Favorite sub-optimal power?

[ninja surprise]

I love me some Fire Breath. I take it on every toon that can get it. I don't care that it's kinda slow, narrow, and doesn't have great range, I just love blowing fire at the badguys and watching the burn.

 

What's your favorite sub-optimal power that you play purely for fun?

[Drazah Krad]

Thunder clap for its aesthetics alone. It just has an awesome feel while using it. 

[Runewritten]

Arcane bolt.

The way you scribe a rune of fire and shove it forward, and it rumbles the screen when it hits-- just feels so wonderful for such a meager power.

[DougGraves]

Jolting Chain.  Watching the foes flop around one by one is great fun.

[Troo]

Fearsome Stare.

[Flashtoo]

I've heard a lot of people shitting on Wormhole, but I love me some Wormhole.

[ZorkNemesis]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

Jolting Chain.  Watching the foes flop around one by one is great fun.

Jolting Chain is actually pretty strong when you fill it with procs.  Explosive Strike, Glad. Javelin, and Apocalypse turn it into a powerhouse, plus you can slap a Force Feedback on it.  Plus, enemies don't fight back when they're on their asses.

 

People call them among the worst powers in the game, but I personally like Triage Beacon and Tree of Life.  Sure they're fairly weak with long charges, but they're a good way to give your team some extra support for some of the longer fights.  As a bonus, they also make fantastic use of the Panacea +HP/End proc, as that proc will affect anyone within the Beacon/Tree radius, so you also give periodic pulses of health and end with the increased regen.  I also think the Spirit Trees look cool and with enough recharge you can plant a forest of them. 

[nihilii]

Does Elude count? I get performance benefits out of it, but the consensus would be that they suck.

 

I'm getting good mileage out of the +recovery. Slotted for endmod, it lets me skip Ageless in favor of another Destiny choice (most often Barrier, to handle crashes).

 

Topping your defense way beyond 45% also has its uses when you primarily play Incarnate content.

 

Even the crash I (generally) enjoy. Managing it becomes a minigame in itself. I just wish the warning was more obvious. Come to think of it, as awesome as CoH is, there are so many little bits that could be improved with a better UI.

[Metatheory]

3 hours ago, Troo said:

Fearsome Stare.

Not sure I would call Fearsome Stare sub-optimal, but some fear, yes!

 

I love a bit of Invoke Panic on some characters. It doesn't last very long but it can get the heat off you, has a nice animation and it's fun! I quite often take it on blappers and sentinels, and if I ever made a regen character I reckon it would be useful.

 

In former times I would have included Touch of Fear from Dark Melee here as I used to use it a lot, but now that it has been changed into a power that you can't just spam you either need to pair it with Intimidate or Cloak of Fear to do anything interesting with it (both OK powers) or just use it as a ho-hum ticky-tack damage power.

[Soyuz]

Bitter Freeze Ray.

 

Most guides to Ice Blast say to skip it because of the long animation and if you team most of the time, you're not going to see the point in this, but if you solo a lot it provides a lovely one-two punch with Freeze Ray. Use it at the beginning of the fight to lock down bosses, or take a couple of minions/LT's out of the fight before the enemy can fire back. It does some nice damage, too.

 

It's even better if your other power set has another ST hold. A 1-2-3 opener, all holds, provides a great safety margin for solo play.

[Vulpoid]

I love me some Sands of Mu + Flurry + Shadow Maul ( Dark Melee)  on a speedster character.

"WAAP WAAP WAAP! WAAP WAAP WAAP! WAAP WAAP WAAP!" 

Not always effective, but very fun.

[Drazah Krad]

7 hours ago, Flashtoo said:

I've heard a lot of people shitting on Wormhole, but I love me some Wormhole.

Wormhole is the only reason my main is gravity. This plus storm summoning is just ridiculous. Pile them up, lock them down and let thunderstorm, tornado, and freezing rain obliterate them. 

[Machariel]

Yeah, Wormhole is pretty much the best power in Gravity. 

It is however in the same set as my actual favorite sub-optimal power, Dimension Shift 😮

 

I'm partial to Fire Breath too.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Vulpoid said:

I love me some Sands of Mu + Flurry + Shadow Maul ( Dark Melee)  on a speedster character.

For a while, until the temp power Sands of Mu expired, my DM tank could make a rotation out of Shadow Maul, the temp Sands of Mu, and the prestige Sands of Mu. It made for amusing fights, where she'd jump into a spawn, taunt, and then hand out cone beatings until the number of targets reduced to where that was inefficient.

[arcane]

LRM Rocket with damage procs is a solid mix of suboptimal but satisfying.

[TheOtherTed]

Brawl.  I can't think of a better way to humiliate your enemy than to finish him off with a bop on the nose.

 

Also, Teleport Foe.  After the teleport changes, my Dark/Dark Corr immediately blew a respec to drop Combat Teleport and pick up whatever Teleport Foe was rolled into.

 

Also Acrobatics, just so some of my squishies can claim to be gymnasts.

[ninja surprise]

1 hour ago, Vulpoid said:

I love me some Sands of Mu + Flurry + Shadow Maul ( Dark Melee)  on a speedster character.

"WAAP WAAP WAAP! WAAP WAAP WAAP! WAAP WAAP WAAP!" 

Not always effective, but very fun.

Plus you get lots of time to type in chat! Shadow Maul on my Bio/Dark tank recharges so fast I use it instead of stronger attacks because it hits so many critters.

[NihilXAOS]

53 minutes ago, arcaneholocaust said:

LRM Rocket with damage procs is a solid mix of suboptimal but satisfying.

I took LRM on an NRG/NRG blaster solely because it is fun to use. Adds zero to the performance of the character and I couldn't care less.

[Metatheory]

1 hour ago, TheOtherTed said:

Also Acrobatics, just so some of my squishies can claim to be gymnasts.

If you take your squishy fighting e.g. Carnies then it starts to feel pretty optimal IMO!

[arcane]

2 hours ago, NihilXAOS said:

I took LRM on an NRG/NRG blaster solely because it is fun to use. Adds zero to the performance of the character and I couldn't care less.

You can make it a better mini-nuke with a handful of procs due to its pretty much guaranteed max proc rate, BUT having perhaps the longest activation time in the game (which also means it soaks up an entire BU/aim) keeps it from being an “optimal” choice. But yes, so fun 🙂

[The_Warpact]

Whirlwind lol I love it.

[Shred Monkey]

Jump Kick!  YES!

[Rejolt]

Short Circuit. Takes so much to leverage and so long to fire. Can be devastating to even high def (base accuracy is 1.30) and mobs that normally resist most mezzing (Cimerorans) and wipe out their endurance in one shot... if you use power boost, slot for endurance, take clarion +secondary, an alpha that boosts end mod ..../brrrreeathes... and hope the mod doesn't resist endurance drains while also seeing their 1 percent of endurance still fire off any power they want.

 

It is fun turning most mobs into every 5 or 6 second brawlers though.

 

Honorable mention - Voltaic Sentinel.

[Rejolt]

12 hours ago, DougGraves said:

Jolting Chain.  Watching the foes flop around one by one is great fun.

It's oddly effective but it feels as if your stuck in a loop of just using it to keep mobs locked down... also, (Your results may vary) I've found offensive procs work best as they trigger off each targets vs self buff ones (+rech, +build up, +heal) as they only have a chance to trigger on the first target.

 

EDIT: It may be the only "Indiana Jones"-like whip power we have. If someone makes a whip set it would fit in with the 3 MM attacks.

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by Rejolt

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, The_Warpact said:

Whirlwind lol I love it.

I've got one speedster with whirlwind. I use it as an attack instead of a toggle. Toggleon, send the spawn flyin, toggleoff, shadow maul, flurry, sands of mu, sprint on all the time, extra run speed from IOs. I don't play her much, but she is amusing.