Non-scrapper/tank alpha masters?

Hello CoX community,

After a long hiatus, power customization has drawn me back into the wonderful world of City of Heroes and as re-awakened my altitis. My only lvl 50 is an ill/storm troller, which i created because i was so sick of being on teams and having the tank being afraid of jumping in and taking the alpha. I am now looking to roll another toon, and i am looking for help in finding a ranged toon that can negotiate an alpha strike almost as well as my illusion controller.

I rolled a traps defender as I wanted to play with the seeker drones, but the traps play style kind of wears on me as it takes almost 3 seconds to place traps and with a fast moving team it felt awkward. Could anyone suggest a CoH powerset combination (for blaster/def/troller) that manages the alpha well? should i just keep trudging on with traps?

regards,
savage

I think most would be scared of answering, because if anybody answers your question with a YES, the developers would see the post and quickly nerf the class mentioned.

If by "negotiate" you mean "deflect" a lot of trollers can, thats meant to be their thing really, a mezzed enemy can't attack, or (my personal fave as I have a very expensive ill/rad) an enemy distracted by phantom army will definitely not be attacking you.

Even with the lousy nerfs to Phantom Army's AI which seems to make it so very passive these days (grumbles)

Thank you for the replies so far, and I appreciate the dark miasma suggestion. I know that most trollers are OK with an alpha, but I guess I am looking for PA type powers that canget things started without having to resort to tactics that need your team to think all that much. I tried an ice troller for example and I hated the whole ice slick behind a corner thing. I am not looking for a tank mage, just a toon that feels like a hero and doesn't have to wait on lazy tankers.

Regards,

Savage

Dunno if i agree with your sentiment, Je Saist. There's lots of def/troller combos that can manage an alpha fine and have done so for issue upon issue. Tactics that jump to mind (a terribly incomplete list):

Dark defender - Fearsome stare. or, toggle-pulling with darkest night onto a tar patch, then fearsome stare.

Traps - seekers, like the OP mentioned.

Seeds of Confusion - huge alpha-buster. Mass Confusion, too. Even single-target confuse on choice targets can swiftly eliminate the worst mob's aggro.

Ice patch from around a corner. Mass Hypnosis. Earthquake. There's lots of ways to start a fight on a non-melee toon.

You can build a "ranged tank" Force Field Defender with pretty much capped defence to everything.

Slotted Dispersion Bubble, Weave and Manouvers, and non-slotted Hover/CJ puts you at 32% Defence, and you can get this by the mid-20s. Build from there with set bonuses to increase your Melee, Ranged, AoE and Psi defence. By the mid 40s you can be packing 60-odd% Smashing/Lethal resists too.

There are more slightly out of date details in the link in my signature.

Don't bother with Provoke - all your teammates will be invulnerable too. I highly recommend Sonic Blast as a secondary to provide some offensive debuffs.

I found this to be a very good antidote to scaredy-tanks.

Traps would work well for this approach too, since FFG gets a slightly higher base Defence than FF, but you already said you dont like the playstyle. Force Fields will allow a fast moving team to move even faster just due to the increased confidence they get when nothings hitting them.

Next closest power would be gang war on mms. Then carrion creepers from plant.

How about plant/ff? A combo you don't see too often, but i can imagine that confusing the bulk of every spawn in addition to you and your team having very good defense would put those fraidy-tanks in their place.

There are several powersets that allow a character to hide around a corner and drop controlls or debuffs that suffice when no one is really survivable enough to take a spawn head-on. Earth control, ice control, and storm summoning are some of the most effective at that. An earth/storm controller can do practically everything it ever needs to do without line of sight.

Anyone with personal forcefield can just walk into a spawn and stand still for a few seconds while the rest of the team engages. It also makes the perfect setup for utilizing a PBAE hold on a controller.

AE controls like flashfires and stalagmites are of course effective when the opposing spawn isn't too spread out... then there's seeds of confusion that just trumps them all. I'm not a fan of wormhole, but there's that too. These powers will allow controllers to solo 8-man-team size spawns, not just survive them.

Mind control only has an AE sleep until it gets terrify, which is almost as good as fearsome stare from dark miasma.

Really, any controller can soften up a troublesome enemy. Not all defenders do that well, but I would have expected seekers to be more than sufficient for opening a fight with your defender. If it's a fast moving team, I'm not sure you need anything else.

So based on what I have read, I am thinking that Dark Miasma, Traps, Plant Control and possibly Rad will give me what I am looking for... Thanks for the input and help!

Of those four what is the current community thought around solo speed/fun factor? Does everything still play the same since i14?

Dark Miasma plays the same as ever, except for a minor damage bonus when soloing or on a small team from Vigilance 2.0. Fun factor is similar to illusion thanks to active defense style. Soloing speed not quite so good, but better than it was with Vigilance 1.0.

Pair it with your favorite aggressive secondary. You won't need much utility on top of full-strength Defender Dark Miasma. No real bad choices, though /Rad, /Psy, /Ice, and /Archery may be particularly good fits.

Masterminds are the masters at soaking alpha strikes; often moreso than Scrappers, Tankers, and Brutes (but the Brute wants the alpha anyway in order to fuel Fury). I say this entirely due to Bodyguard Mode: each pet set to Follow/Defensive or GoTo/Defensive will share a portion of the damage that you take (split the damage into parts such that you take 2 parts and each pet takes 1 part). With a full compliment of 6 pets, that reduces your incoming damage by 75%, after any normal resists you have are applied. And even at lower levels (below 26, when you get your 6th pet), Bodyguard is extremely effective: at level 1, with a single pet, your damage is reduced by 33% -- compare that to a level 1 Tanker's 30% (and then only to some damage types).

And on top of Bodyguard, Masterminds get support secondaries, including several sets already mentioned in this thread.

As others have mentioned, I'd try a plant controller if I were you.

i personally would try a plant/storm troller for these things (plant for the things mentioned above and storm for his damage and extra softcontroll)

Gravity control's wormhole is wonderful at takin alphas, as long as you can lose line of sight.
If unable to lose LOS you have an aoe hold to eat the alpha. Hopefully you wont run into a position where you just used your aoe hold and then cant use wormhole on the next spawn. Id take my chances though. Of course I may be the no. 1 fan of gravity control.

Other than that, id agree with the dark miasma recommendation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow Ravenwolf My favorite combo is Faceplant/DebtCap with the TeamWipe Ancillary

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari Yeah, I like Blasters too.

The ones people have already said a thousand times are the big ones: Dark Miasma, Illusion, Traps, and Plants. FF can do it well from level 1 with Personal Force Field, and it's fun to confuse the hell out of newbie tanks by beating them to the alpha on a Defender.

If villainside becomes acceptable at some point, Omega Maneuver on Crab Spiders is pretty good at it, too, as is Gang War on Thugs/ MMs (though not quite up often enough for every-spawn mitigation.) Almost nothing beats a dom in Domination, though. It's hard to outdo mezzing 95% of enemies up past boss level in one blow.

An MM.