What do you think is the strongest two-person duo?

[Story Archer]

Assume they always play together and only play together, all content from level 1 to 50+. 

 

What do you think is the best pairing?

 

Of the character's I've played, I'm thinking a Rad Armor/Stone Melee Tanker and a Fire/Kinetic Corruptor. High survivability, high damage - the only thing they lack is any sort of hard control which, theoretically at least, they wouldn't need.

 

 

Edited January 2 by Story Archer

[Ironblade]

I think you could just go with two corruptors.  My ice/cold has two holds.  Pair that with a strong AoE with more strong buff/debuff like fire/nature and I think that pair would be pretty powerful.  With those buffs and debuffs, I think they could easily deal with AV's.

 

I've taken ice/cold, ice/nature, fire/kin, fire/thermal, beam/kin and a second beam/kin to level 50.  The beam/kins are focused on team/league damage for incarnate content.  Kinetics is great, but if you're only buffing one other character, I think it wouldn't be the best choice.

[Ukase]

I am more inclined to consider titan/bio scrapper coupled with a fire/natty corruptor. The scrapper is survivable enough; and the damage is far superior to a tanker. And I just prefer the natty buffs to kin. Kin is exceptional, but it's really click heavy, in my experience. You're so busy using the kin secondary, you're not using much of your primary. Whereas, Natty tends to just let the buffs fly initially, and has nice debuffs as well. 

That said - a couple of exceptional players could likely take any 2 ATs, regardless of primary/secondary, and outshine two others with classic meta AT/powerset combos. 

Still, skill levels being roughly equivalent, I'd go with my initial suggestion, simply due to the click heavy nature of kin. I have some bias against kin, to be fair. Or maybe it's just bias for natty over any other corr secondary, with cold being a close 2nd. 

[Story Archer]

4 minutes ago, Ukase said:

I am more inclined to consider titan/bio scrapper coupled with a fire/natty corruptor. The scrapper is survivable enough; and the damage is far superior to a tanker. And I just prefer the natty buffs to kin. Kin is exceptional, but it's really click heavy, in my experience. You're so busy using the kin secondary, you're not using much of your primary. Whereas, Natty tends to just let the buffs fly initially, and has nice debuffs as well. 

That said - a couple of exceptional players could likely take any 2 ATs, regardless of primary/secondary, and outshine two others with classic meta AT/powerset combos. 

Still, skill levels being roughly equivalent, I'd go with my initial suggestion, simply due to the click heavy nature of kin. I have some bias against kin, to be fair. Or maybe it's just bias for natty over any other corr secondary, with cold being a close 2nd. 

 

The good news - again, just from my playing experience - is that a Kin Corruptor can run everything through the Tanker... attacks, heals, buffs, etc. pretty much everything in the build besides Rain of Fire. That cuts down on the necessary clicks considerably. Apart from a steady stream of attacks, you really just pop an occasional heal, Speed Boost or Fulcrum Shift and you're set. And I gotta say, while Scrappers are obviously superior to Tankers when it comes to single-target damage, I've never seen a Scrapper deal the kind of carnage my Rad Tankers do. Those proc'ed out mini nukes are quite literally the bomb on their own, I can only imagine what happens when they're consistently getting Speed Boosted and FS'ed.

 

I don't disagree that anything could be made strong - or fun - I'm just curious what people think might be the strongest pairings, synergy-wise.

[Story Archer]

20 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Still, skill levels being roughly equivalent, I'd go with my initial suggestion, simply due to the click heavy nature of kin. I have some bias against kin, to be fair. Or maybe it's just bias for natty over any other corr secondary, with cold being a close 2nd. 

 

We all have our biases. I've settled in now where I won't play anything other than Rad Armor for Brutes and Tanks or Ninjitsu for Scrappers. Nature Affinity isn't something I've had a ton of experience playing with or alongside - what is it that you like so much about it? Can you compare it to another somewhat similar buff/debuff set? Looking at it, It seems like a heal-heavy (too heavy?) version of Rad, but semi-perma Overgrowth really feels like it would put the set over the top. I'd like to see a build complete with slotting, even just a snapshot, so that I could give it a fair shake.

[Teklord]

As a founding member of Repeat Offenders on Live, I am partial to two defenders or two corruptors. Two Corruptors seems really strong and any of the buffs that work on others have a target. Kinetics is super strong on corruptors, if you are just a duo you WILL get scourge too.

 

TBH this all goes down to play style. A number of self buffing but not hitting the cap would be amazing.  Say Time Manipulation x2, you would be capped on all def, go villain side so you can get sheer willpower by doing the tfs. Pick a blast set with a rain (for the scourge) and go to town.

 

Electric Affinity would plug the mez hole and also be great on buffing both of you.   Even sets that people consider under powered are amazing when in a dedicated duo. Empathy suddenly looks great when you are getting Fortitude, Clear Mind and Adrenalin Boost on both parties. I used to run in a SG based on stacking empathy buffs on everyone "Green Machine". It is quite strong.

 

If you want to proc stuff out go with Water Blast/Empathy. You have capped defenses, strong +tohit, +dmg, capped +regen, very high +recharge, nearly capped +recovery and steam jet in the blast set is great for procs since it has that special recharge that doesn't change the forumula.

[Teklord]

A downside of Water/Empathy x2 is that you would need envenomed daggers for AVs and GMs. 2x time looks good on paper and doesn't have AV issues without temps. Plus a time duo can do all sorts of RP. Are you the same person, separated by time, are you time lords? Are you father/son? Who the heck knows. Time has a good toggle with a 25ft range, you get this at level 4 on a corruptor. This allows you to toggle pull and debuff. It also will stack from different casters. So this makes the early game much much easier.

 

Also going tank + support is in my mind very boring. It makes one person the star and the other the supporting actor who doesn't even get nominated. But this is my bias.

[Maelwys]

At endgame I suspect that a Debuffing-centric toon and a Buffing-Centric toon would be the way to go; because Incarnate abilities are so damn powerful you rarely need a melee AT to "tank". And if we're talking pure duo performance ceiling... I may lean towards a /Marine MM plus either a /Dark or /Cold Corruptor.

However the journey from Lv1-Lv50 is probably going to be "Any Brute plus a debuff-heavy support AT".

Somewhere in the middle would be a Tanker (likely Bio/ or Rad/) and a Corruptor (/Kin /Time /Marine /Cold etc).

[mistagoat]

Hey, this is literally how I play 95% of the time! Playing with a buddy and we only play those toons together so they stay equal level and level up on story arcs and TFs 1-50. We've repeated this at least 50 times so far (just started a new pair last night!) and we've found lots of combos that are great fun but the fastest to level and most brutally efficient pair of toons we've found are a Tank and a Blaster. Rad Tanks and Fire Blasters specifically have provided the best results but Bio and Invul are great tank alternatives and elec blast and rad blast are great blaster alternatives.

 

In your OP you say you're thinking about a rad/stone tank and fire/kin corr, that will be a great combo and you'll have a blast with them. I'd still give the edge to a tank/blaster combo but only by a hair.

 

A couple honorable mentions: 

Stalker/Stalker runs are stupid fun! I think the pair of Elec/Shields were the most fun for us but lots of combos work well.

We made a pair of Arsenal trollers that were devastating! I was Arse/storm and he was Arse/Marine. We were punching way above our weight class.

 

Tank pairs don't work very well.

[Glacier Peak]

Ice/Cold Corruptor and anything else can go afk.

[High_Beam]

I will say that back in the day on Freedom, My energy blaster High Beam had quite a deal of crazy fun with Doctor Finetush an Empathy Defender.  Maybe not the strongest but the memories that duo made were the best.

[Doc Spectre]

I think a Widow and a Soldier of Arachnos would do well together.

[MrAxe]

Tank and a Blaster.

[merrypessimist]

Ill/rad and Ill/Dark controllers.  Army of pets, good damage, and enough debuffs to neuter anything.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm biased, but I'm going to say a Kinetic Melee/Regeneration scrapper and a Rikti monkey.  There may be some deaths though.