Power Armor: How Would You Build It?

[The Witchfire]

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way and save a few replies; every character with any combination of powers COULD be conceived as having them come from power armor. 🙃

 

I'm specifically asking about trying to build a concept like Iron Man or the Power Armor AT from that OTHER superhero MMO (lol).

 

Tank or scrapper with ranged powers coming from the higher level sets?  Sentinel give you range early, but can it get as tanky as Iron Man?

 

Anyway, I'm just looking for some creative build ideas for such a concept. 😀

[PartyKake]

Would probably be that Sentinel archetype I almost never use. 

They get ranged damage and armor sets, right?

 

Though... perhaps a ranged set that includes some melee abilities alongside their ranged blasts.

The energy assault thing dominators get I think tracks.

ranged damage, lots of knockbacks, hard hitting melee (with more knockbacks)

And then the armor set could get interesting. I'm thinking something where:
you get a lot of resists against multiple types, but with a big drawback.

After taking a certain number of hits, you get battle damage and have to get repaired to continue the fight.

 

Opens the opportunity for some other creative uses of it as well. clockwork, android, gory cyborg, etc.

[MTeague]

Tech Origin Sentinel.   Energy Blast / Invulnerability.

• Mostly Tech Bot armor, appropriate color
• Jewel chest detail, white
• Full Helm 
• Banded Gloves
• Rocket Boots

For some reason I can't post images, I keep getting "problem opening the file". But it comes out really close. 

Just have a second costume as backup, because is Gonna get generic'd. 

 

[FupDup]

Sentinel with either Energy/Rad (Rad is much better) as the primary and Invuln/Energy as the secondary, and if you want melee you can pick up Elec or Mu Mastery for your epic pool. 

[The Witchfire]

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

Sentinel with either Energy/Rad (Rad is much better) as the primary and Invuln/Energy as the secondary, and if you want melee you can pick up Elec or Mu Mastery for your epic pool. 

 

  Being newly returned and still learning all the cbanges, I have to ask though; is the Sentinel as durable as it seems?  I've only hit 10 with Witchfire, but I love the Sentinel AT so far.  Obviously I'm not expecting Tank or Brute level durability, but I want a character that can still take some hits. 🙂

[The Witchfire]

2 hours ago, MTeague said:

Tech Origin Sentinel.   Energy Blast / Invulnerability.

• Mostly Tech Bot armor, appropriate color
• Jewel chest detail, white
• Full Helm 
• Banded Gloves
• Rocket Boots

For some reason I can't post images, I keep getting "problem opening the file". But it comes out really close. 

Just have a second costume as backup, because is Gonna get generic'd. 

 

 

I may still be relearning the mecbanics, BUT i was able to visualize those parts & how they came together just fine.  Maybe I've spent too mucb time at Icon since 2004, rofl.

[Major_Decoy]

Honestly, I'd probably do Bio-armour. The effects aren't the best, even set to minimal effects, but ablative armour is one that actually looks kind of wrong on power armour. 

But you've got the different modes, which I feel lends itself to a power armour theme.

 

Honestly, I wish they added a technological theme as an option for Bio-Armour.

[Psyonico]

1 hour ago, The Witchfire said:

 

  Being newly returned and still learning all the cbanges, I have to ask though; is the Sentinel as durable as it seems?  I've only hit 10 with Witchfire, but I love the Sentinel AT so far.  Obviously I'm not expecting Tank or Brute level durability, but I want a character that can still take some hits. 🙂

Sentinels have slightly lower scalers than scrappers for defense/resistance but have the same caps (75% damage resistance, soft cap for defense is the same across all ATs). So they can be fairly sturdy if built that way.

[Biff Pow]

I know a defense set makes sense, but I love the crazy power of an Energy/Energy Blaster. And you can still get some decent defense from the Fighting and Epic pools.

[biostem]

4 hours ago, The Witchfire said:

I'm just looking for some creative build ideas for such a concept

I'd go with a sentinel, likely something like energy blast and invulnerability.  If you wanted to throw in some melee attacks as well, go with mace or ninja tool mastery for a weapon, or just fighting for some punches.

[Hopeling]

1 hour ago, Biff Pow said:

I know a defense set makes sense, but I love the crazy power of an Energy/Energy Blaster. And you can still get some decent defense from the Fighting and Epic pools.

MCU Iron Man is kind of a blaster, honestly. Dude has absolutely wild damage output, but trashes his suits on the regular.

[Snarky]

Invulnerability 

[MTeague]

11 hours ago, Hopeling said:

MCU Iron Man is kind of a blaster, honestly. Dude has absolutely wild damage output, but trashes his suits on the regular.

To be fair, MCU Iron Man's suits get wrecked when he's facetanking Thanos, the Hulk, going mano-e-mano with Thor, Ultron, or the bio-incinerating explody guys in Iron Man 3. Clint or Natasha would have been torn to shreds if they were in any of those fights. I'm still saying Sentinel. Now, if anyone wants to do a blaster anyway, hey, knock yourself out. Your account, your characters, your choices. But Iron Man was hardly any kind of squishy. 

[ZeeHero]

Either go melee route and do energy or electric melee, or a energy sentinel.

Alternately could go with the power armored soldier theme and use a beam rifle.

 

in COH power armor is mostly in the visual theme.

[Hopeling]

13 hours ago, MTeague said:

To be fair, MCU Iron Man's suits get wrecked when he's facetanking Thanos, the Hulk, going mano-e-mano with Thor, Ultron, or the bio-incinerating explody guys in Iron Man 3. Clint or Natasha would have been torn to shreds if they were in any of those fights. I'm still saying Sentinel. Now, if anyone wants to do a blaster anyway, hey, knock yourself out. Your account, your characters, your choices. But Iron Man was hardly any kind of squishy. 

Let me elaborate here, because I didn't mean it as a meme response. Certainly a sentinel is the #1 most obvious fit. But archetypes almost never map perfectly onto media, so I wanted to offer an alternate take.

 

Iron Man has been my favorite superhero since before the MCU, so this isn't a putdown. The movie version is not ultra squishy by any means, but then, neither are blasters if built for it. They're just not as tough as their melee teammates, same way Iron Man is not as tough as Thor. Comic Iron Man should for sure be something like a Sentinel, because he routinely shrugs off attacks and it's a rare, exceptional event for a suit to be destroyed or even visibly damaged.

 

But the MCU version frequently sustains visible heavy damage - on quite a few occasions, to the point of disabling or destroying an entire suit. Yes sometimes that's because he's fighting Thanos or Ultron, but sometimes it's "just" because he took a beating while fixing the helicarrier prop, or because the Mark 42 got clipped by a truck, or because he was in the thick of a fight with the Chitauri for too long. And meanwhile his key piece of tech is a functionally unlimited energy source, and he displays a wide variety of attacks at both range and melee.

 

There's some conceptual space for power armor that isn't totally indestructible, but maybe a bit ablative and modular and replaceable. MCU Iron Man leans more in that direction than other iterations of the character. And if you think that's an interesting take on the character - I do! - then a blaster might fit that feel.

Edited yesterday at 04:57 AM by Hopeling

[Maelwys]

4 hours ago, Hopeling said:

MCU Iron Man

IMO Comics Iron Man and MCU Iron Man are both thematically an EnergyBlast/Invulnerability Sentinel with the Electricity Mastery (for Havoc Punch) Epic Pool.

They can both withstand very heavy blows from very powerful foes; which translates into Damage Resistance (especially Smashing/Lethal)... however in the Comics Tony also tends to pack a hefty amount of Absorb and/or Defense (because his armor often completely negates minor/weaker blows rather than taking any noteworthy damage) so that version might be closer mechanically speaking to a Radiation Armor or even a Super Reflexes Sentinel (with Master Brawler!). IIRC in the vast majority of his incarnations he lacks a healing factor (with the possible exception of Extremis) but his suit has some form of self-repair routine; so that tracks too.