The Utili-toon

I've had this notion. This consideration for that character most everyone wants in their TF. The buff/debuff team assistance guy who makes the going easier.

I started with the ideas that would lead to power choices. This guy would have teleport, recall friend. He'd be first to missions and summon people to him. Shard got you down? No worry. Utili-Toon is there, waiting for you.

Need someone to stealth to the last room for sniping the boss? Stealth/Invisibility a must, possibly even phasing.

Team buffs? No problem. Make that a defender with leadership and you get some of the greatest team aura buffs in the game. And they stack.

And then I stumbled. What would you take for your primary set. It seemed easy, Kinetics is the Crack of the CoX World. Just about everyone loves having a Kin around. But there's also that occasional cry for a debuffer, the -regen Radiationist who'll make the AV slaughter a cinch.

So I decided I'd get some feedback, your input on what this great toon would have to bring to the team.

I'd lean towards Rad/Sonic.

I have one of these, who I use as a "Task Force buster."

Mind/Cold/Primal Controller. Super Speed + the aura makes you invisible, and Heat Loss lets you keep SS running through fights. Celerity +Stealth IO in Sprint for when exemp'ed to low level.

The missions it truly trivializes are the "grab 5 glowie" types that don't make you actually kill any enemies. You run in, sleep the group, grab, and keep moving. It is seriously possible to finish these missions without enemies ever knowing you were there. And on the missions where you do have to kill a huge end group, you just confuse them all and wait until they wipe each other out. Not practical in a radio mission, extremely practical in a TF.

An Ill/Rad can do everything simultaneously.

Tank something? Ill/Rad has immortal tanks.
Pull something? Got plenty of tools for that.
Debuffs? Possibly the best.
Buffs? Some darn good ones.
Vengeance/Fallout/Mutation? Yes, please.
Shoot stuff? You can take Fireball.

What Smurphy said.

And, if you're on Virtue, you might want to look up the Taxibot Supergroup. They are some genuinely cool people with a helpful mentality you'd find appealing.

I'll throw in for a Cold/Sonic defender. An AV who's lost like 90% of their resistance, as well as reduced regen and doing less damage, all while your allies are protected... of course, like Tex said, you could grab a Controller and use Cold as a secondary to get some of the same effect and better utility with controls.

The main thing is do you want to be more effective against groups of foes, or against a large single target? That should tell you whether to be a controller or defender respectively.

or Ill/Rad. TBH I can't argue with that other than to say it lacks imagination (and might be tough to fit in all the powers you want, but w/e)

OH, one last thing: A Kin IS a debuffer. Transfusion debuffs regen. Siphon power and fulcrum shift sap their damage. Transference saps endurance. Siphon speed slows movement and recharge. It's not a whole lot, but it's something to consider.

The best debuff is death and Kinetics helps enormously with that. Personal preference, of course, but most teams I group up on seem happy if I literally do nothing except keep Speed Boost up.

Sub-40: ill/rad, like Smurphy said.
Past-38: ill/kin.

I have an ill/storm which fits this bill. I also have a fire/kin ghost, Rabbit Ghost on Freedom, and am working on a ghost scrapper, a MA/electric, named drooggeist.

I've second builded many utili-toons into something that can do more damage/lockdown. It's cool for a while, but I aint your mommy.

I'll mostly like be shouted down on this one, but I find Ill/Rad highly overrated for teaming. Ill/Rad is a great solo toon that's ok on a team. It really doesn't deal with huge crowds of enemies the way other Controllers do, IMO. It's basically the Fire/Kin of the AV soloing set. If you've played a Mastermind you have a good sense of how Ill/Rad transfers from solo to team.

Which is not to say it's a bad choice. Just not particularly better than any other Radiation character.

I'm partial to well-played Empaths for this role. Keeping Fortitude on half the team does wonders to just flat-out make you better, and I've seen a single one single-handedly take a team from wiping horribly on every attempt to beat up an AV on the STF to taking two at once.

I have some silly powerful toons and I find my Ill/Rad to be my most powerful on teams. Once your teammates properly understand how to best utilize Vengeance and Fallout your team pretty much can't fail. Explain to your teammates that if Vengeance is down it is not only acceptable for someone to die in the middle of a huge pack of enemies, but that person's death will actually make the team defeat the enemies faster. Fallout and Vengeance are massive buffs. Fallout is like two, TWO Warburg Nukes fired simultaneously. Vengeance is like Fortitude for everyone in the area. Those are game changing buffs.

Add on top of that the ability of Ill/Rad to do everything and it really becomes easy mode. I agree Ill/Rad doesn't have the ability to lockdown packs like most other controllers. However, you can have a teammate die and kill the whole pack with Fallout while your Phantom Army takes the aggro of anything actually scary.

I would go for a Cold/Dark defender personally.

I love the Cold Domination set, shields + debuffs, and Dark Blast with its -tohit stacks nicely with that. Dark Blast has a few skippable powers too so you have room for all the pool powers you want.

You get a partial stealth power so SS or a stealth IO cap your stealth and Defenders get the best use out of the Leadership pool. Take the Medicine Pool (For the rez not the healing), Recall Friend and you are good to go. Even if you don't want the medicine pool you get a free rez from day jobs these days!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Oddly enough my utilitoon is FF/Sonic with Tactics. There are many situations where the team gains enormously by the quiet confidence that no member of the team is going to get hit twice in a row, and gains enormously by the +40-70% damage on tough targets. It isn't perfect for all situations, but desquishing the squishiest members of the team is a startling amount of help.

And with FF there is no need to wait several seconds before charging into a fight. Two and a half seconds per fight, times fifty or a hundred fights, really adds up.

If you take Force Fields, you won't get much use out of vengeance. Just sayin'.

A really well built Ill/Rad, like Local Man published, keeps the team healed, perma-AM, and enemies defenses and tohit debuffed. I've been called on in SG chat more than a few times to stop what I'm doing, load my Ill/Rad, and help a team break through an AV. I can run Healing Aura, AM, debuffs and the PA without breaking a sweat.

Again, this is all thanks to Local Man and his Ill/Rad guide.

My rad/sonic can do all of what you started with the exception of teleportation. (I have recall) My SS has a stealth IO in it, and i have recall before 20, so he can stealth TP any tf in the game, IIRC, debuff, buff, and do some damage. Granted, I'm not a team carrier in the shadow shard, cause i prefure superspeed over teleport for travel and it opened up near full inviso for me to use, in conjuction with my recall, since my pools where maxed out. (Fitness / Speed / Leadership / Teleport) Just ran out of power choices. LOL.

I'd highly recommend it. It can do alittle bit of everything "support" wise, and does it all well. Never been on a TF "Failure" with this guy. Cause a powerboosted veng and fallout pretty much turns the rest of us into gods and whatever was unlucky enought to kill someone into fodder.