Combust vs orb of fire

[D4rkh0rus]

I've read that combust is the best meta magic seed for blaster builds... But how so, considering orb of fire deals more damage, albeit only a little bit more.

[Boci]

Combust doesn't require a to hit roll, which normally isn't too much of a problem, but there is a spell which protects you spells that require a ranged attack role, so combust bypasses that. Miss chancre also applies to any spell that requires an attack roll. It has SR, but that is perhaps easier to bypass, and you can make SR yes spells into no (but that will require serious level investment).

[D4rkh0rus]

Combust doesn't require a to hit roll, which normally isn't too much of a problem, but there is a spell which protects you spells that require a ranged attack role, so combust bypasses that. Miss chancre also applies to any spell that requires an attack roll. It has SR, but that is perhaps easier to bypass, and you can make SR yes spells into no (but that will require serious level investment).

True strike and assay spell resistance both take a standard action...

[Boci]

True strike and assay spell resistance both take a standard action...

True strike won't get past range ward, still misses on a natural 1 and has various other foils (like wings of cover). And assay resistance from complete arcana is a swift action.

[Just Caker]

True strike and assay spell resistance both take a standard action...

Try reading assay spell resistance again. If we assume that the average SR at level 20 is 32, cl 20 + assay spell resistance means that you only need a roll of 2 in order to overcome it. That shouldn't be too difficult.