What is your favorite X/X matched character?

[Galaxy Brain]

Many of us pick characters with a thematic pairing like fire/fire, elec/elec, and so on.

 

Personally, my dark/dark controller is a hoot to play with SO many options to toss out spawn to spawn in a team! Its one of those thematic pairs that layers so much down that its powerful even at base level.

 

What about your favorite matched pairs?

[kiramon]

I don’t ever play “intended pairs” like fire/fire etc. it just feels boring and expected.

 

so I Try to find pairs that seemingly don’t match like nature/fire defenders etc. As for my personal favorite, idk. 

[Parabola]

Fun topic. I too tend to avoid matched pairings though. Apart from the 'too obvious' thing it's funny how often matched pairs don't actually synergise as well as mixed pairings. Some other pairings like various flavours of fire/fire can suffer a bit from being too much of one good thing.

 

Of the matched pairings I have played my dark/dark tank takes some beating (literally and figuratively).

[Judasace]

Electric/Electric Stalker. Probably my most played character and just an unholy torrent of AoE damage. Goes great with Ion Judgement, too.

[Haijinx]

Energy Blast/Energy Manipulation Blaster

[Gulbasaur]

I almost exclusively play matched sets or nearly-matched sets. 

 

Both my dark/dark corruptor and dark/dark tanker were a lot of fun. The corruptor has solid -ToHit so felt sturdy and could heal through quite a lot, as well as doing respectable damage. It also gets a pet as its T9, and that pet has basically the same support powers as you so it goes from good to very good. The tanker is tough, although needed a bit of building. I like that dark armour has control auras so you actually don't need to build that much that early as they basically make minions irrelevant while the damage aura chips away at them. 

 

My rad/rad brute (and stalker) were fun. Rad melee feels like it lacks crunch visually but is a solid set and rad armour is basically Regen with Resistances. It also has a lot of proc-friendly powers and you can build it into an off-healer if you really want to (or give it a blaster-worthy nuke if you don't). 

 

Storm/water defender is another one I enjoyed - not exactly matched, but as near as. Water blast is one of the better blast sets for sustain as you've got a heal and a lot of knockdown for soft control and storm is just pure oppressive chaos. Storm summoning possibly wins the award for Most Broken Support Set when you start adding in a lot of recharge, because it has three powers that look situational by design, but you can stack them quite happily with some IO abuse. At about level 30 it goes from debuffs and blasts to owning half the room.

 

Dual Pistols/Devices and Traps/Beam Rifle were both fun but I found DP a bit lacklustre and the animations are a bit too much for me. I know it's meant to feel like gun kata like in Equilibrium or other films of that era, but it makes me think of that Baton Twirling woman in Miss Congeniality. Honestly, add on a hoola hoop and you've got yourself a cabaret show powerset. BR, on the other hand, is simple but effective and doesn't go for overly flashy, even if it does sound a bit like a 90s printer having a meltdown. 

[Blackbird71]

Prior to i27, I would have said Archery/Tactical Arrow.  It was an incredibly fun combo to play, involving some of the most strategic play I've found in this game.

[Doomguide2005]

     *Stops* 

     *Thinks*

      I don't think I've ever deliberately avoided it but thinking on it I can't recall between Live and HC a single character (nope recall one now a DM/DA scrapper) that was matched up like that.  Unless a Plant/Thorns Dominator counts.  None of my 50's were or are such pairings.  

     On the other hand I love themed teams including teams of identical set pairs.

[Parabola]

16 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

Prior to i27, I would have said Archery/Tactical Arrow.  It was an incredibly fun combo to play, involving some of the most strategic play I've found in this game.

Damn I forgot arch/ta. Yeah that's my favourite matched pair. I27 took a little gloss off of it but I'm still a big fan. I can't think of another secondary I'd rather pair with archery and tac arrow works with many primaries but archery is a really good fit.

[Haijinx]

4 minutes ago, Parabola said:

Damn I forgot arch/ta. Yeah that's my favourite matched pair. I27 took a little gloss off of it but I'm still a big fan. I can't think of another secondary I'd rather pair with archery and tac arrow works with many primaries but archery is a really good fit.

Is it really that bad now?

 

[Blackbird71]

14 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Is it really that bad now?

 

Opinions vary, but I shelved my favorite character over it.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

What about your favorite matched pairs?

 

Win/win.

 

Also boots.  Hate when I have to wear mismatched boots.

[Parabola]

21 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Is it really that bad now?

 

No that's what I was saying. It's slightly less powerful but still good in my opinion. Mechanically it fills a niche as being the only all ranged manipulation set too. I had hoped that the inevitable rebalance was only going to hit esd arrow (which was clearly unbalanced vs controller mass holds) but the other changes are liveable with.

[catsi563]

Bale Fire my FiRE FIRE FIRE EVERYTHING and I do mean everything Def Blas Tank Scrap Controller x2 (1 with rad) and Sent that blue flame starts flying the bad guys start cooking

 

Panda my Dark Dark Dark EVERYTHING yep scrap tank blast control sent and the best darned dark dark dark defender in the game =^_^=

 

I tend to build on themes for certain characters especially when they fit so well

[Coyotedancer]

I ❤️ my DarkityDarkDark Defenders.

They are made of win.

 

And tentacles. 

[KelvinKole]

I think my Dark/dark brute on live was my favorite. It was pre IO and incarnates and had a very complete toolkit. A self heal in the attack chain, endurance sustain, the enormous dark regen heal, some cc, and stacking fury and soul drain for damage. Even a self Rez, which i preferred over the T9 armor crash in the days where you could actually die. Still a great and fun combo, but not the God he was then with the vast viability of everything these days. 

[Techwright]

Tough call, but possibly my illusion/storm controller is my "favorite".  I've said it before, but he's a regular Swiss Army Knife: a good response for every situation. 

[macskull]

Fire/Fire Blaster is the only correct answer to this question.

[Greycat]

Dark/Dark defenders (and corruptors.)

Fire/fire blasters.

Ice/ice blasters and sentinels.

Electric/electric (blasters and sents, again, with a nod towards brutes.)

Plant/thorn doms.

 

Hard to pick a "favourite" out of those.

[Apparition]

Sadly, Dual Pistols/Dual Pistols isn’t possible.

[arcane]

I have a handful of these. Fire/Fire blaster meteor-farm-capable with capped fire res/def, Rad/Rad defender proc god, and good ole triple rain scourge Ice/Cold corruptor strike me as my best.

[MTeague]

What's "thematic" all comes down to your character's backstory. 

You can go MA / Electric for a "The Last Dragon" themed scrapper who has found "The Glow", and can use his Elec T9 to even BECOME "The Glow" for periods of time.

 

But for the "matched" sets....  Probably my Fire/Fire/Fire Sentinel.  My Darkity/Dark/Soul Corruptor a close second.

[Galaxy Brain]

43 minutes ago, MTeague said:

What's "thematic" all comes down to your character's backstory. 

You can go MA / Electric for a "The Last Dragon" themed scrapper who has found "The Glow", and can use his Elec T9 to even BECOME "The Glow" for periods of time.

 

But for the "matched" sets....  Probably my Fire/Fire/Fire Sentinel.  My Darkity/Dark/Soul Corruptor a close second.

Of course! You can make anything match via a theme and some imagination, though the actual "matches" are a little different 🙂

[Hardboiled Hero]

would you consider super strength and super reflexes to be an "actual match"?

[TygerDarkstorm]

I'm in the camp of people who don't really like to do matched sets, but I am a bit fond of my Elec/Elec Corruptor.