Blaster

Overview

The Blaster is an offensive juggernaut. Whether up close or afar, he can deal out tremendous amounts of damage. In comparison to the other archetypes, the Blaster is by far the most damaging to the enemy. But the Blaster is quite fragile; this archetype has relatively few hit points. Blaster heroes must be on their guard before getting into combat; while their immense power can overcome most foes, alone they are quite vulnerable. The Blaster can turn the tide of a conflict, but they need their friends to help them succeed.

The Blaster's powersets are:

Primary: Ranged
Secondary: Support
Inherent: Defiance

The Blaster has low hit points and high damage.

Powersets

Primary Powersets

A Blaster's primary powersets are designed specifically for ranged attacks. They are:

• Archery
• Assault Rifle
• Electrical Blast
• Energy Blast
• Fire Blast
• Ice Blast
• Sonic Attack

Secondary Powersets

A Blaster's secondary powersets are designed for support. They are:

• Devices
• Energy Manipulation
• Electricity Manipulation
• Fire Manipulation
• Ice Manipulation

Ancillary Power Pools

• Cold Mastery
• Electrical Mastery
• Flame Mastery
• Force Mastery
• Munitions Mastery

Inherent Power

• Defiance

Strategies

As with the Dominator, the Blaster has powersets that are not exactly intuitive in their synergy. The Blaster primary speaks obviously of ranged combat, and the Blaster's hit points and lack of defense speak to this as well, and yet the Blaster secondaries all feature a number of melee attacks - some of them very good! This discrepancy can lead to confusion. Some Blasters feel their role is to manage ranged combat, and merely take the nature of their secondary to mean that they have more powers they can skip in favour of useful power pools, such as Fitness. Other Blasters, instead, opt to revel in their secondary's melee attacks, taking melee attacks and engaging in as much melee combat as they do ranged.

It should be noted that these strategies are not necessarily equal, but neither is necessarily wrong. The Blaster has these options available to them, and it's up to each player to determine which option is best for them, and which fits their playstyle. This does mean, however, there is very little uniformity across blasters, and that most strategic advise has to be tailored for each type of blaster. The only strategy that is shared across most types of Blaster is that of the Active Defense.

Active Defense

Simply put, the Active Defense is the pattern of protecting oneself by removing things that can harm you. For archetypes with control at their disposal, such as the Dominator and Controller, this means using Holds. For the Blaster, this tends towards being more simplistic; death is, after all, the ultimate debuff.

For some blasters, area effect damage is king. To these blasters, the plan is pretty simple - if you can wipe out all the minions before they get a shot off, they can't be a problem while you're gunning down the lieutenants and bosses. For others, single-target damage is much more key, and to these blasters, the opposite is true - remove the lieutenant because he will take the most effort, then cut your way through the weaker minions. As with all blasters, some controls are available in your secondary set - such as the knockback and disorient powers available to the Energy Manipulation Set, or the Web Grenade and Caltrops powers available to the Devices set. These powers are not there so you can use them to control the battlefield - they're there so you can use them to control the battle.

External Links

• Archetypes documentation on official City of Heroes site
• Official City of Heroes Manual as a zipped PDF file