What are some good powerset combos that show good synergy?

Whenever I roll up an alt, I tend to look at the powersets as a whole and I leave backstory and concept to develop on their own. I've noticed that I tend to only want to pick powerset combinations that work well together; that is, I like it when the secondary effects of one set seem to enhance the effects of the other set.

So this is more of an open question, but in general, what powerset combinations, for any AT, do you think show good synergy?

Off hand, I can think of Dark Melee / Super Reflexes working well together because of SR's high defense paired with DM's -ToHit on enemies.

Kin/Son Defenders (and Son/Kin Corruptors) - While Kinetics can damage cap you, Sonic's -RES can push you past the cap.

Still waiting for his Official BackAlleyBrawler No-Prize

Broadsword/Katana with Fiery Aura/Electric Armor. The defense from Parry/Divine Avalanche combines nicely with the resistance and self-heal from the armor. To a lesser extent, BS/Katana go well with anything but Super Reflexes (SR already has all the defense it needs).

Well of course, Dark Melee + Defense set because of the reason you stated. Any ST damage set with Shields to supply more AoE would be another choice.. Out of the ones I've tried, these ones also spring to mind:

Stone/Ice Tank, protection of Stone with Ice's control means insane levels of protection.

Stone/WP Brute (or Tank), with Willpower's additional endurance management, it lets you get past Stone's high end attacks. Put with that also the possible AoE perma-stun from Fault and WP's regeneration per enemy, it's a very potent group killer despite being mostly ST. The best use I've found so far is against bosses, as you can keep the group around them stunned and feeding you regen so you can fight the boss, which half the time is being knocked down anyway.

Claws/WP Brute (or Scrapper), Similar reasons for Stone/WP, except more offensive than defensive. With Willpower getting stronger the more enemies are nearby, and Claws having very good AoE potential, they suit eachother like tea, milk and two sugars (please, thank you).

Archery/Mental or Fire Blaster, due to the AoE ability from PBAoEs, AoEs, cones and mez. Mental Manipulation especially so because of the stun chance in the PBAoE with Drain Psyche. If you have a distraction, you can get some utter sick (and I don't use that word often) AoE damage against groups, plus you can go staminaless letting you grab more attacks.

Fire/Kinetic or Radiation Corruptor, no comment, but with the right build can make Archery/Mental look like an Empathy/Elec Defender with Flurry.

Elec/Nin Stalker, Elec Melee's main downfall is generally lackluster ST damage, but with the increased chance for critical hits and Assasin's Shock it shoots right up on a Stalker making it a beast. IIRC, Lightning Rod also doesn't drop hide, so you can explode into a group and proceed to AS. Ninjitsu is, of course, the generic "Look at me, I'm awesome!" secondary for Stalkers.

Not one I've actually tried, but Storm Summoning / Dark Blast for Defenders (or vice-versa for Corruptors) looks like a pretty synergistic combo. Dark gives a self heal which Storm is lacking, you've got the two quick recharge AoE stuns (together they will stun bosses), Tentacles keeps the enemy from running away from Freezing Rain and, when you add NF into that combo, you've got some nice AoE damage (by Defender standards).

Blasters: Fire/Ice (Ice actually keeps you alive while Fire lets you kill everyone in the room), Fire/Mental (three AOE's by ... level 10?), elec/energy or elec/elec (where you can actually drain enemies enough to matter). I might throw in Fire/Elec or Fire/Energy but that's not so much "synergy" as it is "ridiculous delightful damage".

Defenders: Rad/Sonic, Best At Everything, really is pretty close. You can have enough protection on a team; you can never have enough damage. Rad/Sonic gives you enough protection and a chunk ton of extra damage.

Illusion/Radiation Controllers. Phantom Army can't be directly buffed, so the only way to make them more effective is debuffs. Rad has a Resistance Debuff that lets PA do more damage. Rad has a Defense Debuff that lets PA hit more often. Also, you need a buff to Recharge to get Phantom Army up more often, and Accelerate Metabolism has a Recharge buff. Radiation is the only Controller secondary with all three: Recharge, Defense Debuff and Resistance Debuff. Just about everyone knows that an Ill/Rad is famous for being the AV killer, and a Perma-PA Ill/Rad is one of the best builds in the game, while being very good solo, on small teams and on large teams.

Fire/Rad Controllers: Choking Cloud is not very impressive on most characters. However, the combo of Fire Control with Choking Cloud makes both better. Choking Cloud has an odd way of working, such that it takes a while for the hold to hit, and then it has a chance of dropping. To make it effective, you need something else to distract the foes but keep them in the area. First, Fire/Rad can use the Flashfire-Fire Cages combo to get an initial AoE control on a group. Then the Fire/Rad controller can run in to give Choking Cloud time to get a hold on foes. While foes are held in Choking Cloud, Hot Feet is chipping away on their health. If the foe breaks out of the hold, Hot Feet has both a Slow and an Afraid aspects, so foes who break from the hold tend to slowly try to run away rather than attack the Fire/Rad controller. This often gives enough time for another hold pulse to hit. The combination of hold, damage, slow and afraid, plus the endurance boost and Recharge from AM means that a Fire/Rad has a special synergy.

Ice/Rad also has some synergy with Choking Cloud and Arctic Air, but the lack of damage means that an Ice/Rad has to rely more upon teammates for damage. Of course, Fire/Kin has a lot of synergy, since both are melee, damage oriented builds.

Illusion/Trick Arrow controllers: Trick Arrow fills in several of the control holes in the Illusion set, while Illusion provides the distraction to allow all the Trick Arrow debuffs to be fired off. Plus, the debuffs help Phantom Army be more effective. This is a very effective Ranged set, with the only melee power being Flash, which is skippable.

Earth/Trick Arrow Controller: No build is better at ranged AoE control. Many of the controls stack to handle bosses.

Kinetics and electric blast. Kinetics contains two endurance drains, electric blast comes with a -recovery to keep the end away. All blasts drain endurance.

Energy melee and dark armor. High on endurance, but with plenty of mitigation...and with all attacks being stuns, the toggle stun makes any attack stun bosses in one shot.

Kinetics and radiation blast. All kinetics need a hit check, so the -defense helps a lot. Plus three of the AoE's can be used from the center of a fulcrum shift.

Katana or broadsword with regeneration. The +defense from the swords goes a long ways with regeneration's damage recovery focus. The extra time not being hit is extra time filling up you health bar.

Dark melee with stone armor. Stone armor is end heavy without a self heal...dark melee has an endurance refill and a heal.

Dark melee and fire armor. Two heals, two endurance refills, and an immobilize to strap down enemies in a burn patch. Yum!

Fire/fire dominators. fiery embrace gives bonus damage not just to your attacks, but to your damage aura and all controls. The breadth of things you can kill with fire is amazing.

Archery/EM: boost range makes all you attacks hit from far away. Archery hits everything from far away. Boost range>buildup>aim>rain of arrows is the snipe nuke of doom.

Fire blast/mental manipulation: AoE's to the nines, with a +regen/recovery to boot.

forcefield/pistols (on chemical rounds) cap everyone's defense, then lower the damage of all your foes.

Some of my fav synergies are:

* Storm/Dark 'fender - as mentioned, you can stack multiple stuns (3 if you include the Dark APP) and has other good control and debuff options.
* Dark/Ice 'fender - you can have up 4 holds with this combo (if you include a APP) and with some great debuffs from Dark it is a brilliant controllerish support combo
* Trick Arrow/Ice 'fender - you can have up to 5 holds (inc. 1 AoE) if you include an APP. Similar to Dark/Ice in terms of a controllerish support combo but with a touch more damage than support (ie Oil Slick Arrow)
* Gravity/Storm 'troller - Grav's AoE hold works great with Freezing rain as it doesn't negate knockdown
* Fire/Dark Tank, Dark/Fire Brute/Scrapper - An interesting mix with two self heals and two endurance recovery powers. Can work really well and deal some nice damage
* Kinetic/Archery 'fender - Mainly for Rain of Arrows/Fulcrum Shift combo, works quite well with the Mass Hypnosis from the APP
* Sonic/Mental Blaster - I found this combo had some good AoE damage going for it
* Bots/Traps Mastermind - Just a combination with huge damage and huge support. You can softcap your defences without even trying on this combo and I steam rolled through most stuff using only SOs and the original three commands that MMs get

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger Quote: 16. Has Paragon Studios redefined "player" to require your mouse to subscribe separately from your keyboard? If your mouse has greater processing power than your gfx card, the answer is yes.

Ice/Psi Dominators : Melee orientated and End heavy aura combined with Drain Psyche, tonnes of -recharge and a fair few melee attacks.*



Necro/Dark Mastermind : The Controllermind. One pet in dark which works well in melee thanks to a PBAOE ToHit debuff combined with a number of melee friendly pets. Lots and lots of Dark controls with Fearsome Stares from you and the Liche, holds galore (yours, the liches, the Dark Servants and the Spirits) and ridiculous amounts of -ToHit.

I'll throw in my agreement with fire/ice blaster and fire/rad controller. I also dig ill/storm but it's almost as much a chaos machine as an energy^2 blaster.

katana/anything and anything/wp are good. Anything/wp is especially good when the anything is an endurance pig. But with something light like katana, or as mentioned above,Claws, you can run all 11 toggles that you desire.

I see where the katana/fire and /elec is being pointed out, but /dark should not be ignored.

I think Ice/Ice on a blaster works very well- yes, it's two of the same thing, but it gives you control abilities to rival those of an actual controllers, while still having good DPS (Not peak, but still better than a lot of other Blaster primaries.)

Dark Melee and Invulnerability

Fire Blast and Dark Miasma

Assault Rifle and Energy Melee

Dark/Shield, or Shield/Dark, is a hella fast and powerful combo. Siphon Life is a flat-out addictive attack, it does excellent damage, animates fast, looks very cool, and oh yeah, that heal helps a lot. It's the combo for a VERY aggressive "jump into the middle of the whole pack" playstyle, and what one set is weak in the other helps make up for. Nice End refill, for example, Shield users will need that.

Fire/Storm 'trollers are really powerful, although they do start off slow. /Rad and /Kin get all the praise, but give /Storm a chance. Your AoE immob in Fire allows you to drop a Tornado on your enemies, much to their dismay, and Fire is already huge on damage by itself. Plus with this combo, if you need to keep enemies somewhere (like a corner), or away from something (like destructibles or squishies), both sets have powers for it.

Rad/Dark Defenders and Dark/Rad Corruptors are fantastic debuffers. You can switch the sets around too and it'll be no less true.

Sonic/Energy for Blapping. Put things to sleep, pound the crap out of them. (This one's hearsay, but I've never heard anyone doubt it.)

Earth/Storm on a Controller. Sooo many stackable effects. Stuns stacked on stuns, slows stacked on slows. Two AoE knockdown patches that cycle pretty fast, AND can be cast around corners. Massive debuffs. More pets than a Crazy Cat Lady.

And the lamest heal in the game... Okay, can't all be winners.

I'll add Sonic/Energy or to a lesser extent Sonic/Electric Blaster. Siren's Song to put everything to sleep, heavy-hitting single-target attacks to pick them off. With Sonic/Energy you can also take Screech to stack with Total Focus on bosses.

Fire/rad trollers are good, but in teams of 2 or more, they basicly make you unstopable. All the debuffs are stacked and after about 4 sync'd AM's, they cap just about everything of importance. So much so that super teams can skip the whole fitnes pool for leadership. The toggles they get stack and lock down/melt everything.

fire/kin trollers are they best for solo, but sadly Fulcrum shift doesnt stack beyond the damage cap.

ill/rad trollers, rad/sonic defenders, stone tanks (thanks to IO's, all the negative's can be offset) and spines/regen scrappers..as well as archery/mental and fire/fire blasters are all good picks.

Just about every possible setup has some sorta synergy.
A better question is: what sets have poor synergy???? You would have better luck knowing what to avoid unless your a vet or insane.

Poor synergy? Well, they might work really well together in truth, but I'm honestly curious how many TA/AR Defenders there are out there. I am Redraw Rambo! I recall at one point it said that TA/Elec was the least-used combo in the game, another possibility?

Mind/Storm 'trollers are fun, but mine certainly does require some thought, no button-mashers need apply. Actually I'd think you need to exercise some care with Storm no matter what it's paired with, you can help your enemies more than your team.

Synergy: 1+1=3
Not synergy: 10+10=20

A lot of "synergy" combos I see in this thread are simply two really great sets in their own right combined to make a predictably strong combo.

Synergy is what saves two bad or so-so sets and makes them viable or even quite good. Electric blaster with /EM or /Elec secondary. Katana scrapper with SR secondary (if you're poor and can't afford sets). That sort of thing.

In my personal opinion, Dark/Elec makes a good pair for Defenders.

Why? Because not only does Dark Miasma completely negate the foes accuracy, Electrical Blast drains their endurance so that they can hardly attack. When they actually do attack, their accuracy is so weakened that they end up just whiffing at thin air. It's especially effective against bosses, since their higher HP lets you use more endurance draining attacks. Short Circuit also helps tremendously with -End powers, since it halts the enemies recovery.