Grendar

If we include PBAoE's and cones, most. Those are more dangerous, but then, Doms actually have tools that let them do close in work without being cut apart. And to be fair, there are Blaster combos that don't have more than two targeted AoE's.

And if they still have enough damage to kill you five times over? Enemies like War Wolves or Steel Strongmen may only have one ranged attack, but it hits like a truck.

No. Controller mez isn't as good as perma-dom, but it's nowhere near as overshadowed as Blasters. Blaster mez is a toy. Controller mez is the same gun, smaller caliber.

I said keep pace, not outperform. You're really bad about that putting words into someones mouth thing. Point is, the Dom will be putting out solid damage, and also has impressive control.

You still haven't actually answered my question. You call it the most flexible AT. What can it do that cannot be done by another AT? It does damage, can it do anything else?

I will grant that, if only by virtue of the Dominators damage set being secondary instead primary. At level 50, however, both have fully fleshed out attack chains for melee, ranged, and AoE. What can the Blaster do at this level that the Dom can't?

First off, Immobilize barely counts as crowd control anymore. I can't think of any enemies off the top of my head that don't have any ranged attacks, and a surprisingly high number are primarily ranged. Immobilize is pretty much only useful for keeping enemies in a tight cluster for AoE's. Secondly, compared to Dominators, Blaster mez is a toy. Most Blasters have one to three powers with an actual mez, the vast majority of which are either single target or come with a long cooldown. Dominators can lock down a spawn entirely, often with just one or two powers. The difference is an order of magnitude. And the Dom can still keep pace with the Blaster's damage.

You keep giving bad answers. What can a Blaster do that cannot be accomplished by another AT?

You don't have to enter melee with Doms either. You do give up some of their higher damage attacks, but they have enough ranged attacks that you can build a fully functional attack chain from range. Blasters have the same range/melee dichotomy. The difference is, Doms have mez protection and crowd controls. To get back to my original argument (I'll drop my contribution to the other discussions, since other posters are more knowledgeable about such things), what is unique to the Blaster chassis that makes them inherently more flexible than other AT's?

How? They have a mix of melee and ranged attacks, and often built for high recharge to get perma-Domination. In one powerset, they have enough attacks to get a ranged, melee, and AoE chain set up, because those attacks recharge much faster than they do for most other AT's due to the Doms unique slotting requirements.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but it sounded like you were arguing that you can't buff Snipes because then you would be compelled to take them and you don't want that. That is the definition of selfishness, putting your own needs ahead of everyone else. If that wasn't what was being said, I apologize.

St_Angelius covered it much better than I could on the facts though.

You mean like Dominators?


So you contend that it's better to gimp an entire class so a few players can enjoy the difficulty than it is to boost the class so it's on par with the other classes and let the players who enjoy the difficulty add their own challenges? Do you realize how selfish that is?

This mentality has always confused me. I've seen it pop up in several threads, but never backed up. What can a Blaster do that cannot explicitly be done by another AT?

-You can have your minions tank just fine, in fact with many secondaries I would recommend it. Poison, FF, Pain... any set with lots of "you cannot target yourself with this power" abilities really benefits from having your minions tank, and even EB's can be safely tanked by your higher tier henchmen just fine. You will lose more of them this way, of course, but you can always summon another one that looks just like him.

-Understand, you could solo everything in this game with Merc/Force Field just fine. Masterminds are the gods of soloing, play whatever you want and you will still be better off than any Blaster in solo content. So don't worry about if Bots/Traps is the best for soloing (incidentally, while it's a great set, I still think that /Dark and /Time both outshine it in some areas).

-The bruiser's knockback isn't the biggest issue with him, it's that he really, really loves his ranged attacks and getting him into melee where he belongs is a pain. It's not really that big a deal though, any enemy vulnerable to knockback will be taken out by him in one or two swings anyways.

-Traps is a lackluster healing secondary. The Triage beacon gives 150% regen, not a healing buff, so you can't use it in reactive healing, and your pets will be taking a LOT of damage even with all your buffs and debuffs up. Don't worry about it too much, they're cheap. As for your question about slotting for recharge, the only sets with any recharge you can put in your pets are the Mastermind Archtype sets. So if you want to reduce the cooldown on your summon ability, you will have to reduce your global cooldown via set bonuses and Hasten. Don’t worry about it too much, you’ll get by just fine without the Arsonist every time he dies.

-I'm a little confused by your question about Demons being a grab bag of abilities. The demons attack types all work well together, it's actually better than if they were all of the same type since enemies with high resistances to certain damage types are still vulnerable to other demonlings. You want to take one or two of the whip attacks for the -res, and all the other attacks make sense on their own (summons henchmen, empowers henchmen, spawns imps, etc). It actually synergizes very well together, Demons are tied with Bots for the best MM primary in the game.

-If you’re expecting your bots to behave like Blasters, you’ll be in for a very disappointing surprise. They love nothing more than running into melee to use their single melee ability and then firing their laser at point blank range. Even if you tell them to stand still, they have a tendency to completely ignore that and run into melee, then run all the way back to where you told them to stand before firing their laser again. It’s kind of annoying, but they’re cheap anyways.

-Avoid /FF like the plague, it's very boring. Very, very boring. Demons/Dark would work extremely well together, though. Demons get a lot of +res, which goes well with -tohit, and the -res from the whip attacks would stack with Tar Patch. Demons/Dark would be an excellent MM.

-The Lich... anticlimactic?! The Lich is the perfect henchman, he stands back further than you do and slings holds, debuffs, immobilizes, fears, and damage from a safe distance. It's like getting a pocket Dark/Nothing defender. Admittedly, his damage is lackluster, but his obscene amounts of finely tuned control more than makes up for it. He will literally decimate the incoming damage (literally reduce it by 90% in many cases). Damage is overrated, controls and debuffs are the kings of CoH.

As for /Storm, I don't like it as much because the best debuff power Hurricane likes to throw enemies out of its radius. As for whether your minions can keep themselves alive with their self heal... no, they’re pretty terrible at it actually. Since it’s a drain rather than a direct heal, they use it in their damage rotation, and it recharges too slowly to make them self sufficient. You should be fine with the single target heal though if you just absolutely love /Storm.

Poison would be a great secondary if Envenom and Weaken had a larger radius. 8 feet is way too small, it really should be 15 feet to be on par with equivalent powers from the other sets. As is, hitting more than one or two targets with them is almost impossible unless you wait for your enemies to converge on you, which makes them useless for soaking the alpha. Its not a bad set by any means, but for dealing with large numbers of enemies /Time, /Dark, or /Traps would all be better suited.

-As for Primary/Secondary sets that fit a theme and can take down tough stuff, a few work very well. Bots/Traps, Bots/Time, Bots/Thermal, Necro/Dark, Necro/Traps (go with a Frankenstein theme), Necro/Time, Demons/Dark, Demons/Thermal all fit thematically and would be great for taking down anything up to EB with ease. Taking down an AV or GM solo will usually require a very solid (and expensive) build, they're a special case. Literally any combination can solo basic content at +0/x1 though, Masterminds are the gods of solo content.

Masterminds aren’t hard to play, but keeping your roudy minions in check can be a hassle. I recommend you get a good set of keybinds to keep them reasonably under control. Beyond that, you should be fine. It's hard to mess up a Mastermind, they're a very well designed class.



Oh, one more thing. You can use inspirations on your henchmen by dragging them over them in the henchmen list. Very useful if your T3 henchman is tanking and he needs a bit more defense.

It's functionally instant. By the time you switch forms and fire off whatever ability you wanted it will have recharged. The only thing this prevents is something crazy like switching rapidly to and from Dwarf in between enemy attacks, which would require crazy reflexes and crazier latency. Well, and the much more plausible case of people rapid-fire shifting and causing server lag.

Personally, I enjoy tri-form. I would love to see toggle suppression, since it would give me a reason to take some of the defensive powers (heck, I'd take toggles-active-but-no-bonuses just so I can have Gravity Shield up when I go human form), but forms are half the fun. The -kb is very exciting though.

You mean you can pull them separately? I always assumed that they attacked when you started destroying the computer, every single group I've been in has simultaneously taken on both AV's and the bot swarm. Honestly, not a big deal, both AV's are just a tank and spank, you just need a durable enough tank/enough support to keep them under control. Unless your team does something crazy like focusing the computer first it's really not that hard.

I was just about to say this. It's the only real powerset that leaps to mind from Red Riding Hood. Dunno about a secondary though.

That explains so much...