The worst powersets in the game?

Illusion. Why?
- Two invisibilities wasting power slots.
- Pet that does knockback, and summons another pet. I don't mind knockback *for players* because there should be actual *intelligence* behind it. For pets... not so much.
- Too reliant on PA.
- Not enough direct control.

When the playstyle is generally described as "Spam two powers, use a third (PA) when it's up, try to perma that," that's not, IMHO, a good set. If I want control, I'll go to anything else.

VEATs. Not least for the forced respec at 24. They just don't seem to know what they want to be. Barring the "huntsman" style (which makes that 24 forced respec even more annoying) and the crab, which is a bit recharge driven, they're just completely un-fun to play for me.

See my Guides and Tutorials

I don't know if it's the "worst" powerset, but here's the one I hate the most of the powersets I've played:

Stone Armour. It's reliant on caveman design which was questionable even at the time of its creation, and has only gotten worse in comparison with other sets. This is the only set where it's not just prudent but PREFERRED to respec after you get your last power and dump half your set. Granite Armour is a horrible idea, or at the very least a mediocre idea with a horrible execution. And even ignoring that, the set proper is not that impressive. It costs far too much to run for what it does, it has really irritating limitations on top of that and it's fugly, to boot.

Pretty much every other set I've played, I enjoy. Some more than others, obviously, but there is no such set that I've outright refused to ever use again. Except Stone Armour. Unless something revolutionary happens with the set's core design, I will never make another character using that thing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

There's no powersets which I "hate" as such, but some, for me, are unbearable.

1. Illusion - God, do I dislike Illusion. I've even tried for the Illusion/Rad combo and still found it abysmmal to play. Just really, really boring.
2. Force Field - Outclassed by pretty much any other Support set. Even worse on a Defender unless you picked a good attacking powerset.
3. Infact, Thermal and Cold Domination, or anything which requires me to keep a buff active on more than two people. Because the only time the whole time stands in a neat little group is right at the beginning of a mission, and i'm not shouting out every 2 minutes.
4. Super Reflexes - I have a lot of SR characters, and I like the set, but A) Scrappers get the AoE defence toggle far too late B) Motherchuffin RNG
5. Titan Weapons - Higher levels, it destroys everything. Pre-SOs? You'll be lucky to have any hair left.
6. Stone Melee - Hits hard, but it hits your endurance harder

Changed title of thread to fit answers given.

Unfortunately, that only applies to the latest post.

For me, personally...
I actually like and have pretty good luck with a lot of the sets that have been mentioned. I absolutely love my Peacebringers and Claws stalkers. Force Field (I can't imagine my Ninja MM's life without it-), Trick Arrow (Try running a decently-played one with a Demons MM and watch what happens- ) and even Sonic can be useful, and definitely have their place in the game.

That said... I'm not at all impressed with Beast Mastery. Mine's in her 30's and I'm still not at all sure I'm going to keep her. The pets are much, much more annoying to control and keep alive than either the Bride's zombies or Hanano's ninja, and that's saying something.

I also haven't been very impressed by my Electric/Electric Dom. Even at 50+3 with all his iToys, he just feels very weak solo and pretty much entirely useless on a team or league. I had Gremlins for about a week on him and respecced out of them. It was like having two Lady Janes around... those jerks' AI was just insane. And suicidal. <_<

Scrapper version of shield is pretty horrible pre-IOs. It's like it was designed with IOs in mind.

Honestly, strictly with SOs, I'd say regen is more survivable than shield.

I'd say my weakest level 50 is a dual pistols/devices blaster. Just... blasters have problems, dual pistols has its problems, and then I combined all that with devices which as most people will tell you, has 2-3 good powers, especially if you want to play at the speed of the typical CoH team.

I tend to dislike my PB also. And I found MA on a stalker to be pretty meh... MA only has the one AoE and it's not a fantastic one, but not having it really hurts.

This is a hard pick for me.

I would probably put Ice Control as the weakest of the control sets. However, my general feeling is that the worst of the control sets is probably about as good as an "average" Defender blast set, because just the basic control powers and modifiers are very good. This is the way I felt about Gravity prior to its buff as well. Both of those sets look bad next to massively overpowered sets like Plant and Fire, but to me they still seem better than fairly "average" sets like Defender Radiation Blast, and MUCH better than the weakest blast sets, like Electric. At least to me, if you have to be worst, being the worst control set is probably the best category to fail at.


Beyond that:

Psi Blast on Blasters. Bad enough that if a prolif is described as having been "Psi'ed" most people understand that to mean stripped of its worth. I consider this the single worst set in the game personally. It's especially pathetic because Corruptor and Defender Psi Blast are average sets to start with, and this set is essentially a nerfed version of that.

Sonic Resonance, Force Field, Poison, and Trick Arrow all ride around at about the same level of underpowered for me, each for somewhat different reasons.

Energy Melee for reasons probably stated in this thread. Bad enough that I can assume someone said something about it without having actually red the thread.

Electric Assault, if forced to pick a Dom set. In fact, probably Electric Assault before Ice Control, at least for me. Where at least ice Control (and Gravity) has some unique things to set it apart, Electric Assault mainly stands out as being the same as everything else but perfectly worse.

Well if you want objectively the worst sets you can just pull the numbers. It's pretty easy to rank anything based on stats like worst damage in ranged/control/melee or worst recharge or etc.

but for the most part, people aren't number crunchers so they'll run off what's subjectively the worst.

Ice Melee.

Since it's so meh that people haven't even remembered to mention it.

Force Field
Trick Arrow
Sonic Resonance
Empathy

...As a frequent support player, these sets I personally find the worst.
They are so horrendously BORING to play.
The numbers are all ok, but they just don't hold up to a fun gaming experience in the modern game.
Also outside sonic, the visuals of FF, TA and Emp are dated.

My two penn'orth:

+1 for Electric Blast. Really disappointing and despite having an E3 blaster at level 50 who was my 2nd or 3rd ever 50 that at the moment I can't bring myself to delete Ive lost count the number of times I've considered deleting him.

+1 for Force Fields. Another set that I want to like but just fall asleep everytime I roll one. Anyone with a bots / FF MM toon should have it deleted and forced to roll a toon that makes them have something to do. Everytime I see someone with one (and there was a time when it seemed like EVERYONE had one Redside), a part of me cries inside.

Kinetic Melee. Probably the highest level toon I've ever deleted. Had a KM / WP brute at level 37 and it looked and sounded quite cool but it was a little slow; ultimately a bit dull to play.

As for PBs, yes with the changes that have been made to Light Form and the form animation changes, they are better, but imo the damage is still sub par. In actual fact a PB has 3 self heals. Two in human form and one in Dwarf. I'm enjoying mine at the moment but that's only after putting money into it to more or less perma Light Form. The recharge bonus associated with that makes all the other attacks cycle faster making it a "little often" type toon. KB is easily manageable if you play intelligently, so not really a major problem imo.