Team Dynamics

Reading comprehension - seems I need to buff it.

So the patrol xp this toon is accumulating, how long until it caps out?

Move out from under the statue and head to the police station. That way when you log and run missions to use up your Patrol XP, you'll also get an XP bonus at the completion of every mission. And, you'll be earning credit towards two day job badges.

Threads like this are why we love newbies.

The main thing to remeber is that you have to actually try to make a useless character. Even a 12 year old playing this who gets a vague idea of powers and enhancements will probably end up with a perfectly viable, if far from optimal character.

Also, while you can easily tweak and optimise and do various crazy powergamey tricks with your character (they introduced purples pretty much just to cater to that crowd) there isn't really that big a gap between optimised and non-optimised characters.

And for the record, for most day jobs, you need to be inside the corresponding buildings. (City Hall, police stations, etc) It's an easy mistake to make, just check the yellow power icon.

If you ever decide to start a character on Pinnacle, I'd be happy to run with you sometime and show you some facemelting awesome. You aren't constrained to only one server, just so you know. And you can have characters of all factions all on the same server, unlike that other game.

I have characters in just about every level range, so I can play whatever. Also, any level character can team with any other level character, you don't have to be within a certain level range due to SuperSidekicking, which is basically, everyone on the team is the same level as the leader/mission holder if they are higher, or one level lower if they are lower.

This game is nothing like WoW. The Tank/Healer/DPS is not only unnecessary, but it is frequently the least efficient way to do something. My wife and I have duoed just about every Giant Monster in the game, just because we could. And we did it with a Tank and a Defender (the two lowest damage output ATs in the game)

We have run an all scrapper ITF. There is nothing more fun than 8 melee damage DPS psychos going apestuff on a bunch of Romans. Tactics consisted of: "KILL THEM ALL!!!!"

Any character can contribute meaningfully to any team, there is no such thing as "We need this, this, and this or we will fail miserably." Any team makeup can succeed at any task in the game. Maybe some team compositions will have an easier time of it, but anything can do it.

Welcome aboard.

The main thing about CoX is, as a couple of people have mentioned, that, on the default settings, the game is easy. It's specifically designed so that you don't need optimised characters and/or teams to complete nearly all of the content provided that the players are competent. Take 8 people with shop bought "equipment", and regardless of their archetypes, they'll be able to do pretty much every mission and Task Force in the game.

The challenge comes from completing content with less players and/or higher level foes than it is designed for. Creating a character that can solo an Archvillain is a significant achievement (don't be put of by the fact that half the people here seem to be able to do this, it's not nearly that common overall ). Alternatively, you might want to get some friends and try to take on a TF set to 3 or 4 levels higher than you. It's certainly doable, but will probably take a fair bit more thought and effort.

Never played a scrapper. Reminds me too much of Liu Kang and his WOOOOOOO! sound.

This game has truly amazing variety and flexibility. No character is locked into one role or function. For example, my main is an empathy/energy blast defender. See that energy blast part? It means my emp doesn't have to stand around waiting for someone to buff or heal. I've spent a lot of solo time on her, and it's crazy fun to send mobs flying with her blasts. I don't think I could stand playing one of those MMOs where you have to play "I am an X and nothing else" characters.

And welcome to the game! Once you're hooked, you'll never look back.

There are certain instances where you will need a good mix or specific ATs. I mostly encounter this whenever I'm running a +4 Task Force or Strike Force, which about as high as difficulty can get. I first saw this when, on a +4 ITF, whenever my Sonic Defender was d/ced due to chronic assertion failure, my entire team would die within a minute. Secret to our success in the end was me being able to stay in the game long enough to kill the archvillain.

With the large amount of powerful AoE, cone, and PBAoE attacks in this game, most groups can be flattened in seconds. Though my experience is support powers are overall more powerful than raw damage, especially since buffs become more useful the more you have.

So, ideally, a good group would consist of the following:
4 support ATs
1 heavily defensive character
3 damage dealers

But not too strict, since the roles can overlap and aren't too well defined (14 ATs will do that to you). You can run with nearly any group until you get into the +3 or higher difficulty.


The two TFs and SFs you'll want specific AT's for all the time are the Lady Gray Task Force and the Barracuda Strike force. The Lady gray just needs a good mix of holds, ranged damage, and melee damage. The barracuda needs either plenty of support ATs, or just one Defender/Mastermind to de-intangible the final boss.