Got wife to try game. Suggestions for complimentary char?

I have a level 50 Kinetics/Energy Blast Defender named Kid-Kinetics. He's based on my 11-year-old nephew (if he lived in Paragon City and had super powers).

When I play the character, I like to team with a tanker, brute, or scrapper. I shadow my melee partner close enough so that my Transfusion power (with a radius of 20 feet) can heal him/her.

This also means that I'm close enough to our opponents to take some damage from their area of effect attacks or even some stray aggro that my partner can't direct away from me. Fortunately, Transfusion heals me, too.

In between heals, I'm busy spamming buffs, debuffs, and even attacks. It makes for a very active, involving, and intense play experience.

When teaming with a partner this way, I opt to toggle off Repel because it would knock back opponents out of melee range. In contrast, when I play solo, Repel can be a lifesaver. Of course, many aspects of solo play can be very different from teaming for a Kinetics/Energy Blast Defender.

Pick whatever character you want to play--tanker, brute, scrapper, or something else. Maybe you'll be inspired by a character concept... what sort of adventuring partner would be fun/interesting/thematically fitting for her character in terms of storytelling (or roleplaying)? Often, when I want to try out a powerset that I haven't played before, I read about the powers and they inspire me to come up with a character concept: male or female, young or old, large or small, human or animal/alien/extradimensional entity... etcetera.

So long as you pick an archetype and powersets that you enjoy playing, your wife's Kinetics/Energy Blast Defender should make for an effective, valuable, complementary teammate. Good luck!
__________________

A little bit of overkill on the "Support character" if your wife goes Blaster: Force fields/sonic defender.

With the new, fancy IOs (level 20 generic Defense, specifically) she can be at the defense cap from the time you hit level 17 to eternity.

Hi there Hockeytown, and welcome to the missus to CoH!

There's been a lot of great suggestions here in this thread. I remember back when CoH first came out it was the first MMO Mrs. Z and I played. We used to team with her playing a Scrapper and myself on a Ice/Emp controller. I know the combo was especially potent, however we didn't have to deal with the KB involved with Energy Blast.

Either way, I'm a firm believer in the family playing together, so this warms the cockles of my heart!

-Z

Targeting tips...

You can re-set many basic keybinds in the options menu. Once you have a standard layout that works, save it as default.

For me, I found it easiest to re-bind the tab key for targeting the next enemy. Since the first power tray automatically defaults to the number keys (not number pad), it's an easy reach to hit tab then 1, 2, 3, 4,... It's also a quick way for me to cycle through the visible enemies.
I have the ~ key re-bound for nearest enemy for my "back to one" (nearest =/= next)

The f-keys are the default for inspies, but like many others, I've gone a step further and bound them to use specific inspies so I'm not constantly rearranging my inspie tray.

I use my arrow keys for movement... I never got the hang of using "wasd" or strafing.

This setup keeps my targeting/powers on my left hand, while I can move with my right. As you can probably tell, I don't use my mouse much except for scrolling the camera in/out and hitting the occasional Oro/WW portal or TAoE.

But just so my right hand doesn't get bored, I also use it for ctrl and alt powering and camera movements. Since ctrl is the easier reach, I set my second most used powers in the corresponding tray. The Alt tray gets powers that are handy, but not used as much in combat. I've set my camera movements to pg up, pg down, delete, home, end and insert... the up & down get the most use.

Hope that's helpful, or at least gives you a few ideas.

.

Id suggest you both read up on some fallen heroes of Paragon. Namely Galaxy Girl and Dauntless.

You see GG was a kin/energy defender. And dauntless was almost certainly a scrapper or tanker. I always imagine him as a SR/SS tank for some reason, real tough scrappy type who in the end cant self heal nor self rez and thus fullfill the destiny of dauntless rather well

A SS/WP brute is a good way to go, alot of DPS and aggro draw and her speed boosting you will be handy.

Your a lucky man I must say as I am a global recharge junke and would kill for a wife who would play my own personal kin.

/ENVY!

actually that leads me to this. Make a peacebringer human form. 1 defender worth of support plus thier cosmic ballance buff will make you feel like iron man MKII. ever manage to get a full team of defenders backing you and you will go on Kryptonian.

Also gonna suggest either a Brute or one of the Scrapper secondaries that keeps the taunt in their aura (such as Shield).

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

I have a friend who is new to MMOs. She is ok with turn-based games, but not that great with arcade style games. So based on my experience with my friend, I suggest:


Movement options:
- use ninja/beast/coyote run and/or get superspeed. Get a jetpack/fly for outdoor travel. Show her how to use the follow command on your toon.
- Under options, there is a mouse option where you click on the ground with the mouse and your toon will walk over to where you clicked. So instead of using a, w, s, d keys, you use the mouse. Let her try these movement options to see which matches her style.
- On your toon, get recall friend in case she has trouble navigating the map


Targeting options:
- get a comfy 3-button mouse, light and slides easily
- show her how to target through you so that she will automatically target what you are fighting
- Move commonly used attack powers to tray 1 so she can use keys 1-9 to attack.
- make a macro/kbind for target nearest

Agro options:
- get invisibility/phase shift for 'oh no!' situations
- use a toon with a self-healing aura and put it on auto to heal herself. She should be ok at low levels and when she gets the hang of it, remove the auto on heal.
- get defense powers, ie combat jumping, tough, weave, etc.
- show her when to use lucks and breakfrees
- show her the art of using corners and other position based tricks to break line of sight

If the lady is having a lot of trouble controlling basic movement, perhaps a different key-layout is in order? I came from EQ, so putting all of the movement and basic targeting on the NumPad was natural for me.

Like this:

ADD "target_enemy_far"
DIVIDE "++autorun"
NUMLOCK "nop"
NUMPAD0 "target_enemy_near"
NUMPAD1 "+left"
NUMPAD2 "+down"
NUMPAD3 "+right"
NUMPAD4 "+turnleft"
NUMPAD5 "+backward"
NUMPAD6 "+turnright"
NUMPAD7 "nop"
NUMPAD8 "+forward"
NUMPAD9 "nop"
NUMPADENTER "target_enemy_next"
SUBTRACT "target_enemy_prev"

oh god I have mollusks in my chest

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

The other thing I was thinking for movement is first, tell her that's it's pretty hard sometimes even for experienced players. I get stuck on things still and can't get loose, and some of the older maps are just atrocious.

Then offer some "me time" where she just logs in and messes about, with out anyone else directing her or teaming. Just have her walk around Atlas Park and get a feel for the controls. Frankly many experienced gamers have to do just that so they can see how a game is played before they start trying to do fancy stuff.

It might help if you showed her where the "Walk" button is. It might be easier to move around without running into walls and stuff if she's moving slower. That'll giver her a chance to see the controls in slow motion. Then move up to regular walk, then Sprint, then hold down the space bar and jump everywhere, then Fly or whatever.

Just take it slowly and in stages. Let her "mess about" and come to you if she has a question.

Hey guys. Got her to play again tonight. Made her a Fire/Rad corrupter to go with my StJ/WP brute. Adjusted her movement keys, mouse speed, and a few other things. Messed around town in the tutorial for a while so she could get used to targeting and killing. Finally got out to Atlas, where buying enhancements got her all confused for a while again again LOL. So, we did the first set of missions and got to level 3. She's already moving around a lot better. Still over running stuff, but much better than the other day.

We found that the brute kills stuff before her fire powers go off a lot, so I told her to keep tapping the power key, and it will select the next closest guy in her view to fire. She liked that a lot instead of clicking to select next guy then going back to hit key again.

Thanks again for all your help. Look for us on Freedom. Hockeytown and Tamales.