What combo surprises you. . .

Greetings all!

Well, after the last double exp weekend I found myself in possession of two characters that I dont read much about on the forums, dont see often in game, or was able to find builds for. Interesting that after nearly 7 years here I am still finding combos that are crazy fun to play and downright devastating in PVE (even before incarnates).

So what were my two hidden gems: Stone/Shield/Soul brute and a Plant/Dark/Mace dominator.

What are your hidden gems?

I have a Force Field/Radiation Blast Defender that I *hate* soloing. I created Lady Hadron nearly 8 years ago on Virtue and, in that time, had managed to get her to level 16. During the Summer Event Blockbuster Missions I decided to revisit her and managed to gain two levels. During the Double XP Weekend I played her again, she's now level 25.

I have to say that, on teams, she's much more fun (and effective). I can give my fellow squishies status protection and some moderate Defense - and the DEF Debuffs from Rad matter much, much more.

One of my favourite characters so far is my dark/ice tank. He's not the heaviest on damage output, but he can take whatever you'd care to throw at him and tough it out.

My Dark/Fire tank seems unusual enough, and there's no synergy to speak of. He's just a monster.

I was surprised... Negatively! By a fire/fire dom, after reading about Bonfire + KD proc and thinking about how good a perma-KD patch would be for fire control.

It's sort of nice, I guess, but nowhere near as nice as I expected, and not being able to immobilize if I want mobs to be KDed just makes for too much scatter (especially if I want to run Hot Feet).

When a melee character takes point and holds aggro it is MUCH better. No argument.

I'll second the Sonic/Devices blaster as an extremely rare, though powerful and interesting, combination.

I've found dark armor/stone melee to be quite a sturdy and fun combination on a tanker, though I couldn't manage it on a brute back in the early days of CoV. For those considering it, be warned that it's one of the few characters where I felt I needed IO's (specifically, recovery and the Theft of Essence proc) in order to operate effectively. But now that the character has them, he is a beast in performance as well as concept.

I don't see many dual blades and fire paired that often (in fact, I don't see Fiery Aura paired with anything other than Fiery Melee, Staff, or Spines that often), but my db/fire scrapper turned out to be an enjoyable character, as well as much stronger than I'd expected. I am seeing this combination more than I used to, and I'm told it's an acknowledged favorite, but I always take statements about "popular" combos with a grain of salt. Every server's culture on this kind of thing is different, the forums are different again, and the AT boards, especially the melee AT boards, are practically a game culture unto themselves.

I'm surprised by anyone who doesn't pick an MA/Regen Scrapper

One thats been going since issue 6 ... Stone/Invul Brute Totally kicks butts ..and they cannot lie :P

FF/Dark defender. BR/Rad Corr. (Never run into another of either.) Flying (Hover only) SR or ElA melee.

Electric/Rad controller... Slow going in early lvls, but once lvl 50 on just SOs it is by far one of the safest characters I have built. So much debuff and control, standing parked in a mob with double stacked sleep patches, choking cloud, debuffing, end sappig, confusing, KDing, stunning everything. I just spam the evil laugh emote constantly as my pets widdle the mob.

Electric/Stone/Soul and Dark/Stone/Soul dom. Both excellent control sets, combined with the brutal smash of stone... Brutes are jealous of my Seismic Smash numbers.

My Fire/Energy Dom is crazy...Power Boosted Flashfires, massive damage from the melee/range, a total end hog though.

My Mind/Bubbles was painful to solo but is absolutely awesome on teams. Confuse, Mass Confuse, Power Boosted holds and bubbles...

DP/Traps was fun, not a powerhouse though.

I've enjoyed my Elec/Dark brute and it's a combo I haven't seen from anyone else. It's great because most enemies that do dark damage are also weak to energy.

It surprises me how many times I've rolled one up. So now I just gave in and made one my Badger. Seriously, the easiest job in the city (especially rocking I/Os) is a SS/Will Brute. Nothing too much bothers you, if you play right nothing bothers you. You just smash, and then smash some more.

Dual Pistols/Trick Arrow sounded like a bad combo, but so far its actually pretty fun. The redraw is a tad annoying, but other than that its got lots of cool little tricks and fun animations.

I made a mm, dom and a brute at about the same time. The dom hit 50 first, followed by the mm. I wasnt too impressed with the elc/shield brute until I got LR and SC. In a lv 40ish mission, the team was fighting paragon protectors. My brute got to the mob first and wiped out most of them. One teammate asked- was there a mob here? Then another teammate said- she (my brute) did it. My elec/sd brute has been my fav ever since
Im leveling an arch/ta corr, and it's surprisingly fun.

The only thing that might surprise me in this game is a SI/Dark MM. But no one expects one of those.

I have a Fire/Stone/Stone tank who I adore, I have no idea if that's a common combo or not but I really only made it when power customisation came out and I wanted to use the volcanic-style Stone Melee and Fire was the only defense set besides Stone which fit the theme.

I'm not sure if "synergy" is the right word but Fiery Aura and Stone Melee really make up for each others weaknesses well. All the KD, disorients, and of course Seismic Slam really helps survive situations that other Fire tanks would weep at, and Burn, Fiery Embrace and a solid damage aura all help to compensate for Stone Melee's poor aoe damage.