Increasing the damage potential of the team !!!

[smnolimits42]

So i want to increase the damage potential of my team.  I'm thinking this sounds like a Kinetic Defender, am i wrong ??  Would Fire be the best seondary, or maybe sonic ??

[Lunar Ronin]

IMO, if you want to do Kinetics, you're better off going Corruptor as you'd be somewhat wasting your own damage potential.  Especially if you want to go with Fire Blast.  Another option would be a Sonic Resonance Defender, which is very underrated.  It'd smoothly bump up your team's damage potential substantially.

[smnolimits43]

Interesting, how so ?

[Frosticus]

Trick Arrow is another nice option. Disruption arrow is a beefy -40% res, gets out really fast and is a huge aoe that lasts a long time. Also recharges much faster than most other -res powers, so it is up every spawn no matter how fast the team is going.

[Renatos1023]

A Kin/Sonic defender might be your best +dam/-res combo. Meaning you boost your team's offense and lower the enemy's resistance, pretty much maxing the damage your team can dish out. As Frosticus said above, TA also puts out some good debuffs (probably my fave debuff set tbh) both -res, -def, and a bunch of others.

 

I love Sonic Resonance but IMO it lacks in the -res department, especially if the ally-targeted toggle drops (or if the ally wanders off, goes afk, dies, etc...your -res in Sonic Resonance really relies on a single ally being in the middle of a mob). IMO, Sonic Resonance needs some work -- fantastic set thematically, but IMO from the title of your post with "maxing team damage" I think Kin/Sonic or TA/Sonic could probably do a better job. Sonic Blast lowers resistance so if you want to max your team's damage output that would be my choice on the blast set, plus it has the best PBAoE nuke IMO. 

 

Cold/ is also a fantastic set, once you get your recharge up and get perma-Sleet and Heat Exhaustion's recharge down, you can really pump up a team's damage. Both do -resistance and Sleet also has a nice chunk of -def. My Cold/Ice is one of my favorite defenders. 

[MoonSheep]

i main a kin/sonic def, it’s pretty good

 

the -res component of sonic doesn’t do much thesedays, so i’d choose whichever secondary you find fun. applying SB regularly to the team and casting FS at the right time is the most important aspect of playing a kin

[schrodingercat]

Cold domination is great for boosting damage potential because it contains sleet, which has -def and -res. It also has heat loss, which boosts your recovery for every target you hit with it, centered in a radius around the target. As an extra goodie, heat loss provides a significant -res debuff. Cold gets a -def debuff in their first power, as well. Your team will hit harder and live longer thanks to your ice shields, which provide 24-25% positional defense and type defense + resistance to cold and fire, as well as arctic fog which is a defense/resist toggle.

 

Trick Arrow is also a fantastic debuffing set and I've run both up to 50 now, with a TA/sonic and a cold/storm. I also tried cold/sonic, but i picked up storm when the new set came out and making things blast in the air from lightning strikes is worth the amusement to not have the sonic debuffs to me.

 

Force field is one I built entirely around debuffing, by putting -res procs in the aoe -res attack and taking rad as a secondary. I give things -100% defense and -60% res while giving my team huge armor buffs. i still make people sad by not giving them other buffs because people are obnoxious, so i don't play it as much, even though i really love the character.

 

Other sets with significant -resistance are poison, rad, traps, time, thermal, storm, force field, and dark.

 

done in order of recharge/reusability ease:

 

Rad has a -res toggle and a -def toggle

sonic has a -res toggle, a single target -res attack, and a -def patch

poison has a quick recasting -res/-def aoe

trick arrow has a quick recasting -res aoe, -def aoe, and another combined aoe debuff

Force field has an aoe -res attack and a single target -res attack and a quick recasting debuff that debuffs everything while buffing your teams resistance to debuffs

storm has freezing rain, an aoe -res/-def patch

Traps has acid mortar, which spews out -res/-def attacks

Dark has a -res patch

time has an aoe -res/-def debuff

thermal has an aoe -res/-def debuff

 

For sets that provide active damage to the team, kin, rad, time, pain, empathy, electric, nature, and thermal all have powers that directly boost the damage of their team.

 

And remember, every defender can give their whole team 18.75% more damage by taking assault, or taking sonic attack as a secondary.

 

I probably missed one!

Edited March 31 by schrodingercat

[Hjarki]

I'd caution against getting too invested in the idea that your buffs/debuffs are particularly useful to your group.

 

Consider that Kinetics player. Fulcrum Shift is fantastic if you're duo'ing with a traditional Scrapper. But what if you're with a Blaster? They're not diving into the middle of crowds except momentarily to throw their ultimate - and they'll be at/near the +damage cap already when that happens. That Scrapper is probably working out well, but a Stalker who has Build Up/Gaussian's 50% of the time? They mostly don't care about your Fulcrum Shift.

 

Tar Patch is a great debuff. But by the time it lands, your team has likely already spent all of their alpha strike abilities so you're just buffing the low damage part of their cycle.

 

Ultimately, there's only one player who you know is getting the full benefit of your buffs/debuffs: you. So treat your support set more like an armor set for your personal benefit. The fact that it also might potentially help someone else should be a bonus, not a justification for the set. When you look at an ability like Ice Shield, your first thought shouldn't be that you can increase defense/resist on others but that you can use it to slot defense/resist set bonuses that you need.

[Purrfekshawn]

On 3/31/2024 at 7:06 PM, schrodingercat said:

Other sets with significant -resistance are poison, rad, traps, time, thermal, storm, force field, and dark.

 

I probably missed one!

 

There's also Pain Domination - it has -DEF/-RES (Anguishing Cry) that can be slotted with Achilles, also World of Pain for +DAMAGE to teammates, and Single Target +DAMAGE. It works better for Corruptors lMO, as it seems to be extremely lazy (not active), in all cases except for (AoE) heals.

[schrodingercat]

12 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'd caution against getting too invested in the idea that your buffs/debuffs are particularly useful to your group.

 

Consider that Kinetics player. Fulcrum Shift is fantastic if you're duo'ing with a traditional Scrapper. But what if you're with a Blaster? They're not diving into the middle of crowds except momentarily to throw their ultimate - and they'll be at/near the +damage cap already when that happens. That Scrapper is probably working out well, but a Stalker who has Build Up/Gaussian's 50% of the time? They mostly don't care about your Fulcrum Shift.

 

Tar Patch is a great debuff. But by the time it lands, your team has likely already spent all of their alpha strike abilities so you're just buffing the low damage part of their cycle.

 

Ultimately, there's only one player who you know is getting the full benefit of your buffs/debuffs: you. So treat your support set more like an armor set for your personal benefit. The fact that it also might potentially help someone else should be a bonus, not a justification for the set. When you look at an ability like Ice Shield, your first thought shouldn't be that you can increase defense/resist on others but that you can use it to slot defense/resist set bonuses that you need.

 

this is all 100% correct. I am extremely supporty when I support, but the support all primarily helps me. I also see "keeping x person on their feet" as a way to boost my personal damage, because I can keep killing without worrying about mobs attacking me.

[MoonSheep]

16 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'd caution against getting too invested in the idea that your buffs/debuffs are particularly useful to your group.

 

Consider that Kinetics player. Fulcrum Shift is fantastic if you're duo'ing with a traditional Scrapper. But what if you're with a Blaster? They're not diving into the middle of crowds except momentarily to throw their ultimate - and they'll be at/near the +damage cap already when that happens. That Scrapper is probably working out well, but a Stalker who has Build Up/Gaussian's 50% of the time? They mostly don't care about your Fulcrum Shift.

 

Tar Patch is a great debuff. But by the time it lands, your team has likely already spent all of their alpha strike abilities so you're just buffing the low damage part of their cycle.

 

Ultimately, there's only one player who you know is getting the full benefit of your buffs/debuffs: you. So treat your support set more like an armor set for your personal benefit. The fact that it also might potentially help someone else should be a bonus, not a justification for the set. When you look at an ability like Ice Shield, your first thought shouldn't be that you can increase defense/resist on others but that you can use it to slot defense/resist set bonuses that you need.

 

OP - the above quote is really poor advice and/or may be an april fools post (i’m assuming the latter), i would refer to this post in all future instances where you’re wondering “what should i not be doing?”

 

teams where all players actively seek to support each other are the most powerful and successful in the game. for example, all corrupter teams and similar are a great example of this

 

buffing 7 other players, or proving a debuff that 8 players can benefit from will always be more effective than trying to turn the tide yourself.

 

people are kidding themselves or purposely trying to mislead others if they think one player using buildup is more effective than providing the whole team with +400% DMG permanently through fulcrum shift

 

actively seeking to support your fellow team mates will lead to far greater outcomes than trying to focus solely on yourself. i encourage you to continue with your team centric mindset and seek to support others the best you can, you have the right attitude

 

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, MoonSheep said:

people are kidding themselves or purposely trying to mislead others if they think one player using buildup is more effective than providing the whole team with +400% DMG permanently through fulcrum shift

Except this almost never happens except in people's imaginations - as I pointed out above. Fantasizing about providing +400% damage when the tip-of-the-spear members of your group are too close to the +damage cap to get more than +100% - and probably aren't going to be in range of your Fulcrum Shift anyway - isn't very useful.

 

For the Defender/Corruptor themselves, Fulcrum Shift is an amazing ability. For many of those you think you're helping, it's not necessarily of much use.

 

Until the Homecoming era changes, Force Field was considerably virtually worthless as a set. Why? Because while it was fantastic at buffing Defense, most players outside of the early game couldn't really use more defense than they already had.

 

1 hour ago, MoonSheep said:

teams where all players actively seek to support each other are the most powerful and successful in the game. for example, all corrupter teams and similar are a great example of this

You know what's normally better? An all Tanker team. Tankers don't get anything as dramatic as Fulcrum Shift. But why would they need it? They're all running +120% damage from 8xAssault.

 

The fundamental flaw in your theory is that CoH is a game with limits - and well-designed, fully developed characters are often at/near/above those limits. Speed Boost is a fantastic buff in the early levels when many character struggle with recharge/endurance. In endgame? It tends to be nearly useless because most builds can't meaningfully use more endurance than they have or more recharge than they have.

 

That's why so many players don't bother to 'gather for buffs'. A Time Defender can provide a massive shift in hit/defense. But my Scrapper isn't going to wait for the buff because he doesn't need either in 99% of situations. Even if he does need it, it's probably a situation where 8xManeuvers + 8xTactics from all those non-Defenders in my group gathered for this very difficult fight are probably enough.

[Duckbutler]

I don't think Hjarki is wrong about the limits and usefulness of buffs. Yeah, there will be wastage. Yes, if you're slow you're going to miss your opportunity to fully leverage those buffs.

 

What's wrong is the conclusion and what's really making me comment is that I use a very similar logic to argue for altruism. Not necessarily here in game, I mean in general. In life. You are the only true constant in your world. Whatever you put out there into the world will follow you wherever you go. So build the world that you want to live in! Then at least your one, tiny corner of it will be worth living in! And if that corner happens to be here, playing video games, running a TF for the millionth time, treat each other with kindness because surely you would want someone to do the same for you and, at some point, you needed it.

 

Don't think of the excess buffs as waste, think of them as a margin of safety. Understand that, yeah, buffs/debuffs like Fulcrum shift aren't always going to be at full up time or efficiency and that's why you have a margin of safety. If your team is moving so fast you don't need all your buffs? Smile cause you're doing great, and try to keep up. And maybe learn to rotate your debuffs rather than stacking them all.

[Infinitum]

33 minutes ago, Duckbutler said:

You are the only true constant in your world. Whatever you put out there into the world will follow you wherever you go. So build the world that you want to live in! Then at least your one, tiny corner of it will be worth living in! And if that corner happens to be here, playing video games, running a TF for the millionth time, treat each other with kindness because surely you would want someone to do the same for you and, at some point, you needed it.

 

Same here, thanks for saying that.   Honestly I wish more people thought like this, acted like this - and advised others to be like this. 

 

Seriously this is worth using my alloted HC storage space for.