Bastille Boy

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.

I've talked with several people in the past couple of weeks who only recently found out about Homecoming. I think all of them played on live, but that was a long time ago! One of them had only played for the first few years the game was online. When giving advice, it's good to remember that you might be talking with someone who's new to the game or someone who last played the game when Pluto was still considered a planet. There are no norms about how to play the game well that you can expect everyone in a pickup group to know. It's also good to remember that people have different ideas about what counts as playing the game well. I doubt that's the issue here. It sounds as if this person needed some advice.

Some of the people I play or socialize with in CoX don't feel comfortable with Discord's privacy policy. So for me it is not a reliable way of getting in touch with people I want to get in touch with. The forum and the in-game tools work better for me.

The demon's heart pounded. The witch who had summoned it fifty-one years before was now on her deathbed. She was still conscious, lucid, and in good spirits, but her smiles masked the truth. In two days, three at the most, her eyes would close forever, and the demon would go back to Hell. Most likely, she would go there, too. "I'm sorry I couldn't find a way to free you, dear," said the witch. "But I did find a way to keep you above ground a bit longer." A hope. The demon felt its eyes blaze. "You have a big decision to make," said the witch. Now it was worried. "The last time I made a big decision, it went badly." "You've had lots of practice making small decisions, dear. You've gotten quite good at it." The demon hesitated. "You don't want to go back to the sulfur pits, do you?" It shook its head. "Who do you want your new masters to be? Thieving spiders, self-righteous pyromaniacs, or trigger-happy buffoons?" "I don't like the police." "But that's your choice?" It paused, but only for a moment. "Yes." "Then put on your ring of disguise. Open the bottle of cabernet franc on the table and fill my cup. I've had quite enough tea. Then take the rest of the wine with you to the police station down the street. Make sure you're in view of the security cameras, then chug the wine. Hurl the bottle at the station's front window, and spit your worst insults at those dirty cops. When they come to arrest you, don't resist." The demon was in the back of a paddy wagon when it felt her pass. It didn't know where the witch's soul went, but it knew she wasn't in Hell. Suddenly the flimsy handcuffs felt solid. Why on earth had it called the police "buffoons"? They were street-smart, strong, and brave! And some of them had truly beautiful souls. The sergeant in the passenger seat, for instance, was delightfully corrupt. It had chosen wisely, this time. The police deserved a loyal servant. It silently vowed to be the best, most obedient, most helpful prisoner the police had ever captured.

Is this advice for blasters? Psi and Energy aren't corruptor secondaries.

My next corruptor project is a Fire/Cold. This is reputedly a top-tier combination for team play. It may be challenging to solo (though of course I'll try). I'm debating whether to go Fire/Cold/Dark or Fire/Cold/Mace. The Fire/Cold/Dark would have softcap M/R defenses. The Fire/Cold/Mace would softcap S/L/E/R defenses and take the Medicine pool for Aid Self.

My demon character, Damon Glasseater, needs a lot of help! He can only be summoned via a Latin incantation. The last time Damon was above ground, civilized people wore tunics, Pluto had only recently stopped being worshiped as a god, and stained glass was a valued art form. Now apparently the barbarians have taken over, because everybody is wearing trousers. They think Pluto is either a planet or a dwarf planet or a cartoon dog. There are all these buildings with beautiful glass windows, and if you stain them with depictions of the glories of the underworld, people get upset, and if you eat the windows, people get upset about that, too. It's probably best for Damon to stay at Architect Entertainment in Pocket D when the scientist who accidentally summoned him can't supervise him. People seem to like it when Damon makes the holograms melt. When he's done, DJ Zero lets him eat the empties. Brown glass beer bottles don't look like much, but they taste very, very good. Damon is okay with not eating souls. Souls aren't crunchy, and they don't contain silicon, usually, and you can't make sculptures out of them before you eat them.

In honor of Jailbird Joe's 40th birthday and the second anniversary of his appearance on Homecoming, I've given him a full-length biography on FBSA Wiki. Of my many level-50 toons, he's the one I come back to most often. He has the best balance between a concept I like and game mechanics I enjoy playing. I'd rank his powers as "A tier." In addition to the vulnerabilities of having Willpower as an armor set, he has one of the worst possible weaknesses for an outlaw: a powerful subconscious inclination to trust cops. As long as he stays in the Rogue Isles, this mostly works out for him. P.S. I used to have a Time/Sonic defender named "Jailbird Joe," but I renamed that character.

I have a large roster of alts, but there are two characters I keep coming back to. Both are residents of the minimum security prison I assume that the Rogue Island Police or some affiliated organization is running. (Why minimum security? If somebody escapes and starts paying their "protection money," the system is working as intended.) Robby Lackey (Defender, Pain Domination / Sonic Attack): A "Destined One" who got caught by the RIPD three weeks after he arrived in Mercy. Oof! Perhaps this isn't surprising, given that his "superpowers" are masochism and yelling at people. The RIPD's joint is preferable to the Zig. Though this isn't a top tier powerset combination by any means, it is surprisingly tough; I've completed AE 801.2 at +0/8 on this toon. Compared with other "healing" sets, Pain Domination is less "clicky," so it's possible to focus on blasting and contribute -res on steamrolling teams. Jailbird Joe (Tanker, Willpower / Super Strength): Born and raised in Marconeville, the scrawny weakling wasn't cut out to be a Family man. Trespassing on D.O.C. property was a way to make a clean break. He isn't scrawny anymore! I'd rank this powerset combination A-tier. This is not my toughest tanker (that would be the Shield / EM), but Joe does fine in most content, and he can contribute a lot of AOE DPS. He's fun to solo, thanks to double Rage being up almost all the time. He's completed a solo AE 801.2 run at +3/8.

Sonic Blast. It's just yelling at your enemies until they give in. "Sticks and stones..." Water Blast (minus Dehydrate). Shooting someone with a Super Soaker is technically violence, but let's be serious.

Jacob Hobbes, former Zig inmate and current warden of the Port Oakes Penitentiary, would agree with you that the Zig is totally impractical. A lot of villains go into the Zig every day, but a lot of villains also leave every day. The escape rate is ridiculous. It's not just the Arachnos breakouts. Walk around Brickstown at any hour of any day, and you'll see dozens of guys in orange jumpsuits outside the walls of the Zig, unsupervised, just kind of hanging out. (They're always guys.) How often is there a Prison Break Event? Every fifteen minutes? There is a lot we don't know about the Zig. Why are there so many escapes? Why are the low-level escapees we see in game all men? And how do we reconcile the things we've been told about power suppression in the Zig? In the villain tutorial, Angel Lopez (an inmate) says that most inmates are forced to take "inhibitor drugs." Superadine lets inmates "once again feel mighty." The player experiences this. In Episode 3 of the blueside Pandora's Box arc, Odysseus says that inmates' (and other people's) powers are drained "slowly" when they enter the walls of the Zig. There is no mention of drugs. In Episode 3 of the redside Pandora's Box arc, the player's powers are suppressed for a short time. A rank-and-file guard says, "Grab whatever technical gizmo or magical doohickey you're looking for. Cause in here? That crap ain't working." There is no mention of drugs. In the second mission of "Breakout at the Zig," Blunt Trauma, Nexus 99, and Void Ripper can use some offensive powers as soon as they are out of their cells. You could throw up your hands and say that this is an inconsistent mess of plot holes. Here's my best guess about how it could all fit together: There is corruption among the officers of the Zig. Among the officers supervising the men's medium security unit, corruption has run rampant. This explains the large number of low-level male escapees. Pandora's Box is the main superpower suppressor, but its effects are not instantaneous, and it doesn't suppress superpowers completely. It reduces them to a low level (typically 5 or below). Inmates are made to take a depressant drug. The intent is to prevent inmates from using the low-level powers that Pandora's Box does not suppress. It is not 100% effective, and the administration of it is disorderly and uneven. The fact that the "inhibitor drug" is a depressant explains why Angel Lopez says superadine lets inmates "feel mighty," rather than saying it restores their powers. It explains both why inmates are so desperate to escape and why so many escapees get past the walls and then just kind of hang out, rather than running as fast as they can or looking for civilian clothes.

I decided the build I chose earlier was too squishy and respecced again. The earlier build goes all-in on recharge. In a Hami league, I actually got triple rage a few times. The new build sacrifices a bit of recharge to get better regeneration and E/N resistance. Double rage is still up most of the time. I also dropped Punch to take Resurgence. On the new build, I regularly use Haymaker, Knockout Blow, Foot Stomp, Boxing, and Cross Punch. I rarely use Hurl. Jab is a set mule (and a required pick). With T4 alpha and destiny (agility radial), no lores, T3 other incarnates, full accolades, and +5s on everything that matters (purples, PVPs, most of the non-set IOs), I could finish AE 801.2 at +3/8 with twelve minutes to spare. I used Resurgence several times. Not sure if I'll be able to do max diff on this mission with full incarnates.

I just respecced to the last build in my post above, with power picks in a a slightly different order. I have +5s on seven of the enhancements (the recharge in Hasten, the resistance in High Pain Tolerance, and three others). T4 alpha and destiny, no lores, other incarnates T3. Full accolades. I then ran AE 801.2 at +2/8. 1h23m to complete, several deaths. I used inspirations (as they dropped, not from email) and duplicity. My previous build could only handle this mission at +1/8. Conclusion: This WP/SS build is not my toughest tanker, but it's solid, and it does good DPS (especially AoE).

Funny you should ask this. I was just working on planning a respec for my WP/SS tanker. (Advice on the last build in this post would be welcome!) @Hyperstrike suggested a build here. It's a good build if it fits your character concept and play style. I built my first SS/WP tanker with some very specific requirements in mind. Thematically, I wanted to limit the toon to powers with a plausible natural origin (counting "taking a boatload of performance-enhancing drugs" as "natural"). That means no Gloom, Zapp, or Laser Beam Eyes. I also wanted to try my hand at designing a "proc monster." The idea was to sacrifice durability (the usual goal for a tanker) for the sake of higher DPS than a tanker can usually achieve. Building a proc monster involves a lot of subtleties, and I wasn't really ready for it. Here's what I came up with: This build was fun to play. It does have more DPS than most of the other tankers I've played. But it does not have S-tier DPS, and it has defensive weaknesses. It does just fine 98% of the time, but when it fails (usually because of defense debuffs), it fails fast. Also, there is a tension in the idea of a Super Strength based proc monster. Recharge in the alpha slot reduces proc rate, so proc monster builds avoid Agility. (I took Cardiac; not sure why I did that instead of Musculature.) But the thing that makes Super Strength awesome is double Rage. For that, you want as much recharge as possible, which means you ideally want Agility alpha. You also want maximum recharge if Foot Stomp is your only AoE. I tried switching from Cardiac to Agility alpha, and the toon subjectively felt more fun. I knew that this change made proc-monstering less feasible, so I replaced some of the procs to get better set bonuses (without doing a full respec). It keeps the +recharge procs, which are key to making Super Strength tick. Here's the current build: I'm considering a full respec to make this a more tanky toon. My earlier builds don't pursue softcapped S/L defense. They softcap F/C/E/N, and they rely on resistance and regeneration to deal with S/L. I am wondering whether softcapping S/L defense will significantly improve durability. This has more recharge than my earlier builds, so it should be able to keep double rage up longer, but it sacrifices single-target DPS at a given level of rage. It does have a second AoE, which is nice. If I could justify Gloom with in the character concept, replacing Hurl with Gloom would significantly improve the single-target DPS.