Questions about ATs and other things

[Furius]

Hi, I've played City of Heroes a long time ago way before shutdown and I am very happy to have the opportunity to play it again. However, a lot has changed since then and I started with a lot of questions. Most of it was solved just reading some posts in this forum and some channels in discord, but I still have some questions which I need more clear answers. 

 

1- My first priority in this game is to experience the content and storyline of it. I loved it since forever, but I never had the opportunity of experiencing it all, so I'm taking the chance now. However, I'd like to experience it solo, at least the first time, as I like to take my time and follow my own rhythm in missions. Teams tend to break my immersion, so I would like recommendations on ATs that can solo everthing in a rewarding, fast and solid way, including TFs, AVs, and all the hardest stuff. I don't mind taking ATs that have a high learning curve, as I'm willing to make the effort to learn it well. Considering this, I ask:

A) What can you tell me about Demon/Dark MM, Necro/Dark MM and Dark/Dark Dominator? Can they fulfill my requirements? Which one of these is better for it?

B) Which ranged AT is the best for what I want?  And which melee AT? I would like you to keep in mind that I prefer Darkness or Electricity-themed characters.

C) For reasons of storyline I am wishing to also make an additional Warshade and Arachnos Soldier character. Can they fare well solo and tackle all the content alone? Do you recommend Bane or Crab Spiders for such a purpose?

 

2- A side question: can the Concealment power pool allow me to stealth through missions with the same effectiveness as stalkers? Or are they somehow "weaker" than Hide (detection wise)?

 

I wish you all the best and thanks in advance for the disposition to answer me.

 

[Parabola]

1) There are now a lot of different ATs and builds that can solo av's (which is really the limiting factor in trying to solo everything). However the field narrows if you are trying to do it on high difficulty settings. My most capable all rounder is a rad/dark tank(mage) who can solo most things that I want to attempt.

 

A) I'm no expert on either mm's or dominators but my understanding is that there can be scaling issues for mm's in high level content. Some people do some very impressive things with dominators, if you check out that subforum you'll find it hard to miss one particular posters exploits with dark/dark.

 

B) Melee wise tanks are very good these days. Very, very good. Between dark and electric themes I would go for dark melee which for my money is an s tier tank melee set. For ranged the aforementioned dark/dark dom would seem a good fit (although doms aren't 100% ranged). There are lots of options though, proc out (search for 'proc monsters' to get a feel for what this means) a dark or elec blast defender with rad emission or cold dom primary and you could probably kill most things.

 

A word of caution about the 'one character to do it all' idea. At the end of the day the real limiting factor is how much you enjoy playing the character in question. You'll spend a huge amount of time doing sometimes fairly repetitive stuff so no matter how capable the character is it will be a slog if you don't enjoy it. Start a few different alts that you like the look of and get a feel for them. A weaker character that you enjoy is going to see a lot more of the game than an uber powerful character you hate playing, even if you have to dial the difficulty back a bit to do it.

 

C) Can't help you here.

 

2) Yes the stealth power will allow you to ghost most things if you want. There are some high perception enemies out there like snipers who will see through it though. I imagine hide is stronger but I'm not in front of mids or the game in order to check.

 

Welcome back to the game!

[Six-Six]

1- Not necessarily so. There are teams that form for story purposes and working together rather than steam-rolling through mobs. Although when you do solo, you do get to take your time and read the content that only the star-holder is privy to. But yeah, solo works, or a small group. Another way to go is to run the game at your own pace, then when you come across something you can't hack alone, just give a shout in Looking For Group chat and a people will gladly oblige.

 

A) If you're interested in MMs, I'd suggest Demons over Zombies. I find Zombies a little TOOOO slow. Demons (or doggies) are strong enough that I have one toon with just the Demonlings go until 50. /Dark on almost any AT is strong. IMHO It tends to be an end-guzzler, though; but if you sort out your endurance consumption vs. recovery early on, it should serve you well. /Dark also gels nicely with Soul Patron Power Pool which is one of my favourites for utility and animation.

 

B) This totally depends on your play style. I myself learned the game on a Sentinel, which is a very survivable ranged tank. Over the course of over a hundred toons, and about half of them incarnates, I can say that I like the versatility to go ranged and up close and personal when I feel like it. So Blasters, Spiders and Dominators do it for me. I do still run melee toons (Tanks, Scrappers, Brutes, and Stalkers) for concept purposes and I also enjoy an occasional Mastermind.

C) The Epic ATs are more than strong enough, hence the term Epic. A lot of people will advise you not to run them until you've got a good grasp of the ropes. But it will be worth it. WS, PBs and Spiders also have a special story only available to them that you will sure want to go through.

 

2- Quick answer is yes. Though nothing will match stalker level concealment. Other ATs will have variations of this power built into them, in varying degrees... and not right off the bat. Spiders get them after level 24, Blasters have Field Operative (/Devices), Shinobi (/Ninja Training), etc. Other ATs also offer some sort of concealment power some with or without the Crit mechanic. You can also slot a Stealth IO into running and sprints or jumping to give you a weak form of concealment -- foes will see you if you get too close, but it works well enough to let you sneak past most enemies.

 

[Furius]

@Six-Six @Parabola Thank you very much for your answers. You really clarified things for me. I see that this community is as wonderful as it was back before shutdown. I will follow your suggestions.

[Six-Six]

@Furius Awesome! 

You're right about the community. It's one of the best in all the MMOs I've tried in the past. It starts with the amazing devs and GMs and trickles down. of course you still get the odd asshat here and there, but it's just the law of probabilities doing its thing. Just don't mind them and enjoy the game the way you want to.

A bit more advice from someone who prefers to solo (and also because I'm feeling chatty atm)... If you're into content, then I suggest you go villain. It's purely subjective, but I for one think red-side content is better than blue. you can change your alignment to Rogue which means you get red-side contacts but you can step on blue soil if you feel like it; similarly, Vigilante will have you see blue contacts with the ability to visit the villain part of town, as opposed to being pure Hero or Villain that locks you in your respective parts of Paragon City. Once you get your hero legs back, you can roll a Going Rogue or Praetorian character (not to be confused with the Rogue alignment) and try gold-side content, which I think is the best even in its unfinished state.

But I'd save that for when you're comfortable with your toon. A lot of us also tend to Disable XP at level 7, 14, 24, 34, 39, 44 in order to not out-level some contacts and miss out on content. however, you simply can't get them all. In such cases, there's a Pillar of Ice and Flame in Ouroboros that lets you go back to any story arc you missed. You can access Ouroboros through a portal which you can earn or mooch off of someone (if someone activates theirs and you use it, you'll also get power yourself). Some supergroup bases will also have this Pillar which lets you do Flashback missions starting level 15. There are plenty of SG bases that give you access sans membership. some people are just nice like that.

Play with whatever powers you like, wearing whatever turns you on, doing what you find fun. Enjoy the game. 😃

[Furius]

@Six-Six Thank you a lot for the tips! I will surely follow your suggestion to go villain. I've never done the Destined One arc, but from what I've read in the wiki (yeah, I can't resist a spoiler lol) it's one of the best storylines in the game. Just some questions: you said if I'm rogue I can have red contacts, but I get access to Paragon City too. But can I do the missions for the blue contacts there? Is it possible to follow hero and villain storylines simultaneously? And what happens to Epic ATs that go full to other side? Do they get locked out of their respective storylines too?

[Six-Six]

Unfortunately no, you can only get either hero side contacts (Hero and Vigilante) or villain side contacts (Rogue and Villain). For example, you start out as a Hero then switch to vigilante by either 10 tip missions + 1 morality missions (which start dropping at level 20 and earns you 40 spanking merits) or through Nul the Gull in pocket D, you can go to the Rogue Isles, but any contact there will ignore you and not give you missions. Similarly, you will have slightly different contacts and stories if between Hero and Vigi (or Villain and Rogue). You can however switch alignments as often as you like, but it might be counter productive if you're trying to experience a nice story flow.

Here's what I do with every new alt:
I do the Breakout Tutorial, land in Mercy and take it from there on normal XP (no XP boost from P2W lady). every now and then you get a choice of contact referrals. I just do them on the fly. The nice thing about the content is that it is not very linear, so you can do them pretty much in any order you like and the result is somewhat of a unique story in itself for that particular character.

At level 15 I sometimes do Flashback arcs of the stories that I missed. not always. I do this while my powers are still relevantly limited to the level range. but most of the time, just following the flow of contacts is enough. I only try to have 1-2 active story arcs at a time, 3 at the most. otherwise my wee brain can't handle what's going on. haha.

So you've reached level 50, but you have this aching feeling that you've only seen maybe a fraction of all the contacts out there, so you're missing out on a lot of stuff. Here's the fun part: Roll a new toon. try different powers on the same costume, different costume with the same powers, or totally different toon altogether... and do it all over again, but taking a different route than you did before.

This, my friend, is how I became an altoholic. 😃

 

[Without_Pause]

A Dark/dark Dom should be fine in the end for what you want I'm not sure how well or not it will do against EBs as you level. Melee builds should also be fine. If you aren't looking for doing content on the side of x8 mobs, Tanks will rank lower. If you don't mind small(er) packs, Stalkers will be great for cranking through missions quite quickly if that's how you want to do things. Scrappers and Brutes are in the middle, but Brutes are fueled by Fury so lean towards bigger mobs. 

 

If Stalker/scrapper, I would look at EA for secondary although Stone is also getting much love in its revamp and addition to these ATs. I just don't have experience with it. EA also has a bit of stealth in it for Scrappers. Shield is also good, but it will take time to develop as the ride with EA is much smoother. If Brute, Invul is really strong.

 

Primaries would lean heavily with Dark as it has a heal and a theme you like. It is more ST focused so that works better for soloing things like AVs. Dark/ea or Dark/invul are going to be hard to kill. Again, possibly going outside of your theme, but Energy melee is by far the best ST damage set so would be rather ideal for soling AVs. I already know my level 35 Em/en Scrapper is going to be one of my best if I go all in on building him.

 

Dark amour is good for Brutes so if you want that theme with going something besides Dark for the primary. Rad melee also has a heal although less consistent, and a couple animations on the longer side, but the damage toggle is overly good for procs. Ice melee is a good mix of lesser resisted damage and controls.

 

Soling AVs for ranged I would look at Beam with something which also adds good debuffs/-regen if possible. Dark does work here for Corrs and Defenders. Ice has enough controls to be more survivable. Soloing with a ranged character really is about hover blasting and having capped ranged defense. Dark blast does have a heal, but its ST damage isn't great.

 

I would lean on Dark for damage since it is the least resisted unless Dark is beneficial in the other set and there's a reason for the damage to come from non-Dark sources(Bean with -regen, and EM because it is stupid good).

 

If Dark is required, I would do Dark/ea as a Stalker or Scrapper. If not, Em/ea Scrapper. I prefer having more AoE on a Scrapper versus losing it and ramping up the already strong ST damage for a Stalker.