Corruptor - just don't see any big picture

[Gerswin]

Every time I join a speedy ITF and I see their are 5 corruptors on the team with week heeling sets like /kinetic and /cold I know that DPS will be too low and most of the time will be spent at hospital instead of fiteing mobs.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Gerswin said:

Every time I join a speedy ITF and I see their are 5 corruptors on the team with week heeling sets like /kinetic and /cold I know that DPS will be too low and most of the time will be spent at hospital instead of fiteing mobs.

Oh this is a humorous post! I see you were going with the same troll logic as @Diantane. 

 

Very funny indeed, mainly because Kinetic Corruptors can already hit damage cap by themselves, (let alone with five other Corruptors) and Cold Domination has some of the best debuffs in the entire game - meaning enemies will take even more damage.

[Projector]

35 minutes ago, Gerswin said:

Every time I join a speedy ITF and I see their are 5 corruptors on the team with week heeling sets like /kinetic and /cold I know that DPS will be too low and most of the time will be spent at hospital instead of fiteing mobs.

Either you are joking, to which I would say, "Well played," or you are teaming with some of the worst corruptors either build-wise or skill-wise. 

Kinetics heal is one of, if not the best in the game, and if people aren't getting healed, it's because they are out of position. A well-played /kin makes almost everything in the game a cake walk, relatively speaking.

Both /cold and /kin raise the overall DPS of their team by either lowering stats of the enemy via debuffs or by literally increasing the damage % bonus via powers like Fulcrum Shift. Not only that, but they increase the resource sustain (end) for their team, so their team can fight for longer periods of time, too. 

I genuinely have no clue why your experience has been so bad, but if you play on Excelsior, I'll be happy to show you otherwise. Or I'll happily transfer to your shard and I will run with you.

I'm in the midst of a private 4star event that is encouraging different types of 4star runs throughout the next 2 months. This would be considered the hardest content in the game, aside from specific challenges like Really Hard Way or MoKeyes.

Of the 55 4star runs that have been done and tracked over just the last 2 weeks, Corruptors are the most used at 175 used, Defenders are #2 at 102 used, and Blasters are number 3 at 43 used. Put another way, after only two weeks, 40% of the toons brought have been Corruptors. 

Corruptors are easily the strongest AT in the game in team environments, with one well-played corruptor enabling your team to just shred through content. This gets even more insane when you discover that the Scourge mechanic effectively triples Blizzard's damage instead of doubling it. 

[Projector]

On 10/6/2024 at 8:58 AM, Diantane said:

I've played a corruptor a few times, but failed to see much damage from them. When I looked on MIDS I saw that a corrupter's blasts are only about 15% higher than a Defender's secondaries. Even the Sentinels do substantially more damage with the same blasts (let alone the blasters). The only time I saw a high damage is when I finally got to "Scourge."

 

Note: When it takes every blast you got a few times over to solo something, you know you can't do much damage.

Hey OP, I'm sorry you've had a rough experience with Corruptors! I do think you are right that you are missing the big picture. Hopefully this will help.

As a result, this is unfortunately a very unfair comparison between Blasters and Corruptors, and it's flawed because it's using an incomplete picture to compare two ATs that have entirely different ways of accessing damage. They have fundamentally different approaches to DPS.

• Blasters just pump out very high raw damage numbers. Everything they do is about those raw numbers, and their only built-in ways to increase those numbers are with Build Up and Aim. 
• Corruptors, however, find their damage in other ways, specifically through buffs and debuffs via their secondary set. Scourge is also a huge part of this and cannot be overlooked because if Corruptors had blaster damage numbers and got double damage after an enemy drops below 50% health, they'd be absolutely broken. 

The problem is that you are comparing the two ATs using only the factor that is a Blaster's biggest strength while ignoring the Corruptor's strengths, which inherently makes Corruptors look weak because with your criteria, Blasters get two offensive power sets to contribute to their damage, while, in terms raw damage numbers from offensive powers, Corruptors only have one offensive power set. 

This example should hopefully show what I mean:

As a blaster, if I hit Build Up, Aim, and eat a bunch of Red Insps, I can cap my damage output at 400%. On my own, that is all I will ever be able to do. That's the ceiling. (I recognize that procs can bypass this ceiling a little bit, but that's a nonfactor since corruptors have access to the same procs).

As a Corruptor, I can do the same thing via Aim in the primary set and chewing a bunch of reds, or if I'm Kinetics, I can cap my own damage just with fulcrum shift and enough enemies. My damage won't be as high as a Blaster until I start throwing out debuffs. The most effective way to bypass the damage cap is via debuff. I can cap my own and my team's damage output while also throwing out debuffs which make all of our attacks more likely to hit, lower their resistance, lower their regen, etc. AFAIK, debuffs are the only reliable way around the damage cap limitation.

If your team needs more DPS, the correct answer isn't always "bring a blaster." The Blaster can only contribute their own individual DPS output to the team, but if you bring a Corruptor that not only can cap their own damage, but can also increase the damage output potential of 7 other players on their team? That one blaster's contribution is a lot smaller. One Blaster doing 50% more damage is worth less than all 8 team members each doing 300% more damage 😄

Also, before anyone brings up  that Defenders have generally higher buff/debuff/heal values but the Scourge mechanic is ALSO what pushes Corruptors higher than Defenders, because while Defenders have better debuff values on their powers, the difference in those values is not enough to overcome the increased damage output Corruptors have via Scourge and higher base damage values. In other words, say a Defender can lower a target's resistance by 40%, whereas a Corruptor using the same power can only lower it by 30%. If the Corruptor is actually attacking, the damage it does, especially when Scourge kicks in, will more than make up for that gap in debuff value.

Bonus points for anything that increases your team's to-hit chance, because your raw damage values mean nothing if you don't hit anything.

This is going to be greatly oversimplified:
Let's say an attack does 100 damage, but the enemy is 40% resistant to that attack's damage type. You fire it twice.
One hit/one miss = 60 damage.
Two hits = 120 damage.
Zero hits = 0 damage.

Repeat with the same values, but increase your damage by 400% and fire the same attack twice. (This is the limit of a Blaster).
One hit/one miss = 240 damage.
Two hits = 480 damage.
Zero hits = 0 damage.

Repeat with the same damage bonus, but -res debuffs make the enemy only 20% resistant to that damage type. (This would be the "limit" for a Corruptor, but the Corruptor has the added benefit of making this the "limit" for their entire team, too).
One hit/one miss = 320 damage.
Two hits = 640 damage.
Zero hits = 0 damage.

(Note: I sometimes suck at math, and may be slightly off in how resist affects the damage output here, but I am confident the base assertion is still true, was just trying to give some tangible values to the concepts I was explaining.)

You can also test pretty much everything I've said in this post in a farm, and I'd be happy to do it myself, record it, and share it here, if you'd like! I suggest doing it in a farm since the Tank's gauntlet/taunt will keep enemies from scattering/aggroing onto the Corr or Blaster.

• Round 1: Go with a tank and a fire/fire blaster or an ice/fire blaster, herd two mobs together and see how long it takes to kill both mobs by attacking only with the blaster and whatever taunt/damage auras the tank has.
• Round 2: Repeat, but swap the blaster for a ice/ or fire/kin Corruptor.
• Round 3: Repeat, but swap /Kin for /Cold.
• Round 4: Bring all four, but don't let the corruptors attack, only let them use their buffs/debuffs and have the blaster and tank fight.

I guarantee you rounds 2, 3, and 4 will all be faster times than the tank and blaster combo. Not only that, they will also be safer and have better sustain thanks to cold and kin buffs.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful and gives you a better idea of the bigger picture in terms of damage output between ATs.
 

[Timeshadow]

As a mainline DPS player, I'd say it's well understood that CoH is a game that turns on buffs and debuffs. More than any other combat role, buffers and debuffers can determine whether a team is even capable of doing a specific piece of content. 

 

The reason for that is simple, force multiplication. Support toons literally make content easier by reducing the difficulty of combat, either by strengthening players or weakening enemies. The trade off for that ability is lower damage than DPS ATs. That's a perfectly normal part of RPG design and has been since the tabletop days.

 

To say Corrs are useless because they do less damage than Blasters or Sents is to take the support role, in its entirety, out of context. You're measuring a team-focused class based on how it solos, which entirely misses the point of its existence.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Timeshadow said:

To say Corrs are useless because they do less damage than Blasters or Sents is to take the support role, in its entirety, out of context. You're measuring a team-focused class based on how it solos, which entirely misses the point of its existence.

 

Aside from the fact it solos decently when considered against the rest of ranged ATs (solo Blaster is risking failure more often for example), I ran Synapse on my latest Corruptor on Friday. He is Ice/Marine. We ran without pause because I was able to keep everyone's endurance sufficiently high they never had to stop to recover endurance, buffing their resistance lowered incoming damage, and buffing damage, recharge, and To-Hit allowed us to cruise right along. 

 

Some of my corruptors blast more than others. Really depends on the nature and number of buffs to tend to (as well as how often people push the envelope and require I focus on healing). Ice blast makes you play a bit more like a controller--focus on the Ice Storms and Blizzards, the single targets are just icing on the cake. 

[Wavicle]

OP's Corruptor is probably Empathy.

[Timeshadow]

2 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Aside from the fact it solos decently when considered against the rest of ranged ATs (solo Blaster is risking failure more often for example), I ran Synapse on my latest Corruptor on Friday. He is Ice/Marine. We ran without pause because I was able to keep everyone's endurance sufficiently high they never had to stop to recover endurance, buffing their resistance lowered incoming damage, and buffing damage, recharge, and To-Hit allowed us to cruise right along. 

 

Some of my corruptors blast more than others. Really depends on the nature and number of buffs to tend to (as well as how often people push the envelope and require I focus on healing). Ice blast makes you play a bit more like a controller--focus on the Ice Storms and Blizzards, the single targets are just icing on the cake. 

 

I'm running up my first "serious" Corr right now. She's DP/TA so it's pretty simple. Apply debuffs, then blast until everything's dead or debuffs need to be reapplied. I've yet to hear any complaints. 

 

My post was less to say, "Corruptors do bad damage compared to anything else," so much as to point out that any lower level of damage on a support AT is the trade you make for having the ability to impact a fight in other ways that are equally, if not more, important than pure DPS. 

 

A lot of people are calling the OP a troll. I don't know if that's what they're doing or they're just asking a question without proper understanding of the needed context. 

[Without_Pause]

2 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

We ran without pause

I beg to differ. 😆

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, Wavicle said:

OP's Corruptor is probably Empathy.

If previous postings are any indicator, it really doesn't matter. Because they'll have taken all their blasts and intentionally neglected everything else entirely (under the guise of "it's PRIMARILY supposed to be dealing damage therefore a REAL Corruptor shouldn't take any powers from their secondary and the rest of the team should be handling all the buffing/debuffing" or similar nonsensewaffle)

[Erratic1]

8 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

My post was less to say, "Corruptors do bad damage compared to anything else," so much as to point out that any lower level of damage on a support AT is the trade you make for having the ability to impact a fight in other ways that are equally, if not more, important than pure DPS. 

 

I was agreeing with you mostly, just underscoring the AT focus involves more than just damage.

 

8 hours ago, Timeshadow said:

A lot of people are calling the OP a troll. I don't know if that's what they're doing or they're just asking a question without proper understanding of the needed context. 

 

OP has a forum history of extremely opinionated positions usually at considerable odds with common experience.

[Triumphant]

Quote

OP has a forum history of extremely opinionated positions usually at considerable odds with common experience.

 

This may be, at once, both the most accurate and also the most polite description of the OP that I have yet encountered on these forums. 😄👍

[Darkir]

On 10/9/2024 at 4:07 AM, Diantane said:

I've played Kinetic Defenders that reached the damage cap between levels 42-50. Tried to do the same on a Corruptor, but it was impossible.

Then you are bad at making builds and characters. A lvl 35 fire/kin can easily hit the damage cap all the time and do more dmg than any sentinel.

Edited October 30, 2024 by Darkir

[Without_Pause]

11 minutes ago, Darkir said:

Then you are bad at making builds and characters. A lvl 35 fire/kin can easily hit the damage cap all the time and do more dmg than any sentinel.

To be fair, the Sent will be far safer doing its damage.

[LightMaster]

On 10/16/2024 at 12:04 PM, Projector said:

Either you are joking, to which I would say, "Well played," or you are teaming with some of the worst corruptors either build-wise or skill-wise. 

Kinetics heal is one of, if not the best in the game, and if people aren't getting healed, it's because they are out of position. A well-played /kin makes almost everything in the game a cake walk, relatively speaking.

Both /cold and /kin raise the overall DPS of their team by either lowering stats of the enemy via debuffs or by literally increasing the damage % bonus via powers like Fulcrum Shift. Not only that, but they increase the resource sustain (end) for their team, so their team can fight for longer periods of time, too. 

I genuinely have no clue why your experience has been so bad, but if you play on Excelsior, I'll be happy to show you otherwise. Or I'll happily transfer to your shard and I will run with you.

I'm in the midst of a private 4star event that is encouraging different types of 4star runs throughout the next 2 months. This would be considered the hardest content in the game, aside from specific challenges like Really Hard Way or MoKeyes.

Of the 55 4star runs that have been done and tracked over just the last 2 weeks, Corruptors are the most used at 175 used, Defenders are #2 at 102 used, and Blasters are number 3 at 43 used. Put another way, after only two weeks, 40% of the toons brought have been Corruptors. 

Corruptors are easily the strongest AT in the game in team environments, with one well-played corruptor enabling your team to just shred through content. This gets even more insane when you discover that the Scourge mechanic effectively triples Blizzard's damage instead of doubling it. 

I’d like to see the rest of the Most Used AT leaderboard.
 

Been thinking why Corruptors managed to be more used than Defenders, who got stronger scale for buff/debuffs, and I saw a lot of Corruptors in endgame content videos as well.
 

Then I realized the one single Inherent that makes Corruptor more appealing than Defender for some… Scourge. Scourge alone allows Corruptor to be an effective finisher with damage comparable to Blaster against damaged enemies, especially if they managed to stack up +DMG on the team or -Res on the enemies. It can result a truly destructive Inherent by exploiting DoTs, doubling the DoTs (or even tripled in Blizzard’s case) which damaged enemies will drop like flies.

 

No other ranged Archetype has a similar “Deal Double Damage” critical hit system except Controller’s Concealment, though Controllers can only take advantage of it by using high damaging primary powers (like Illusion Control) or Arcane Bolt. Even then, Concealment doesn’t seems to be compatible with DoT, wheras Corruptor’s Scourge work the absolute best with DoT powers, and it stacks with Proc IOs (like -Res or extra damage) as well because Proc IOs also works well with most DoT powers.

Edited January 14 by LightMaster

[Mopery]

gr8 b8 m8 i r8 8/8

[Hjarki]

18 hours ago, LightMaster said:

Then I realized the one single Inherent that makes Corruptor more appealing than Defender for some… Scourge. Scourge alone allows Corruptor to be an effective finisher with damage comparable to Blaster against damaged enemies, especially if they managed to stack up +DMG on the team or -Res on the enemies. It can result a truly destructive Inherent by exploiting DoTs, doubling the DoTs (or even tripled in Blizzard’s case) which damaged enemies will drop like flies.

Scourge averages out to around 30% more damage against an arbitrarily large health pool. In practice, it varies from a bit less efficient than that to a lot less efficient than that. The issue is that you calculate whether an attack will Scourge before the damage lands. So if you had some hypothetical attack that did 50% of an enemy's health pool, it would never (usefully) Scourge. On the other hand, Rains are famously good with Scourge because each tick is so tiny and you'll get nearly perfect performance. However, as with all such effects, additional effects from set mechanics, DoT and procs cannot Scourge.

 

A Scrapper will generally get about 10% - 15% (depending on ATO and set) additional damage from criticals. However, they get this regardless of the size of attacks or the opponent's health pool so they're going to get generally better performance on non-AV/GM. They're also working off of a much higher base damage scale and melee sets tend to hit a bit harder than blast sets. Stalkers, between the progressive critical chance stacking on Assassinate and periodic hides from ATO, probably get around the same 'crit rate' as idealized Corruptors with, again, a high damage scale and melee sets.

 

In terms of the overall notion of Corruptors (and support AT in general), it's important to remember that CoH is not a competitive game. Even against the most difficult content, you're going to find a lot of 'sub-optimal' play. If I were tasked with putting together an optimal team to deal with the hardest content in the game, it would probably be almost entirely Tankers using sets like Bio, Radiation and Shield. You get great values on the stacking Leadership pools as well as the stacking effects of those armor sets. While no individual player on your team could debuff/buff like an individual support AT, the cumulative effect would be similar without taking the damage hit from the low damage scale AT.

 

However, if you're just recruiting random people from world chat to join your adventure in four-star, you probably want all those support AT to deal with the fact that you don't have that sort of optimized team.

[StorytellingMonkey]

On 10/6/2024 at 8:58 AM, Diantane said:

The only time I saw a high damage is when I finally got to "Scourge."

 

You don't "finally get" scourge.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Scourge

 

The real key with a corruptor is waiting for others to severely damage opponents and then finishing them off with scourge.

So say you target through a tank or melee character, or maybe a blaster or sentinel, watch the health bar on their target, as soon as they hit half health, start your attacks (the character you are targeting through is still attacking them).

Meanwhile - as you are waiting to attack, use your defender-like powers to support the character you are targeting through.

 

But, yeah, if you are soloing or running with at steam-rolling team, scourge seems like it is isn't very useful.

If I'm soloing with a corruptor, I tend to try to make sure that I will have a high damage power available when an enemy is a bit below 1/2 health.

[LightMaster]

5 hours ago, Hjarki said:

If I were tasked with putting together an optimal team to deal with the hardest content in the game, it would probably be almost entirely Tankers using sets like Bio, Radiation and Shield. You get great values on the stacking Leadership pools as well as the stacking effects of those armor sets. While no individual player on your team could debuff/buff like an individual support AT, the cumulative effect would be similar without taking the damage hit from the low damage scale AT.

That means a team of seven Tankers makes 105% Damage bonus or eight making 120% from Assault, which causes their AoE attacks to be even more insane and make their single target attack closer to critless Scrapper in damage output.

 

Tactics grants a total of 70% (7 Tankers) or 80% (8 Tankers), while Maneuvers grants 14.0% or 16.0% (rounded down according to in-game overview) but both can be Enhanced for even greater effect.

 

Corruptor and Controller grants similar boost in Leadership, while VEATs and Defender have the better Maneuvers, and Defender alone the biggest Assault and Tactics boost. That said, these five Archetypes are much frailer than Tankers due to not having Armor primary/secondary, and the Armored Classes in Sentinel, Scrapper, Stalker and Brute offers the weakest version of the three basic Leadership powers despite their Armor nowhere as sturdy, regenerative or evasive as the Tanker’s.

[Carnifax]

15 hours ago, Hjarki said:

A Scrapper will generally get about 10% - 15% (depending on ATO and set) additional damage from criticals. However, they get this regardless of the size of attacks or the opponent's health pool so they're going to get generally better performance on non-AV/GM. They're also working off of a much higher base damage scale and melee sets tend to hit a bit harder than blast sets. Stalkers, between the progressive critical chance stacking on Assassinate and periodic hides from ATO, probably get around the same 'crit rate' as idealized Corruptors with, again, a high damage scale and melee sets.

 

Looking at a parse of my logs on my Stalker (Ice/Stone) the Crit rate will vary per power. This was a PuG Maria arc on Everlasting yesterday (50 : 4x8). 

 

On Assassins Blade 37% of my damage is crits. On Freezing Touch (not including Procs) it's 40%. Zapp is about the same. Frozen Aura it's 24%. Which makes a lot of sense, I'll tend to get crits on Assassins because 1-2 powers before it then it generates crits. Freezing is my "follow up" (Zapp if Freezing is on cool down) when hidden so will crit. 

 

Frozen Aura has a smaller chance to crit from hidden (50% I believe) so even though I tend to open with it in groups 24% is about right. 

 

I looked at a Water / TA Corruptor too but the one power I was most interested in (Whirlpool) I don't seem to be measuring Scourge correctly on (it's a pet so could be something I omitted in the parser). So I checked Whirlpool with @KaizenSozes parser instead and it's reporting 18% for Whirlpool, which is a little surprising. I'd have expected a little higher but potentially lots of reasons why not (I open with it early / people have Judgements and tend to nuke things down).

 

On Steam Spray scourge is about 11% of my damage. Water Jet is ~20% (again discounting procs), as is Water Burst and 26% for Aqua Bolt (which makes a load of sense, Aqua tends to be my "He's only got a small bit of HP left" power). 

 

Not proving / disproving anything really, just wanted to give some of my Stalker and Corruptor figures based on playthrus over the last few days.

[Psiphon]

I tend to play Corruptors more than Defenders because they fit the concept better.

I think of Defenders as a bit like Captain America, noble and doing what needs to be done but within certain constraints. Corruptors I view as more Batman like in that they're happy to dish out an extra bit of violence to make the villains pay for their devilish deeds. Also I do like seeing Scourge popping up as the pain comes down.

 

In regards to the damage numbers being mentioned in this topic, they don't take into account the ability of each AT to deliver the damage. Being ranged ATs Corruptors and Defenders can deal damage over a much larger area than their melee counterparts, they can also do this immediately without having to chase mobs down.

 

I feel that the devs have done a great job in balancing the ATs, something for everyone.

[KaizenSoze]

8 hours ago, Carnifax said:

I looked at a Water / TA Corruptor too but the one power I was most interested in (Whirlpool) I don't seem to be measuring Scourge correctly on (it's a pet so could be something I omitted in the parser). So I checked Whirlpool with @KaizenSozes parser instead and it's reporting 18% for Whirlpool, which is a little surprising. I'd have expected a little higher but potentially lots of reasons why not (I open with it early / people have Judgements and tend to nuke things down).

I would always manually check a surprising result. But make sure you have all the pet log categories on, but since you are seeing some damage from Whirlpool, those categories are probably on. I would be happy to manually check the logs for you.

 

Speculation about the low Scourge rate. Whirlpool is usually cast early in fight, so most of it's damage is done before Scourge starts. By the time Scourge is happening I tend to think that the mob is killed off via other powers. This is one of the meta questions I have been thinking about, like how much damage Freezing Touch actually does, because of extremely long dot length. Most of the time I'll finish a mob with a snipe, which is why Freezing touch on my Elec/Ice blaster tends to be a very low % of my total damage. I think Whirlpool is suffering from the same issue.

 

 

[Camel]

On 10/9/2024 at 5:49 AM, Diantane said:

Like I said, if it takes 23 blasts for a Corruptor to solo a boss when a Blaster or Sentinel can kill them with 6 or 7, that would prove my point.

My Fire/Marine/Fire Corr can solo entire +4 mobs in the ITF before the rest of my team catches up to me. 😘 

[Doomguide2005]

On 10/20/2024 at 10:48 PM, Wavicle said:

OP's Corruptor is probably Empathy.

o.O ... And poorly played if it is sir.  One Empathy corrupter is probably weaker than most other singular corruptors.  That'll change fast as you add more Empaths especially as you get into endgame builds.  You want something incredibly hard to kill give me 3 or more Empaths running at level 45+.  Run by players I doubt you'll find much harder to kill in existence.  And the damage output won't be lacking either. 

 

Sorry if you were mostly in jest, as a long time Empathy player and member and one time leader of Green Machine I tend to get triggered by such comments.

[Wavicle]

49 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Sorry if you were mostly in jest, as a long time Empathy player and member and one time leader of Green Machine I tend to get triggered by such comments.

 

Mostly in jest. If they really were playing Empathy and were playing solo or looking at personal damage on teams where they are the only buff character they could be having an issue.