How the heck do I convince myself to make a Corruptor?

[Chompie]

Every time I think "Ooh I'm going to make a Corruptor today" I end up with a Defender instead. I can't resist its siren call. I'll look through powers and go "Ooh, this 20% Defense Debuff could be 25% instead! This 11.25% resist aura could be 15%! All I have to do is not pick Corruptor..."
And then boom, suddenly it turns out that I still don't have a Corruptor.

Some of you out there love Corruptors, right? Tell me about how awesome they are!
(preferably how awesome they are without incarnate stuff or fully tricked out with the best sets)

[Apparition]

A lot of Defender buffs and debuffs are overkill, and you'll do more damage on a team as a Corruptor, (sometimes a lot more).  And damage is king.

[EmmySky]

I am working on incarnates on an elec/storm corr right now.  Pretty fun combo.

 

Honestly just find a combo you like.  I don't care for stalkers and actually decided to skip incarnates on mine for now.  Maybe later it'll be fun again.  Plenty of character slots so just have fun!

[Dark Dove]

1 hour ago, Chompie said:

Every time I think "Ooh I'm going to make a Corruptor today" I end up with a Defender instead. I can't resist its siren call. I'll look through powers and go "Ooh, this 20% Defense Debuff could be 25% instead! This 11.25% resist aura could be 15%! All I have to do is not pick Corruptor..."
And then boom, suddenly it turns out that I still don't have a Corruptor.

Some of you out there love Corruptors, right? Tell me about how awesome they are!
(preferably how awesome they are without incarnate stuff or fully tricked out with the best sets)

Numbers look nice but in practice most power sets function so similarly in actual gameplay that you'll come to find out it doesn't really matter much.  Even considering your fine print text, you usually can't achieve numbers that actually matter more without expensive IO set builds like defense softcaps and resist caps, and debuffs in today's version of teaming are great but nearly as expendable as healing; damage and defense softcaps are all that matter anymore in real gameplay, barring certain outlier situations.  Everything else is gravy, you can embrace the gravy and play a corruptor, it isn't a bad thing.

 

Pick some powersets that are particularly useful on a corruptor or at least don't lose anything big by going corruptor (energy blast loses nothing except inflated knockback, for example, making it a great set for corruptors, and Ice/Cold and Water/Cold function very well for corruptors, there are a lot of examples that work well) and give it a shot.  It's just as fun as a defender, stop procrastinating, you got infinite character slots, go, hunt, kill skuls!

[Riverdusk]

Well, if you are looking for just numbers justifications there are some combo that work well as a corrupter.

 

Fire blast is probably the best example.  It doesn't have any debuff secondary effects so it is clearly better on a corrupter.  Ice can also work well as scourging rains (which it has two) are VERY nice (and fun to see all those scourge messages imo).  Radiation blast is good as well if you are interested in it.  How much -defense do you really need and as a corrupter you get to skip neutrino bolt.

 

As for secondary, kinetic where you can take advantage of a corrupter's higher damage cap with it is a clear corrupter winner.  Personally I also like something like /time (a case like @Apparition noted where its numbers are good enough even as a corrupter to pretty easily reach softcap defenses.  Especially if you go with a power boost APP (although devs mentioned they are "looking" at that, so I'd have a back up plan to not need it).

 

I'm sure there are other combos, but those are some of the ones I always think of first for corrupter.

 

 

 

 

[Greycat]

Easiest way is to just quit worrying about the numbers.

If you want numbers, open Excel. (Or Open/Libreoffice, or Quattro Pro or whatever. I'm not picky.)

If you want to run around blasting things and being hero/villainy, open COH.

 

🙂

[Erratic1]

12 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

As for secondary, kinetic where you can take advantage of a corrupter's higher damage cap with it is a clear corrupter winner.

Well, there is the corner pocket case of Kinetics and Sonic Attack which works better on the Defender because the Defender most strongly debuffs the target's resistance and more strongly buffs damage.

[0th Power]

“Self, make a corruptor.”

[Rishidian]

Try copious amounts of alcohol first.  Enough where you can't see straight.  Then create your Corruptor.

 

It may suck (no pun intended), but you won't care.

[LiquidBandage]

3 hours ago, Chompie said:

Every time I think "Ooh I'm going to make a Corruptor today" I end up with a Defender instead.

I have always had a Defender mindset when I make a Defender or lean heavily into a Controller secondary. It is just part of the ingrained mentality from when I first played on Live. My favorite Defender (FF/Psi) from live I remade here and did the Tactics/Maneuvers thing to squeeze every ounce of defense & tohit out of my buffs (if you were in my aura, you could insta-snipe back before HC changed Snipe powers). 

 

The change finally happened when I looked closer at the mechanics of handling Mending Mitochondria in Hamidon encounters. Typically you have Controllers and Dominators just spam their solitary single target Hold and single target ranged attack until enough mez stacks and it doesn't heal your attacks fast enough. Some of that can be overcome by debuffs, but I chose to focus in on the holds themselves. Controllers for all of their lauded "controllery" capabilities seem to have a hard time actually holding mobs that are tougher than Lieutenant level and that is a shame. I have a Bots/Time MM that dipped into the Fire epic pool to get a second single target hold and that gave me an idea once I saw the stacking of holds in action. 

 

I looked at Corruptor primaries for a set that had one or more Holds and settled on Cold. Then I looked at Corruptor secondaries and found a single target hold in Poison (plus a cone that seemingly does a hold). Then I looked at Epics for Corruptors and was disappointed and immediately looked at Patrons and found a gem in Soul Mastery. That could be four single target holds I could roll on any problematic mob. Envenom and Weaken could be a great prep to make the Holds even more effective. Weaken Resolve (Force of Will pool) stacks nicely into that debuff combo (plus I can get a travel power and a defense power in Unleash Potential). 

 

If you look at how a full team plows through content, what is typically the last mob to die? The Boss/AV or the problematic types. Blasters can do their thing and AoE everything while you lock down and devour the difficult targets. It is even more fun when you kill the Boss before the Blasters have killed all the scrubs. That was a the genesis of how I made my first Corruptor and actually took him to 50 and still play him today. I made him a specialist at controlling problematic mobs (Paragon Protector, Fake Nem, etc), bosses and Arch Villains / Heroes. Because the mainstay of the character is rooted in the primary set (the holds), they appear earlier in the character's development. The single target debuffs also come early, so the tools to do what I want are all there early on (I don't have to wait to 38 to "start playing my character").

 

I took the single target heal (forced to), the mez protection power and the rez power. That's it. Nothing else to allow me to fall back on playing like a Defender. I play that character like the deep dark boogey man that reaches out from the shadows (protective buffer of teammates) to dig its claws into a juicy boss and devour it. To be honest, a lot of the process is changing your mindset on how you play your character and keying in on core powers that you can get early _because_ you are a Corruptor instead of a Defender. Then the next Corruptor I made leaned much more into the mindset aspect and I have not regretted it at all. 

[nihilii]

11 hours ago, Greycat said:

Easiest way is to just quit worrying about the numbers.

If you want numbers, open Excel. (Or Open/Libreoffice, or Quattro Pro or whatever. I'm not picky.)

If you want to run around blasting things and being hero/villainy, open COH.

 

🙂

While I am remotely aware of the existence of people who play CoH without 3-4 .xls spreadsheets open at all times, it's always a surprise to be reminded *I'm* the nutjob.

[Clave Dark 5]

Being a native red-sider, I used to have to go the other way, "I want to roll a Defender, but they're so wimpy!  This damage is pitiful!!"  😁

 

If I can learn, you can too!

[UltraAlt]

16 hours ago, Chompie said:

Some of you out there love Corruptors, right? Tell me about how awesome they are!
(preferably how awesome they are without incarnate stuff or fully tricked out with the best sets)

 

I have some Corruptor characters. I don't "love" corruptors.

I love City of Heroes, and the corruptors are simply another way to play in THE CITY.

 

Corruptors are like Defender/Blaster. They do to extra damage when enemies are at low health. Do less healing than a defender, but more damage than a defender.

They bridge the gap of being a damage dealer (on opponents with low health) and team support.

They really rely upon the rest of a team to damage enemies so that they can take them out.

While they are waiting to take those kill shots, they can buff or heal the team.

 

It is a different play style and a change of pace.

 

 

[Coyote]

I generally look at the Blast / Support set, and see "which late powers are more important to me". This usually means going Defender since the later blasts are usually not as important as the later Support powers, but there are some Support sets that bloom early, like Rad. I'd certainly run a Fire Blast/Rad character as a Corruptor, since the important Rad powers all appear early, and as said above, Fire Blast is better on a Corruptor.

[Doomguide2005]

500% vs 400% Corruptor damage cap vs Defender cap.

 

0.65 defdebuff

or what's roughly left of the debuff difference between a Defender -25 vs -20 Corruptor vs a lvl 54 AV

 

Or what everyone else is saying, try it ... a Kinetic of some sort to take advantage of that damage cap might indeed be the thing.

[kiramon]

It’s fun to see scourge. 
 

for most the difference won’t be huge either way, as people play sub optimally where it would make a difference. 
 

[Uun]

I really like corruptors. More damage (even after debuff strength is factored in), you can skip the T1 blast, scourge. I've got a Fire/Time that's just sick, a Rad/Dark and an Archery/TA.  

 

 

[TheOtherTed]

4 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Being a native red-sider, I used to have to go the other way, "I want to roll a Defender, but they're so wimpy!  This damage is pitiful!!"

Yep, maybe this is the way, OP.  Run a "mirror image" def/corr pair in Praetoria or the Rogue Isles and see which one you like better.

 

On a side note, my defender addiction ended hard on Live.  My regular posse had left the game one by one, and my early 40s Kin/Arch defender was mostly on her own.  In boredom, I tried soloing a bank mission - and found I just could not do it.  My controllers had no problem soloing, nor did my Dark/Arch def (though let's be honest - that's just a controller in disguise).  But the support character I played the most, teamed with the most, just could not save that bank.

 

So, yeah, self-sufficiency was the key to my conversion.  Try it and see how it goes.

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, kiramon said:

It’s fun to see scourge. 

Really this...

 

                               ...especially if you have a rain power.

[SwitchFade]

21 hours ago, Chompie said:

Every time I think "Ooh I'm going to make a Corruptor today" I end up with a Defender instead. I can't resist its siren call. I'll look through powers and go "Ooh, this 20% Defense Debuff could be 25% instead! This 11.25% resist aura could be 15%! All I have to do is not pick Corruptor..."
And then boom, suddenly it turns out that I still don't have a Corruptor.

Some of you out there love Corruptors, right? Tell me about how awesome they are!
(preferably how awesome they are without incarnate stuff or fully tricked out with the best sets)

Make a /Kin... More damage, same buffage.

 

 

 

 

[Erratic1]

Darn this thread...now I'm thinking about an Ice Blast/Kinetics Corruptor.

 

And I already have an Ice/Time Corruptor, Ice/Time Controller, and Kinetics/Sonic Defender...I do not need to tread those powersets again.

[zenijos10]

On 12/28/2020 at 3:25 PM, Chompie said:

Every time I think "Ooh I'm going to make a Corruptor today" I end up with a Defender instead. I can't resist its siren call. I'll look through powers and go "Ooh, this 20% Defense Debuff could be 25% instead! This 11.25% resist aura could be 15%! All I have to do is not pick Corruptor..."
And then boom, suddenly it turns out that I still don't have a Corruptor.

Some of you out there love Corruptors, right? Tell me about how awesome they are!
(preferably how awesome they are without incarnate stuff or fully tricked out with the best sets)

Make one so you can stop asking yourself this question and get on with your defenders.

[Normal Thomas]

5 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

Darn this thread...now I'm thinking about an Ice Blast/Kinetics Corruptor.

 

And I already have an Ice/Time Corruptor, Ice/Time Controller, and Kinetics/Sonic Defender...I do not need to tread those powersets again.

It's great. Probably my favorite 50.

[carroto]

Some combos are better on a Defender, others on a Corruptor.  I'd usually prefer to skip the first blast in most sets.  Corruptors get to do that.  On the other hand, there are some support sets with a stinker in the first spot, and Defenders get to skip that.  Some combos just naturally call out for one AT or the other.  If the secondary effect from the blast set doesn't matter all that much, Corruptor is good.

 

Probably the biggest single determiner for me is whether the focus of the character will be teaming or a mix of solo/teaming.  With most sets a Defender will contribute more to the team in most situations.  Sure if you're teamed with a Kin and living at the damage cap, a Corruptor will contribute much more damage.  Otherwise it's probably the Defender.  However I like to be able to solo too, and although Defenders solo reasonably well these days, they don't do it as well as a Corruptor with most combos.

 

Scourge is addictive.  I started out on Corruptors and playing a Defender and seeing a blast that "should" have Scourged and finished a mob instead leave them with a sliver of health just feels wrong.  Higher base damage means that red inspirations do more.  So it's easier to chew a few and burn down an EB.  So in a lot of situations Corruptors are just more fun.  Hell I recently re-rolled a mid 20s Defender into a Corruptor because I wanted my damage and Scourge.

 

I have my Defenders that I like, but they tend to be very team-focused.  Because of that, they don't solo all that well.  I like feeling capable everywhere.  Corruptors are "good enough" on teams, and solo better.  So it's about your play style and preference in that area.

[Gobbledigook]

Just make a scantily clad succubus type character and go out and corrupt some poor souls. 🙂