Best all-round duo you can come up with

Hey guys. My bro and I have been banging our head against the walls trying to figure this out but we just aren't experienced enough with the endgame to make an informed decision.

We want to be able to all manner of endgame activities with nothing too specific in mind. Even some crazy stuff like duoing STF. Basically as cheesy as it is we want the best, most synergistic combo we can come up with. We're open to play pretty much anything.

The best we came up with so far is a Fire/Fire Brute and a Fire/Cold Corruptor. \Cold Corruptor seems amazing, especially for duo AV killing.

Earth/Kin Controller and a Fire/Shield Brute was another one we thought would be nice. Crazy control and Fulcrum Shift/Speed Boost for the Brute sounds pretty nice.

I'm really not sure on the secondary pick for Brute. If you guys could pick any armor set to go with any buff set to make the Brute as resilient as possible while maintaining good DPS, what would it be?

We thought FA would be better than Shield because you could potentially soft cap a FA Brute with the Cold's shields. And that the defense from cold would potentially be overkill on a shield.

Quick side question, does anyone know how FM compares to other Brute sets for single target DPS? I saw a Scrapper thread where FM was right up there for DPS right behind DM, wondering if it's more or less the same for Brutes.

Fire/Fire and Fire/Cold will be an awesome duo, lots of damage.

The only thing more fun than a fire/traps corruptor is two of them.

Electric/Cold Controller and an Electric/Spines Scrapper.

Endless endurance and the Ice shields along with the debuffs make this an amazing pair.

Any combo is fun but since you want to do some crazy high end TF duoing then what you have listed will be good.

You basically want good damage, good debuff, agro magnet, good end management or end recovery.

The other options is to go SS as primary for the brute for obvious reasons.

Or maybe Ill/cold troller to have PA as a option for agro while your brute can focus on damage on towers like on a STF. Ice/cold Corr may work better as well for better single target, and more slows and a hold to help out.

My wife and me are playing a SS/Fire brute and Fire/Cold Corr combo right now, we don't plan on Duoing TF's but it has been a blast so far. Only big issue is Fire Corr having some end problems early on.

How about a pair of Bots/Traps MMs? Buffs, debuffs, controls, and damage - all wrapped up in one neat little package.

I say a Fire/Shield Scrapper for great AoE and ST damage and a Fire/Cold or Ill/Cold Controller for excellent damage and debuff.

I'm in a Bots/Traps MM level-pacted duo right now, just hit lvl 30 - they're beasts, no doubt. Two Thug/Traps might be even better, however my final vote for best all-round would actually be one Bots/Traps MM (tankermind-style) and one Fire/Dark Corr. Both have support secondaries with plenty of control/buffs/etc, Fire/ brings crazy damage, and Bots/ MM brings plenty of damage-soaking capabilities.

My personal favorite is a pair of Empathy/Sonic defenders. The can literally destroy anything. One heal only, with just it's base lvl 1 slot, so you are NOT a healer by any means. Grab 3 leadership toggles, tough/weave, combat jump, and hasten from pools, ss or sj travel, then slot fort for ED cap def and tohit, skip RAs after getting AB, and get ~10% recharge bonus. You then need darkness mastery to complete your awesomeness. Soul drain and two oppressive glooms makes you animals. Your defense capped, +4 tohit capped beasts are now perma 80%+soul drain damage with over 180% global recharge for some serious beat down. Not to mention sonic debuffs resistance for more carnage. A tad light on AoE, but with howl coming up in 3 seconds, it's all you'll need. Oh, and if you didn't know, perma AB/hasten/Soul drain makes for some sickening stuff. Every new power is like a revamp in your abilities, from level 1 on, all the way up to 50, getting soul drain and OG.

Next up is a pair of my main, a fire/rad troller. Two hot feet, chocking cloud, debuffs, and AM? Yes please. 6 imps? Hell yea. They can take down GMs and AVs, or plow through hordes of enemies. Keep some recharge in the build for perma hasten/AM so AM keeps you at +60% recovery and your end should be fine. Musculature helps a lot on rad I say, and with two of you, my cardiac would be overshadowed by 2 AMs. And musculatured imps would be a blasty blast. But fire/rads in numbers can do some sick stuff, look it up on youtube, 7 of them took down Recluse's inner circle in under 3(?) minutes. Might be off on time, but it was under 5 for certain. I want to level up another one in a duo, but none of my RL friends want to "copy" my main, so no luck

Thugs/traps and Thugs/dark, as the very wise Dechs said, will be a great combo as well. Not the same sets as I like my duos, but they will work wonders. The leadership from them, along with you two getting leadership, and the FFG and shadow fall, their defense will be capped, and their tohit will likely also be capped to +4s with 2-4 tactics running. The combo of dark and traps is nice, as the heal compliments traps, and the -regen compliments dark. Single hard target or large mob, you will steam roll.

I won't as in depth here, but some other good ones (not *quite as good* IMO) are
a pair of VEATS, not quite as good for AVs with just two, but will be duoable none the less.

Previously stated res armor melee toon and a cold buffer. Work wonders, or cheap soft cap for SD even

Two endurance drainers. Two elec/psi doms is my main choice here for drain psyche and 2 auras.

sonc/traps or traps/sonic (defender is my choice, but both work) major debuffs, and very easily capped, leaving room for other bonuses. Fire instead for a corruptor works well too.

Any of those will work, though some better than others. Pick something that sounds fun too. I just want to restate that emp/son just gives that feeling of growing power as you go on, and was one of my most fun rides.

My friend and I run a good duo. I'm a Shield/Fire tank, and he is an ElecM/Shield scrapper. The damage output of this team is pretty crazy. We've taken down several GM's. As the tank, I aggro everything, then its Lightning rod, 2 shield charges, and thunderstrike for good measure. Only thing standing after that are bosses and MAYBE an Lt. We run our missons at 4/8 with ease.

I've thought a lot about a /cold controller with a scrapper however.

I actually never find killing a GM that much fun if it takes too long and I don't like spending that much time trying to Duoing a TF/SF.

However, if "fun" is a big factor, I would suggest duoing two Bane soldiers. There's a lot of smashing going on! Both of you carry leaderships and can debuff quite well.

I also do Duo Fortunata. We play on team speak so we'll let each other know before we use the nuke. One nuke per spawn is quite fun.

But if the goal is to take down GMs and duoing a TF, I think a Tanker/Brute + Corr/Defender (Sonic Blast and either Radiation or Cold Domination) is a pretty reliable choice.

Two fire/rad controllers or fire/rad corruptors.

A great combo for AoE control and damage: Fire/Shield Scrapper and a Plant/Kin controller. Let the scrapper gather foes into a tight group, then the controller hits them with Seeds+Roots+Fulcrum, Scrapper wipes them out with AoE damage while Roots helps. Carrion Creepers can tank the tough foes.

The scrapper can build to softcap, but always has Transference and Transfusion to fall back on. Speed Boost and Siphon Speed keep you moving fast. Make sure that the controller has invisibility (Super speed with a stealth IO works great) to let the scrapper draw the aggro.

Currently, my fav duo is my SS/SD brute and my friend's Son/Kin corr. Max dam FS + SC, infinite end, high rech, heals & debuffs. Kinda ridiculous.

The only thing I can see Emp/Sonic defenders having a slight problem with is the lack of -Regen for AV's and such. I know, envenomed daggers are cheap, but some people might not want to go to a temp power for that. Other than that? Well, I've seen stacked Sonic Blasts before and it is a very, very pretty thing. Add to that capped regen, capped Defense, enormous recharge, infinite end recovery... nothing's going to kill you* so it's just a matter of WHEN you win.

* OK, there might be some AV's that can get lucky and 1-shot one of you.

I think I see two sorts of distinctly different duos mentioned in the replies to this thread and if anyone's planning on going with any suggestions or ideas they should be well aware of this.

• There's the duos that just play common game content - designed to be playable with just about anything - together. This can possibly be done at any level and is just for the sake of playing with each other, a friend or whatever, for the fun of it - nothing more in terms of ambitions.
• Then there's the duos that aim to play through content designed only for teams, which is also what the OP mentioned he was inquiring about.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deathstroke33 My friend and I run a good duo. I'm a Shield/Fire tank, and he is an ElecM/Shield scrapper. The damage output of this team is pretty crazy. We've taken down several GM's. As the tank, I aggro everything, then its Lightning rod, 2 shield charges, and thunderstrike for good measure.

I would like to see this take on Reichsman...*

To duo end-game team-oriented content most conveniently you will want to combine damage with at least plenty of buffs or debuffs and ideally both.

Rads, colds and sonics come to mind as a few most excellent choices to have as at least 1 person on the duo.
As a rule of thumb most any duo that meets the following criteria should work in most (again - not all, but most) end-game content:

• Both toons put out good damage.
• At least one of them has a powerset capable of sufficiently effective debuffing such as - amongst others - the before-mentioned rad, cold or sonic, for instance.
• The duo is able to cope with large spawns and ambushes of regular mobs either by one of them being able to sustain it all and having some form of taunting / crowd control or both toons being def softcapped either by themselves or with the buffs of their partner.

It may look like an open door, but the point is I think that generally speaking - aside from all the more specific suggestions that have already been made - most any duo that meets the above 3 criteria will work.


* Yes I know it's probably possible by means of dumping all sorts of temps (Warburg nukes, Shivs, etc... the usual suspects) on him, but aside from that.