Flavour of the Month: Level 50

[PaxArcana]

25 minutes ago, tjknight said:

 Inversely, Masterminds seem to make good use of sets that aren't as  popular for Defenders and Corruptors.

Masterminds always have team-mates to benefit from their buffs and debuffs.  🙂

[kenlon]

25 minutes ago, tjknight said:

I'm pretty shocked by the sheer dominance that Empathy has with Defenders. Like.. wow.  Also, in general how low powerful sets like Pain, Traps, Cold, Thermal, and Sonic rank  among the Defenders.  Inversely, Masterminds seem to make good use of sets that aren't as  popular for Defenders and Corruptors.

You really shouldn't be - people are stupid and want "healers", and by that they mean Empathy. (Never mind that the buffs defenders bring are always more important than pure heal-per-second. . . )

[Without_Pause]

33 minutes ago, tjknight said:

I'm pretty shocked by the sheer dominance that Empathy has with Defenders. Like.. wow.  Also, in general how low powerful sets like Pain, Traps, Cold, Thermal, and Sonic rank  among the Defenders.  Inversely, Masterminds seem to make good use of sets that aren't as  popular for Defenders and Corruptors.

 

Very interesting. 

Meta in gaming and needing healers. A number of the combos are based on classic CoH power gaming, but you can see some which come together for specific reasons, ie theme or because they work well together. Also interesting to see things like the above mentioned Mind control and other powersets work better for specific ATs.  /ea for stalkers being one and things like psy melee and SJ being popular since stalkers get a toggle to stun and both melee sets play into that. Psy/ea isn't a natural pairing, and yet there it is as the top stalker pairing.

 

I'm trying to figure out how surprised I'm suppose to be that /regen is still such a force for scrappers. I mean, I get Kat/regen, but I think the redraw would annoy me.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Without_Pause

[Myrmidon]

Incarnates:

 

KM/WP Brute: Master of the mystic arts.

 

Rad/Fire Brute: I just wanted Influence because I didn’t know that the Homecoming team was awesome and changed things for the better.

 

Fire/Rad Corruptor: The power of the Sun in the palm of my hand.

 

Electric/Kin Corruptor: Super Sapper from Hell.

 

 

I would have more, however, I had a month timeout vacation in Europe.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Myrmidon

[ParaBruce]

2 hours ago, kenlon said:

You really shouldn't be - people are stupid and want "healers", and by that they mean Empathy. (Never mind that the buffs defenders bring are always more important than pure heal-per-second. . . )

 

There was a thread about this in the Defenders forum just recently. Some important points:

 

#1. Essentially nobody has perfect defenses while leveling, and by no means everyone at 50 has them. Lots of people at 50 have a hodgepodge of SOs and random SOs with no planning or set bonuses at all. Others have plans in progress. The huge majority of characters do take damage at inconvenient times. Healing remains helpful, alongside the defense and resistance help from support that makes it needed less often.

 

#2. Empathy doesn't just heal. Clear Mind is one of the best anti-mez powers I'm aware of in the game. 

 

#3. Empathy doesn't just heal. Regeneration Aura and Recovery Aura are great for, again, nearly everyone. The fraction of characters who simply don't need any help with regeneration or, in particular, recovery is quite a small one.

 

#4. Empathy doesn't just heal. As noted above, there are people who don't need any help with their defenses, but not all that many. And even they are likely to want some to-hit and damage help, because, well, okay, there must be people who don't want a better chance to hit and aren't interested in doing more damage, but I'll bet it's a really, really small fraction of the player base. So Fortitude is pretty much always welcome.

 

[Heraclea]

Incarnates:

 

Heraclea - Invulnerability/Dark Melee tanker

 

Yamnaya - electric/electric blaster

 

Catrina - bio/spines tanker

 

Mother of Vinegar - water/willpower sentinel

 

Shero - titan weapons/willpower scrapper

 

Penthesilea - street justice/willpower brute

 

Level 50, alpha not unlocked yet:

 

Grandma Gnosis - illusions/radiation controller

[Vanden]

So who are the unicorns? If you have a character with a Primary/Secondary combination that's listed up there as the only 50 of its kind, you have to tell us, it's the law.

[Heraclea]

14 minutes ago, Vanden said:

So who are the unicorns? If you have a character with a Primary/Secondary combination that's listed up there as the only 50 of its kind, you have to tell us, it's the law.

Not there yet, but the character that's on a rocket to 50 right now is an Archery/Devices blaster.  Only 28 of them.

 

Blasters are much more fun now that they get sustain powers. 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Heraclea

[Crowcus Pocus]

Lovely work. Thank you!

 

Small fix: "Sonic Resonance" instead of "Sonic Debuff" on Defender's chart.

[Eva Destruction]

My main is one of only 28 Fire/Elec Blasters, I feel kinda special now.

 

I would have expected DM/SD to be higher for Scrappers, considering it was a bit of an FotM on live, but it seems all the shielders are going for the double tele-nukes now that that's an option.

[Budo]

9 hours ago, Vanden said:

So who are the unicorns? If you have a character with a Primary/Secondary combination that's listed up there as the only 50 of its kind, you have to tell us, it's the law.

Not quite a unicorn, as there are apparently 2 others, but being one of only 3 Elec/Traps controllers is not surprising. 

Almost always when I team, I get some version of a "Huh, never seen one of you before..."-type comment. 

 

(Which makes sense, because it's not very good....but it can be fun!)

[Coyotedancer]

Only 80 KinMelee Stalkers at 50...

Only *11* of those are KM/Bio...

 

… And two of that less-than-a-dozen are Kai! XD 

 

It sort of surprises me that they're that rare. KM on a Stalker hits like a sack of bricks.

 

 

Edited September 4, 2019 by Coyotedancer

[kenlon]

15 hours ago, ParaBruce said:

 

There was a thread about this in the Defenders forum just recently. Some important points:

 

#1. Essentially nobody has perfect defenses while leveling, and by no means everyone at 50 has them. Lots of people at 50 have a hodgepodge of SOs and random SOs with no planning or set bonuses at all. Others have plans in progress. The huge majority of characters do take damage at inconvenient times. Healing remains helpful, alongside the defense and resistance help from support that makes it needed less often.

 

#2. Empathy doesn't just heal. Clear Mind is one of the best anti-mez powers I'm aware of in the game. 

 

#3. Empathy doesn't just heal. Regeneration Aura and Recovery Aura are great for, again, nearly everyone. The fraction of characters who simply don't need any help with regeneration or, in particular, recovery is quite a small one.

 

#4. Empathy doesn't just heal. As noted above, there are people who don't need any help with their defenses, but not all that many. And even they are likely to want some to-hit and damage help, because, well, okay, there must be people who don't want a better chance to hit and aren't interested in doing more damage, but I'll bet it's a really, really small fraction of the player base. So Fortitude is pretty much always welcome.

 

Astonishingly, all those points are addressed by what I actually said, which is apparently not what you read. 
The buffs from any Defender primary (including Empathy) are more important than pure heal-per-second. That doesn't change the fact that a facepalmingly large percentage of the Empathy defenders running around are basically healbots who put Healing Aura on auto and assume they are done.

 

Empathy is a fine set. Empathy Defenders are excellent team additions. "Healers" are not.

[Myrmidon]

19 hours ago, Vanden said:

So who are the unicorns? If you have a character with a Primary/Secondary combination that's listed up there as the only 50 of its kind, you have to tell us, it's the law.

KM/WP Brute - 17 of us. 

[Caulderone]

Heh.  Adding up Brutes, then Tankers, then Scrappers.

 

There are more Brutes than Tankers + Scrappers combined + 6000.

[Cyrickain13]

Too many alts....but know I know what I want to build.

[WumpusRat]

I have an axe/shield brute on the way up. Only 17 of those. I haven't touched her in a couple weeks though.

[kenlon]

Thanks to these charts, I have now rolled my next set of alts:

The Loudest Ninja (Sonic/Ninjitsu Blaster)

Doctor North (Battle Axe/Ice Brute)

Arbiter's Shadow (Mind/Trick Arrow Controller)

Just A Soldier (AR/Traps Corruptor)

E9-NEM Support Drone (Sonic/Beam Rifle Defender, also not a nemesis plot, we promise!)

Winter Spirit (Ice/Thorny Assault Dominator) 

Thunderberg (Ice/Elec Scrapper)

The Scurrilous Imp (Fire/Fire Stalker)

The Watcher's Eye (SR/Katana Tanker)

 

Good times.

[esotericist]

On 9/2/2019 at 12:13 AM, Vanden said:

So who are the unicorns? If you have a character with a Primary/Secondary combination that's listed up there as the only 50 of its kind, you have to tell us, it's the law.

sadly, i'm currently levelling one of those unicorns, so i am in the process of reducing the quantity of unicorns in the world.

 

i am a monster.

[Rathulfr]

14 hours ago, Caulderone said:

Heh.  Adding up Brutes, then Tankers, then Scrappers.

 

There are more Brutes than Tankers + Scrappers combined + 6000.

Which neatly coincides precisely with the number of Spines/Fire farmers.  🤣

[jubakumbi]

Am I a unicorn for not havng a Spines/Fire or any other 'farmer'?

 

😉

 

[Apparition]

30 minutes ago, jubakumbi said:

Am I a unicorn for not havng a Spines/Fire or any other 'farmer'?

 

😉

 

 

Spines/Fire?  No.  Any farmer at all?  Yes.

[myyth]

what surprises me is how I hear things like "regen is horrible" and "willpower has everything regen has but more" and "willpower was the devs way of apologizing for how bad regen is"

 

yet regen is the most popular secondary for scrappers and sentinels over willpower. So regen really isn't that bad then? 

 

 

[Lusiphur Malache]

My 3 50s are all kinds of meh. Gonna create the ultimate unicorn as soon as I figure it out,by the time it is a 50 probably will be FoTM

[Without_Pause]

11 minutes ago, myyth said:

what surprises me is how I hear things like "regen is horrible" and "willpower has everything regen has but more" and "willpower was the devs way of apologizing for how bad regen is"

 

yet regen is the most popular secondary for scrappers and sentinels over willpower. So regen really isn't that bad then? 

 

 

/regen just needs more investment and /wp will be a smoother ride. /regen also has a well known character and others giving it the needed eyeballs. It is tougher to think of a superhero who has willpower versus regen or invulnerability.