City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Most *Versatile* Powersets/Builds

Adeon Hawkwood

By Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2011-02-21 15:35 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA View Post
My apologies MajorDecoy, I underestimated how precise my wording needed to be. I should indeed have stated "base damage" instead of "damage" so as not to confuse the MajorDecoys of the world.
You said "Total damage"

Quote:
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA View Post
my total damage increases by 25%.
If you mean "base damage", don't say "total damage" because the two imply vastly different things.

 

Posted

And my point still stands. Your argument that it isn't overpowered is exceedingly weak because you're including "(I have no idea how close this is to true)"

You're conjecturing "Well, it doesn't feel like giving a pet an inspiration does much to improve my damage. It wouldn't be overpowered if one damage inspiration improved all of my pets damage"

You have the tools at your disposal to find out how much giving one pet a damage inspiration improves your damage output. Use them.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
I've found that while masterminds tend to be highly versatile, they tend, on average and in the incarnations I've played, to have two significant vulnerabilities that my Ill/Rad does not have:

1. They tend to be vulnerable to AoE damage. In situations with a lot of AoE, you can easily find all your pets vaporizing faster than you can keep them alive unless you have a huge amount of AoE defense (Bots/FF, for example, tends to be less vulnerable, but not completely invulnerable). Two of the three sources of aggro control in Ill/Rad are totally indestructible: PA and Spooky.
An absolutely fair point. Yet this doesn't seem to happen often with me. Perhaps this is due to playstyle as I eliminate AOE threats with priority. /Dark of course provides - to hit mitigation. Another factor has to be the innate resistance of the Mercs. If I recall correctly even the lowest of them has 10% resist to Smash/Lethal. Then I added the proc that adds +10% to all resists. But resisted damage is still damage and that's where the medic comes in. I keep my medic alive and he keeps everything else going if I can't.
If all else fails then TP Foe can be used to cut the AOE threat well before it's developed.

Quote:
2. They tend to be vulnerable to high order burst damage, such as from AVs. The little pets in particular are AV cannon fodder. That makes it tricky for most masterminds to control AV aggro without significant help.
Yeah completely fair point. Fotunately I've got Fluffy. [In reference to later posts, please note that insps can be dropped onto Fluffy as well.]

Quote:
Really strong MMs can cover for these weaknesses of course, but they tend to be pits in the armor Ill/Rad doesn't have. They have other strengths that Ill/Rad doesn't have, of course, but those two tend to hurt the overall versatility of MMs in my mind, even given their other advantages.

Which is not to say they aren't highly versatile archetypes in general. And Bots in particular, being essentially completely ranged, can in practice neutralize a lot of the issues with aggro and burst damage by staying at range. My experience with Mercs is much more limited, so I can't say with first hand experience what the top end performance of Merc MMs is.
Well please allow me to recommend them. In addition to the normal advice of avoiding serum, I would offer that Burst and Slug are worth taking. Burst to help initiate a -Def cascade and Slug for actual damage. I hope you find the journey as enjoyable as I.

It's not how many times you get knocked down that count. It's how many times you get up.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
I've found that while masterminds tend to be highly versatile, they tend, on average and in the incarnations I've played, to have two significant vulnerabilities that my Ill/Rad does not have:

1. They tend to be vulnerable to AoE damage. In situations with a lot of AoE, you can easily find all your pets vaporizing faster than you can keep them alive unless you have a huge amount of AoE defense (Bots/FF, for example, tends to be less vulnerable, but not completely invulnerable). Two of the three sources of aggro control in Ill/Rad are totally indestructible: PA and Spooky.

2. They tend to be vulnerable to high order burst damage, such as from AVs. The little pets in particular are AV cannon fodder. That makes it tricky for most masterminds to control AV aggro without significant help.

Really strong MMs can cover for these weaknesses of course, but they tend to be pits in the armor Ill/Rad doesn't have. They have other strengths that Ill/Rad doesn't have, of course, but those two tend to hurt the overall versatility of MMs in my mind, even given their other advantages.

Which is not to say they aren't highly versatile archetypes in general. And Bots in particular, being essentially completely ranged, can in practice neutralize a lot of the issues with aggro and burst damage by staying at range. My experience with Mercs is much more limited, so I can't say with first hand experience what the top end performance of Merc MMs is.
There are two types of MM AT: There is Robot/Thug users that claim MMs are perfect and there's Ninja/Necro users like me who think the pets are just dying too fast to be effective. I will never bring my Necro/Pain to Barracuda SF again. All those aoe frustrates me to no end and I highly doubt that I'll bring Necro/Pain to Apex. It's tough enough to survive ambushes. I can't imagine all the hard work just to goto undead pets so they don't just run through the blue flame. It is just not worth the effort.

If melee pets like Genin can't survive even one hit, then they have no business going in kicking.

I agree with your points on MMs. While they are versatility, they also have a lot of weaknesses. And I am one of those who hate using Bodyguard mode with taunt. If I want to direct damage to myself, I'll play Tanker/Brute. When I choose MMs, I want my pets take most of the damage, not me.


Speaking about which, Arcanaville, is there any chance to add Positional Resistance? I figure the system already has Positional Defense. It shouldn't be that hard to add Positional Resistance, right? I want them to add AoE resistance to MM's pets (mostly melee ones). It's ridiculous how fast they die against aoe from bosses/AV.

What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Deacon_NA View Post
In no way is inspiration consumption by MMs "fair". I'm not going to make this a "cause" but the discrepancy is very real.
Fair is subjective in a game like this.

Not all ATs and powersets benefit equally from inspirations.


An MM's pets, as long as they are alive, deal damage basically "for free" in terms of your endurance usage - so you'll need to excuse most people if they aren't feeling bad that MMs don't get the same benefit from damage inspirations (this is also a part of why it would be massively overpowered).

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus View Post
Fair is subjective in a game like this.

Not all ATs and powersets benefit equally from inspirations.


An MM's pets, as long as they are alive, deal damage basically "for free" in terms of your endurance usage - so you'll need to excuse most people if they aren't feeling bad that MMs don't get the same benefit from damage inspirations (this is also a part of why it would be massively overpowered).
This is mostly true before they change Stamina to inherent and before set bonuses are included. Mastermind's strength in endurance usage isn't that big of a deal once people have set bonuses or epic powers. And it's not like pets don't use endurance. Oni and Commando can easily run out of endurance without -end.

Inspiration usage is extremely important in this game and MM benefits the least from it. Sure, you can toss inspirations to pet but do you have enough to give to all 6 pets? The most I would do is to toss to boss pet or purple to Jounins.

What's left is to normalize all Assassin Strikes and improve Stalker's old sets (Claw, MA and EM)! You don't need to bring back the missing PbAoE attack. You just need to make the existing ones better! For example, make Slice a WIDER and LONGER cone.

 

Posted

A few thoughts,

  • Ill/Rad
    This is definitely a top contender for the most versatile, I'd also argue the most 'powerful'; but since powerful is really up for grabs for definition, I'll stick with versatile. A few problems with Ill/Rad's though, which I found an Ill/Cold addresses,
    • Toggle debuffs: Not having a ToHit check is great, but it also becomes a problem when trying to help a team by reducing -res on large spawns; often with OP'ed teams, stuff dies too fast for the RI to really spread, particularly with very mobile mobs (which is common when decoys come into the picture).
    • Not enough debuff: -ToHit is useful but not terribly so with teams with capped defenses; same goes for -def. -Resist turns out to be MUCH more useful and /rad has only so much of it
    • Not enough team buffs: Other than radiant aura (which is a mediocre AoE heal) and AM, which it is often hard to get people to bunch up for on fast paced missions, Rad doesn't really have anything
  • Ill/Cold
    This is my personal favorite, some of the things I really like about my Ill/Cold over my Ill/Rad,
    • Massive -resist with Heat Loss and Sleet
    • Sleet, Sleet and more sleet; with multiple casts, you can cover a much larger area; slows enemies, reduces their resistance/defense
    • Much more resistance than I can built my Ill/Rad up to
    • It doesn't have an AoE heal, but with 6 slotted Aid Self (one int reducer), self healing is taken care of
    • Buffs. One /Cold can increase the survivability of the entire team by a significant amount; including that of the Phantom (this is of lower value on an Ill troll though, since your PA's can't be buffed)
    • Don't really have to worry about End
    • Benumb literally neuters AV's
    • With -slow in so many powers, it feels like your enemies just dropped into slow motion
    Rad's have 'some' advantages still, but to me, they don't really compare.
  • Ill/Kin
    This is a very interesting concept that I am thinking of rolling. It obviously has a lot of advantages, so I'll just list my concerns here,
    • Effectively no debuffs
    • Buffs you have don't effect a majority of your pets, hence the solo experience would be severely lower
    • No self resistance buff (which arguably Ill/Rad also doesn't have though)

      I still might roll one since the buffs are pretty awesome.
  • Masterminds
    Once I see a good one, I'll comment more.
  • Epic Archtypes
    SoA's are pretty good - though, they still seem mostly damage oriented. Their buffs/debuffs/control are all weak compared to trolls - though still really versatile and great toons, I can't quite bring myself to put them in the same bucket as Illusion trolls

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Posted

I found my Huntsman to be one of the most versatile characters I've ever built. I'm sure you know what that is, but just for the sake of it, a Huntsman is a VEAT that goes Bane but only takes a few, if any, of the Bane primary.

On mine I took Crowd Control because I love the idea of slobber knocking a group of enemies that get too close for comfort. I also took Build Up. That was pretty much it out of the primary. I decided this character was amazingly powerful when I almost accidentally solo'd an AV class Silver Mantis with a build that had zero IOs and most of his powers underslotted. I ran into the battle hoping to just suicide on her because I had forgotten to reduce my difficulty. If I had more blues I probably could have finished her.

 

Posted

I think I am almost starting to sound like dechs kaison I have advocated this combo so many times but except for soloing av's I think an elec/psi/ice dom can fill just about any role. Solo or teamed, I can neutralize any mob with one shot. Whole mob confused? Check. Whole mob slept and reslept even with two "rain powers" from the app? Check. Whole mob held? Check. Oh what's that? They are tightly knit enough to cap regen?(which now with tier 4 alpha only takes six mobs to get 133hp/second) capped hp? Check. Soft-capped sm/lethal? Check. Tons of aoe, and complete end drain to anything that manages to live thru the massive debuff and damage barrage of sleet and ice storm for more than about 3 seconds. Oh yeah and psw. And all of these effects are as helpful on a team as they are soloing, even on 4/8. So it may not offer buffs to keep the team alive but if you want to neuter a problem mob, there isn't anything better.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jibikao View Post
Speaking about which, Arcanaville, is there any chance to add Positional Resistance? I figure the system already has Positional Defense. It shouldn't be that hard to add Positional Resistance, right? I want them to add AoE resistance to MM's pets (mostly melee ones). It's ridiculous how fast they die against aoe from bosses/AV.
Offhand i would say it is not possible since damage and resistance works in a completely different manner than defense. The type(s) of damage an attack does is not a tag attached to the attack like defense tags. The way the combat engine works your request is not possible without rewriting the combat engine from the ground up. Not likely to happen.

Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...

 

Posted

I'd have to say my Mind/Kin. She's the only one of my characters that..:

Can harm each of Hami's mitos (positional defense < Attacks without position flags!)
Has tanked for teams (aside from my one actual, well, Tank)
Finished a TF solo
Does competently in PvP

All in addition to all the other benefits of Mind and Kin that have already been stated in this thread (Stackable mezzes, heal, end regain, buffs, debuffs, the combo dishes out good damage, etc)...

...

I'll concede she's not great at everything. She'd be hard to softcap without gimping half her powers. I find myself wishing Mind had an AoE immobilize so that she could have constant containment damage (Note, i actually hate immobs as a mez, but there ya go). However, anything she CAN'T do (like rez) is easily taken care of with temp powers, of which i have like, 50.

Though i also have to admit i barely play any of my other characters, so yeah.

-STEELE =)


Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)

 

Posted

Even though Fire/Kin controllers have a reputation for farming, they're actually pretty versatile. They have good survivability, incredible buffs, and excellent damage (although the first and last depends somewhat on what APP they take).

Ill/Rad and Elec/Psi/Ice have already been mentioned.

 

Posted

Here are my two most versatile toons

Earth/Earth/Ice Dominator
-Awesome AoE Control (most of my primary)
-Awesome ST damage (Seismic Smash,Stone Mallet,Heavy Mallet,Fossilize,Stone prison)
-Good AoE damage (Ice Storm, Fissure, Tremor,Stone Cages,Stalagmites)
-Decent ST Control (Fossilize, Seismic Smash,Stone Prison)
-Perma Stun (perma dom+Power Boost+Stalagmites+Fissure)
-Softcapped S/L
-Perma Dom
-Pet that acts like a tank
- -def (from just about every power)
- -res (Sleet and proc in Earthquake)
-Sleep (Salt Crystals)
-Self Heal (Aid Self,Hoarfrost)

Elec/Nin/Levi Stalker
-Awesome AoE (LR,TS,CI,JL)
-Amazing survivablitiy (Easily softcapped to melee, AoE and range)
-Cone Confuse (Blinding Powder)
- -tohit (Blinding Powder)
- -perc (Blinding Powder)
-Sleep (blinding Powder)
-Aggro shredding AoE (Smoke Flash)
-Status Protection (Kuji-in Rin)
-Self Heal (Kuji-in Sha)
-Range Attack (Spirit Shark)
-Hold (Spirit Shark Jaws)
-Decent St damage (AS,CB,HP,CI)
-Decent in PVP
-Stealth+TP
-Can get -res through proc in water spout
-Can get a pet
-Hibernate and Kuji-in Retsu for when times get really tough

 

Posted

My take is going to be a bit unusual.

The standard answer: Dark support. Just filled with awesome.

The unusual answer: an IO'd out SS/Fire Brute. Or anything that can tank and also tear up spawns with overpowered damage.

First answer first. Dark is loaded with great powers. It borders onto a control set at times, and it does all the really important things. -Regen, -resist, great heal. I don't put a lot of faith in a gigantic list of everything that a set can do, because most of it is trivialised by damage, and putting things like a single target fear is just trying to pad an answer and make it appear more valuable. So a set to me needs to do the essentials well. There's only so much you can do in any fight and by and large those single target effects need to be either super powerful and useful against AVs or they are meaningless under a wave of AOE damage... which brings me to my second choice.

An IOd out SS/Fire brute, or really anything that can tank AVs and take out entire spawns in a matter of seconds. My SS/Fire Brute can feel guilty when she can just triviliase a whole team for an entire TF except for the AV battles where she needs temp powers to debuff regen (which is doable) or just a small amount of extra help to do the same. Jump in, crowd control the whole spawn with footstomp, and they are dead in less than 10 seconds. Bosses all down in maybe 15 seconds. Next spawn. Versatile because it's the perfect solution to just about everything in the game.

I guess it comes down to perspective - I don't believe versatile is about a giant list of what bag of tricks you have. It comes down to what you can do. An SS/Fire brute (and a variety of other combinations of the sort) can do a whole TF without breaking stride at breakneck speed. Damage is the ultimate debuff, and they have it in spades. They also have pretty good survivability (enough to tank most AVs) with the right IOs. If they release content whereby you must single target fear someone before they can be defeated, or that simply requires stealth, then my definition of versatile will adjust accordingly.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Schismatrix View Post
Offhand i would say it is not possible since damage and resistance works in a completely different manner than defense. The type(s) of damage an attack does is not a tag attached to the attack like defense tags. The way the combat engine works your request is not possible without rewriting the combat engine from the ground up. Not likely to happen.
I forgot to address this the first time around, but yes, "positional resistance" is not really possible with the current game engine. Its not a question of technology, and more a question of what resistance even means in City of Heroes.

The critical thing to understand is that the act of hitting something with an attack is a two phase process:

1. Determine if the power hits the target at all.

Defense works at this point to affect tohit rolls, if the power requires a tohit roll. Autohitting powers don't. Every power is typed with a set of types. These types could be anything, and in fact as far as the game engine is concerned they are just one, two, three, four, and so on. Defenses have the same typing, and a defense applies to the attack if the attack has its type as one of the listed types. If an attack fails to hit the target, none of its effects take effect on the target.

2. For each effect of the power, determine its net effect on the target.

Resistance works at this point, and notice that once a power hits its target, each individual effect can be and is processed separately. If you shoot an Energy blast at the target, the energy blast probably has a smashing damage component and an energy damage component. Each is a separate effect of the power, and each is processed separately. For each effect, Resistances are checked to determine how much of the effect actually affects the target. Targets can resist basically everything: you can resist damage with damage resistances, holds with hold resistance, etc. Again, the game engine doesn't really know about types in the same way we do: to the game engine its just one, two, three, four, etc just like for defense types (with a couple of interesting exceptions not important here). For each effect, there is a corresponding resistance.

Why "positional resistance" isn't really possible is that resistance is directly tied to the effect. Smashing damage has a corresponding smashing resistance. Energy damage has a corresponding energy resistance. By the time the game gets around to looking at damage, its no longer concerned with the original typing of the attacks. In effect, the effects part of the game engine has no idea what the original typing of the attacks was. Even if it did, it has no way to use that information to "resist" the attack.


Even were you to try to add "positional resistance" as a totally new concept and feature to the game engine there would be the question of what that would mean. Does that mean you would resist positional damage effects? How about positional mezzes? Positional knockback? Would you resist your own self buffing effects? Most self buffs are coded to be unresistable, so that, say, an Invuln tanker doesn't self-resist his own Build Up (which is a buff to the strength of all damage types: ordinarily an Invuln's resistances would resist those buffs and decrease them, which is why they are flagged unresistable)? There exist the possibility of some weird corner cases if you were to attempt to do this.


There was a semi-related question regarding Toxic Defense that I think most people didn't fully understand. The devs used to say that it was extremely difficult to add Toxic Defense, and that's why it wasn't in the game. That was actually not true. In fact, toxic defense *exists* now, deep in the game engine. Adding a defense type isn't all that hard really.

So it exists. So suppose I were to give it to Force fields today. What happens tomorrow? Absolutely nothing. And the reason why is that no attack is typed toxic. Having toxic defense is like having alligator defense, or chocolate frosting defense. Those things would only work against attacks designated alligator attacks or chocolate frosting attacks. There are no toxic attacks because the toxic attack type didn't exist when those powers were created. Adding it to player powers would therefore grant no benefit. The important thing is not that players lack toxic defense, but that no attack that deals toxic damage is typed with an analogous type.

In the same way, "melee resistance" would be something that would work against "melee damage." And there is no such thing as melee damage.

To make "toxic defense" work, the devs would have to do three things:

1. Tag all (actually: most - some attacks deliver damage type X but aren't typed with the corresponding attack type deliberately for conceptual reasons) attacks that deliver toxic damage with the toxic attack type.

2. Add the correct balanced amount of toxic defense to all sets that offer some form of defense. What that might be is not an obvious question to answer in all cases.

3. Ensure that this net typing doesn't create corner cases that subvert the original intent. For example, if a critter was specifically given toxic attacks that did not have non-positional typing for a specific strength reason, these designs would need to be reviewed and possibly modified.

Needless to say, that is a lot of work. Hundreds of player and critter powers would be affected by this, which would then need to be Q&A checked before being released. Attempting to make "positional resistance" would be an undertaking an order of magnitude more complex.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by BunnyAnomaly View Post
I guess it comes down to perspective - I don't believe versatile is about a giant list of what bag of tricks you have.
I agree with you, and actually, would take it a bit further. Measuring versatility, and for that matter, "power" is like measuring the value of Bingo cards, but after one half of the numbers have been called. You have an idea of what the game has measured in the past, and some idea that some categories of things may happen in the future, but that's it. You're at the whim of the environment. And also, weirdly, at the whim of your whim, because you can only be powerful or versatile if you care to do thing that power or versatility opens up to you.

Of course, there's an even bigger risk to making declarations about relative strength. Remember the debacle with the l33t ski773d PVP professor who said some very unbecoming things about our community a few years ago? He was a Scrapper who (allegedly) had built a reputation on using Teleport Other to port enemy players into drones. That's "versatility" of a kind that got him named by the New Orleans Time Picayune as "the game's most hated player."

His supposed motive was that he was playing the game "as the developers intended it." That is to say, he ignored every social contract that governed the way players approached the game and played only by the hardcoded ones. At the time he claimed he was "shocked" that players did not like this.

I don't know why. As a professor of gaming, he should have predicted, like Richard Bartle did in his book Designing Virtual Worlds, that a virtual environment is not a gamebut a place. Some of what goes on there is game-like, but only if players consent to participate in it. If a player decides he or she would like to disregard "fights with Scrappers who use Teleport Other"--or, much more relevantly for most of us, the PVP, task force, team, farming, solo, market or costume contest aspects of the game--there is very little a developer can do to change that.

In short, versatility and power are difficult to measure because they only have meaning in terms of what a player wants to do. You can attach rewards to them, as the developers have in the case of PVP, but reward does not automatically mean players will begin to value that aspect of the game, or the ability of their characters to perform in it.

In all of this I don't mean to say that everything is totally relative, because that isn't exactly true either. However, the point that does hopefully get across that power and versatility are as much of a measure of environment and player desire than they are of what is coded into powers. I think we can see that reflected in this thread, with each person naming a different type of character they see as "most versatile." Actually, I would attribute a fair amount of City of Heroes success to the fact that it manages to give the impression that so many player characters are uniquely ideal.

 

Posted

I think there are lots of "winners" for most versatile. Some of my personal favorites.

Fire/Kin/Earth - Controller
Elec/Shield - Scrapper
Fire/Dark - Corruptor
Rad/Sonic - Defender

I think it really comes down to what other people bring and what you enjoy playing. I'm far more motivated to playing as hard as possible when I enjoy it. To me, playing something I don't like is more like work not fun.

H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD