Worst Build Combos

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

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.

 

The only reason that I don't have one of those is that I cannot stand the elemental swords of Fire Melee and Ice Melee!

[Bill Z Bubba]

4 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

The only reason that I don't have one of those is that I cannot stand the elemental swords of Fire Melee and Ice Melee!

 

I can grok that. I had to silence a bunch of sounds last time I tried out ice melee but at least it provides some mitigation with ice patch, freezing touch and frozen aura. Fire ain't got squat!

[Rishidian]

Could be a corruptor - I haven't played him in a while.

 

Data chunk?  Not sure what you are looking for.  I wasn't looking for assistance, though I would appreciate the offer.  I'm not really looking to reactivate this one for crime fighting.  The point I was making is this combination didn't work for me - Other, better players (as all of you are), may be able to make it work.  I'm not upset about it.  Ok, maybe some about the self only defense bubble with the 5% hole.  But I was shut down kinda abruptly in a different thread when I asked if it could be closed.  So I let it go there.

 

Since I solo most of the time, a lot of the support AT's are more difficult for me.  Maybe I need to team up more.  Probably.  Most assuredly.

[Ukase]

Let me give folks a chance to brace themselves. 

What's the saying? "One man's meat is another man's poison" ? Or one man's junk is another man's treasure ? 

I made a poison/ice defender. I got it to level 11 and just said enough. I'd read this post on the forums where some kind soul was singing the praises of how wonderful poison was. 

It ain't. It's trash. I can't fathom why anyone would ever make one. It really is trash. 

Another combo was a mind/psi dominator. 
I had a friend who'd needed MoTPN. The badge giving them fits was the one with the telepathists. 
Sure, I could've PL'd it, but I wanted to play it - experience the AT. See how it was. 

It just made me respect Mistress Mezmera all the more - because he play's his incredibly well. Makes it seem easy. Mine, however was a turd. Each day, I'd play it - and it was horrid. It wasn't until level 48 when I learned that the dominator hit domination more quickly when teamed. I was pretty pissed off. 
I completely understand that this game is an MMO, and yeah, yeah, teaming, teaming is all the rage. 
But, I digress. So, I just deleted it. I didn't even take any of the enhancements out of it. Just a straight delete, and swore off of Dominators. A truly trash AT if there ever was one. 


And then...I ran into Shotty Mario who persuaded me to give an Earth Dom a shot, and I did. Now I have two of them. But for the rest of them - they're trash. Until I'm convinced otherwise. (Anecdotally - when I've done master TFs that failed, it was always someone on a Dom that died! Low HP, meager damage, just really useless to my style of play. )

 

[Haijinx]

11 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

Pain on a Sent??? Did I miss something?

 

Pssst.  Its called Regen. 

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Rishidian said:

Data chunk?  Not sure what you are looking for. 

 

That's in my signature. It was not directed at you specifically.

 

1 hour ago, Rishidian said:

 

I wasn't looking for assistance, though I would appreciate the offer. 

 

If it didn't work for you, there are plenty of other things to go try. I have a very long list of  failed attempts myself.

 

[arcane]

5 hours ago, Ukase said:

Let me give folks a chance to brace themselves. 

What's the saying? "One man's meat is another man's poison" ? Or one man's junk is another man's treasure ? 

I made a poison/ice defender. I got it to level 11 and just said enough. I'd read this post on the forums where some kind soul was singing the praises of how wonderful poison was. 

It ain't. It's trash. I can't fathom why anyone would ever make one. It really is trash. 

Another combo was a mind/psi dominator. 
I had a friend who'd needed MoTPN. The badge giving them fits was the one with the telepathists. 
Sure, I could've PL'd it, but I wanted to play it - experience the AT. See how it was. 

It just made me respect Mistress Mezmera all the more - because he play's his incredibly well. Makes it seem easy. Mine, however was a turd. Each day, I'd play it - and it was horrid. It wasn't until level 48 when I learned that the dominator hit domination more quickly when teamed. I was pretty pissed off. 
I completely understand that this game is an MMO, and yeah, yeah, teaming, teaming is all the rage. 
But, I digress. So, I just deleted it. I didn't even take any of the enhancements out of it. Just a straight delete, and swore off of Dominators. A truly trash AT if there ever was one. 


And then...I ran into Shotty Mario who persuaded me to give an Earth Dom a shot, and I did. Now I have two of them. But for the rest of them - they're trash. Until I'm convinced otherwise. (Anecdotally - when I've done master TFs that failed, it was always someone on a Dom that died! Low HP, meager damage, just really useless to my style of play. )

 

How dare

[oedipus_tex]

I had a Fire Control/Sonic Resonance Controller who felt this way. If endurance costs are ever lowered in a balance pass it might be more feasible. That's the one flaw that will make me abandon a character.

 

Anyway, just in general, Arctic Air and Hot Feet should probably have their endurance costs cut in half or two thirds. They can function okay paired with a good way to recover endurance, but pairing them with an endurance heavy set (Poison, Sonic Res, a few others) will send your bar crashing.

[InvaderStych]

To date, the  worst most frustrating combo I ever tried was also the first.

 

In 2004:

 

Broadsword/Dark Armor scrapper.

 

Which is probably totally viable now, but not even remotely then. Hooray for all those levels before Stamina!  Who was talking about endurance just buggering off?  What endurance? 😄

 

On the other hand that was also before ED, and pre-ED Headsplitter was a sight to behold.  Too bad it was unplayable for more than about 15 seconds before completely flattening the blue bar.

Edited November 13, 2021 by InvaderStych

[JasperStone]

18 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

     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.  

Oh yes, I am aware and excited.

Just talking about the state of the game now.

also how pointless endurance drain is in PVE ...for now

[Doomguide2005]

19 hours ago, KC4800 said:

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

Oof, hey at least you got somewhere to aim all that kb right😜

[KC4800]

54 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Oof, hey at least you got somewhere to aim all that kb right😜

I have enough recharge I can lay down TripMine, Poison trap, caltrops, another TripMine, PBU, Fold Space, then start energy blasting anything that is still alive. It's not team friendly at all though.

[Doomguide2005]

21 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

I have enough recharge I can lay down TripMine, Poison trap, caltrops, another TripMine, PBU, Fold Space, then start energy blasting anything that is still alive. It's not team friendly at all though.

     Nope, not a team oriented pairing at all.  My worst was about as unfriendly to solo as yours is to teams.  An Ice/Sonic Controller.  One of very few that I didn't make it to 50 on (managed low to mid 20's as I recall) and likely never would at least by playing through content anytime within a few issues of when it was created.  Couldn't fight its way out of 3 white cons without running out of end (damage being non-existent).   I suspect it would be much better these days endurance wise but still much better teamed than solo.

[A Cat]

16 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

The only reason that I don't have one of those is that I cannot stand the elemental swords of Fire Melee and Ice Melee!

I like the swords personally. I know why it ended up this way, but I'd be nice if it was a power customization instead, so normal fire melee and ice melee is just punching people with fire/ice cubes, and there's a fire sword/ice sword customization of both where you can have everything is done with swords instead. I suppose you'd have needed a time machine for this to have happen though. I'd totally do it right before assassinating Hitler and causing the events of Command and Conquer Red Alert to happen. It's a crime to humanity and the timeline that we don't have Mammoth Tanks IRL. 

[arcane]

I would’ve said my Traps/AR defender months ago but I find myself becoming too fond of it. Traps is too freakin good when you *do* get to leverage its stationary nature in bigger fights. AV’s, pylons, BAF chokes, big ITF herds missions 3/4, etc etc. And between Traps procs and Dominate damage I try not to stress a lot about how bad AR is.

 

Making me want to update my Grav/Traps.

Edited November 13, 2021 by arcane

[Ukase]

12 hours ago, arcane said:

How dare

I dare fine.

[arcane]

17 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

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.

I know you have more choosy min maxer standards but I have zero faith the toon will be bad.

[Yomo Kimyata]

14 minutes ago, arcane said:

I know you have more choosy min maxer standards but I have zero faith the toon will be bad.

This is a good point, and to me it demonstrates power creep since the game began.  There’s nothing wrong with fire melee (except the swords and maybe fire breath, yuck!) and there’s nothing wrong regeneration (which I really enjoy as a set).  But they are vanilla.  There’s no knock back to proc for a FF +recharge.  There’s no -def to proc for an Achilles heel.  In comparison to other sets with more slotting options, they are less multifaceted.

 

if, for example, they added a set that adds -res to melee damage, or a set that adds a damage proc to healing sets, then those new io sets would be instantly popular and some of the vanilla AT sets would be more popular as well.

[oedipus_tex]

On 11/12/2021 at 10:41 AM, Machariel said:

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

 

 

LOL yep. It's been a while since I looked at the DPA of Electric Assault but I seem to recall most of the attacks having a lower DPA than Lift. And then I realized Lift with Containment does more damage on a Controller. Since then I have only rolled Gravity Control on Controllers. That 26 level wait for a good AoE Control is frustrating on either build though.

[Trademarked Name]

I made an Invisible Woman themed Illusion Control/Force Field Controller (IC because it's the only set with Superior Invis.) and as thematically it was nice, it was just not good for the mechanics of the game. So painful to actually play. Found myself having to constantly go lev -1 or +0/x1 on solo missions.

I favored blasters and scrappers in live. In HC some of my favorite sets are Doms and Sentinels due to strong survivability and ok offense. Conversely some controllers are all holds/defense, and have nothing to end the fight with, and heaven help you if you've got End heavy powers, and you either get fought to a stand still or have to run away from minions.  

[Glacier Peak]

It's worth pointing out, if it hasn't already been said, that players can create builds on the beta test shard and fully trick out the build without having to invest any inf or PL to 50. It's normally what I do if my build idea has made it past the 'looks good in Mids' phase. 

[Zhym]

I've played a few combos that didn't work well together: Assault Rifle/Invulnerability Sentinel (I didn't quite realize just how many problems that build has until I noticed it was easier to cap resists on a defender, fer crying out loud), Sonic/Kinetic Corruptor (only later did I realize that a Kin/Sonic Defender is better in nearly every way), and a Beam Rifle/Mental Blaster. 

 

But there's only one powerset combo I've tried that's so bad that I'd rather go clean the bathroom than play it again: Kin/Regen Brute.   Kin is cheesy and slow, and regen is...well, regen.  There's nothing about that combo to recommend it, IMO.

 

And yes, I realize that many would consider "anything with Kinetic Melee in it" also to be a valid answer.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Zhym

[Haijinx]

16 hours ago, Zhym said:

And yes, I realize that many would consider "anything with Kinetic Melee in it" also to be a valid answer.

 

The sad part is that going by the first couple quick attacks/levels you think its going to be good.   Then you have this dawning realization that it actually sucks.  

 

And the problem is that to really fix it, it needs the later animations trimmed down, they are all way too slow.  And animation support in a game that isn't even actually in production?  That's tough.  

[Zhym]

7 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

 

The sad part is that going by the first couple quick attacks/levels you think its going to be good.   Then you have this dawning realization that it actually sucks.  

 

And the problem is that to really fix it, it needs the later animations trimmed down, they are all way too slow.  And animation support in a game that isn't even actually in production?  That's tough.  

You just made me realize what's so awful about KM/Regen in particular: it's a pairing of a click-heavy secondary (regen) with a really slow primary (KM).  So you have to fit those regen clicks in between really slow KM animations, and the whole experience is incredibly frustrating. 

 

OTOH, I guess those slow attack animations create plenty of time to decide which regen power to click next.  If you ever wanted CoX to be a turn-based strategy game, KM/Regen is for you!  As long as you don't mind that everyone else, including your enemies, are playing it as a real-time game.

Edited November 15, 2021 by Zhym

[Yomo Kimyata]

5 minutes ago, Zhym said:

You just made me realize what's so awful about KM/Regen in particular: it's a pairing of a click-heavy secondary (regen) with a really slow primary (KM).  So you have to fit those regen clicks in between really slow KM animations, and the whole experience is incredibly frustrating. 

 

OTOH, I guess those slow attack animations create plenty of time to decide which regen power to click next.  If you ever wanted CoX to be a turn-based strategy game, KM/Regen is for you!  As long as you don't mind that everyone else, including your enemies, are playing it as a real-time game.

 

What I learned with my staff/regen brute (which was a very early character for me on HC) was it really helps to anticipate heals and sometimes pre-heal, if that makes any sense.