I'm old now.

[rizlazz]

I was one of the older players in the live game and I'm no younger now. My SG is...well.. they seem to have either more time than I do or they are are a lot more 'in the milieu' so to speak. So to all the other old peeps out there I have some questions:

1. my old school shit aint cutting it, what do you do

2. I need something that allows my stupid old reflexes to not kill the team (or myself if I am solo)

3. I like doing missions. Team or Solo

4. I dont care about AT or theme, i just want to not be the old guy that wiped us

Its a level build

 

teach me

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by rizlazz

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 hours ago, rizlazz said:

teach me

 

Cheatcode: Tanks.

 

Death is hard to come by. Spam AoEs and Taunt when you're teaming and they'll think you know what you're doing. Recent buffs make them kill faster than they did. Fake it til you make it.

[NinjaSquirrel]

Play a scrapper?  Run in, kill things.  SR and shield scrappers are pretty tough as long as you don't skimp on defenses.  And if you do die, well, you're just a scrapper.  No one is counting on you to keep them alive.

[Cancrusher]

I'm gonna agree with Bill here.  Tanks are a great choice.  Pick a set with good AOE (Titan is a favorite of mine) and look at the tanker topic for examples of how to build them.  I like tanks with toggles that continually generate taunt aggro when you have them active.  run into a group of enemies, let the toggle hold them on you, and then just wail away.

 

If you don't use macros and/or key binds, you should read the guides on those, too.  They help streamline combat with shortcuts so reflexes don't matter as much.

[Hyperstrike]

My signature says it all.

[Warboss]

I'd have to agree with the majority recommendation. Tanks are really the best bet, and fun to play! You could go with a Brute, but it will take a bit longer to get survivability dialed in.

[Erratic1]

Thing about Tankers is people then expect you to tank and hold aggro so the group doesn't wipe. Not a hard job but here is the thing...

 

...Brute can be made plenty tough enough and nobody expects you to do anything but wade in and start hitting things. Also Fury means you'll do decent damage at low levels.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

Brute can be made plenty tough enough

 

1 hour ago, Warboss said:

You could go with a Brute, but it will take a bit longer to get survivability dialed in.

 

Both are true statements. But old, in my case at least, also means lazy and it takes much more work to toughen up the brute in comparison since they start at scrapper levels of mitigation.

 

It all boils down to just how lazy you wanna be.

[PeregrineFalcon]

17 hours ago, rizlazz said:

2. I need something that allows my stupid old reflexes to not kill the team (or myself if I am solo)

I'm in the same boat, part of the reason that I like playing tanks.

 

And if you want to play a support character a great option is a Force Field Defender/Corrupter. You don't have to have the reflexes that Empathy requires. You can just bubble the team every 2 minutes and then spend the rest of the time pretending that you're a blaster.

[Shred Monkey]

Tank is good as other have said.

 

Here's another interesting option.  Traps!

 

Your biggest contributing factor is your force field generator.  It just follows you around.  So just standing around near the people who are taking damage is pretty much your primary job, you only have to recast it every few minutes when it dies.  Other than that, you're free to blast away with whatever attack set you choose (I like dual pistols for style points).  I also throw down caltrops frequently as well for more AoE damage and ghetto mitigation.

[rizlazz]

thanks for the suggestions, I truly appreciate the time you took to respond.

From the feedback I have rolled up a fire/ice tank and a traps/elec defender, Time to hit the bricks.

[Hedgefund]

When I think of "old and don't want to kill the team" that makes me think of a buffer that just drops their buffs and starts blasting.  Cold, Sonic, Thermal, maybe even Time or FF.  Time if soloing is paramount.

[Six-Six]

1. Don't sweat it too much. It's a game. Have fun, enjoy. You'll be fine. I usually stick to 8 things that I click. The rest would be toggles or clickies on auto. My wee brain can't handle any more than that, and I don't have enough fingers. Besides, most of the people who play this game have seen a few too many winters, so you're definitely not alone. Sooner or later, you'll find your tribe and it won't matter how old or how much you suck... trust me. 
 

2 & 3. I suggest you do some solo missions early on. this will let you learn and get a feel for your powers. And if you can survive solo, then you'll be pulling your weight on a team.

I think you've got your AT and powers chosen. good luck and good hunting. 😃

P.S. don't be afraid to try out other ATs and power combinations.

[Without_Pause]

3 hours ago, Hedgefund said:

When I think of "old and don't want to kill the team" that makes me think of a buffer that just drops their buffs and starts blasting.  Cold, Sonic, Thermal, maybe even Time or FF.  Time if soloing is paramount.

Cold you don't even have to worry about heals. Cold/beam you just shield the team and then focus on the ST blasts as your debuff spreads so by all accounts you are being effective with doing minimal work.

[Ironscarlet]

Lots of builds that would work but only a few are a good leveling experience. I would recommend a armor with def oriented like SR or energy aura. These 2 can get to def cap with little effort and cheap. Def cap is 45%.  Then if you want to do melee go brute or scrapper if you want range go sent. SR has few clicks so you can focus on damage rotation. Would recommend pairing  it with a self heal like from dark or water(sent) or rad (melee). You will have a toon that can def cap and heal itself while leveling and little enhancement set effort.

 

The only reason I did not recommend Tank is because some people while leveling might require you to be the Tank for the team this might be to much pressure trying to carry a team. At max level It’s different it’s easy but low lvl Tank actually have to know what to do.

 

If you want to go buffer it’s going to be allot of clicks and a rough solo compared to the armor sets. Would strongly recommend Illusion/dark controller for phantom army to tank and dark to debfuff and heal yourself still allot of clicks. Would recommend to hold off on buffer/debugger till maybe 2nd toon.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Ironscarlet

[Cancrusher]

10 hours ago, rizlazz said:

thanks for the suggestions, I truly appreciate the time you took to respond.

From the feedback I have rolled up a fire/ice tank and a traps/elec defender, Time to hit the bricks.

 

Cool. 😎

 

Also, remember that you can experiment with more or less as many AT/power set combos as you want, since you have 1000 character slots now.  Make the most of that.  If you try your two characters and don't enjoy them after a while, just make some new, different, characters and take 'em for a test drive.  Sometimes it takes a while to find the right AT/power sets that really "click" with you.

[nihilii]

I think the Fire/Ice Tanker is a great choice. Burn and Blazing Aura will let you kill things with little effort, no need to even target. Ice Patch with the Tanker radius buff is great mitigation. And you get all of these core powers by level 20. It's an excellent leveling build for a lax yet useful character.

[SeraphimKensai]

I'm also old, and the reason I got to be old was my old friend common sense. That said aside of one of @Linea's AE missions or the Dr. Aeon TF, if someone dies that's on them. They either shouldn't of been standing there, or should of prioritized a different target, or should of stayed closer to where incoming buffs or heals are if they need them.

 

Tankers work great, and I've never found a combo I didn't care for aside of stone/kin Melee, so they have a lot of flexibility for play styles.

 

good luck out there.

[Without_Pause]

I would add a Sent can be good for this. Hover blast and have an armor to keep you safe as well. My Fire/ea has rarely faceplanted. Since Sents have lower target caps and Beam ignores it in terms of its debuff, Beam would be good since ST damage is it's strength and it has -regen.

[Linea]

Tank, any tank.  But you will pull aggro and might get yourself killed, maybe.  But the durability part just comes naturally, you probably don't even need to work at it.

Brute, you'll pull less aggro than the tank, but you'll also probably need to work at durability at least a little bit.

Scrapper, 50/50 depending on the sets you pick, you might or might not pull agro, and you really do need to work on durability.

Stalker, you won't pull aggro, you can shed aggro, but you absolutely do need to work on durability.   I'd recommend StJ/Ena for the most part, but it does have a psionics hole.

Sentinel, you won't pull aggro, and like the stalker you can shed aggro, but you also absolutely do need to work on durability, and your offense is the worst.  Any primary with /Ena /Regen /Inv .... and others will all work.

Bots/FF Mastermind ... Buff, Fire, and Forget.  The ultimate in lazy play.

FF/Water, you'll work harder on keeping yourself alive, but depending on build you can go from ultra-durable self buffs to incarnate softcapping an entire team with Clarion+Pbu+Bubbles.  And once buffed, it's no-harm no-foul if you die as your buffs persist for 4? minutes.  Just get ressed and buff again before the next fight.

 

My personal picks would likely be: Kat/Ena Scrapper or Brute (SL softcap at 13ish with dampeners), Kat/Bio Scrapper (overall favorite), Huntsman (best malfactor build I've ever played), FF/Water (second best malfactor build).

[StriderIV]

1 hour ago, Linea said:

Tank, any tank.  But you will pull aggro and might get yourself killed, maybe.  But the durability part just comes naturally, you probably don't even need to work at it.

Brute, you'll pull less aggro than the tank, but you'll also probably need to work at durability at least a little bit.

Scrapper, 50/50 depending on the sets you pick, you might or might not pull agro, and you really do need to work on durability.

Stalker, you won't pull aggro, you can shed aggro, but you absolutely do need to work on durability.   I'd recommend StJ/Ena for the most part, but it does have a psionics hole.

Sentinel, you won't pull aggro, and like the stalker you can shed aggro, but you also absolutely do need to work on durability, and your offense is the worst.  Any primary with /Ena /Regen /Inv .... and others will all work.

Bots/FF Mastermind ... Buff, Fire, and Forget.  The ultimate in lazy play.

FF/Water, you'll work harder on keeping yourself alive, but depending on build you can go from ultra-durable self buffs to incarnate softcapping an entire team with Clarion+Pbu+Bubbles.  And once buffed, it's no-harm no-foul if you die as your buffs persist for 4? minutes.  Just get ressed and buff again before the next fight.

 

My personal picks would likely be: Kat/Ena Scrapper or Brute (SL softcap at 13ish with dampeners), Kat/Bio Scrapper (overall favorite), Huntsman (best malfactor build I've ever played), FF/Water (second best malfactor build).

Linea! For your Stalker, what is some of your reasoning for recommending Stj/Ena or EM/Ena? Stj has always seemed pretty appealing.

[SeraphimKensai]

3 minutes ago, StriderIV said:

Linea! For your Stalker, what is some of your reasoning for recommending Stj/Ena or EM/Ena? Stj has always seemed pretty appealing.

STJ used to be the king of Single Target damage pylon tests, with the rework that Energy Melee got, EM is pushing ahead.

 

So I would guess that's why those two sets in particular were recommended. That said Stalkers are one of my favorite AT's and get can be made to do some crazy feats (my most recent is a fire/rad stalker where I purposely took two so so stalker sets to make a beast that uses an alternating layers approach to survivability with rune of protection, particule shielding, meltdown, and shadow meld while using ground zero/rad therapy to supplement AoE).

[Saikochoro]

If you want a smooth play experience that is low maintenance with good survivability I would suggest the following:

 

-Pretty much any tanker. SR and WP is about as low maintenance as you can get. SR has better mitigation than WP, but WP can still handle pretty much anything in the game anyway. Unless you are purposefully looking for the hardest possible content you’ll be fine. Especially on teams. Take your pick for the attack set as pretty much any of them will work. Dark melee is a good pairing for SR. I like EM and MA for WP. 
 

-Brutes are also good, but they require more effort in building to take advantage of their mitigation potential. 
 

- Stalkers are great because they allow you to choose when, where, and who to fight. They have a great alpha strike and are sturdy enough for pretty much any content. I suggest energy aura and pair it with street justice or energy melee. 
 

- Sentinels can also be a great AT to play if you like relaxed play style. They have the benefit of both ranged damage and full armor. They may not do as much damage as a blaster, but they are certainly more survivable. They may not be as sturdy as the more beefy melees, but they have the benefit of range which is pretty big. Plus you don’t have to chase mobs. I suggest using energy aura if you pick energy aura. Any blast set is fine, but I personally like electric, beam, and fire. 

[Linea]

1 hour ago, StriderIV said:

Linea! For your Stalker, what is some of your reasoning for recommending Stj/Ena or EM/Ena? Stj has always seemed pretty appealing.

The top 3 for stalkers are:

1. EnM - maximum ST damage, terrible AoE.  It's AoE is bad to start with, and then gets 2/3s of the AoE ripped out in the Stalker Conversion.  I recommend EnM/EnA Scrapper for this version.
2. Stj - Best all around, Second best ST, Second Best AoE.
3. ElM - Best AoE, and not horrible ST, *IF* and only *IF* you pickup a snipe, probably Gloom and ShadowMeld.  I would also second the opinion that Stalker ElM is probably the best version of ElM in the game.  I'd almost wonder how we could backport it back to the other ATs.

Edited January 31, 2022 by Linea

[StriderIV]

3 minutes ago, Linea said:

The top 3 for stalkers are:

1. EnM - maximum ST damage, terrible AoE.  It's AoE is bad to start with, and then gets 2/3s of the AoE ripped out in the Stalker Conversion.  I recommend EnM/EnA Scrapper for this version.
2. Stj - Best all around, Second best ST, Second Best AoE.
3. ElM - Best AoE, and not horrible ST, *IF* and only *IF* you pickup a snipe, probably Gloom and ShadowMeld.

Ahhhh gotcha! So it seems that EnM might just shine MORE on a scrapper, whereas StJ really shines on a Stalker. No idea it had the second best AoE. I'll have to search around the forums for your StJ/EnA build 😛 I'm sure it is somewhere.

Edited January 31, 2022 by StriderIV