Worst Build Combos

[roleki]

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely love the resulting character BECAUSE it is so much of a kludge, but of the half billion builds I've run, none have had more "why am I doing this to myself?" moments than an Ice/Trick Arrow controller. 

 

Massive amounts of slow to dump on an enemy coupled with agonizingly low DPS ensured each encounter dragged on for an eternity.  Top it off with no native way to ignite OSA, and, in days past, if it WAS ignited it would scare away your own pet... ah, good times. The TA revamp has helped a bit, but still, the overall theme is just... slow. 

[Aeroprism]

15 minutes ago, JasperStone said:

... but now the way teams can steam roll through content /Traps can be challenging.

 

In truth you just have to find a way to make the powers work in the given situation.

 

Steamrolling messed with well beyond /traps, it messed with entire ATs and aspects of the game.

 

But your second statement is what I love here.  No, my controller won't shine in a level 54 steamroller group the way shs did in a middle 20 group, but you can be sure as heck that she won't be useless either.

[Erratic1]

6 hours ago, Carnifax said:

I hated my 20-something Rad/Elec Brute with a vengence. Sloooooow melee attacks and a rather boring secondary where End is a constant issue til the 30s, then it buggers off entirely. 

 

And this is as someone with an Ice/Traps Controller I happily played to 50. 

 

Oddly, I am inexplicably pulled to my Elec/Rad Tanker. But I don't use the glacially slow Devastating Blow, taking Cross Punch instead. And yeah, endurance was an issue until I got Energize to the point where its up every 45s (which as an upside means healing every 45s as well).

 

It is a subjective thing, but I would not call the combo the worst ever or even a contender for it. That Assault Rifle/Poison corruptor I had on live however.....

 

He was "fun" to play in the sense of, "What can I manage to work my way through with him which other players would breeze through?"

 

 

Edited November 12, 2021 by Erratic1

[arcane]

96 characters and not sure anything is really feels “bad” after IO’s and Incarnates..

 

But, thinking about what powersets feel “least good”, I’m gonna say my Sonic/ Blaster and /Staff and /Kinetic Tankers come to mind immediately for just feeling like a slog on damage compared to others in the same AT.

[dtjunkie]

The lack of synergy between illusion and kinetics, specifically that kinetics does nothing for Phantom Army, probably makes it one of the worst combos in my mind.

 

But of course I have a lvl 50 Ill/Kin that I had a lot of fun with.

[Uun]

I'm sure others like this combo, but I really disliked Dual Pistols/Ninja blaster. Back on live I had a Ninja/Poison mastermind that was painful and a Traps/Assault Rifle defender that was pretty anemic. 

[Ger]

Mercs/kin mm was not fun for me to play at all.  Kinetic melee/fire brute was pretty lame as well. AR/forcefield corr is lots of fun but not all that effective. I have 50s of most powersets and while some are better than others, there are very few that are not fun in certain situations.

[Machariel]

grav/elec might be the worst dominator you could build, it is certainly the worst one I’ve played. 

[arcane]

1 hour ago, dtjunkie said:

The lack of synergy between illusion and kinetics, specifically that kinetics does nothing for Phantom Army, probably makes it one of the worst combos in my mind.

 

But of course I have a lvl 50 Ill/Kin that I had a lot of fun with.

But who needs synergy when you’ve got two of the undisputed best powersets in the game.

[Carnifax]

40 minutes ago, arcane said:

But who needs synergy when you’ve got two of the undisputed best powersets in the game.

Me. I detest sets fighting with each other or powers being a bit "clashy" (like cones but you also wanna be in melee).

 

I dumped my Staff/NRG brute cos the redraw drove me mad. Even if it's an illusion and you can cancel / counter it it didn't feel right. And that was probably my favourite concept of all my Homecoming chars (Snookered: a cue ball for a head robot dressed like an early 80s snooker player and who wields a cue).

[Gulbasaur]

15 hours ago, Snarky said:

I have a Storm Water Blast Defender i cannot even bring myself to run.  The knockback…… it….its alive!!!

I'd actually rate mine as one of my most effective non-tank tanks. They're so good at area control, including using knockback. Embrace the chaos.

 

My Pistols/Devices blaster, on the other hand... pure ass. I was just twirling around, not really achieveing anything. Heavily dependent on kiting, which would be fine if pistols wasn't so twirly. It feels more like an emote set than a power set. Two sets I'd rate as fairly medioce leads to a showy, but ineffective, experience.

Edited November 12, 2021 by Gulbasaur

[Aeroprism]

19 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Me. I detest sets fighting with each other or powers being a bit "clashy" (like cones but you also wanna be in melee).

 

 

My Ice/Ice tank is like this because of Frost.  She hovers, still in melee range, but just high enough to allow the cone to face down. 

 

It is honestly pure awesome. The amount of people I hit with this cone is stupid-high and I don't even have to move to follow up with ST-melee.

[Taemeluch]

I dont know which is more sad. 

 

That I have tried most of these builds and come to the same conclusion or actually have had the time to try these builds. 

[arcane]

50 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Me. I detest sets fighting with each other or powers being a bit "clashy" (like cones but you also wanna be in melee).

 

I dumped my Staff/NRG brute cos the redraw drove me mad. Even if it's an illusion and you can cancel / counter it it didn't feel right. And that was probably my favourite concept of all my Homecoming chars (Snookered: a cue ball for a head robot dressed like an early 80s snooker player and who wields a cue).

Ok that’s all fine and good but I’m still gonna say agree to disagree; IMO any combo that is simultaneously packing Phantom Army, Speed Boost, and Fulcrum Shift is inevitably near the very top of best combos in the game, synergy be damned. You can’t input three of the best powers in the game and get a bad output.

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, JasperStone said:

My character on Live was an Emp/Elec Defender. Made it here and it is kinda of pointless in the current form of the game.  

Empathy is not necessary anymore and the endurance drain is pointless. May reroll to /Elec Affinity just to keep the theme.

 

Thugs/Trap MM loved it on Live ... but now the way teams can steam roll through content /Traps can be challenging.

 

In truth you just have to find a way to make the powers work in the given situation.

     Inserts near mandatory comment about new difficulty settings now on the Test server.  Seems likely to breath new life into both Empathy and Electric blast (nevermind pairing them).  Really makes me want to try out a Emp/Elec team of 4 or more members.  

[KC4800]

Energy/Traps corruptor is still the worst combo I ever chose, but Fold Space helps a lilbit.

[Dazl]

16 hours ago, Snarky said:

I have a Storm Water Blast Defender i cannot even bring myself to run.  The knockback…… it….its alive!!!

You might want to try using KB -> KD’s in some of those Storm powers, makes a major difference.

[arcane]

FF/AR always comes to mind. I don’t have the balls to make one.

[ZemX]

2 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

My Ice/Ice tank is like this because of Frost.  She hovers, still in melee range, but just high enough to allow the cone to face down.

 

I suspect that comment was more about narrow/longer cones like Breath of Fire or Shockwave.  Most melee cones don't take you out of melee range to fit the most targets into them as possible.  You might move a little to line things up but that's about it.  And of course it's that much easier on Tankers with the +50% arc inherent.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I strongly believe that any combination can succeed, depending on your definition of success.  Some are markedly better than others, though.

 

I took a few defenders to 50 that would have been unicorns according to the March 2020 data.  The Sonic/AR defender was really the only complete dud of the bunch, and it still wasn't impossible to solo him to 50.

[ZorkNemesis]

While I made it work out in the end, one of my least favorite charcaters to play was a Sonic/Ninja Blaster.  This was before Ninja Training got a round of buffs but even after the combo doesn't feel so great.  Sonic is fairly weak in the damage department, Ninja doesn't add much more damage thanks to the sword being weak, and while the combo offers good control options, ultimately fights became a major slog when Dreadful Wail isn't up and, unlike other Blaster combos I've played, the combo had trouble dealing with larger spawns solo.

 

My opinion might also have been soured by taking it through Praetoria, Night Ward included, so there'a that.

[Rishidian]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

96 characters and not sure anything is really feels “bad” after IO’s and Incarnates..

Reminds me of an old joke from General Dynamics:

 

**Put enough force behind it, and you can make anything fly.

 

My worst AT was a Sonic/FF Controller (I think it was a controller...).  Since I almost exclusively solo, this was going to be a slow leveler.  But, good God! This guy couldn't do enough damage to take down even cons.

And I won't get into the save-your-ass bubble that doesn't let you attack, but lets in 5% of other's attacks,

So, yeah, he was relegated to my Base Builder at level 8.

 

I look at it like this: Maybe it's not a bad build - just bad for me.  Which makes me wonder which one of us sux....

[Erratic1]

 

17 minutes ago, ZorkNemesis said:

While I made it work out in the end, one of my least favorite charcaters to play was a Sonic/Ninja Blaster.  This was before Ninja Training got a round of buffs but even after the combo doesn't feel so great.  Sonic is fairly weak in the damage department, Ninja doesn't add much more damage thanks to the sword being weak, and while the combo offers good control options, ultimately fights became a major slog when Dreadful Wail isn't up and, unlike other Blaster combos I've played, the combo had trouble dealing with larger spawns solo.

 

My opinion might also have been soured by taking it through Praetoria, Night Ward included, so there'a that.

 

 

 The OP does ask why one finds a particular combo  to be "worst" and fairly you and others have pointed to Sonic's damage as being an issue. I am not sure if the  OP was being deeply insightful in asking for the why or not since I think some chunk of the opposition to Sonic and possibly some builds mentioned  here come from failure to meet expectation. 

 

I have long struggled to find Blaster builds I like. I have started a lot of blasters but only taken two to 50, with the second one making it there this past weekend as a Sonic/Tactical Arrow. What turns me off to blasters is not their supposed fragility but rather  dealing damage at range, unless solo, feels like watching paint dry--I push a sequence of buttons against something which for the most part is distracted by others or is going to die before it gets much of a chance to do much back to me. Its a window dressing complaint because I enjoy melee and yet let's be realistic...most times the things you're fighting at as a melee AT do not have much chance either. But on a melee there is the up close interaction. Blaster feels like shooting fish in a barrel for me and so I tend to get bored of them in their 30s and move on.

 

I knew going in Sonic was supposedly* lower damage. But my goal with Sonic/TA was to be more Corruptor lite--I debuff targets I am hitting and have secondary tools which add control without the added duty of either buffing or healing others. So while other dislike Sonic because it does not meet their damage expectations, I am getting what I expected out of it.

 

* Not sure Sonic is quite as craptastic as all that given the following video composite of two different characters--one Fire, one Sonic--on the test server taking on one yellow and one white opponents of the same level and starting and finishing the damage dealing process at the same time: https://imgur.com/jvjBu5A. But that is a discussion best held elsewhere.

[Erratic1]

16 minutes ago, Rishidian said:

My worst AT was a Sonic/FF Controller (I think it was a controller...). 

 

Controllers do not get Sonic as a primary ability set, so I'd guess Corruptor.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Due to another thread, I think a fire/regen scrapper would be a fine addition to this list. And I'm finding myself tempted to PL one and fully trick it out to see just how bad it would really be.