Best similar builds for trio play

[Story Archer]

So I'm going to be playing with two other people and we're all going to use identical builds when we're playing together. What Archetype/Power Sets would you suggest? No Controllers or Masterminds, please.

 

At the moment Fire/Rad Corruptor is leading the list.

Edited March 26 by Story Archer

[cronus]

I would've said all VEAT for the buffs

[RobotLove]

Three cold/sonic or cold/ice (if you like proc heavy builds) Defenders will tear through pretty much anything in the game.

 

Second place would go to time/ or rad/.

 

Rad/ needs a little more coordination. Time/ is easier to play and works well even on budget builds.

Edited March 26 by RobotLove

[Clave Dark 5]

Really anything you like, play what you enjoy playing and can all agree on, no need to overthink this.

[SeraphimKensai]

Given the fact that you all want to play the same toon and the caveat of no controllers/masterminds.... I'd suggest to go ice/nature corruptors.

 

The reasoning...

• although fire does a little more damage, ice works damn well on a corruptor benefiting from scourge on ice storm and blizzard. Your attacks also slow incoming damage and with three sets of ice blast that's a lot of slow.
• nature is a beast, it has some decent debuffs that reduce incoming damage, tohit, resistance, and regen. It has three pbaoe click buffs that boost your damage, tohit, endurance discount, absorb levels, healing and resistance. They can be made perma and they stack from other players. you also have access to extra healing if you need it, but here's a kicker...you get a triple stack of entangling aura, so anything within 15 feet of the three of you is held short of an AV.

All the stacked resistance plus -damage on your enemies from your debuffs and not much is going to be able to bring you down. Well built you'll be at resistance caps. You could build defense, but given there's three of you it's not really needed as you can heal anything that gets through. The end discount and tohit stacking will also allow you to proc out more attacks for more damage.

[MonteCarla]

Fire Corrupters is probably the best choice for blast sets and archetypes. You leverage Scourge and put out more base dmage than anyone. And you dont need any more debuff effects with the right support sets.

 

All take Assault (+45% Damage) and Manouvers, slotted (+12.5% Defence)

 

My top three contenders in order are:

 

3 x Time Manipulation

+50% Damage from double Temporal Selection

+60% (double TS) + 150% (triple Chrono Shift) = 210% Recharge.

+300% Regen from TS

+45% Defence +30% To Hit from triple Farisght

A bit of patchy +Recovery from ChronoShift, probably best to stagger this.

No mez protection beyond rarely getting hit.

-66% Res debuff from Slowed Response, up every 20s or so, add another -60% for Achilles Heel procs. (Do they stack from different casters?)

-60% Damage debuff from Triple Time's Juncture

-- Safest, with best +Rech and better damage boost than Empathy

 

3 x Empathy corrupters:

+35% Defence, +50% Damage, +30% To Hit from double Fortiitude

+200% Recharge from double Adrenalin Boost.

+4000% Regen or something crazy from triple auras and double AB, and more Energy than you can possibly consume.

Full mez protection and +Perception from Clear Mind

No - Res debuffs.

-- Very safe with decent damage output boost

 

3 x Rad Emission

+60% Damage from Triple AM

+90% Recharge

+90% Recovery

-66% Res debuff from 3 x Enervating Field, fast cast toggle

-100% To hit and -Def on Rad Infection, slow casting toggle

Mez resistance - mezzes wear off ultra-quick but still interrupt. 

No defence bonus

Choking Cloud x3 is awesome "passive active defence"!

 

 

Empathy and Time will have you dying only of boredom as you rarely take a hit, and heal instantly. Time has better damage output due to the -Res.

Build up and Nuke from 3 Fire Corrupters opening every spawn will be pretty amazing at that Recharge.

Empathy is safer and gives mez protection, Time give you the -Res debuff.

 

Radiation Emission is not quite as good, requiring a bit more active defence. But everyone will be held pretty quickly by Choking Cloud. It's weakness will be AV's - the holds wont work and the -To Hit gets taken down a lot by purple triangles. And you get a slightly less stellar +Recharge, translating into a 10 second or so further wait for your nukes to be back up?

 

 

3 x Nature, since it got a mention

+53% Res to all (3 x wild Growth)

+200% damage (3 x Overgrowth)

No +Defence, no +Recharge, but heals and absorbs

-66% Res on a single target (corrosive enzymes)

It would be very good, but not as stellar as Time, Empathy or Rad.

 

VEATS give you an extra +45% damage, some -Res and more +Defence than you ever need?

No +Recharge or +Recovery though, and less base damage than a Fire Corrupter.

 

(I love overthinking this, @Clave Dark 5 🙂 )

 

 

Edited March 26 by MonteCarla

[Story Archer]

22 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

Fire Corrupters is probably the best choice for blast sets and archetypes. You leverage Scourge and put out more base dmage than anyone. And you dont need any more debuff effects with the right support sets.

 

All take Assault (+45% Damage) and Manouvers, slotted (+12.5% Defence)

 

My top three contenders in order are:

 

3 x Time Manipulation

+50% Damage from double Temporal Selection

+60% (double TS) + 150% (triple Chrono Shift) = 210% Recharge.

+300% Regen from TS

+45% Defence +30% To Hit from triple Farisght

A bit of patchy +Recovery from ChronoShift, probably best to stagger this.

No mez protection beyond rarely getting hit.

-66% Res debuff from Slowed Response, up every 20s or so, add another -60% for Achilles Heel procs. (Do they stack from different casters?)

-60% Damage debuff from Triple Time's Juncture

-- Safest, with best +Rech and better damage boost than Empathy

 

3 x Empathy corrupters:

+35% Defence, +50% Damage, +30% To Hit from double Fortiitude

+200% Recharge from double Adrenalin Boost.

+4000% Regen or something crazy from triple auras and double AB, and more Energy than you can possibly consume.

Full mez protection and +Perception from Clear Mind

No - Res debuffs.

-- Very safe with decent damage output boost

 

3 x Rad Emission

+60% Damage from Triple AM

+90% Recharge

+90% Recovery

-66% Res debuff from 3 x Enervating Field, fast cast toggle

-100% To hit and -Def on Rad Infection, slow casting toggle

Mez resistance - mezzes wear off ultra-quick but still interrupt. 

No defence bonus

Choking Cloud x3 is awesome "passive active defence"!

 

 

Empathy and Time will have you dying only of boredom as you rarely take a hit, and heal instantly. Time has better damage output due to the -Res.

Build up and Nuke from 3 Fire Corrupters opening every spawn will be pretty amazing at that Recharge.

Empathy is safer and gives mez protection, Time give you the -Res debuff.

 

Radiation Emission is not quite as good, requiring a bit more active defence. But everyone will be held pretty quickly by Choking Cloud. It's weakness will be AV's - the holds wont work and the -To Hit gets taken down a lot by purple triangles. And you get a slightly less stellar +Recharge, translating into a 10 second or so further wait for your nukes to be back up?

 

 

3 x Nature, since it got a mention

+53% Res to all (3 x wild Growth)

+200% damage (3 x Overgrowth)

No +Defence, no +Recharge, but heals and absorbs

-66% Res on a single target (corrosive enzymes)

It would be very good, but not as stellar as Time, Empathy or Rad.

 

VEATS give you an extra +45% damage, some -Res and more +Defence than you ever need?

No +Recharge or +Recovery though, and less base damage than a Fire Corrupter.

 

(I love overthinking this, @Clave Dark 5 🙂 )

 

 

 

Thank you very much for taking the time to respond in so much detail, this is exactly what I was hoping for.

 

The two people I'm playing with are very new and I just don't have any experience with the Time set, but you've got me looking pretty hard at Empathy now. I do have a couple of questions/concerns, mainly about being able to keep the buffs up. Fortitude isn't a problem, but looking at Mids, Recovery Aura, Regen Aura and AB all have a duration of 90s with base recharges of 500s, 500s and 300s respectively. How do I get them perma? FWIW, I expect the majority of the time spent playing these characters will be pre-50, so I can't assume we're always going to have maxed out purple IO's on everything. 

 

That's one of the things I have to take into account and why Rad came to mind first - you get RI and AM pretty much right off the bat, instead of having to wait til late 20's/early 30's for the stuff that makes the build go.

Edited March 26 by Story Archer

[MonteCarla]

You slot them for Recharge. +100%.

You have double Adrenalin Boost +200%

Hasten gives you +70% recharge

That makes them recharge in less than a quarter of the time.

 

So AB recharges in 60 seconds... Ahh, I think my maths is off. Sorry. You can't have double AB up all the time on an Empathy trio. 

 

The Auras will recharge in around 120 seconds, so you'll maybe have two of them out of three up at any time if you stagger them.

 

That put Empathy down a little bit more over Time.

 

Time is really easy to play, just gather to Chrono Shift/Farsight every two minutes, Temporal Select each other when its up, and blast away.

 

You really will die of boredom 🙂

I've played two Empathy duos with friends in the past couple of years and we abandoned them in the 40s because nothing was a challenge!

 

And yeah, these sets will all function very well with just SO's as you level.

 

PS Experimental Injection is probably a great idea for Time to give you that mez protection and some more +Recovery

Edited March 26 by MonteCarla

[Story Archer]

15 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

You slot them for Recharge. +100%.

You have double Adrenalin Boost +200%

Hasten gives you +70% recharge

That makes them recharge in less than a quarter of the time.

 

So AB recharges in 60 seconds... Ahh, I think my maths is off. Sorry. You can't have double AB up all the time on an Empathy trio. 

 

The Auras will recharge in around 120 seconds, so you'll maybe have two of them out of three up at any time if you stagger them.

 

That put Empathy down a little bit more over Time.

 

Time is really easy to play, just gather to Chrono Shift/Farsight every two minutes, Temporal Select each other when its up, and blast away.

 

You really will die of boredom 🙂

I've played two Empathy duos with friends in the past couple of years and we abandoned them in the 40s because nothing was a challenge!

 

And yeah, these sets will all function very well with just SO's as you level.

 

PS Experimental Injection is probably a great idea for Time to give you that mez protection and some more +Recovery

 

I'm looking into Time as we speak - this is the other consideration (I edited the post while you were responding to it). Also, aren't we capped at 300% recharge?

 

FWIW, I expect the majority of the time spent playing these characters will be pre-50, so I can't assume we're always going to have maxed out purple IO's on everything. 

 

That's one of the things I have to take into account and why Rad came to mind first - you get RI and AM pretty much right off the bat, instead of having to wait til late 20's/early 30's for the stuff that makes the build go.

 

Edited March 26 by Story Archer

[Scarlet Shocker]

Storm/Dark Defenders

 

You get Freezing Rain earlier than Sleet (same power different name) nothing can come near you to melee you and the ranged stuff won't be able to touch you because it's blind

[biostem]

5 hours ago, Story Archer said:

I'm going to be playing with two other people and we're all going to use identical builds when we're playing together

I'd go with 3 Sentinels;  You'll all be rather sturdy and have the range to cover each other's backs.  On top of all that, if you wanted a little diversification of powers, you could take different APPs/PPPs, some of which offer nice ally/PBAoE heals to supplement your trio.

[Snarky]

Yeah. Fire Corr.  I have not used rad but take a look at Dark. Very powerful on  Corr. Three Fire/Dark Corr would be vicious

[MonteCarla]

Storm Defenders and Dark Defenders would do some nice force amplification, but they don't buff each other's recharge, or provide any endurance tools.

In both cases you get 18% more defence and 50% resistance to 3 exotic types via the stealth auras, and the same level of AoE -Res that Time gives, but with no -Damage.

 

3 Sentinels will just add together, no multiplication. And they won't be any sturdier than 3 mutually buffing Corrupters.

 

These are all excellent solo choices.

 

You'd still have a good time with three of them, but they don't super-mesh the way Time, Empathy and Radiation do.

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

what about Fire/Rad corrs?

 

[MonteCarla]

Fire/Rad Corrupters are my number 3 choice, Scarlet! 🙂

See my big first post above for why.

[Story Archer]

12 hours ago, Snarky said:

Yeah. Fire Corr.  I have not used rad but take a look at Dark. Very powerful on  Corr. Three Fire/Dark Corr would be vicious

 

I'm a huge Dark guy (Dark/Dark is my favorite controller), but the stacking +Recharge and +Endurance really are must-haves for me and Dark just doesn't do that, unfortunately.

[Story Archer]

12 hours ago, Snarky said:

Yeah. Fire Corr.  I have not used rad but take a look at Dark. Very powerful on  Corr. Three Fire/Dark Corr would be vicious

 

I think that's what we're going to go with. The fact that /Rad is so front-loaded is what put it over the top for me, so we don't have to wait until 25+ for the builds to really start syncing together.

[Ukase]

Sorry - I've got to echo ice corruptor. The reason why ice gets the nod over fire is because two are newer players. The hold from freeze ray is a very quick animation. When you're newer, using a simple hold like Freeze Ray is pretty nice. And some of you are talking about fire like it's in a whole different tier of dps. It's not. It might slightly eke out fire. 

Add to that - there's blizzard. Yes, it's DoT, as opposed to burst damage like inferno, but it's also a Targeted AoE so our newer players don't have to enter melee unless they want to do so. 

For the secondary, they could go natty, rad, dark - I'm not sure it matters that much. Empath is straightforward, but as mentioned, some of the better powers come later. 

Rad's only real draw backs are the lack of any status protection like Clear Mind, (but with AM, the holds/mez don't last as long) and the somewhat awkward time spent placing lingering radiation and radiation infection and enervating field - if they take all 3 - on the stronger bosses or AVs. 

Dark is a fine secondary...3 tar patches? 3 dark servants? 3 Twilight Grasps? one might miss, but surely not both of the other two. 
I enjoyed my ice/dark corruptor a lot more than my fire/dark corruptor. Not real sure why, but I think it was the holds the ice primary has. From where I sat, the dps is pretty much the same. There was never an incident where I thought, "Gee, my fire corruptor would have killed this npc by now". 

but, opinions will vary. 

If it were me, I'd try to convince the other two to make 3 different characters each. That is, each player creates the same 3 characters. Play each for a few missions, and see how they like them. Some folks are better geared towards melee; some ranged, some both. Some folks are better off with a secondary that would have buffs that last 4 minutes, or might fare better with debuffs, like dark. But, that's just me. 

[Story Archer]

22 hours ago, Ukase said:

Sorry - I've got to echo ice corruptor. The reason why ice gets the nod over fire is because two are newer players. The hold from freeze ray is a very quick animation. When you're newer, using a simple hold like Freeze Ray is pretty nice. And some of you are talking about fire like it's in a whole different tier of dps. It's not. It might slightly eke out fire. 

Add to that - there's blizzard. Yes, it's DoT, as opposed to burst damage like inferno, but it's also a Targeted AoE so our newer players don't have to enter melee unless they want to do so. 

For the secondary, they could go natty, rad, dark - I'm not sure it matters that much. Empath is straightforward, but as mentioned, some of the better powers come later. 

Rad's only real draw backs are the lack of any status protection like Clear Mind, (but with AM, the holds/mez don't last as long) and the somewhat awkward time spent placing lingering radiation and radiation infection and enervating field - if they take all 3 - on the stronger bosses or AVs. 

Dark is a fine secondary...3 tar patches? 3 dark servants? 3 Twilight Grasps? one might miss, but surely not both of the other two. 
I enjoyed my ice/dark corruptor a lot more than my fire/dark corruptor. Not real sure why, but I think it was the holds the ice primary has. From where I sat, the dps is pretty much the same. There was never an incident where I thought, "Gee, my fire corruptor would have killed this npc by now". 

but, opinions will vary. 

If it were me, I'd try to convince the other two to make 3 different characters each. That is, each player creates the same 3 characters. Play each for a few missions, and see how they like them. Some folks are better geared towards melee; some ranged, some both. Some folks are better off with a secondary that would have buffs that last 4 minutes, or might fare better with debuffs, like dark. But, that's just me. 

 

I'm a big fan of Ice and Dark. Where Dark falls short in this particular venture is the lack of +Recharge and +Endurance. I suppose an argument can be made for a slower, more measured approach for newer players, but removing triple stacked AM's creates a gap that Dark just can't fill. As for Ice, I'm not opposed to it at all, I think both are very strong. At the moment, since we're planning on stacking Choking Clouds, there should be little fear of wading into melee, especially once RI has been placed. To be honest, as nice as that early Hold is, by the mid levels things should be dying so quickly there really won't be any point to holding individual targets most of the time.

 

The build I've put together has been set up to give a broad range of experience for lots of different types of abilities - toggle buffs and debuffs, click buffs and debuffs, single target ranged and melee damage, AoE and PBAoE damage, holds, heals - pretty much everything but pets. I'm sure they'll be making plenty of their own builds based on what they liked most from our play.

[Clave Dark 5]

@MonteCarla And you overthought it well, can't deny it!

[Doomguide2005]

Well dang the internet ate my earlier response.  

 

3 Empaths is Green Machine territory.  You will be a near unstoppable force on SOs alone.

Defense will be soft capped by lvl 13 onward.  You will laugh at mez.  All mez no Sleep or Fear holes etc..   Adrenaline Boost comes online at 26th as a Defender.  Between Hasten (+70%), slotting (~+100%) and Adrenaline Boost (+100%) you're all but perma-Hasten (275%).  Day job or empowerment buffs and you're there (or almost any single set bonus for recharge like 1 LotG 7.5 increased recharge).  PS: the recharge hard cap is +400% cutting recharge to 1/5th.   So no the Auras are never perma.  But they safely overlap so you should always be under the effects of at least one of each and often two.  No more endurance worries.  AB is perma but only 1.  Standard GM buffing is you use AB on the next Empath on the team list (and Fortitude on the next two).  Between AB and Regen Aura you'll be pushing the regeneration hard cap of 2000% ... the one shot rule, massive regen and your HA/HO damage will just vanish and you'll be nearly impossible to kill when you add in the rest of the buffs.  Your To Hit buffs will mean you'll rarely miss even with no accuracy enhancement (~+90% for 3 GMs).  And again for emphasis all on SOs.  Sets and special IOs would just make for gravy and make things a bit less build strict.  The only thing about a small team of all Empaths in no inherent regen debuff.  It's coming from either pet(s), Envenomed Daggers or both.  Without AVs can become a hopeless draw.  They can't kill you and you'll have trouble putting them down especially in a reasonable time frame.  But 3 buffed Shivans etc. is a whole other thing.  Incarnates are again more high octane gravy (Lore pets and judgement nukes).

Edited March 29 by Doomguide2005

[Yomo Kimyata]

Three Kinetic Melee/Regeneration scrappers!

[Major_Decoy]

I am going to deliberately misinterpret the prompt.

 

Radiation/Dark Tank, Dark/Radiation Corrupter, Radiation/Dark Blaster.

Edited March 29 by Major_Decoy
If it hadn't been for "no controller" I would have said Rad/Dark Tank, Dark/Rad Controller, Rad/Dark Corrupter.