It doesn't "pay" to play a support character

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Alright Op, just for you I will be on everlasting a fair bit today, look up Llewellyn Blackwell, and I will happily run with you through TFs and story arcs, teach you how to turn the merits into wealth, and try and pass on tips and tactics, and even throw in some lore and RP if your into that sort of thing.

[InvaderStych]

Wow, thanks @Bill Z Bubba!  Trying to re-frame my responses to things in life.  Seemed like a good moment to practice.  Although this is truly a "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants" moment, or however that quote about being there because of the work done by those who came before actually goes.

 

Agreed @Troo, there are a couple indexes in the Guides section, though if I had to theorize, I would bet new, frustrated, players end up here first.  Mostly out of frustration, totally understandable.  I'm sure we've all vented steam before looking up the answer at some point in our lives.  I sure as hell know that I have over the years. 😄

[Troo]

Come on man, while you may not have intended it, this is a lot of bad advice.

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Well as is always mentioned in any advice thread about earning funds, its all about max level. The earning ratio in the game is abysmal at low levels, unless you using reward merits as a way to earn funds, at lower levels yeah it can be hard even to keep just at level SOs on a build, something folks who didnt play way way way back in the long long ago may have forgotten.

 

Here are some tips, level 15 common IOs are pretty cheap to make, and never go red. They offer a modest but decent base % that a poor new player can get real use from, as poor man perma IOs while gaining the funds for a richer build.

This game is not all about max level.  (My richest character is level 1. My favorite character is level locked at 32)

Low level earning ratios are easier than ever. It could be expectations that need to be reset.

Reward Merits are a huge boost for new characters.

1 hour ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

So first bit of advice, focus on 1 toon, get them to cap, and use them to fund your alt habit. We all do that around here for the most part.

 

The 2nd bit, would be to stop arguing with us, and listen to us. If you want help, if you want to make friends, and get along. Then stamping your feet and sticking your fingers in your ears while telling us we dont know better when we all clearly do is not going to make you any allies around here.

BB, seriously? You can do better than this.

 

Get character to cap is simply insulting to someone struggling at lower levels. Doubling down on that with "listen to us" when providing subjectively bad advice.. come on man.

 

Edit: It was nice to see you offer to play with them.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Troo

[Lines]

46 minutes ago, Diantane said:

Will take me a long while to learn/experience all this.

Take your time with it. The game has a deceptive amount of depth, so don't try and take it all in at once. Always feel free to ask questions if things don't make sense or you want some tips.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

2 minutes ago, Troo said:

Come on man, while you may not have intended it, this is a lot of bad advice.

This game is not all about max level.  (My richest character is level 1. My favorite character is level locked at 32)

Low level earning ratios are easier than ever. It could be expectations that need to be reset.

Reward Merits are a huge boost for new characters.

BB, seriously? You can do better than this.

 

Get character to cap is simply insulting to someone struggling at lower levels. Doubling down on that with "listen to us" when providing subjectively bad advice.. come on man.

theya re not struggling at lower levels they are stone walling at mid levels, and they are doing that to themselves. Unless you are really trying to say that someone who has leveled 30 characters or so into the mid levels. So yes I do have much higher expectations for such a player then a fresh out of the tutorial player and what they should be able to get done. Getting to 50 on one toon would be way way way easier then leveling that many alts to mid level unless they did all that via dfb and door sitting fire farms.

 

Likewise while I do love me some reward merits, the early story arcs are for actual new players a pita and speed bumps rather then fun. I dont send any new player anywhere near the hallows and Leonard as an example because he wrecks the unwary.

 

Nope these days I mainly help new players via fast leveling in PI radio teams, and verbally explain things in game. I teach about merits during TF runs. If players want to learn the story, they can as that is def the best thing to do with solo time.

 

And you do understand that your personal examples of a wealthy lvl 1 IE marketeer mule, and a toon you keep frozen at a specific level are such extreme outliers as to not even be worth mentioning in any normal conversation right?

[Bastille Boy]

The best tankers and defenders aren't pure support characters. They combine their support roles with attacks.

 

Tankers draw aggro most effectively through their attacks (as others have mentioned). I always take Taunt on my tankers, but I reserve it for specific situations, e.g. when I want to pull only part of a dangerous enemy group toward the team. For ordinary groups, the best way to draw aggro is to dive in and start using AOEs. Tanker AOEs are good attacks!

 

It's hard to generalize about defenders; different powerset combinations play very differently. But all well-played defenders use attacks. Some defenders are heavy damage dealers themselves. Some defenders use the secondary effects of their attacks (e.g. the resistance debuff in Sonic attacks) to make other players' attacks more effective.

 

Getting inf on a first character is tricky for any archetype! Some things that may help:

• Selling rare salvage in the marketplace can be a good way to get an initial nest egg (450k - 500k depending on how patient you are).
• Running arcs or TFs for merits, buying enhancement converters, and selling those converters on the market is another way.
• Getting level 15 or level 20 common IOs is a good idea.
• Once you get into the mid-20s, it's worth starting to get some attuned yellow set IOs that will scale all the way up to 50 (e.g. Thunderstrike on single target ranged attacks). You'll save money in the long run (compared with leveling on SOs or regularly replacing common IOs), and you'll benefit from the set bonuses.
• Yellow IO sets for attacks are usually cheaper than yellow IO sets for defensive powers.

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, Diantane said:

If a tank is not concentrating on his job, part or all of the team could wipe. You name me any mmo where a tank can go off and kill stuff like a DPS without wiping the team.

 

LOTRO, WOW, etc. A tank is a tank - period! (unless just solo leveling)

 

The tank must keep other defenseless characters safe (blasters, PB, MM, defenders, controllers, etc. Plus melee that put most into their DPS (no defense)).

 

Tanker attacks have an integrated Taunt.  By design, they generate aggro by attacking.  The more you attack as a tank, and the more damage you deal, the more aggro you focus on yourself.

 

Use.

 

Your.

 

Attacks.

 

Additionally, there are no "defenseless" archetypes.  None.  Not a single archetype in this game lacks some means of reducing or utterly removing incoming damage.  Every archetype has access to a variety of controls, debuffs and buffs.  Every archetype also, not by coincidence, deals damage, because the most effective defense, in this game, is offense.  Defeated enemies deal 0 damage.

 

Lastly, there is no optimal team composition.  All archetypes are useful and usable in a team, and no one archetype is "needed" for a team to function.  A completely random group of 8 players with totally different archetypes, power sets and play styles can utterly decimate the toughest content in this game, simply by using BOTH OF THEIR POWER SETS AND COMMUNICATING.  This game is not WoW.  It was designed so a team didn't "need" any specific archetype or archetypes, but instead, so every player could approach the team content from the perspective of "Solo plus X".

 

As long as you continue to try to shoehorn Co* into a WoW model, you'll continue to struggle, and that's on you.

[Sovera]

4 hours ago, Diantane said:

If a tank is not concentrating on his job, part or all of the team could wipe. You name me any mmo where a tank can go off and kill stuff like a DPS without wiping the team.

 

LOTRO, WOW, etc. A tank is a tank - period! (unless just solo leveling)

 

The tank must keep other defenseless characters safe (blasters, PB, MM, defenders, controllers, etc. Plus melee that put most into their DPS (no defense)).

We are not in LOTR or WoW, Period.

 

4 hours ago, Diantane said:

Maybe the developers nerfed being able to collect loot at the door and that hit non-damaging characters as well.

 

If I get an equal share of the loot, then why did I only get 60k inf and 3 TO's after 7 hours of doing tons of missions with a group of 5-8 players? If they got the same, then all of those characters will go broke and stop playing the game because their character can't perform correctly.

 

I've got about 30 characters with a maximum level of 26. Most of them have less than 3,000 influence. The highest has about 50,000. The game just doesn't give rewards very well anymore.

 

If you're using double XP it kills your influence input. Please check the guide in my signature. To give you an idea at how your newbie problem is skewed doing the very first taskforce at level 8, taking about 40 minutes, and which has crap rewards, will net you about 3 million in cash.

 

Yeah, your 30k is a tiny droplet.

 

The very first TF at level 8 just supplied you with all the influence needed to purchase all your generic IOs for that character and for a second alt too if need be.

 

Taskforces or missions from contacts (not radio missions) will award you lots of money in the form of merits.

 

It is my experience that leveling via TFs makes me about 100 mill once I reach level 50. Which isn't much, but it's a start. Once you are level 50 money just pours in. Spend five minutes in a map and you've made 4-5 million simply by killing stuff. Doing an end game TF at max difficulty usually makes 10 mill in raw inf not accounting drops.

 

But that's for later. For now please read the guide since it's been compiled with information for newcomers and then set yourself free from gearing up problems. If you have more questions do ask since this community trips over itself wanting to help. Stuff you'd see hidden away for the elite in other games (from builds to ways of making money) is loudly advertised and offered for newcomers so that they can enjoy their stay.

 

 

Edit: But regarding your original question, yeah, it does not pay to be a 'pure' support or tank. Though if you want to be beloved by the masses from level 1 to level 50 and beyond then roll a Kinetics support and you will be loudly cheered and welcomed to whatever team you go. But please, use your attacks be it on a support or a tank. We're not in WoW where a healer can just coast or is super busy trying to keep everyone alive, or simply does not have the mana to spend attacking.

Edited September 7, 2020 by Sovera

[siolfir]

3 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

You do know PB have the same dmg res cap as tanks, can achieve that on all dmg types cept psi with a single click power that can easily be made perma, and still do nuker levels of dmg right?

They don't, though - it's 85% for all four EATs and 90% for Tankers and Brutes.

 

2 hours ago, Diantane said:

The problem is getting to 50 with low level enhancements on my character. All I can afford is level 15 IO's in 32% of the slots (the rest are empty) on my security level 26.

First, there is a lot of good advice in this thread - which I hinted at in my post by referring to the market allowing you to keep up with the paltry inf gains at low levels, but I was also trying to avoid telling you how to play: although I disagree with "pure tank", "pure support" builds, I know some people prefer to play that way and the game isn't hard enough that I can't drag the mostly dead weight around on a team. So you can be a better Tank in general, and also make your own inf by following that advice. I strongly recommend that you do so.

 

But you could also shortcut the whole thing and just read this post, which is in this same section of the forum:

That's enough that if you're going to waste inf on SOs (you shouldn't, but they're convenient if you can't or won't get IOs) I think it'll get you through to the level 45 sets without making any more inf along the way. I may be off on that, too, I haven't actually done it recently.

 

The advice to hit 50 on at least one character isn't bad, because the inf gains increase as you level and the higher-level common recipes sell for much more, but if that's not how you want to play it's also unnecessary. But if you make a lot of alts, which it sounds like you do, and don't level at least one up to the higher levels so it can fund the others, you'll need to use the market to keep up until somewhere in the mid-30s.

[Greycat]

8 hours ago, Diantane said:

When playing COH I've noticed holes in the Pickup Groups (PUG). Players keep losing their characters to the hospital or rez's when available. New Defenders that are playing their character like a weak blaster and not concentrating on their character's primary skill set. Tanks also do the same. Lots of attacks but can't "tank" very well.

 

So I created a few "dedicated" characters. Like a tank that is built for defense only. One that can take the punishment of an alpha strike. Only had the weak, unslotted, unused first attack and the strong and slotted taunt skill. Also had tough, weave, combat jumping (7 defense toggles in all). This one was a Willpower tank.

 

Also when I play defenders, It is focused on the primary skills (not the weak blaster). He is complete support to the team.

 

Here's the problem. The way the mechanics of the game works (that I have noticed), is that you get little to no influence or loot unless you are causing DAMAGE! After playing my tank and running a team for seven hours straight, I end up with 60,000 influence and 3 TO's. How could I possibly enhance my character with this pitiful return? Most of my slots are empty and the rest have level 15 IO's (this at security level 26). This isn't going to work. My dedicated tank that everyone loved...... has failed. He won't be able to perform as he once did. To protect the team from almost all incoming damage.

 

Now to help fix this problem I am starting to train offensive skills (the higher tier ones), but it will be a long road ahead because I can't enhance them very well. My skills won't have the correct level IO's until 35 or 40 should i decide to play him at all. It might be better to make a DPS character and die a thousand times due to the "holes" in the group.

Yeah. As soon as I read this and saw "dedicated," all I can say is...

 

Build *balanced* characters, not "dedicated" ones. I'll take a an Empathy Defender over a "Pure Healer" any day. Also, secondary side on defenders? Don't forget, those skills tend to do *debuffs,* as well. I'd also suggest, for *some* powersets (Empathy does stand as an example here) to make a second build that's more offense-oriented for those times you just want to solo.

 

Of course, you have to fix that income problem. There's been other advice on that throughout. Pay attention to what else is dropping - what are you getting in salvage and recipes? Ending up with 60k inf? One piece of orange salvage dropped on the market for 5 inf should net you ~400-450k pretty much instantly. Some recipes can go for quite a bit, even if you can't craft them into the (generally more desirable) IOs.

 

Also, (a) explore the zones - download Vidiotmaps and snag explore badges. 5 merits per zone you get all the badges for. And (b) run your *own* missions so you get those reward mertis. They'll make you money.

[MTeague]

4 hours ago, Diantane said:

I lot of good info Nemu and very interesting. Will take me a long while to learn/experience all this.

I also strongly recommend learning the Auction House and Enhancement Converters. 

 

I have lvl 15's running around with 40 million who were not sugar daddied at all.  Because I'd get a few yellow recipes, craft them, spend some merits on converters, convert them into something people will pay a few million for, and post for sale. Then buy MORE yellow recipes, and MORE converters, and it feeds from there.

 

Orange Salvage can be excellent seed money. You can post those for 1 inf and someone will buy for at LEAST 400,000, probably more. 

 

 

Homecoming market is like any other market and prices can and will fluctuate, so double check current going rate for some things rather than trust the exact numbers in a 2019 guide. But the same principles (buy cheap, convert to expensive, post expensives for sale) still hold true, even if you might have to pay 20,000 for each yellow recipe instead of 10,000.  If you end up millions ahead, you really won't care about ten thousand this way or that.

[Coyotedancer]

@Diantane, I bounce between Everlasting and Excelsior... Pop me a /tell some time and I'll grab one of my 50s, a few crazy friends and host a Peregrine smash-fest for your favorite character.

 

If you're running without XP boosts, that should not only get your character a few levels closer to 50, it'll generate a nice little nest egg of INF and saleable drops to get them closer to their enhancement goals. Plus it's good fun. Most of the nutballs I run with could solo those missions on their own at x8, so it's no drag having lower level characters along for the ride. Just dive right in there and do your best and you'll be fine. If you can handle the bad puns and tentacle jokes that pass for team chat. XD

[Lusiphur Malache]

10 hours ago, Diantane said:

Also when I play defenders, It is focused on the primary skills (not the weak blaster). He is complete support to the team.

I have a defender that is dark^3, which means I have 1 heal, that i sometimes get to use.  Mostly i'm using my weak blaster powers so much that the baddies can't hit the ground with spit before my mates clean them up, hell the pugs I run with go without a tank almost half the time.

 

8 hours ago, Diantane said:

If a tank is not concentrating on his job, part or all of the team could wipe. You name me any mmo where a tank can go off and kill stuff like a DPS without wiping the team.

my mindset screams blaster, consequently I play most ATs like a blaster.  I have a elec/fire tank, he is closer to a blaster with no range or a scrapper without crit than a tank.  You might need to make friends with all the good controllers, they can make your life easier.  Maybe you should look to redside and play a brute or corrupter.

[Saikochoro]

My biggest advice is to not relegate yourself so specifically to one way of playing a role. If you are a tank your job is to manage aggro AND deal damage. Fortunately, tanks are designed such that dealing damage helps tremendously in managing aggro. 
 

If you are a support, your job is to support through buffs/debuffs/healing AND dealing damage. It is always advisable to take, slot, and use attacks on all archetypes regardless of chosen role. 
 

Second piece of advice is to play the content that you enjoy whether it be radios, task forces, AE, badge hunting etc. Task forces and story content will have the best rewards because they offer reward merits, which can turn into influence easily. However, if you are willing to put in minimal effort into using the market and converters you will never have influence problems ever again.  
 

Spend 20 minutes even just once or twice a week crafting level 31 yellow recipes and converting them to desirable rare recipes and you will rake in hundreds of millions of influence much faster than any other method. Plus it has the benefit of keeping the market of desirable IOs well supplied.  There are several good guides on how to do this and it is pretty easy. Using the market is also level agnostic meaning a level 1 can do just as well as a level 50. Level 50’s only advantage is more slots on market/recipe/salvage. 
 

If you don’t want to bother with enhancement conversion my advice is to do 1-3 task forces a week. This will get you between 50-75 merits each week even more if you do the weekly strike targets. Then go to the merit vendor and turn all of those into enhancement converters. Then sell the converters on the market. 1 merit = 3 converters = ~180k influence.  So, even just 50 merits a week is 9m influence easy peasy. 

Edited September 7, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Sovera]

11 minutes ago, Darkesyde said:

I have a defender that is dark^3, which means I have 1 heal, that i sometimes get to use.  Mostly i'm using my weak blaster powers so much that the baddies can't hit the ground with spit before my mates clean them up, hell the pugs I run with go without a tank almost half the time.

I don't mean this in a mean way, but you should try joining a group with that triple Dark and then just putz around not attacking for a few groups. You might discover you're not influencing combat as much as you believe you are (or you might find that you are).

[Coyotedancer]

DarkityDarkDarks are all about the debuffing, even when they're being blasty.

They don't HAVE to use their heal when none of the goons can hit anybody....

[DougGraves]

9 hours ago, Judasace said:

City of Heroes. Also, Asheron's call.

 

Shout out for Asheron's Call.  My favorite MMO until CoH. 

[Crysis]

Other than MSR’s and maybe a couple of other league based trials I don’t think damage output factors into the rewards.

 

But to your main point, yeah...defensive only toons in this game are not worth much.  All that matters is Zerg rush and DPS.  Debuffs are certainly useful, but that’s offensive in nature.  Purely defense?  Past lvl 25 or so, just excess baggage.

[cranebump]

Probably already mentioned but:

 

Grab the Atlas Exploration badges

Go to Echo: Galaxy, do the same thing.

Get Ouro on way out, if you don’t have it.

 

Use the 10 merits for converters. Sell them all. You should have at least 3/4 of a mil on that alone. 

[Ironblade]

13 hours ago, Diantane said:

Maybe the developers nerfed being able to collect loot at the door and that hit non-damaging characters as well.

It's exactly the opposite.  You used to need to do damage for full credit and that disadvantaged 'healers', so the system was changed to evenly distribute the rewards across the team.

 

I'll also extend an offer to team.  Most of my characters are on Everlasting and I do all sorts of content there.

However, I also have a scrapper on Indomitable and a tank on Excelsior that I want to level and I don't know as many people on those shards.

My global is @Ironblade so you can send a friend request, email, etc.

Edited September 8, 2020 by Ironblade

[GlaziusF]

On 9/7/2020 at 6:54 AM, Diantane said:

Here's the problem. The way the mechanics of the game works (that I have noticed), is that you get little to no influence or loot unless you are causing DAMAGE! After playing my tank and running a team for seven hours straight, I end up with 60,000 influence and 3 TO's. How could I possibly enhance my character with this pitiful return? Most of my slots are empty and the rest have level 15 IO's (this at security level 26). This isn't going to work. My dedicated tank that everyone loved...... has failed. He won't be able to perform as he once did. To protect the team from almost all incoming damage.

Mate, I have literally no idea what's happening to you. I pulled an old level 24 psi/rad stalker out of mothballs and decided to just see how long it'd take me to get comparable numbers.

 

The answer was two missions and half an hour. Not even solid stomper missions, I was just doin' normal contact stuff (at +1, because stalkers roll deep, not wide) and ran into an outdoor hunt and a hostage escort. And not comparable numbers either - the inf count was a bit close but when I sold off the enhancements and common recipes that dropped I'd already pegged over 100k. 

 

The only way causing damage matters is if you're rolling with a crew that's like 25% confuse powers by volume and your opposition's beating themselves into the turf before you can even get there. Confused enemies taking each other down does absorb a proportional percentage of the inf and XP, but I have a tough time imagining it somehow accounting for a 15x difference in payout.

 

What the heck kind of missions were you running, and did you maybe misplace a number somewhere in the adding up?

[Hew]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:34 AM, Diantane said:

Maybe the developers nerfed being able to collect loot at the door and that hit non-damaging characters as well.

 

If I get an equal share of the loot, then why did I only get 60k inf and 3 TO's after 7 hours of doing tons of missions with a group of 5-8 players? If they got the same, then all of those characters will go broke and stop playing the game because their character can't perform correctly.

 

I've got about 30 characters with a maximum level of 26. Most of them have less than 3,000 influence. The highest has about 50,000. The game just doesn't give rewards very well anymore.

This screams of "running with an xp booster". Per the tin can, you get ZERO inf while it is active. If you want to have money for generic ios while running an xp booster, you have to sell everything you get for base inf, and then play market games. 🙂

[Myrmidon]

A clarification.

 

Punchvoke - Brute

Gauntlet - Tanker

 

Try to stay with the correct terminology in order to curb confusion.😁

[Myrmidon]

@Diantane, if you would like both Double Experience boosts and Influence at the same time, the simplest way is to convert all of your Merits into Enhancement Converters and sell them in Wentworths. Check the Market forum for more detailed info.

[Crater Kate]

@Diantane - lots of other people have offered lots of great advice, all of which I'd second. Please understand, what follows is meant as constructive and helpful and in good faith, and isn't meant personally at all:

 

I noticed that you're the person who started the thread about old-school playing a bit over a week ago. Between these two threads, the impression I'm getting is that you have a very particular way you feel like the game is meant to be played. And it's great that you have your preferences, I'm not trying to take those away from you! But IMO, the most important lesson you can learn about City of Heroes is this: there is no wrong way to play. Not everyone is going to share your preferences! The beauty of CoH is it's a very lenient system, which means you can play a casual leveling style... or you can play as hardcore as you want. You can have a character who never leaves Pocket D... or you can have a character who spends their life grinding AE. Similarly, you CAN play a tank that spams threat generation, and you CAN play a Defender that does nothing but heal... but you can ALSO play a tank that maximizes damage and sacrifices durability. You can do the same with a Defender. You can build a Tank for support, if that's your thing. You can even make a Defender built for durability! Anything can be successful if you want it to be 🙂

 

I advertise myself as a 'something of everything' player. This means I dabble in as many ways to play this game as possible (minus PVP). I've run with master of task forces, and I've run with teams on Matthew Habashy's arc. I spend time hardcore RPing, and I spend time grinding inf. I spend time base building, and I spend time hanging out in the general/help channels. I've built characters that are optimized on doing one particular thing, and I've built some that do a hodge podge of junk. My biggest takeaway from everything I've dabbled in is that ALL of these are deep and rich ways to engage in the game, and no one way is at all better than any other. They are ALL right. 

This isn't LOTRO or SWTOR or WOW.

Welcome to City of Heroes, where a tank is not a tank is not a tank. And that's awesome.