Would buff/buff AT be overpowered?

I've always thought that Stalkers should've been Melee/Debuff or Melee/Control.

Buff/buff? I think its an interesting question.
People already make teaming-only support heavy characters, just like they make self-sufficient ones who contribute zero force multiplication to a team, so how far could you push it?

I'm pretty sure it would be overpowered, and I immediately thought of a Kinetics/FF super-fender. I dual-boxed a pair of Defenders for a while, one Kinetics, one Force Fields, and they filled each others weak points incredibly well. They were both Offenders, ie well slotted blasts, and could take down Praetorian AV's together. They turned any team into a group of indestructible cannonballs.

But is that overpowered? Two characters can do it now. If one completely team dependent character could do this, at the cost of having to solo on power pools and brawl, is that a bad thing? It wouldn't stop people from making more balanced or solo-orientated characters.

Oh yeah, and Buff/Melee would rock!

What would happen if you got too many of these buff/buff toons on a team?

Eventually I'd think that too many of these types of characters on a team would end up weakening the team overall. We see that teams of all-controllers or all-defenders can absolutely wreck things, but without any of that all important damage you effectively can't bring anything down.

Sure, you could debuff the enemies to hell and buff each other into veritable gods, but then what? You still need to be able to hurt the enemy. I suppose you could recruit a lone blaster or scrapper, turn he/she/it into a god, then follow the damage-dealer debuffing all the enemies. But would that really be any better than having an all-defender, all-corrupter, or all-controller team?

Do not let your soupy boiling anger blind you to the Sands of Mu, Duck San!

No really, I soloed an Ice Controller once, probably the closest thing to this in the game currnetly, and Sands Of Mu vet power was crucial. >shudder!< The word "once" is the keystone of that sentence.

Not that I'm advocating soloing these Buff/Buff types, or forming whole teams of them. Yes, both those situations would kind of stink. Personally, I'd prefer to see a Buff/Melee AT, or a Movement/Melee AT or something cool like that.

I just don't think the Buff/Buff idea is completely worthy of derision - there is a minority of players who like to play support roles.

I'd assume a Buff/Buff AT would get Epic powers similar to what Controllers get now, and if that happened they'd be good farmers. I'm specifically looking at Kinetics/Cold/Fire.

Anyway, pure support characters do kind of exist now. Unless people are inviting Ice Controllers to the team for their L33T damage. And no these types of characters are not "leeches" just because they don't get orange numbers. That's just silly.

EDIT: Would a Cold/Storm be able to double-Sleet/Freezing Rain? Now that would be a great character assuming the epics had ranged attacks. The attack powers in Storm with the endurance recovery and debuff of Cold. You'd also make your allies completely invisible with stacked stealth auras (or maybe not if they're hardcoded to be mutually exclusive).

I've been in the process of writing up a fancy Melee/Buff Archetype suggestion etc Look for it soon

I would like some combinations of buff/buff, but I can't imagine anything more boring that an FF/Sonic on a team of 8. Cycle through four shields 24/7. *Shudder*

Not so much overpowered as just lame and pointless. Instead of wasting resources to develop such an AT- I would rather see more effective and challenging ATs made. Besides, you can still make yourself a gEmpath with medicine pool that is a "pacifist" and have the same result.

I don't like the idea.

Kin/Force Fields would rock some faces though.

This AT would be unsoloable and overpowered on teams to the point where it'd become the new h34lzor FOTM. It goes against every bit of good sense and spirit in power design in the game.

I wonder how many Empathy/Pain "healers" we'd get.

What is the saying? "Variety is the spice of life?"

It's funny that the idea of 'more options' was put for to justify a hypothetical archetpe with less options. It can support. That is all it can do. Certainly the powersets are varied enough that you can support in different ways, but in the end? It's all suport.

You helping others do stuff really well, but you're not doing it yourself.

The devs have made sure that the character have something they themselves do well as well as supporting. Controllers are best at controlling. (Blueside)Defenders are best at weakening/debuffing attacks. Corruptors are best at finishing weak targets off. Masterminds are best at creating havoc via their little armies.

'Buff/buff? can't do anything else well. This goes back to the original early 'open archetype' system. You can make a control/armor that can survive most anything, but that doesn't make it a good thing from game design. Pure support characters? Sure, you can invite them to the team. But you know they can't do everything for you. If their set lacks healing? They can use medicine, but it's not great. They lacks shields? Manuevers is weak. They can patch their support holes, but it's done by sacrificing the other things they could do. Buff/buff makes no balance in its team role, especially for min/maxers.