Easiest Power Set's to play?

[Heraclea]

9 hours ago, Darlomidge said:

I think it's more the fact I dont really know how to play the Invul power set. I'm not really sure what powers to use when. I always have Unyielding and Temp Invulnerability toggled on, then after that I'm unsure on what to do.

Temporary Invulnerability, Unyielding, and Invincibility are your toggles.  Temporary Invuln adds smashing/lethal resistance.  Unyielding is your mez protection.  Invincibility is your taunt aura, and it also gives you scaling defense depending on how many mobs are in range of it.  These toggles and Dull Pain, your trouble button, are the heart of the set.  Before level 22 or so endurance reduction is your only priority in the toggles.

 

Dull Pain gets six slots seeking to maximize heal and recharge.   These four are your core powers. 

 

The rest should be taken eventually, except for Unstoppable, which is a free pick of something else at 32 or 38.  Tough Hide gets two or three slots of defense.  The other passives are fine with their default slot.  This is a great blessing for your attacks.  They should be taken eventually but they aren't priorities.

 

Get endurance under control.  Give slots to Health and frankenslot the recovery uniques. 

 

Once endurance is a solved problem, you will eventually want Tough and Weave.  This means wasting a selection on Boxing or Kick first.  At least you don't have to do the Stamina grind any more. 

 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Heraclea

[Six-Six]

I like Willpower as well. My very first toon was/is a /wp. Since then I've found that wp has a bit too much def and res, and I limit it to only 3 each. While I agree with the toggle and forget factor, it's all good until you get sapped and all of your toggles turn off and you have to turn them on one by one. For that reason, I'd go with Super Reflexes. SR's secondaries are mostly auto, so less of a toggle and forget and more of no need to worry. I do find SR's resist a bit more wanting as it is a little limited.
 

[Skyhawke]

I'll echo Willpower.  It's a tad rough early on, but after awhile, you just go and go and go.  Add in the Energy ancillary power pool and take the end discount power and the recover/healing one and it's just crazy. 

Edited September 24, 2019 by Skyhawke

[Zepp]

I would go Dark Melee / Willpower Scrapper or Brute. You can perma the build-up, which is tied to damage, and you can decrease their chance of hitting you, which addresses Willpower's lack of defense... Unstoppable.

[Riverdusk]

On 9/24/2019 at 6:38 PM, Zepp said:

I would go Dark Melee / Willpower Scrapper or Brute. You can perma the build-up, which is tied to damage, and you can decrease their chance of hitting you, which addresses Willpower's lack of defense... Unstoppable.

Not to mention siphon life giving you a huge heal every few seconds on top of WP's already crazy regen.  Should be one of the most unkillable combo around.

[Zepp]

1 minute ago, Riverdusk said:

Not to mention siphon life giving you a huge heal every few seconds on top of WP's already crazy regen.  Should be one of the most unkillable combo around.

And Dark Consumption for Endurance Management...

 

The only thing making it difficult is the fact that your "attack chain" -- if you stick to a pre-determined attack chain -- is usually around 90s long...

[quietkane]

I know you mentioned Brute, but I have recently gotten every Tanker primary to level 40 or higher, so I'm here to provide some thoughts on melee sets:

• Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, and Ice Armor are all bad sets below level 30, and of those three only Ice Armor feels like it matures into a good set without devoting a significant budget and effort into shoring up your weaknesses via IOs.  Even then, Ice Armor doesn't feel quite as tough as other sets, it's just that it's tough enough to get most jobs done, and it offers enough other benefits that it feels like you've made a deliberate trade-off of peak toughness for some additional utility tools.  Invuln can become very tough, but you have to tailor your build to make that happen, and it feels pretty end-hungry for a lot of its level curve.  Invuln also doesn't do anything but make you tougher, which is sort of not that much fun in my book.  SR is in more or less the same boat as Invuln.
• Willpower, as many in this thread have said, is a completely effortless set.  It is practically nothing but toggles and auto powers, it helps with your endurance management, and it is reasonably tough if you're willing to take and use its Tier 9.  Honestly, High Pain Threshold, Fast Healing, and Rise to the Challenge are pretty much good enough to get you to the mid 20's all by themselves.
• Shield Defense is surprisingly tough for a set which only actually has 5 powers which do anything to make you tougher.  And it has three different powers which offer some pretty cool utility.  It, like Super Reflexes, has a click mez protection power, though, so while it is good at its job, I wouldn't count it as an easy set to play.
• Of all the defensive sets, Stone Armor makes the most direct, obvious trade-off.  It has more toughness on demand than any other defensive set, bar none, but it pays a steep price for it in stopping power.  If you want a character who doesn't feel threatened by anything, Stone Armor will do that.  If you want a character that feels invincible and lethal, Stone Armor is not the set for you.
• Fiery Aura is the other side of that coin.  It doesn't deliberately sacrifice toughness for damage, but it brings less mitigation to the table than other sets, and instead of moar tuff, it has Fiery Embrace and Burn.  It doesn't have any inherent Knockback protection, it has the "classic" set Psi-hole, and it barely protects against Cold damage at all.  Healing Flames is also a serious portion of its ability not to pass out when there's foes all about, so it's not the best at getting you through a tough spot without breaking a sweat.
  • Caveat:  Fiery Aura is also an anomoly in that it can hard-cap resists against its primary damage type without IOs.  Because of this, you can make /FA Scrappers, Brutes, Sentinels, and Stalkers who can handle very large groups of enemies at very low levels if those enemies deal nothing but Fire damage.  Hence all the Spines/Fire Brutes that exist so as to abuse this fact in Architect missions.
• Regeneration can be a strong set, but it is by no means easy to play.  It benefits more from +recharge, +resist, or +defense than any other set, and IOs can yield those things in spades, but there's no version of Regeneration that doesn't need to manage at least two click powers on a regular basis, and missing Dull Pain can mean a face plant, so it definitely doesn't count as easy.  In general, I recommend people try Willpower before they try Regeneration.
• Dark Armor has endurance issues.  Like, bad endurance issues.  Once you have overcome these endurance issues, Dark Armor feels like there's just no way to kill it, but it is a long, long road there.  Dark Armor is in the same boat as Fiery Aura in that it has no inherent -KB protection, and a lot of its toughness is tied up in a click heal.  It is by far the best click heal in the game, and at very high levels of IO bonuses and incarnate boosts, it will basically top up your health bar every 20 seconds, but it is still a click heal, and it is a very end-hungry click heal at that.  I love Dark Armor, but it's not an easy set to get into.
• Electric Armor is, in my opinion, the devs' attempt to do a resist set right.  It doesn't have a Psi hole, it has slightly better resists than Dark Armor or Fiery Aura has, and it has -KB protection.  It also brings a click heal to the table, but it feels less like it needs that click heal to get the job done and more like it's there as another tool in your kit.  It gets a +recharge buff and an end management tool, so its kit feels like it's got lots of utility.  Its -KB protection only works when you're on the ground, so you can't play a flying character with it, but otherwise I would say Elec is a pretty easy defensive set to play well.
• Radiation Armor and Bio Armor are both sets that seem like they're trying to do everything at once.  Rad has resists, Absorbs, regen, a click heal, enemy to-hit debuffs, a +recharge buff, and a couple of damage tools.  Bio has +regen/+recovery, an absorb click, a +health/+end click, resists, defenses, enemy damage debuffs, enemy -resist debuffs, enemy -regen debuffs, and a +resist click that scales with nearby enemies.
  • Of the two, Rad feels far more like you can just sort of set your toggles and click your powers as they come off cooldown.  You do need to pay attention to when Particle Shielding and Radiation Therapy are up and sort of juggle those two cooldowns, but I feel like between them you actually have more survivability than you need, so you've got some wiggle room to fumble a cooldown once in a while.
  • Bio Armor absolutely has the most ridiculous peak performance of any defensive set in the game, and when you get really good with it, you'll feel like you have toughness on demand, tons of extra damage on demand, and solid endurance management tools.  It absolutely requires you to learn the ins and outs of the set to get there, though, and it is not a set that will ever let you just set your toggles and cruise.  It a clear outlier in terms of its ability to become an enabler for your team, but it is the most complex defensive set in the game by a country mile.

Personal recommendation?  Broadsword/Shield Defense Scrapper is pretty tough, deals serious damage, has satisfyingly "crunchy" animations, solos well, and teams well.  Respec out of Slash once you've got Disembowel, and don't lean on Parry too much.  Pick up the Steadfast Protection Resist/+3% Defense IO and the Gladiator's Armor Resist TP/+3% Defense IOs as soon as you can afford them.  If you plan to team, slot the Achilles' Heel -Resist proc in Slice and Whirling Sword when you get the chance.

[pattycake]

I really like War Mace with anything. Its not the best set, its one of the highest single-target damage PS in the game, with strong and low activation speeds, allowing you to endlessly proc sets. But these days you want to try AoE based builds. INE though, its fun to play and its a very underrated PS.

[Hrothgan]

On 9/24/2019 at 5:53 PM, gameboy1234 said:

On my SD/WM tanker, it wasn't too long before I was soloing Carnival missions on +1/+4, and pulling the first group into the second so there'd be more folks to fight.  Not sure how long but it wasn't level 50, might have been in the 20 to 30 range (I know I had Shield Bash by then though, and two AoEs from Mace, so it might have been a bit post 30).

 

Check your total bonuses in the Combat Stats window.  Monitor some of those like to-hit and last chance to hit and global accuracy as you fight.  You sound like you've got a bit to much Damage and Resists slotted, and not enough other effects like Recharge, Accuracy, To-Hit Debuff (I think that goes in Unyielding), etc.  Powers have to hit before they do damage, and that's important. 

 

You haven't mentioned Dull Pain and that confuses me.  Dull Pain should be six slotted before anything else is.  Three Health and three Recharge.  You should have global recharge and concentrate on making Dull Pain permanent.  Hasten is your friend.  (Note I didn't say Dull Pain should be slotted to the exclusion of anything else.  My Inv/SS tanker hasn't even taken it yet, but she's low level and is still filling out her attack chain.  Once you get two or three slots in everything, taunt, a travel power, and a (mostly) full attack chain, then take Dull Pain and Hasten.  Then maybe work on Tough and Weave.  It's all in the long term planning.)

 

What you should be doing: 1. use insp 2. kill stuff.  3. use the insp drops you got from killing stuff.  4. kill stuff 5. go back to 1.

 

 

 

I was specifically talking about the toggles as those are pretty much always on - so thought that might be affecting my endurance a fair bit. I do use Dull Pain, but only ever when my Health's low and I need the heal. I do definitely need to use inspirations more as you say, I'll double check all my powers and enhancements and screenshot them for you.

 

I've mainly followed this build and just tweaked a few things here and there. https://web.archive.org/web/20120907034145/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?p=252633#post252633 

 

 

[Hrothgan]

On 9/24/2019 at 6:17 PM, Heraclea said:

Temporary Invulnerability, Unyielding, and Invincibility are your toggles.  Temporary Invuln adds smashing/lethal resistance.  Unyielding is your mez protection.  Invincibility is your taunt aura, and it also gives you scaling defense depending on how many mobs are in range of it.  These toggles and Dull Pain, your trouble button, are the heart of the set.  Before level 22 or so endurance reduction is your only priority in the toggles.

 

Dull Pain gets six slots seeking to maximize heal and recharge.   These four are your core powers. 

 

The rest should be taken eventually, except for Unstoppable, which is a free pick of something else at 32 or 38.  Tough Hide gets two or three slots of defense.  The other passives are fine with their default slot.  This is a great blessing for your attacks.  They should be taken eventually but they aren't priorities.

 

Get endurance under control.  Give slots to Health and frankenslot the recovery uniques. 

 

Once endurance is a solved problem, you will eventually want Tough and Weave.  This means wasting a selection on Boxing or Kick first.  At least you don't have to do the Stamina grind any more. 

 

Thanks for the info, that simplifies it a bit for me so I've got a few things I can work on!

[Queen Nefertiti]

I have a level 50 SS/Invul tank (I know, not quite the same) and she is stellar. I did take the electricity: conserve power epic, but looking online that's not available to brutes. Even without it though she only has occasional end issues in long fights. Unstoppable helps immensely as long as the fight ends before it crashes and my health and end plummet. A lot of the time if my end is low I stop using the later powers and just keep hitting with tier 1 and 2 attacks till it goes up again. As long as something is hitting the aggro stays on me. I know it is obvious, but most alts suffer with end issues until they have enough slots and set bonuses in place. As for your slotting, from what you have said it's pretty standard. I slot like that too. 1 end reduction, 1 accuracy then three damage.  I do go IO as soon as I hit level 22 then slot the level appropriate as I gain more slots. The extra bonus is not that much between 25 and 50, but spending some merits on unslotters and replacing the end ones every 10 levels with higher ones can make a difference.

[MunkiLord]

On 9/26/2019 at 10:14 PM, quietkane said:

I know you mentioned Brute, but I have recently gotten every Tanker primary to level 40 or higher, so I'm here to provide some thoughts on melee sets:

• Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, and Ice Armor are all bad sets below level 30, and of those three only Ice Armor feels like it matures into a good set without devoting a significant budget and effort into shoring up your weaknesses via IOs.

Minor point, but I don't think SR takes significant budget or effort to softcap.

[kenlon]

On 9/26/2019 at 8:14 PM, quietkane said:

Invulnerability, Super Reflexes, and Ice Armor are all bad sets below level 30

 

. . . Super Reflexes gets good insanely early on tankers. It is not hard to be just about to the def softcap on SOs alone, at 22. You have to give up most of your offense to get there, slot and power-wise, but if you don't insist on maxing it you can still do quite well. (I can't confirm it just at this moment as I am not at a machine that has Mids, but I'll doublecheck it when I am no longer at work.)

 

SR is astonishingly powerful as a tanker primary, and I have to wonder how you built it that you found it not to be. In fact, if SR had been put on tankers on live in it's current form, I can guarantee it would have been nerfed. 

[quietkane]

On 10/2/2019 at 2:12 PM, kenlon said:

 

. . . Super Reflexes gets good insanely early on tankers. It is not hard to be just about to the def softcap on SOs alone, at 22. You have to give up most of your offense to get there, slot and power-wise, but if you don't insist on maxing it you can still do quite well. (I can't confirm it just at this moment as I am not at a machine that has Mids, but I'll doublecheck it when I am no longer at work.)

 

SR is astonishingly powerful as a tanker primary, and I have to wonder how you built it that you found it not to be. In fact, if SR had been put on tankers on live in it's current form, I can guarantee it would have been nerfed. 

OK, you're right that Super Reflexes is allowed to be pretty tough from an early level on a Tanker.  Its defensive package isn't complete until level 29 on Brutes, which is what the OP was talking about, so that's why I called it bad below 30.   Still, my experience is with Tankers, so I guess it wasn't completely fair to lump it in with Invuln and Ice in that way.  However, even as a Tanker set, Super Reflexes has several issues that Invuln and Ice do suffer from:

• SR is very power hungry, as you mention, and it isn't much better when it comes to slots.  Because all of its resists are in its auto powers and most of its defense is in its toggles, SR must take its first 7 powers.  Delaying any of them delays your ability to tank for your team.
  • Contrast this to Shield Defense whose toughness mostly lives in 4 powers, Willpower which can get away with only three powers for far longer than it has any business doing so, or Dark Armor whose toughness budget is almost entirely Dark Regeneration.
  • While the set's toughness being spread out does mean that SR can't "miss" its key power, it also means that you have much less build flexibility.  Save for Elude, basically every SR tanker has the same power picks, and pretty much the same slotting for those powers.
• Super Reflexes has a Tier 9 which does not make you any tougher as a Tanker unless your enemies have +ToHit or -Defense.  To be fair, the most-run TF in the game has an enemy set which has a crap-ton of -Defense, but I would still wager most players spend at least half of their time fighting enemies that don't bring -Defense or +ToHit.  It's useful that at least one of its powers is skippable, but when you compare it to Shield which both can reach soft-capped defenses and has a Tier 9 which hard caps your S/L resists, it does sort of leave something to be desired.
  • This is also bad design because the game does nothing to explain to a player that any Defense over 45% won't help them in most situations.  That's information that the player base discovered for themselves.  If you don't read the forums or research builds, you sort don't have any way of knowing that Elude is useless most of the time for a Tanker.
• Super Reflexes mostly doesn't do anything except make you tougher.  That can be appropriate for Scrappers and Stalkers, but it's borderline for Brutes, and it's a straight-up flaw for a Tanker set.  It is tied for having the worst aggro-management kit, it does nothing to help your endurance management, it doesn't help bring the enemies down faster, and it does nothing to help keep the rest of your team safe if you lose aggro or the enemies have a lot of AoE.  It is slightly better than Invuln in this regard in that Quickness can make you better at doing any of those things if your other powers do them, but otherwise Super Reflexes is only about making you tougher, and that's only half of a Tanker's job.
• SR's mitigation isn't much more than a whole lot of defense.  Which, yes, that's powerful, but it's also a reachable goal for other sets that bring other mitigation tools to the table.  Shield Defense can hit 45% defense against all ranges with just Maneuvers, Combat Jumping, and the two +3% Defense IOs, and it has native, always-on resists that are roughly as good as SR's scaling resists are at 25% health.  Bio Armor gets to ~42% defense against everything but S/L with Combat Jumping, Weave, and the two +3% Defense IOs, and it has a ton of other mitigation tools.  The point is, it may be easy to get SR to the soft-cap in defense, but it is quite difficult to get it much tougher than that because of the way pool powers and set IOs grant other mitigation.  If your goal is a cheap build with lots of +Recharge that's tough enough to tank +1x4, then Super Reflexes is great.  If your goal is a reasonably-costed build which is tough enough to tank +4x8 without outside assistance, Super Reflexes is playing on hard mode.

"Astonishingly powerful" is clearly a subjective statement.  My Will, Dark, Elec, and Bio Tankers are all much tougher than my SR Tanker, and of the four only the Bio Tanker spent more on her build by a significant amount.  Can my SR Tanker still tank for an ITF?  Absolutely.  But I feel like I'm working harder for it on him than on my other tanks.

Edited October 9, 2019 by quietkane

[GamerKate]

Can we roll up toons at the level cap now?

 

I’m confused as to how OP has a lvl 50 he doesn’t know how to use.

 

MCM

[MetaVileTerror]

Well, you can insta-50 on Pineapple, but as far as people not knowing "how to play" their level 50s on the other Shards . . . that's farming/power-levelling for you.

[Hrothgan]

21 hours ago, MrCaptainMan said:

Can we roll up toons at the level cap now?

 

I’m confused as to how OP has a lvl 50 he doesn’t know how to use.

 

MCM

 

I don't believe there's a definitive guide anywhere telling you how to play a powerset? Certainly not in game anyway. I don't recall saying I don't know how to use a character either, I said I struggled with the Invul power set a little. Did you have anything meaningful to add to this topic other than deviating from my OP?

[Anaku]

I think my FIre/Energy Sentinal was one of the more enjoyable and easiest toons I have leveled.

[Herotu]

On 9/20/2019 at 9:03 AM, Darlomidge said:

Currently rolling a Level 50 SS/Inv Brute, have quite a bit of difficulty with survivability and endurance during solo play - probably mostly to do with the fact I find it quite difficult to play and find it fairly unforgiving. Does anyone know of an archetype and powerset that's fairly simple to play? 

I feel your pain. I keep forgetting all the active defense Click powers. I recommend;

Invulnerability/Willpower for melee/sentinel,

Blasters.

Masterminds.

[GamerKate]

23 hours ago, Darlomidge said:

 

I don't believe there's a definitive guide anywhere telling you how to play a powerset? Certainly not in game anyway. I don't recall saying I don't know how to use a character either, I said I struggled with the Invul power set a little. Did you have anything meaningful to add to this topic other than deviating from my OP?

I didnt mean to insult you, I was confused at some of your stated approach, for example having SOs at lvl 50 and not using inspirations. The tutorial teaches us how to use inspirations, for example, and I was surprised at a lvl 50 player not knowing about their usefulness.

 

There's nothing wrong with powerlevelling, I hasten to add, if that's your cup of tea then its all good. Just that when you said you were 'rolling' a lvl 50 I thought you were somehow being able to have a fully powered lvl 50 without levelling it, as I usually see 'rolling up a character' to mean creating a new one in the CC and then zoning in at lvl 1

 

MCM