Easiest AT/Powerset to start out with?

Addendum: if they're a more support minded person and want to team all of the time, a ff defender is pretty simple: use deflection/insulation bubble every 4 min, follow around your teammates with dispersion bubble running, and attack stuff. Just tell them to skip detention field and the kb powers, and not to use pff unless they're about to die.

I'd say Scrapper is definitely an easier introduction than a Brute.

I hear the arguments in favor of Fury being straightforward, but getting the most out of Fury, especially early on when you don't have defenses of Yes, is about knowing what you and your build can reasonably handle. If you don't know this, then you'll either do substandard damage erring on the side of caution or get your buttocks handed to you at tachyon speeds. Probably more often the latter; the constant need to maintain fury might rush a new player into attacking things that they or, worse, their group can't reasonably accomplish.

A new player who hasn't seen everydamnthing a billion times like us vets might also want a look at the scenery or the mission dialogues at times. Granted, the writing in this game isn't exactly Terry Pratchett, but being forced to power through by the Fury mechanic could rob them of what experience is offered.

As for sets: Any armor set which doesn't require a lot of reactive clicking would probably be Easier. WP offers a reasonably smooth ride. Any set with Parry might make it a little smoother; Katana/WP is straightforward, effective, and still has very good endgame potential.

I would say Corruptor. Depending on what combo they are self sufficient soloers as well as coveted on teams. The best secondary for beginners IMO is Dark. It gives good debuffs, you don't have to worry about taking time out to buff others, and it has a pet. It also has a great heal that fires off even if the enemy targeted dies (which is the reason it puts it above Kins heals).

For the primary I'd say they are all good to pair with Dark, I would suggest a new player choose one that fits thematically for them as they will probably have more fun for a longer period of time this way.

IMO you really can't go wrong with that AT unless you don't like ranged damage. If you're a melee player at heart I'd say scrapper/brute. Which one I can't say. Personally I torn between the two. One one hand I love the extra survivability of Brutes but don't like the base damage, on the other I love the damage and tasty criticals of scrappers but they aren't as durable as Brutes.

If durability is a question when you are driving a scrapper then there is a very strong possibility you are doing something that could be improved upon significantly.

Fun is really very very subjective. I can see a lot of people who would be bored to death of melee ATs. I have some real-life friends who have told me that their CoX experience consisted of: (1) Choosing a melee AT. (2) Getting some random pointless door mission. (3) Going into the mission, turning on toggles, and then randomly pound attacks.

These same people then talk about how quickly they quit the game years ago. I try to tell them that there is a lot of variety out there if only they would look for it, in builds and in missions.

So I would instead talk to the person and see what sort of character they wanted to play before suggesting more. My first 50 was a TA/A in '05 and it actually took me a really long time to play the melee ATs because they bored me out of my mind.

So I might recommend someone to play a defender, dominator, tank, stalker, whatever, depending upon what they said they found was fun.

I tend to agree with the people who recommend blasters over scrappers/brutes regardless. The blaster will at least teach basic awareness of things. An /SR scrapper could conceivably go through most of the game not realizing that some enemy types are much more tricky than others and not really understand much of what goes on in the game, mechanics-wise.

I personally started with a Martial Arts/Regen scrapper, with no inf* and no experience. I had no help with building him, but I really enjoyed the character. I found him a lot of fun, slightly busy but still enjoyable.

*I lied - I had 5 million inf given to me by a friend so I could buy TOs.

Although, I really like a challenge.

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Originally Posted by Wavicle CoH players are stupid and incompetent compared to WoW players.

I actually started with an Electric/Electric (it's lightning, it HAS to hurt! Oh, and should probably be hard to dodge too...) And despite (perhaps because of) dying many many times, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Certainly forced me to learn as much about the game as I could- I learned pulling before I learned that you could replace enhancements. Learned to view and think about every fight before rushing in, learned that other players are fantastic to have around (meatshields!), and loved to crash and burn play-style. If I screwed up, I died, and I learned from my mistake (Ok, no more attacking 50 foot tall pumpkin monsters...). Learned how to keep enemies away- combination of Tesla Cage and Lightning Clap. Learned that there is no shame in running. Learned that it is hard to have more fun than nuking the hell out of some enemies that just killed you.

If I had started with a melee character, I may not have even stuck around, but that's just me. Unless they are religiously opposed to ranged fighting, I stick to my recommendation of a Blaster.

Should note that I joined during the Halloween event.

My first character was a MM. Aside what you or the numbers might say, i found it a very easy archetype to play, even if i was dead broke and with none to guide me through. Commands didn't matter for me all that much as long as i could throw my lackeys in and help them out. In this fashion, not getting hit and letting your guys do all the job, is pretty straightforward. In time, i started to formulate strategies that bypassed weaknesses of my character (an example of that would be poor defenses) in an attempt to work around these said weaknesses. I started looking on online guides as well for extra information, but i realise that i might have been an exception. A lot of people won't go into researching their AT.

I still, firmly believe, when fate decided that i should play the MM, it wasn't the key binds, of which i never ever made to any of my MMs, and certainly not the different commands to better my henchmen's AI. It was the notion that i was a damn Mastermind commanding some underdogs and no commands or anything else would spoil my ambition for total world domination!

So to any other soon to be Masterminds out there, don't let anyone else let you down. Pick your favorite underdogs and go out there to rule! The rest will eventually come by themselves!

Easiest AT to start out with..hmm...it depends on what their likes and dislikes are and whether or not they have video games skills.

Once your friend understands combos, I think a Street Justice/Willpower Brute might be a good fit. Street Justice is fun to watch and Willpower is a fire and forget secondary which is very forgiving for bad slotting choices, and does well with SOs.

My Mind/Dark controller is hella fun and effective, and, since I am doing well with it with no controller experience I think I can safely suggest it as an easy AT

Lisa.

Hmmm, frankly think there are far more power sets/AT's that are easy enough to pick up than ones that are not. This game as many have said is not rocket science (even the 'hard' parts). Add in a generally very helpful, friendly community (both here and live in game) and there's really few things that should be all that daunting even to a total MMO newbie. Which I was when I started.

I would not recommend starting with MM personally.
I would not start with any of the Epic AT's ... Peacebringer, Warshade or VEAT, though the VEATS aren't particularly difficult until you reach the decision point of what to continue onto 50 with and it's really only making that decision that adds trickiness to the equation.

Outside of that my first 4 characters were in order: Claws/SR, Broadsword/Regen, Empathy/Dark and Kin/Psi and I'm still here 7 years later.

Friend who started as a Spines/Regen and is still active 6 years later. And another who started with Nrg/Nrg and proceeded through Fire/Fire, Ice/Ice, and lots of similar blasters and is still active (though less so) 6+ years later.

Doomguide

Wow, didn't expect there to be this many replies already. Since there are too many to all quote and reply to directly I guess I'll just make some things more clear.

First of all this is all hypothetical, I know of no friends that want to start playing CoH atm

Secondly, a thing that came up a lot, the concept of "fun", offcourse this is totally dependent on the person playing, and one person might like to only play in teams, while the next one tends to solo 90% of all content, but what i actually meant with "fun" is the fact that some powersets only start to get great when they get that one key power, somewhere late in their development. (The only one I can think of at the moment is a WS's Eclipse, but there must be many more of those "powerset defining" powers).

@Armath, don't take my initial post as MM-bashing, my first lvl 50 was a MM, and it has taught me a lot about the game. I would still be my favorite char if they would fix the stupid "sure, I'll solo everything" pet-AI. (But that's a discussion for a different part of these boards)

I would find out what kind of character the person wants to play, then pick something of medium difficulty from there.

My younger brother wanted to play something Mage-y, so I set him up as a Earth/Fire Dominator, for example.

A decent and easy to understand support option would be something like Traps or Cold on a Corruptor. Use your powers when they are available, and shoot stuff the rest of the time. They really don't need to understand how or why these sets affect AVs, only that they "should use certain powers when they fight them."

Willpower is definitely way up there for easy to understand. So, actually, is Fiery Aura. Right about the period they might start dying a bit, Rise of the Phoenix shows up to remove that penalty more or less completely, and "heal myself when I need to, hurt enemies with Burn and fire aura" is IMO very easy to understand.

Well, first I'll agree with everyone saying that it's gonna be easier to play what you find fun. I, for instance, hate not having ranged options, so for a long time I couldn't play melee ATs unless the powerset had some range (thus why my first scrappers were Spines and Claws), or unless something else made me love it, like a tanker's uber-survivability from the early levels on... One of my friends was having enough fun with his first scrapper, until he discovered support ATs, realized that's what he liked, and stuck to controllers and defenders for a long time...

But it's not always easy finding out what someone will like, especially if they never played before, and I guess a lot more people like melee than dislike it (not only from hearing my friends talk about it and seeing all those meleers in trials but also from the data the devs released a while back), so in the absence of more knowledge, if I had to recommend something to a new player, I'd go with melee...

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Originally Posted by Thoran_EU I think my guess would be a X/WP scrapper, where X is every set without a special mechanic (like the combo mechanic on DB or the Momentum on TW)

I not only agree but I actually witnessed at least 3 friends start off with Scrappers and fall in love quickly with the game. Two started before WP was out, one went SR (had a tough time solo in the first levels) and the other with Regen (had it easy for a long time). The last one started with WP and never looked back. WP has no trash powers you shouldn't pick and is super survivable... I guess the only way you could mess it up is if, like that guy playing the brute yesterday, you didn't realize you actually have to turn your toggles on...

I think Katana (for the added survivability just from attacking, possibly without even noticing it, and for having decent ST and AoE damage from early on) and MA (just for being and looking awesome and bringing a lot of comic-book scrappers to mind) are probably good options for X.

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Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle A brute is probably more straightforward than a scrapper since fury completely dominates everything at low level and masks slotting deficiencies at higher levels. Sure, a player as green as this may not exactly understand fury, but who says you have to understand it for it to be effective? Just about any primary would be good, as would most secondaries: the fact that all of them are sticky is another point toward ease of use for novices.

I know a lot of people who think Fury sucks... Me kinda included (I still haven't managed to drag a brute to 50). I thought I was alone in it, feeling like that mechanic -forced- me to play in a certain way (which is funny, because when I'm not -forced- to do it, I actually tend to play exactly like that), but a lot of people, especially new players, have told me they feel like that.

Personally I think it really sucks to be punished with super-low damage (and DPE, the new guy might not understand DPE, but he'll hate seeing his blue bar plummet) for having to click a glowie, ride an elevator, look around to find something or appreciate the scenery, read text or just take a quick bio break...

And keeping fury at I-don't-suck levels actually does take some knowledge that might be tough for a new player: using fast attacks a lot and non-stop, jumping in the middle of large spawns (and knowing how to get the large spawns to begin with, and then how to survive them!), slotting for recharge/end before going for damage (unlike every other AT in the game). My friend who started with the WP Scrapper played a Shield Brute after and really struggled with it in the beginning (he only kept at it because I kept telling him he'd eventually be awesome).

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that Brutes are uber, super-survivable and able to deal a ton of damage due to Fury. Knowing that still doesn't help me not hating Fury shoving me ahead towards the next spawn. I'll run to it anyway, I don't want the shoving. With the new Fury and a Claws Brute, I'm trying it again, but I still haven't reached the no-hate point.

Fury seems to be one of those things that a lot of people love and a lot of people hate, so I think it would be risky to throw it on a completely new player in case he found himself in the hate camp (and, again, using fury so you actually do decent damage, not great just decent, isn't as simple as some here are saying).

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Originally Posted by Mad Grim So yes, I'd recommend a Blaster. Not because it is good (it isn't), but because of what it teaches you.

Well, he asked for the easiest, not the most didactic. I do agree that playing a squishy will usually teach you a lot more about the game: I started with a rad/rad def and I soon had really good situational awareness compared to my friends who started playing melee.

The problem is that for some people that learning curve might feel too steep and make them give up before they actually learn it, especially people who never played any MMOs before (other kinds of games tend to be much more forgiving about lack of knowledge).

So, while 2 of my 3 friends who started with Scrappers later had some trouble learning to play squishies, they at least had their melee powerhouses to fall back on and keep playing if the squishy was getting too frustrating... Then they tried again with frustation levels lowered, and again, and eventually they got it.

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Originally Posted by Thoran_EU I don't think SR (or any def based secondary) is easy to understand. Low ammounts of defence do near nothing for your survival, the only time you start seeing any viable improvement in survivability is when you get near the 30% mark.

I agree, kinda. It's not that they are hard to understand, they are easy: more def means you get hit less. It's just that they tend to suck in the early levels... So I don't think SR is a good starter powerset either.

Well said Doc.