What is your approach to making characters?

Started by lugaru, April 07, 2010, 07:52:46 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

lugaru

My first problem is that I cant mak a "pure" character... I always grab something from another power set to simulate super strenght, invulnerability or watever.

Examples:

Goo is a martial artist with chains for goo tendrils and invulnerability from the power armor set.
The Vocalist is ALMOST pure force except for the sonic device from gadgets which makes him LETHAL btw.
American Pride is forcefield, might and smg (simulating a personal tk power and army training)
The worse is doc obsidian... ice, fire, might... but he is fun.

My only pure char right now is Gray Girl, she is all psychic but I wont be surprised if I give her a martial attack for show (and offense) once I get all the good psychic attacks.

GhostMachine

#1
Its pretty much impossible to make a pure character that's decent in all situations, unless you go Sorcery and count all the different types as pure rather than different powersets.

I only have one pure hero at the moment, my Might heroine Dr. March, and she'll probably end up with powers from other sets before she hits 30. (She's 15 or 16 right now; I forget which)

My main hero Midnight Crusader is mostly Munitions, except he has Orbital Cannon with the Anvil of Dawn advantage and Toxic Nanites from Gadgeteering and Regeneration and Resurgance from Supernatural. Plus Implosion Engine as his 4th Tier power (retconned and dumped Mini-Mines to take it).

My Power Armor hero Cyberknight X has the block from Might and Sonic Device from Gadgeteering, and the CO version of GhostMachine is mostly Darkness with Wrist Bolter and Invulnerability from Power Armor, but will be getting March of the Dead from Ebon Sorcery eventually. They're the closest to being anywhere near pure besides Dr. March. All my other heroes have mixes of 2 or more powersets rather than powers being mostly from one particular powerset.

If Gray Girl has any of the close range psychic attacks - especially the area effect ones, like Telekinetic Eruption or Ego Sprites - you might want to consider Mighty Leap to put her in the thick of things. Thunderbolt Lunge is getting changed for the worst, or I'd suggest it instead, because it can also be used an escape but won't be once its changed.

Courtnall6

I'll usaully start off staying in one power set but I will pick from others if the power set is lacking in some way...or another power in another set would work well with the characters theme. Hardpoint was going to be pure Archery...except there aren't enough Archery powers to do that. So he's a mix of Archery, Munitions, and Gadgets.

Northguard is pure Force(retconned from Ice). I have no reason to look elsewhere at the moment.

Some characters like Wild Wave...where I want to add more from the Supernatural power set...but I can't because they don't fit his theme. So he's mostly Electric with 2 powers from Supernatural

So for me basically...if the power fits the theme I'll use it. :cool:
Clothes make the man and colourful tights make the Super-Hero.

GhostMachine

Forgot to mention one thing:

My alien hero Commander Arkinus started out being pure Ice, but at some point I decided to add Toxic Nanites (works great with Snow Storm!). Later on I decided he didn't have enough oomph as Ice, so I retconned and changed him to Ice/Electric (still with the Toxic Nanites). And I may give him Orbital Cannon at some point (with it supposed to be a beam fired from his spaceship which is in orbit and cloaked). I have a heroine named Frostforce who is Ice/Force, but she's fairly low level; I'm mainly just using her to see how those two sets mesh and may delete her eventually.

I'm with C6 on Archery. I forgot all about my hero Nightarrow when i made my previous post, as he's pure Archery at the moment (only lvl 14) but will end up being a mix of Archery, Martial Arts (no attacks), Power Armor and *maybe* Gadgeteering. So far I like CO Archery better than CoH Archery, except for the lack of something like CoH's Oil Slick Arrow.

bat1987

I mostly stick to the theme, usually one power set with some minor additions to make it more effective. Black Dragon is MA but he has grenade from munitions for better crowd control. Plus he has sonic device from gadgeteering and i use retaliation for block for bonus damage. The fight against tougher opponents usually go like this : block to get damage buff, activate sonic device followed by burning chi fist = bye bye badguy  :D

For lightning bolt i took all the powers from electric, there arent really that many of them btw, but once you take gigabolt and switch sparkstorm to toggle you`ll be pretty much unstoppable.

Celestial and Darkness I find to be a really good combo (ying yang has this), fun too.
I heard a lot of people complaining about might but I dont see why, Project Greenskin has only imbue from celestial (for guarantied critical) and he one shoted his nemesis with the haymaker the other day. Only thing to do is to focus only on str and con and you`ll be good to go. Use haymaker a lot!  :D

If one doesn`t worry much about PvP (sucks btw), you can make a good PVE build out of pretty much any set by adding some bonus things from others to spice it up a bit.

GhostMachine

#5
The only problem I have with Might is a lack of good long range attacks. Its okay if you're doing a Hulk type character, but not if you're doing a Superman type. Hurl is too slow to be used as anything but an opening strike unless you're just fighting henchmen, for instance. Retaliation is tied with Ebon Void (provided you put the advantages on them) for my favorite block in the game, though. (Love Energy Shield's look, but its not worth taking unless you use a lot of melee attacks; if you ask me, Might and Power Armor got each other's block!)

And I hate pvp for one reason; Teleport. Seems like 90% of players who do pvp have it. I won't even attempt to do a B.A.S.H. because of that. I'd like to see them add a pvp zone where travel powers don't work.

Valandar

I wanted to make a Green Lantern type character, that also was similar to the original incarnation of my avatar (the 'create guns and blades' version). So I pretty much went straight Force, then added in (later) Gatling Gun and Sniper Rifle from Munitions (colored bright red, like they were shapes of energy). But I also added Regen, simply for survivability, after a respec.

The result?

Ran a Nemcon mish for the first time after the respec. Enemies that would swat me down with a few strokes now had trouble getting me below 2/3 health. And those big ol Spartan type guys just fell like timbers.
"I've never seen anything this beautiful in the entire galaxy. ...All right, hand me the bomb."  - Ultra Magnus

No, I am NOT accepting suggestions or requests at this time.

Xenolith

Regen makes that big of a difference, huh?  I just gave that power to the Phantom Avenger and now I'm eager to see how it works out.

Valandar

Quote from: Xenolith on April 08, 2010, 12:40:58 PM
Regen makes that big of a difference, huh?  I just gave that power to the Phantom Avenger and now I'm eager to see how it works out.

It does if you have a really high Recovery stat, like I do.
"I've never seen anything this beautiful in the entire galaxy. ...All right, hand me the bomb."  - Ultra Magnus

No, I am NOT accepting suggestions or requests at this time.

lugaru

I've got a regenerating char (Rosario Thorn, swamp thing as a cute latina) and I had players actually ask me how was I shrugging off all that damage. Very nice power, and cool in the arena since you can flee for a second, regen and jump back in.

Valandar

My current character has Regen. If I block, I can get pounded on (and have in at least one situation) by three Villains and 4-6 mooks, all 2 levels above me, and actually recover health during that time. It's actually RIDICULOUSLY powerful.
"I've never seen anything this beautiful in the entire galaxy. ...All right, hand me the bomb."  - Ultra Magnus

No, I am NOT accepting suggestions or requests at this time.

UnkoMan

The Corpse has regen, and I found I love it. It was great for him since he's a low damage melee character. I would block whenever I was at 1/4 or less health and then gain it all back. Now that he's gotten more powers (and a bit of range) he does enough damage for me to take out large mobs without usually having to block all the time. So yes it is totally powerful, but I would be upset with anything else. Not to say he is invincible. He still goes down from time to time, but... Well he's the Corpse. He's not able to die. I'll probably toss in resurrection or whatever that power is called next.

But, yeah, when making a character I usually don't think about power sets at all. I base my decisions on what power I think would fit the character and be useful. That being said, a lot of them end up being in the same set anyhow.

Corpse is martial arts and darkness pretty much, with regen.
Danger is, I think, currently pure force but I plan to add some electrical.
MicroCosm has a bit of power armor and a bit of electrical and I'll end up giving him some gadgeteering as well.
Chemo Lad is fire and celestial.
Sea Lad is mostly might. If I can find a power replacer to make single blade a knife then I'll give him some of that.

I don't recall the others.

lugaru

So I feel that Force is short changed in this game in terms of it getting love (Valandar should agree)... I mean it is powerful enough but short on powers, cant be customized much and has few replacers or other stuff. I would love to see energy constructs, weapons or summons. On the other hand The Vocalist found a way to instantly take out 4 standard minions with one blow using force as pure force.  

Force Eruption (that area attack) + Sonic Device = Area damage + extra damage + 1 explosion per character. It WIPES most minions, the more the merrier. And it even stuns the survivors, great way to knock some guards silly and steal what they are protecting while they recover.

So does anyone know if Nanobot Swarm is any good? That might be my next power so I can quickly do Sonic Device and Field Surge again.

Xenolith

I gave Nanobot Swarm to Mister Green when I retconned him.  I never use it.  I've never found it to be that useful because mobs can be dealth with rather quickly, and in fights with those big, bad guys, it just does't add up to being a big deal.

GhostMachine

From what I've read, Nanobot Swarm isn't that good. I've never even been tempted to try it, myself.

As an alternative to Nanobot Swarm to snap off a second Sonic Device, I'd suggest waiting for Toxic Nanites if you can't access it yet. Use Toxic Nanites with an attack that hits multiple opponents at once, like Force Eruption (no idea if you can use both it and Sonic Device at the same time; my only hero with Sonic Device so far doesn't use TN). I use TN with Snow Storm on Commander Arkinus and with Gatling Gun and Frag Grenade (sometimes with Sniper Rifle, too) on Midnight Crusader. You shouldn't need to put any extra levels in TN or take its advantage unless you do pvp; just level up the powers you use it with, and you should be good to go.

lugaru

#15
I tested Nanobot Swarm and when I saw the -17s effect and 1 minute cool off It was straight back to the trainer (obviosly I had not left the Power House yet). I went with an inspired choice, circle of Ebon Wrath. My character has an "ozzy ozzburne" mystic side to him (and mystic crafting) and a KILLER Black Metal (corpse paint, spikes and armor) costume so the fear and added damage is a major plus. I'm pretty sure Toxic Nanites is next. I'm loving my character but I'm seriosly going to run out of powers I'm interested in soon, it is funny how I feel that I'm done making the character that I always envisioned as one of my own superheroic creations.

My next hero might be a holy vampire... I have a character from supernatural rpg's I ran called Ayla, a vampiric nun who uses her claws to carve sacred symbols into vampires chests and flies around with big bat wings. I'm having a hard time building the right costume but she should be fun wih supernatural/celestial powers.

Xenolith

I think I'm going to drop some Nanite Swarm when they give us a free Retcon with the next patch.  It just isn't that useful.

GhostMachine

I've been levelling up Cyberknight X the last few days (but took a break to get Blue Zombie from lvl 14 to 15 so he could get another costume) and have taken Chest Beam and Mini Gun as his last two powers. Now, I had Mini Gun on him before a long time ago before I retconned him (Cyberknight X is actually my oldest character, but is just now level 26 because I stopped running him for a long time and ended up levelling up Midnight Crusader to 40 first), so I knew what to expect from it. But the Chest Beam is freakin' awesome! I've found myself opting to use it when I really could end a fight with something else just so I can see the target go flying. I am running out of Power Armor powers I'm interested in taking, and Cyberknight X's next power will likely be from Gadgeteering or Might. (He's mostly Power Armor except for Retaliation and Sonic Devices)

Blue Zombie is one of my multi-powerset heroes: He has the Darkness energy builder (with the advantage that gives each strike a chance to call fear), Beatdown and Mighty Leap from Might, Reaper's Caress and Scything Blade from Single Blades, and Invulnerability from Power Armor. And I'm considering retconning him to replace Mighty Leap (with either Defensive Combo or Spirit Reverberation) and *maybe* change his travel power (currently Superspeed; I pre-ordered from Gamestop and use the Anti-Grav Boots to get around/over anything I can't with SS).