f13.net

Ok,  I thought we might need a place to talk about different character ideas, and what are characters are going to be, with positives and negitives of different powers and power sets.

I cant decide what character to play in release.

I really like my Dark/Dark Scrapper but he just EATS through END, big time. Leaving my with so much downtime, it sucks. Also, chasing down runners with melee is a pain. I took teleport friend, and planning to take teleport also. I might play this character in retail.

I am also playing a Fire/Fire Blaster. He is only lvl 5, and fun to play, but some thing is just not fitting. Maybe once he gets flight and a few more powers he will be more fun. I think if I play a blaster in retail, it will be Energy/? or Fire/?, Im not big on the Fire support set.

My third alt is a Dark/Dark Defender, he is fun, and I made him hoping to be a more offensive baised Dark Ranged character. Im not big on having Buff/Debuff as my main function, but the Dark Ranged secondary is nice. Any one have any experiance with this?

By now you probably noticed, I like the Dark skillset. I wish they had a Dark/Dark for the Blaster, if they did, that would be my main, with out a second thought.

Also, could some one with teleport talk a bit about it, I hear its good, but consumes end very fast when traveling. How does it work exactlly. Can I port to any where in a zone? or only some where I can see on the screan?

My first character was a Dark/Dark defender and I really liked him, but my heal options were not the best and the debuff in the early stages at least were not that impressive to me.  I dropped him for a Empath/Dark defender and am really enjoying that combo right now.  I agree with your views on the Fire/Fire blaster, though I think you start to shine when you get hover and then flight, which I can see as a must for that character.

I made an earth/empath controller last night and really had a blast.  Was nice being able to take down oranges at second level.  The ability to control the mob and stay away is phenominal.  With a lot of empath play, I am starting to see some skill needs in the healing arts.  Had about as much fun as I have had to date in any MMORPG last night with a timed mission and a toon full party.  Was just a blast.

The dark armor pool for scrapper early on is VERY energy hungry. At low levels it can be annoying but mainly the trick is to balance what powers you have up especially the defenses with how bad you are getting beaten. Once you level up and start getting dual origin and single origin enhancers end drain issues on the active armors goes away.

As far as dark ranged it is a nice power set and does good damage but once you hit 20s you start coming more fully into your archetype. At that point blasters start greatly and I mean GREATLY outdamaging defenders. Defenders damage stays pretty good but compared to blasters we are deffinatly middle of the road.

The nice thing about dark ranged is it has some nifty powers like tenebrous tentacles that works like an aoe cone root power as well as some other crowd control like powers. Dark defenders with really enhanced tar pit and the dark ranged power set can fill the position of controllers in many groups.


Also the neat thing with dark defenders is if you get the last power you get a pet that mimics the same kinds of power you can use. So basically at higher level dark defenders are two defenders for the price of one and can really debuff the crap out of targets.


Kaid

I didn't see the question about teleport here is a run down.

Basically teleport works like a normal ground targetable power you click button once and you get a recticle point that where you want to go and hit power again to port to that location. You can point the retical anywhere including UP. My tactic is to aim up at a 45 degree angle then bamf a couple times to get altitude then start porting in the general direction of where I want to go.

You get about a 1.5 or 2 second hover when you come out of port so you have time to activate it again while in the air. Hehe one thing to watch for is you keep momentum. So if you start falling and port you will come out at the other end with extra momentum. This can be bad if you fall a long way then port you can sometimes come out of the other end and SLAM into the ground hehe OWIE.

Takes a big of getting used to but no power in the game can beat it specially if you get end reducers in a point to point race.


Kaid

Speaking of big characters I just made the CoH version of a Troll.  Made him a scrapper and gave him a broadsword/regen.  He looks pretty neat to me, pretty much the look I wanted, down to the glowing purple eyes.  Basically seeing if I could remake a troll character from EQ that I had.  The answer was "yes".

Having lots of fun so far but am terribly torn between him and my main blaster.  GAH.  Too hard to pick who to play.  One reason I have been soloing abit.  When I lose connect I usually switch characters.

My char is about the same as Fargull and it's tons of fun to play.  I quite enjoy controlling the mob and flinging them about.  Having said that, there is a certain satisfaction in playing a melee character.  My first try was martial arts and, I have to say, smacking around a big ugly brute is a wonderful feeling... especially when you're 5' tall.

My highest level character is like this now.  Except I chose Invulnerability as my second pool set.

And he looks like a pirate "Graybeard".  I wish I had chosen Regeneration as my second pool instead of Inv. because the broadsword skill I have, as well as combat jumping, seem to eat through endurance pretty fast.

Hehe I have been blipping characters a bit recently as I am trying to determine which of the controller types I want for release. I am leaning toward fire or ice now but man it is fun chucking a fricking CAR at your opponent with gravity.

If you ever want to see a fun power and are messing around with characters at level 6 gravity controllers get a power called propel good damage with knock back if a tad slow and the animation for the power is hilarious. You basically summon a random ambient item to fling at your target. These include forklifts, propane tanks, cars, pool tables, kitchen sinks.


Kaid

Has anyone tried the tanker archetype yet?

I'm really wanting to make a character who can turn himself into fire or ice or something, and it seems like perhaps tankers get those powers.

Is that the case or am I mistaken?

Yes tankers get those powers. The problem, it seems, with tankers is they deal very little damage, the accuracy sucks, and well, a lot of people say they're boring.

They may not be, it may just be that it takes a certain type of player to enjoy taking damage while not dishing out that much.

With enough defense buffs a scrapper turns into a tanker.

Heh, guess I'll make one for this "launchday test" thing.

I wonder when they'll bring the servers back up though.

Ok, here's my character question.  As a reference, I've not played this game one lick and my knowledge is pretty much limited to what I've read here.

Is there any way currently in the game to make a Wild West gunfighter?  Are the costume options present(cowboy hat, trench coat, six shooters) and are there skill sets that would make this a possibility.  I only ask because I've become particularly enthralled in the Dark Tower series by King and Deadwood on HBO.  Plus, the wild west gunfighter has always had a special place in my heart (I grew up in Tucson).

Anyhow, might see you all in final if you play more than 2 weeks. I've got to graduate and have a lot of work to do by May 15 so that won't leave me much time to muck around in a mmorpg. I might get it though just to play an hour here and there. I really enjoyed Freedom Force and want some more comicy goodness.

I am pretty sure you can do the cowboy look. I'm not so sure about the six guns.

No to six shooters.  You can certainly do the cowboy thing.  I have seen it in game already, complete with cigar.

The only use of guns in the game is the 'assault rifle' blaster line though.  This will have you using different guns for differnt powers.  Machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifle....  For secondary you would probably go with gadgets.  Things like caltrops and such.

Im playing an Stone/Stone Tanker and having quite a bit of fun.  The accuracy problem is a surprisingly small problem when soloing, so long as you have a single acc booster in each of your major attacks.  With two max armor boosters and a temporary self buff increasing my HP by 40% or so, I can take single oranges consistantly if not easily.

The problem is extremely pronounced in groups taking out higher level MOBs though - the yellow-to-orange and the orange-to-purple MOB con effects on accuracy are just harsh for tankers.  Similarly I can rip through anything green in 3 hits - two from my fast cycling power attack and 1 from my slow cycler - beause of the level difference.   Thankfully it seems only the Tanker is hurt by DAoC Con-syndrome

Nah, everyone has somewhat of a challenge hitting higher level foes I think... then again I only have a fire blaster and a scrapper to compare with.  Both of them vs much higher targets really assist by having an accuracy or two slotted up to certain powers.  Some don't miss much others are pretty damn innacurate and need heavy slotting.

Controllers need to slot a lot of accuracy as I understand, since level plays a big role in avoiding the effects of holds.

Yes to cowboy hat.  No to trench coat - this is in the same category as robes and capes - to be patched in later maybe.  No to six shooters: CoH doesn't have equippable weapons as such, the way it works is that if you take a skill line that involves weapons, when you use those attacks your character magically whips out a gun from somewhere.  Right now everyone has the same guns for the same skills.  I did see on the beta boards a dev post suggesting that eventually they're amenable to adding additional weapon models and letting you pick which one you want your character to use.

Erm, perhaps I wasn't as clear as I should have been.  Those observations were made fighting right next to equal level blaster/scrapper teammates.

Gonna use the launch test to try out a few different tank/scrapper combos, see if there is any noticeable difference.

All I ask for is a shark with a frickin laser attached to his head.

I've pre-ordered this game from gamestop since everyone's been raving about it(Haemish, your endorsement was the final straw).

Like someone else mentioned, I too have EQ Enchanter in my background, and intend to play a controller to start out with...

Has anyone played with illusion control or the mind control pools mentioned on the COH site?  The primary power types on the screenie from the achetype walkthrough are fire, earth, gravity, ice, illusions, and mental powers...  Is that all of them, or is the list longer?

I did read a bit about the buff/debuff power pool, but didn't see anything about the one's I'm interested in, namely force fields and kinetics.

Ideally gamestop.com will send me an email so I can get into the beta and find out stuff for myself soon.

EDIT: Found hero planning tool from warcry's CoH site.  Very interesting, looks like Mind Control is what I want.  The secondary powers are still bizarre...  I'm not sure I like any of them.

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Alkiera

Hmm, trying to decide between a rifle/??? blaster, and a dark/dark scrapper.

Does origin do anything btw? Or do we just pick the origin that sounds coolest?

I'm also noticing people tend to take matched pairs of powersets (dark/dark, fire/fire etc). Which reading some of the descriptions kind of makes sense since buff effects in one group are sometimes related to the damage type of that group. Anyone found non-matching combinations that support each other espiecially well?

No, and yes.  The game went though iterations where origin did have the same sort of effect on player stats as "race" does in fantasy-type games (elves are weak but strong in magic, dwarves are weak in magic but tough and strong, etc.) but in the end they decided it wasn't contributing anything useful to the game and they yanked it all out.  Origin may play some role later in the game but right now according to the devs it's strictly for roleplaying purposes.

Well origin does have an impact on what kinds of missions and contact you are going to get.  It basically determines what foe groups you are primarily going up against, so if you like battling Circle of Thorns, magic is the origin for you. 5th column? go Natural.  Zombies? Science. Clockworks? Tech. etc etc.

Other than that it's just a roleplay device.  At one time it was going to affect costume choice and type of insipiration drops but that isn't in.

Xilren

Things I have tried and a brief run down.

Storm/psychic defender: storm specializes in preventing enemy from closing distance to get into melee range with your groups vulnerable people. It has a number of ways of doing this and it does them pretty well. Also it has a heal o2 it dosn't work on yourself but it is one of the best single target heals in the game. It is super efficient and very fast recharging without any enhancers on it. In my old group with an empathy defender my job was usually keeping the main tank healed while the empath person did aoe heals to keep the rest up.

The psychic part is okay good damage but kinda slow. After trying dark blast I would probably if I did it again go storm/dark. Dark powers so far hit pretty hard recharge fast with a quick animation and they also get a number of good control powers.

Controllers

I am pretty sure I will be making a controller for release I have tried all types but illusion and mind neither of which appealed to me. The only controller type that really seems lacking is illusion it just has to many mez powers which are nowheres near as useful as roots,  disorients and holds.

Ice/fire/earth

Very comparable powers they each have a distinct flavor to them and are unique but most of their main cc works in a similar fashion. Teamed up with alluvians blaster we can chomp through some nasties in a big hurry. If your part has alot of aoe powers having a controller with aoe root can make a good power totally deadly.

Gravity

Its an odd ball somewhere between illusion and the elemental branches. At lower levels it is one of the more offensive controller sets with two dedicated damage only powers lift and propel. It also gets roots and aoe roots which makes it a bit better for the groups I have been in than illusion is.  Gravity starts really strong and works well but I look at the last couple of powers in the list and I scratch my head a bit. They are in the process of reworking some of them so we shall see how they eventually turn out.

Illusion: great power if you like weird pets. They have three pet /decoy powers. They have one of the most limited ammounts of crowd control. They get no roots and no disorients nor any knock downs. It is just single target hold aoe hold and then weird stuff like pets and invis.

I am not saying they are not strong they are just very odd for controller and I never cared for the mix much myself.

Mind a field sadly lacking in crowd control power. They get a single target hold and a group hold but their other cc is all mez powers and charms. Charms are strong but you get no xp for any damage your charmed critter does so their use is situational at best. Mezes break on damage so they just won't be used in most group situation. They round this out by getting a some odd ball powers like the ability to make somebody else in your group fly. To bad it dosn't allow them to fly themselves without tanking a power pool.

Tanks

I have played a fire tank a bit early on their endurance issue is tight but eventually that goes away and they are fine tankers. They are the most offensive build of tankers and give them something like axe as a weapon power and they do plenty of damage.

For a true hard core meatlump though the two best choices are currently Rock and invuln.

These are very good due to having passives that protect vs leathal and smashing damage as opposed to fire and cold for the ice and fire tanks. Lethal and smashing are by far the most common damage types you can take so even with their auras off they take less damage from a good 70% of all attacks. Invuln is probably the stronger vs the most common attacks but rock has defense vs psionic attacks and it is one of the only tanks who can defend against that.


Ice pretty darn strong tanks their passive is not as good but their normal armors are very nice with a good mix of diversity depending on what you need protected against. They also look very cool in use although icicles looks very freudian.

Damage for tanks in general is pretty midline some powers like axe though can over short term pump their damage very high. THe problem with axe though is the powers recharge slow and the end use is high. So for a few mobs if you really want to do damage you can but your ability to mosh for a long period of time is less. The other powers are usually one of two kinds. Either they are all attack abilities with few utility skills or few attacks with much more utility. The elemental forms are usually more utility oriented some of which is very nice such as aoe damage for agro and aoe snares to keep things from running. If you have ever tried to melee in coh you will understand how good keeping things from running is.


Kaid

I noticed this, and it made me unhappy.  I'll live, tho.  The elemental controls just don't fit the character I want to play.  It'll prolly mean teaching people how to play with me again, tho... one of the most irritating aspects of early EQ.  And mid-era EQ.  In fact, I was still doing that last time I played with a pickup group, a few months ago.  *sigh*

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Alkiera

It looks like my initial character will be an energy/energy blaster. I've now tried all the main archetypes, and find nuker to be least annoying with cowardly gang members. I've also tried all the blaster variants, and energy is great. Being able to reliably knock down foes with a ranged attack is great. Particularly if you push your recharge timers up as fast as you can afford, and keep knocking them down. If you get it right (and have a little luck with accuracy), an orange and three yellows should consume most of your endurance, and none of your hit points - because they are always on the floor.

The one advantage for the charms though is they last by default of 20 seconds instead of default 12 for normal holds. So for big fights or fights with nasty nasty bosses they can be used to keep bosses from beating on you for longer than a hold would. That being said they are very situational.


kaid

I actually think that's rather cool - though it sounds like it should really ask you to pick your 'sworn nemesis' or something.

My sworn nemeses are teh skulls and hellions. No 'kill 10 circle of thorns' in King's Row for me! Fuck the rooftops! I'm from the streets, baby.

As a science blaster, I have been working on the city's undead problem.  They had an elaborate scheme going that unfolded over at least 15 different missions with me gathering clues, rescuing scientists, attaining tissue samples, investigating chemical thefts...  It ended in a big showdown in the sewers between me and one of their big bosses.  It was rough, but I took him out last night and saved the city (I won't say what their evil plot WAS, because it was kind of fun to read the clues and figure it out along with your contact... even though the contact was abit slow on the uptake).  Yes, thank you, thank you.  I really did actually feel heroic there for abit.  Pretty damn cool.  So neat to see part of a mission arc that started at level 1 reach a climax at level 13.

My other mission arc seems bugged though.  Visit Carli somethingorother.  well, I visit her and she don't do nothing.  CS ticket submitted and such.

Oh, as I got closer and closer to the Vahzilok evil plot, they started sending LOTS of hit squads at me.  During the final 6 or so missions they sent about 5 hit squads after me.  One of them was a level 13 mortificator and about 7 freaking abominations.  Man that was fun to see that charging at me.  Thank god the abominations are REAL slow and REAL dumb.

I suspect I have not seen the end of the Vahz and their schemes yet...

Your mission arc actually climaxes at 14. You have to get a group of level 14's and go see the chief of police by the giant statue in steel canyon. You create a task force and go kill Dr. Vahz. It's supposed to be fucking awesome. Oh, and you get a title from the task force missions if you were wondering where they come from.

Edit: Because Aremaic is hard.

Well, I am 14 now, so that is neat.  The bad thing is I think the line that will take me to the statue is fucking bugged with the damn carli brunelli shit.  So no killing Dr. Vahz for me I fear.

The statue task force mission is a seperate line you can do immediately when you get level 14. Has nothing to do with Carla Brunelli. You're basically volunteering for the swat team.

Ah, good news.  Having fun with my newfound super speed.  Zip, zip, zip...  *giggles*

Now to socket it up with a level 15 dual origin runspeed.

That's what I'm playing now. I've been gone for a bit though, and haven't played anything else, but with Energy/Energy Blaster, I'm basically untouchable. Even before I got hover. I just keep pumping Range where I can, then Accuracy then Refresh timer or Damage.

I actually enjoy kitnig sometimes. Outdoors of course. Indoors I'm not all that great against any more than two or three same-level opponents. But in groups, it's just fun as hell to hear the oohs and ahhs from the group members when I unleash a Enhance-buffed Energy Vortex AOE.

Dunno how powerful this is in later levels, and I only just found out about Warcry's character builder in this thread, so have been pretty much flying blind. But it's a fun template. I spend my advancement-rewards mostly on Energy Vortex the natural punch power and the single-target ranged attack.

Well, I think I might have found my release character. I am having great fun with my new blaster, he is Assault Rifle/Gadgets with Hasten from the speed line. I know its silly not go get flight with a blaster, but I doubt I will reach 14 with him, and hasten makes him a pure killing machine.

I like the assault rifle skills because they dont seem to use very much END. Even with hasten active, I can still spam my specials non stop. I am at lvl 7 now, and I dont think I have run out of END once in the entire life of the character. Put this against my Scrapper Dark/Dark who ran out of END after a fight vs two even leveled mobs.

Yes if you go assult rifles you will deffinatly want hasten. The powers are very very low end usage but fairly long recycle times. Coupled with the draw animations makes hasten a god send.

Also the devices pool has a lot of good stuff. The target drone is really sweet it is an toggled aura accuracy buff and since missing for a blaster = teh suk its really sweet.

kaid

FINALLY got a chance to play a bit this weekend (not long, unfortunately). My first character (Captain Catass on Pinnacle) is a Science/Blaster type.

Can anyone give me advice on what enhancements to use? How often do they drop? Is it worthwhile to swap them in and out?

I only made it to level 3 in my limited play time, but I had a blast.

First off, hasten on a blaster.  I would not call you silly at all to pick hasten over hover.  I cannot imagine life without hasten as a blaster.  My solo and group functionality doubles with it.  Endurance inspirations are fairly common and it comes back a LOT faster than health.  I will choose to burn endurance over health anyday.  Plus, using powers is just fun and hasten lets you use them twice as fast.  Stick a second enhancement slot on them and keep them both up with high end (for your level) timer reduction enhancements.  At level 15 with a dual origin 15 and a tutorial 15++ in there I get hasten recycled back JUST before it fades.  I love that.  With god as my witness I shall never be slow again.  And superspeed is plenty fun, trust me.

Now to Way's question.  For a blaster, the enhancements I like the best are damage, accuracy, and recharge timer.  Different powers will beg for different enhancements.  If a power misses a lot slot it up with accuracy.  If it is accurate but kind of low damage throw on some extra damage to make it abit harder hitting.  If it is one of those big whump powers that takes an age to come back... well if you are like me you LOVE those powers.  I slot them up with damage to make them even MORE devestating and timer improvements so I can use them more.

As a blaster, missing will just annoy us and get us killed.  So first thing I look for is accuracy.  If it does not hit it was just a waste of time and endurance.

So it is really personal preference and individual power dependent.  Don't be afraid to slot them up.  They drop pretty frequent, and you will be destroying them in no time to make room for new ones mid mission.  Just don't let your enhancement storage get full, because then you stop getting drops.  Give away, destroy or sell (to superpower field vendors) the ones you don't want to make room.

You will get plenty so slot them up to whatever you have at the time.  Store ones that you plan to use in the next level, but there is no reason to store them anymore than a level prior.  The tutorial ones drop really common.

At low level you level fast and will outgrow them rather fast as well, so use them while you can.

You also start getting a lot of 'money' and the only thing to do with it is buy enhancements.  So don't feel shy about buying one you want.

I switched to Tank from Controller and have been having a blast.

The Controller I used was Gravity/Force Field, and he was fun simply because I could...well, Control much of my situation.  With Force Push, and Lift, I could keep some ganger off his feet until my hold recycled, and so on.  Some of  the Force Field shield powers looked pretty helpful, but I never had more than two of them.

I've tried most of the Tank stuff, if only for the first few levels.   I really like Invulnerability, and am also fond of Super Strength and Energy Melee.  Damage output isn't mammoth, but it's nothing to sneeze at either.  With those two Secondaries you also have a good chance of disorienting foes, which is great.  The main problems I have are endurance, and runners.  Runners I can catch, but I find it easier to just let them go and find new evil-doers.  Endurance, well...I seem to run out of endurance long before I'm ever in jeapordy of losing my life.

I have little fear of charging straight into large groups of opponents by myself, in fact I prefer it, since there are seldom runners when I'm outnumbered 10:1.  I can take out four or five blue gangers with no Endurance and less than half a bar of Hit Points, Vahzlock(sp?) seem tougher than their level to me...well, some more than others.

I disagree completely with schild on the mediocrity of Tanks.  As an example, some scrapper of equal my level in Steel Canyon asked me to help him take out a group of Nazi's, we weren't grouped, just met on the street.  There was a red con and three oranges.  I agreed, he charged in, and I followed.  Next thing I know, he's on the ground and I'm still fighting all four.  I took down the red and two oranges before having to flee from the third.  If I had had a damage Inspiration to start with, or one of the heal Inspirations, I would have been fine.  If I hadn't had two endurance Inspirations, I probably would have had to flee at some point after killing off the red con.

Some might find the archetype a bit dull, there's somthing appealing to me about wading into a host of bad-guys and coming out the only one left standing.  I may not hit for huge numbers, but I sure can take a hit, or a hundred.

Tanks are very tanky in the game especially earth and invuln. Usually if things really hit the fan the only person to survive will be the tanks. They have also upgraded tanks taunt recently so it "sticks" better and allows them to do their jobs easier.

Some may find them a bit simple sounding but it really depends on the power sets. Also as you get higher and higher level as a tank you are forced to be swithing armor even in fights to best protect against what you are fighting.

In my level 34 group it was always impressive to see my groups ice and earth tanks just slog into a HUGE pack sometimes 15 or 20 mobs first to get agro and watch their health only slowly go down as they got agro for the rest to start blasting.

At the high end fully slotted up tanks can hit upwards of 80 to 90% resistance to whichever attack they are protecting against. That plus they get a GOOD ammount more health than anybody else makes them a great part of any team.

Edit

I also forgot to mention if you are a fan of doing big damage tanks can dish it out pretty well. If you want to do some serious beat down pick up hasten and either earth melee or axe hehe especially axe. With buildup and tankers freakish tanking abilities tanks can solo better and faster at the high levels amazingly well. Inface they had to do some changes near the end of beta because high level tankers could fight mobs 6 to 8 levels higher than them. They still can fight over their levels better than most other archtypes when soloing.

kaid