Help me reroll a 50

Yeah, crazy idea, I know. When I say "reroll," I mean delete the character and create a new one with the same look and backstory, but different powersets and/or AT. To answer the obvious question of why in as short a form as I can: Because I'm done playing Blasters. I really don't want to discuss this, beyond saying that recent changes to the game have made me realise that I never actually liked them to begin with, and I will no longer torture myself playing an AT I don't like.

The "50" in question is The Steel Rook, my second oldest character ever created, second only to Samuel Tow himself, and designed by a good friend of mine back when we were both much younger. The Rook originally started out as, and still is, an AR/Dev/Munitions (eventually, those didn't exist at the time) Blaster. The concept that my friend gave me amounted to "make me a character that looked like the Brotherhood of Steel armour from Fallout and Fallout 2. I did what I could at the time, and thus The Steel Rook was born, pictured here some time later as evidenced by his Justice shoulders. I didn't give him a story up until somewhere around 2007 when I was in the UK and so had time to kill, but his story isn't all that complex: He's a genius inventor who started out working on creating an autonomous robot with his wife, until she was killed by muggers, causing him to turn around and form his own weapons development and security company to combat crime of all natures.

The original idea for the Rook is the idea that never was - that of a guy in very strong power armour armed to the teeth. The "armed" part was easy - Assault Rifle has decent damage and Blasters are good at dealing it. The "armour" part... Not so much. Seven years later, I am done seeing this big armoured brute dying like a chump, so I'm rerolling him, along with a fair few other characters when time and opportunity permits. The question, and the very reason I made this, is "Into what?"

I have four options here, highlighting the four ATs I'm prepared to play: Scrapper, Brute, Mastermind, Stalker, in that order. Of those four, I have two overall directions I could go:

1: Melee of some sort, capitalising on his power armour and likely going with Invulnerability. This means either Brute or Scrapper, but WHAT/Inv? I want to keep the high-tech aspect of the character, but I really don't know what to use for that.

2: A Bots/Traps/SomethingElse Mastermind, delving into his background of robotics design and his general aptitude for science and technology. This will probably require that I downsize the armour suit, however, as Masterminds aren't known for being personally very resilient.

Any of the ATs above will fill the criteria I have for character performance, so I'm really mostly looking for which one will suit my concept and design the closest.

Any ideas?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'll give you a couple of different directions you could go:

1. Keep the character, do an IO build that focuses on upping ranged defense. Possibly Smash/Lethal defense, if you wanted to take him villainside for a bit to get access to the Mace Mastery pool (which is also thematically correct.) Such a build would only need to be moderately expensive, and certainly within the means of most players.

2. AR/Traps, either defender or corruptor. Force Field Generator does great things for survivability, particularly because of the status resistance.

Knowing Fallout as I do, I'd do War Mace/Invulnerability Brute. War Mace can be a Super Sledge. Broadsword/Invuln could work too, for a Ripper-using Brother.

As for Masterminds being personally resilient, speak for yourself. My Masterminds are personally invincible (my Bots/Traps is softcapped to everything (except Psi), after the Protection Bots get their shields on her). Bodyguard mode helps a lot with this (the status protection from FFG helps too.)

Sounds like you want range damage and using a weapon.

Options

Keep the same toon, respec and pick up Mace Mastery patron armor, combat jumping, tough and weave then add in some Io's to softcap S/L and you have a pretty durable blaster.

Reroll as a Defender or Corrupter and pick traps & assault rifle this will increase your survivability way over what you can get as a blaster.

Reroll as a crab spider or if you don't like the spider backpack reroll as a soldier and just pick up the bane powers but none of the mace ones, you will still have your gun attacks.

On melee: To be honest, my problem is that I don't know what I want. Energy Melee sounds a bit too... Blah, as does Kinetic Melee, to be honest, and while I'd want a weapon... I'm not sure I can get to grips with using one like that. The problem with this one is I just don't know what to do or even where to go.

On Mastermind: When I say "isn't personally strong," that's not to criticise Masterminds. Far from it, I know how strong they can be. That's just to say that if I DO go that route, I'll probably want to modify the costume a little bit. I just don't want to see a big armoured guy flopping around from knockback.

As a side note, Inventions Sets are not considered here, as I have no plans to invest into them with anyone other than my previously stated test character, and my preliminary results with her are not promising. I'll build this guy on Commons at most, so no building against AT.

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Originally Posted by monkey0707 Reroll as a crab spider or if you don't like the spider backpack reroll as a soldier and just pick up the bane powers but none of the mace ones, you will still have your gun attacks.

Now that's a curious idea. A Bane Spider would, I assume, have access to rifle attacks, melee attacks, personal protection and... I don't know what else. I've never examined the AT. I just have a problem with their being linked to Arachnos, however, and that makes the idea very unlikely. However, yes, that would be very, very close to what I'd want visually.

See, this is why I keep begging the developers for a combination Assault/Defence set. I want something that plays like a Peacebringer or an Arachnos Soldier without being tied to Arachnos or Kheldians.

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So far, the things I hear are making me lean more towards Masterminds, simply because I can get personal "toughness," visible technology and a character I actually don't feel afraid to long in.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Keep in mind guys, that Sam doesn't use IOs. His characters are SO only (IIRC). So, with that in mind, you're probably best off going as a brute/scrapper with KM or SS as your attack set, and invuln as your defense set. You could even go for super reflexes, saying that your suit gives you preternatural reflexes.

I got beaten to the suggestion, but I'd say give an Arachnos Soldier a try.

You've got good defenses (armor), weapons (gun and/or mace depending on which you'd rather have), melee and ranged attacks, stealth if you want it, and good team support.

The SoA specific-arcs are weak enough that you can easily take them blue-side if you want and not really miss anything.

Now, I haven't tried a Bane build (I'm currently levelling up a Crab build), so I don't know if the mace can be customized to something like a super-sledge or not (on the non-arachnos costume slots) like you can with war mace.

Another option would actually BE war mace. Do a War Mace/Invulnerable Brute or Tanker. My WM/Shield Tank is absolutely brutal. The buffs that WM has gotten have filled the single target hole and it's group destruction of minions/lts is second to none (imo).

BTW deleting a 50 to start over isn't that crazy. Admittedly I've never deleted a 50 before (mostly because I only have a couple of 50's), but I've deleted (and re-rolled) quite a number of 42's to 48's.

One of my main characters has been:
a level 39 Claws/Regen scrapper
a level 40 Broadsword/Invul scrapper
a level 32 Energy Melee/Invul tank
a level 36 Super Strength/Invul tank
and is currently a level 46 Super Strength/Willpower tank

Really, the Huntsman Arachnos build sounds like the way to go. Hit level 20 as fast as you can and do tips to become a hero, then you can completely ignore the Arachnos background of the AT. Just make sure you do the mission arc at L10 to get your extra costume slot so you don't have to LOOK like a Spider either.

For a melee AT, conceptually a Brute with SS/Inv or Energy/Inv (or perhaps Energy Aura, if you want something different) would be best. I'm with you on rerolling a character you like, but don't like to play, it's hard but in the end you're happy you did it.

I myself rerolled my first 50, who also happened to be my first character at launch. An Inv/Mace tank. He was supposed to be an immortal, but I went with what I had. When Willpower was released, I had to have it. He is now a lvl 50 WP/Mace Tank.

Hmmmm... what would you think of a Kinetic Melee/Electric Armor/Weapons scrapper?

Keep the electric armor customization set to "bright" but pick an almost black shade to reduce the effects. And if you have the origins pack, maybe add a combat sparks aura to him/her.

In which case, I'd recommend Bots/Traps/Mace Mastery. It's as tech/invention themed as you can really get for a Mastermind!

Personally, I didn't like Traps back in beta, so went with Forcefield but these days Traps is seen as the better option (plus, you get more "inventions"!)