Are heroes tougher than villains?

I'm not referring to PvP here.

What I'm talking about is that I "grew up" blueside, since that's all there was at launch. I know blueside much better than red, but I have several villains.

To me, none of them seem as comparatively tough as my heroes. I'm not sure why, but I have a few possibilities in mind. Please let me know if you feel which are correct/incorrect.

1. The mobs that villains fight are tougher than the mobs that heroes do.

2. Heroes get access to EPPs.

3. I'm just not playing villains right. (This must be a valid suggestion, cause I've seen uber villains).

4. Heroes actually are more powerful cause they are less rounded/more specialized.

5. Tanks > Brutes.


I really want an uber villain. I have several high level ones and I'd like to get at least one to uber status.

I am going to suggest 3. You're doing it wrong.

One reason I am going to say this is your 5.

Brutes don't tank. They rage and destroy. They are scrappers on steroids.

I would recommend reading the guides on a villain AT and giving it a whirl. Once I stopped trying to use controller tactics with my dominator and scrapper tactics with my stalker I really enjoyed them.

What exactly are you looking for in your villain?

Matter of opinion on some of those things.

1: Vils tend to see a lot more Hero class mobs in later arcs than heroes see AVs.

2: Vils DO get an epic pool.. Patron pools. Patron pools are IMO not as good as Heroes epic pools, but it really depends on what you're looking to use them for.

3: I dunno how you play, so I really couldn't say.. I think if you're trying to play a vil AT like you would plays a 'comparable' hero AT, you are not going to like the outcome.

4: Eye of the beholder. I like the Villain ATs better than Hero ATs, but matter of opinion and how you like to play.

5: Tanks are better at TANKING than Brutes.. but Brutes are better at actually killing things and doing it quickly. YMMV depending on how you build your char, but I definitely love my brutes more than my tanks.


I can't help you with 'Uber' vils.. I build to my own specifications. If you're looking for help building one of your high levels into a wrecking machine, you may want to try asking on the proper AT forum for the char you are interested in building up.

A comment on #2, Villains get Patron Pools (unless your implication was that the Epic pools are better than the Patron Pools, in which case the argument could certainly be made).

And yeah, I have to agree with SwellGuy (and who wouldn't, he's just so swell). Brutes don't tank, Corruptors don't blast, Dominators don't control, Stalkers don't scrap, and Masterminds don't do whatever hero archetype playstyle you might try to pigeonhole them into.

It really depends on the villains you are using. But I would guess that its probably a combination of 3 and 4. The villain ATs are more 'middle ground' at least in my opinion. Corruptors are like middle ground between Blasters and Defenders. Dominators are middle ground between controllers and Blasters and Scrappers to a point. Brutes are in between Tankers and Scrappers. Masterminds, arguably are between Defenders and Tankers and maybe Blasters or Scrappers depending on which pet you have. Stalkers are kinda like Scrappers but with a lot more burst damage and should be used with different tactics than point, click, kill, next. Where heroes are more specialized in well defined areas and do great in them, villains tend to do pretty good in a couple areas. When I first started playing villains, I definatly equated Corruptors with Blasters, Dominators with Contollers, Stalkers with Scrappers, Brutes with Tanks, and that left Masterminds with Defenders. After a while though I realized that its not a 1 to 1 relationship, but a mesh. If you focus on trying to make them equal in one area, they won't be as good in the area that you focus on as the hero counterpart, but their strength comes from being able to do many different things well while heroes can do fewer things but better.

*Note, I know all the 'middle ground' examples I gave are very subjective, just my opinion. Different power-sets have outliers I know. Just trying to give a examples.

I think it's really a combination of 1 and 4.

The devs knew a lot more about power balancing and had tech to create more interesting and difficult enemies. The presence of Longbow everywhere comes to mind. There's also more elite bosses/AVs.

And I think that the hero ATs are very good at one or two things whereas the villain ATs are built to be more general. They're pretty good at a bunch of things. Jack of all trades, master of none as it were.

Like a dominator is ok at crowd control and damage, but isn't going to be able to beat a controller for crowd control or one of the more specialized damage dealing hero ATs for damage output.

That's definitely not saying the hero ATs are better or worse than the villain ATs. It's just a different design philosophy.

I know I can handle a wider variety of foes on most of my villains than I can on most of my heroes. Heroes are specialists far more often than villains. The key is knowing when and how to best apply the villain's power, and that's something that takes a bit of practice to learn.

Out of curiosity, Swamper, are you referring to solo or teamed?

I have noticed that medium to large villianside teams don't seem to be as easy as the same sized teams heroside. I think thats a combination of 2 factors;

1. Villian ATs almost universally solo better then hero ATs, with scrappers and perhaps high level controllers the only exceptions. That plus the lower villianside population probably mean they don't get as much practice teaming.
2. Large villian teams face foes as hard or harder then large hero teams, but shields (brute armor vs tank armor, buffs), debuffs, etc. are weaker villianside because of the tradeoff for that "well roundedness". Its thus I think a bit harder for teams to survive colliding with an extra spawn or two villianside, theres not as much synergy on a large team.

Solo, it would depend a lot on your AT, but I do think the "new" mobs the devs made for villianside are a bit tougher then comparable level ones heroside, even aside from the increased number of AVs/Heros.

Numbers wise? Yes, heroes have the edge in most categories. They have the ATs with the highest buff/debuff values, damage modifiers (although not damage caps), defense values, etc. The old joke is that villain ATs don't have a primary and secondary powerset - they have two secondaries. Also, only one AT redside has a defensive/control primary, so villains tend to dish it out better than they can take it.

Well, of course heroes are tougher than villains. It takes a team of villains to take down a single hero, and a team of heroes to take down an arch-villain.

{jumps off the suddenly derailed thread}

An open letter to NCsoft

I think the answer is, "Heroes were less balanced at the start than villains were at THEIR start". So the best Heroes were a lot better than most villains, which were a lot better than the worst heroes, and people just didn't play the worst heroes.

There's been a lot of rebalancing, but (for instance) Invulnerability tanks started out with the capability of capping resist and defense to all types except Psi and "untyped" (what toxic started out at) while Ice could cap defense [except for the alpha, where they had mediocre defense to one type and nothing to anything else.]

Or Dark Armor before stacking armor, where they had (as someone put it) the choice between being beaten to death, or being stunned and beaten to death.

When City of Villains came out, there were still some pretty bad imbalances. You could get an Energy Brute going and do Assassin Strike level damage in three different places in your attack chain, at a second or two activation time each, while Stalkers were waiting eight seconds with no combat and spending four seconds in activation to do that level of damage once.

But if you took the best Heroes and the best Villains you came out with better Heroes.

Also City of Villains has traditionally had tougher opponents. From Arachnos and their "we have SOMETHING you're allergic to" approach, to Longbow and the stacking def debuff/res debuff combo, to getting Carnies from level 30+ instead of 40+ ... they wanted to fix the problem of characters steamrolling trivial content. And they did.

The problem was that City of Villains and City of Heroes were never all that separate, so you had "City of hard knocks" on one side and "city of creampuffs" on the other, and most people go with the easy option.

The other side of the coin is that villains don't fall into the typical MMO formula of healer, tank, dps. A tanker, two defenders, and any five people with a pulse can go from 1-50 in CoH. A brute and two corrupters don't need the five people with a pulse.

Not that CoH really falls into the 'holy trinity' either. You can compose a team of literally any AT combination and, well played, they can go from 1-50.