General archtype/power balance

[Championess]

On 4/21/2025 at 11:40 PM, MoonSheep said:

 

here’s a short and potentially argumentative guide:

 

some dom primary and secondaries suck

 

choose a mind/fire or plant/energy and you’ll have a whale of a time

 

don’t try to play it like a scrapper, switch on the brain and think about which enemies need to be mezzed or simply killed

 

use your bloody inspirations

 

get perma dom

 

you have now completed your 11 second guide on dominators

 

Sagely advice from the 3rd best dommie on HC right here.  😜

Edited Wednesday at 06:24 PM by Championess

[FFTMime]

While I admit it has to be right, it still makes me lament I can't play my personal flavor of gremlin and not have a shitty time. 

[BZRKR]

32 minutes ago, FFTMime said:

While I admit it has to be right, it still makes me lament I can't play my personal flavor of gremlin and not have a shitty time. 

I may be missing it, but how would you define your personal flavor of gremlin? Like what 3 bullet points would you distill it down to?

[FFTMime]

Nothing specific, but my usual interaction with things goes along the lines of wanting to play this AT but the powersets or combo I want to use is bad. Where my option is to play something that's not conceptual that does work instead. But I don't wanna. Getting concept and acceptable levels of performance to meet is difficult. 

[FFTMime]

What I am saying is I have criminally and habitually bad taste and no one is to blame but me. I cannot be happy playing things that just work, it seems. 

[Psyonico]

5 hours ago, FFTMime said:

Getting concept and acceptable levels of performance to meet is difficult. 

That depends on your definition of “acceptable performance”.  I personally find very few sets *don’t* give acceptable performance.  For example, Electric Control.  I find it neither does enough damage or control to be worth my time.  Every other control set does either one or both of those to a satisfying extent for me.

 

Electric Control is one of the few (possibly only) sets that I find unfulfilling to play.  But I probably have different expectations than you do.  I don’t expect all of my characters to solo +4x8.  Heck, even at level 50 I don’t expect any set to be able to solo above +1x2.  And only +1 because of alpha incarnate shift.

[tidge]

8 hours ago, Psyonico said:

That depends on your definition of “acceptable performance”.  I personally find very few sets *don’t* give acceptable performance.  For example, Electric Control.  I find it neither does enough damage or control to be worth my time.  Every other control set does either one or both of those to a satisfying extent for me.

 

I have sets I keep going back to for concept/animation reasons, but I keep getting reminded how underwhelming I find them. I don't really find them unacceptable, but I find them to be low-performing (for my tastes for the AT). Sometimes those sets shine on other ATs, sometimes those sets offer "one great trick" that gets a lot of attention but doesn't rock my world.

 

The old, linked posts about differences in clear times measured in seconds between melee types... not particular persuasive to me, although the relative difference between melee sets does align with my personal perceptions.

[Chance Jackson]

On 4/21/2025 at 5:54 PM, Snarky said:

Brutes have ALWAYS sucked pre 20.  Before inherent fitness it was like trying to watch Strongmen run a Marathon.  Painful.

Huh? Maybe my memory is whacked but didn't COV release after inherent Fitness?

 

Am i crazy in thinking brutes are the best melee to level up thx to fury?

[Snokle]

Nope

33 minutes ago, Chance Jackson said:

Huh? Maybe my memory is whacked but didn't COV release after inherent Fitness?

 

Am i crazy in thinking brutes are the best melee to level up thx to fury?

 

Nope, I remember starting playing this game when CoV was launched and Fitness had to be chosen as a power pick. It was did not become an inherent power until Issue 19. So old school days you waited till level 20 and you liked it. Although I think most ATs sucked before 20 as you got stamina then.

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, Chance Jackson said:

Huh? Maybe my memory is whacked but didn't COV release after inherent Fitness?

 

Am i crazy in thinking brutes are the best melee to level up thx to fury?

your memory is whacked.  you are crazy.  

 

Brutes?  matter of personal preference.  i spent years on them.  you would have to pay me to play them now...

[skoryy]

On 4/24/2025 at 2:05 PM, Chance Jackson said:

Huh? Maybe my memory is whacked but didn't COV release after inherent Fitness?

 

Am i crazy in thinking brutes are the best melee to level up thx to fury?

 

I want to say inherent fitness came an issue or two before shutdown.  (Too lazy to check the wiki.)

And brutes are relatively easy to level up thanks to fury.  The advantage levels off the further you go, but its there.

[skoryy]

On 4/21/2025 at 10:27 AM, arcane said:

If you are using all of the various resources available to you, from inspirations to IO’s to Incarnates, you should never have a character that doesn’t even feel “viable”.

 

I'll go a step further and ask viable for what.  What's viable for you might not be for me because I got bored of soloing +4/x8 and just do teams these days.  What's viable for you might not be for me because I find stalkers more engaging than other melee classes.  What's viable for you might not be for me because an elec/time 'troller makes for some fun animations and I can still hang with the team.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, skoryy said:

 What's viable for you might not be for me because I got bored of soloing +4/x8 and just do teams these days.  What's viable for you might not be for me because I find stalkers more engaging than other melee classes.  What's viable for you might not be for me because an elec/time 'troller makes for some fun animations and I can still hang with the team.

 

I crave more examples, just in case what's viable for you is also viable for me.

[Vedic70]

On 4/24/2025 at 1:27 PM, Snarky said:

your memory is whacked.  you are crazy.  

 

Brutes?  matter of personal preference.  i spent years on them.  you would have to pay me to play them now...

What makes Brutes like that now? Is it just there are other more enjoyable ATs or was there a big change to their playstyle that makes them much different from before?

[Snarky]

6 minutes ago, Vedic70 said:

What makes Brutes like that now? Is it just there are other more enjoyable ATs or was there a big change to their playstyle that makes them much different from before?

They were nerfed multiple times.  
 

Part of it is the STYLE of playing a Brute was nerfed in the last deepest cut.  In the original Fury was not easy to get and decayed fast. The fastest way to get a ton if fury was to piss everyone off.  (Can you survive it?  Rollercoaster!).  Then it decayed fast (Do it again!).  And it went to the top.  Now?   Yawn.