I know that it’s tempting fate… but does anyone else think the name of this thread could be, I dunno, altered a bit?
The forum is not very helpful so I’ll ask here. I never played CoH prior to this weekend so I have some basic questions. Also, I’m a solo player - I might group later but other than pickup groups in TSW/SWL I’ve never liked the experience.
How much should I invest in early powers? Should I be saving things like enhancement slots to put with later power choices or is respeccing cheap enough that I can do over when I have access to the later powers.
For that matter do powers scale? An early power might give moderate damage. Does that increase with level? How does it compare to a later power that also gives moderate damage (ignoring that fact that the later power is also likely to have some other advantage)?
I suspect I know the answers to these but it can’t hurt to ask.
I think it should be kept to retain the overall doom-and-gloom of situation, given that NCSoft could swoop in at any moment and shut the whole thing down.
I fully expect that they will.
But then, I am a glass is half empty and we’re all gonna die of thirst kinda guy.
Yeah. I get that. Let us revel in the game while it lasts.
I wish I could help. But it’s been so long. I need to play more in this particular issue (25) before I could even try to answer your questions. I’m sure that others here can explain it.
Heh, I’m just making alts and winging it. My highest level is 8. I throw enhancements into slots. I put new slots into early powers. I’m going for damage and accuracy for now.
My understanding is that early levels have a higher base accuracy that gets lower as you level up. But I feel like I’m missing a lot. So it goes.
Dud[quote=“wisefool, post:333, topic:70345, full:true”]
Hmm I do have a $ aura running. I was going to call my force field my Agent but I supposed it could be my Lawyer and I could be named… Bovine Excrement.
(It’s supposed to be Bojack horseman but there is no horse face)
Meet Pomeranian-San:
[/quote]
e that is awesome!
That fits my play perfectly! But my one alt that has reached level 10 seemed to be getting weaker as he leveled so I though I might be missing something.
You have come to the right place! (And I suspect the Homecoming forum has some folks that could provide similar info, but I know it’s harder to track down there.)
If you mostly plan to solo, I highly recommend choosing one of the basic archetypes (that’s your class) with both damage and defense: Scrapper and Brute are the usual choices. Any AT can solo, but you’re going to find it much easier with those than others.
Having said that, I also highly recommend the group experience in CoH. Even if you just team with one other person, it’s a very different and (IMHO) more interesting game. And there’s very little as crazy and fun as a full 8-man team with a lot of buffs. But I can understand why you’d want to get familiar with the game as a solo player first.
You should absolutely be using your slots and power choices for whatever helps you as you level. You’ll get the ability to respec at least 5 times on the way to 50 (and more are available through various means). That works out really well for experimentation with new powers as you level up, and moving slots around if you change your mind about what to use later.
Powers do indeed scale with level, though as you mentioned the later powers generally have benefits the early ones do not. The most important thing for a soloist is to have a solid attack chain. Early on that just means getting several attacks so one of them is always available. You can even choose an extra attack or two out of the Pool sets if you like (available from L4 on). Later, once you have a good selection, you can choose which ones you like best and develop a more efficient attack chain.
As a mostly-solo low-level character you should be slotting your attacks with these enhancements: two accuracy, an endurance reduction, and (once you have enough slots) three damage. The end redux can be left off if you’re OK on endurance (blue bar) but you’ll likely need it, especially if your defenses require toggle powers. You may not be able to afford to put enhancements in all the slots right away, which is fine, just focus on accuracy and end first. Once you get up past 22 and start using single origin enhancements, you need less accuracy and can use just one per attack.
Feel free to ask in-game if you have questions! You can do “/gfriend @ineffablebob” to add me to your global friends list, and join the QT3 gobal chat channel with “/chan_join SuperQT3”. Not a lot of us on there, but occasionally we get some discussion going.
Go to P2W vendor, get the 6 enhancements, a travel power and a free extra attack
The chat bubble has an interesting menu to adjust difficulty and number of spawns under notoriety. +2 team size and -1 difficulty is pretty good to solo missions with. Lots of spawns, easy to aoe, no damage taken really.
You can grab missions by calling contacts, some places give radios later which are great, they act like an extra contact.
Been through dozens of startup builds, and brute is just so much better than any of them lol. It’s kind of depressing. I really love playing a controller, but it’s just so slow to try and kill anything, even with the “best” power sets for damage. I have a spines/fire brute that destroys everything he gets even close to. Fights that take my controller 30 seconds, last about 3 on the brute.
Ah well, it will be a good farmer I suppose. I wish I could figure out how to get more damage out of one of the control sets. Illusion/Radiation Controller is a lot of fun, and certainly effective, it’s just so damn slow.
Used to be many controller builds basically couldn’t solo. I quite preferred this because IMO CoX was way, way more fun in large groups and a good controller was an enormous force maximizer in a group. Then they traded group utility for still anemic damage for solo capability and ruined everything. That’s more or less when I stopped playing Heroes (though I tried Villains for a while later).
Yes, that was a long, long time ago. If they ever get lag etc licked I might have to go back and see how things have evolved.
Can’t comment on controllers in general since I never could stick with any of the ones I created. But I used to run a rad/dark defender in the early days, and at the higher levels I often didn’t even bother with Radiation Infection unless we were fighting AVs or monsters, something that would be around for a while. Rad’s anchored toggle powers take too long to set up, especially on a fast-moving team.
If it’s damage and control you’re after, check out the dominator AT. I had a fire/fire dom that was very effective, although admittedly the build I had was hideously expensive.
Is there a shared bank? Where one character can store enhancements for another character?
at some point they added some passive abilities to try to help the non-damage classes solo better (and be better overall really) Controller for example does something like double damage to targets that are ‘held’ and Corruptors now have a chance of double damage on targets under 50%
The damage output difference smooths out once you get up into the 40+ range, and especially at 50 with IO sets and incarnate powers, but during the leveling process this is the way it’s gonna be. Some ATs are just better suited for team play in the lower levels because of that lack of damage.
I would argue it’s still the case that good support makes the group. I’ve been regularly running with 6-8 person teams anywhere from L20+ that are mostly support, and we usually have to crank up difficulty to +2 or +3 to make it interesting. The main difference now from back in the day is that a single controller/tank/dominator can’t completely shut down the biggest spawns and toughest enemies, but one is fine for 3-5 person groups and two can handle anything. More than that, and it’s ridiculous.
This is still somewhat painful, but they have made one major QOL improvement…the toggle doesn’t turn off when the anchor dies. It sticks around until the corpse disappears. That doesn’t help the fast-moving situation, but it makes a huge difference when the team accidentally kills your anchor first in a skirmish.
One of my personal favorites. Just recreated Darkglow last week. :)
Far as I know, there is not. But you can sort of make one using a supergroup base, and it works even if you’re soloing. Create a supergroup (you must be level 10, then go to Atlas Park or Port Oakes and find the supergroup registrar) and use “/altinvite name” to invite your other characters. Then make a base, add a room, and in that room put an enhancement table. And salvage rack and inspiration storage, if you like.
Pretty much impossible to find a group on the red side sadly. Spent an hour yesterday in the queue while asking in lfg. Blue side pops pretty much instantly. Think I will park that villain and recreate one of my live characters on blue to group. Torn between brute and scrapper. On Live it was a scrapper but brute didn’t exist when he was created.
So many different character types I’d love to try, I’ve never seen a game so rough on Altitis. CO would be the same but ‘thankfully’ they lock a lot of power choices behind paywalls so it alleviates some of the pain. lol
What are some of the best solo builds? I am asking, because after trying to find a group for a while, Ill want to just do something and solo.
I heard that electric / shield brutes were good. I used to use Illusion / Rad controllers, but I heard they were hit with the nerf bat super hard and can’t solo anymore.
I mean, obviously they didn’t completely lose their group utility (or even tilt very far into sololand). But it wasn’t a trade I wanted to make.
Thanks! I just started a Rad / Fire defender and this radiation stuff is WEIRD. Cast it, it all dies anyway and what, why is it still sucking up energy? I can’t tell if it anchors on a geographic area or centers around a mob.
I got the stinking cloud point blank hold, that’s the only one I’m going to slot now. I also like the AOE slow, that’s a nice one.
they used to go away when the target died but would be anchored on them as they moved while alive. The description still shows this is how they work, but I’m pretty sure now they last until you turn it off and if the target dies they just drop to the floor at that spot and stay