In the Ice Manipulation powerset (2ndary Blaster), the second and third powers are Ice Fist and Ice Sword, respectively. Both of these powers add to damage done in HtH combat, with the typical Ice side effects of Slow and -recharge.
But if Blasters of mid level and above are the paper cannons of the game, what good is it to do more damage in melee? I'm avoiding these things like the Plague. Does anyone have any experience in these powers? Do they have some hidden value?
...any religion that rejects coffee worships a false god. -Numtini
As a healer I have grouped with Blasters around level 20 that have done this.
This strikes me as viable IF:
1. There is a tank in the group that actually took Provoke and can actually perform crowd control (lol). There needs to be a tanking 101 course in CoH ;)
2. There is no zerging - and the blaster goes toe to toe one villian at a time (due to good pulling, crowd control or duoing a mission where the instancing tends to involve fewer villians as a result).
"I think my brain just shoved its head up its own ass in retaliation. " HaemishM.
With my controllers and grouped with other controllers I have seen blasters use their melee stuff to some effect by going after held creatures. One really nice one I have seen used in conjunction with a controller is the fire sword circle power.
That being said I would not seek out melee unless you have a good tank who can provoke or a good controller to hold things down as you REALLY do not want to get hit in melee especially later.
They are not as some people say useless powers but you just have to be aware of your groups abilities to make use of them fully.
Most of the time, the blaster secondary powers are more for making those critters who do melee the blaster, go away. :>
Ice is nice for that, as is anything that has a bit of knockback. I use my webgrenades on my ar/dev blaster mostly for baddies that are too damn close to me. Drop a nade, and step out of melee range.
That or as crowd control, pop caltrops, drop two nades concentrate fire on a third, and then just work my way across the group.
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