First player build

[EmmySky]

9 minutes ago, Rathulfr said:

The best thing for a new player is just to pick whatever looks/sounds cool at first and try it out for a few dozen levels.  If you don't like it, then roll another one that's different and try that out, instead.  I learned more about this game and what was good and bad by simple trial and error, and had a blast doing so.

 

Excellent advice!

[Saikochoro]

 

Depends on the play style you like. If you’ve played other mmos: do you like melee, Range, suport, tanks?

 

I will echo the sentiment that melee characters are a bit more forgiving due to defensive sets. But they are also in melee range.  Ranged sets can still be a lot of fun. I don’t have much experience in control/support sets so can’t offer much advice for those. Here are my thoughts on various archetypes and powersets.

 

Keep in mind this is all just my opinion. YMMV.  Also I’m only going to mention a few primaries and secondaries for each archetype I discuss. These won’t necessarily be the best or most popular, but ones that I like and are their to give you ideas. 

 

Melee Archetypes

 

Stalkers: The Soloist.  A stealth archetype with extremely good melee damage. You can stealth to objectives and skip mobs you don’t feel like fighting. More than most other archetypes you get to decide when, where, and what to engage. Some sets offer good AoE damage, but in general is more single target focused. These are the boss killers. Auto crit out of stealth and decent chance to crit out of stealth. Inherent gives you stacks of focus that makes your premier damage power (assassins strike) auto crit out of stealth. Or you can do an extreme crit (Soviet slower animation) from stealth.

 

Notable primaries:

• Ninja Blade - your typical assassin. Awesome style (especially the assassins blade power). Great utility. Great damage. Can’t go wrong with this primary. 
• Street Justice - monster Damage. Crunching sound affects. Feels nice and fast. 
• Electric - great AoE for a stalker. More so than most other sets.

 

Notable secondaries:

• Ninjitsu - good defense (as opposed to resist) based secondary. Offer positional as opposed to typed defense. (Might want to read up on the difference, but I value positional more than typed if available).
• Shield - also offers positional defenses. Gives you a +damage aura. Also gives you a nice AoE attack to supplement single target focused primaries. 
• Energy - good types defenses. 
• Bio Armor - layered mitigation. Very high healing/absorb. Good recovery tools to help with endurance. Decent resists as well as some typed defenses. Gives you the ability to change adaptations (basically stances): you can decide to do more damage, have better recovery, or have better survivability. 

 

Scrapper: The Brawler. Very high melee damage dealer.  While perhaps not as high single target damage as stalkers, they are still one of the highest damage dealers in the game. They also don’t skimp on AoE damage except for certain primaries. Inherent power gives them the ability to crit, though they can’t control crits as well as stalkers.  I think they have better overall survivability than stalkers, but not by an insane amount.

 

Notable primaries:

• Martial Arts - not going to be topping the charts with this powerset. Doesn’t have great AoE. Largely considered inferior to street justice. But damn - the set just looks so good.  My personal favorite primary for scrappers. Feels fast, flows nicely, looks awesome, and does good single target damage. 
• Titan Weapons - obligatory mention that it’s the highest damage set. No contest. I liked it for a while, but got kind of bored of it. Still it is a great set with a very interesting momentum mechanic. First attack is painfully slow, but builds momentum. Subsequent attacks have some of the fastest animations available while momentum lasts (5 seconds I think).
• Claws - if you ever liked wolverine growing up, then this set is for you. Very fast attacks. Good single target. Good AoE. Truly a great well rounded set. 
• Dark melee - good single target damage. Somewhat anemic AoE, but that is partially being addressed in an upcoming patch. Great utility. Offers to hit debuffs on enemies, a power to replenish endurance, and a very strong + damage power. 

 

Notable secondaries:

• Bio armor - same as for stalkers, but even better. 
• Shield - same as for stalkers, but even better. 
• Willpower - a very well rounded set and forget powerset. Gives healing, recovery, and decent resists. Unlike bio armor or Regen it is not clicky at all (doesn’t require a lot of action on your part). 
• Regen - again if you ever liked wolverine, then this set is for you. I personally think bio armor is better, but this is still a great healing based secondary. It gets kind of a bad rap by some, but it is still very popular. 

 

Brute: The love child of an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Very high melee damage. Very high survivability. There is honestly no downside to brutes. Their inherent makes you do more damage the more you engage the enemy.  The can deal almost as much damage as scrappers and survive almost as well as tankers. Probably the most solo friendly archetype if you just want to engage everything. Also extremely valuable on teams. Stalkers are still better soloists if you want to be able to skip things though. 

 

Notable primaries:

• Rad @ spines - just lumping these two together as premier farming sets. Neither of them are my favorite though, but they perform well. 
• Claws - good fast attacks to help with fury generation. Good single target and AoE. 
• Staff Fighting - this set gets a bad rap. Largely considered best to use this set on stalkers. But I love it on brutes. Great animations, great AoE, and decent single target. Also this is the only melee primary that gives you stances (called forms in this set). Pair this with bio armor and you have a lot of adaptability for various situations. 

 

Notable secondaries:

• Willpower - same as scrappers, but better. Higher resist caps and high base health to work with the Regen. Great set and forget set. 
• Fiery aura - highest possible damage secondary. Burn, blazing aura, and fiery embrace make this set almost mandatory for farming.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the set I picked for my first level 50 on lives. I paired it with super strength. Turned out to be great at farming by accident. The set has a lot of holes in it for general content, but maxes out fire resistance easily. 
• Invulnerability - Superman. Outstanding survivability. Once you get it up and running you won’t die. 

 

Tanker: Love child of an immovable force that happened to be right next to another immovable force. Will survive pretty much anything. Recent changes made by homecoming also greatly improved tanker damage as well. So honestly they aren’t slacking when it come to damage either. 

 

Notable primaries (notice that primaries and secondaries are reversed for tankers):

• Invulnerability - same as brutes but even better. 
• Bio armor - honestly this is great on any archetype that can take it, but tanker higher base values milk it for even more worth. 
• Shield - again great for the same reasons as for scrappers and stalkers. 
• Willpower - same as above, but even better. 

 

Notable secondaries:

• Super strength - Superman. Knockout blow - extreme single target power. Footstomp - superb AoE power. Rage - basically what every other + damage power wishes it could be. Though it does have an annoying crash for 10 seconds. Most popular tanker secondary by far. It’s also good on brutes, but I mentioned it here instead. 
• War Mace - very good single target, very good AoE, and great control. Good crunching sound affects. It’s not Titan weapons, but it’s decently close. 
• Electrical melee - not great at single target, but good AoE damage. Pair it with shield and you have two teleport mini nukes.  Very fun.

 

Ranged Archetypes

 

Note I am not including defenders, corruptors, masterminds, or dominators in my discussion as I don’t have enough experience with them and they add an element of support/control to their gameplay.

 

Blaster:  As Nick Fury once said to Loki, “Ant, meet boot.”  Highest ranged damage, great melee damage. Blasters are damage kings. Their primary is a ranged attack set and their secondary is a melee attack set. They don’t have a set dedicated to survivability like the melee archetypes. Though their secondaries to have a sustain power. The more they attack the enemy the more damage they do. Each of their primary sets has a nuke.  Very fun and hectic. 

 

Notable primaries:

• Fire blast - best damage primary. Fast attacks. Superb single target. Superb AoE. Inferno is basically the end all be all of attacks in the game. Very fun set. 
• Ice blast - much more single target focused than fire, but still very good damage. Ice has the added bonus of having control baked into the set in the form of slows, -rech, and even holds. 
• Archery - this set seems to have people that either absolutely love or it absolutely hate it.  The hate mainly comes from the fact that it is largely lethal damage, which is one of the most resisted damage types in the game. However, it’s nuke recharges very quickly and it has good single target. Fills the Green Arrow/Hawkeye   itch. 
• Dual pistols - very cool (if over the top) animations. Won’t win any damage contests, but similar to martial arts on scrappers it just feels good to play. Plus you can pair it with martial combat on blasters for some awesome fun. 

 

Notable secondaries 

• Martial combat - see above. Pair it with dual pistols and go to town. Might not be the best secondary, but the fun factor is very high. 
• Energy manipulation  - great for boosting your primary attack set. Very popular set. 
• Tactical arrow - my personal favorite secondary.  Has an awesome sustain power. Some baked in recharge. Good control options. Pairs nicely with any primary, but naturally goes with archery.

 

Sentinel: Love child of blaster and scrapper.  You have the blaster primaries and the scrapper secondaries. Though there are some modifications to the powers in each set. The don’t do as much damage as blasters, but they trade that damage for good survivability. Their inherent power is gives you the option to debuff a target or gain some healing.

 

Notable primaries:

• Beam rifle - probably one of the best sentinel primaries. Gains an AoE versus the blaster set and has good single target damage. 
• Dual pistols - fun for the same reason as blasters. 
• Fire blast - use this if you want to eek out as much damage as possible. 

 

Notable secondaries: I really like how they adapted the secondaries when they were added to sentinel. 

• Bio armor - especially in offensive adaptation. Boosts up the damage, which seems to be one of the main complaints about sentinels. As with the melee archetypes it has good layered mitigation. 
• Radiation - this set has some great resists. It also has some good baked in utility with +rech, +dam, and a heal. Can’t really go wrong with this. 
• Regen - great absorb shield, self healing, recovery.  Simple to use and very popular. 
• Super reflexes - great positional defenses. Baked in + recharge. Better version of status protection than the same set in other archetypes. 
• Ninjitsu - stealth, positional defenses, heal, recovery. What’s not to like? 

 

Again, the above listing and discussion is by no means exhaustive, but it should help give you ideas.

[Myrmidon]

Look at concepts that you like from the Comics/Science Fiction Genre and start from there.