The Slacker's Choice?

Some of the traditional "best" characters are very high-maintenance. The Rad, Cold, Kin, and Traps sets are great for top-end performance, but tend to require lots of clicks here and there, to keep up with powers expiring or set up the powers in the first place before you actually attack. So let's take this in the other direction...

I'm looking for the slacker's choice. The kind of character any noob or casual player could do great with just by toggling up, putting Hasten on auto, and running into the fray. I'm talking about the kind of character anyone could play effectively with a bad case of the flu or half a case in their bloodstream. Pay no attention to your green or blue bars, you've got attacks to make.

I'm leaning toward Dark Melee and Dark Blast combos for the self-heal and -ToHit. Dark Melee combines nicely with Invuln, Shield, or WP for a Brute, Scrapper, or Tanker. A Fortunata might fit the bill and be team friendly, with Mind Link being the only thing to refresh. A petless Crab tank build might be safer and require even less. An FF/Dark Defender might work, too, now that you can hit multiple team members with one cast of each bubble.

What would you recommend?

My Inv/DM tank is pretty fire and forget. I don't even remember the last time I fired off Dull Pain. Toggle up, wade in.

Ill/Rad Controllers are pretty low maintenance. Drop toggles on bosses, spawn pets when necessary. Be invisible. About the most active thing to do is move around for healing, only no one is getting hurt because of the pets and debuff, so not so much. When I finally got to pick a pool attack, I was quite giddy with excitement at the chance of having something to do.

Almost any MasterMind is a great slacker AT. Sit back and let your minions do all the work.

Scrappers, brutes and tanks are likely to be your best choice if all you really want to do is toggle up and jump into a fight. Almost all support sets are going to require some kind of activity other than attacking, so any defenders, corruptors, MM's and controllers are likely to be busy enough to not qualify as a slacker. VEATs would also qualify, as all their team buffs are toggles except mind link - and you can put that on autofire.

I would consider Willpower, SR and Shield Defense as the most slacking sets for a melee type - you turn on your toggles and put active defense/practiced brawler on autofire and go to town. Invulnerability is probably second choice - you have to fire off dull pain every now and then but once you get it perma you can put it on autofire if you want. All the other defensive sets are going to have at least 1 heal you have to fire off regularily.

There you go - anything/WP, SR or SD is going to be a serious slacker toon, at least once you jump into combat. You might have to put some effort into the build, especially with SD or WP if you want to softcap them, but outside of that they are jump in and go toons.

Anything */Willpower would be my vote. Played a WP/Fire tanker to 50 and a MA/WP scrapper into the 30s and both were all about bashing attacks. The defense was "set-and-forget" all the way. The perfect set for a person like me that wants to play for stress-relief from my 12-14 hour days.

Cmon guys Kat/WP scrapper is the obvious choice, just press 1 2 3 4 and you still get extra defense from Divine Avalanche (plus no chasing Fury like a Brute). Maybe you won't even die in the trip to 50.

I can make a push for Stone/WP Brute. Plenty of damage without Fury and pretty much unkillable if you keep using Fault.

Will also second the notion of a Mastermind. Try a Bots/FF. Bubble up bots, keep your PBAoE bubble on and slotted Maneuvers, fire a Photon Grenade into a group of enemies while you're in Bodyguard. Enemy attacks you, bots absorb damage and attack group, bots are softcapped to all damage so aggro they get is just aggro off of you and you've not got to worry about their health because they heal themselves.

I'm feeling what the OP is looking for on my SR/MA tanker, very fire and forget from very low levels. Only thing I need to do is make sure I'm firing storm kick whenever its up and thats part of my attack chain anyway...

Bots/FF. Bubble them up and just let the bots blast away at everything.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DocBenway Almost any MasterMind is a great slacker AT. Sit back and let your minions do all the work.

As someone once said to me, Masterminds are the only AT he's been able to play while eating soup at the same time.

If anybody is slacking you really don't want them on your team.

Maybe I just play MMs wrong but I always found that given their wonky AI, more effort than usual had to be spent on targeting and general shepherding.

WP wins this challenge hands down, I reckon. Not only is it slightly more fire and forget than invuln, shields or SR, it also has the best bang for buck when casually constructed. You really don't need fancy sets to make WP work well. Any defense bonuses you get are nice, recharge is totally irrelevant, and so on. Inv and shield may have much higher highs than WP but not with a simple SO, common IO or cheaply frankenslotted build.

Like Dark?

Storm/Dark defender, Dark/Storm corruptor, or Necro/Storm mastermind.

On your basic steamrolling team, or soloing an easy radio mish, if you just use one click from Storm (Freezing Rain) each spawn, and spend the rest of the time blasting (or siccing your pets), you're fine. Use a mouse click bind to make FR even easier. Between FR's massive soft control, a decent self-heal (Life Drain) being part of your attack chain, and a bit of +def (Steamy Mist) and -tohit (Dark blasts) tipping the scales in your favor, no need to worry about your green bar.

Plus you'll have the option of pulling out all the stops for tougher feats, herdicaning, storm tanking, AV soloing, etc. For when you're not quite so sloshed.

Cold/Dark or Dark/Cold is also an option; it's a little bit Storm, a little bit FF. Your single target click buff in Cold is totally skippable, nobody expects you to have it anyway. Benumb you only need to pull out for AVs. Infrigidate sucks. So with those clicks taken out of the equation, Cold's almost as slacker friendly as FF. MMs unfortunately don't have Cold yet. Aww.

Rad, Traps, Cold and those kinds of sets require a bit more work. Toggle & refresh toggles, cast/refresh FFG/PA/PGT/AM, etc. All of those can be extremely effective (AV-soloing effective), but requires some thought and attention to what's going on. I'm thinking more of the powersets & ATs you'd give to an ADHD kid or a new/casual player who doesn't want to get into the minutiae.

I think a Bots/FF might be an excellent choice. You get mez protection and have to do little outside of summon and move. On a team, you throw out your bubbles every few minutes and you're done. Bots/Traps would be more effective, but you've got a lot more going on and it's easy to outrun the FFG. Pet management can get a little detailed, but FF is kinder to the slacker than most.

DM/Invuln & DM/WP were definitely in my thoughts. Toggle and go! Invuln has an extra click and a hard-crashing tier-9, but you can get away without both in a lot of cases once you get softcapped. Brute, Scrapper, or Tanker would all do well with those powersets.

I'm not so much worried about the cost of any builds here. It's more about what a player has to do to make the most of the character. The less they have to do outside of hitting "1-2-1-3", the better. Mez protection is a big factor, which is another reason why melee & FF keep popping up in my mind.

Without mez protection, you can run into situational issues. In the right map, a ranged-capped character can be effectively invincible. In the wrong map, they can't get enough height or a clear shot from far away. You end up having to micromanage movement more often and that's counter to my goal here.

Good low-maintenance choices:

• Bots/FF MM - Summon the bots, upgrade them, and bubble them up. Then just go around telling them to kill stuff and watching the pretty light show... all you really need to do is reapply the bubbles every four minutes and maybe toss an Aid Other or two. You can go nuts woth Force Bolt and Repulsion Bomb if you want, or even take a couple of your Pulse Rifle powers, but you really don't have to do anything more than stay close enough to the bots to keep them in your Dispersion Bubble.
• Anything/WP Brute or Scrapper - WP is pretty much a "fire and forget" defensive set, so just toggle up and run around smashing things. Axe/WP or DB/WP are nice because they get good attack chains with pretty low global recharge so you won't even need to fool with Hasten, and if you want to be even more survivable then try Stone Melee/WP.
• Bane Spider - You're a Mace/SR Stalker that can actually stand and fight (plus you get great team buffs). Much like WP, just toggle up and go... with the added bonus of being able to skip fighting altogether if you want and just stealth in, clobber the boss or the spawn guarding the glowie, and be done. You may want Aid Self, but really eating the occasional green pill works pretty well once you softcap (which is quite easy).
• Fire/Fire Blaster - If you're a little suicidal and willing to dump a billion or two inf into making a S/L softcapped Blaster then this combo is great fun. Jump into the middle of a spawn, tap a few buttons, and watch everything die. Including possibly you. You have to pick your enemies to avoid non-S/L attacks, but as long as you do you can mow down spawns insanely fast and you don't have to worry about fooling with a bunch of fancy defensive powers since, well, you don't have any. (Well, aside from defense toggles).
• Dark Melee/SR Scrapper or Brute (or SR/DM Tank now) - You're almost unhittable and you have a self heal in your standard attack chain. It doesn't really get much more simple than that.

Put my vote in for dark/WP.

You have self heal in dark/, stacking -tohit to suppliment WPs inherent defense (and -tohit in RttC which everyone forgets is there) and you can basically toggle up, and just smash things.

Your AoE will be a little limited unless you like shadow maul (i hate it) until you hit 35 (then you can grab some AoE goodness in your epic/patron powers) but you'll be basically unkillable with unlimited recovery, and just smash things to pieces.

Sonic Resonance is a very low maintenance back seat set. I'd say Defender is the lowest maintance way to play this.

You can fulfill your basic team obligations by
1) popping Disruption Field on the melee-ist leading the charge
2) toggling on Dispersion
3) buffing everyone every 4 minutes
4) firing off single target blasts, and Sonic Siphon at hard targets

You can take the lawn chair at the back and make the rest of the team be the heroes, and everyone's happy. Works with any blast set.

My Crab is my favourite slacker character.
It can solo anything and all I have to do is turn on toggles and use a couple of attacks. It alsohas a bunch of pets I just let do all the work when I really feel like slacking off and not even attacking.

Dark/WP should be an excellent choice. Nothing to do but enjoy the ride.

Love the team buffs, mez protection, and range offered by VEATs. Sonic would work just as well as FF from a slacking standpoint, though it's much harder to softcap. Good stuff!

I like SR a lot, but... well, if you go with perma-Hasten, then you have at least one power you must regularly maintain (either Hasten or Practiced Brawler). Shield (Active Defense & Hasten) is in the same spot, as are Fortunatas (Mind Link & Hasten). I have a DM/SR Brute that isn't taking Hasten at all (cheap build for just messing around on a second server), so that works great. I can just auto Practiced Brawler and I'm done. One click isn't bad though, so I'd consider SR a decent choice with Hasten or a great choice without.

I have an S/L/E-capped Fire/Fire Blaster that I love, but he seems to eat unlucky mezzes a little too often. That means paying attention to things if I grab any aggro. Personally, I don't mind keeping an eye on that stuff and popping a break free as needed, but that's a bit outside what I'm looking for in a slacker's choice. Yes, anyone can take Clarion, but then you're adding another maintenance power and that's defeating my purpose here.

Nuther vote here for MMs. If you don't know about it, read up on body guard mode.

My Bots/Dark drops that area effect slow, maybe fearsome stares them a little, they take ONE SHOT at me and my bots let loose the fury of electronic-powered mayhem while I maybe click a heal or something. When I get bored I use more Dark powers to debuff the bosses that much more. We can really chew through groups of foes without too much sweat.