New player seeking advice

Hello all

i started COX a few months ago. i was a former WoW player with an 80 feral druid specced for pvp

my issue at the moment is choosing an AT and powersets. there's just so much to choose from! i'm sure as i play, i will learn more about these, but it's very daunting at the moment. i'd appreciate any advice based on some points below if possible:


a) i would like to be a tanker, scrapper or brute as i've always liked melee toons more than ranged or support classes

a) in an ideal world, i would like a toon based on strong AoE powers. i just enjoy the challenge of hearding a load of mobs and nuking them all down without dying

c) i also want to get into the pvp aspect of the game at 50 as much as possible. my style of pvp always seemed to be about outlasting the opponent as opposed to bursting but i'll try anything.


at the moment, i have a dark/dark scrapper at lvl 7. i had a concept and liked the fact there was a dark Ancillary power pool for scrappers to complete the concept.

any feedback would be appreciated. my apologies if this information has been covered else where

108

As an addendum to what I told you in the Brute forum, it's considered poor manners to post the same message in multiple forums. I understand why you did, but when you have a question that covers multiple ATs it's best to put it in the Archetypes and Powers General Discussion forum.

My apologies about the multiple posts. i'll keep it in mind for the future

108

My suggestion would be:

Spines scrapper; Spines/Fire for pure AoE, not quite as tough, and may have sustainability issues. Spines/Willpower; the defense set adds little to your AoE, but you can easily sustain your offense continually.

/Electric tanker; I've only played it to 27 but already I am impressed. Shield/Electric is my character, which I am enjoying quite a bit so far; that too adds AoE from the defense primary. Fire/Electric and Dark/Electric might also be promising.

/Fire tanker, with some of the same combinations.

Any tanker can solo with impunity most of what the game can throw at them. It's standing up to the demands of holding aggro for a team that requires some know how. Holding aggro is not a big issue, especially if you are used to playing WoW, where my memory is that it was very fussy and required specific talents. Your challenge is maintaining your survivability while being the front line fighter.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

This game tries to do a fairly good job of balancing survivability vs damage. Not to sound mean, but every player wants to never die while one-shotting everything, right?

Based on your stated preferences though, Spines and Fire Primary on Scrappers are generally high AoE. As for survivability, from what I've seen Shield Defense seems fairly strong at high levels, though an endurance hog (endurance being yet another thing to juggle).

Honestly, the flavor of the month (well, actually flavor of the last 2+ years) toon seems to be Fire/Kinetics Controllers, but understanding why would probably take a bit of explanation for someone new to the game.

I don't have any interest in or knowledge of PvP so I'll address my answer strictly to the PvE aspect.

You're looking for melee first; that does mean Scrapper or Tanker heroside. Now deciding between the two you'll need to make the call:

1. Do you want to be the wall that protects the team and survive? Are you willing to have a bit less damage output in exchange for great defenses? In that case you'll want a Tanker... looking for AOE damage I'd put Fire Melee as your secondary of choice... possibly Electric Melee as it looks good on paper.

• Now your primary choice is more open; for raw survivability nothing matches Stone Armor. Invuln can, with good building and IO choices, nearly match that level.

• Shield would be another good choice... slightly weaker defensively than a well built Invuln but with significantly greater damage output and the awesome Shield Charge attack.

• For pure damage with much lower durability Fire Armor is another choice. Be aware that you're going to be fairly squishy as tankers go... without major IO bonuses Fire Armor struggles to survive tanking situations other primaries take in stride.

2. Do you want to kill things fast and have enough durability to survive but you aren't really interested in tanking for a team? Then you probably want a Scrapper. Good AOE primaries would be Spines, Broadsword, Katana and Fire. Spines offers the most AOE of the bunch at the expense of a good single target attack chain.

• Now secondaries... Regeneration is a good choice and it's certainly the earliest maturing set... most of the good stuff comes by level 16. It tends to be weaker in the late game than some of the others though. Still a potent choice but it's strongest in the early to mid game. It doesn't have anything to help with your damage output though. I have two Regen scrappers at 50, one a Broadsword/Regen and the other Spine/Regen... they're effective but they can go from full health to dead in literally 3 seconds if you're not on your game and ready with the click heals.

• Shield has recently become my favorite Scrapper secondary, it's a bit late maturing but when it does it's an awesome engine of destruction. One caveat is that it limits you on your primaries... Spines, Katana, Claws and Dual Blades cannot be paired with Shield. Once you reach the defense soft cap of 45% a Shield scrapper actually has Tanker level defenses. You're not going to see that happen until the mid 30's though.

Most any scrapper secondary can be quite effective if you build it right; Regen and Shield are simply the ones I've played to 50. Of the two, my Broadsword/Shield is by far the best AOE killing machine, he's nearly unkillable unless I do something really, REALLY stupid. The Spine/Regen can kill lots of weak mobs faster but it runs into problems with tougher mobs and is always only one mistake away from death... the BS/Shield doesn't care about tough or weak.

Again, everything I've said pertains to the PvE game... PvP is very much a niche thing in this game with only a small percentage of the playerbase participating. The figures I've seen (I can't swear to the accuracy but anecdotal experience seems to bear it out) show less than 5% of the players ever PvP to any extent.