Cliche' builds

[Mr. Apocalypse]

Hi all

 

I have been on a fire farming kick lately and I have recently decided to PL myself a collection of the most Cliche' builds for each AT while also trying to hit the inf cap.  My goal is to have at least 2 of every AT including epics fully outfitted with the best builds possible for whatever type of content I want to do with them. For now they they will just be door sitting mules for recipe and salvage drops. I am not looking for builds at this point just power set combos that seem to be the most common choices.

 

In the past I have limited myself to only villain ATs, I have only recently started messing around with the Hero ATs

 

 

I currently have

@ lvl50 completed builds

Rob/dark/Soul -MM - Mr. Apocalypse

Rad/fire/Mu - Brute - Neutron Mamba

Spines/Fire/Mu - Brute - Cosmic Cobra

Rad/Kin/Mace - Corruptor - Tasty Tart

 

I have a about 10 others that have hit 50, but have not been trained up or have no final build decided upon.

 

What do you think are the most commonly picked AT power set combos?

 

Maybe this list can also serve to help those that want to be different, from choosing the most common when stepping into a new AT.

 

[Gobbledygook]

Inv/SS Tank

[Bill Z Bubba]

Claws/Regen Scrapper (no really, don't do this)

Emp/Nrg Defender (no, really, pls don't do this)

Dark/Dark Defender (yea, it rocks, I don't have one, why bother?)

Claws/* cuz claws is fuckin awesome... yea, do this.

[Psyonico]

56 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Emp/Nrg Defender (no, really, pls don't do this)

 

Hey! My first 50 on live was an Emp/Energy, what's wrong with that?

[Bill Z Bubba]

11 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

Hey! My first 50 on live was an Emp/Energy, what's wrong with that?

 

My first non-BZB character on live was an emp/nrg. There's EVERYTHING wrong with it!

[Errants]

Fire/Psi Blaster

Fire/Rad Controller

Storm/Water Defender

Kat/DA Scrapper

Inv/SS Tanker

PB

WS

[SeraphimKensai]

@Psyonicoand @Bill Z Bubba I'm also guilty of the infamous Emp/Energy Defender which I mained for a number of years especially for pvp.

 

that said OP, literally just make whatever builds you want. I started HC with the idea of one of each AT, then that kept growing and I'm slowly on my way to 150 or so, last time I counted was around 130 lvl 50s. The problem when you get to this point is hoping you don't inadvertently double up a powerset combo.

[Nemu]

Most folks tend to ignore synergy and go with thematic matching combos like fire/fire, ice/ice, etc... Here's my heroside breakdown

 

On the blaster side Fire/Fire/Fire is very popular, as well as energy/energy/force.

 

Emp/Psi is pretty cliche and popular back in the day when people thought rocking their aura = doing their jobs and new people that played support wanted to be "sexy nurse healorz" and be congratulated on their "great healz" and pouted when people don't "gather around for RAs". Meanwhile dark/darkity/dark defenders stood up in their own emo ways against the Healzors tide and fought back. This became known as the great "Nurse X vs Dark X" war.

 

Inv/SS tanks are pretty ubiquitous even today, and back in the day Stone tanks were "required" for harder content, you can stay on theme and go stone/stone, since you are already making fire armor brutes I'm skipping fire armor for tanks. (otherwise I'd also recommend a dumpster diving Fire/Ice Tank)

 

Wolverine clones were everywhere when this game came out so Claws/Regen is pretty cliche, when dual blades came out with willpower there were so many DB/WP scrappers even though there was very little synergy, but I'd rank that as a cliche pairing given the history and context of this game.

 

Ill/rad is the classic AV killer back in the days, and fire/kin trollers were the premier farming troller, so those two are both very cliche

 

Sentinels are too new for me to give any historical context so I'll pass.

[High_Beam]

AR/Devices - I had two on live, at the same time, both level 50, one male and one female.  Like it was going to end up differently because I stopped playing them before Set IOs and Incarnates.  There was no story, no reason for it other than guns and stuff.  For a couple of years I desperately hoped they would develop something like a Grenades secondary (I still do since they could be like trick arrow excuse me tactical arrow but different) so I could roll a new one.  Oh yeah then add to that the Mercs/Traps MM, aka soft AR/Dev Blaster because extra assault rifle from your mercs.  I was a cliché.  Well except that I didn't make Punisher clones.  Munitions Mistress still holds a soft place in my heart however.

 

I rolled an Emp/Psi not because of the reasons mentioned by Nemu but because I had a best friend in game who ran an emp/psi and when she left I created one in her honor.

[Redletter]

I mean, the most cliche builds are builds people play because they're thematically congruous.

 

Rad/Rad Sentinel comes to my mind as the most cliche sentinel build, because it's the nuke sentinel. It... doesnt make it good. I mean, it's not bad, but like... it's a sentinel. Do you WANT to level a sentinel for content? What content NEEDS a sentinel?

 

I mean. I dunno. But Rad/Rad is probably the sentinel I see the most. Because casting nuke, like, 3 times as your MAIN attack string is fun -- which is the REAL reason people play any powerset combos that they do.

 

Plants/Nature Controller also comes to mind. Why is is popular? Is it because Plants and Nature are super strong? No, silly, it's because it lets people play as *LEGALLY DISTINCT PLANT HERO WHO IS NOT UNDER ANY MEANS POISON IVY*...

 

Plants and Nature just HAPPEN to ALSO be super strong...

[Marshal_General]

AR/Dev blaster is pretty cliche'.

[Redletter]

5 hours ago, Marshal_General said:

AR/Dev blaster is pretty cliche'.

 

I would revise this to DP/Dev or BR/Dev nowadays. I just don't see AR as much.

 

Which reminds me! Arch/TA blasters are 'cliche' too. Can you imagine? A bow user, USING a BOW?! How uninspired.

[roleki]

I feel like Energy/Energy Blaster should go on the list.  Dont see them much on HC, but good lord they were everywhere on Live.

[High_Beam]

3 hours ago, roleki said:

I feel like Energy/Energy Blaster should go on the list.  Dont see them much on HC, but good lord they were everywhere on Live.

That was my signature character High Beam.  And zero melee powers taken to boot!  OMG now I have to re-roll my beloved cliche.

[ZorkNemesis]

Inv/SS Tank with flight is the classic "Flying Brick" setup, SS/Inv Brute as well.

 

Fire/Kin Controller.  Everyone has one but me it seems.

 

Fire/Fire and Energy/Energy Blasters are very common.  Energy/Energy was a staple "flavor of the month" combo back on live and was also my first ever level 50 character back in I4.

 

AR/Dev is also a classic Blaster combo, but less common these days since AR isn't so good.

 

Emp/Psi Defender is a pretty standard defender, Empathy typically extends itself to psionics in theming.  Arch/Trick is also somewhat commonplace since for the longest time this was viewed as the only way to make Trick Arrow viable in any capacity (people really hate weapon redraw).

 

Claws/Regen Scrapper.  NCSoft and Cryptic got sued by Marvel over this one due to the sheer number of Wolverine clones.

 

Energy/Energy Stalker was a popular setup on live days.  Energy on a Stalker lacks AoE but still put out some serious hurt.

 

Robots/Forcefield Mastermind.  The classic super tanky MM.

 

I'm drawing blanks on cliche Dominators and Corrupters.  I don't recall them ever having a truly cliche build of sorts, but I also always played on lower population servers and don't know what the rest of the game was doing.

[Errants]

SS/Stone Brute
Fire/Dark Corrupter
Mind/Psi Dominator
Mercs/Traps or Bots/FF MM

Nrg/Regen or Nin/Nin Stalker

Realized I forgot villain AT's.

[tidge]

On 6/20/2022 at 1:34 PM, Mr. Apocalypse said:

What do you think are the most commonly picked AT power set combos?

 

Many have been mentioned. Without passing judgement on any player who chooses to make and play any of the following, these seem pretty cliché:

 

(Blaster) Dual Pistols/Martial Combat fills the need for very tropey action heros.

(Mastermind) Robotics/Traps feels very "classic" to me, as does Demons/Dark... I don't typically notice MMs playing Demons/Thermal, maybe because those players all went /Time?

[Bill Z Bubba]

12 minutes ago, tidge said:

I don't typically notice MMs playing Demons/Thermal, maybe because those players all went /Time?

 

I went from demons/time to demons/thermal. Still sucked.

[Ceejer]

Plant/Thorny Dom. When you want to take down the blue boy scout you get the green. 

Edited June 26, 2022 by Ceejer
Spelling, what else.

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 hours ago, Ceejer said:

you the the green. 

 

?

 

 

[Akalabeth]

I didn't see anyone mention archery/trick arrow or trick arrow/archery?

[Armaaz]

For corruptors I'd say fire or ice for primary and cold, kin or dark for secondary.

[Gobbledygook]

On 6/26/2022 at 5:28 PM, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

?

 

 

Poison Ivy when she controlled Superman.

Maybe.

[biostem]

On 6/29/2022 at 10:48 AM, Akalabeth said:

I didn't see anyone mention archery/trick arrow or trick arrow/archery?

I almost feel like archery/nature or nature/archery would be more cliche, (thinking your stereotypical "ranger", here)...

[Shocktacular]

Wasn't there a period of time when everyone and their cousin was making an elec/bio sentinel?

With controllers, on Live it was always fire/kin, fire/rad, or ill/rad as far as I know. I'm also fairly confident in the fire/psi dominator being the main dom build from Live, as well as inv/SS tank.

MMs were mostly bots/FF, bots/traps, or thugs/traps IIRC. 

I see a lot of rad/fire brutes nowadays for farming. Not to sure about other ATs.

 

Edited July 5, 2022 by Shocktacular