What are the "workhorse" combos for each AT?

[Menelruin]

Sometimes it's fun to mess with a Combo system, or Disintegration, or Bio Adaptations.  Other times, it's nice and chill to play something a bit more vanilla, with no real gimmicks or specializations, but just solid and reliable performance.  I've been enjoying the latter with a Claws/WP scrapper lately,  and was wondering what the other "workhorses" for ATs are.  Not necessarily flashy, or gimmicky, just good, even performance.  My guesses for some are as follows:

 

Blaster:  Archery/TA.  No secondary effects or DoTs, and nice passives in the secondary.

 

Defender/Corruptor:  Thermal/Sonic.  A solid Jack-of-all-trades primary, and a secondary with an effect that's pretty much always useful. 

 

Scrapper/Stalker:  Claws/WP.  Nothing flashy, just a solid passive and quick, normal attacks that still shred things. 

 

Tanker/Brute:  Inv/SS, or maybe WP.  Decent mix of defense and resists, though Rage may be a bit gimicky.

 

Controller/Dom:  I have no idea!

 

Mastermind:  Dunno, Bots/FF maybe? 

 

EDIT:  Please note I'm not necessarily saying OPTIMAL, I mean simple and basic, yet still a good performer.  Good starter combos, but also solid for high tier stuff.  Not TW with Momentum, or other added mechanics.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Menelruin

[Without_Pause]

Blaster: Water/temp

Brute: Claws/wp

Stalker: StJ/ea

 

I have others I can see having more potential, see Rad/bio brute, but these are for ease of 1-50. Ill/dark and a Widow might join after they hit 50.

[Damoklese]

For controller.. id say Fire/Kinetics.  Its been around forever, its effective, and it can handle most anything you throw at it.    Not the best controller mind you.. just solid.

 

Dominator is a different beast.  Ive never really played one for long, because they always feel like a worse controller to me.  But when people talk about effective dominator combos..one of the first ones mentioned is always Mind/Psychic.  So that might be their "workhorse".

[Zeraphia]

Defender: Nature/Sonic... this one in particular has become one of my favorites, can boast perma OG with high recharge along with assault to give over 100% damage buff to all teammates, also gives hefty resistances (rarer to see), strong overtime heals that are very appreciated in "harder" iTrials (MoM, Magi, etc.), holds enemies pretty well with the pbaoe hold toggle, can do well over -100% res, -regen, a huge absorb heal that will serve as massive aoe "wake up." This combo just doesn't cease to amazing.

 

Corruptor: Fire/Cold or Fire/Kin... Both of these combine really well, cold applies -res which will greatly reduce enemies and pairing it with fire gives it high DPS and high effective team damage buffing with some mitigation through the shields. Kinetics improves the already high Fire damage and just pushes it on to new heights along with everyone on your team, excellent combinations to warrant going Corruptor over Defender.

 

Scrapper: TW/ Rad/ or Mace/ are the strongest primaries overall, TW/ being of course the most supreme. A lot of secondary choices are very viable including /Shield, /Bio being the two "best" ones overall. That's not to say other combinations can't work but those are the highest performing combinations for a Scrapper given they don't have native inherent taunts and the primaries have a solid mixture of ST and AoE DPS and other specialties. TW/Bio Rad/Shield Rad/Bio Mace/Shield Mace/Bio are all extremely good and extremely solid.

 

Blaster: If you want supreme damage (you don't mind using inspirations when needed and having to build for it), Fire/Fire. If you want utility and safety, Ice/ Water/ Beam/ paired with /Time /Martial /Ice and /Atomic are all great in their own rights. 

 

Stalker: Primaries: StJ and Rad are the top performers, and honestly, overall Rad is the best for Stalkers right now to me. It has very hard hitting ST, an extremely hard hitting follow up after AS, good AoE, and solid overall DPS with lots of -res proc potential, even over StJ, although StJ is definitely less of an animation trap. /Bio and /Shield are top tier again for secondaries. StJ/Shield Rad/Shield StJ/Bio and Rad/Bio are all extremely good and extremely viable.

 

Controller: Illusion/ (overall reason I'd go Controller) or Plant/ paired with /Dark /Time /Rad /Cold. Illusion is a unique powerset to Controllers that is honestly the most fun and the reason I'd pick Controller over Dominator, it also is the best set at soloing extremely hard targets due to PA, and provides a decent amount of damage personally. Plant is also very good at actually controlling, Illusion is more about the soft control of PA, Plant has the AoE confuse SoC and this is going to continue to be an extremely solid set because of this even in the later levels and beyond. The secondaries that stand out are /Dark for its immense survivability and actually reworked to fit Controllers best, Cold for its debuffs and lots of LotG mules, Rad for its debuffs and recharge time buff, and Time for being amazing at everything and granting softcaps to all damage types. 

 

Dominator: Mind/ Dark/ Plant/ are imo the best ones for primary, and /Fire /Energy or /Martial for assault. Mind is considerably better on Dominator given that every single power is laced with Domination-prone goodies. Dark is also extremely solid and actually has no bad picks for control, it can lockdown several groups at once with ease. Plant is great here as it is on Controller, SoC is godlike. The secondaries are closer to what you prefer, the best one to me is Fire because once an enemy is locked down, just go straight at them with damage, and Fire allows you to just never enter melee range at all and deal tremendous damage with Fiery Embrace. Energy is excellent with the Energy Release mechanic, it's glorious in Whirling Hands where you can technically "crit" that AoE and it can sometimes stun your enemies, you can even force the crits to happen by using Total Focus. Martial has excellent AoE and probably the best of all Dominator secondaries.

 

Mastermind: Please do not go off and make a Bots/FF off of charts/hype, it WAS really good... before we learned more about Thugs and about Time. Both totally eclipse this combo in a variety of ways. Time will softcap you the same that FF would, but it provides an actually good heal that also heals over time, grants recharge bonuses for the caster, among several other very key features, Time is very well established as a top-tier MM secondary for literally every single pet primary (I'm not kidding it really is that good). Thugs was thought of as squishy until the literature caught up more about them. Thugs actually has the best survivability overall out of the gate given the fact that both of its enforcers use a Maneuvers-type power granting high defense bonuses overall than even the Robots' FFs do, in addition have much higher damage in both AoE and single target even comparing against the Assault Bots' -regen. There are lots of viable MM combinations, honestly too many to list, but Thugs/Time is going to be a top performer if not the top performer overall.

 

Brute: I genuinely cannot come up with many combinations that justify in a PvE environment being rolled as a Brute over Scrapper vs. Tanker in a lot of situations. One of the standouts is TW/FA. Unlike being rolled as a Scrapper, the Brute version gains the inherent taunt to keep enemies in and keep damaging them, which overall makes for a much nicer feel, and TW deals massive damage to out-DPS a Tanker where it would matter, this becomes one of the justified cases... That does NOT mean that anything rolled as a Brute would be bad (or even EXCELLENT!), but numerically a lot of cases will be won with a Scrapper/Tanker rolled instead. You can get this to softcap S/L/M damage and cap S/L/F resistance and it'll be very durable and excel extremely well at +4/x8 soloing and AV soloing, extremely good on teams and solo, could tank fairly well too.

 

Tanker: Lots of viable combos here, but the "best" I've ever found was Rad/TW... Rad is extremely durable, the only hole it has is Cold, and Cold damage is the rarest form of damage in the entire game, also comes in DoTs, and the hardest fight you'll encounter with lots of Cold damage is Ice Mistral on MLTF (she's pathetic at best). You can also proc out Ground Zero and Rad Therapy to be extremely damaging AoE powers along with your TW AoE hits, this combination is hilariously good. Then you have /TW just being flat out broken and giving you the defense when you need it to cap S/M defenses. I've soloed MoLRSF and MoMLTF on this combination due to its sheer toughness and damage. That said /WM and /SS are both extremely good with Rad. Rad is of course the top-tier primary atm, but /Dark /Invul /Elec /Ice all stand out in their own unique ways. It's harder to make a bad Tanker combo than it is to make a good one, all of the primaries are viable in some way shape or form.

 

 

[tidge]

Street Justice is a melee set with a combo gimmick, but I find that it is pretty easy to ignore (or otherwise not worry about).

[Strawberry]

Brute: Anything /Firey Aura. I don't even play Brutes. I think the highest level Brute I've ever made is level 8, but this is literally the only Brute I see on my teams 🧐

Controller: Fire/Kinetics. I have particular dislike for this combo back from the golden days of CoH that has left a sour taste in my mouth ever since. I am personally not a fan of fotm toons/sets and seeing Fire/Kinetics running around everywhere used to drive me insane. That being said, it remains a strong combo even after nerfs and nowadays it isn't wildly OP, but still a good strong standard. If I was going to pick an updated Controller for Homecoming, probably something with Plants primary like Plants/Storm, Plants/Kinetics, Plants/Rad.

Corruptor: Fire/Thermal. Having a rain power and high base damage on the blast set is more important than the -res from Sonic for a Corruptor imo. Agreed that Thermal is a gold standard for Corruptors.

Defender: Dark/Dark. Consistently useful and consistently hovering around a slightly above average power-level since the game launched. The -hit & -res can always prove useful. A decent heal, if you pay even a minimal amount of attention to your positioning, but definitely not heal focused. A strong group rez, if needed, but if no deaths there is application outside of rezzing the team. Also, some soft control from both your primary and secondary. Both sets also take advantage of your higher Defender baseline numbers for heals, debuffs, buffs, etc... I've always seen it as what other Defender primaries/secondaries should compare themselves to.

MM: Demons/Thermal. I also agree with the mention of Bots/FF, but I think Demons/Infernal is the Homecoming equivalent of Bots/FF and sets a better standard given Homecoming's distaste (not mine) for FF.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Strawberry

[Twisted Toon]

I would say a Grav/Time Controller is pretty solid. Not fast in taking down foes, but able to lock down darn near anything. Also, good buffs for the team and a couple of HoTs.

[r0y]

11 hours ago, tidge said:

Street Justice is a melee set with a combo gimmick, but I find that it is pretty easy to ignore (or otherwise not worry about).

StJ is a very easy combo system, as there are two "dumps" for the combos (ST and AoE).  When the stars align (with both Stalker ATO sets) it is amazing damage.  Normal play is also incredibly strong.  I'll have to check out Rad Melee (I hated it on a tank, too long of animations and a much more goofy mechanic).

 

I also love EA on my stalker, but /bio is the obvious +damage choice.

[Without_Pause]

Rad is essentially Dark with a crappier heal, less utility, and more AoE and more so not on a stalker. I have 3 Rad melee characters, but I think only one might make it to 50. Rad/bio brute because, well duh. 🙂 I'm not a fan of the animations either.

[SuperPlyx]

War Mace Brute...just hit things with a stick....nice and simple. 

[Heraclea]

Tanker: Willpower/War Mace.  Set and forget primary.  Nuthin' fancy but satisfying secondary.

 

Scrapper: Stone Melee/Wlllpower.  Stone gets good early and its knockabout power is a lot of fun.  /Bio or other recovery based secondaries also work.  

 

Blaster: Archery/Devices.  I have a controllish blaster (Ice/Plants) and a defendish blaster (Electric/Electric) but when I just want to rain down death from range this is my choice.  And /Devices rules the Halloween event.

 

Brute: Dual Blades/Fire.  Fire has one simple trouble button that just works.  It gets good early.  Dual Blades may seem gimmicky but it's just a matter of putting your buttons in the right order and going 1-2-3 etc. 

 

Mastermind: Beasts/Time.  The beasts are one of the less annoying pet sets, and Time is full of friendly and straightforward debuffs.

 

Controller: Plant/Poison.  No gimmicks here, just straight up control and debuff.  Does not solo well, or at least not to my preferences, but that isn't why you came.   No 'anchors' so no snapping at the team or worries about firing them at whatever your target is.

 

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Heraclea

[roleki]

22 hours ago, Twisted Toon said:

I would say a Grav/Time Controller is pretty solid. Not fast in taking down foes, but able to lock down darn near anything. Also, good buffs for the team and a couple of HoTs.

I can't really speak to other ATs, but I run a ton of controllers and in my experience, nothing is as wash-rinse-repeat as a Grav/Time.  That's not a BAD thing! Grav/Time just does what it does over and over and over, and it doesn't care about endurance or recharge or defense or pretty much anything happening around it.  Grav/Time has an answer to whatever you run into along the way; it may not be the best answer, but it's an answer.  Fire/Kin may be ubiquitous, but a MISS! can change how the next minute or so plays out; Grav/Time is pretty much agnostic on that front.