Power Duos

I have really enjoyed reading the discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of different archtypes and how people have chosen their powers and slotted them. A lot of that information has been really helpful to me as an "altoholic" (or someone with "altitis" if you prefer.)

What I have not seen is any indepth discussion of the best set ups for two people who play together. Should they match power sets? Should they purposefully make different power sets?

I'm half of one of those COH couples...most of my courtship was online and my first "date" with my husband was killing vaz in the sewers (also known as "our place"). And we have found in 3-1/2 years playing together (when I got on) that sometimes an alt we adore soloing with just doesn't work with our partner's alt. And sometimes we happen upon the fact that, when working together, an otherwise boringish alt all of a sudden really works well.

For instance, my husband's FIRST character, still is not up to 50 (and he was in beta) because unless he's in a team (and we do mostly pick up groups) his tank is pretty slow going in terms of getting through missions as a solo'er. But when paired with my fire/fire blaster...well, we kick beaucoup behind.

Of course, then there is sometimes too much of a good thing, we may love soloing, but when paired with an identical build, it can get VERY frustrating to play. (think anything that has knockback.)

Bottom line, I'm wondering if there has been any indept discussion about duos? What ATs really work well together and what duos should you avoid.

I haven't seen any real in-depth discussion but there are a lot of good combos out there depending on what you want.

Matching character can work extremely well for some sets. A lot of the buff/debuff sets are insanely good if you have two people with the same set coordinating (Traps and Empathy are both excellent examples of this). Similarly taking a solid all-round character like a Scrapper or Brute and adding a second one is always an excellent option.

Different pairings are also fun, for example a Blaster paired with an Empath becomes an invincible killing machine with Fortitude, Adrenalin Boost and Clear Mind. Alternatively pairing two different buff/debuff sets can work well (a Trapper paired with a Kin seems like it would have good synergy). The melee and ranged pairing can also work well, especially if the ranged character can provide some support to the melee (a Brute and Corruptor pairing for example).

My 2 cents:

The Shield

(Brute) Anything/Super Reflexes

(Tanker) Anything/Ice Armor
(Tanker) Anything/Shield Defense
(Tanker) Anything/Invulnerability


The Spear

(Corruptor) Sonic/Pain Domination
(Corruptor/Controller/Defender) Anything/Thermal
(Corruptor/Controller/Defender) Anything/Radiation
(Corruptor/Defender) Anything/Cold

(Mastermind) Anything/Thermal
(Mastermind) Anything/Pain Domination
(Mastermind) Anything/Poison

(Dominator) Practically anything works here. Sleep is especially useful when you want to tackle very difficult tasks (such as a 2-man LRSF)

I find that corrupter or defender duos work pretty well. My brother and I did a pair of Kinetics defenders that were pretty fun. We also tried a pair of Fire/Rad Corrupters that worked pretty well, 2x Rain of Fire with 2x EF and RI is pretty fun. We found that with 2 rains, there was enough slow to be mostly ok.

Other pairs I had thought about were Empathy and traps, as some have said. An Empathy pair doesn't get really great til 32, but gets good at 12 with fort. Once you get to 32 though, you can use AB on each other, Getting a huge boost to regen, recovery and recharge. I expect with some IOs + AB itself, you shouldn't have much trouble keeping it perm on each other.

A pair of Traps would work pretty nice. 2 FF gen would give very nice amounts of defense, Add in 2x maneuvers and your pretty nice off for defense. For example 2 corrupters with slotted FF gen and Maneuvers are at about 40% defense to all. At low levels you could alternate acid mortar to get it up most spawns, eventually should be able to double up the mortars. Add in 2x seeker drone, and x2 poison trap, and you have some nice debuffing.

I could see where a pair of sonic could be nice, end recovery might be an issue, plus you would need to be in melee range to take advantage of Disruption field. But with bubbles on each other, plus 2x sonic dispersion you should be near or at the res cap. 2x disruption field is -60% res, plus another -60% from sonic siphon for hard targets. Not quite as fun looking as some of the others, but some nice synergies.

a pair of /cold or cold/ could bubble each other, Frostwork each other, would get double sleet eventually. Could get pretty nice defense with 2x maneuvers, 2x Arctic fog, and bubbles, with those, looks like about 36-38% def all for a corrupter, 48ish% def all for a defender. That plus all the debuffing available to a cold, though to be honest a lot of it is single target.

Basically I tend to look at the defender/corrupter sets that I might not want to solo, because they have buffs that are for other people only.

I expect a pair of brutes/scrappers could duo fine, but wouldn't really be synergistic. One thing I worry a bit about with different pairings is that one of the pair ends up feeling less useful. If you have a buffer/attacker pair, I might worry that the buffer might feel somewhat secondary, though this obviously depends on the players. But if I'm doing a dedicated pairing, I really want to take advantage of the nice buffs/debuffs available.

Edit: Forgot another pair worth mentioning, a pair of SoA. Especially a pair of Huntsman or maybe Crabs. Pick up TT:Maneuvers, Maneuvers, TT:Assault, Assault, you have 40% def all and +60% damage. Add in 2x Venom grenade for -40% res all, and -80% toxic, and you have some good debuffing to go with the defense and damage. You get some status protection in the armor and have a fair bit of AE. Best thing is you can of that by mid teens. You can pick up some useful pets at higher levels, and depending on if you go crab or bane, can get either more pets + res all + serum(hp) or you could get stealth + more def + more -res with surveillance.

Think of Synergy.

Add 2 things together that make both better this game is all about damage and so force multipliers win every time:

Fire/Dark Corruptor and a Fire/Kin Corruptor
Plant/Psi Dominator and a Fire/Kin Controller
Spines/Dark Scrapper and a Sonic/Rad defender
Fire/Fire Brute and a Cold/Traps

Your idea is to either multiply an already powerful force or to fill in a weakness on a powerful force that has a hole.

Look to my examples:

Fire/Fire brute is all damage all the time but is squishie due to fire armor - Cold shields make it very powerful and the traps debuffs make the fire damage even more powerful.

Plant/Psi dom is an extremely damaging force and has seeds of confusion that will extend the life of the imps for the controller and the kinetics for the troller will boost the damage of the Dom.

Spines/Dark is a killing machine adding Sonic shields and the -res debuff to him and the added -def of the rad attacks makes it amazing.

These are just examples you can look at what a character DOES and HOW. Do you spend time doing damage or buffing? If damage how can you make it even more damage? Just look at things and work them through!

My personal favorite is a pair of empathy/sonic defenders. A friend and I ran them together a while back, and they start off powerful and get better as you level. With 2x all leaderships, perma hasten and AB, and sonic's -resistance, we crushed everything in the game, and were duoing avs by 18. They will have soft capped def, great regen/recov, capped tohit on +4s, and about an 80% damage boost. It's even better with //dark as your APP set, because 2 stun auras and soul drain are insane. A soul drain buffed nuke with some -res debufsf thrown in and a pre SD 80% boost is not something to be taken lightly. I just wish my friend still played as often as I do so we could get them their incarnate abilities.

My buddy and I did a couple of characters who were designed to team together . . .

He was on a Fire/Shield scrapper. I was on a Plant/Kin controller.

He would gather the foes up into a nice, tight group, then I would step out and hit them with Seeds, Fulcrum Shift and Roots. Then Shield Charge and the fire AoEs would wipe out the group. Speed Boost let him have his Shield Charge up much more often.

We pretty much cruised through missions once he got his Defense up to decent levels, but even before that, my Transfusion kept him alive. The taunt aura for Shield is very effective for gathering up groups.

To answer the OP directly, no. There hasn't been a distinctive in-depth discussion about which duos are particularly (in)effective. That being said, there's no time like the present

As the others have said, the combination of damage and support really can't be beat. But since every AT can do some sort of damage and support comes in a lotta flavors it can be difficult, if not impossible, to nail down exactly what's best. Still, there are some general connections that can be drawn.

Tanks of all sorts pair well with Blasters. Blasters have the damage that Tanks lack while Tankers provide Blasters with the protection they need to avoid tasting the pavement. Generally speaking, this combo benefits from an AoE focused Blaster like Fire/ or Elec/ since it allows the duo to leverage the aggro cap to their full advantage.

You all have made some excellent suggestions/observations.

As was mentioned by Vysires, there have been times when one or the other (usually me) feels a little useless. Or worse, impatient waiting for my husband's "alpha strike" powers to recycle because he didn't want to put recharge reductions into his enhancement slots. =) The absolute worst for us was when he had a traps character and I was bleeding out of my eyeballs with boredom waiting for him to finish planting all his mines.

Sometimes, the best we can do is not pair a knockback king with a melee person.

I think our general approach so far has been more matching matching ATs or matching power sets (a fire blaster with a fire corruptor).

I have noticed that there was not much comment on what is good to pair with a blaster. Right of the top of my head I can see advantages to a number of different builds just because they balance the blaster by 1) healing, 2) taking aggro, 3) Debuffing/buffing, 4) locking down enemies...any of which skills would benefit the blaster by either countering their general squishiness or helping them kill faster.

At this time, my husband is contemplating either a sonic/fire or a radiation/fire blaster. He has suggested doing a corruptor, but I'm leaning towards some sort of tank or dominator. Thoughts?

Apologies to Timeshadow, who did mention tanks with blasters. =)

That is the way I'm kind of leaning at the moment although I know with my style of play, tanks tend to be a bit slow. Or maybe I just haven't done the right build yet?

Hmmm, I usually suggest a FF/sonic to herd a posse of blasters through missions with glee. Corruptor side, you could get similar results with Sonic/sonic, Sonic/Thermal, or Sonic/cold!

Mezmeara lets look at what your husband wants in a blaster:

Sonic/Fire - -resistance and the added fire damage makes this a very high damage blaster

Radiation/Fire - is a good High end content blaster and an AV cracker. The -defense cuts through hard targets

What would I pair with them?

Sonic/Fire I absolutely would go with a Plant/kin controller or a Plant/Psi Dom. It also really would shine under a Fire/Kin corruptor.

Radiation/Fire matches up well with a Claws/WP brute. You run lower numbers of foes but higher levels. Then the Radiation cracks the armor making claws more effective.

A friend and I had a lot of fun with a Fire/Fire tank and a Fire/Rad controller. The idea was the debuffs of the controller would make the tank survivable even with the "weaker" Fire armor, and between them they would have plenty of damage to make mobs melt. Then, at higher levels the two of them would make a good team nucleus for TFs and other content, with solid builds they could add any 6 other random characters and make it through. This worked out quite well, was fun to play all the way up, and is still one of our favorite pairs. As a tank I was never bored trying to keep aggro off my friend, who has a rather "aggressive" playstyle. Now that they are available, a fire/rad or fire/dark corruptor could also work, and could be paired with a Brute for even more damage, though it could take a fairly extreme build to make a fire armor brute sturdy enough to tank high level content the same way, so you might want to consider a different brute armor set.

We also tried a Stone tank with kin/sonic defender, and while that was effective, it was much slower to take spawns down unless we recruited a blaster, say. Stone tanks are also not in as much fashion for end game content now, since it has moved away from "stand in one spot and be extremely survivable", Stones speciality.

If you *just* want to duo with a pair, definitely swap scrapper or brute in for tanker in the above, any kind of support at all is plenty for a duo and you'll want the damage.

I and my wife play together, though not all the time. Like you, sometimes those characters that are great solo don't always mesh well when we team them. But one pairing that has been a lot of fun for us both is her Broad Sword/Shield Scrapper with my Empathy/Dark Defender. I debuff the dickens out of the baddies and punch up her blue or green bars when she needs it, and she gets to wail on sacks of XP ^_^

As always, YMMV. It's really going to depend on how and what you like to play, too, not just how the sets compliment each other.

I agree with everything said above. There are lots of great combos in CoH.

One combo I did not see however, that I haven't tried but I think would work very well, is two masterminds. Two Thugs/ especially would work well, and then varying the secondaries a bit, like /Traps and /Dark Miasma, would produce an especially strong combination. But almost any combo would work.

Don't forget to take Leadership and you're off to the races.

A buddy and I paired twin FF/Energy Defenders, for some really crazy fun. Only times we died was when somebody got too carried away with blowing stuff up and forget to shield her 'sister'.

A couple of times, we picked up a random Scrapper and bubbled them into a 'Nexus of Disaster', then just followed along, picking off the stragglers.

We repeated the experiment with Fire/Storm and Ice/Ice Corruptors and discovered the 'Super-Team Secret' which is that 'too much' of any good thing is a heck of a lot of Fun!

Oh, and two Broadsword/Shield Defense Scrappers, with Leadership, is a 'war crime'.

Be Well!
Fireheart

I am so enjoying the discussion and am getting some wonderful ideas.

Cpt. Courageous and I have been taking the last few days to work with some of our duos which we haven't played for a while and have been reacquainted with our love of dual stormies and dual claw scrappers.

The new alts that prompted my initial question ended up being a plant/fire corruptor (him) and I ended up ax/fire brute. I have to admit that part of my turning into a brute was the rage issue...particularly as he was kibbitzing my costume choices and I was building rage with the aggro. =) We're not very far along to see how this duo will fair, but I can say this -- I like that our alts have specific jobs during fights.

I had been VERY frustrated having a Mental/Psy Dominator playing with his Plant/Fire. Sure, I could use my confuse (I love that power) then he'd come along with his seeds of confusion and just all along seemed to be one upping me with his power and aoe. With my Brute, I can work off some of that angst with my melee.

I have to say though, that I'm going to see how this really works out. I'm usually a very fast player and the slow down with axe, even with it's power, is something I'll have to get used to, EVEN THOUGH I'm finding that the slow down really is helping with the energy drain from my fire toggles.

Meanwhile, I've seen a lot of suggestions in this topic that I'd like to try out.

Thanks for your discussion and suggestions.

Mez

A few possibilities off the top of my head:

2 shield/fire tanks: Ludicrously easy to softcap just with SOs when you overlap grant cover. You'll have solid AoE damage from a very early level with combustion, and you don't even have to wait that long to get shield charge and fire sword circle. I'd imagine you could turn the difficulty up to X8 pretty early on this and sail through the levels.

2 fire/? controllers: All sorts of possibilities here. 2 /rads, or a /rad and a /kin, are obvious candidates. Especially with the buff changes coming, /sonic, /thermal, /cold would all be pretty good either doubled up or mixed and matched. Two /emp would also work nicely.

2 illusion/? controllers: A little bit different here. One really nice advantage is being able to alternate phantom army so there's always one up. Also easy to stack deceive on AVs. You won't be steamrolling large groups as quickly as some other combinations, but should be solid and steady.

Earth/? and Elec/? dominators: Earth has strong control to open a fight, giving the elec's conductive aura and chain AoEs time to work. Elec can also use its AoE immobilize over earthquake.

Any tank with good aggro management with any good AoE damage dealer: Already brought up in a common form, a tank with a blaster.

Warshade with empath: Mez is an achilles' heel for warshades, but a non-issue with an empath around. Plus, fortitude will help keep them safe through early levels, and adrenalin boost is pure gold to keep a warshade's AoE damage and buffs like mires and eclipse going.

2 /dark corruptors: Overlapping tar patches, fearsome stares and darkest nights keep enemies squishy and unable to hit the broad side of a barn. The combined fear and slow should keep everything in its place nicely, ready to soak up AoE damage.

Earth/storm and fire/storm controller, or plant/storm and fire/storm: Massive amounts of control from pretty early levels, and plenty of damage by the time you're stacking freezing rains. If you work really well together sculpting enemy groups with hurricane would be a thing of beauty. Once you hit tornado and lightning storm, the pair of -kb immobilizers should make it that much easier to lock everything down. You can even have some pretty nice exotic resistances with overlapped steamy mists.