Starfox_NA

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I don't understand why people think that max tohit vs. max defense should be 50% chance to hit. Max perception vs. max stealth is, what, 5ft at level 50?

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Couldn't agree more. A maxed-out tank has 90% damage resistance. Resistance debuffs can reduce this to perhaps 75% damage reduction (if you have a -150% resist debuff, which takes a whole team of debuffers in consort). Defense should be about as effective; a maxed out tanker attacked by a maxed-out attacker should be hit about 10% of the time, a scrapper about 25% of the time - which corresponds to 80% and 50% damage reduction, respectively.

From a PvP persepctive (even tough I'm mostly PvE)

1: 50% hit
2: 95% hit (Wet dreams for more as attacker and less as defender)
3: 5% hit
4: About 25% hit

The last question is the interesting one. It seems like it should relate to the resistance cap; maxed-out defense and resist should be about equal. Resistance debuffs do not really hurt people with resistance more than others; neither should to-hit buffs. (This might not be true about Defender debuffs in PvP).

I think the problem is the defense model. If defense was a % change for the attack to miss, not a subtraction from the hit chance, then defense and resistance could be equal and to-hit buffs and debuffs would be in a realm all of their own. So what is now 10% defense would be changed to 20% miss chance, and a separate defense roll or dodge chance if you like could be a part of the attack procedure.

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As for how it is PvP, say you are selling "Progenitor Goo Mk XII" for 800 Quatlu's and I have one I want to sell. I am going to price my item based off not only what the 'market' says it should go for, but also based off of what others are selling for AT THIS MOMENT. So, if I think you're selling too low, I could buy yours, then try to sell both at a higher price. Or, if I think you're selling too high, I can undercut you, reducing your chance of selling. Either way, my actions will effect you, and your actions will effect me. Thus, "PvP."

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This pretty much sums up why I left WoW and might soon be leaving CoH.

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We also will be actively monitoring datamining on every aspect of this system through all of Training Room and into Live.

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You have a very bad track record at this. Just an example: you saud you'd datamine to keep track of the balance for Trick Arrow / Archery. Yet nothing happened to these set for half a year, until players started screaming about it.

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However, what happens with Defiance through the course of the game is interesting. At the start of the game, a Blaster player will probably find that golden window and get use to it as most mob-foes are still relatively weak. As the game progresses, that golden window is going to get narrower and narrower as mob-foes progressively get stronger. This could get increasing frustrating as what looked great at the begining, gradually looses its luster, and slowly becomes more awkward. Towards the end of the game, mob-foes are typically much stronger, and that window can become typically closed all together on average, meaning the Archtype has pretty much lost general use of their Inherent Power. A player must gradually increase the size of the band in thier life bar spectrum that they must retain to be able to survive the next attack when it comes and still be at at least a "Sliver of Life", thereby working against what ever advantage Defiance may give them.

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This is by far the best argument against Defiance that I've seen so far. It encapsulates the problems of high-level blasters and evaluates Defiance into that perspective. In other words; it shows that when blasters start to sux at higher levels, defiance is no help at all. It only helps when it is not needed.

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n short, I think we agree.

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This does not seem to be an unreasonable assumption. 8) We are just showing different angles of the same issue.

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W < X < Y < Z <== yay, balanced

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This is very rarely how it works. There is almost always a "rote" method better than Z (where Z is the most complex, skill-demanding method). If there isn't, it is certainly possible to find some even harder trick, something so chancy it is never profitable, and call that Z. Somewhere there is a line between ambition and sheer lunacy. And that was pretty much what I was saying in my last post.

Perhaps this reward balance is not even desirable. Lets take difficulty as an example. It is undeniably so that playing on Invincible is more demanding than playing on Rugged. If you play as fast on Invincible as you do on Rugged, you'll definitely get more rewards. Yet most pick-up groups will earn more rewards over time on Rugged because they cannot really manage Invincible and not slow down. These teams will play closer to their potential on Invincible, yet earn slimmer rewards. They might learn more new skill and have more fun, tough, and that's just as important.

This was probably a design goal for the difficulty slider - very few teams should consistently benefit from an Invincible setting. If most teams did, Invincible is to easy as there is no setting challenging to the really good players.

In your defiance example, the player who has truly mastered Defiance will consistently earn more xp. But it is debatable whether it is possible to truly master defiance and whether you'll ever pay of the debt you got learning the skill. I would say Defiance mastery is a skill with little payoff. Yet it is fun for an advanced player, and maybe that is the greatest payoff of all. I've only recently started using Defiance, and I've done it not because I expect it to pay off in xp, but to challenge myself and see how much I can take.

And yet, over time, these Defiance skills will add to my general skill level, giving me a wider palette of tactics to use with "true" skill, which in turn gives me a (slightly) increased rate of xp gain overall - without using any repetitive "trick" tactics. So even tough a repetitive use of defiance might not pay off, the ability to use it in the few situations where it is appropriate certainly can.

Thus "W < X < Y < Z <== yay, balanced!" might not be true, but the ability to use tactic Z might still pay off if it is not (ab)used consistently, only used as the situation naturally pops up.

Whether this has a bearing on the merits of Defiance is a completely different story. I'm not trying to argue for or against Defiance, i'm arguing about what "true" skill and "root" skill means in the game and what the rewards of these are.

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The crux of that post is that a successfully balanced game should allow player to achieve higher reward rates by using increasingly complex strategies. Since not all strategies should be predictable in advance, this means that emergent strategies should be evaluated not only in terms of how high a reward rate they achieve, but also how complex they are.

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I submit that any strategy which can be consistently used to increase your rate of xp gain isn't really worth a reward, no matter how complex. What I consider worthy of increased xp gain is playing on the edge and using your abilities to the limit. A pre I5 tank herding was practicing a known and complex skill, but by no means pushing the limits.

I've never played EQ, but the 4-kite strategy as it is described above seems to me a trick tactic, while the charm kite strategy seems to be to push the limit. As described, it seems highly unlikely that charm kiting could generate a large and consistent xp boost over time. A power leveler would pick 4-kiting over charm kiting any day, simply because the former is repetitive, while the later requires adjusting your tactics to each situation. And tactics that need adjusting generally take time to think out and coordinate, and thus lessen the reward over time. Charm kiting seems to be more for the player looking for a challenge.

In my experience, the things that reward skilled players over unskilled ones are more subtle than trick strategies. Skilled players are able to pull of basic tactics much better, and that's the real difference. A team of players who have played a lot together develop an intuitive sense of tactics and what their friends will and won't do that go beyond mere root training, and that's where I find the true advantage lies - and should lie.

When I go over my argument if find that the distinction between trick strategies and genuine skill is not easy to make. Some trick strategies (charm kiting) take "genuine" skill to pull off. Some (pre I5 herding) require only "root" skill. And a "genuinely" skilled team would still be better at using them. This muddles my argument - I hope some of you still get my drift.

What I find myself saying above is that any strategy which consistently increases xp shouldn't, which comes out as more categorical than I want to be. I also think that no matter how you design your game, there will always be farming - repetitive ways of garnering rewards. The only question is how much faster these farming techniques are compared to "standard" gameplay. As long as farming awards are not outrageous, I don't really see an issue and don't think too much time should be spend on filling the holes. Basically, we all play to have fun. If people are having fun power-leveling, why should I care? My answer is: if their rewards make mine seem insignificant. Where that point lies is very, very subjective. I have no problem with were it is now in CoX.

However my objection to the quote above still remains: a power set that performs better when used with trick tactics should not be better "on average" than one which doesn't. Over time, the skill of the players using each set can be expected to develop just as much, which means each set should be as rewarding on average. Some sets might be harder on new players, or players whose talents do not fit the methodology of the set, but on average each set should perform the same. Some players like the rush of risk in regeneration; others like the relative consistency of super reflexes. Weirdly enough regen might require better reflexes on the part of the player than super-reflexes does, but that does not mean it should perform better on average. It does mean that there may be a wider spread between the performance of a regeneration players because of their reflexes than between super-reflexes players. On the other hand, super-reflexes require other skills which can vary just as much.


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As an aside, I am honestly curious whether Cryptic considered Warburg temp powers and Shivans when designing the LRSF. I don't really expect an answer on this, but one can always hope...

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Very much afraid they did, and I hate that. Balancing PvE content around rewards that can only be found in PvP zones sucks. Shivans and nukes are just to powerful, balancing the opposition around them creates imbalances in and of itself. The worst thing is that it drags people who do not want PvP into PvP zones, with predictable results.

Interesting to see a gude to my favourite MM combo. I previouslyhave a Robots7Traps at 45, my Thugs/Dark is only at 27 yet but so far proving great fun.

I am a blastermind with my thugs/dark. That means I shoot as much as I can, in consort with my thugs. I ove in under stealth to a good angle and open up, mixing in geals as I go. The Bruider is so far a waste of space and mostly work as a distuptor; it is me and my lesser thugs that do the real damage.

I only have Shadow Falla and the heal from my secondary.

So far,this has been great fun and works very well. I don't care if it is a power build or not. It is fast enough and safe enough for me and works well on teams, even if the role is a bit unusual - don't ask me to tank, and if you want healing you better stand in my gang.

Powerset Selection Guide mk III by Starfox.

It makes a huge pretention, in that it is an all-in-one guide to all archetyes and powersets, hero and villain side. Of course, it doesn't go into detail.

Extensive updates, as I have now actually played most of the City of Villains sets and archetypes I was only guessig about before.

Power Pools

Power Pools flesh your character out. While not nearly as character-defining as your main power sets, they decide how you move about, which has a huge impact on look and feel. There are also pool powers that allow you to make up for limitation in your main powers – some attacks, a little control and so on – but generally these are weak and do not allow you to transcend archetype barriers. Taking the medicine pool will not make you a healer.

There is one power pool that is mandatory. Even statesman admits it. It is Fitness, and all because of the final power, Stamina. It doesn’t really matter who you are, you should get Stamina. Preferably at level 20. Hasten is also very good, but not all builds need it – I have noted in the archetypes part of the guide who needs it the most.

Several power pools have attacks, and these are spread put over the pools, so I will discuss them in this introduction rather than in the pools themselves. In general, these are similar to what melee archetypes get early in their careers – not spectacular but not bad either. The damage they do varies by archetype, so a tanker, controller or defender will deal less damage than a scrapper or blaster – just as they do with regular attacks. Comparing them, Boxing has the best damage and Air Superiority has both good damage and nice side effects. Kick and Jump Kick seem to be the worst. Flurry is interesting in that it is very endurance effective. It should be noted that all weapon users have to re-draw their weapon after making a pool power attack – including the kick attacks. This applies to Assault Rifle, Archery, Battle Axe, Ninja Blade, War Mace, and most Scrappers.


Concealment
Concealment powers make people invisible or semi-transparent. The first power, Stealth, has a funky glow while the later ones make you conspicuous by your absence – especially if you glow because of other special effects, in which case your body will be a negative space in the glow. Formerly a very good power set for combat, Concealment is now more of a sneaking and set-up set. This is because the effects are suppressed when you fight, so you are no longer invisible at all – though you still suffer all the drawbacks. Still, it can be nice not to be jumped as you round a corner and combined with Super Speed you can move about unseen by most. A very useful set in player vs. player combat.

Fighting
The set begins with Boxing, the best of the pool power attacks, and the mediocre Kick. These look like basic brawling moves, nothing fancy. But most who take fighting do it for the later defensive powers. Because these scale and stack for Brutes, Scrappers and Tankers, they can be really attractive, but the endurance cost is great. For a non-melee archetype, the benefits are very small. If all you want is some defense, Combat Jumping may be a better pick than Weave – it is way more endurance effective, even if the bonus is slightly lower.

Fitness
As noted in the introduction, Fitness is as close to mandatory as anything gets in City of Heroes. It is hard to praise this set enough. Not only is Stamina absolutely essential, the other powers are good as well. Swift increases your basic running rate, cutting travel time early on and allowing you to turn off Sprint indoors to save endurance. Hurdle is a mini travel power, as fast as unslotted Flight, but lacks jump control. It works very well with the Leaping pool. Health is limited regeneration, and reduces downtime considerably. You may want to slot it to get regeneration that actually helps in a fight. And Stamina increases your endurance recovery – which allows you to use all your powers more, and also reduces downtime. Get Stamina as soon as possible, no later than level 24. None of these powers have any effect on your appearance.

Flight
The limousine of the travel powers, Flight is slow but safe and comfortable. Hover is very slow unless you slot it for speed, but if you do it becomes slightly faster than Sprint and provides a little defense on top. Get Swift from the Fitness pool to speed up your Hover rate. Hover also reduces knockback to almost nothing. Air Superiority is a very good melee attack that can be taken as a prerequisite for Fly if you don’t want Hover – even unslotted, the knockup and flight hindrance makes it worth having. Fly is slow for a travel power. You should put three Flight Speed enhancers (the maximum that will help) into Fly as soon as you can afford to – and you will still be slower than anyone else. However, flight is safe, easy, and comfortable. You can chat, read clues, call contacts, sort enhancements and do other such things while in flight. If you take off as soon as you exit a mission, chatting away in the air, you may well get to the next mission first because your teammates had to stop to type. This of course leaves any ambushers behind – sometimes a bad policy. Flight is absolutely great for recon, especially when you have to find something specific in an outdoor instance map. Group Fly isn’t generally very useful, but has some utility in the endgame. It can also help with pets.

Leadership
Everyone affected by a Leadership power is surrounded by dancing icons similar to those you get from inspirations. Leadership is a series of toggles that are rather expensive to run, but which help your friends as long as they are in sight and not too far away. Because of the endurance cost they are best taken after you have Stamina, and – except for Assault - you should either slot these heavily or not take them at all. Running them unslotted is a big drain for small benefit. Defenders, and to a lesser degree Controllers, Corruptors, and Masterminds, get a bonus to Leadership, making this a more attractive option for them.

Leaping
A versatile movement power popular with meleeists. Jumping lets you get on top of things, and is much faster than flight. It does demand constant attention as you jump, and has some fumble potential – you sometimes get stuck, and if you are unlucky this may even get killed. After level 30 or so, jumping squishies should strongly consider stealth. Combat Jumping is a good minor defense and protects against immobilization, cheap enough that you can always run it. Acrobatics is a poor man’s knockback resistance, expensive to run but essential to some. Most tankers and scrappers should not touch it, but Dark Armor, Fiery Aura, and Ninjitsu lacks knockback protection. Jump Kick is a cute, acrobatic attack that does little damage considering how slow it is.

Medicine
Medicine is a poor man’s empathy. When you use it, you pull out a big technological gizmo and radiate the usual green healing waves. All the powers in this set have short range and can be interrupted if you get attacked. With Super Reflexes, or Ice Armor you may be able to use it in combat, but most others can’t, so it is mainly useful to cut down on downtime and in preparation for a fight. Stimulant only affects others and lasts a minute.

Presence
Taunt and Confront powers that need to hit – unlike their Tanker and Scrapper counterparts – and some limited fear powers at the end. Just remember that Presence is much weaker than other fear powers. The fact that Provoke needs to hit may actually be an advantage. A Tanker taunt always affects the five enemies closest to the point of origin. Because Provoke can miss, the effect can spread to other targets further away, reducing the risk of a double-taunt. Still, don’t count on it.

Speed
Speed powers have glowing, fiery effects. You leave a trail of fire when you run, and Hasten gives you the signature glowing hands that tell people you streamlined your character. Hasten is one of the more popular powers in the game. It reduces the recharge time of all other powers a lot, which means that you can do the same things more often, which in turn means you need fewer powers. Thus, you can concentrate on your good powers and leave out the weak ones. This is especially important to blasters and controllers. It used to be possible to have Hasten running continuously, but with Enhancement Diversification, this is no longer so. Flurry is a series of rapid punches that take a long time to execute, but cost little endurance and do decent damage. Super Speed makes you move like a car. Nothing beats you on level ground, but terrain gives you problems. Think like a car –a detour is often faster than an off-road trip. Combining Super Speed with Combat Jumping makes it a lot more terrain-friendly. You also get limited stealth, which stacks with other stealth powers to make you fully invisible, which is very good indeed – but doesn’t work in player vs. player. Whirlwind is a quixotic control power with a huge endurance cost.

Teleportation
The travel power that is hardest to use, with great fumble potential. After each teleport, you get a limited time of grace when you will not fall – but cannot move. During this time you are supposed to orient for the next teleport. This doesn’t always work, and even a little lag can make it a nightmare. When it works, Teleport is a strenuous (both on you and your character) but fast mode of travel. It can also be fun. And nothing beats Teleport for a quick escape, especially in player versus player. Recall Friend summons a teammate to you; this is very useful and reduces downtime. It can also rescue someone in trouble – even a fallen comrade. Teleport Foe is a pull power that does not require line-of-sight. You can stand in cover and teleport enemies to you. This allows you to single out important enemies and defeat them before their friends come to the rescue. Again very useful in player versus player. Like most such powers it works best for a tanker. Team Teleport is teleport, only you bring friends. Since you already have Recall Friend, this is mainly for combat. A warning – those you bring along with Team Teleport do not have the period of grace where they will not fall, so you cannot leapfrog yourself and allies/pets through the air this way.

Tankers

Tankers are the damage-takers of City of Heroes, the heavy guys who stand there taking the punishment to protect their team. To do this, you have good defenses and the ability to force opponents to attack you instead of teammates. Tanks can solo, but they are primarily a defensive team ‘type.

Visually, there are two kinds of tanks – invulnerability tanks, and “the others”. Nine out of ten comic-book bricks translate best into invulnerability tanks – the other sets look unusual and are too specific. Of course, this isn’t so in the game, where you find all kinds of tanks. But if you select something other than Invulnerability for a primary, you have to build your concept around the look of your powers.

Tanks have been revised more than any other archetype over the history of the game. They started out pretty useless, but in update three they became extremely powerful instead. High level teams had to have them, while tanks could do well without teams. This changed in update five, where tanker defenses were reduced. Some people argue that tanks are now useless. I still think that they are valuable on a team; they are way tougher than anyone else and can make fights much safer, but they are no longer required.

The tank sets all have some aura power that continually taunts those nearby, and this is an important part of your ability to keep the enemy focused on you. You also have gauntlet – when you attack, enemies in the area will go for you, even if you don’t attack them specifically. This is an asset when you try to protect your team. But it is also a straightjacket – it is impossible to make a highly offensive tank and play as a scrapper, because enemies will not treat you like a scrapper.

Your early power choices are extremely important – you need to quickly get decent attacks and defenses. Taking the Taunt power early will make you very team dependent and makes you a focus for all enemies, so if you do this you should cut back on attacks and focus on defenses. On the bright side, Taunt costs no endurance, so you can run many toggles and taunt all day long – this is know as a taunt bot and might be boring in the long run. If you skip Taunt, you will attract fewer enemies and can afford to take more attacks, but will be less useful in a team. Later in your career you can both deal and take significant damage and do well either solo or in teams.


Tanker Primary - Defense
Most of the identity of tankers comes from their defense set. You talk more of Invulnerability tankers and Fire tankers than of Axe tanks or Energy tanks. Tanker primaries have a huge impact on appearance - the various defensive powers dominate how you look, but even more importantly it affects how you play. Early tankers should be wary of taking many defensive toggles because of the endurance cost. Just be sure to get whatever provides you with status resistance. Passive powers cost no endurance, but they are also significantly worse than toggles – always slot up toggles before auto powers.

Fiery Aura
Want to be a human blaze, constantly surrounded by all-consuming fire? Then fire tanking may be for you. Be warned that the constant, pulsing blaze can be very tiring on the eyes. Fiery aura is a more aggressive set that the others, with a very good damaging aura and a damage-enhancing power and you can even replenish your own endurance, which lets you attack more. Fire has the great advantage of having all its resistance and status protection concentrated in but two powers, which are thus easy to slot. The drawbacks are that you can’t dodge at all and that you are vulnerable to psionics, knockback and immobilize attacks. It is almost mandatory to take pool powers defenses; Combat Jumping and either Acrobatics or Hover. An Ice tanker should take a close look at pool powers that boost defense – Combat Jumping, Hover, Maneuvers and Weave – as those last points of defense can really help.

Ice Armor
Ice Armor looks keen but is noisy, with dramatic storm sounds. You encase yourself in crystal ice and shroud yourself in whirlwind. Ice is designed to make foes miss rather than to absorb damage. This is good because when you are missed, you also avoid the secondary effects of the hit, which can be quite nasty. It is bad because you can be killed by a streak of bad luck. Weapon-using enemies generally have high accuracy and will do much more damage to you, and Devouring Earth quartz drops make you squishy. You can debuff enemy damage and increase your own hit points, but it can be very worthwhile to invest in Aid Self from the Medicine pool.

Chilling Embrace is a very sticky taunt power and the core of the ice set. Just move by someone and they will pursue you relentlessly – but will be too slow to catch up. By remaining mobile, you can force enemies to endlessly chase you around. A different but effective way of tanking, but vulnerable to strong ranged attacks.

Invulnerability
Perhaps the most “normal” of the defensive sets, Invulnerability shelters you in various rainbow-shifting auras. It is not as blatant as the other tanker armors, but still clearly visible at a distance. Invulnerability is a set with a mix of resistance and dodge. You have less resistance than a fire tank, but can make up for it with Invincibility, which makes you very hard to hit when you are surrounded. Oddly, it can be safer for you to fight an arch-villain if he is surrounded by minions. It is also often safer for you to charge than to pull enemies to you, as you want them to surround you as quickly as possible. You should carefully decide whether you want all the passive powers, and slotting them is not a high priority.

Stone Armor
Stone tanks embody the power of the earth, and their armor takes the form of chunks of earth embedded in their bodies. These armors change your looks a lot, less so if you use the huge body type. Stone has excellent defenses but slow you down to a crawl. Nothing fazes a stone tank, but it can be hard for them to reach foes or keep their attention. For this reason, they love to work with Kinetics Defenders/Controllers, who can reduce their speed handicap. The final power, Granite Armor, changes you into a giant earth elemental regardless of how you normally look and changes your defense from being all about avoiding attacks to being all about absorbing damage. You are so slow in Granite form that it can be hard to keep enemies focused on you, so you definitely need Mud Pots by then. Earth tanks should take a long hard look at teleportation, both to teleport themselves and their opponents. If the mountain cannot come to the enemy, the enemy must be brought to the mountain. Swift, from the Fitness pool, is also great and deserving of extra slots because it partly mitigates your self-imposed slow.


Tanker Secondaries
This is the attack power of the tank, dramatic powers that look and sound magnificent but don’t do all that much damage. Unlike Scrappers, tanks have a wide variety of damage types to choose from and no less than two punching sets. Sadly, the early attacks are often quite poor and not worth investing heavily in. This exaggerates the early weakness of tanks, because your defenses are not worth much early on either.

As a tank, you are generally surrounded by mobs, which would seem to make area attacks attractive, but this is open to debate. On a team with an area blaster, the lesser opponents will go down quickly anyway, so it is better for you to concentrate on the big baddies where your damage will actually show. Ice and Invulnerability tankers actually get better defenses when surrounded, and so want to keep minions alive.


Battle Axe
Battle axe is a straightforward, heavy duty set. The axe is satisfyingly big and makes massive swings and chops. The attacks do heavy lethal damage – which many enemies resist heavily. Axe attacks have long recharge, which means you need Hasten or many attacks to fill up your attack chain, which will let you do a lot of damage at a high cost in endurance. Axe has some knockback and a single area attack, but is mainly small cones. Since it is a weapon set, you have a pretty long draw animation whenever you use a non-axe power, which is a problem is you want to use pool power attacks.

Energy Melee
Energy is a punching set, where your hands are surrounded by pink energy fields. On a small model, these look a little like pom-poms, on larger models it becomes more of a nimbus around your fists. The sounds are very good and suggestive of great power. Early energy attacks recharge quickly. They do little damage, mostly smashing, but let you fill your attack sequence early on. Later attacks are massive and slow, but do the best single-target damage for tankers, mostly energy. As smashing damage is heavily resisted in the late game, this is all good. The secondary effect of Energy Melee is stun, which is good but not spectacular.

Fiery Melee
The visuals are suitably fiery. For several of the attacks, you manifest a scimitar-like plane of fire which may not fit all character concepts but works great for others. Fiery melee is an area-focused set, with two attacks that damage everyone nearby and one cone. This is great for holding agro, but may be a drawback for Invulnerability tanks, who rely on being surrounded. Unlike all other sets, you don’t reduce their ability to do hurt you – there is no stun or knockback. Fiery Melee works great for Fire tanks who have no reason to keep minions alive and even a special means of boosting fire damage. This is the most endurance-effective of the sets, but you can still burn a lot of endurance with area attacks. The early attacks do great fire damage that is less resisted than lethal or smashing. The later single-target attacks are good, but not as impressive as those from other sets.

Ice Melee
Crisp effects and chilling sounds make this set visually distinctive. Two of your attacks are with the Ice Sword, a rapier-shaped icicle you create as you chop. Ice is the most defensive of the tanker melee sets. Many of your powers can control the enemy – hold, slow, and sleep. To make up, you do less damage than most tanks, especially later on. Ice has one cone attack but nothing that hurts everyone nearby. If you are a team tank, this can be to your advantage – your role is not to deal damage but to protect the team. Ice Slick combines well with the Burn power of Fire Aura.

Stone Melee
Stone melee is a solid set. Your fists are encased in earth or you manifest a huge earth mallet to smash opponents. You need Hasten or pool attacks to fill out your single-target attack chain with earth, because late in the set you get two big area attacks and a ranged boulder throw instead of more single-target mayhem. You also get a ranged attack. These specials are good aggro control and enemy suppression tools.

Super Strength
Visually the most generic set, a huge number of comic book heroes use super strength. The animations are all suggestive of great power. Later on, you get some really heavy damage as well as two area attacks – one of which only causes stun – and a ranged attack. This helps to hold agro, and works well with Invulnerability in that you do not kill the mobs you area attack. Most of your attacks have a chance to knockback or stun. The most spectacular feature is Rage, a power that increases your damage a lot for a good time, then forces you to remain passive for a few seconds. This is very good for solo play, means you have to learn to pace your attacks on a team or stop using Rage altogether.

War Mace
The mace looks good in a medieval fashion, but hampers your style – the option to have a singlestick, baseball bat or nunchaku would make it fit many more concepts. War mace is in many ways Battle Axe light. There are few basic damage attacks early on. It gets a decent disorient which sadly doesn’t work on bosses. Later attacks include a small area and some cones. The secondary effect is a mix of stun and knockback but nothing spectacular. You have to draw the mace each time you use a non-mace power, which penalizes pool power attacks.

Stalkers

The stalker is a stealthy melee fighter, not a part of “the line” in a team, do not expect to stand around and fight toe-to-toe. Unlike the pushy brutes who just charge until they drop, as a stalker you have to conserve your efforts and concentrate on important foes. In solo play, this means you must often run away behind a corner and hope Hide goes up again so you can sneak attack the enemy as they come in pursuit. Stalking is easier on a team, especially one with strong brutes or masterminds, as there are plenty of distractions to keep enemies away from you. Just resist the feeling that you must play like a scrapper and stay in melee – you help your team best by making lethal lightning raids on choice targets. Sadly, stalking works less well at higher levels. Your burst damage can no longer down a boss in a few seconds, so you are forced into prolonged melee. By this time you should have built your defenses so that you can scrap, but you will never be as good at is as a true scrapper.

A stalker that is hidden attacks for double damage, and can use the special Assassin’s Strike powers that do about seven times as much damage as a regular attack. However, assassin’s strikes require that you are standing still and undisturbed for a good time as you attack and can get interrupted by the weirdest things, so they are hard to get off in a chaotic melee. Area attacks have only 50% chance to get the double damage when hidden, so they are significantly less effective than they could be.

Stalkers have a primary powerset with attacks and a secondary powerset with defenses and stealth powers.


Stalker Primaries
The punch of the stalker. The most important distinction is how focused the set is on single-target damage. The two single-target sets, Martial Arts and Energy Melee, have a significant advantage in early, heavy-hitting attacks, while Spines offers good area damage. Ninja Sword and Claws are in between.

Most stalker attacks do lethal damage, that is heavily resisted by machines and armored foes, but that zombies and some other critters are vulnerable to.

Claws
Claw attack look like acrobatic power moves. Later, Claws get some ranged attacks with good knockback, and this is the strong suit of the set. With Shockwave, a skilled claws stalker can pile and pin enemies in a corner. Claws can keep up a very high rate of damage over time, but is less explosive than Ninja Blade or Energy Melee, which makes it less stalky and more scrappy.

Dark Melee
Dark melee is a series of very rapid fist strikes with some dark particles floating about. The later powers are more blatantly dark, with tentacles rising out of the ground and waves of dark energy. It is focused on single-target burst damage, which makes it stalky rather than scrappy. Instead it has the ability to drain life and gain power at the expense of the opposition. These advanced powers don’t work well with Assassin Strike as thery make you visible, but makes you a better scrapper once you have enough attacks – for which you need Hasten or pool power attacks. Another thing that sets Dark Melee aside is that it does mostly negative damage, avoiding the high lethal resistance many foes have. While not as good as energy damage, it is still better than physical.

Energy Melee
A single-target set with no multi-target attacks at all, Energy Melee has some spectacular attacks in it, especially later. It is almost unfair how good it is to do energy rather than physical damage as a stalker, it is much less resisted. However, the very strongest attacks do not benefit from critical hits, so these are more for scrapping and as follow-ups. The side effect here is stun, which is very useful – properly slotted you can stun someone long enough for your hide to kick in and allow a critical, as long as nothing else interferes. The animations give your hands a reddish glow like starbursts, quite supernatural. Energy melee is a very stalky set. You excel at quick strikes, but if you want a full attack chain you have to take power pool attacks.

Martial Arts
Martial arts is all about single-target kicking mayhem. The kicks start basic and become more and more fanciful as you move up in levels. They all look dramatically powerful and sound good – this is not a soft self-defense art, but up-front kick action. Martial arts is accurate and does good smashing damage, which is as almost as widely resisted as lethal damage, but with less variation. That is, fewer things are vulnerable to smashing, but neither are there as many creatures with high smashing resistance as there is with high lethal resistance. Martial arts has a reasonable amount of knockback and disorient, Cobra Strike is better than you’d think and might be good enough to allow you to hide if you wait it out.

Ninja Blade
The animations are keen, with lethal economic movements, even if purists complain that it is a left-handed version of kendo. Ninja Blade has a mix of small cones and single target attacks. It lacks the single-target mayhem of energy and martial arts, and the area attacks have only a 50% chance to get a critical even though the area is very small and hard to catch several opponents in. You have to re-draw the ninja blade if you do something else in between. This limits the usefulness of power pool attacks.

Spines
Spines is the oddball stalker primary. Weird, huge organic spines grow out of your body and you spew gouts of toxic sap. Once you get used to it, it looks pretty good in a scary way. Spines concentrate on area and ranged attacks. The flipside is that you are not as good at single target melee attacks as other stalkers. The special effect of spines is a poison that slows and deals some damage over time. Poison is perhaps the least resisted damage type in the game, so this is better than it looks at first.


Stalker Secondaries
Stalkers have defensive secondaries, to keep them alive while engaging the enemy. Defenses are very costly in endurance, and you should consider carefully if you can afford to use them. Once you have Stamina you should be good, but low-level stalkers must settle for just a few defensive toggles to run – generally the one that grants status resistance and one that reduces incoming damage. All stalkers learn to resist things like holds, sleep and stun, but some are still vulnerable to knockback. This protection is vital as you lose your Hide for a good long while if you are held or slept.

Dark Armor
Dark armor looks sinister, with great clouds of inky vapor hiding your hero. Really scary and amazingly cool if it fits your character concept. It is unusual in that it provides psionic resistance and has an absolutely wonderful self-heal once you get it slotted for endurance reduction. Dark Armor never gets resistance to knockback, so either Hover from the Flight pool or Acrobatics from the Leaping pool is a must. Later on you get auras that cause damage, fear or stun, these can be amazing, but they break your hide so you have to activate them during the fight. Works better for scrappy stalker sets, like Claws and Spines.

Energy Aura
The early armors are subtle, but later on it gets some animations that are grainy may not look good on low-end machines. It is a dodge set, which some people hate, but it has full status protection, great endurance management tools and an oddball repulse – these benefit a brute more than a stalker. You can stay on only two toggles for a very long time with thisset – the one that gives status resistance and the one that gives physical defense – as almost all attacks that cause non-pysical damage early on also do a little bit of physical damage, which lets you use your physical defense.

Ninjitsu
Ninjitsu is less about avoiding attacks and more about avoiding aggro. It has extra hide and confusion powers, along with caltrops to tie up foes as you make a quick hide. It otherwise resembles Super Reflexes, but lacks the passive defenses and status protection to knockback, instead resisting confusion, fear, and psi. The animations are subtle vibration effects like those of Super Reflexes, only deep blue.

Regeneration
Regeneration has a bright green glow. If you play a regenerator, you must make this glow part of your character concept, or you will end up with a mismatched toon. It is an odd kind of defense in that it doesn’t reduce the damage you take – instead it repairs you after the fact. Regeneration for a stalker is all about reducing downtime – with your lower base hit points, your regeneration is inherently weaker than that of a scrapper. You also lack Quick Recovery, another factor that makes it less attractive in to-to-toe battles than the scrapper version. You do have a lot of emergency buttons to keep you alive in tricky situations, but these can only be used now and then.

Super Reflexes
Super Reflexes is the art of dodging blows, a superhero staple. Visually, you do not actually dodge blows in the game, instead you are surrounded by pale “vibration effects” to show the blur of your quick movements. This is rather discreet and not visible at a distance. The defense of Super Reflexes is hit or miss. Either you ignore the blow, or you take it full force. You get some minor damage reduction when you are hurt, but generally you play lottery with life – a few hits can put you down, but odds are you won’t get hit. Along with dark armor and energy aura, this is the scrappiest of the stalker secondaries, it is all about defense toggles and has few emergency tricks.

Scrappers

The scrapper is the offensive melee hero, as opposed to the tanker’s defense. While a scrapper can theoretically do as much or even more damage than a blaster, they rarely do, as they have to maneuver for position a lot more than blasters and don’t have as many area attacks.

Scrappers have a primary powerset with attacks and a secondary powerset with defenses. Unlike other archetypes, the secondary is just as important as the primary for establishing identity, the difference between a regeneration scrapper and a super-reflex scrapper is just as important as that between katana and martial arts.


Scrapper Primaries
These represent the offensive might of the scrapper. All of them do the same thing – damage. But damage comes in different forms and there are side effects to consider. Most scrappers do lethal damage, that is heavily resisted by machines and armored foes, but that zombies and some other critters are vulnerable to.

Most scrapper attacks use weapons, which you have to re-draw if you do something else in between. This limits the usefulness of power pool attacks.

Broadsword
The heavy hitter of scrapper primaries – the sword is huge and the animations reminiscent of Conan rather than Zorro. The effects follow suit with strong attacks that have long recharge. You will need Hasten or many different attacks unless you like to stand around while your attacks recharge, and when you finally get a full attack chain, your endurance will suffer but your damage can become spectacular. Broadsword is a basic melee set that has some knockdown to keep foes from hurting you.

Claws
Claw attack look like acrobatic power moves. Later, Claws get some ranged attacks with good knockback, and this is the strong suit of the set. With Shockwave, a skilled claws scrapper can pile and pin enemies in a corner. Claws can keep up a very high rate of damage over time, but is less explosive than Katana and Broadsword, which makes it less popular in player vs. player.

Dark Melee
Dark melee is the only punching set for scrappers. The basic attacks consist of series of very rapid fist strikes with some dark particles floating about. The later powers are more blatantly dark, with tentacles rising out of the ground and waves of dark energy. As an attack set, dark is short on basic attacks and needs either power pool attacks or Hasten to fill the attack chain. The area attacks it has have a very long recharge.. Instead it has the ability to drain life and gain power at the expense of the opposition. These advanced powers recharge slowly, so once again dark benefits from Hasten. Another thing that sets Dark Melee aside is that it does mostly negative damage, avoiding the high lethal resistance many foes have.

Katana
The katana animations are keen, with lethal economic movements, even if purists complain that it is a left-handed version of kendo. It may not look that way, but Katana maneuvers are broadsword moves with less damage, cost, and animation time. Katana is less extreme than broadsword, the attacks are not as spectacularly powerful but the damage over time is slightly better. You have some knockdown, and with your higher speed, you can keep foes down better than broadsword can. Still, this is more about damage than defense.

Martial Arts
Martial arts is all about kicking. There are no mundane fisticuffs scrappers in City of Heroes, something many have bemoaned. The kicks start basic and become more and more fanciful as you move up in levels. They all look dramatically powerful and sound good – this is not a soft self-defense art, but up-front kicking mayhem. Martial arts is accurate and does good smashing damage, which is as almost as widely resisted as lethal damage, but with less variation. That is, fewer things are vulnerable to smashing, but neither are there as many creatures with high smashing resistance as there is with high lethal resistance. Martial arts has a reasonable amount of knockback and disorient, Cobra Strike is better than you’d think.

Spines
Spines is the oddball scrapper primary. It looks weird, huge organic spines grow out of your body and you spew gouts of toxic sap. Once you get used to it, it looks pretty good in a scary way, but this is definitely unusual. Spines concentrate on area attacks. You can stay in the middle of things to deal damage to everyone around – or you can skirmish to use your cones. The flipside is that you make enemies very angry and that you are not as good at single target melee attacks as other scrappers. The special effect of spines is a poison that slows and deals some damage over time. Poison is perhaps the least resisted damage type in the game, so this is better than it looks at first.


Scrapper Secondaries
Scrappers have defensive secondaries, to keep them alive in melee. Most of these sets are blatantly visible, making you glow more than you’d expect a scrapper to. Defenses are very costly in endurance, and you should consider carefully if you can afford to use them. Once you have Stamina fully slotted, you should be good, but low-level scrappers must settle for just a few defensive toggles to run – generally the one that grants status resistance and one that reduces incoming damage. All scrappers learn to resist things like holds, sleep and stun, but some are still vulnerable to knockback. This protection is vital when you are in melee and attacks hail down left and right.

Dark Armor
Dark armor looks sinister, with great clouds of inky vapor hiding your hero. Later, you learn to become stealthy and move about as a dark cloud. Really scary and amazingly cool if it fits your character concept. It is unusual in that it provides psionic resistance and has an absolutely wonderful self-heal once you get it slotted for endurance reduction. It used to be an expensive and awkward set, but has continually improved and now may be the best of the scrapper defenses. Dark Armor never gets resistance to knockback, so either Hover from the Flight pool or Acrobatics from the Leaping pool is a must.

Invulnerability
Perhaps the most “normal” of the defensive sets, Invulnerability shelters you in various rainbow-shifting auras. It is not as blatant as Dark Armor or Regeneration, but still clearly visible at a distance. It is a mixed resistance and dodge set. A very important power is Invincibility, a dodge power that gets more powerful when surrounded and draws enemies to you like flies to honey. This makes Invulnerability a tank-like scrapper set, that likes to be in the middle of things.

Regeneration
Regeneration in City of Heroes has a green glow. If you play a regenerator, you must make this glow part of your character concept, or you will end up with a mismatched toon. It is an odd kind of defense in that it doesn’t reduce the damage you take – instead it repairs you after the fact. This means that as long as you take damage slowly, nothing at all happens, but when the damage escalates you can find yourself splattered very quickly. You end fights either whole or dead, and you must learn how much you can take on. Regeneration benefits greatly form all the conventional defenses you can scrape together, so as too keep you from being overwhelmed by incoming damage. It is also unique because it doesn’t need Stamina, which is particularly good if you fly and thus get no benefit fro the early Fitness powers. Regeneration has a lot of panic buttons, powers you want to use when in dire straits, and this means that powers with long animation times are dangerous.

Super Reflexes
Super Reflexes is the art of dodging blows, a supers staple. Visually, you do not actually dodge blows in the game, instead you are surrounded by pale “vibration effects” to show the blur of your quick movement. This is rather discreet and not visible at a distance. In combat you rarely get hit, which means you seldom do the animations associated with taking damage, another visual cue. The defense of Super Reflexes is hit or miss. Either you ignore the blow, or you take it full force. You get some minor damage reduction when you are hurt, but generally you play lottery with life – a few hits can put you down, but odds are you won’t get hit. This is good because when you are missed, you also avoid the secondary effects of the hit, like slow and other debuffs. It is bad because you can be one-shot killed and because it works better against less dangerous opponents – it is at its worst when you need it the most. Super Reflexes requires many powers and very heavy slotting to work well.

Masterminds

The mastermind is a pet wrangler, pretty helpless on their own but able to summon and control a variety of henchmen. It is a demanding role; doing this well takes patience, skill, and preparation. Your role in City of Villains depend both on what minions you have and the composition of the team, making the mastermind pretty flexible. But other villains will expect you to be ruthless yet loyal, willing to risk your minions as shock troops for the safety of the team. It is often in your best interest to do so, but not always and not unconditionally.

As a mastermind, you need to control your minions. You get three command buttons when you start, but these are only the beginning; you need to learn how to script your own commands. In fact, writing commands and emotes for your minions is one of the pleasures of being a mastermind, and there are plenty of guides on the subject. One bind that is so basic that I decided to post it here is this one: /bind “SHIFT+lbutton ""petcom_all goto aggressive". This will give you a goto command in your mouse – shift-click on any location, and your minions will attempt to go there and attack anything nearby. This allows you to send your pets into danger ahead of you, instead of just having them follow.

The mastermind is unique in that you may be able to get by without Stamina. Pet summoning is expensive, but you only have to do it once per zone or instance, and while your other powers use normal endurance, commands cost nothing. If you are satisfied with directing and supporting your minions without attacking yourself, you may be able to save three powers, a power pool selection and several slots in Fitness. This is especially attractive if you use Hover and Fly for movement, because you do not need the movement enhancements from Fitness.

Many masterminds swear by the Leadership pool, and indeed Leadership is good and does provide a greater bonus for a mastermind than for many other archetypes. However, it is by no means mandatory, and you can get a similar effect by merely slotting your pet powers.

All mastermind primaries include attacks. Views on these are varied. Some say they only cost time and energy better spent elsewhere. Others take them all and fight along with their minions as blasterminds. Both tactics work, which to pick is a matter of taste.


Mastermind Primaries - Minions
This is where you get your minions and teach them new tricks. Summoned minions last forever – or until somehow disposed of. You need not recast them except as they take losses or when you change zones. There are also a few attacks and some utility powers in here. The attacks are optional – you do not need them, but it can be nice to have something to do while your pets fight, and it allows you to pull, something the henchmen are too stupid to do well without very close control.

Mercenaries
The mercenaries are world war two soldiers clad in drab grey uniforms. They are suitably nondescript for minions, but have individual facial features. Both your and their blasts use a sub-machine gun that looks cool and does decent damage. Mercenaries are strong at range but weak in melee, so you will be less inclined than other masterminds to send them as shock troops. Their AI rarely runs off to do things on their own, so they tend to form a tight firing squad and shoot, shoot, shoot. The final minion is a combat medic that will help to keep you and your minions alive.

Necromancy
Necromancy summons zombies, skeletal warriors and finally a lich with dark powers of its own. They are typically minion-grey but move well and some of their standard emotes are quite cute. Your blasts come from Dark Blast and look suitably sinister. Undead thrive in melee but are a bit weak at range. The AI is aggressive, the undead tend to split up and move off, so you should mind the aggro you cause. A cool effect is that when one of your minions falls, you can extract its soul in order to get one more, temporary henchman.

Ninjas
Ninjas are clad in dull grey tights and caps, looking very much like underlings. They fight with martial arts and later with bows and ninja tricks. The final henchman is a red-face demon that can breathe fire and has other supernatural feats, quite different from the subtle ninjas. They have a mix of melee and ranged powers, but are stronger up close. Unlike other minions, they dodge instead of having damage reduction. This is good because it protects against all attacks and stacks well with Force Field, but the other minions are stronger against the things they each resist. The AI is tricky and tends to send ninjas all over the place or have them stay at range and use their bows – keep a tight leash on ninjas.

Robots
The robots look very good. Not only do they have unique and cool shapes, they also have a bit of color and some blinking indicator lights. The sounds and animations are good too, if a bit noisy. In combat, they have a balance between melee and range. Both you and they use lasers, which somewhat oddly has knockback, and the robots also have a decent melee attack. The AI is somewhat conservative, with less chance to run off than undead or ninjas. The mid-level bots are defensive, using force fields on you and minions and repairing other bots.

Thugs
The robots look very good. Not only do they have unique and cool shapes, they also have a bit of color and some blinking indicator lights. The sounds and animations are good too, if a bit noisy. I actually like the metal clatter they make, as it tells me they are close behind me. In combat, they have a balance between melee and range. Both you and they use lasers, which somewhat oddly has knockback, and the robots also have a decent melee attack. The AI is somewhat conservative, with less chance to run off than undead or ninjas. The mid-level bots are defensive, using force fields on you and minions and repairing other bots.


Mastermind Secondaries
The secondaries are there to help keep your minions alive, and to a lesser degree to help your team. In general, a mastermind is less able to defend than corruptors, but these powers are still very useful.

Dark Miasma
Matches Necromancy very well in special effects, and is a solid heal and debuff set. Because it has no buffs that you put on your minions, you don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort on buffing, which should be a relief. However, it is not as strong as the defender or even the corruptor set. Specifically, your heal power has a much smaller radius than normal, so you must keep your minions closely leashed to use it. This works well for robots and mercenaries, less well for the other pets.

Force Field
Pale blue force field bubbles makes this set very visually distinctive, and it matches the powers protector bots already have. Force field is a somewhat one-dimensional defense buff and knockback set. It also has several effects that knock down or lock up the opposition for a time. The high-level powers are costly and require skill to use. Force Field combines well with both Ninjas and Robots because the defenses stack, but it is a lot of work to buff all your bots and comrades. Personal Force Field is a good power for a mastermind, especially in player vs. player.

Poison
A buff/debuff set that is cone and single-target, and the only secondary unique to masterminds. Many of the powers need to hit enemies to be effective, somewhat harsh for single-target debuffs. They also cost a lot of endurance. The FX is green, but not as green as either Empathy or Radiation Emission, which poison otherwise is similar too. Because the heal has range, it works well with the pets that tend to run off, like ninjas and zombies.

Traps
A high-tech set with gadgets to protect your team and weaken your enemies, new with City of Villains. Among the more interesting tricks are Caltrops and a Force Field Generator Drone that follows you around., especially useful as it protects against most status effects. Overall, this set cost little endurance to use because it has no toggle powers. It is very strong, but static – you like to entrench and be on the defense, which works very poorly with brutes.

Trick Arrow
Trick Arrow is a pure debuff set – you hinder the enemy but don’t directly aid your friends. It is also control-heavy. It uses the same bow you get with ninjas. It can help keep the enemy in place, which in turn makes zombies or ninja scatter less. The blinding power can also prevent undue aggro. Unlike dark miasma, trick arrow does not need to keep enemies alive to debuff them. Instead, the debuffs are location-based, which makes you somewhat static. Oil Slick is a very high-damage power which will change your life greatly. You will want some energy damage to ignite it with – which you get in your inherent attack if you take any origin but natural.

Dominators

Dominators are manipulators and damage dealers. You get a primary power set with control and a secondary assault set with attacks. First your control powers make foes unable to respond, then assault takes them apart.

To understand dominators, you must know the basics of the various control powers in City of Villains. Sleep and Hold leaves the opponent completely helpless, but a sleeping target will awake when they take damage or are healed – a held target will not. Stun makes you unable to act, but able to move about. Knockback can toss targets about and leaves them unable to act while they get to their feet, which takes a few seconds. Some powers knockback repeatedly, which gives the enemy very little chance to act. Immobilize powers roots the mob in place and most of them have the side effect of making the target resistant to knockback – this very bad for Ice Control, who have a power that keep foes continuously knocked down. Slow can dramatically slow movement and reduces the frequency if attacks. Slowed mobs often do not realize they have been slowed, and continue to try to get close to you at a snail’s pace. Confusion makes mobs change side for a time, attacking their friends. Fear makes mobs run away, while terror prevents foes from attacking unless you hurt them, but does not shut down any toggle powers they might have. Slow, immobilize, fear, terror and knockback are often termed soft control powers, as they leave mobs impaired but not completely helpless. Disorient and particularly hold is considered hard control or lockdown because it stops all attacks from the mob. Finally, a drop is something you activate, but which then remains and operates by itself, like a pet or a slick of ice.

The special ability of Dominators is called Domination, shown on your domination bar. Each time you attack, you gain a little domination, and when the bar reaches 90%, you can activate the Domination power. This restores all your endurance, makes your holds take better and last longer, and increases your damage. This means that quick, cheap shots are good for you, as each attack you do helps build domination equally. Dominators have a problem in that mobs of higher rank are resistant to their powers. It takes several attempts to control a boss, and is almost impossible to completely lock down an arch-enemy or monster. This is where Domination really shines, as it will let you control a boss in one go.

Most dominators get a pet at level 32. This creature will follow you around and attack enemies that come near, but they are pretty stupid and can be a nuisance to manage.


Dominator Primaries
All of these powers strive to make the enemy unable to act, but do so in different ways. Look and feel is an important balance aspect here, as a power set with obvious power effects makes it much easier for teammates to react appropriately.

Fire Control
Fire control consists of smoke and cages of fire. While the fire is spectacular enough, the smoke has the problem that it can be hard to see who is mesmerized and who is not. The fire set really shines in its pets – you get three little fire imps that can’t withstand much damage, but are quite lethal. The control is a mix of soft and hard, with some debuff thrown in.

Gravity Control
Gravity control is an oddball set. The effects are very subtle, targets are surrounded by semi-transparent fields of force, and it can be difficult to see who is affected and who is not. The difference between gravity’s hold and immobilize is that held mobs hover slightly off the ground, but this does not always activate properly. Gravity has a lot of single-shot knockup and knockback powers that deal some damage, has the unusual ability to reposition groups of enemies, and an area hold with range. It is severely lacking in soft control. Their pet is the Singularity, a mini-dominator in itself.

Ice Control
Ice creates crystal shards and arctic storms to control targets, the animations are crisp and the effects very obvious. A good soft control set, ice can slow foes and keep them slipping on slick ice. What ice lacks is direct damage, use your secondary for that. Ice dominators have a lot of free time because few of the ice powers are worth spamming in combat – lay them down, then you are free to blast. The pet, Jack Frost, tends to act passive and stay at range but has nice slow and hold powers.

Mind Control
Mind dominators combine telekinesis and hypnosis. Their hypnotic powers are subtle, generally aura effects around the heads of their victims, while foes flying about helplessly makes telekinesis obvious enough. Mind has plenty of hard control and good direct damage – for a dominator. As the set with the widest variety of direct control, mind lacks drop powers. Everything they do, they do themselves. They lack a pet, replacing it with an area confusion power.

Plant Control
Plant animations take the form of somewhat stylized brush and plants. It has the usual mix of early hold and immobilize powers, but gets a spectacular cone confuse power early and some really gross pets and pet-like effects later on. Because the confuse cone is so powerful, plant control is very strong is somewhat chaotic.


Dominator Secondaries
Dominator secondaries are a mix of powers mainly from blaster primaries and secondaries, but some tanker attacks thrown in for good measure. This means you get a mix of ranged and melee attacks, with one self-buff or recovery power as topping. While these attacks are good, they are widely dispersed over levels, so if you want a concentrated attack capability at either range or in melee, you’ll have to wait.

Energy Assault
A mix of energy blasts and melee attacks, with Power Boost as the auxiliary power. The ranged attacks have knockback and the melee attacks have stun. The animations are bolts of power and shining fists, all tinted a spooky pink and with booming sound effects. Gives a solid feel and looks good. Has Power Boost, which is like mini-domination and will strengthen your control for a very short while.

Fiery Assault
A mix of fire blasts and fire tanker melee attacks, all well animated. Fire is a low-endurance set that does good damage over time but has no side effects. Flares, the power you must take, is not an efficient damage dealer, but it is cheap and recharges fast, helping you build your domination. Has two utility powers; one that increases damage but not accuracy and won’t help your control at all, and an endurance recovery power.

Icy Assault
Crackling white shards of ice makes this set distinctive, as does the only corruptor melee weapon, the ice sword. The animations are all very quick, which makes for lethal attack chains. The side effect is slow, which helps but isn’t spectacular. The utility power is Power Boost, which is very nice on hard control sets but a little misplaced with a soft control set like Ice Control.

Psionic Assault
Psionics manifest as translucent pink circles and shards, all very psychedelic. It is strong in that it ignores many defenses. It is weak in that mindless critters, like zombies and robots, are almost immune. Select your targets wisely. The utility power recharges your health and endurance.

Thorny Assault
An entirely new set with City of Villains, thorny assault makes you sprout thorns on your body and spew them out as attacks. It looks pretty gross and has to be taken into account when designing your look. It is strong in cone attacks, and the special effect is defense debuff which is nice but not essential. The utility power is Aim, nice for overcoming defense and doing extra damage but which won’t aid your control a lot. After each time you use a power outside this set, you have to re-draw the thorns, which costs precious time – and dominators constantly switch between their primary and secondary power sets in combat.

Defenders

Defenders are the jack-of-all-trades of City of Heroes. When you invite a defender to a team, you never know what you get. Some are offenders, concentrating on damage almost as much as blasters. Some are pure healers that do not blast at all. Some do neither, but concentrate on keeping the mobs down almost like a controller.

Many defender powers benefit team members – but not yourself. This is an intentional balancing factor, but can mean that you are the weakest member of the team; not only have you invested in powers that don’t help yourself directly, you also make everyone else more powerful. This tends to force the defender into a second-line role. You can take satisfaction in that the team as a whole becomes much stronger because of your presence, and wise players will appreciate the aid you give. If you crave to be the focal hero who personally vanquishes the enemy, this may not be for you.

When you play a defender, expect a lot of invites and questions of the type “r u a healer?”. This is good because defenders thrive on teams, but annoying and an insult to non-healers. Many, many players have the misconception that the only worthwhile defenders are those who heal. In fact, only half the defender power sets even have a healing power – defenders are much more than healers.

Defenders have few power sets to call their own – primaries are shared with controllers and secondaries with blasters. This leaves quite a small niche for the defender to fill – that of a blaster who helps the team. If what you want to play is someone fully devoted to buffs and debuffs, you should take a long hard look at controllers. If what you want is to do direct damage, look at blasters, or even at corruptors from City of Villains.

All defenders have another, hidden power in the Leadership pool. Leadership powers become almost twice as strong in defender hands. This adds versatility to defender builds, as you can skip many of your primary and secondary powers in favor of Leadership and come out ahead of other archetypes. However, Leadership powers are fatiguing to run, so take care that you do not run yourself dry.

Defenders have a special ability called vigilance, that reduces the endurance cost of your powers when your teammates – not you – are hurt. This is actually quite useful to all defenders as it lets you go more all-out when the situation grows dire. It does nothing to help you solo, which is a bit sad as many defenders need help in that department.


Defender Primaries
These are the sets that set defenders apart from one another, the different primaries look, feel, and play very differently. Each is powerful in its own way. All but Dark Miasma are shared with controllers and all but Empathy and Force Field with corruptors.

Dark Miasma
Dark miasma has no particular specialty, but is good at everything. It can heal, debuff, control, and even has a healing pet. While other sets can do each of these things better that dark, no other set can do it all. The unique features of Dark Miasma are the pet - who uses powers similar to your own – and psi resistance. What you lack is status resistance. The look is sinister, with strands of smoke and dark auras, but many powers look alike to the uninitiated. Dark Miasma works well with most of the secondary sets, both visually and in effects.

Empathy
The classic healer, Empathy has deep green and somewhat blatant animations. It starts out as an all-heal set, and the buffs you get later are also focused on the health and endurance of your teammates. To fully utilize Empathy, you have to spend a lot of time and endurance during combat. This works less well for a defender that wants to blast. Many empaths refuse to blast at all, thinking it too risky and a waste of their power; a healer who has to spend energy minding himself because he attracted attention does not help the team. Blasting empaths spend less time healing and focus on their buffs.

Force Field
Pale blue force field bubbles around yourself and others makes this set very visually distinctive. Force field is a somewhat one-dimensional defense buff and knockback set. You have several effects that knock down or lock up the opposition for a time; these become part of your attack chain and take some skill to use well. The high-level powers are costly and of dubious utility. Note that Force Field makes people harder to hit but does not reduce the damage if they are hit. This makes it good at protecting the defenseless against standard opponents, but less good at protecting tanks from arch-villains. In combat you are generally free to blast, as your buffs last a long while. This makes the selection of your secondary important; you will have lots of opportunity to use it. If you use the knockback aspect of Force Field, you may wish to use Energy Blast for even more knockback. Dark Blast is also nice because the accuracy debuff stacks with your force fields. Lastly, you may want to look at Maneuvers from the Leadership pool for that last bit of team defense. Oh, the joys of overspecialization!

Kinetics
Kinetics is visually discreet but powerful in effect. A set almost completely devoted to offensive buffing, kinetics can turn any band of heroes into a pack of rabid wolves on speed. This makes play fast and furious – but risky. You get many siphon powers – that both help the team and hinder the enemy, but which must hit to work. This makes accuracy important, and sometimes your powers will miss at a critical time. Siphon powers also pull well. Kinetics has an odd but powerful melee heal, but few other defenses. It works nicely with Electric Blast because they both drain endurance and work well in close quarters, as well as with Radiation Blast because of close-in powers and the increased chance of hitting targets with your debuffs. The Tactics power from the Leadership pool can increase the chance to hit with your vital powers as well as help your team.

Radiation Emission
Very distinctive visually, with green, radiant, bubbly effects. Radiation Emission is the primary buff/debuff set in the game, and you will live and die with your debuff toggles. Later on, it offers some control. It is also a set that works well solo and that is invaluable in archvillain fights in the endgame. It combines with Radiation Blast and Electric Blast because you tend to be in the middle of the action so point-blank blasts work well. One warning – you may not have enough endurance to blast heavily.

Sonic Resonance
Sonics has subtle special effects and specializes in resistance – helping your friends and reducing the resistance of the enemy. This makes it good for everyone but best for scrappers and tankers who already have resistance of their own. It offers no defense whatsoever against psionics. Sonic resonance and Force Field are pretty similar, with Force Field making people harder to hit and Sonic Resonance reducing the damage they take when they do get hit. My take on this is that Force Field offers better defense, while sonic has better utility powers.

Storm Summoning
A dramatic and flashy set with some amazing special effects – and some utility problems. Many storm powers provide control, but take great skill to use well or the result is chaos. You also get some ability to heal and buff, but that is secondary. True to the name, you summon different weather effects, which look amazing and leave you free to act while they wreak havoc. You may wish to take Dark Blast because of stacking stuns and a limited self-heal that you otherwise lack, but visually it is an odd combination. Storm works less well with Radiation Blast and Electric Blast as storm excels in moving enemies away from you, and those blast sets want to be close to the enemy.

Trick Arrow
Trick Arrow is a pure debuff set – you hinder the enemy but don’t directly aid your friends. With no way to help your friends, you rely completely on weakening the enemy, which you do very well. This makes it more solo-friendly than other defense sets. It is also control-heavy. Unlike the other debuff sets, radiation and dark, trick arrow does not need to keep enemies alive. Instead, the debuffs are location-based, which makes you somewhat static. Oil Slick is a very high-damage power which will change your life greatly. You will want some energy damage to ignite it with – which you get in your inherent attack if you take any origin but natural. Combines well with Archery because they both use the same bow, but also with electric blast to ignite the slick and stack holds.


Defender Secondaries - Blast
Though similar to what blasters have, defender blast powers do less damage but generally have stronger special effects. Archery, Electric Blast, Energy Blast and Sonic Blast are shared with blasters. Many defenders ignore blasting powers to focus on their primary, and with the low damage that is understandable. However defenders can still do damage, and there are often lulls in the fighting when defense powers are not needed. One or two strongly slotted blasts make some soloing possible.

Handle area blasts with care – they cost a lot of endurance and attract unwanted attention that may prevent you from doing your main job. In a team setting, an area blast delivered after the general melee has started can get good results without attracting undue attention or taking up too much of your time.

Each blast set generally contains a set of standard attacks; two basic single-target attacks, one ball attack, one cone, a snipe attack, a very lethal point-blank attack which has decent range these days, the Aim maneuver that increases accuracy and damage, and an overload point-blank area. Each set also has something special outside this standard array, and most miss one or more of the standard attacks.

Archery
Archery is a very accurate weapon set. It has a draw animation which can mess up timing, and does mostly lethal damage. Because most arrows do all their damage at once, you draw relatively little aggro. Archery is also is eerily silent, which I think might be an advantage in player versus player – I have definitely had trouble spotting bow-using enemies. Archery has a ranged overload attack that does damage over time, and which can thus be partly avoided but can presumably affect an unlimited number of opponents. It lacks a point-blank attack, but has a strong but slow flame arrow and a stunning shot. Except for the one stun, archery has no special effects to be enhanced because you are a defender.

Dark Blast
Blast with some control mixed in, and strong on cones. It looks appropriately sinister, with strands of dark energy and icky tentacles sprouting out of the ground, but the visuals are less developed than other darkness sets. The special effect is accuracy debuff, which is highly useful and combines well with defense buffs (Force Field) and other accuracy debuffs from the Dark and Radiation primaries. It lacks a ball attack and a point-blank attack, replacing those with a self-heal and a total of three cone attacks, one of which immobilizes without giving the enemy knockback protection.

Electrical Blast
Very good looking in a comic-book-electric way, and more attractive to a defender than a blaster. The special effect is endurance drain, which is powerful in defender hands, and works well with certain radiation and kinetics powers. It lacks a damaging cone and a regular point-blank attack, but has an extra point-blank area that drains a lot of endurance, a ranged hold, and the overload has range. Finally, it has a semi-pet that fires on its own, possibly drawing unwanted attention. This pet does as much damage for a defender as it does for a blaster, which makes it more attractive to a defender. Electricity’s lack of focus on either area or single target damage hurts defenders less than blasters because you spend time using your primary.

Energy Blast
Classic bursts of pure whiteness which fits many defender concepts visually as it has a look of positive energy. However, it is less useful to defenders than to blasters. Knockback does not improve in defender hands and is mostly useful solo, where defenders will never be very good. Also, defenders tend to have less time use their knockback well than blasters do. Still, if combined with a set that already has a lot of knockback (Force Field, Storm), it can be worthwhile. Energy blast has the standard power array, with the addition of a ranged knockback power.

Psychic Blast
Psychic blast is the one blast set defenders have all to themselves, even if some powers are shared with the dominator’s Psychic Assault set. The attacks have many concentric circles like you’d expect from a sonic set, only light purple. Some of the later effects can make me a little woozy. Many targets that normally have good defenses are vulnerable to psi. And while enemies that normally resist well are vulnerable to psi, robots, zombies and similar mindless targets are almost immune. Be selective about who you blast – picking the shaman instead of the zombie as a target can double your damage. It lacks Aim and a point-blank attack, but has a grand total of five single target attacks with various side effects; slow, immobilize, stun, sleep, and knockback; the last two with very good damage. It also has long range overall, with the longest snipe range in the game. But Psychic Blast is a late-blooming set whose early powers are weak.

Radiation Blast
Radiation blasts are green, bright green. Some of the sounds are startling. But it has very nice animations – if you like green. It is distinguished by the speed of its early attacks. If you only plan to slot one attack, saving slots for your primary, Neutrino Bolt is a good choice. The secondary effect is defense debuff, which makes targets easier to hit – less useful than you’d think because good builds already hit most of the time anyway but helpful if you primary must hit – like dark, kinetics and the choking cloud of radiation emission. Radiation has the standard array of blasts as well as a point-blank area attack.

Sonic Blast
Sonic appears as concentric circles coming from your mouth. The sounds are distinct and vary widely between the different powers. Not everyone likes either the sound or animations; try them out and see what you think. Sonic lacks a ball attack, but has two extra cones; one causing sleep and one causing knockback. It also has a ranged stun. The sleep cone should be powerful for a defender, but the main thing is that all sonic blasts debuff damage resistance – which will increase the damage of all attacks that strike that target. Potentially this can raise damage to blaster levels, especially if several sonics concentrate their powers.

Corruptors

Corruptors are ranged damage dealers who also have the power to keep their compatriots alive. While primarily concerned with destroying the fools that oppose you, your allies and tools deserve enough attention to do their part of the grand scheme.

You do not do as much damage as a blaster, but you are more able to defend yourself and your team. In many ways a corruptor is similar to a defender, only not as weak on the offense nor as strong on defense. Corruptors do very well in teams with each other – not only to their defenses supplement each other, but having several corruptor blasts overlapping is very efficient and satisfying. Being the sole corruptor on a big team, and implicitly responsible for team health, is not an enviable position. You are not a healer!

Corruptors have a special ability called Scourge that occasionally lets you do more damage to badly injured enemies. In between delivering area attacks, it may pay to tab through your enemies, finding weak fools that you can quickly put down this way, but mostly it is just a small topping to your damage powers.


Corruptor Primaries - Blast
Your blasts are your main power, but it should be used with care lest you make your foes realize too early what a threat you are. Handle area blasts with care – they cost a lot of endurance and attract unwanted attention. In a team setting, an area blast delivered after the general melee has started can get good results. Several corruptors area blasting in tandem is great.

Each blaster set generally contains a set of standard attack; two basic single-target attacks, one ball attack, one damaging cone, a snipe attack, a point-blank very lethal attack that recently got a range increase, the aim maneuver that increases accuracy and damage, and a point-blank area overload attack. All sets also have something special outside this standard array, and most miss one or more of the standard attacks.

Assault Rifle
Assault rifle is a great area set. The effects look good, some even spectacular, but the “super soaker” rifle itself looks terrible unless your concept is some form of junkyard inventor. Assault Rifle is pretty slow. The cones are your strong suit, they also slow and invite return fire, but do plenty of damage. You also get an inherent accuracy bonus as compensation for having to draw the rifle before you shoot. The rifle suffers from doing mostly lethal damage, which is widely resisted in the mid levels. Assault rifle lacks the point-blank attack and overload, replacing them with extra cones. It also has a ranged stun.

Dark Blast
Dark is a good overall set with great cones but with a poor single-target attack chain. Blast with some control mixed in, and strong on cones. It looks appropriately sinister, with strands of dark energy and icky tentacles sprouting out of the ground, but the visuals are less developed than other darkness sets. The special effect is accuracy debuff, which is highly useful and combines well with other accuracy debuffs from the Dark and Radiation secondaries. It lacks a ball attack and a point-blank attack, replacing those with a self-heal and a total of three cone attacks, one of which immobilizes without giving the enemy knockback protection.

Energy Blast
Energy blast is great solo, less great on teams. Again a very spectacular-looking blast set – bolts of white energy that knock people about. I wish we could select the color of our blasts or at least get reddish blasts like dominators do, anything would be better than white for most villains. Energy Blast is a solid blast set, starting out good at single-target and growing into area attacks later. Knockback is a decent special effect that keeps foes from attacking, but can be annoying to melee fighters and tends to spread opponents out. Learn to use it. Works well with Hover – it is much easier to control knockback if you fly. Energy blast has the standard power array, with the addition of a ranged knockback power, but the ball attack tends to cause undue scatter.

Fire Blast
The most aggressive blast set in the game. It looks and sounds great, and has several good attacks for different occasions. The side effect is some extra damage as the target burns, which makes fire very effective, but the enemy hate you with a passion. Fire Blast gets both its area attacks early, which makes many fire users focus on area, but you don’t have to. Because fire has no secondary effect to save your skin, you should have a good meat shield or a secondary that defends yourself, such as Dark Miasma, Radiation Emission, or Traps. Fire Blast has the standard array of powers, plus Rain of Fire; a control power that will cause enemies to flee and can cause a lot of scattering if used wrong.

Ice Blast
Ice is a heavy hitter with long recharge. It looks and feels crisp, even if it is noisier than you’d expect. The Ice holds especially look good and are really obvious. It also has very fast animations and spectacular single-target damage. One warning; it eats Endurance fast. Ice Blast lacks a ball attack, the overload is ranged and does damage over time, the point-blank attack actually has range without sacrificing power, and there are no less than two single-target holds. This means a high-level Ice corruptor can easily hold a boss.

Radiation Blast
Radiation is a balanced set, as close to a “default blast” as it gets. The blasts are green, bright green. Some of the sounds are startling. It has nice animations – if you like green. It is distinguished by the speed of its early attacks - Neutrino Bolt is almost an attack chain by itself. The secondary effect is defense debuff, which makes targets easier to hit – less useful than you’d think because good builds already hit most of the time anyway but great if your secondary is accuracy-dependent, like dark or kinetics. Radiation has the standard array of blasts as well as a point-blank area attack. The short range blast is particularly good as it has a strong disorient.

Sonic Blast
Sonic is a gimmickry set with a weak attack chain but good control. Sonic appears as concentric circles coming from your mouth. The sounds are distinct and vary widely between the different powers. Not everyone likes either the sound or animations; try them out and see what you think. The special effect is non-spectacular but important; it weakens targets so that later attacks do more damage. This can be quite significant over a series of attacks, especially against tough opponents. Sonic lacks a ball attack, but has two extra cones; one causing sleep and one causing knockback.


Corruptor Secondaries
Basically, your secondary set is there to bye time while you scour the enemy with your primaries. Whether you do this by strengthening your meat-shield or by hindering the opposition is a matter of style. Many corruptor powers benefit team members – but not yourself. This is an intentional balancing factor, but can mean that you are the weakest member of the team – not only have you invested in powers that don’t help yourself directly, you also make everyone else more powerful. Use this as an excuse to never take risks. After all, you are the one doing them a favor by keeping them alive, right? It is only fair that they take the risks.

Cold Domination
Cold domination is a buff set that gives teammates defense and extra hit points while slowing and weakening the enemy. It looks good and strengthens the team, but helps you very little. It offers team stealth instead of the mezmerisation protection of the competing force field and sonic resonance sets. The slow toggle is very nice, but draws a lot of aggro and costs a lot of endurance.

Dark Miasma
Dark miasma can heal, debuff, control, and even has a healing pet. The unique features of Dark Miasma include great control, the pet - who uses powers similar to your own – and psi resistance. The powers look is sinister, with strands of smoke and dark auras, but may look alike to the uninitiated. Dark Miasma works well with most of the primary sets, both visually and in effects.

Kinetics
Kinetics is visually discreet but powerful in effect. A set almost completely devoted to offensive buffing, kinetics can turn any band of villains into a pack of brutes, and I don’t even want to think of what it can make of brutes. This makes play fast and furious – but risky. You get many siphon powers that both help the team and hinder the enemy, but which must hit to work. This makes accuracy important, and sometimes your powers will miss at a critical time. Siphon powers also pull well. Kinetics has an odd but powerful melee heal, but few other defenses. It works nicely with Radiation Blast because of close-in powers and the increased chance of hitting targets with your debuffs. Brutes will love you, especially Stone Armor brutes.

Radiation Emission
Very distinctive visually, with green, radiant, bubbly effects. Radiation Emission is the primary buff/debuff set in the game, and you will live and die with your debuff toggles. Later on, it offers some control and works well solo. It combines especially well with Radiation Blast because you tend to be in the middle of the action so point-blank blasts work well. One warning – you may not have enough endurance to blast heavily.

Sonic Resonance
Sonics has subtle special effects and specializes in resistance – helping your friends and reducing the resistance of the enemy. This makes it good for everyone but best for brutes who already have resistance of their own. It offers no defense whatsoever against psionics, but you can give yourself some damage reduction and status resistance.

Thermal Radiation
A healing and buffing set. Almost all of the powers only work on your team, even if you can heal yourself and have a powerful debuff as your last power. Your allies will become very powerful as you heal them and encase them in fiery auras that make them resist most types of damage. You can also raise the dead in a spectacular fire display, make your allies immune to status effects and increase the attack power of a single ally significantly.

Traps
A high-tech set with gadgets to protect your team and weaken your enemies, new with City of Villains. Most of the powers work on yourself as well as others, making this a good solo set. Among the more interesting tricks are Caltrops, Trip Mine, and a Force Field Generator drone that follows you around and gives you and those nearby status resistance. The problem is that you are less than mobile – you like to entrench. This fits extremely bad with the play-style of brutes.

Controllers

Controllers are protectors and manipulators. While they can deal decent damage attacking mesmerized foes, they are all about keeping the enemy form hurting their team. Yes, controllers definitely do best in teams, and can be the glue that holds a team together. The controller is an advanced class, and you must learn to use your powers to best advantage or be quite useless.

Controllers have a primary powerset with mesmerizing powers and a secondary powerset with healing and buff/debuff. They share all their secondaries with defenders, and there is a constant debate on whether this infringes on the defender’s territory. It is true that many controllers defend as well as a defenders do, not just because they share the same power sets, but also because once your control powers are up, you have time left over to use your defender powers. From a controller’s viewpoint, a defender is a “controller light”, someone who choose team defense but didn’t go all-out.

To understand controllers, you must know the basics of the various control powers in City of Heroes. Sleep and Hold leaves the opponent completely helpless, but a sleeping target will awake when they take damage or are healed – a held target will not. Stun makes you unable to act, but able to move about. Knockback can toss targets about and leaves them unable to act while they get to their feet, which takes a few seconds. Some powers knockback repeatedly, which gives the enemy very little chance to act. Immobilize powers roots the mob in place and most of them have the side effect of making the target resistant to knockback – this very bad for Ice and Earth controllers, who have powers that keep foes continuously knocked down. Slow can dramatically slow movement and reduces the frequency if attacks. Slowed mobs often do not realize they have been slowed, and continue to try to get close to you at a snail’s pace. Confusion makes mobs change side for a time, attacking their friends. Fear makes mobs run away, while terror prevents foes from attacking unless you hurt them, but does not shut down any toggle powers they might have. Slow, immobilize, fear, terror and knockback are often termed soft control powers, as they leave mobs impaired but not completely helpless. Disorient and particularly hold is considered hard control or lockdown because it stops all attacks from the mob. Finally, a drop is something you activate, but which then remains and operates by itself, like a pet or a slick of ice.

Controllers get something called Containment. You do double against enemies that are slept, held, stunned, or immobilized. This lets you do some damage, especially with immobilization, and is powerful when you get ancillary powers in the endgame. It will not help drop powers, like pets or Freezing Rain.

Controllers have a problem in that mobs of higher rank are resistant to their powers. It takes several attempts to control a boss, and is almost impossible to completely lock down an arch villain or monster. This means that when really needed, control is at its weakest. In these situations, your secondary power set should come in handy.

All controllers have powers with slow recharge, making Hasten a good choice. Other common pool power choices include attacks, to make up for the lack of damage. This is mainly for a controller who wants to be able to play solo.


Controller Primaries
All of these powers strive to make the enemy unable to act, but do so in different ways. Look and feel is an important balance aspect here, as a power set with obvious hold effects makes it much easier for teammates to react appropriately.

Earth Control
Earth control is a loud set. Effects take the form of piles of earth and radiating seismic shockwaves. Earth effects are very obvious and clearly distinguishable from one another – sometimes to the point where they block your view. Earth is very good at soft control, and can lock foes in quagmires or make them bounce about helplessly. The defense debuff is large, especially on Quicksand, and can really help. Especially if your secondary needs to hit, like dark, kinetics, or Choking Cloud from radiation. The pet is a stone-man that lumbers around adding some chaos.

Fire Control
Fire control consists of smoke and cages of fire. While the fire is spectacular enough, the smoke has the problem that it can be hard to see who is mesmerized and who is not. The fire set really shines in its pets – you get three little fire imps that can’t withstand much damage, but are quite lethal. The control is a mix of soft and hard, with some debuff thrown in. Overall, fire has decent control and good damage.

Gravity Control
Gravity control is an oddball set. The effects are very subtle, targets are surrounded by semi-transparent fields of force, and it can be difficult to see who is affected and who is not. The difference between gravity’s hold and immobilize is that held mobs hover slightly off the ground, but this does not always activate properly. Gravity has a lot of single-shot knock-up and knockback powers that are pretty good at dealing direct damage, has the unusual ability to reposition groups of enemies, and an area hold with range. It is severely lacking in soft control. Their pet is the Singularity, a mini-controller in itself.

Ice Control
Ice creates crystal shards and arctic storms to control targets, the animations are crisp and the effects very obvious. A good soft control set, ice can slow foes and keep them slipping on slick ice. What ice lacks is direct damage; if you plan to solo you will definitely need pool power attacks. Ice controllers have a lot of free time because few of the ice powers are worth spamming in combat – lay them down, then you are free to do use other powers, like your secondary set. The pet, Jack Frost, tends to act passive and stay at range but has nice slow and hold powers.

Illusion Control
Illusion control deals with light and spectral images, creating semi-transparent figments that fight for you. The Illusionists’ best control comes with their three pets. This is powerful, but risky – pets can sometimes be astoundingly stupid. Illusionists can also make your whole team invisible, cause good direct damage, and have a confuse power. They lack much of the direct control of other controller sets, making up for it with their pets.

Mind Control
Mind controllers combine telekinesis and hypnosis. Their hypnotic powers are subtle, generally aura effects around the heads of their victims, while villains flying about helplessly makes telekinesis obvious enough. Mind has plenty of hard control and good single-target damage. As the set with the widest variety of direct control, mind lacks drop powers. Everything they do, they do themselves. They lack a pet, replacing it with an area confusion power.


Controller Secondaries
Controllers share their secondaries with defenders, and are almost as good as defenders at using them. The choice of a secondary is important, as control powers tend to occupy only a part of your time – the rest is best spent on your secondary power set. Pet controllers can also use their secondary to buff their pets.

Empathy
The classic healer, Empathy has deep green and somewhat blatant animations. Empathy starts out as an all-heal set, and even the buffs you get are focused on health and endurance. To fully utilize Empathy, you have to spend a lot of time and endurance, which can cut into your control. But empathy works well for a controller that wants to be indirect and support teammates. As a controller, you are likely to concentrate more on your buffs than on your heals. These come around at high level, leaving your lower level powers open for your primary. Another option is to be a healer, concentrate on your empathy and only pick a few primary powers – this may work well for controllers with buff/debuffs and/or powers that do not count as attacks, like fire, mind and illusion.

Force Field
Pale blue force field bubbles around yourself and others makes this set very visually distinctive. The most important benefit of force field to a controller is that it gives you and those near you resistance to stun, hold, and immobilize powers. Other than that, it offers knockback and defense boost. As a controller, you are probably uninterested in the knockback aspects, which leaves you interested in only a few of the early powers. Because force field require few powers and little attention during combat, you can focus fully on your primary powers, particularly good for sets that like to spam damage, like illusion, gravity and mind.

Kinetics
Kinetics is visually discreet but powerful in effect. A set almost completely devoted to offensive buffing, kinetics can turn any band of heroes into a pack of rabid wolves on speed. Keeping a team buffed with kinetics takes quite a lot of time, giving you less time to spend on control. You also have some great debuffs, especially against single hard targets like arch villains. You must hit the enemy in order to use most Kinetics powers, so accuracy is important. Finally, these powers pull well. But kinetics lacks a clear synergy with other control sets, except perhaps with fire and fire imps.

Radiation Emission
Very distinctive visually, with radiant green effects. Radiation Emission is the primary buff/debuff set in the game. Placing a radiation toggle on someone makes him almost as useless as if you had him held, and affects those nearby as well. Control powers can insure they do not run away. Radiation also has a good self-buff in accelerate metabolism. The best radiation powers for a controller come early, which may cut into your early control abilities.

Sonic Resonance
Sonics has subtle special effects and specializes in resistance – helping your friends and reducing the resistance of the enemy. This makes it good for everyone but best for buffing scrappers and tankers who already have resistance of their own. You have no less than two status protection powers. The main boon to controllers is that it offers you and nearby teammates protection to stun, hold and immobilize powers.

Storm Summoning
A dramatic and flashy set with some amazing special effects – and some utility problems. True to the name, you summon weather effects that do various things, which look amazing and leave you free to act while they wreak havoc. Combined with a pet from your primary, this makes for a veritable army of chaos. Storm powers provide drops and soft control, which can greatly aid if your primary lacks such powers – like gravity and mind controllers do. You also get some ability to heal and buff, but that is secondary. Storm controllers may wish to take immobilize powers to reduce the scattering that storm easily causes.

Trick Arrow
Trick Arrow is a pure debuff set – you hinder the enemy but don’t directly aid your friends. This makes it more solo-friendly than other defense sets. It is control-heavy, which lets you over-specialize and makes holding bosses very easy. It has some area control and debuff powers that auto-hit, which is very different from the direct control of gravity and mind controllers. The Oil Slick does great damage if you can ignite it – which is trivial for a fire controller, hard for others – but suffers from a pet-confusing bug.

Brutes

As a brute you are a melee damage dealer with a twist. With good but not superb defenses and weak attack, you would be useless if it wasn’t for the special ability, Fury. Each time you attack or are attacked, you get a little bit of fury, as indicated on the fury bar. It doesn’t matter if the attack was big or small, and it doesn’t matter if it hit or not. As the fury bar climbs, you do more damage, up to a damage bonus of +200% with a full bar. Fury drops rapidly over time.

This means as a brute you don’t want to rest, don’t want to plan, don’t want to scout. You want to charge from one fight to the next, smashing whatever is in your path. This can be amazing when it works, but it is very easy to overextend and bring doom on both you and your team.

Because it is the number of attacks that count, not the damage or number of targets, it is a good idea to use quick attacks in a fast cycle. Brawl is actually quite good used this way, only it is expensive in endurance. Boxing is spectacular; quick, cheap to use, and decent damage. It is also viable to slot attacks for recharge and endurance reduction rather than damage. This is because fury adds to whatever damage enhancements you have. If you have 3 SOs worth of damage enhancements, this is about +100% damage. Since fury can already give you a +200% damage bonus, this is a lot less impressive than it would be for another class.

But the truly efficient way to build fury is to be attacked. A horde of enemies can attack you way more than you can attack them. The trick is to survive. This means that powers that help you survive and fight on, like your secondary set and pool powers like Toughness, Weave, Combat Jumping, Hover, Health and Stamina actually let you do more damage, because they let you build fury faster. But the best way to survive is to have a good corruptor by your side, preferably Kinetics.


Brute Primaries
Most of these sets were designed for tankers and adjusted for brutes. This means not all of them fit your aggressive style. Some are very useful once you have built your fury, but not good in the build-up phase. There are plenty of attacks too slow to contribute to building fury, expensive area attacks, build-up powers that pale next to what you get from fury, and other powers really best suited to tanks.

Dark Melee
Dark melee has a number of basic attacks that are very rapid fist strikes with some dark particles floating about. The later powers are more blatantly dark, with tentacles rising out of the ground and waves of dark energy. As an attack set, dark is short on basic attacks and needs either power pool attacks or Hasten to fill the attack chain. Instead it has the ability to drain life and gain power at the expense of the opposition. These advanced powers pale somewhat when compared to fury and recharge slowly. Dark Melee does mostly negative damage, avoiding the high lethal resistance many foes have.

Electric Melee
Sparkling red lightning is the hallmark of electric melee. The sounds are very good and suggestive of great power. Energy melee has a small amount of endurance drain in its attacks which helps a lot. It also has chance to cause a short sleep, which can drop toggles but is otherwise not very useful. The problem with electric melee is that it is a bit gimmicky, giving up a good attack chain for oddball attacks that can randomly strike several foes or let you ride a lightning bolt into melee. If you want an attack chain, you’ll have to dig deeply into pool power attacks.

Energy Melee
Energy is a punching set, where your hands are surrounded by pink energy fields. On a small model, these look a little like pom-poms, on larger models it becomes more of a nimbus around your fists. The sounds are very good and suggestive of great power. Early energy attacks recharge quickly but have overlong animations. They do little damage, mostly smashing, but let you fill your attack sequence early on. Later attacks are massive, doing a lot of single-target damage, mostly energy. As smashing damage is heavily resisted in the late game, this is all good. The secondary effect of Energy Melee is stun.

Fiery Melee
The visuals are suitably fiery. For several of the attacks, you manifest a scimitar-like plane of fire which may not fit all character concepts but works great for others. It differs from the tanker version in that you do not get Combustion – which in my eyes makes the brute version of Fire Melee sort of pointless. This is the most endurance-effective of the sets. The early attacks do great fire damage that is less resisted than lethal or smashing. The later single-target attacks are good, but not as impressive as those from other sets. Unlike all other sets, you don’t reduce the enemy’s ability to do hurt you at all – there is no stun or knockback.

Stone Melee
Stone melee is a solid set. Your fists are encased in earth or you manifest a huge earth mallet to smash opponents. You need Hasten or pool attacks to fill out your single-target attack chain with earth, because late in the set you get two big area attacks and a ranged boulder throw instead of more single-target mayhem. These specials are good aggro control and enemy suppression tools. Stone lacks in quick attacks, so you will have to rely more on your enemies for building your fury.

Super Strength
Visually the most generic set, a huge number of comic book villains use Super Strength. The animations are all suggestive of great power. The early attacks are non-spectacular, but quick and help build fury fast. Later on, you get some heavy damage as well as two area attacks – one of which only causes stun – and a ranged attack. This helps to hold agro, and the stun works well with Invulnerability in that you do not kill the mobs you area attack. Most of your attacks have a chance to knockback or stun. The Rage power isn’t nearly as useful for brutes as it is for tankers. Brutes have good damage anyway, and the enforced rest at the end of Rage is a great disadvantage.


Brute Secondaries - Defense
Your defense has a huge impact on appearance - the various defensive powers dominate how you look. These powers are very important to brutes, because a good defense keeps you alive to build up your fury. Avoid any damaging auras early on, and slot them more for endurance reduction than damage – fury will make them lethal enough once you get into the fight properly.

Dark Armor
Dark armor looks sinister, with great clouds of inky vapor hiding you. Later, you learn to become invisible and move about as a dark cloud. Really scary and amazingly cool if it fits your character concept. It is unusual in that it provides psionic resistance. Dark Armor never gets resistance to knockback, so either Hover from the Flight pool or Acrobatics from the Leaping pool is a must. Dark Regeneration is an awesome healing power, but needs endurance reduction.

Electric Armor
Sparkling auras of red lightning actually makes this one of the more subtle armor sets, which says something about how blatant the others are. Electric melee is a resistance set that offers good resist to energy damage and average resistance to the rest. It lacks healing, but has great endurance management tools later on. I think these are intended to offer some control ability, but sincerely doubt this works out. It has knockback resistance as a passive power that only works when you are in contact with the ground. It has a passive self-speed power which ought to be great for a brute.

Energy Aura
The early armors are subtle, with an orange sheen like embers, almost infernal. Later on it gets some animations that are grainy and may not look good on low-end machines. It is similar to Electric Armor, but based on dodge rather than damage resistance. This helps you avoid the side effect of attacks but is somewhat chancy. On top of this you get great endurance management tools and all-around status protection, but you lack any healing. As a defense set, you should be able to use Aid Self from the Medicine pool to get some healing if you feel you need it.

Fiery Aura
Fire brutes show their anger as flame, and this flame looks quite different from that of fire tankers – it looks less like a blowtorch and more like an actual fire. Fiery aura is an aggressive set, with a damaging aura and a damage-enhancing power and you can even replenish your own endurance, which lets you attack more. Fire has the great advantage of having all its resistance and status protection concentrated in but two powers, which are thus easy to slot. The drawbacks are that you can’t dodge at all and that you are vulnerable to psionics, knockback and immobilize attacks. It is almost mandatory to take pool powers defenses; Combat Jumping and either Acrobatics or Hover.

Invulnerability
Perhaps the most “normal” of the defensive sets, Invulnerability shelters you in a dark and menacing aura. It is not as blatant as the other armors, but still clearly visible at a distance. Invulnerability is a set with a mix of resistance and dodge. You your signature power is Invincibility, which makes you very hard to hit when you are surrounded. Oddly, it can be safer for you to fight an arch-enemy if he is surrounded by minions. Invulnerability provides good defenses, but you should carefully decide whether you can afford all the passive powers, and slotting them is not a high priority.

Stone Armor
A very defensive set, built for tanks and perhaps not suited to the typical aggressive brute. Stone Armor embodies the power of the earth, and the armor takes the form of chunks of earth embedded in your body. These armors change your looks a lot, less so if you are big and use the huge body type. Stone has excellent defenses but slow you down to a crawl. Nothing fazes a stone brute, but it can be hard for you to reach foes or keep their attention. For this reason, you’ll love to work with Kinetics corruptors, who can reduce your speed handicap. The final power, Granite Armor, changes you into a giant earth elemental regardless of how you normally look and changes your defense from being all about avoiding attacks to being all about absorbing damage. You are so slow in this form that it can be hard to keep enemies focused on you, which in turn makes it harder to get fury. Earth brutes should take a long hard look at teleportation. Swift, from the Fitness pool, is also great and deserving of extra slots because it partly mitigates your self-imposed slow.

Blasters

Blasters are the strongest damage dealers of the game. But to really do damage, you need to use area attacks – which attract way too much attention. Perhaps the hardest archetypes to play well at higher levels, blasters are very squishy. Your best defense is to nail them first, and this gets harder and harder as you progress.

Blaster’s special ability is Defiance, which lets you do more damage when you are hurt. For this to be significant, you have to be really badly hurt, so it is not much help.

Many blasters favor Hover because it keeps you out of melee.


Blaster Primaries
These are all about ranged damage, and is the core of the archetype. Some of them – Archery, Electrical Blast, Energy Blast, and Sonic Blast, are shared with defenders and/or corruptors. These still do much more damage in blaster hands.

Each blaster set generally contains a set of eight standard attack; two basic single-target attacks, one ball attack, one cone, a snipe attack, a very lethal point-blank attack (whose range was recently improved), the Aim maneuver that increases accuracy and damage, and an overload point-blank area attack that leaves you drained of endurance. Each set also has something special outside this standard array, and most miss one or more of the standard attacks.

Archery
Archery is very accurate and decently quick. It suffers from doing mostly lethal damage, which is widely resisted in the mid levels. You get a big inherent accuracy bonus as compensation for having to draw the bow before you shoot, but draw time makes it hard to align your cone after using a non-archery power, such as Build Up or Aim. Archery is eerily silent, which is an advantage in player versus player – I have definitely had trouble spotting bow-using enemies. Because most arrows do all their damage all at once, it draws relatively little aggro. Archery has a very strong overload attack that does damage over time, and which can thus be partly avoided but can affect an unlimited number of opponents. The good news is that it does not drain your endurance. It lacks a point-blank attack, but has a high-damage flame arrow and a stunning shot.

Assault Rifle
The effects look good, some even spectacular, but the “super soaker” rifle itself looks terrible unless your concept is some form of junkyard inventor. The cones are your strong suit, they also slow and invite return fire, but do plenty of damage. Like Archery, you have a draw animation which can mess up timing, and you deal mostly lethal damage. You do get an inherent accuracy bonus as compensation for having to draw the rifle before you shoot, but it is hard to align cones after using a non-assault-rifle power, such as Build Up. Assault rifle lacks Aim, the point-blank attack, and the overload, replacing them with extra cones. It also has a ranged stun.

Electrical Blast
A very pretty set that is hard to play. Its basic animations are different in that they never appear to miss – you can miss, but the lightning will always appear to connect. This can satisfy the vain. The later special effects are truly spectacular, with wide fields and cages of electricity. Electricity is a mix-and-match that lacks a clear focus. It’s not great either at single-target nor at area, but the secondary effect of endurance drain and a hold can give it decent control if used right. You gain some of the endurance you drain from others – a marginal effect. It combines well with Electricity Manipulation, because they both have close-combat area attacks and endurance drain, but Energy Manipulation also works wonders on this set. It lacks a damaging cone and a point-blank attack, but has an extra point-blank area attack that drains lots of endurance, a ranged hold, a semi-pet that fires on its own, and the overload has range.

Energy Blast
Again a very spectacular-looking blast set, and one that fits many hero concepts – bolts of energy that knock people about are something of a superhero staple. If we could select the color of our blasts, it would be even more versatile concept-wise. Energy Blast is a solid blast set, starting out good at single-target and growing into area attacks later. Knockback is a good special effect when solo – it keeps foes from attacking, but can be annoying to melee fighters and tends to spread opponents out. Learn to use it. Works well with Hover – it is much easier to control knockback if you fly. Energy blast has the standard power array, with the addition of a ranged knockback power, but the ball attack tends to cause undue scatter.

Fire Blast
The most aggressive blast set in the game. It looks and sounds great, and has several good attacks for different occasions. The side effect is some extra damage as the target burns, which makes the enemy hate fire blasters with a passion. This makes Fire Blast strong but extra dangerous to use. Fire Blast gets its area attacks early, which makes most fire blasters focus on area, but you don’t have to. Because fire has no secondary effect to save your skin, I feel it works well with Devices and the control that one offers, but there are no startling synergies with any secondary. Fire Blast has the standard array of powers, plus Rain of Fire; a control power that will cause enemies to flee and can cause a lot of scattering if used wrong.

Ice Blast
Ice is the queen of single-target blasting. It looks and feels crisp, even if it is noisier than you’d expect. The Ice holds especially look good and are really obvious. It also has very fast animations and spectacular single-target damage. One warning; it eats Endurance fast. Ice Blast lacks a ball attack, the overload is ranged and does damage over time, and there are no less than two single-target holds. This means a high-level Ice blaster can easily hold a boss. It has good Synergies with Energy Manipulation because of Power Boost – which doubles the duration of all your holds.

Sonic Blast
Sonic blasts appear as concentric circles coming from your mouth. The sounds are distinct and vary widely between the different powers. Not everyone likes either the sound or animations; try them out and see what you think. The special effect is non-spectacular but important; it weakens targets so that later attacks do more damage. This can be quite significant over a series of attacks, especially against tough targets. Sonic lacks a ball attack, but has two extra cones; one causing sleep and one causing knockback. It also has a ranged stun.


Blaster Secondaries
These do not supply much-needed defense, except in a few cases. Instead they have melee attacks. These attacks are often spectacularly good, and can save the day, especially in player versus player. However, they are also very dangerous to use as blasters lack all defense. Most of these sets have one power that is worth mentioning, because it is so important – Build Up. Many feel that this spectacular damage booster is the only worthwhile power in the blaster secondaries.

Devices
The most defensive of the blaster secondaries, with a little debuff, control and defense. Devices powers generally look very pretty. A power of note is Targeting Drone, which replaces Build Up in this set. It sounds awful and is a toggle that you grow dependent on, which you will curse every time someone drops your toggles, but it is highly effective. Devices lacks damaging melee attacks, but this matters little. If you take Devices, you will probably want to buy several of the powers, unlike other secondary blaster sets.

Energy Manipulation
Energy manipulation looks nothing special but it is good at offense. The reason is that Energy works with and improves your primary set, unlike the other secondaries. You get Build Up early, and you get other meta-powers that can increase the range, endurance and secondary effects of your other powers. To top it off, Energy Manipulation also has some spectacular single-target melee attacks. The increase in secondary effects comes from Power Boost, which vastly increases the effect of many other powers, such as hold, knockback, stun, flight speed and so on. It also doubles the base defensive bonus of other powers, including group powers and luck inspirations.

Electricity Manipulation
This set looks and feels like comic book lightning. Lightning Field, the aura damage power, looks good – but isn’t very useful and attracts unwanted attention. Electricity Manipulation is a good meleeist power set, with decent area melee attacks. Because of this and because it has endurance drain, it works well with Electrical Blast.

Fire Manipulation
Fire Manipulation looks good in an infernal way but is hard to play. I used to recommend against it, but I have seen several good players use it well lately. Like most things in the game, it works well when used wisely. Its main feature are the two area attacks, both of which have long execution times that make them dangerous to use but give you good area damage. It also has a nice endurance recovery power.

Ice Manipulation
Looks and sounds cool and provides some control. A defensive set that still has the all-important Build Up, but it takes a while to get to the good powers. The melee attacks are fast, and there are several decent control and debuff powers.

Origin

Origin is mainly a style thing – if you want a certain origin, don’t let game concerns dissuade you. The differences are not that big, but they do exist. Some people are strict about origin, and may criticize your choice based on your powers or background. The final verdict from Cryptic on this is that heroes have whatever origin the player selected. There is certainly enough overlap between origins, and comic book culture was never purist.

Each origin uses different enhancements. The most important difference between them are the names and how hard they are to find in the shop list – it is a lot easier to understand the use of “Awakening: Recovery Acceleration” than of “Astatine Exposure”. At various stages of the game, there are different shops where you can trade. Some of these shops are conveniently located, some are not.

Each origin has signature foes. Each origin has a story arc associated with in every five-level bracket, where the signature enemies are likely to be found. Different enemies drop different enhancements, this means that after level 30 or so it is slightly more profitable to fight signature enemies. It also makes sense from a role-playing perspective. If your signature opponents give you trouble, that is a disadvantage. For similar reasons, it is good to be of a rare origin, because when and if your team shares the loot, there will be a lot of loot only you can use. However, you will still buy most of your enhancements, so it’s no big issue. It used to be, but the game was changed so that you can now buy everything in shops.

At level 25, you get to select an origin-based title. Each has a different list appropriate to stereotypes of that origin.


Mutant
The mutant origin is one of the most flexible in the game and the one you will see most often. By definition, mutants are born with their powers – but there is often an awakening when these powers are released or realized. This can lead to some confusion with the Science origin – did the dramatic event awaken or create your powers? As established in comic culture, mutants can do anything and look like anything, so it is very easy to design a mutant hero. The signature enemy of mutants is The Council, a fun, varied group that most people like to fight. Longbow are also mutants, but a lot less fun to fight. Their enhancements represent genetic drift or development and are very conveniently named.

Science
Science heroes are very flexible; almost any concept can be a science hero. There all sorts here, from technology gone blatantly haywire to seemingly normal people who gain power in unfathomable ways. The signature enemy is the Devouring Earth – a tricky group with many special features and mesmerizing powers. Many players dislike fighting the Devouring Earth, even if they are quite easy for a solo brute, scrapper or tanker they can be rough on big teams. An odd thing is that the background story of the heroic aura quest heroes do at level 30 is science-oriented – it really doesn’t make sense for anyone but science and possibly technology heroes. Science enhancements are experiments and have names that leave no clue whatsoever to their function, which is quite a problem.

Technology
Technology is flexible in effect, but imposes some restriction on costume and concept. Reasonably, you need power armor, gadgets or cybernetics to be tech’, or you can be a robot. This can be hard to represent in the game. I suppose that is why this is the most uncommon origin. However, remember that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – anything can be tech with enough technobabble. Technology heroes have the Freakshow, and later on Nemesis, as their signature foes. While hard on solo blasters, Freakshow are generally considered good enemies, which teams are glad to fight. Nemesis can be rough on teams and are very hard in outdoor missions, but are good enemies once you understand how to fight them. Tech enhancements are cybernetic devices; many names give clues to their function.

Natural
Natural characters have a problem because so many powers have blatant special effects. It can be hard to explain why your natural toon glows or shoots beams from the eyes. This is particularly true of tankers and brutes. On the other hand, it is a wide concept. It includes everything from the everyday hero to Superman. Examples include occultists, gadget heroes, martial artists, psionicists, masters of Tibetan mysticism, special forces, super spies, and aliens with powers that are “natural” to them. Still, natural heroes are somewhat rare. Your signature enemy is Crey, a large and varied group that most players find fun and exiting to fight. Natural enhancements represent special training and the names give clues to their function.

Magic
Magic characters generally fall into one of four categories – magicians, magical creatures, people using magic devices, and those granted power for a cause. Neither has any trouble explaining any power or special effect. This is probably why magic is the second most common origin. All the hero shops are easy to get to; Serafina in Brickstown is the most convenient of all the high-level shops. The shop buildings are very distinctive, making them easy to find. The signature enemy is the Circle of Thorns, who can be tricky to fight and who have the bad habit of living in caves with numerous nooks and crannies you must search over and over to find the last elusive objective. Magic enhancements are based on contact with “the powers”, and the names can be mystifying.

This is version three of the guide and includes both City of Heroes and City of Villains. I was somewhat in a hurry to update it, so some things might be artifacts from version two of the guide.

City of Heroes and City of Villains both offer great freedom when designing characters, but it can be hard to know what to choose. This guide is written for those who want to familiarize themselves with the huge selection of power sets. I also bring up the bad parts about the sets – something like “what the manual should have told you, but didn’t”. Still, the game has good advice and succinct power descriptions that are worth fine-combing. This guide only complements that, it doesn’t replace it.

Use this guide to get an impression of what each powerset can do. Then, after some of them have awakened your interest, look for more specific guides in the Player Guides board. This guide can also serve as an introduction to what other heroes can do, giving you some basic hints on what to expect from those you meet.

This is a beginner’s guide that may offer some insights to advanced players. It is not a complete guide to each set; that would have taken much too much space and time. Nor are there exact figures, the guide is based on experience and opinion. The tips I offer are conventional wisdom, but by no means the only way to go. They are intended to help you avoid common pitfalls. Advanced players may well break every rule I give and get away with it.

The look-and-feel of a super can be as important as the actual powers, and I’ve tried to describe what the various animations look like. In most cases, they look good and comic-like, but some of the descriptions are a bit bland – how many ways can you describe fire? Certain sets have more blatant animations than you’d expect, and these have been specifically noted.

I who wrote it am a long-standing alt-o-holic (a player who plays many different characters), I have played about half the powersets described here into the thirties and played extensively along with others who have the rest of them. I have less endgame experience, so the guide is most valid at lower levels. This also means I can’t include Kheldians or the ancillary power sets you get at high level. By the time you get access to such things, you should know what they are.

Can we have a deadline on this? I'll be computer-free during the holiday, and I'dlike to know if there is even a point in trying. Could perhaps be done abouth the 5th of January.

As I read my guide again, I realize it is now VERY dated - it feels like half the powers and all of the solottigis now obsolete. Be aware of this of you try to use it.

A post from another thread that reflects my more recent empathy experiences - mostly on the receiving end, as my Empath retired soon after the final version of this gude.

It was long since I laast played my Empath, but here are my impressions of the usefulness of the set:

Early on, you rock. Basically, nothing beats an Emapth at level 6. With Heal Other and Healing Aura, you can help your team face almost anything. Sure, Dark and Kinetics heal more for less End cost - when they manage to hit. Which is a very unreliable thing with only trainers for accuracy. You can heal on demand and pin-pojnt heal in a crisi - just what is needed at this point.

The teens and twenties are good. Healing slowly loses much of its luster, but you get more slots which lets it stay competitive, and you get exellent buffs. As long as you take the effort to use it as soon as it comes up, Fortitude is one of the best buffs in the game. Especially if cast at someone who can hold Aggro. Basically, that toon functions at two levels higher when buffed - which is awesome. However, it is also a pain to maintain. I hated it after a while, and it was the main reason my empath is now in a home for retired heroes. Clear Mind is also a great buff, but with a short duration and long animation, it is also a pain to keep up. The easiest way is to get an aggro-hungry tank and buff him, tending the rest of the team only as needed. Of course, if you choose to play an empath, you might not want to go the easiest way but instead do your job RIGHT - which will consume almost all your time and give you very little time over for blasting.

The period 30-40 is the low point of the Empathy defender. After level 30-something, heals are no longer the universal band-aid they used to be as damage comes in too fast, and the empath can no longer safely hang at the front to use Healing Aura. Recovery Aura is no longer in high demand as most people can now manage their own Endurance. Your prime powers become Heal Other, Fortitude, Clear Mind, Regeneration Aura, and Adrenaline Boost. There are two paths to go; focus even more on team buffs, for example with the Leadership pool. Or develop your attacks, and become a second-line blaster with buffs and heals.

After level 40, empathy strangely recovers. In map-clearing portal missions, Fortitude is in high demand, and fights are short enough that a single Healing Aura once they are over takes care of most healing needs.