Poll—Worst archetype https://strawpoll.com/wgusp1z1x

[Capitancopyright]

Select the “worst” archetype(s) in your opinion, by any interpretation of the word. Multiple selections are permitted. Feel free to reason in comments. Poll here

Edited October 9, 2020 by Zauhesi

[Troo]

Pollsters?

[Capitancopyright]

Added sentinel 

[Zepp]

A lot of Sentinel hate out there...

[Apparition]

11 minutes ago, Zepp said:

A lot of Sentinel hate out there...

It is a DPS AT that does little DPS.  Not a surprise.

[Zepp]

4 hours ago, Apparition said:

It is a DPS AT that does little DPS.  Not a surprise.

It's basically got slightly lower than Scrapper defense with slightly lower than Tanker damage... it needs a rebalance, but even in its current state it is fun to play. Definitely not for min-maxers though.

[Gwyrddu]

For me it's hands down the corruptor. Not as good as blasters for damage and not as good as buffing/debuffing as defenders, with several powers which can't be used on yourself yet also lacks pets. In practice playing my corruptor is like setting my difficulty up at least one level.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Gwyrddu

[JJDrakken]

All that hate for MMs, Number 2? LOL. Just a bunch of people who have no idea how to play one or folks who have played with MMs who have no idea how to play one. 

[tidge]

On 12/13/2020 at 1:31 PM, JJDrakken said:

All that hate for MMs, Number 2? LOL. Just a bunch of people who have no idea how to play one or folks who have played with MMs who have no idea how to play one. 

As of this day, Peacebringers have edged out Masterminds for the number 2 spot. I can't say I completely disagree with either of those two being ranked highly. This is just my own take: each takes some serious effort to understand, and each requires a change in play-thought to get the most out of... and then the "most" may still fall short of other ATs.

 

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around why Dominators and Soldiers of Arachnos are ranked so high. With Dominators, I suppose it could be that some folks view 'perma-Domination' with some sort of disgust (or are just jealous Controllers?), and maybe it is the backpack (or slow mace attacks?) that turns folks away from Soldier VEATs?

[Gwyrddu]

43 minutes ago, tidge said:

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around why Dominators and Soldiers of Arachnos are ranked so high. With Dominators, I suppose it could be that some folks view 'perma-Domination' with some sort of disgust (or are just jealous Controllers?),

The problem with dominators is not that they aren't potentially powerful, but rather too much of that power is wrapped up in their domination ability, limiting how they are built and played moreso than most other AT's. Otherwise they are controllers with even less reliable controls with no defenses and with much of their damage tied up in melee attacks.

[KaizenSoze]

I would be interested to see why Arachnos Solders are so disliked. I wonder if it's the mostly the bane or the crab side.

 

To me the Sentinel hate is a bit much, they have issues, but it's a great AT for a smooth ride to 50. A great starter AT, just not a good end game AT.

As for odd results, Widows are rated one of the best ATs, but have lowest played to 50 numbers in the game. Part of that is that you can play both types on one char.

Again, I wonder about the break out between Night Widows and Fortunatas.

 

Dominators as Gwyrddu said, are very constrained by domination. They are the 6th lowest played to 50 AT in the game which tells that most people don't enjoy them. Even though there is a huge variety in power sets which usually leads to more characters.

 

[oedipus_tex]

I probably play Dominators more than any other class, but I do think there are a couple of things about Dominators that hold them back:

• DPA of Control powers. The legacy of the OG devs is animation times all over the map.  
• Mechanics of perma-dom. Maintaining perma Domination is a chore. It's just not that much fun to have to remember to reclick the power.
• Fragility. Dominators have worse armor options than any class in the game other than Blasters and certain subsets of Corruptors.
• Virtually no resistance to debuffs. Armor sets provide resistance to -ToHit, -Endurance, -Recharge etc. Ranged characters have to worry less about this. Dominators are melee-ish characters and have to tank much of it head on.
• No mezz protection outside of Domination. While this is also true of most other squishies, other squishies have, at a minimum, +Defense +Resist Healing or something to assist them. Several Dominator sets get zilch.
• Samey-Assault sets. Probably more than any other power set type, there is a lack of diversity in how Assault sets play. Unlike the Blast, Melee and Manipulation sets on which they are based, most lack truly interesting powers to set them apart. Icy Assault for example lacks the holds, ice patches, pbaoe sleeps and other things that make Ice Blast, Melee, and Manipulation so interesting.
• Inconsistent Applicability of the Domination ability. Seeds of Confusion Dominates. Synaptic Overload Dominates the first target only. Arctic Air doesn't Dominate anything. 5 AoE powers in Mind Control Dominate; only two in Electric Control do.
• Control matters much less than it used to. It's not quite accurate to say every enemy group is blown away in 3 seconds, but I do think its accurate that in the game of today players deal so much damage that any class that can't keep up and can't buff the team is in a weak place.

 

I think Dominators make a great foundation and still enjoy them. I'd like to see more done to them though.

Edited December 23, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[BrandX]

I think it's the sets for Dominators.  No tech feeling sets for instance.  Then there's the fact that some sets are or are considered bad for Dominators (Gravity for instance).

 

 

 

[Erratic1]

5 minutes ago, BrandX said:

I think it's the sets for Dominators.  No tech feeling sets for instance.  Then there's the fact that some sets are or are considered bad for Dominators (Gravity for instance).

 

 

 

Pair Gravity with Energy Assault and hold or knock things away as needed.

[Greycat]

... you're aware you can make a poll on the forums, instead of going to a mystery site, right?

[Grindingsucks]

Kind of depends on how you quantify bad, I suppose.  It can be very subjective and may mean different things for different people.  

 

I selected all the epic AT's (HEATs & VEATs) b/c I dislike fixed powersets.  Finding creative ideas is a big part of the fun of this game for me- including mixing and matching powersets in interesting ways.  Those AT's take that away from me.

 

I enjoy playing all of the other AT's to some degree.  I would say that they're probably all fairly overpowered (at least when  you hit incarnate- and maybe even at lvl 50 with strong IO sets), apart from Sentinels, which feel properly balanced to me, even when they have incarnate abilities.

[mcdoogss]

On 10/12/2020 at 6:13 AM, Zepp said:

It's basically got slightly lower than Scrapper defense with slightly lower than Tanker damage... it needs a rebalance, but even in its current state it is fun to play. Definitely not for min-maxers though.

Every time i try to play a sentinel, i go load up one of my VEATs (crab in particular) instead.  

[mcdoogss]

On 12/23/2020 at 8:14 AM, tidge said:

As of this day, Peacebringers have edged out Masterminds for the number 2 spot. I can't say I completely disagree with either of those two being ranked highly. This is just my own take: each takes some serious effort to understand, and each requires a change in play-thought to get the most out of... and then the "most" may still fall short of other ATs.

 

I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around why Dominators and Soldiers of Arachnos are ranked so high. With Dominators, I suppose it could be that some folks view 'perma-Domination' with some sort of disgust (or are just jealous Controllers?), and maybe it is the backpack (or slow mace attacks?) that turns folks away from Soldier VEATs?

Doms and soldiers are solidly mid-table in that poll, 14 votes between 4th (warshade) and 5th (dom), while only 7 between 5th and 10th

[carroto]

27 minutes ago, mcdoogss said:

Doms and soldiers are solidly mid-table in that poll, 14 votes between 4th (warshade) and 5th (dom), while only 7 between 5th and 10th

That's a good point.  If you look at the number of votes it's really the top four, and then everything else.  Those four are in a league of their own.  Those happen to be the same four I voted for before looking at the results.  It makes sense.

 

Sentinels were undertuned, presumably out of fear of being too tank-magey.  When I've tried playing one I haven't been able to stick with it.  The strength of the attacks wasn't even the main issue.  The lowered range and target caps kind of kill them for me.

 

Masterminds have a number of issues, but one of the ones that kills them for me is the higher end costs.  I know that supposedly that's to compensate for the fact that the pets are attacking at no cost to the MM, but I don't like to just sit back and watch.  I like to do stuff too.  However an active secondary can drain my end bar so fast I can't really.  To make matters worse, the timing of the level shifts on the pets means I have to start running Leadership toggles pretty early if I want them to be able to hit.  Long before I have enough slots to get endurance usage under control.  So much of the early leveling experience is just watching my pets die and not doing much about it because I'm out of end.

 

HEATs could use a pass at their animation times.  Some of the lower-damage attacks have way too long animations.  They feel clunky to play.

 

[Gulbasaur]

I still hold that Brutes are a terrible mix of design choices - tanking AT with aggro generation mechanics in a game that has a fixed aggro cap that rewards moving quickly from group to group otherwise your damage output begins to drop. Where does the aggro go? Normally, the teammates with the biggest debuffs so you end up with a lot of faceplanted support archetypes because the brute feels Fury-conscious. In an ideal team, that's not an issue, but when you've got got sidekicked-up players against +5 enemies, it's a quick and messy death.

 

It rewards poor team play with damage buffs and that's just naughty.