oriand

Maybe the "boss" of the safeguard mission was actually Silver Mantis or something?

Snakebit -- If I were skipping Buckshot and Grenade, what would AR give me that would be more useful than, say, Ice? Or Archery?

Edit to add: Seldom, I've started the Dark/Read and I like it a lot. I'd consider sonic but there's lots of other opportunities to play sonic whereas the number of dark builds I like is small. I'm also leveling a Plant/Electric dominator since they get such good single-target attacks without spine's AoEs and DoTs.

I figured War Mace would be good since Smashing is good against Robots, who resist Psi. I figured most mobs with generic S/L resistance probably don't resist Psi overly.

---

If the Fire/Fire Dom isn't so good, what about Plant/Thorn. We are eco-terrorists after all. And then we could stack sleeps and confuses.

There might be different versions of him. Ouroboros wasn't around in the Olden Days and maybe the Council version of him is different.

Yeah, once he started killing my pets, the whole summon/upgrade cycle wasn't letting me get him below half health. Obviously using Gang War as a panic button was also... less than ideal.

Hmm. I guess if I keep the bruiser at range he can still Hurl. Or I could try stacking Knockout Blow with Paralytic Venom.

Seriously. I'm level 33, frankenslotted, trying to take him down in Mender Lazarus' SF on difficulty ONE. What am I doing wrong?

Hello all!

My girlfriend recently started playing City of Heroes with me, and for her first character rolled a Tech origin Min/Psychic Dominator. The concept was that she had a headband that amplified neural activity until she could impose her thoughts upon unwilling victims. She then set out to forcibly reeducate the masses and found an anarcho-eco-communist state.

So I decided to play her right hand man, bodyguard, and leader of her troops. Magic origin, as the sole sorcerer in her organization. I rolled an Assault Rifle/Kinetics Corruptor. I figured that with Inertial Reduction and Speed Boost there'd be no pressing need for her to go for Fitness or Travel pools, giving her total flexibility to play around and take whatever powers looked interesting. Anyway, we've been duoing almsot exclusively and it is a NIGHTMARE. there is NO synergy between our builds. She loves using Mass Hypnosis and Confuse, neither of which works well with my abundance of AoE, knockback, and DoT. She doesn't benefit all that much from kinetic support either; with domination, and drain psyche down the road, she has the tools to stay in the fight while I'm sucking blue. She already has status protection for tough fights from Domination, so increase density isn't doing much either.

Anyway, she's only level 14 now, so I'm rolling a new toon to replace mine. The conceptual limits are: Magic origin, should feel gang/paramilitary, no outlandish-looking powers like spines or ice or whatever. here are my current thoughts, and concerns.

Stalker -- Katana/Regeneration. I have this one at level 12 and he's a lot of fun. Opening fights with Hypnosis, assassin strike, placate, autocrit sting of the wasp, rehide, autocrit flashing steel is just too awesome to contemplate. I'm just not totally satisfied with this one because I was hoping to bring enough support or tanking to reliably keep us both alive.

Mastermind -- Mercs/ForceFields. I have this one to level 10, and he's been amazingly effective. I can solo most content effortlessly, and I can still carry an assault rifle like my original toon. I just worry about potential boredom, as this is two defensive sets. Neither of us will have big damage, and the defense/control combo might make life TOO easy. Plus, bubbling 6 pets and one teammate... bleh.

Corruptor -- So the problem with my previous corruptor was a VERY late-blooming secondary. I'm thinking Dark/Rad. It's a build I've wanted to try for a while, the secondary is great from day one, and since I refuse to play Dark Blast on Defenders this might be my only chance to try the set. I have one to level 6 and he's been SCARY good. The only downside is that Sleep and Confuse don't exactly synergize with my debuff toggles and area to-hit debuffs.

Dominator -- I could play a second Dom. Her dominator isn't exactly the most reliable control. Her reflexes just aren't very good yet, so she can't handle cycling through her songle-target controls to lockdown three or four enemies. She'll frequently hold, then levitate or confuse, then mental dart. Then everybody else kills me. If I played Fire/Fire I could show her how it's done and we could stack holds on everything dangerous. I just worry about elite bosses crushing us mercilessly during the triangles of doom.

Brute -- A brute would seem to be ideal, since It would be survivable without her help, able to tank for her, and to do some damage. I'd be looking at weapon primaries, probably War Mace with the baseball bat. Unfortunately looking at Mids it seems the stun on war mace would never work when I wanted it to, so maybe Battle Axe with the Hatchet. Anyway the secondary needs to feel magical, so I'm thinking Energy Aura or Shield Defense with the energy or dark shield. I have a Mace/Shield up to 4 who seems to be decent.

Thoughts on what combo I missed or how to allay the downsides to these?

What gives? I still have a level 50 hero on Freedom, a Peacebringer, and a Warshade, but I can't make any more.

Since the grenade scatters people, hogs end, and attracts the aggro to me while waking sleepers and knocking down confused enemies, thereby preventing them form attacking... I'm gonna say the synergy is not quite there.

Thanks. I'd include an exclamation point, only my keyboard is broken.

It's not that I'm hung up on damage. My first and only fifty is an Illusion/Kinetic Controller. I know how good buffing is. I love Radiation, Poison, and Force Fields.

My complaint is that your suggested build has exactly Two Kinetic powers at level , one of which is a damage buff. I'm not the one hung on damage there. But It seems to a problem endemic to Kinetic Corruptors: Their best powers are at twenty, thirty-five, and thirty-eight.

That's why I'd rahter have a Defender or Controller for most sets, though /Radiation and /Dark Corruptors seem to be okay.

Hmm. I figured I would take it for the S/L resists, since hopefully Psychic Scream will allow her to get more of the aggro. Plus if I don't take it at sixteen I'm putting it off until twenty-four, which I guess is workable. I'll probably get Beanbag actually if I don't respec for it.

Thanks for the advice, which is what I really wanted, although I'm feeling peeved enough with the game to point out that your proposed build really highlights my argument. If I understand correctly, you're suggesting

Burst, Transfusion
Slug
Buckshot
Siphon Power
Beanbag
Siphon Speed
Hurdle
Health
Sniper Rifle
Flamethrower
Stamina

As my level twenty build. That probably WILL work a lot better than what I'm running no, but I really think I'd be better off with, say AR/Nrg

Burst, Power Thrust
Slug
Buckshot
Build Up
Beanbag
Hasten
Aid Other
Super Speed
Conserve Power
Flamethrower
Aid Self

All the same attacks except the snipe, more damage on them, build up, and I even retained some healing and an END management tool.

I hit power boost, then Radiation Infection

I hit power boost, while already running Radiation Infection

I hit Power Boost, then Fortitude

She's Level 14 as well, looking like this:

1: Levitate, Psionic Dart
2: Dominate
4: Mind Probe
6: Confuse
8: Mass Hypnosis
10: Hasten
12: Telekinesis
14: Super Speed

We tend to open with Mass Hypno, then Dominate on whoever's left awake, then plug away with single-target attacks until everyone wakes and I use buckshot while she rotates confuse/dominate/levitate. Unfortunately she's not very good at changing targets quickly and thus is constantly holding an enemy, then levitating him, or confusing an enemy and then immediately mind probing him to death.

We did most of our leveling before the recent Dominator buff, which is why she has so few attacks. She had trouble keeping up with the rate everything recharged as it is, and Mind Blast/Tk Thrust were terrible damage back then. Hasten was there so Domination will be up more often. Super Speed, she'll be respeccing out of once I get Speed Boost but in the meantime there was nothing she wanted.

If I were playing her toon I'd respec it to something like:

1:Levitate, Psionic Dart
2: Dominate
4: TK Thrust
6: Mesmerize
8: Mass Hypno
10: Confuse
12: Telekinesis
14: Hasten

But I'm not.

Anyway, the next few levels should hopefully bring big improvements, but all on her side, not mine. She gets:

16: Psychic Scream, bringing her damage up and taking some heat off me
18: Total Domination, which should save our bacon occasionally
20: Drain Psyche, so I don't have to heal her as often.

Meanwhile I'm getting:

16: Increase Density, which is good but only if she actually gets attacked
18: Flamethrower-- great damage, but aggravates my END- and aggro-woes while interfering with sleep
20: Speed Boost, giving her even more attacks she's too slow to use efficiently

Feh. I'm leveling a Ninja Blade/Regen Stalker with the same costume. Hopefully then I won't die so hard.

By "build around" I meant "build to avoid selecting."

I've never played a /Dark Blast Defender even though I'd like to, because I can't wait until level SIXTEEN just to get my second attack. I like the set on Corruptors though if they have early debuffs in the secondary to get their damage up until eight.

EDIT: THIRD attack, rather.

EDIT: Also, I haven't had the best luck pulling with Snipes. I read somewhere [CoHtitan?] that hte more damage your attack does, the wider radius of enemies will be notified. Is that still true?

So I notice that the blast sets designed with Defenders in mind, Dark Blast and Psychic Blast, give their snipes out really early in the game. This seems counter-intuitive to me. I wouldn't have thought a Defender-snipe would do enough damage to care about, especially since you won't have debuffed your enemies yet if you're using the snipe as an opener.

I haven't really used my snipes though on any archetype. Anyway, Moonbeam in particular is becoming a pain to build around. So tell me: What, if anything, are Defender snipes good for? How should I use them, or are they to be avoided? Are Corruptor snipes better?

Are Snipes worthwhile on Corruptors? I never take them on Defenders and don't play Blasters much, so I don't know what a snipe is even good for.

I will grab Beanbag, I guess. I originally skipped it because I had unrealistic expectations about the control my Dom could provide.

Corruptor Vs. Brute

The Default 4/8 Second blasts do the same base damage as 4/8 second punches from a Brute. Except that Corruptors have Scourge, while Brutes have Fury. I like Fury better. The early Cones need to hit three enemies to do significantly more damage than a Brute punch, and some brutes get cones of their own (Shadow Maul and Jacob's Ladder) that put COrruptor cones to shame. The only downside to the Brute attacks is that Brutes have way weaker dama/activation without Fury. This means they don't have the brust damage, but at low levels doesn't impact their sustained DPS since everybody spends a lot of time standing around.

Dominators do more damage with their 4 seconds blasts than Corruptors do, although they don't get Scourge. They usually don't get AoEs early on, but it takes hitting three people to do better than a powerful Dominator attack. I'd say these classes are comparable at low levels.

Stalkers are hard to directly compare to other classes, but c'mon, Assassin's Strike!

Similarly, I don't have the data in front of my to compare Masterminds to Corruptors, but intuition tells me that my masterminds, starting at level 6, melt enemies just as quickly as Corruptors at those levels.

Look, I'm willing to believe that I'm doing something wrong, but you're going to have to give more detailed advice than "shoot enemies more" -- that's basically all my Assault/Kin does: Siphon, Siphon, and shoot away. Lots of faceplanting, admittedly while being dragged down by an unreliable partner.

Smurphy--

I'm not making a semantic argument. If you'd read on through my admittedly really long post you'd see that I make a specific argument that Corruptors are ill-served by their Blasting Primary set.

Having a set be Primary means only two things: First, you can skip the first power if you want, and second, you can get the higher-tier powers faster.

Do you see the first doing Corruptors any good? Burst, Flares, and Dark Blast are some of the best powers in their respective sets, especially at low levels where they're the centerpiece of your single-target DPS. Some Blasters may skip them, but Blasters have a LOT more attacks available and power slots ot pick them in. Since Corruptors need their Support powers and tend (in my opinion) to get more value from pools like Fitness and Leadership, it takes them a long time to build an attack chain. I ALWAYS take the first blast for my Corruptors.

Now how about the second? Let's look at a couple of levels. At 14 a primary has 1-6, a secondary has 1-4. That means that having blasting as a primary is bringing Corruptors generally Aim, snipes, and single-target controls, occasionally a cone or a rain. But they don't have the damage numbers to make the best use of snipes or Aim. This is the same level range where Stalkers get Build Up/Placate, Masterminds get their second pet, and Defenders get powers like Speed Boost, Fortitude, and Dispersion Bubble. At level 32, Corruptors get a nuke, which is good, but not as good as a Blaster nuke. I also think it's not as good as a Mastermind's second upgrade, a Controller's Pet, or Defender powers like Fulcrum Shift or Heat Loss. Every AT that overlaps powersets with Corruptors gets something better at 32 than Corruptors do.

If you switched any of those other ATs primary and secondary, they'd be severely nerfed; Corruptors, on the other hand, would probably get stronger.

---

TLDR: If Corruptors role is to shoot enemies, why are they worse at it (at low levels, in my experience) than every other villain AT?

I've seen expressed in quite a few places the opinion that going rogue will mean the end of Defenders, because everyone will switch over to Corruptors. Every time I hear this, I wonder if the speaker and I are living on the same planet. In my limited experience, Corruptors are the weakest and most poorly designed of the archetypes.

Caveat 1: I'm not talking about level 50 viability, or indeed the 38-50 game. I suspect Corruptors are probably among the BEST ATs at that level. After all, at that point they're essentially a Defender with higher damage numbers and Scourge.

(Which isn't to say I think Defenders will have no place at level 50. They have higher Defense and Heal numbers, epic power pools, exclusive access to Force Fields and Empathy, and most importantly they can skip the first power in their support sets.)

Caveat 2: The primary purpose of this post isn't to criticize the devs or ask for changes to be made, it's to look for advice on making the most of my Corruptors. I'm making the argument that the AT is broken largely in hopes of being proven wrong.

Summary of the argument: Corruptors don't work because they're the only Archetype in the game who depend on their SECONDARY powerset to perform their PRIMARY role. (Arguably Tankers do too, but I don't play them either)

What do I mean? Corruptors are billed as damage dealers by the in-game help text, and they share a primary set with blasters. But their damage abilities are actually pretty unexciting. Their attacks do comparable damage to those a Brute... without Fury. Lacking Build Up or accaptably powerful snipes, there's no way they can quickly kill dangerous targets like a Blaster; Stalkers are the burst kings of CoV. I haven't crunched numebrs but intuition tells me a level 6 mastermind's pets do as much damage as a corruptor--maybe he doesn't suprass the corruptor until level twelve. And since the (much-needed) Dominator buff, they use the same powers Corruptors have with higher numbers, albeit fewer AoEs. In my experience, low-level Corruptors actually do less damage than any other VIllainous archetype. When they CAN kill things effectively it's because of debuffs that live in their secondary powerset.

One might reasonably ask what difference it makes. Isn't the distinction between primary/secondary more smeantics than game mechanics? After all, Controllers get a lot of value out of their secondary, and many Dominators and Tankers take more secondary powers than primary.

Well, how, game mechanically, is a Primary set better than a Secondary? I'm discounting numbers, which are set by the AT itself, not the powerset. Actually a Primary and a secondary have only two differences: you can skip the first power of a primary, and you can get to the high-level powers earlier.

How much this matters depends on the shape of the powerset. Some powersets start out easy as cake and add little cherries on top, while other are like intricate machines assembled one piece at a time. Defense sets, for instance, are typically front loaded. The Smashing/Lethal damage shield available at level ONE is typically the most effective power in the entire set.

In my opinion, Blasting sets are the same way. The best attacks in the set are the first two blasts and the early cone or ball. Other attacks like the snipe, the control, or the second AoE add some utility and survivability but don't vastly increase the effectiveness. Even good powers like those extra AoEs and Nukes need good enhancements and other powers to support them that aren't available at low levels anyway.

the Blaster AT has poor power selections by design, since his primary benefits are huge damage numbers, a good inherent, and moderate HP.

A Defender is a whole different thing. Defenders have low damage, low HP, and an essentially worthless inherent. The only thing going for them is their power selection, which carries the entire archetype. Support sets tend to contain multiple game-changing powers. Picking up Speed Boost, Dispersion Bubble, or Sleet changes the game radically.

Although there are late blooming blasting sets (dark blast) and early-blooming support sets (cold, radiation), by and large I think Corruptors get the worst of both worlds. They get early access to snipes and explosions without the damage numbers to make them worthwhile, and suffer LONG waiting times to get the Support powers they need to be viable.

Corruptors are further hampered by being forced to begin with the first support power at level 1. A lot of exciting sets start with mediocre abilities. Look at Radiant Aura or Web Grenade. At the lowest level Defenders frequently do MORE damage because they can skip unnecessary weak heals and immobilizes and take more attacks. Corruptors get to skip the first blasting attack if they want, but there's really no reason to, as these attacks are extremely effective, especially before level 20.

---

Having laid out the argument in the general case, and eagerly awaiting an explanation of where I've gone wrong, I'd like to share a couple of examples of difficulty I've had with Corruptors and see if you can help me.

My first Corruptor was an Assault Rifle/Kinetics Corruptor I rolled to duo with my girlfriend's Mind/Psychic Dominator. We're currently at level 14 and my build looks like this:

1: Burst, Transfusion
2: Slug
4: Buckshot
6: Siphon Power
8: Recall Friend
10: Siphon Speed
12: Hurdle
14: Health

Performance has been... not good. We open fights with Mass Hypno, so I have to hold off on Buckshot until it wears off, leaving me with only two attacks to wear down enemies. Even using my full chain the damage is nothing to write home about. My girlfriend is pretty new and doesn't have the fastest reflexes, so I can't count on her controls to bail me out of trouble, leaving me dependent on my healing top stay alive. I die a lot, since my area attacks attract aggro without actually killing things. When we're not dying, I'm always the one running out of endurance since I have to attack and heal, while she doesn't heal and has Domination to refill her.

I know this build has a lot of pool powers that are doing nothing for me. I have two respecs saved and would happily use one if it would help but honestly I don't know what I could take. None of the powers I've skipped seem useful. Repel is an endurance hog, Sniper Rifle doesn't do that much damage, M30s would attract more aggro and use up endurance, and beanbag is worse than my partner's controls and another way to deplete my END. Plus, I'm gonna need Stamina to keep up with my girlfirend when she's running on Speed Boost and Drain Psyche. This was the build that convinced me Corruptors have a problem: apart form ym heal, I do literally nothing but damage, and not even good damage.

---

My brother's first character was, for concept reasons, an Energy/Traps Corruptor with Flight. He gave up at about level 8. His build and play were wildly suboptimal so I rolled my own version to prove it could be done.

1: Power Bolts, Web Grenade
2: Power Blast
4: Energy Torrent
6: Caltrops
8: Power Burst
10: Acid Mortar

Notice anything? This build is exactly the same as an Energy/Devices Blaster, only with lower damage and HP. Not until level 10 and the Acid Mortar does he get anything uniquely Support-themed. Compare the above to a Traps/Energy Defender I could roll when Issue 16 hits:

1: Caltrops, Power Bolts
2: Power Blast
4: Energy Torrent
6: Acid Mortar
8: Force Field Generator
10: Power Burst

That looks a hell of a lot better to me.

---

Finally, determined to try a Corruptor with more popular sets, I rolled an Ice/Radiation Corruptor. This is what she looks like right now:

1: Ice Bolts, Radiant Aura
2: Radiation Infection
4: Frost Breath
6: Accelerate Metabolism

The character is a blast to play, but I can't help noticing that were I a defender I could have Ice Blast in place of Radiant Aura.

---

Anyway, apologies for the long, long post. What I'm looking for is:

1: Build advice for AR/Kin, Nrg/Traps, and Ice/Rad Corruptors
2: Advice on early/blooming set combos. (While working on this post I decided to try a Dark/Rad, which has been brilliant. I don't want Moonbeam or Dark Pit, so getting the early Rad powers is painless, and getting early access to Tentacles and Life Drain is more valuable to me than Fallout or Choking Cloud)
3: Play advice and tactics for making the best of low level corruptors.