Archetype that made the worst first impression on you?

[RikOz]

I rolled a Kheldian back on live, and abandoned it fairly quickly. Not so much because of the powers, but more that I put a ton of time into designing a costume only to find out I'd need to be in squid form to do most things.

[Solarverse]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

If you do bot advertise you are running a modified task force or bother to tell me before you lock the team and hit go do not expect me to stay.  I am not captive to your whim.  You advertise Synapse then i join i help you crush it.  If you wanted peeps for a Synapse +1or +4 you are responsible for providing that information. My psychic powers are short one fuse and not working.  

Yes, before starting I tell the team I set as +1. I don't try and trap people. However, I also don't appreciate speed runners joining and trying to force a speed run on our teams. So that courtesy goes both ways. 

[Snarky]

7 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Yes, before starting I tell the team I set as +1. I don't try and trap people. However, I also don't appreciate speed runners joining and trying to force a speed run on our teams. So that courtesy goes both ways. 

I dont love speed runs. I like to get stuff done. Did a posi 1 and 2 tonight. They were both a little rough honestly and we wiped hard at the end of posi1. 2 peeps ran to the door while we were clearing.  After 2 team wipes and one quit we got it completed. I will not quit a regular (speed?) run no natter how ugly it gets. But i prefer a regular run not a difficulty raised run. I earn the same merits at normal or +4. There will be no purple drops.  Just get it done

[Crysis]

Tanker.  I made a big, giant burly tanker with arms and legs as thick as tree trunks.  Jumped into melee and started swinging.  I hadn’t yet discovered herding.  I swing down my mighty fists and realize I may as well be Tyrannosaurs Rex because these big giant massive arms do absolute crap for damage.

 

Then I discovered Fire/Ice and Fire/Fire tanking and thought the rest of the tank set must just be “broken.”

 

I mean I get it now....you can’t have that much survivability and top end damage as well.  Tankmage and all that.  But at the time (Game launch back in 2003/04) it really made me think Tankers as a class must be busted or something.

[Solarverse]

9 hours ago, Snarky said:

I dont love speed runs. I like to get stuff done. Did a posi 1 and 2 tonight. They were both a little rough honestly and we wiped hard at the end of posi1. 2 peeps ran to the door while we were clearing.  After 2 team wipes and one quit we got it completed. I will not quit a regular (speed?) run no natter how ugly it gets. But i prefer a regular run not a difficulty raised run. I earn the same merits at normal or +4. There will be no purple drops.  Just get it done

Ugh, the infamous spring the trap at the door routine, heh. You know what I always say, "It's not a Task Force without at least one team wipe!" Haha!

[Pixie_Knight]

On 1/21/2020 at 8:27 AM, SaintD said:

I tried the Kheldians on Live and found them to be beyond pathetic in every way. Damage, resistance, endurance, everything. Wasted garbage of an AT.

I tried a Peacekeeper again here on Homecoming now that I actively powerlevel toons in AE (which I never did on Live). Getting that thing up to 28 on any-AT xp farms was an exercise in utter agony due to how utterly, disgustingly poor the low level powers are on a Kheldian. But, nonetheless, I got there! A shiny, level 28 Kheldian, ready to go!

.....it was still utter, worthless garbage. It isn't just crap, it's insultingly crap. It's auras are the most beautiful in the game and are a fantastic costume in itself when customized, and they're tied to this rank turd of an AT. My first impression was that Kheldians are an utter failpile, and over a decade later, I confirmed it.

This game is free and I still want compensation for every second spent on that heap of shit AT.

 

Wait, WHAT?! Yes, kelds are fairly weak starting out. And if you solo only, a human form keld can feel weak at any level if you don't know how to play one. But they can be rather dangerous. Warshades especially have a rather high potential when played well. If you do a human only build you're character is a sub-par blaster with minor healing or control and some damage resistance, true. In teams though it's still viable. But a triple form (or even duo form) keld that's played well is a sight to behold. They can change things up on the fly, depending on the situation and what's needed. Party needs some healing, a peacebringer can bring that. Then they can switch to off tank with Dwarf form or damage dealing in Nova form as the situation requires. Warshades can provide solid crowd control via a PBAOE minion stun aura, single target hold, and single target immobilize. In Nova form they can once again be a very solid damage dealer, or tank decently in Dwarf form. And then there's the jaw dropping awe that a double mire into nova form aoe alpha strike can be. Teleport in either in dwarf form (to survive the alpha strike) or human form (to negate most of it via minion mez), hit Mire for a massive damage buff, switch to human or dwarf (depending on how you started) and use your second Mire, then switch to Nova form while jumping back and unleashing AOE doom on the massed enemies.

 

Their biggest flaw is how slot starved kelds are, especially if going for a triple form build. They can make great use of respecs though, since inevitably a triple form keld will have slots in powers that don't benefit much from them early on. A human only build does need to be planned out though.

 

On 1/21/2020 at 7:50 AM, Heraclea said:

On Victory I had a Ninja/Poison mastermind.  This one struggled.  It didn't help that MMs were redside only, making playing though Sharkhead more or less mandatory.  Scrapyarder missions were quite tedious on the character.  I liked the concept - Amir Al-Muminin, spiritual leader of the Shiyitti Sect - but I lost interest and never got them past 30-aomething. 

 

Made one on Torchbearer - this one's beast/time.  Beasts are probably the least annoying of the pets, though they are noisy.  Being able to level blueside was a big plus.  Even so, though I rolled the character back in June I didn't really get interested until recently.  Got this one to 50 a couple days ago. 

 

But... Ninja/poison masterminds have always been considered beastly. Okay, sure they are heavily single target oriented. But the nastiest fights are against a single tough foe, which ninja/poison can shut down with relative ease. Like all masterminds though, expect to be resummoning mid fight quite frequently against EB/AV.

 

Personally, I have trouble with brutes and stalkers. Brutes I... Well, the Fury mechanic encourages reckless charges at levels they can't really sustain such a reckless charge very well. As for stalkers, they feel too much like a glass canon to me. And I'm not a fan of the playstyle they originally encouraged of "Assassinate, then run away".

 

[Gulbasaur]

Blasters - I don't feel like their damage is high enough to mitigate the lack of mitigation. Yes, I could IO out for softcap defences, but it'd still feel wimpy.

 

Dominators - even with domination up I think they're just blasters with holds.

 

Peacebringers solo - meh. Peacebringers on teams - aw yiss. Their inherent does them dirty.

 

Masterminds - I cannot stand how passive they feel. Even with a more active secondary, I find myself just sort of hanging around while the damage happens around me.

 

[Pixie_Knight]

17 minutes ago, Gulbasaur said:

Masterminds - I cannot stand how passive they feel. Even with a more active secondary, I find myself just sort of hanging around while the damage happens around me.

 

Yeah, if you just order a single attack or use secondary abilities, I can see them feeling too passive. In which case taking the personal attacks may help a bit. On the other hand, masterminds are best played via micromanaging your pets. I constantly find myself directing them to attack specific enemies, calling them back when they are about to do something stupid (like Brawling an explosive destructible), and so forth. About the only time I passively let them do their own thing is during a Mayhem mission. And that's cause I have them set to Aggressive Follow to rack up destruction.

[Gulbasaur]

59 minutes ago, Pixie_Knight said:

Yeah, if you just order a single attack or use secondary abilities, I can see them feeling too passive. In which case taking the personal attacks may help a bit. On the other hand, masterminds are best played via micromanaging your pets. I constantly find myself directing them to attack specific enemies, calling them back when they are about to do something stupid (like Brawling an explosive destructible), and so forth. About the only time I passively let them do their own thing is during a Mayhem mission. And that's cause I have them set to Aggressive Follow to rack up destruction.

Part of the problem is that pet classes have never been something I enjoy and masterminds go all-in on pets. I don't mind the lore pets because you pretty much just set them to aggressive then go about your business and if they die then I'm still extremely capable - masterminds have pets right at the heart of the archetype and I don't enjoy that style of play.

 

Mind is my favourite control set because it doesn't rely on pets and plays like a blast set (and even better on fortunata, where you get Mind's greatest hits but also you can stab people). It's just not my thing, I'm currently levelling a dark/dark corruptor (only playing in very small teams - strongly recommend if you like challenge) and that's got a pet at L38 which I'm 50-50 on whether or not I'll take. 

[Pixie_Knight]

And that's fair. I enjoy masterminds, but find bots/force field to be too passive, for the most part. I mean with that combo you barely have to do anything besides set them to aggressive.

[The_Warpact]

On 1/21/2020 at 7:57 PM, The_Warpact said:

Tanker/Warshade/Peacebringer so much suck that they tie.

Sentinel just seems so bland the middle of the road blah.

I change this, rolled a Bio/SS tanker and I'm currently bulldozing the sh*t out of mishes.

 

The new patch really helped tanks out and the 100% increase to dmg is really noticeable.

 

WS/PB and Sentinel still suck...

[Pixie_Knight]

My first attempt at a controller was a Mind/Empathy controller. And it was... Well, I wasn't really impressed. This was back in Issue 1, and I'd gone in knowing the damage output would be low when compared to my scrapper main. And at first it was okay. The tutorial (Outbreak) was fine. Tedious, but fine. I got my single target hold almost immediately, and I thought things were going to pick up. Only to discover by level 5 that I couldn't even do a street sweeping mission in Atlas Park. My damage was so freaking low that defeating anything took ages. Which was fine, because I could keep a group of 2 or 3 non-boss enemies locked down forever. The problem was that people would see me slowly chipping away at the health of enemies and "helpfully" jump into the fight, often one shotting enemies I'd barely gotten down to 8/10ths of their max health. Which would naturally rob me of credit for the defeat, and most of the xp/influence. So maybe teaming? Yeah, that was a bad idea too. I'd get yelled at and/or booted from the team for doing anything other then spamming Healing Aura. That character never got to level 8.

 

I later tried again after Containment was added (around Issue 6) with an Illusion controller. Can't remember what the secondary was off hand, and that's mostly because I ended up rarely actually using it due to locking down groups of enemies so my secondary had nothing to contribute.

[Player2]

Dominators.  The limited number of control primaries turns me off of them.  Controllers have a pretty decent range of secondaries and one more primary than dominators, so controllers get a pass...  for now.

 

Also Masterminds for same reason as dominators and also limiting the pet options are.  There's no variation in pets from one mastermind to the next, so you could have a really interesting character idea and then he calls in his B-squad.  "Oh, I see you hired your minions from Minions 'R Us, too." 

 

Masterminds need more customization.

[MTeague]

Defender.  To be clear, I'm not talking about "first impression on Homecoming."  I'm talking "first impression" which for me means Live, back in issue 0 or maybe 1.

 

I don't always solo. But when I do, I drink DosEquis But I do solo at least some on every character, and I have a certain minimum "Okay. You're supposed to be Super Hero or a Super Villian. So you should darn well FEEL super."  On live this meant setting difficulty to at least "Rugged", I think the Homecoming analog would be +2x1 With Solo Bosses ON.  Back in Live, I simply couldn't get a defender past that. Not even a major story arc mission.  Just a door mission with Skulls or 5th Column ("Council" didn't exist at that time... it was 5th Column).  All they did was rack up impressive levels of debt. 

 

My scrappers, tankers, controllers could manage just fine.  Blasters were squishy but if I hoarded my inspirations I could generally burn the boss down before it burned me down. 

But a Defender?  Solo?  Back then.  Uh-uh.  I pretty much HAD TO team to progress in any way, and then the character stopped feeling Super.  Sure, they could heal Bob the Scrapper, or they could toss out some bubbles, or put out some Rad Debuff anchors.  And they could help out a team. But if they were 100% guaranteed to die and rack up debt solo, then they weren't a hero... they were a sidekick at best. 

 

I did not roll another Defender for a long, long time. Not until after IO's were a thing.

 

Now of course, I have four Defenders, which tops the spread among my alts.  (Most AT's I have 3 of, some only 2).  IO's and ATO's and general changes along the way changed things Considerably.

Edited January 26, 2020 by MTeague

[Pixie_Knight]

Heh, I had initially set aside Defenders too. But it wasn't because they didn't feel "super". It was because I got really sick and tired of teams taking the time to figure out who my debuff anchors were, then killing those mobs first. I also got fed up with trying to heal Stupid. I flat out tell the team "my heal is centered around me, and requires an enemy to use. Don't run off" and "My rez requires a living enemy, and I proactively use it as a minion mez." What do I get? People running around corners then demanding I heal them.

 

The worst offender was when I playing a level 8 (I think) Trick Arrow/Archery defender just after those sets got released. The team leader actually bothered to ask me if I wanted to join rather then just sending a blind invite. That impressed me a lot. I explained that my character couldn't heal at all, and was a pure debuffer/attacker. Team leader was fine with that, so I accepted the invite. I was the 8th person on the team. A team with no controllers and no other defenders. At this point the team leader posted the following in team chat:

 

"YAY! WE GOT A HEALER! WE ARE GODS NOW!"

 

That... was a warning. One I should have paid attention to. The leader ran off while I was heading to the mission entrance. It turned out he was cranking up his mission difficulty to the max thanks to that "we have a healer, we are gods now" mentality. I was the highest level person on the team, and when I entered the mission I saw wall to wall Outcasts that conned red to me. I was blanching, and suggested that maybe turning the difficulty slider back down might be a wise idea. Most of the team was level 5 after all, so level 11 minions was a bit much for the team. Hell, I wasn't confident in my ability to reliably hit them, let alone defeat ONE enemy. I was ignored, and instead the team charged in recklessly. At this point I fired off my Glue Arrow and Poison Gas Arrow, and began spamming attacks as fast as they recharged. Whenever my debuffs were recharged, I fired those off again. The rest of the team went down in seconds, naturally. Meanwhile I was eating Inspirations as fast as they dropped. Green, yellow, orange, didn't matter what it was. I needed every edge I could get just to survive a tiny bit longer.

 

Well, somehow I managed to survive that first room. And by the end of it all I had a tray filled with Awakens. Since the team were yelling at me to rez them, I started handing out Awakens to everyone. The next room (hallway actually) had fewer enemies, only eight of them (as opposed to 20). And once again the party charged in recklessly, leading me to spam everything I had the second it recharged. As well as spamming Inspirations as fast as they dropped in the vain hope of surviving. Once again I barely managed to survive the furball, while the rest of the team went down in the opening few seconds of the fight. Since I didn't have any Awakens, people had to go to the hospital and run back. When they returned, I got booted from the team for being an "XP leach" since I wasn't a Healer. Never mind that I was the only one on the team that was surviving the fights, let alone defeating a single enemy. Also ignoring the fact that they were getting defeated so easily because the team leader cranked up the difficulty to the maximum with a full team and picked MY mission.

 

Needless to say, it took a few months before I was willing to touch a Defender again.

[TheOtherTed]

On live, tankers.  I started the game with scrappers, so that likely flavored my impression of Tanks - they felt too slow and too passive.  I tried time and again to get one going, but to no avail.  It wasn't until I tried a Dark Armor tank (with suitable costume and backstory) that something finally "clicked."

 

Also, masterminds.  Had a bit of fun with a Robots/FF MM, but when I started to feel like I was just a buffbot for my, well, bots, I realized I'd rather be a buffbot for other player characters (I was heavy into defenders and controllers at the time).  Dropped the AT and never looked back.  I still have no desire to play one.

 

On Homecoming, sentinels - which seemed a bit strange, because I consistently have fun with scrappers and blappers.  Still can't put my finger on why I haven't been impressed, but here we are.

[Rathulfr]

Kheldians

[catsi563]

you now what? Ill admit I had a rough time initially with Controllers. I found them hard to work and level without a team and sincei played a bit more aggressively I preferred tanks or scraps orblasters

 

the irony of this is that my first EVER 50 was my Bale Fire and her fire rad fire controller version on Champion. She dinged 50 during a carnie mission where her ability to lock down and debuff everyuthing including the illusionists and dark mistresses allowed the rest of the team to roflstomp the rest

[Tahliah]

Peacebringer.  When they first came out, I was super excited not just to get fly at level 1 but to have another "blaster" type AT to play.  Then, like now, I prefer range to melee, so yay!  Omg, I hated that AT with a passion and barely got her to 20, maybe 22ish, and only then because my SG mates were into the new Kheldian experience thing.  Ugh.  Happily, that wore off pretty quickly, and I was thrilled to move her to the bottom of my character list and forget all about her (until now).

 

I'm also not a fan of sentinels.  I just can't get into them at all.  They don't do enough damage to my mind, and they don't have enough def/resist to make them worth the effort to keep up with their crazy end needs.  They aren't blasters, and they aren't scrappers . . . sents seem to be a "trying to be all things to all players" AT.  And as is often the case when you try to be all things to all people, you end up nothing much.  That said, I will admit that I haven't got a sent above the mid-20's for these very reasons, so they may get better later, but I just can't bear to play them long enough to find out.

[Greycat]

VEATs. I hate the forced respec at 24, and the storyline (at least as introduced) was insulting and annoying. Even now, I only play up to the one to get another costume slot and ignore the rest. (And I've only rerolled VEATs from live that I liked  the *character* from. Still not fond of the AT.) By contrast, I love my Kheldians.

 

Masterminds, at first - had a bots/FF that was so inactive and boring I nearly gave up on the AT. Fortunately, thugs/poison picked things up for me.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Greycat

[Pixie_Knight]

My Arachnos Soldier has the backstory of being an undercover cop from Kings Row who had been infiltrating the Skulls and happened to be a latent psychic. Cue a series of events, and Arachnos forcibly conscripted and brainwashed said undercover cop. Thus Arachnid Huntress's story arc is getting fed up with being the punching bag for every 2 bit "destined one", leaps the chance to fake being one and get some revenge, and eventually breaking the conditioning Arachnos put her through and becoming a hero... after forcibly changing her foretold Destiny and stomping future Recluse into the ground.

[Pbuckley818]

Sentinel- It is literally the safest DPS in the game, I have armor and fight from a distance. I can think of nothing that could sound more boring than that. But still some people like it.

[Rathulfr]

9 minutes ago, Pbuckley818 said:

Sentinel- It is literally the safest DPS in the game, I have armor and fight from a distance. I can think of nothing that could sound more boring than that. But still some people like it.

*raises hand*

 

I like how it feels, even if I'm a bit disappointed by how it plays.  Hopefully, a little buff to damage and a reworking of the Inherent might ameliorate that.  We shall see: I'm waiting patiently. 😊

 

[Pbuckley818]

1 minute ago, Rathulfr said:

*raises hand*

 

I like how it feels, even if I'm a bit disappointed by how it plays.  Hopefully, a little buff to damage and a reworking of the Inherent might ameliorate that.  We shall see: I'm waiting patiently. 😊

 

I won't begrudge you for that. Some people aren't nut bar thrill seekers like me.

[Rathulfr]

On 1/25/2020 at 1:51 AM, Gulbasaur said:

Blasters - I don't feel like their damage is high enough to mitigate the lack of mitigation. Yes, I could IO out for softcap defences, but it'd still feel wimpy.

A properly built Blaster is pretty durable.  My Energy Blasters are almost as durable as my Energy Sentinels, and put out way more damage.  But I did need to be 50 and have the right build and IO sets to get there.