Bastille Boy

I have an AE arc, "Cops and Robbers Quarry Party" (63365), that is a smashing/lethal farm with no defense debuffs. All the attacks are from War Mace. Be careful...the corruptional officers and the ex-heroes hit hard! Because of the wandering groups, I find I need healing/regeneration IOs as well as capped res and def to survive this with a passive farmer.

My main villain is Jacob Hobbes, a.k.a. "Herocatcher Jake." He is an Ice/Thermal corruptor. I keep changing my mind about which of my heroes is my main. None of them stand a chance against Officer Hobbes. They're all rule-following goody-goodies. They'd never assault a cop, especially not a cop who has an aura of warmth. They wouldn't resist a lawful arrest, either. Officer Hobbes is technically a corruptional officer, not a cop, but heroes usually don't appreciate the difference until they're wearing several kilograms of titanium jewelry. If the heroes decided to resist arrest, Officer Hobbes would probably win against most of the squishies. I haven't done PVP recently, but I understand that his powersets are high-ranked in the current 1v1 meta. Against the tankers, it would probably be a stalemate. Hobbes couldn't hit hard enough, and the tankers couldn't hit at all.

Omigod omigod omigod, Eddie is out of the Zig! It's such a shame he went to prison. The worst thing he's ever done is sell magic mushrooms, and they weren't even the hallucinogenic kind. And then I went and wrote that stupid letter and messed up his parole hearing. I don't care what the other corruptional officers think. I'm offering him a job.

I played Champions Online a bunch about about a year ago. I got two characters to level 40. I didn't fully gear either of them. I got the sense that the game population was low, but there were still enough people for group events. Things I liked about the game: The combat mechanics are different from CoX in some interesting ways, at least at first...the block button, "hold" powers with a tradeoff between damage and animation time. The character building system is flexible and allows possibilities you can't have in CoX, like a dual role healer/Melee DPS. The old.school comic book style graphics are kind of cute. The underwater zone was cool. Things I didn't like: The game mechanics strongly reward a repetitive attack or healing cycle focused on one main power. It's a Holy Trinity game. You can have a dual-role DPS/healer character, but you can't rapidly switch between healing and damage. You have to decide which role you're playing and stick to it, at least for a while. Single role characters will generally be stronger. The writing is not even trying to be good. It's all cops and robbers. One of the voice actors really likes to portray villains with a lisp.

I got in trouble with a team once when I was playing a Nature defender whose debuffs drew aggro. I was trying to shuttle between two separated groups of players who seemed to need healing. I caused problems by bringing enemies with me. If a team isn't staying together, for whatever reasons (good or bad), sometimes it's best to pick one group and stay with them. The people who go off in another direction can't blame you for not healing/buffing them if they choose to run off.

Goose Assault T1: Honk: Ranged, Moderate DMG (Energy), Foe -Res T2: Peck: Melee, Minor DMG (Energy), Foe Minor Disorient T3: Honk, Honk: Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG (Energy), Foe -Res T4: Surprising Kick: Melee, Moderate DMG (Energy), Foe Disorient T5: It Is Already Too Late: Self +ToHit, +Dark DMG on all attacks T6: Disapproving Stare: Ranged, High DMG (Dark), Foe -ToHit T7: Flurry of Wings: PBAoE, Moderate DMG(Energy), Foe Disorient T8: HONK: Ranged, Extreme DMG(Energy), Foe -Res T9: Hahahaha You Can't Even Beat a Goose: PBAoE, Moderate DMG(Dark), Foe -ToHit

I like the idea of having a small reward for team compositions that are either more challenging or more interesting in some way. I don't like the specific proposal because it would convey false information about the relationship between archetype and team role. (Corruptors and controllers aren't support?) How about something like this? Team Composition Challenge: 1 prismatic aether for completing a TF on a team that has any of these five features: No Duplicates: At least five players, all different archetypes. Same Archetype: At least five players, all the same archetype. Classic Blueside: All Blueside archetypes, including at least five different archetypes. Duplicates are allowed. Classic Redside: All Redside archetypes, including at least five different archetypes. Duplicates are allowed. Small team: Either two or three players on the team.

There are several powersets with strong heals in CoX, including Empathy, Pain, Thermal, Nature, Electrical Affinity. Empathy and Pain are top-tier for PVP. For PVE (which for most players is the whole game), Thermal, Nature, and Electrical Affinity are stronger. You can still make Empathy and Pain work well if you play them well. Healing is never your main role on a team in CoX (except in PVP). Good empathy defenders heal when players need healing, but they spend most of their time buffing and attacking. "Dedicated support" isn't a thing in this game. All good characters take attack powers and use them. Tanks are in a really good place right now. In addition to their defensive / aggro management role, they do very good AoE damage. Both the combinations you're thinking about are very good. You might be happier with Shield/War Mace, which is beginner-friendly and also a top tier combination for the endgame. Dark Armor has a lot of potential, but it's a little bit tricky to build well. Illusion/Empathy could be good for someone who only plays on teams. I like to mix solo and team play on all my toons. Soloing Ill/Emp would be frustrating, since it wouldn't do much damage. For soloing with Illusion, you really want a secondary that includes a resistance debuff, to increase the damage from your Phantom Army. It also helps to have a power that enhances your global recharge. Illusion/Radiation and Illusion/Time each give you debuffs, recharge enhancement, a PBAoE heal, and at least one strong team buff.

Except for two emps (one Green Machine, one built for PVP), all my toons are built to be able to solo. I team with all my toons at least some of the time. The PVP emp is the only toon with dual builds. I almost always take both Maneuvers and Weave. If I only have room in my build for two power pool defense toggles, I take Maneuvers over Combat Jumping or Hover because of the team benefit. Whether I take the other Leadership toggles depends on what I have room for. I think my Rad/Sonic defender and the Green Machine emp are the only toons I have that take all three toggles. For Green Machine, Assault and Tactics are both required. There's room in the Rad/Sonic for all three toggles because both powersets have so many skippable powers. (I take five powers in Rad and six in Sonic.) For most other powerset combinations, taking all the Leadership toggles requires sacrificing something I think would benefit me and my teams more. I'd say I take either Tactics or Assault about 40% of the time, more often Tactics.

I see ways of getting two positional softcaps. The question is, which two? Is AoE defense currently more useful than melee, or is melee + ranged the way to go? I don't think there's any way of softcapping all three positional defenses without some help from the primary (e.g., Farsight on Time).

Yes, it is tough! Building for M/R on something like Pain or Nature leaves little room for other goals. I do have a few toons I built this way despite the challenges. I'm wondering if it still makes sense in Issue 4 (if it ever made sense). I'm wondering if it's worth a respec to an S/L/E/R build or to AoE/R.

I have a stable of level 50 defenders and corruptors. All of them are built to softcap ranged defense. In addition, most of them are built to softcap either S/L/E or melee defense. I ignored AoE defense, believing that most AoE attacks also had either a melee tag or a ranged tag. Maybe that was a misunderstanding. It doesn't matter now. Now it's clear that attacks get at most one positional tag, and there's a bunch of attacks in the game that are tagged AoE. For powersets that don't include a defense buff, I don't think it's possible to softcap melee, ranged, and AoE. You have to pick at most two. What are the best defenses to softcap in Issue 27 Page 4? Does it still make sense to go for ranged and melee? Is it better to go for ranged and AoE (and learn to kite well)? Is ranged + S/L/E actually the best choice?

I have a Shield / Super Strength tanker. It is great fun to play. With Foot Stomp, double Rage, and the damage bonus from Against All Odds, this toon can do serious AoE damage. I've run a solo AE 801.2 with this toon at +3/8. I'm not sure yet whether it can do AE 801.2 at +4/8. My Shield/EM tanker can do it easily. So I'd say that my Shield / SS tanker is decently tough, good enough to handle 98% of the game with no problem. It wouldn't be my first choice for the most difficult missions on the most difficult modes.

War Mace is my top pick. I have a ridiculous number of war mace toons, mostly tankers and scrappers. The set is strong in both AoE and single target. The knockdown is helpful (both for slotting recharge procs and for mitigation). The weapon can be customized to fit many themes. Runner-up: Dark Melee. Having a self-heal and to-hit debuffs is good for mitigation. I don't much like it thematically, but maybe you will? Second runner-up: Street Justice. The best version is on stalkers, where it's top tier, but it's perfectly fine on other melee ATs. The animations are fast, and it's compatible with a wide range of origin stories, including natural origins. The weakness is the low radius of the AoE attacks.

For a tank-killer like 801, if the main tank's armor set is resistance based, I'd bring a Time defender. If the main tank's armor set is primarily defense based, I'd bring Nature or Electrical Affinity. For a mission that's hard because the enemies refuse to die, like the first mission of the Katie Hannon TF, I'd bring a Rad defender.