Ever come back to a AT + Power and find greatness?

[Snarky]

I alt.  A lot.  Usually in search of a great vampire.  But I have tried many a weird AT and powerset combo.  Have maybe 30 fully kitted out 50s in my garage, some with multiple builds for various content.  A lot of "empty" 50s stripped and stored.  

 

One of my obsessions was finding a great fully ranged Blaster.  Now Beam is great for ST, and I love what they have done with AR.  But I just wandered over to an old Seismic Temporal Blaster I ran at 50 for like a week a year ago.  I made an alt build for it for doing low level stuff.  Then started doing every TF/SF/Trial in order.  Just completed the 25-30 stuff and will be doing the first respecs and Katie Hannon this evening.  

 

What I discovered is that there is a great "trick" I overlooked on this playstyle.  I built him fully ranged, with concentration on ranged defense. Just not taking a couple measly temporal attacks.  No big loss. As I leveled I was impressed by how effective that very large Meteor was.  Then I got to a level where I could add Bonfire from Flame Mastery.  Now most of us have been warned about the giant knockback on this pseudo pet.  And it is monumental.  So....say I wander into a giant area packed with multiple spawns.  I (stealthed) build up and drop meteor on one spawn. I drop the very large Bonfire on their neighbor spawn. Then I go stand in the Bonfire.  It is the brave soul that comes up to melee me.  Someone who I know to center my ST attacks on.  The strange synergy of being fully ranged and then standing in a fear patch that is almost a nuke level damage patch that knocks back most?   Greatness.  

Edited May 16, 2023 by Snarky

[Nyghtmaire]

I came across a similar feeling with my bots/TA MM. The on-paper defense is insufficient. And building for sufficient recharge to get the arrows out crimps my personal defenses. But, BUT… Flash Arrow fills those gaps. Flash Arrow + group fly and/or zones of denial* (Oil Slick followed by Glue Arrow with patron immobilize) rounds off into a safe, efficient process. Flash Arrow recharges fast enough to be used on multiple groups should too many be around. I’m sure many, many players have discovered this combo (I remember weirdly enough a guide to a merc/TA combo on the Live forums - Feel the Rainbow or something similar), but for me it changed the way I play and how I thought about CoH mechanics. It expanded my horizons, man! I’m a slow learner, one of the:

 

 

 

*”denial” here means “F.U. you’re being arrested/exterminated.”

[nihilii]

All the time!

 

I used to be a /nin hater.

Why would I want a defense-based powerset when I can pop lucks on top of resistance and be that much sturdier?
End recovery power? Bah, I'll just run Ageless!

Click mez protection? Ugh, so tedious to maintain.

 

Then I did a 180° last year and this is now my favorite powerset. I run the exact thing I used to think silly, Elude + Barrier while taking care of endurance through traditional means, and I'm having a blast.

 

To be fair, the various changes as of late have truly opened new dynamics.

 

An Elude build is so much better now that the power is available at 30 rather than 38. The power remains all the way down to lvl 25 when exemplaring.

 

Click mez protection usable while mezzed also removes the burden of clicking it every 2 minutes. Huge quality of life improvement.

Edited May 16, 2023 by nihilii

[Tankshock]

Have an Ice/Time.  Bonfire works great with the rain powers, really... melts stuff.  And yeah, standing in it with Ranged is a bit of cheat mode.

[SeraphimKensai]

I generally try to build my characters for greatness right off the bat. That said I'm more likely to boot up an old character and look at the build and figure that I must of respec'd the character while drunk, which happens from time to time.

 

Occasionally I'll log into an old character and it fits like a glove and you end up missing it, like for instance I fired up a Warshade for the first time in 6 months, and I got that Ooop this thing looks so cool vibe (before the "this AT still need improvements that are outside of my contro"l vibe).

[Greycat]

It's part of why I rarely delete characters, honestly... I've had the 'this character just doesn't click for me' - come back a year later - 'this character's awesome!" experience several times. Even with my live-namesake, a fire/ss tanker.

[Snarky]

Yes, I am addicted to the giant Meteor sound and animation.  It is a reminder of how much I like knock out Blow.  Having Bonfire as a strategy tool satisfies my need for that type of gaming.  The damage, very respectable.  No Fire Blaster, but what really is?  I have one.  Yeesh, that is NOT a relaxed playstyle.

[Lazarillo]

First character I ever considered my "main", back during the game's original lifetime (starting around i5 for reference), was a Claws/Invulnerability Scrapper.  I liked the concept but wasn't a big fan of the animations, particularly with Follow-Up, which had a weird slowness to it.  When Dual Blades came out later, I changed to DB/Invuln instead and generally had a grand old time.  However, when HC came around, I kinda decided some of those animations (notably 1,000 Cuts) now were kinda unappealing, and the Claws ones didn't seem so bad.  So I swapped back, this time as Claws/Willpower, and man, lemme tell ya, upgrades to the set over the years, and the ability to convert Shockwave's KB to KD, made me a true believer.

 

The biggest frustration now is the degree to which it feels like nothing else measures up.

[Techwright]

I'm not sure it's greatness, but after failing to get a fully viable fire/fire tank in the OG but liking the look of my design, I decided to rebuilt it as a brute in Homecoming.  Better, but I was still being tossed everywhere.  I shelved it for a few years, came back to it several months ago, determined to make it work this time, and started researching and asking questions, which led me to crafted solutions.  I'm still trying to squeeze a bit more knockback protection into his design, and he's functioning more like a scrapper than a brute, but I consider him playable now, so...success.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I have many, many, (too) many alts.  Most of them were made for one purpose or another and got shelved for one reason or another.  But sometimes I come back to this game after a break and find myself looking at things with fresh eyes.

 

For example, I've been looking back into Force Fields lately.  I'm a melee player for the most part, but I've put together a few characters that thematically worked with the powerset and whatever vision was in my mind's eye at the time.  All of them well predate the FF set boost and the power creep that allows us to get powers earlier and skip the T1 of our secondary.

 

Nemesis Interrobang (lvl 47 FF/Energy Blast Defender):  Was always a solid solo play, but since I never wasted time or inf on Sudden Acceleration procs, it was mostly a very fun knockback build.  Super tanky, and with some quirky power choices (I generally like to try out every power in a set at one point or another.  Yes, I used Detention Field!)  So I dusted Nemesis?! off and gave him?! another shot.  On the revamp, it's significantly more damage-dealing with the -35% damage resistance from Repulsion Bolt and Force Bomb.  The Damping Bubble debuff resistances are crazy overkill, imo, and has me re-examining my pool choices.  I expect this build to solo +4/x8 content handily by 50 just like my melee alts, although I'm still feeling out the differences in build strategies for a defender v. .scrapper.  ?!

 

Heir Apparent (lvl 18 Water Blast/FF Corruptor):  This was a solo challenge toon that I was playing on Reunion.  It was a mixture of Ironman and no /AH -- Heir Apparent could only store and use anything he or she found or made in a base that was headed by Estate Executor (lvl 7 Time/Dark Defender), but if Heir Apparent was defeated, they were deleted (along with everything they were carrying at the time, including slotted IOs), I'd make a new alt named Heir Apparent and Estate Executor would give them access to the vault.  I think this was my third or fourth attempt by the time I got distracted.  They were all **/FF corruptors for the Personal Force Field, because so many of my defeats occur when I am AFK and that helped a lot!  But I got bored and moved on -- doubtful I will replay but I'm thinking about making a new corruptor or two without the ironman restriction.

 

Brush With Divinity (lvl 24 Fire/FF Controller):  Part of a themed villain group.  I've actually spent some time on her lately because the damage resistance debuffs will make leveling trivial.  I really enjoyed controllers on Live but I'm kind of "meh" about them so far here.  The fun part has been developing a strategy:  "Hmm, this power's mez effect provides knockback prevention, but that one doesn't.  Where do I have to use procs for -kb and so on?"  Right now, slow offense with 6-slotted Hot Feet and not nearly enough endurance reduction!

 

At some point I'll come back to the TA builds I have, also from before the TA set boost.  The anticipation is terrible; I hope it lasts.

[biostem]

When the game was live, I complete wrote off super reflexes.  As of late, I've tried it on both a Sentinel and a Tanker, and it's actually pretty good!

[Clave Dark 5]

Yup.  I leveled a (I think) Dark/Grav something awhile back to like 4o, then drifted away, he never clicked for me.  Then over a year later I made a Dark Grav something with this great concept and zoomed to 50 really quickly... then discovered I'd already had one that I had forgotten about.  Him I'll probably strip out and delte one of these days, but this is why I'm happy to let others collect dust at say 15.  Plus, who knows when a set revamp might sudden;y make them better?

[blackhand]

Yes. Ive gotten better, as the alts got into the 20s, in keeping notes as to why I shelved or neglected someone. Those are good to review as sometimes they help me realize I was missing something. For example, when I see someone else rocking well and good with something I poo pooed. Often, I hold things to too high a solo power standard for one. 

[carroto]

Not exactly the same thing but I always liked Stalkers and always liked AoE, so  that limited my choices quite a bit.  Finally after all these years decided to make a single-target specialist and it's become my favorite character.  Fits really well into the current meta where on most teams the trash mobs get AoE'ed into the dirt really fast leaving the bosses to be cleaned up.

[0th Power]

I am currently trying to like energy melee again.  Slow ET has been a killer and having to lead with total focus is annoying, but here's to hoping i like it this time.

[Snarky]

I ran this Seismic Temporal Flame through every Task Force in order

 

Then as I was poking around I looked at the beautiful sustain on Earth.  Now redoing as Seismic Earth.

 

The guy moved to Paragon for the cheap rent.  Went to Pocket D and asked to be more powerful.  Then he was turned into a 4 feet tall rock creature with Seismic Earth powers.  Null says “No returns allowed, whatever that means.”

[Wavicle]

I especially like Bonfire with a KB>KD enhancer.

Meteor's KB is too much fun to turn it to KD. And everything's dead anyway, so who cares if it's scattered?

[Neiska]

On 5/23/2023 at 7:52 PM, Snarky said:

I ran this Seismic Temporal Flame through every Task Force in order

 

Then as I was poking around I looked at the beautiful sustain on Earth.  Now redoing as Seismic Earth.

 

The guy moved to Paragon for the cheap rent.  Went to Pocket D and asked to be more powerful.  Then he was turned into a 4 feet tall rock creature with Seismic Earth powers.  Null says “No returns allowed, whatever that means.”

 

Sometimes I will run a theme build. Just for funs. It doesn't have to be the best, or the strongest, or the fastest. I had one vampire attempt, the build was Beasts/Dark MM, went "classical." Almost went beasts/storm, but I had never had a fully slotted /dark MM before that. Sure, she was one of my worst MMs, but she was a lot of fun to play.

 

One friend I know picks ATs/Powers for an entirely different reason. They host roleplay events, and pick powers with visuals he can use to help his storytelling. I think he has a few full lvl 50s, just for the powers. I dont think he actually gears/slots those characters, he just gets the levels for access to everything. I am not sure if that counts as a theme, or even a build, more of a "for the special effects" kind of option. Which I haven't really seen a lot of.

[Player2]

What is the best vampire themed AT & powerset combo?  And what are some unusual vampire concept combos?

[rolandgrey]

Yeah.  Dominators.  I used to be unable to play them.  They didn't make sense to me.  Worse, my introduction to Dominators was a Mind Control/Psionic Assault Dominator, and I built it so it had almost no melee attacks.  The thinking was "This is a squishy character, and needs to stay away from the enemies..."  So, I've learned since that is a poor way to play a Dominator, but I'm still rather stung on the Mind/Psi Dom.  Frankly, just about anything with psychic damage...  At least, from the player's side.  It seems NPCs have really powerful psychic damage, but players get this weird, sleepy version.

 

Dominators are still a bit rare for me to roll up.  I need a really good concept to slap one together.  However, once I do, I've found them to be quite enjoyable.

[Luminara]

Found?  No.  Greatness isn't found, it finds you.  Usually when you're in a compromising position.  I remember one time when my pants were around my ankles and...

 

Er...

 

Right, back to reading my book.

[Lazarillo]

3 hours ago, Player2 said:

And what are some unusual vampire concept combos?

I occasionally play a vampire Illusion/Savage Dominator.  It's pretty outside the box, but feels like a nice mix with the sort of feral blood-crazed creature in the secondary (including a heal that isn't explicitly draining life, but is based on lusting for blood), with some dark magic-y feeling stuff.  Ravens, confounding visions, etc, all feels in spirit.  Maybe Mind instead of Illusion if you want something a little less...flashy.

[Player2]

2 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

I occasionally play a vampire Illusion/Savage Dominator.  It's pretty outside the box, but feels like a nice mix with the sort of feral blood-crazed creature in the secondary (including a heal that isn't explicitly draining life, but is based on lusting for blood), with some dark magic-y feeling stuff.  Ravens, confounding visions, etc, all feels in spirit.  Maybe Mind instead of Illusion if you want something a little less...flashy.

I was thinking Mind/Dark Dominator would be pretty standard.  You get a self-heal life-draining attack in dark plus powerful mind mojo.

[Lazarillo]

20 minutes ago, Player2 said:

I was thinking Mind/Dark Dominator would be pretty standard.  You get a self-heal life-draining attack in dark plus powerful mind mojo.

Well, you asked for "unusual" so I was trying to avoid Dark sets in general.  But yeah, such a combo also seems totally appropriate.

[TygerDarkstorm]

7 hours ago, Player2 said:

What is the best vampire themed AT & powerset combo?  And what are some unusual vampire concept combos?

Human form Warshade. Pretty much everything you do is about leeching life from others to power yourself, including rezzing yourself