I hate when the powers look too good

[DougGraves]

I know katana is better on a tanker than dual blades.  Claws is better than dual blades.  But the animations on dual blades is just so cool, I gave up on the others and am playing dual blades.

 

Are there powersets you play just for the theme, looks, or animations that you would not normally choose to play because of the mechanics?

[MTeague]

Ain't nothing wrong with making a sub-optimal character for style points.  I mean, it's a comic book superhero game. It lives and dies on STYLE. And really, darn near every powerset can be made to work and work plenty good enough to get the job done once you add in IO's.  Patch all the holes you need.

 

There are certainly some specific powers that I've taken .... not often... but I've taken them on various characters, and I'm keeping them, no matter how sub-optimal for funsies or nostalgia. 

• Kinetics/Repel:   I just love running into a crowd and sending people flying with it.  Ever since back on Live, I and a couple squishes had to escape from the perez park maze, and we didn't want to take the hospital express.  I put on repel, and said, "okay, we're gonna freight train right through them. Stay with me!!"  (3 of 4 of us made it to zone alive!)
• Mind/Teleknesis:  This was useful levelling as an auto-hit toggle hold. For a controller, before I could afford sets, it let me lock down bosses immediately.  saved my hash a few times soloing.  I dont' think I've activated it in over 30 levels.  But conceptually I love it, and still have it on my Mind controller.
• Storm/Thunderclap:  the stun isn't strong enough for anything more than minions which rarely need to be stunned.  it comes with crappy base accuracy. But the animation and sound is awesome. I can't let go of it on my Storm Defender. I keep *trying* to find a way to make it not suck.
• Leaping/Jump Kick:  I really really like the animation.  It needs to be about 50% faster.  Maybe more. But the flip-kick looks pretty good, even if the animation time is Too Darn Long for the damage it does. 
• Fighting/Boxing/Kick/Cross Punch:   this doesnt' really belong in the list. If you get all three they synergize VERY well.  But I have all three, on a Beast/Empathy Mastermind.  It's probably a waste of Endurance, and I don't doubt people will tell me its three bad power choices for an MM.  My own personal damage will never be THAT meaningful compared to the wolves and lions.  I get that. But I can't play an MM that just stands there doing buffs and spot heals and looking good.  For any few seconds I have where I don't need to rebuff, and where I dont need to cast a heal?  She's gonna be a Kickboxing Empath MM, tearing it up right beside her pets. 

Edited January 5, 2020 by MTeague

[boggo2300]

54 minutes ago, DougGraves said:

I know katana is better on a tanker than dual blades.  Claws is better than dual blades.  But the animations on dual blades is just so cool, I gave up on the others and am playing dual blades.

 

Are there powersets you play just for the theme, looks, or animations that you would not normally choose to play because of the mechanics?

Thats how it SHOULD be

I play everything for the theme, looks, or animations and I have never even given thought to the mechanics during character creation, I just don't give a fig about the meta game

[Gulbasaur]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

Fighting/Boxing/Kick/Cross Punch:   this doesnt' really belong in the list. If you get all three they synergize VERY well. 

Good to see a bit of love for the Fighting attacks. They have good animations, take a bunch of procs and do a couple of status effects as well as the synergy bonuses.

 

If you don't take kick and use it to proc a +100 recharge boost as a filler attack, you're doing it wrong.

 

Cross punch has my favourite melee animations, as a bonus.

[boggo2300]

Just to respond to the thread title,  never team with me then, my toons look so good the mobs just surrender to the cool!

[Harry_Canyon]

My first 50 from live was a Dual Blades/Willpower Brute.  As I had played since the games open, this was not only several years into the games life but the most recent character I made at the time.  It took me only 30 days of casual solo play to reach my peak, but would have likely just sat in a pile of Alt-o-holic quagmire if not for how it felt to me.  

 

This was the set for me.  Not the most damaging and the gimmick took some time to perfect, but it was fun, flashy, and fluid.  My second 50 was an Inv/EM tanker... Also not much in the way of numbers, but damn if I didn't have a blast with him.  EM Tanks were just the worst back then; feeling like you wrapped your hands in holographic cotton candy, and blew kisses at your opponents. What you find fun may not match what others do, but have that fun despite them.

[SarahTheM1]

Admittedly I'm biased because I go all-in on concept well before any kind of optimization, but I also feel like there's vanishingly few truly Bad powers in the game. Plenty of situational ones though.

 

(It's me, the one person who doesn't outright hate Foe Capture and Phase powers.)

[1gecko]

Have to agree with the rest of the responders on this one: going with the powers that 'work' with the CHARACTER rather than the min/maxing for straight damage output and/or resilience is (and probably SHOULD be in almost all cases) the purpose of the game!

 

after all - if we were just playing for min/max we would be playing some (boring) console game with ONE 'tank' character, one ranged damage character, one healer and one crowd controller as possibilities for the player to choose from!  And that is NOT heroic (or villainous - depending on your desire)...

 

I have (way too) many alts of character concepts that make AWESOME characters (were this a book) - admittedly some I don't play that much... And yes, a few of those are because of other player's reaction to the character and its powers!

That said - some combinations, while great from a story/concept perspective, do NOT work out that well in practice. 😭 I have an Illusion / Force Field (bubbler) Controller that... well... from a game-play standpoint doesn't contribute that much to a team (especially with as *fast* as we go through missions / enemy groups now!  who *needs* bubbles to stay alive anymore?) and *can NOT* solo; but her backstory and character concept are (in my opinion at least) awesome!

[Redlynne]

8 hours ago, MTeague said:

• Storm/Thunderclap:  the stun isn't strong enough for anything more than minions which rarely need to be stunned.  it comes with crappy base accuracy. But the animation and sound is awesome. I can't let go of it on my Storm Defender. I keep *trying* to find a way to make it not suck.

You basically need to find a way to stack the Stun with something ... even if that something is an Immobilize with the 3 PPM Debilitative Action Stun proc in it  ... or the 3 PPM Unspeakable Terror Stun proc in it ... or the 2.5 PPM Pounding Slugfest Stun proc in it ... so as to be able to stack the Stun MAG up to "useful quantities" when combined with Thunderclap.

[Luminara]

The day ED went live, I wanted to know just how "bad" a character could possibly be, and defender melee attack values were the lowest possible, so I made a Kin/Elec defender and played without blasts.  I used pool melee attacks instead.  Leveled her to 50.  Went to Hami raids.  Engaged in a taunt fight with a tank and actually peeled an AV off of him and tanked it.  Twice.  Fought Adamastor solo and dropped him to 50% health (didn't die, just took so long to get that far, didn't want to finish, so i left).

 

The people who insist that there are sets which are unplayable, or should be avoided because they're "underpowered", are speaking from one of two perspectives - either an obsession with having the absolute highest stats possible and utter disdain for anything else, in which case their opinions are biased and irrelevant; or the players themselves are so bad at this game that even with set bonuses and Incarnate abilities, they fall flat on their faces when they try to play anything but top performers, and blame the game for their lack of competence.

 

Everything works well.  Every set is completely viable.  Playing something simply because you find it visually appealing isn't wrong, or masochistic.  Enjoy it.  That's exactly how the game was designed to work and you're "doin' it right".

[Oubliette_Red]

Pretty much all of my character's powers are built around a theme, because I usually come up wit a concept for a character prior to powerset selection, then select the powersets to fit the character.

 

One of my main characters on Legacy, Clepsydra, was a water/time character prior to CoH getting Water, so I used Fire that was coloured like water and some of her attacks became "steam" attacks. It worked rather well.

[Lazarillo]

I have a hard time with this sometimes, myself.  Frequently, especially with the melee sets, there's one power that I think looks awful that's really vital to playing the set to its full potential, and, similarly, a power that I really like the look of, but the use of it will make me notably less effective.  I can enjoy playing for concept, but having the voice in the back of my head telling me I could be "better" sometimes ruins the fun.  I have less trouble when it's something cool but weak than the other way around, as though I'd love to see some sort of balance pass made so various "weak" powers would be at least brought in line as alternatives, so to speak, at least there's, like, hope there that it could happen.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Lazarillo

[Shred Monkey]

Ironically, I don't even think this ...

 

On 1/4/2020 at 11:43 PM, DougGraves said:

I know katana is better on a tanker than dual blades.  Claws is better than dual blades. 

 

...is definitively true to begin with.

[NNDeepdish]

I love my claws/regen scrapper. I don't care if no one plays it because every other scrapper is apparently better

[Sailboat]

On 1/5/2020 at 9:28 AM, Redlynne said:

You basically need to find a way to stack the Stun with something ... even if that something is an Immobilize with the 3 PPM Debilitative Action Stun proc in it  ... or the 3 PPM Unspeakable Terror Stun proc in it ... or the 2.5 PPM Pounding Slugfest Stun proc in it ... so as to be able to stack the Stun MAG up to "useful quantities" when combined with Thunderclap.

I run TC on a Storm/Dark Defender with the Dark ancillary.  Thunder Clap, Dark Pit, and Oppressive Gloom are all area stuns.  Tornado also has a stun component but it's hard to control and the AoE is small.

 

Thanks for the proc suggestions -- might pick up a few of those for Tenebrous Tentacles and the like.