Class Project

Hello Everybody,

I am a student at the Art Institute of Boston in a class called Interactive Game Design. I am currently doing a report on the archetypes and how ones experience varies greatly between the vast choices of the game. I am attempting to group the archetypes into different roles within a team.
Now correct me if I'm using the wrong terms but this is what I have so far...

• Damage Dealer
• Tank
• Healer
• Buff/Debuff

Well, first off I'd say that healer is definitely a sub-type of buff/debuff, not a category of its own. Apart from that, I'd more or less just add the category 'control', and note that control and tanking are related.

The real thing I'd think about, though, is how the archetypes generally fulfill more than one role. Tanks are aggro management with a side of damage, controllers control and buff, defenders buff/debuff and blast, doms control and do damage, masterminds often do damage, buff/debuff *and* aggro management... etc. Every archetype other than maybe blasters fall into more than one category.

edit: bah, cross posted. Basically, what he said.

Hero ATs are pretty much cut clear into the classic D&D archetypes

Tanker: Aggro Management
Scrapper: Damage Dealer
Blaster: Damage Dealer
Defender: Support (buff/debuff/heal)
Controller: Support (crowd control)

Note that while Tankers, Defenders and Controllers can deal damage, their role in a team isn't that of "Damage Dealers" because they don't (typically) excel at it and there are better things they can do that define their role in a team (such as aggro management, buff/debuff and control, respectively).

Now, for villain archetypes it's a bit more complicated since they all can be considered profficient damage dealers, so each archetype's role in a team is defined by that which they can do that other's can't

Brute: Aggro Management
Corruptor: Support (buff/debuff)
Mastermind: Support (buff/debuff)
Dominator: Support (crowd control)
Stalker: ???

In my opinion, at the highest level, I see:

• Damager
• Controls
• Buffer

• enemy aggro management (taunt, gauntlet , provoke, or just threat level)
• enemy disablement via mezzing (shut down with stuns, holds, sleeps and fears)
• enemy movement hinderance (immobs, slows, knock downs, knock ups, repels)
• debuffing enemy effectiveness (-tohit, -def, -res, -dam, -regen, -recov)

I think things are divided into:

1) Ranged
2) Melee
3) Control Regulation (limiting)
4) Redirection of Fire (Aggro management)
5) Force Regulation (force increasing or decreasing)

A primary and secondary would be usually, although not always mainly made up of two of these things, and scales to the AT.

I'd go with Damage, Support and Control. All ATs do these things to varying degrees of specialization.

Tanking/aggro control being under Control, all buff/debuff/healing being under Support. Even the 'pure' damage AT (Blaster) has some control powers.

Buff/Debuff

I call those:
1. Offensive support
2. Defensive support

Defensive support is buffs, heals, anything done on your fellow teammates to increase survival of effiency of the team. Offensive has the same increase goal, but by affecting your enemies. Stun, immobilizing, lowering hit or damage, degen.

This will rule out the 'healer' class, a thermal troller or defender can heal, but also have lotsa buff and debuffs, so they are mixed support. /TA cant heal at all, it focus completly on debuffing enemies, full offensive support.

This game only has two AT categories.

Doing damage to stuff and debuffing some stuff and probably some mezzes or buffing some stuff and maybe some heals.

and

Doing damage to stuff and buffing or debuffing or mezzing some stuff and probably some heals.

It is even tough to categorize powersets within ATs . . . Controllers can tank with Phantom Army (and Phantasm's decoy), Animate Stone and Singularity. A Fire/Kin with high Defense should more properly be considered a Damage Dealer.

An Ill/Rad alone can do blasting, controlling, buffing and debuffing and tanking, and is probably strongest at tanking and debuffing.

I see lots of variation in how people define "role"

Personally these roles below are the ones I agree with the most.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silas I'd go with Damage, Support and Control. All ATs do these things to varying degrees of specialization. Tanking/aggro control being under Control, all buff/debuff/healing being under Support. Even the 'pure' damage AT (Blaster) has some control powers.

Functionally a Tanker and Controller/Dominator accomplish the same thing through different means. A Tanker primarily controls aggro in the battlespace through "Taunting"; a Controller/Dominator does so through various forms of mezzing. IMO they fill the same role.

The Support role is interesting in that some have made a distinction between Buffs and Debuffs. IMO these are two sides of the same coin. An example illustrating this point is a -To Hit Debuff vs. +Def Buff. Functionally they serve to reduce a foes chance to land an attack. IMO they serve the same purpose but do so through distinctly different means. There are many more but a -Res Debuff vs. a Damage Buff would be another example.

Note that all the ATs fill the Damage role but for some its their primary purpose on a team.

For this study I think you will have to accept that All ATs are capable of filling all three roles in varying capacity. On a macro level, having ATs that are capable of bluring the role lines highlights the real beauty of the City of Heroes game design.

Aggro management is obtained by establishing the highest threat. Given that threat rating can be created by any of these things: debuffs, damage, proximity, taunt control I kept it seperate.

So, did you get an A?

[note: I skipped 80% of the posts before writing this.]

There are only two main classes: Damage and Control.

Damage is pretty straight forward, though there are different mitigation strategies within those ATs and powersets. Ranged damage uses range as mitigation and might have slows or other debuffs giving control. An ice blaster for example. Scrappers and Tankers use defense or damage resistance as mitigation.

Control is not just holds. Player health can be controlled. All debuffs and aggro management, which is an attention debuff for others, are forms of control.

The lines are not straight and the roles are not black and white. Each powerset, and combination, provides tremendous variation. Add to that the power pools and you could make an Aggro-control, stealthing healer able to debuff enemy endurance. Though, trying to bend one AT into the role of another isn't suggested.