GuyPerfect

And Killing Crew became Freakshow

Pictured above:

* Miss Liberty, the trainer in Atlas Park.
* It's, a possessive as clearly indicated by the apostrophe.
* Unresistable, which is totally a real word despite my spell checker's objections.
* Merit Rewards, a type of special Salvage.
* Powerset, because the space bar is for timid country folk.

Let us take a moment to honor all the obnoxiously careless and unprofessional typographical errors in the game, and look for signs of more to come.

It's what separates the best from the bester.

We'll be shooting for any enemy group and any AV/GM. Farming a map of Fire-only enemies with Fiery Aura isn't all that impressive.

There's no reason ANY Beam Rifle shouldn't be available to Robotics.

There's no rez for Sister Psyche because the devs finally decided they no longer hate villains.

Preface: This is not a thread for posting builds. I can't enforce this as a rule, but I ask for your cooperation to keep this discussion healthy until the time comes that we try to make something out of it.
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In contrast to the tone of this thread, which is provocative satire, the idea hit me that we as a community could try to construct not the best single build, but the best character with an assortment of powers using the 3 alternate build slots available to it.

Typical "bests" include the following:

• High damage. Usually total output over time rather than spikes. It's hard to out-spike a Stalker, for instance, but not so tough to out-DPS them.
• High survivability. Defense is the everlasting flavor of the month for this one, but it can only get you so far. For proper survivability, we'll be wanting a good mix of Resistance, Defense and likely some heals.
• Soloing tough targets. Sometimes it's the high DPS, others is the -Regen, but it's always about out-living the adversary and winning the fight. This includes Arch-villains and Giant Monsters of various flavors. A note that this requires some focus on single-target attacks.
• Soloing many targets. When it comes to farming, you want to destroy the most enemies in the fastest way you can. This brings a strong focus on AoE attacks, possibly debuffs and a good deal of survivability. If you're not at the aggro cap, you can totally do better.
• Melee damage. Getting in close and punching them in the face. Not much more is as satisfying as that.
• Ranged damage. Laying down pain everywhere you go, striking the fool who tries to flee. Nothing says godly like the wielder of destruction.
• Crowd Control. When the enemy can't do anything else, at least they can still wimper and wet themselves, amirite?
• Team contributions. Tanking and damage are both ways to contribute to a team, but if you can do all of the above, the team is more likely to be treated as tag-alongs anyway. For the purpose of this thought experiment, we're going to ignore ally buffs/heals/whatever and focus on solo content.

Obviously, no one build can be the best at all of this. But we get 3 build slots to choose from, so perhaps one character can do all of this? One build for GM soloing, one build for map clearing... you get the idea.

Each of the Archetypes boards are filled with ideas, suggestions and builds to make characters that are especially apt at each of the things listed above. There's a lot of good insight in our community, so bringing that all together could be quite an interesting thing indeed.
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Brutes and Scrappers tend to have the advantage, since they're basically invincible and offensive powerhouses out of the box. They're not so keen on ranged damage, though, but most people don't seem to mind.

Dominators, and to a lesser extent Controllers, can batter enemies upside the head in total safety thanks to the crowd control. Controllers aren't as high on damage, but they do get access to some potent buffs and debuffs (Fulcrum Shift <3) that in some cases will push them beyond the capabilities of a Dominator.

Tankers are as sturdy as it gets. They'll always be the most survivable due to a combination of high protective attributes and just higher HP in general. The main problem with Tankers is that their damage is significantly lower than those of Scrapper and Brute, but with the right assortment of powers, they can be made to work as offensive characters.

Blasters pwn the crap out of everything, so long as they have protection. They don't do as much damage as Scrappers (even ranged damage on Scrapper is as good as Blaster), but they specialize in ranged and location AoEs that have a much larger effect area than anything Scrappers get. The Blaster's primary weakness is a combination of no protection along with low HP. All of the epic archetypes have less HP than Blaster, but they get self protection, so you generally don't have to think about it.

Speaking of which, all of the epic archetypes. Like Dominator, they do a little bit of everything, along with the added benefit of self protection. They all get mez protection, although Warshade has to shapeshift for it. They all get ranged and melee attacks, personal shields, control powers... Some have heals, some have pets, but they're all pretty vicious in battle. The main sticking point is that their damage, especially compared to the above, isn't as impressive. But when you can do everything, does it really matter if you're the best at nothing?

For the purposes of this thought experiment, I'd like to avoid the epic archetypes. They're considerably more restricted in their variety, and something like "a Warshade" is all the more thought you'd need to put into it. Let's pick one of the standard archetypes and see what we can do with it.

Masterminds are a curious mix of DPS, buff/debuff and aggro control, which is something no other archetype can lay claim to. With well-protected and suped-up pets, Masterminds can be a sight to behold, busting down tough targets and many weaker targets in short order.

Stalkers are good and are about to become better, but every single possible combination of power sets is excessively limited in the AoE department. I can't say this is a viable archetype for this experiment.
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So here's what we need to put together:

• A character that is not an Epic Archetype
• Very high single-target DPS in one build
• Very high multi-target DPS in another build
• Very high survivability in both builds (not exclusively Defense or Resistance)
• A mix of ranged damage, melee damage and crowd control (though this one's less important)
• Able to solo Arch-Villains and Giant Monsters; the faster the better
• Able to solo an aggro cap of +4s; the faster the better

So... I guess the place to start is, what archetype would be best for this? If only Brutes got Spines...

Likewise, the Rogue->Hero missions share a similar theme, although I think they pulled them off better. You see an opportunity to make some money or whatever, some inconvenient thing happens, and you have to do something quote-unquote "good" to keep it from coming back and biting you later... and then... maybe you would have done it for the good anyway? Could this be?

And the plot thickens!

Sounds like a bug report is in order, yeah. Make sure you note what operating system you're using, your blood type, the time of day, and anything else that's totally irrelevant to help them fix the problem. Be sure to use helpful, descriptive phrases like "it wont work" and "problem with program."

Also, if they ask you to help them test something, be sure to use the opportunity to dump an unrelated wishlist on them for no reason. Focus testing is a great time to suggest things that don't pertain to what needs to be tested.

Sorry, Carp Melee first.

Because everyone knows the best Defenders don't team.

*Dramatic pause*