Worst of the worst

[Sir Myshkin]

10 hours ago, parabola said:

I'm seriously tempted to build the 'Mad King' version of this though.

Do iiiiiiitt 😁

4 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I have an electric/electric blaster who was in fact my first level 50 blaster.  I play the character as a defender. Her whole shtick is endurance drain and everything is slotted for that. 

 

To be fair, Electricity Manipulation has two of the strongest attacks for Blaster secondaries in Charged Brawl and Shocking Grasp (proc'd). I've got my own Elec/Nrg Blaster (only one) set to get the Musculature Radial and Preemptive Interface to max out his endurance sapping capabilities without gimping damage capacity.

19 minutes ago, KelvinKole said:

I would have to put Poison on this list. It's heal can't effectively heal because of the projectile speed, no self heal, it's debuffs have accuracy checks (I think) with a tiny Aoe splash, and it's two best powers are PBAoE without any self buffing to get you in there safely. 

 

Something like an energy/poison corruptor should be a new level of hell.

Poison is a killer debuff set, especially in a single-target scenario. It was never designed to be "the healer" in a group.

 

I'm honestly surprised no one's tried throwing Trick Arrow under the bus yet. I'd have to get my pitchfork, torches, and shovels out.

[Parabola]

3 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Do iiiiiiitt 😁

I've also been thinking about a battle axe/regen brute mad king. Every attack takes a ff+rech and regen will love the recharge on all its clicks. Not sure how survivable it would end up but it sounds like fun!

[Heraclea]

6 hours ago, Snarky said:

I play Brites

I have a sudden hankering to roll a Brite.

[roleki]

36 minutes ago, Sir Myshkin said:

I'm honestly surprised no one's tried throwing Trick Arrow under the bus yet. I'd have to get my pitchfork, torches, and shovels out.

As a controller secondary, /TA is a solid complement to just about any primary, and that's right out of the box.  It may not have a killer top-end or a defining power that everyone can point to as a signature move, but anyone who has given it a fair chance would have to admit /TA helps them keep the chaos in check by providing solid debuffs and additional controls.

 

That said, if I hopped on a PUG and saw a Defender, I'd be mildly disappointed to find out they were TA/, because that's like having a controller on outdated TOs.

[Sir Myshkin]

1 hour ago, parabola said:

I've also been thinking about a battle axe/regen brute mad king. Every attack takes a ff+rech and regen will love the recharge on all its clicks. Not sure how survivable it would end up but it sounds like fun!

If you leverage the procs over global sets you could probably get away with some pretty good proc ratios. I went the direct route with TW/Regen and filled it with as much global recharge balance as I could pack, plus Spiritual to the point where the FF+Rech proc only takes a bit (~8-10/s) off of Instant Healing (and hardly nothing off pretty much anything else). If you do a FF+Rech leveraged build though, that truly would be a "Mad King Special" for sure as it'd only be powered through combat! Going that path would also allow you to utilize more extra slots for defensive bonuses.

38 minutes ago, roleki said:

That said, if I hopped on a PUG and saw a Defender, I'd be mildly disappointed to find out they were TA/, because that's like having a controller on outdated TOs.

Aw, but a proper archer doesn't have any issues taking down an AV on their own.

[Bossk_Hogg]

1 hour ago, Sir Myshkin said:

 

 

I'm honestly surprised no one's tried throwing Trick Arrow under the bus yet. I'd have to get my pitchfork, torches, and shovels out.

I mean... It is kind of crap though. 4 of the powers are significantly worse than the blaster secondary version, and one is functionally identical. It's debuffing is nothing particularly impressive either. Plus there's the Sword of Damocles on procs, as Powerhouse has already noted they're due for a nerf, he just has other priorities at the moment. It may not be the worst defender set, but I'd say it's the worst debuffing set. It's quite weak on basic IO set builds, and painful to actually play up through the levels (particularly as a corrupter where you're just a shitty /TA blaster until 30 or so).

[NNDeepdish]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

As a controller secondary, /TA is a solid complement to just about any primary, and that's right out of the box.  It may not have a killer top-end or a defining power that everyone can point to as a signature move, but anyone who has given it a fair chance would have to admit /TA helps them keep the chaos in check by providing solid debuffs and additional controls.

 

That said, if I hopped on a PUG and saw a Defender, I'd be mildly disappointed to find out they were TA/, because that's like having a controller on outdated TOs.

Didn't they buff Defender TA at some point? 

 

I played a TA def on live and absolutely loved it even though it was the worst set at the time.

[Solarverse]

TA/Rad Defender. Radiation does poop damage and TA is just, well...ever seen anyone run TA?

 

If you want to play something that will be a major pain in the rear to keep your endurance up, play Titan/Dark Scrapper and name him/her Toggle Dropper. It wont be your enemy's toggles dropping, it will be your own.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Solarverse

[HelenCarnate]

Any of the following brutes no one has made to 50 according to the FOTM post from September

Savage Melee/Ice Armor 

Ice Melee/SR 

Ice Melee/Regen 

Spines/Energy Armor

Stone Melee/SR 

Street Justice/Stone

 

Of those Ice Melee/Regen sounds pretty bad.  Low damage primary paired with a click intensive secondary means a lot of time spent keeping yourself alive and less time attacking. 

 

Looking at the same info on Trollers that leaves

Ice/Sonic and Ice/Traps.

 

Ice is stuck with very little damage but a ton of control.  I can see Ice/Traps being ok as you can throw out an Ice Slick then toss out caltrops, and your other traps and those can make up for the low damage primary.  Ice/Sonic however would be terrible solo as 4 of the powers require them to be cast on an ally.  In a group it would not be so bad.  You would mainly be just keeping up shields and making sure your -resist toggle is on a melee character wile doing minor damage and keeping everything falling down.  You would still be able to contribute to a decent amount of damage, but only indirectly with Disruption Field. 

 

You can do basically the same for the other ATs to find out which is the least popular and go from there.  That thread can be found here

 

 

[SlimPickens]

21 hours ago, Dragon Crush said:

Petless ninja/TA mastermind

[Sir Myshkin]

19 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Powerhouse has already noted they're due for a nerf

Powerhouse did not say he was going to blanket nerf procs, but specifically that (many months down the road) [they] plan on looking at how procs interact with Epic/Patron pool powers as procs are inadvertently leveraging the long recharge of those abilities which was intended to limit them, and is instead being used to over-extend their power.

 

I was gonna post a further retort in defense of Trick Arrow, but ultimately I walked that one up the plate knowing I could defend it without consideration, but it's better to just let others have their opinion on the matter without turning an innocent thread into a debate. 🙂

 

I already posted the video evidence of what it can do and that's enough proof of its ability.

[Parabola]

6 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

I can see Ice/Traps being ok as you can throw out an Ice Slick then toss out caltrops, and your other traps and those can make up for the low damage primary.

I have one of these and it has serious synergy. Ice is a very low maintenance primary, you run arctic air, lay down ice slick and spam the immob and that's about it. Traps needs time dedicated to it to get through all the cast times and also provides defence and mez protection to keep arctic air up. The whole things plays great at point blank range and with procs in everything it does decent damage. It's pretty safe too, mobs really don't know what's hit them with everything that you have going on.

[Menelruin]

What is a "Mad King" build? 

[Redlynne]

31 minutes ago, Menelruin said:

What is a "Mad King" build? 

Myshkin's "Mad King Special"

Edited December 3, 2019 by Redlynne

[SeraphimKensai]

Stone Armor/Savage Melee Tank.

 

You'll have amazing mitigation, with amazing drawbacks, that other tanks can achieve your mitigation abilities without the drawbacks but even doing the same you'll never overcome your drawbacks.

 

That said Savage Melee will actually help out your recharge issues in granite to a degree, it's damage is pretty much reliant upon DoT's, and is reduced by Granite's 30% damage debuff.

[Bossk_Hogg]

17 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Powerhouse did not say he was going to blanket nerf procs, but specifically that (many months down the road) [they] plan on looking at how procs interact with Epic/Patron pool powers as procs are inadvertently leveraging the long recharge of those abilities which was intended to limit them, and is instead being used to over-extend their power.

 

I was gonna post a further retort in defense of Trick Arrow, but ultimately I walked that one up the plate knowing I could defend it without consideration, but it's better to just let others have their opinion on the matter without turning an innocent thread into a debate. 🙂

 

I already posted the video evidence of what it can do and that's enough proof of its ability.

I'd love to find a reason to play my archery/TA corrupter again. But killing a pylon isnt it. That's a very specific DPS race against an immobile target. You bolt the same incarnate and IO package on just about anything and it will kill pylons. 

Play it through some mid level content, support teams with its middling debuffs and I would be impressed. But a debuff set with no -regen, terrible -to-hit numbers... every time I look at her I wonder why I'm not just playing radiation, which has better numbers on most everything plus a solid team buff. Oil Slick Arrow only goes so far. 

Edited December 3, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[Riverdusk]

21 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

Powerhouse did not say he was going to blanket nerf procs, but specifically that (many months down the road) [they] plan on looking at how procs interact with Epic/Patron pool powers as procs are inadvertently leveraging the long recharge of those abilities which was intended to limit them, and is instead being used to over-extend their power.

 

I was gonna post a further retort in defense of Trick Arrow, but ultimately I walked that one up the plate knowing I could defend it without consideration, but it's better to just let others have their opinion on the matter without turning an innocent thread into a debate. 🙂

 

I already posted the video evidence of what it can do and that's enough proof of its ability.

That sounds more reasonable and glad you cleared that up.  I was ready to roll my eyes again at another Powerhouse idea.  The previous one being when he said if it was up to him he'd take away the taunt aura from any scrapper armor set that had one.

[SaintD]

On 12/3/2019 at 8:30 AM, HelenCarnate said:

Any of the following brutes no one has made to 50 according to the FOTM post from September

Savage Melee/Ice Armor 

Ice Melee/SR 

Ice Melee/Regen 

Spines/Energy Armor

Stone Melee/SR 

Street Justice/Stone

 

Of those Ice Melee/Regen sounds pretty bad.  Low damage primary paired with a click intensive secondary means a lot of time spent keeping yourself alive and less time attacking.

There's practically no Brute to talk about in this topic. Mentioning Ice Melee on a Brute as 'low damage' is massively disingenuous insofar as it's a functional Brute primary. It's 'low damage' on Brute tier scales made for internet grognarding, not in actual use where it's still going to have a couple hundred percent extra damage and still overkill the absolute shit out of enemies.

 

The Brute AT is so straightforwardly effective across its whole primary and secondary toolbox that gimping it requires deliberate intervention. In a conversation about the worst of the worst on City of Heroes, Brutes disqualify themselves immediately for just plain working relatively effectively no matter what silly shit you do with them.

 

And yes, even Energy Melee on a Brute. For all the wailing, Energy Melee Brutes still basically just murderhobo content. They just don't do it as ludicrously as Titan Weapons.

Edited December 4, 2019 by SaintD

[HelenCarnate]

35 minutes ago, SaintD said:

There's practically no Brute to talk about in this topic. Mentioning Ice Melee on a Brute as 'low damage' is massively disingenuous insofar as it's a functional Brute primary. It's 'low damage' on Brute tier scales made for internet grognarding, not in actual use where it's still going to have a couple hundred percent extra damage and still overkill the absolute shit out of enemies.

 

The Brute AT is so straightforwardly effective across its whole primary and secondary toolbox that gimping it requires deliberate intervention. In a conversation about the worst of the worst on City of Heroes, Brutes disqualify themselves immediately.

 

And yes, even Energy Melee on a Brute. For all the wailing, Energy Melee Brutes still basically just murderhobo content. They just don't do it as ludicrously as Titan Weapons.

So I guess that also disqualifies tanks as any primary is pretty much unkillable once you get to a certain point.  Stalkers and Scrappers we may as well exclude as well since they are also murder bots.  Defenders get great debuffs/buffs and/or heals that can turn them into gods (but with less damage) and Corruptors are nearly as good but do more damage so I guess we can't use those either.  Controllers and Doms can lock everything down and control the battle field so they can't be included as the worst either.  Masterminds can summon armies and heal/buff them or debuff others so I guess they are out.  VEATS and HEATs can do great damage and be durable so they are out.  That leaves us with blasters which have damage for days so we are left with not being able to include any ATs.

 

Or it could just be a matter of preference and opinion and what is good in one person's eyes may be bad in someone else's eyes.  And it is possible for both to be right since the topic is subjective.

[siolfir]

1 hour ago, SaintD said:

For all the wailing, Energy Melee Brutes still basically just murderhobo content.

Well, sure, if they're solo. If they're on a team they're busy staring at their hands or doing slow-motion jumps while the mobs are already dead and everyone else is moving on.

[SaintD]

5 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

So I guess that also disqualifies tanks as any primary is pretty much unkillable once you get to a certain point.  Stalkers and Scrappers we may as well exclude as well since they are also murder bots.  Defenders get great debuffs/buffs and/or heals that can turn them into gods (but with less damage) and Corruptors are nearly as good but do more damage so I guess we can't use those either.  Controllers and Doms can lock everything down and control the battle field so they can't be included as the worst either.  Masterminds can summon armies and heal/buff them or debuff others so I guess they are out.  VEATS and HEATs can do great damage and be durable so they are out.  That leaves us with blasters which have damage for days so we are left with not being able to include any ATs.

 

Or it could just be a matter of preference and opinion and what is good in one person's eyes may be bad in someone else's eyes.  And it is possible for both to be right since the topic is subjective.

Tanks as an entire class wouldn't be disqualified, because some of them hit problems of being poor at aggro management, and others get hit with problems of just plain being slow to clear content. Stalkers would be disqualified because yes, you can throw any Stalker primary and any Stalker secondary together and you've still got a DPS machine that basically fulfills what a Stalker does, and the argument is one internal to the AT where people quibble over which one of their primaries is 'best'. But in the end, with both Stalkers and Scrappers, it ends up not mattering much in terms of the AT being able to do what the AT does and always being able to contribute.

Defenders as an entire AT certainly don't get disqualified because there are Defender primaries that suck ass for supporting either a team, or themselves, or having a very specific focus that makes them only situationally useful. The same goes for Corrupters, which can very much put together primary/secondary combos that seriously impact that actual usability of the AT. Doms are the same; you can easily put together Doms that are just garbage and have trouble basically doing their job.

It pretty much becomes obvious you have no idea by mentioning Controllers, which have basically become the unwanted red-headed stepchild of City of DPS. Like it or not the game became more and more heavily unbalanced up until it shut down, and Controllers ended up being garbage tier for doing a job no-one wants or needs because the only enemies Controllers can effect at mid to higher levels of play are just plain dead immediately, and the only big, tough enemies everyone would love to be held are basically immune to it. In a team a Controllers job is to stand around thinking about that one time they were on a small, suck-ass team and they were controlling stuff because the Tank was licking his own butt and the Blaster thought his cones were ST powers and I'm gonna make a forum post about how Controllers totally aren't pants guyz! They totally aren't!

Masterminds have Mercenaries and Ninjas. I don't need to say anything else on that matter.

Most of the ATs can be royally f***ed up to the point where they're scarcely capable of adequately doing their job, or potentially any job at all, whether that's aggro management, not dying, applying buffs or debuffs, or controlling. They can be f***ed up to the point where they're dead weight, only good for bumping up the number of enemies that spawn while everyone else does the lifting. Scrappers, Stalkers, and Brutes are extremely notable in that they are extraordinarily resistant to this problem. Any primary, any secondary. Doesn't matter. They have basically one job - MURDER EVERYTHING YOU CAN, LIVE LONG ENOUGH FOR THE MURDER TO END - and there's no combination you can come up with on any of them that won't fill their basic murdering purpose, within their own flavors, to the extent that they're not worth having around. Every single Scrapper, Stalker, and Brute primary WILL murder the shit out of everything. Every single Scrapper, Stalker, and Brute secondary WILL give them the ability to stand up long enough to murder the shit out of anything.

In any conversation about 'The Absolute Worst of the Worst', yes, Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers aren't anywhere near the conversation. The very worst combination you can possibly make of any of them is STILL a valid and usable DPS machine within their own niche of how they deal that DPS, that's more preferable to have on the team than even average combos of some other AT's, let alone under performing ones, because they'll always, no matter what, just go and do their damn job of making red numbers come out of things until it stops moving. City of DPS always needs murderhobos, and any Brute, Stalker, or Scrapper combo is going to murderhobo. Guaranteed.

Edited December 4, 2019 by SaintD

[Harry_Canyon]

On 12/2/2019 at 2:07 PM, Heraclea said:

I have a sudden hankering to roll a Brite.

Prepare to be disappointed.  😜

[Galaxy Brain]

Just wanna say, Ice Melee is super underrated. The AoE damage is def there with Frost's wide reach and the footstomp clone. Yes, it does a smidge less damage but it also has a ton of safety to leverage more offensive secondaries 🙂

[ShardWarrior]

On 12/1/2019 at 10:14 PM, Heraclea said:

Fire Armor/Energy Melee tanker.

This would be my vote for worst of the worst as well.  Truly horrible combination - so much so they should not be allowed.

[roleki]

11 hours ago, SaintD said:

It pretty much becomes obvious you have no idea by mentioning Controllers, which have basically become the unwanted red-headed stepchild of City of DPS. Like it or not the game became more and more heavily unbalanced up until it shut down, and Controllers ended up being garbage tier for doing a job no-one wants or needs because the only enemies Controllers can effect at mid to higher levels of play are just plain dead immediately, and the only big, tough enemies everyone would love to be held are basically immune to it. In a team a Controllers job is to stand around thinking about that one time they were on a small, suck-ass team and they were controlling stuff because the Tank was licking his own butt and the Blaster thought his cones were ST powers and I'm gonna make a forum post about how Controllers totally aren't pants guyz! They totally aren't!

Not to detract from a perfectly cromulent rant, but in my experience, Controllers generally range from "present during the proceedings" to "potential MVP" depending on whether the team has a competent Brute/Scrapper. 

 

In my opinion, if there's a red-headed stepchild in this power-crept meta, it's Tanks.  The ability to herd a room into a killzone is diminished in importance somewhat when every AT has access to a nuke, making every area of a map a killzone.  The ability to inherently hold aggro is diminished in importance somewhat by the ability of most teams to melt through mobs in less than the span of an attack chain.  The ability to inherently survive alpha is diminished in importance somewhat when nearly every character can soft-cap defense, resistance (or both) and can slot a Preventive Medicine proc on top of it.   

 

There was a time when a team wouldn't dream of clicking into a mission without a Tank; now, you see a Tank on a team and you just hope they're not run by one of those people who still think it's 2007 or something.