Is a Useful Pacifist Possible?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-10-28 20:08 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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Empathy 'pure healer' Defenders.. oh wait... you said 'useful.' Nevermind.
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Originally Posted by all_hell
What toon that would come closest to not doing any damage BUT at the same time be as useful on a team as most any other toon.
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Anything/Pain Domination MM... don't take any personal attacks. *Technically* you can't help it if random mercs/zombies/demons follow you around and inflict harm on those around you. 
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Controllers and Masterminds are the only two ATs whose primary and secondary aren't focused on dealing damage. Masterminds' primary has attacks in it though. So it seems to me if you're going to make this work, it's as a Controller probably.|
Originally Posted by all_hell
What toon that would come closest to not doing any damage BUT at the same time be as useful on a team as most any other toon.
I suspect that 0 damage would be impossible because many holds and immobs have a dmg component. |
Does pets doing damage count? Because you could make a pretty boss MM who doesn't deal any damage, if you let your henchman do the damage.
I would say if you really want to try this do a Plant/ or Mind/ controller with /Empathy or /ForceField. Illusion Control might fit the concept too. /Sonic /Thermal or /Radiation would work, too.
You actually have some flexibility, if you go with a controller.
@Gilia1
I play heroes on Champion.
I play villains on Virtue.
An Electric/Empathy or Earth/Empathy Controller would be very low damage but still useful. Plant Control actually does decent damage (its AoE immobilize hits unusually hard, plus it has Carrion Creepers) so even with a buff-focused secondary you'd still be doing a fair bit of damage (at least if you use the fun powers).
Another option would be to take a Defender and slot your attacks for secondary effect rather than damage. Since Defenders have the highest debuff strength but low base damage (especially teamed) you could use your attacks as extra debuffs. For instance, imagine what a Rad/Dark/Psi Defender with his Dark Blast powers slotted with accurate to-hit debuff sets could do to a spawn... they'd be debuffed so far into uselessness that they might as well be level one Hellions. 
(And you'd also have great recharge bonuses if you used Cloud Senses.)
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See, i thought a pacifist was opposed to violence in general, not simply avoiding committing violence with their own hands.
"No, I didn't decapitate that dude, i sharpened my buddy's sword, juiced him with steroids and had him do it for me. After all, I'm a pacifist."
So, no, a useful pacifist in the context of this game is not possible.
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i make stuff...
Ice Earth or Electric Controller with a buffing secondary.
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
See, i thought a pacifist was opposed to violence in general, not simply avoiding committing violence with their own hands.
"No, I didn't decapitate that dude, i sharpened my buddy's sword, juiced him with steroids and had him do it for me. After all, I'm a pacifist." So, no, a useful pacifist in the context of this game is not possible. |
Well my Ice/Rad and Ice/Therm Controllers made it 44 levels with nothing but a single target hold for an attack. While not entirely pacifists their damage sucked so much that killing stuff was pretty much not on the table. Hindering it and buffing teammates was pretty much the order of the day.
In terms of character concept, I've had a pacifist Blaster, a Sonic/MM who casually walked around switching opponents' minds off. He did a lot of "damage" in game terms, but his victims woke up with little more than a mild headache afterwards. (Sonic Blasts were coloured pink and emanted from his head, thus looked like Psi blasts)
In terms of game mechanics, and trying to avoid lowering the opposition's health as much as possible, a Controller is definitely the way to go. Ice, Electrical or Earth paired with a buffing secondary such as Kinetics, Empathy or Sonic. (Force Fields is out as a direct damage dealer via Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb)
I'd go Ice/Sonic or Ice/Emp. Two powers that cause damage there, potentially both skippable with all the extra soft control you get.
Of course, you could debate the morality of freezing your victims solid or encasing them in rock, and yet leaving them conscious for as long as possible.
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Be a Forcefield (or Empathy) defender that hardly uses their secondary. If you took /ice as your secondary, you could use the Freeze Ray hold (which does tiny damage) and Bitter Freeze Ray (which does a bit more damage.|
Originally Posted by all_hell
What toon that would come closest to not doing any damage BUT at the same time be as useful on a team as most any other toon.
I suspect that 0 damage would be impossible because many holds and immobs have a dmg component. |
I'd see Forcefield as being more in line with a pacifist as you would be preventing damage. Empathy heals damage which, to me, is more like a medic & a medic may or may not be a pacifist.
It might be a bit hard to find teams as not every PUG knows how much a FF defender increases heir defense. It could also possibly be the most boring hero to play...ever. You would always have to team to get any exp, but if that's how you want to spend you time in CoH then power to you.
If you're going to be a true pacifist, then make anything the character, but don't ever fight anything. The most you can do is fedex missions.
The next best thing would be grav/FF or grav/sonic and phase shift everything you can to prevent fighting in accordance with your pacifist beliefs.
If you want a character that does no damage, however, someone beat me to the MM idea.
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I've got a Mind/Empathy Controller specifically because she's not really into hurting folks. The Sleep and the Mind Control allow her to "hold" people without hurting them.
I still took the damage attacks though. If folks get nasty I can bounce them off the pavement a few times, no problemo.
Tank as a taunt-bot. Take the 1st power in the secondary as required but dont use it, Select a primary that has no or dont take/toggle a damage aura and simply taunt and maybe "soft controls" like fault or hand clap for 0 damage stuns. I would be an ideal pacifist... "Please, hit *me* not them." Useful? Dunno, probably could be.
W/e u decide - Best of luck leveling...lol
Miss Arc #147491: Rise of Bedlam
AKA Iron Smoke @Champion Server
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While I'm really with Schismatrix on this topic, I like Kractis_Sky's take as well. Load up on power pool mitigation, get taunt and provoke and invoke panic.|
Originally Posted by Kractis_Sky
Tank as a taunt-bot. Take the 1st power in the secondary as required but dont use it, Select a primary that has no or dont take/toggle a damage aura and simply taunt and maybe "soft controls" like fault or hand clap for 0 damage stuns. I would be an ideal pacifist... "Please, hit *me* not them." Useful? Dunno, probably could be.
W/e u decide - Best of luck leveling...lol |
Who cares that you're running 10 toggles if you're not using end attacking?
Be well, people of CoH.
There's no way around it: this game is based around defeats, and has few, if any, paths that circumvent this. In fact, if a player found a way to level as quickly sans defeats as those doing so, it would be termed an exploit and closed. You're in a game that's all about taking down enemy threats via force.
That said, the closest I've found is this: Mind control with concealment. If you play your cards right, you can finish many missions with only one defeat. Sneak to the objective, confuse target group, wait until they whittle themselves down to a single foe, take that foe out. true, you are inciting violence, but it is among those who have chosen that path already. You are merely redirecting what was there to end its threat.
I think the Mastermind is going to be the most fun to play.
Go zombies/pain. And be a pacifist who's assailed by a horde of zombies that feed on his pain. The zombies have realized that it causes you pain to see other people get hurt, and so go around hurting anyone who happens to get close to you. When the pain gets too much, you shoot out waves of pain that the zombies feed on (i.e. get healed) and sometimes you let out a pained screamed asking for the zombies to stop, that paradoxically only makes them kill faster (resistance debuffing).
Make a bind for the cowering emote, so you always have it at hand.
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Since pretty much the only thing that nets you experience is reducing your enemy's hit points to zero, the entire concept of being a pacifist in this game is a non-sequitur. Helping others reduce hit points to zero qualifies as aiding and abetting violence, which a true pacifist cannot do.|
Originally Posted by all_hell
What toon that would come closest to not doing any damage BUT at the same time be as useful on a team as most any other toon.
I suspect that 0 damage would be impossible because many holds and immobs have a dmg component. |
A pacifist would be able to complete only missions that don't involve defeating enemies, of which there are very few. Thus, a true pacifist character would probably stay level 1 forever. You might be able to play the market and craft, but at level one you have so few slots that it would be very uninteresting.
What you're talking about isn't a true pacifist, but someone who just doesn't want to get their hands dirty.
If you want to play this kind of hypocritical faux pacifist, the obvious ones that come to mind are Mind/Empathy and Mind/Force Field, but a Mind/Kinetics controller might be more interesting to play.
Confuse, Mass Hypnosis, Telekinesis, Total Domination and Mass Confusion all do no damage. If you want to be coy about it, Levitate doesn't do any damage ("I just threw him up in the air, it's not my fault if he can't hack the landing").
None of the Kinetics powers causes damage, and Siphon Power and Fulcrum Shift reduce the ability of targets to cause damage (while buffing your team). If you load up on Leadership powers you could make a pretty decent character, but you'd not have a lot to do without being able to use Dominate, Mesmerize or Levitate. You could spam Confuse, Siphon Power, and Transfusion, but most of your other powers have long recharge times.
The real problem with this whole concept is that without attacking there's a lot of dead time. The fast-recharge powers like the single-target holds and attacks all do damage (because damage is king in this game). You can only buff team members once with any effect, and the best buffs (Fortitude, Adrenalin Burst) don't recharge fast enough to keep you busy or engaged. Buff-only characters are excruciatingly boring to play, and don't offer the force multiplier effect that AoE debuffing characters can.
In general, the whole "pure healer" idea makes no sense in CoH. It may make sense in other games, and it may make sense in the comics, but this is a super-hero combat simulator game. If that's not what rings your bell, you're in the wrong place.
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There are several levels to pacifism, not just one single, dogmatic definition.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
Since pretty much the only thing that nets you experience is reducing your enemy's hit points to zero, the entire concept of being a pacifist in this game is a non-sequitur. Helping others reduce hit points to zero qualifies as aiding and abetting violence, which a true pacifist cannot do.
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To the OP:
I run my Illusion/Empathy as a pacifist, well in the sense that she wont take a life. I'm sure there's a term for it, but I can't recall it at the moment. Her only damaging power is Spectral Wounds. For her it is not an attack power, she actually uses it to plant Zig MedComs on her enemies. As for her pets; the Phantom Army, Spectral Terror, and Phantasm... she's a psychic, all of her pets are mental manifestations of her enemies fears. They are, in effect sustaining no damage other than their own psyche attacking itself.
Excluding physical weapons, you could probably create a concept with any power you wanted and find a way to describe it and play it under your original description.
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I suppose you could RP a little way around that. Something like "I was a vicious, violent fighter but have seen the light and will no longer harm others". That would give you a RP excuse to level the character up to the point where you have useful mezzes/pets/whatever, and *then* become a pacifist. Possibly respec out of your attacks, too.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
A pacifist would be able to complete only missions that don't involve defeating enemies, of which there are very few. Thus, a true pacifist character would probably stay level 1 forever. You might be able to play the mark |
There was a motivational-poster style thing I saw a while back:
SCRAPPERS: Killing villains since 20... arrest? oh god.
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Please feel free to redefine the term or replace it so that it fits better in the context of the game and the question.|
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
See, i thought a pacifist was opposed to violence in general, not simply avoiding committing violence with their own hands.
"No, I didn't decapitate that dude, i sharpened my buddy's sword, juiced him with steroids and had him do it for me. After all, I'm a pacifist." So, no, a useful pacifist in the context of this game is not possible. |
What's the word for someone who does no more harm than they have to?
I heard once that the proscription against shedding blood led to the use of blunt instruments.
I see some senerios then:
1. Avoident- Violence present: run away or toggle phase shift - not useful
2. Christian/Ghandi- Violence present: actually buff the attacker and take it - semi-tank like
3. Fighting Monk(?)- Violence present: I'll use only that amout of force to defend myself and/or get away - no sharp intruments, decisive use of humiliating force as a teaching intrument - no death = no xp. except on teams. This pacifist is meh, IMO. I don't like it.
4. Doctor/Altruist- Violence present: prevent injury too and aid those injured - but only on *my* team - meh, again bastardized.
I dont think this is going to work well, but I like the ideas thrown around
Miss Arc #147491: Rise of Bedlam
AKA Iron Smoke @Champion Server
My Illusion/Rad Controller hates dealing damage, because with her matter control powers the most efficient way she can do this is to physically merge with them, and then will wounds to open in their skin. This hurts HER, because it's essentially the same as causing wounds to her own body.
For this reason, she's primarily a team support character, using her Secondary and her illusiory pets. It's easier on her to restrain her foes and blind them than actually hurt them. She'll defend herself if attacked, but prefers not to fight herself if she can help it.
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This is an interesting take. A character that only defends themselves. It's doable, but does present a very different take on gameplay approach: you never make an opening shot. Instead, you take no action but to approach the enemy. No powers active that affect the enemy, so no taunts/taunt auras/controls/etc.|
Originally Posted by Kractis_Sky
....Fighting Monk(?)- Violence present: I'll use only that amout of force to defend myself and/or get away....
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You only attack once they attack you.
Hm. Could be interesting...though I'd be reticent to do it on anything but a tougher archetype, like a scrapper/tanker/brute.
...actually, the brute might work best, oddly enough. The damage you deal to them is in balance to the amount of violence they mete out to you. If they do not attack you much, your attacks will be lighter than if they pound away at you. Just a thought.
What toon that would come closest to not doing any damage BUT at the same time be as useful on a team as most any other toon.
I suspect that 0 damage would be impossible because many holds and immobs have a dmg component.