What are my choices to be a team player

Firstly, I'm actually getting frustrated with the game at this point
This is also a fairly long post so if you don't want to read the entire thing:
I want an AT that is fairly supportive other than pure DPS that does not cost a lot of INF to make (so tanking/mezzing/debuffing/buffing, all nice)
I panic when I have to be the mezzer or debuffer if I don't have AoEs, though.

I love everything about this game apart from the fact none of the powers I've tried, I like. I'm used to playing WoW where within the first 20 levels or so, you'd get a good feel about how the class plays and so on. With this game I've tried mostly a brute, MM and SoA. The soldiers were really nice but I'm worried I'll be designated to a pure DPS role with a litle bit of support. I don't want that. I want to be mostly support in some capacity. I don't care if it's tanking, mezzing or buffing. I love team play and I want my character to reflect this.

One of my biggest problems is that debuffing seems almost impossible to me. AoEs are fine but when I have single target debuffs, with so many targets to pick from, it seems almost counter-productive to have to use the mouse to manually click a target. Is that how everyone does it? I'm used to playing WoW where there's probably (at most) 6 enemies on screen that can survive more than one attack; CoH is obviously vastly different and I tend to panic and pretty much just "mez orange, then yellow", which I hate since it doesn't have any strategy to it.

I'm VIP, so I can use all archetypes. I'm considering a tanking character since that seems "easiest" compared to something than can heal or buffs teamamtes a lot. Having up to 7 other players is a bit... awkward for me to manage. So I assume tanking or mass debuffers are logical in being part of a team. I know DPS can do fine but I'd rather have more than just "blaster/scrapper looking for group". I know hero epics, tankers and MMs can tank. I heard brutes can, too. Are brutes and MM the same with threat generation (get the AoE taunt from presence)?
Other than those four, what classes can tank without too much inf invested?

I thought about a controller or dominator, also; they seemed almost ideal for team play with various debuffs, but I'm a bit concerned since I do want to go with mind as a primary. I made a dom with mind/psy and in Death From Below, it's been Hell, and that's sugar coating it. I found my character insanely weak and practically useless beyond randomly holding or confusing a boss. And when they last about 10 seconds at most, it's annoying. I know a lot of it was due to me being only level 16 or so but
in teams I still think I'll be weak without a bunch of IOs or sets.

I suppose I'm really looking for a basic AT with simple powers, like a WP/Brute Strength tanker or such. But I want to be able to be able to do well in teams with anything other than a pure DPS role. Hell, even a corrupter with debuffs/assault rifle(or pistols) would be great to me. Solo isn't actually a major part of it, at all. But I'd rather avoid something like traps/bots that really are slow to take things down.

I prefer debuff sets that I can leverage the most out of solo, but oh yeah, really helps out the team as well.

My absolute favorite is a fire/traps corruptor. It was my first foray into range sets as it were(even though I am in melee mostly).

I wanted something with a bit of mez protection, Ffg fits that bill, as well as providing decent defence. Seekers is huge for taking alphas, and debuffs decently as well. Poison gas trap keeps the spawn busy and debuffed while you get started with blasting. Basically, I don't need to worry about surviving now. Enough so that if the tank is slow, I'm happy to eat the alpha.

I wanted something that could pump out some respectable aoe damage. Easily covered by fire, as well as having better than decent st damage. Acid mortar debuffs their resists so the spawn is taking even more damage. If you play aggressively, and by that I mean don't set up and pull, but instead debuff and toe bomb, it is impressively fast to take out a spawn. To put it another way, be the second one in the spawn, and if the tank balks, be the first.

Basically the best way to help the team is to do what you would do anyway and your toolbox guarantees you have a response for any situation that pops up.

Now there is no denying, the more influence you drop into it, the better it will be, but it really does well with just frankenslotting which is cheap as chips.

Illusion/dark controller. Good damage, good support, good debuffs, good on the cheap only gets better the more you pump into it. You get one of the key powers Phantom Army at 18 to so that helps a ton both as damage and distraction.

A Plant/Fire Dom has plenty of AoE control and damage abilities, and is solid in both team and solo play. You might want to try that, too. Your core abilities will be in place pretty much before level 12, with a few higher-level abilities that you'll pick up later.

Tri-form khelds can be quite adaptive as well.

Have a look at Defenders/Corruptors. Browse the forums on those two aswell. Lots of good advice and playstyles to get a feel for on the players guides also. If DeBuffing the enemy is confusing or tricky, stick to Buffing the group. Pain Dom, Empathy, Force Field, Sonic Res, Thermal, Cold Dom can be just as welcome and overly helpful on any team... Or you can roll a Trick Arrow and drop patches (no target required) and watch all melt and stick and twitch and burn.

Look into Doms. Great control and nasty range/melee dps potential.
Mind is not.. well, great at DPS. Great control, just short on damage. The way mind works is, you are a buffer zone between cascading mob agro. Mezzing a close mob so it doesn't spill onto the one your team is chewing through gets to be the norm.

By late game (incarnate content), your character will have enough iPowers to fill in whatever gaps you think you have. Making a Tankmage is darn near certain in a lot of builds regarless of AT. If it is in fact DeBuffing/Buffing/Team stuff you want, then Defenders/Corruptors can't be beat. Controllers can be better at DPS while bringing sizable Mez to the group. Some Troller builds are just plain silly as far as Mez potential.

Explore the ATs, as a VIP you have plenty of slots and access to the Test Server/Beta to test any build you want.

Have fun.

For heaven's sake... just play a tanker already. Want damage? Got it. Want survivability? Got that in spades? Want to be able to keep your team alive? Few make it more possible than a good tanker.

I'd second the fire/traps. The debuff, hold and heal are devices you put on the floor, so you don't have to worry about what target to select - the device does that itself, all you do is activate it. As was mentioned, /traps gives you a very nice forcefield bubble around you and all nearby teammates, so even if you're not sure what to do, you're being extremely helpful simply standing near everyone.

Another fun and popular corruptor is fire/dark. You have a huge heal, and the heal radiates off YOU, after you have targeted an enemy. No need to select the individual players, just 1 enemy. Dark is a powerful debuff, but it can be hard to gauge how you're doing, just because it's primary effect is that stuff suddenly isn't hitting your team very much (If you've ever had trouble with those nasty CoT ghosts, THAT'S what dark does!). It does really lovely damage with Rain of Fire pouring on enemies who are held in place with Tar Patch - and you get BOTH those powers by level 6! That heal is your level 1 power.

I probably wouldn't select a controller right off the bat - after playing all dps characters, they can be overwhelming, with both powersets being pretty much NO dps. Don't get me wrong, trollers are great and amazing - at the highest levels, they're steamrolling powerhouses! I am just remembering my first experience with the AT - it was horribly confusing, I would have liked having only half of it being confusing, personally. If you are concerned about taking things down, understand that this will not be happening on (most) troller powersets until the 40's, when you can both get and slot up some epic pool powers. MOST ESPECIALLY on a Mind/ troller, since they don't even get a pet to do a little damage.

I would not suggest a tank at this point, either. A good tank should have the best understanding of the game and the different powersets, as well as strategy and tactics, in order to know how to keep their teammates safest. It doesn't sound like that's where you are right now.

A corruptor of any sort that suits your fancy would give you buffs/debuffs to feel useful for the team, as well as do damage, where you already feel confident. They have the same two powersets as defenders (with minor exceptions), but corruptors have the blasts as their primary and thus do significantly more damage. Conversely, the buffs/debuffs usually are not any stronger on a defender (TOTALLY not fair to defenders, but there ya go). So, yeah.. corruptor over defender, especially if you've been frustrated by lack of damage on a mind/ troller. Dominators are helped the most by IO set bonuses, so if you don't like IO's, I'd pass on a dom, too.



NOTE: Your SoA should be a good team asset, btw. If you took your team buffs and slotted them decently, you should be adding significant buffs to the whole team! It's just not an obvious effect, like an attack.

Both Dark Miasma and Trick Arrow immediately came to mind as good AoE-heavy debuffer sets (Defender primaries; Controller, Corruptor, and Mastermind secondaries). It's been a while since I've played either, but I recall that Dark had greater survivability, as it has more "soft" controls than Trick Arrow.

...and, wow, shows you how long it's been since I've played. Illusion/Dark wasn't possible back in the day, and I didn't even make the connection until Lucky666's post. I'm kinda surprised it isn't FotM based on what I remember from either set...

The interesting thing about being a team-centric character in City of Heroes is that the nature of teams changes dramatically depending a number of factors, including the mix of powersets other people are bringing to the table, the level range under consideration and the enemies being opposed. I'll elaborate a bit on what I mean by this.

1) Scenario 1: The Early Game. Most players are underpowered at this stage regardless of what they're playing, unless they are high-level characters who have exemplared down to assist (but that's another matter and a niche case). At this stage of the game many defensive powersets have yet to mature. Tankers and other melee artists have significant holes in their respective armors. Buffers and debuffers alike haven't acquired their best moves yet, and control archetypes remain light on control.

In this environment, there's a great deal of emphasis on reactive mechanics, particularly healing. You'll often see low level teams for things like DFB saying they 'need a healer'. While there are certainly buff sets that work very well at low levels (such as Force Fields), they tend to get overshadowed by healing here because this stage also includes many players new to the game who haven't let learned the several critical ways in which CoH differs from some other popular MMOs and just gravitate automatically to a 'trinity' mentality of meatshield-dps-healer.

Most in demand: 'Healers" (often but not necessarily Empathy), damage dealers.


2) Scenario 2: The Middle/Late game. After level 38, all primary and secondary powers are available. Everyone has all their best tricks and with three slots per non-power level rather than two, everyone is really starting to flesh out their powers. Buffers and debuffers are coming into their own and edging out those 'pure healers' who don't adapt. Tankers and other melee artists experience a dramatic rise in survivability now and often don't require outside buffs/heals to survive in most situations anymore. Controllers are locking down the battlefield on a regular basis. Masterminds have all their pets and upgrades. Life is good.

At this point, many players begin using IOs and the focus often shifts to gaining experience at high rates by doing missions on very high difficulty settings. Players interested in badges and/or accolades (or those just interested in the story or a new experience) will do a lot of Task Forces as well, and even go back an exemplar the early level task forces as it's considerably easier to do them as an exemplared higher-level character than it would be otherwise.

Most in demand: 'tanks' (often but not necessarily Tankers), debuffers (specifically those with -res or -regen debuffs).


3) Scenario 3: Endgame. At 50, the VIP incarnate game takes over for those it applies to, and yet again the landscape of teaming changes drastically. Many VIP players who play extensively in VIP content are going to be playing with mid to high-end IO builds - this becomes much more of a given than in the rest of the game, though of course not 100%. Incarnate powers change up what's needed and what's not, as these powers often perform functions one might otherwise need a certain character type to accomplish.

What's in demand here now becomes about what's necessary to accomplish the specific objective, as many of the high-end TFs and incarnate Trials have certain gimmicks which reward the use of certain powers or the presence of certain ATs. For example, in the Lady Grey Task Force there is a mission in which having at least one (ideally two or more) character with a hold power is vital to success. A team may very easily be forced to quit the Task Force in failure if they lack this component, so players with holds (not necessarily Controllers/Dominators, though that's often best) are in high demand.

Most in demand: whatever's needed. Holds for LGTF, Corruptors for Magi, Masterminds for BAF, Mind Control 'trollers/doms for Lord Recluse (if trying for Master) and so on and so forth.



The end result of all this is that pretty much any character you might choose to make is going to be a lynchpin somewhere at some point - often in multiple situations. If you build and play your character well and you enjoy doing it, you'll often find there's something in the game that a team will want you along for. That said, based on your preference to focus on team support and avoid a straight damage role, I think Corruptors, Defenders, Controllers, Dominators and Tankers all make sense in their own way depending on how you prefer to play. What most of these have in common is that they're going to start off in Scenario 1 as weak (Corruptors and Doms slightly less so than the other three due to higher damage output), but mature into highly sought-after demigods.

Keep in mind that I just analyzed one factor (level range), leaving other factors like existing team composition and type of enemies being fought out of the equation. A team that's already capped for Defense might prefer a Sonic to a Force Fielder, for instance. A team doing a Carninval-heavy arc might prefer a Dark Armor brute to an Invlun tank. The variables just go on and on, with the end result that no one build choice is the 'best' or single most sought after, which has the fortunate corollary of meaning no choice is 'wrong' or 'teh gimp' either.

I would like to further reiterate what the above poster has said: there are simply far too many variables in play to judge a character without playing it a lot in different situations.

You mention being disappointed with control ATs in DFB. Yeah, you will be. DFB is basically a massive DPS gank fest; lots of fairly easy MOBs to chew through, with no significant risk of failure. I have seen teams of almost entirely new players (except for me) who steamrolled DFB even though they didn't even know how to queue before I explained it to them. It's just way too easy to be an accurate introduction to teaming. I see it mostly as an express elevator past the "Pre-Stamina" levels (though that affectation is no longer relevant).

Control ATs tend to shine when the content is significantly challenging. Playing a controller on a steamrolling team feels very unrewarding, because MOBs are dying faster than you can lock them down, and your buff/debuffs just don't seem to matter. This is not a bad thing, and you can't let it bother you. Just do what damage you can and stay diligent for situations in which your powers suddenly become important, like overpulls, ambushes, or major bosses.

For every team where you feel useless, you'll eventually find a team where you're the MVP. Perhaps there are no tankers available, and the rest of your team is all blasters and stalkers. In this situation, a controller is a godsend, because it's your controls/buffs/debuffs that are preventing the MOBs from flattening your teammates before they can do their damage. Without you there to soften them up or lock them down, the team would fail.

Also, as mentioned above, CoH has a very swingy character development system. Some powerset combinations are heavily reliant on a limited number of key powers, and until you acquire and sufficiently slot those powers, can feel weak. Other combinations might come into bloom very early and feel relatively stronger, but then seem to lose ground as the late-blooming sets catch up. Some sets are also very open-ended, and require a lot of personal experience (and many respecs) before you really figure out how to play them to your enjoyment. The poster boy for this would be the Warshade: an AT that provides an almost overwhelming selection of attractive options and difficult opportunity costs, but provides equally overwhelming rewards for mastery.

I guess, in the end, the best advice is to simply try a lot of different sets. Read as much as you can about various builds here on the boards, and learn the strengths and weaknesses of those builds. Then, through trial and error, you will figure out what style of play you enjoy most and will eventually find a character that matches that style. Remember that you can't accurately judge a build until you've acquired and slotted its key powers, and then played it in a variety of different situations with various team compositions.

Most of all, don't be afraid to just roll-up a character and mess around for a bit. You have a LOT of slots to play with, and deleting a character isn't a big deal. As long as you had fun while playing it, you're not losing anything in the end.

*EDIT* Just wanted to add one more point. You mentioned playing WoW in your post. I used to play EQ, EQ2, FF11, and various other MMOs where item-centric character progression is most of the game's appeal. Creating a character in such a game meant that you would be spending literally years improving it, raiding and questing for tiny incremental upgrades along the way. In other words: creating a character is a massive investment. City of Heroes really isn't like that. There really isn't a great deal of depth in character development in CoH, beyond reaching level 50, choosing a good IO build, getting a few key accolade powers, and slotting your incarnate powers. All told, it really shouldn't take an experienced player more than about a month of casual play to completely "finish" a character if they have the resources available (enough cash for IOs, etc.). CoH instead focuses on providing a variety of novel play styles and semi-randomized content with customizable difficulty so that you can experience the game differently each time. Investing heavily in one character is sort of missing the point, and you never know how much you might enjoy a character you thought you weren't interested in at first. I'm sure every long-time CoH veteran has a story about rolling-up some weird combo they thought would be weak on a lark or as a joke, and then falling in love with it.

You can be anything and be a team player, but it requires a little bit of abstract thinking. Taking provoke on your sturdy controller that has mez protection, picking up a revive teammate power and vengeance on your character that has a self revive themselves, etc. You don't have to completely sacrifice your character's strengths to support a team, either.

My favorite and main character is a team centered scrapper. He's got leadership, aid other, a hold and provoke, in addition to confront (and destinies at higher levels). He trades a little bit of damage for being able to expand to other side roles and support a team - he's tough enough to taunt groups of enemies, vengeance makes sure only one person on the team is KOed at a time, and if things get really harry he's got self revives to jump back up and help stabilize the situation.

If you can be a team player with a scrapper, you can be a team player with anything. But remember: being a team player does not mean carrying the team. It means helping support the team's needs in the current situation. All characters are generally sufficient enough that a team will not rely on a single person to be the difference between steam rolling and flatlining - it may happen, but it's very rare.

If it gives you perspective, I've had so much fun on my team based, Broadsword/Regeneration scrapper that it's kept me in the game for 8 years now. It's active and challenging. It also helps to have a great community like Virtue.

I think this game is good enough there is a lot of leeway here. From what I am seeing most is that you don't care for the anchors so much, and going for controller instead of corruptor or defender would get you some AoE control.

Earth/kin - no anchors with debuffs in earth controls that are pardon the pun "rock solid". Everyone loves kin.

Earth/cold - again just one anchor in snowstorm and you might use that on fliers or bosses only. Super debuffs and buffs, too.

Electric Control has no anchor and one of the tastiest powers in the game. Even the confuse is of a contagious variety that spreads quickly through a spawn.

It's not everyone's cup of tea: Ice/Forcefields has mighty alpha busting and team defending.

One of the biggest issues in this scenario is that it can be hard to tell how a build will play prior to level 22 at minimum, when you get access to Single Origin Enhancements. At this point, most of your heavy use powers will see their effectiveness doubled (three SO's is somewhere in the 80-90% boost for Schedule A types like Damage and Recharge) or even tripled. Thus, it can be very hard to figure out if a build is going to do anything you want it to until you've slogged through the early levels.

As to your question, a few characters from my own experience spring to mind:

/Time Corruptor. I went with Fire/Time, but really any assault set will do well enough. Time is almost entirely AoE buffs and AoE debuffs, with the exception of an entirely skippable single target buff and two fairly impressive debuffs that you only really need to bring out on hard targets like AV's and GM's. Very solid support, and doesn't really need much investment to make good. I ran on -1/x6 with just SO's, and that was being conservative with the difficulty since I hate having to run back.

Plant/ Dominator. Lots of good AoE crowd control. Plant is really the standout best set for Doms, it has an AoE confuse that can keep a spawn locked down permanently with just SO's, a power that spawns dozens of little minions that can draw aggro away from you, and the usual AoE immob, AoE hold, and pet summoning power. Combine that with a good assault set (I went with psi for Drain Psyche, but I'm kind of regretting it - when enemies resist psychic damage they resist it HARD) and you have a character that can contribute to DPS and control without too much hassle. Do be forewarned that this is one of those builds that picks up sharply at level 22, before then you have to choose between duration, recharge, and accuracy on your key powers and the compromises can hurt.

/Dark Mastermind. Dark is probably the most versatile MM secondary, you have a cone fear and a PBAoE disorient, a powerful team heal, an anchor based -acc and -dam, a team stealth, a hold, and an additional pet who does everything you do automatically. Combine with a good primary like Demons or Necromancy and you can contribute to teams or run solo without an expensive build. MM's are awesome like that.

A slightly off-kilter option you may like is a Time/Electric Defender. It's not going to win any awards for damage but it makes for an extremely tough character that can provide a lot of protection for a team simply by debuffing, holding and draining everything within reach. It works pretty well on just SOs although it is a bit endurance heavy (plus I'd strongly recommend a knockback protection IO). But even on SOs you get a tough character that cna protect a team and even fill in for a tank to some extent (at least against enemies without to much mez abilities).

Keep in mind, though, that a single piece of rare salvage often goes for over a million nowadays, so while he may not have that much influence on hand right now, just dumping stuff on the market will easily net him more than enough for whatever slotting he needs.

An open letter to NCsoft