So, I've been considering remaking Sibrina to another archtype... thinking that will spark my interest in playing her more. Seems like Mastermind just isn't my cup of tea, and I already have a Dominator in Marilin, so I'd like to get some thoughts and ideas from those who know Sibrina about what sort of archtype you think she'd fit into and those who don't know her... just some thoughts on the other three archtypes out there.
Any feedback would be very appreciated!
Thanks everyone!
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Well I don't know Sibrina much, yet. But I do know that, of the mastermind sets, I can only 'deal with' Robots and Thugs, as the AI for the others tends to be problematic. (Not sure on Soldiers, hopefully they're not as suicidal as Ninjas.) So I can see why you'd not be into them as much.
So far I've... three Dominators (La Diablesse/Mind-fire, Bitter December/Ice-cold, and Miss Mesmerise/Mind-Psi) and although I love the set, they're very end-heavy.
Brutes, same thing, once you get into the teens, end mgmt is a problem (to the point of where you're constantly trying to choose between Fury and being able to attack!).
I positively LOVE Stalkers (my second-highest is Daisy Chain, at 41, and you would all LOVE her backstory!) but she's been a solo machine ever since I rolled her in Beta cos no one would team with a Stalker until I12.
I do like Corruptors (I have two) but they're definitely team builds. Soloing gets tricky in the mid-20's with them, mainly due to end issues, resistance to the debuffs, and taking all the aggro. Corrs are squishy.
Best AT, hands down - Widows. But you have to have a 50 to get one.
I should stick up for my zombies, who do just fine in battle -- as long as I follow them in. But this is not addressing Sibrina's issue, since she does not want to be a Mastermind! (And managing pets is very busy, so I do not blame her in the least.)
My favorite Archetypes are the Mastermind and the Dominator -- I love having Domination in my pocket for when I meet bosses. It makes things so much easier, and it feels very cinematic to me. There's always a point in superhero movies where a character really cuts loose, and Domination allows me to simulate that.
I like Stalkers; I have an old one whom I never play. But I often have trouble teaming with them since players have a habit of attacking first and getting all the aggro on their stalker, then dying. This tends to frustrate me, when zombies are so good at taking fire and Assassin's Strike is perfectly effective after aggro has already been drawn.
My Brute is an experiment and I am learning a lot. I have learned that, for me at least, being the Brute does not mean attacking the boss as a tank would. Instead, I aggro the group and attack the small guys, building up Fury (or whatever it is called) until I can attack the boss. It is the opposite of the tank, for me, as far as playing the character goes. The boss dies last when I play the Brute. Unless we have a Stalker; the Stalker + Brute combo is great because the Stalker kills the boss and the Brute kills everyone else. It's very different than hero side, as I see it.
Some Corrupter powers I find insanely boring. It's just a point and kill squishy class, and when you get hit, you go down. But other power sets have more complicated and neat abilities and you do more than just lay down the DPS at range; those characters I can enjoy very much.
I must preface this by saying I suck at this game. A lot. I rolled Babydoll Slayer about three minutes BEFORE Crimson Conjuress came into the world, a week or so prior to In Absentia and Ersatz Evil exiting, and almost two or three weeks before Felicia Onyx. Go ahead and look at the SG screen, and compare.
Ok, so my personal take on the "secretary" gimmick is best served with a mastermind. I envision her coordinating and hiring clean up crews, preferring to oversee "temps" solve problems than be forced to do the work herself.
But I agree with you, not overly fond of using them, and agree with Alistaire, bots and thugs are the only ones I can even remotely deal with.
Sibirina is already good with a rifle in character, so she may choose to simply drop the help and do it alone (assault rifle/?? corr). I personally like the AR set, but I think it weakens in the later game since it's all lethal damage or something. Once more, I suck and don't know about all that. I do know that there is a Rifle Kelli and Rifle Ivy in existance and very low level, and I'm excited about the prospect of the Worst Team Ever being 8 AR corruptors. Corruptors are fun in groups, but no matter how you look at them they're support pieces. I've had more frustration with my corrs than any other AT in the game.
From what I know, Ms Styles doesn't have any powers. Since i12 started, this is a LOT less of a problem since weapons finally exist. I LOVE Brutes more than I love lacy undergarments. The /willpower set, while it does have it's flaws, also solves a lot of the endurance problems with it's version of Stamina. Charisma has very few endurance problems, unless she has to run all three of her toggles, and that's very, very rare. Charisma also disgusts me with how survivable she is, and how much she destroys things. She's my mandatory Dual Blade/Willpower brute made when i11 went live. Even Kelli does a great job of killing, and she's Mace/Willpower. Sibrina has plenty of IC outlets to change to either of these, or even axe/something as Charisma, Felicia, and Greta all have great weapon proficiency and would be more than willing to help teach her.
I'm not too good with Stalkers, but Greta and Felciia seem to kill things well enough, and Babydoll Slasher doesn't suck as much as I expected. Granted, she's not even level 10 yet...
I'm not that experienced with Dominators, but you said you haz one and are satisfied with just her, so all good there.
Finally, there's plenty of leeway to draft a new set, between teachers to teach weapons, Greta to...ah...modify our favorite Keyboarding Redhead, or random wackiness that results from living in the isles.
...Sorry if this was incoherent, I'm pretty burnt from work.
Recap:
Corr - Support piece, squishy, bad solo, good teams.
Brute - LOVE in FURY form, easy to use, good IC change-over potential.
Stalker - Bit more of a finesse piece than brutes, but still totally playable once you find the groove. More solo oriented than team based, though flexable enough to be used on both.
And 'cause Nadja got in RIGHT before me...
Her break downs are pretty accurate. I usually brute down the minions and LTs before focusing on the big bads, to build my fury while lowering opposition DPS quickly. In other RPG terms, it's kinda like casting both "cure poison" and "boost damage" on yourself at the same time.
I play corruptors as a "Reverse Defender," where my thinking in battle is thus:
1) Heal if needed.
2) Damage.
3) Buff/Debuff if available/tacticaly sound
4) Damage.
I play defenders similarly, but with a corruptor you've got more of a "pick 'em off" ability since you have the inherent "mercy shot" thing going. I've heard brutes complain about corruptors sniping the minions out from under them while trying to build fury, but in all hoensty I find it helpful since I usually can get an enemy down to just a few hitpoints with one or two clicks and it's more economical to use my BIG attacks on new targets and let my Corruptor friends pick off the other ones. But that's more team-work/synergy than actual powersets.
Just for my somewhat belated two cents:
Brute - My only 50 thusfar, Maidolin De'Vi is a SS/Inv Brute, and I love her. She's damn near indestructable now, and, with time, puts out a fair amount of damage (plus she's one of the best looking dead girls out there).
Corrupters - I think you guys have already hit the nail on the head with them: they have a lot of potential, but are a pain to solo with.
Dominators - Fun and fairly soloable, they're a great DPS group, if a bit more difficult.
MM - Since they're right out, I've just gotta represent a bit, to use a horribly gauche term. My soldiers AI pretty darn good 90% of the time. They generally just sit back and shoot, and can do alright with disorienting rifle butts if they get into melee.
Stalkers - They look damn fun to play, but I've never gotten the hang of 'em, myself.
Crab/Bane - Haven't played 'em
Widow/Fortunata - Its been rough going so far with Widow Sandre, but the jury will deside after level 24. They seem to be a Stalker / Dom lovechild...
Personally I would say Thugs/Traps, Thugs/Dark but I am Biased in my experience.
If you do not want to play a mastermind, and based on the support role of a "secretary" I am going to suggest a corruptor. Like Babydoll said, you can play a corruptor as a Defender. I have in my stable a Dark/Thermal who is entirely team based, she cannot physically solo. Period. 2 attacks + Vet powers. On a team though she makes brutes gods and everyone else just harder to kill.
As someone who I assume is "natural origin" though like babydoll said that could change. You could make an AR/Traps corruptor. This isn't the easiest build in the world, but you can decimate things if you have a team who is patient with you. As alistaire knows well, there are few things that make you more giddy than watching your acid mortar go off...and pull enemies into your field of mines and poison traps.
Alternatively if you want to go full on support, Kinetics is the owner of all. With Radiation and Dark being tied with it.
Cold and Thermal function similarly. One gives Defense, the other Damage Resistance. They have few debuffs, but with that you also don't solo so well until the late game.
I played a dominator pre Domination changes and was a month after we got grandville. So my experiences there are tainted to the poor.
Stalkers are fun, but squishy. once you start getting hit, you start going down fast since they have low HP by comparisson to other melee classes.
Brutes. Choose, but Choose Wisely. The wrong combo can make you wonder why you thought it was a good idea. (DM/Elec it makes me cry). Willpower however, is God on the lips and minds of children. There are few things, if anything up to a team of 3 on the middle difficulty a DB/WP brute can't solo.
And yeah Alistaire said it to, Widows are where it's at. I love my Fortunata, and my Night Widow is in this group and quite fun as well.
Hope my rambling helps a little
I haven't really had a chance to RP more with Sibrina, but she seems like a ranged fighter to me. IMO, of course.
As far as MMs go, I have Steel Finesse, my Bots/Arrow MM... I must say, she is disgustingly strong. Steel and Ivy took out Black Scorpion as an AV by themselves, and Steel took out Manticore as a Hero all on her own, and it was easy to do.
If you really don't like the MM sets, but still want to go with Range, Corrupters are very fun. They aren't the best set up for solo, but the right set can make it very possible... Dark/Rad, Ice/Dark, and the new Elec/ /Storm sets open up very fun possibilities.
Dominaters are very fun! Which I'm learning all over again thanks to Thessa, even with the lack of holds Earth control has at early levels, and the commonly resisted Lethal that /Spines has. But, like all ATs, the right set can make this game a lot easier.
And of course there are brutes. What Nadja said pretty much sums up brutes, and the right set will make you unbeatable in the PvE game. And the new /Super Reflexes on brutes or /Willpower are great ways to play if you want to go all baseline human.
Lastly, stalkers are very difficult. Builds are tight, you rely on hit and run good chunks of hte time, BUT they kill things the quickest. As long as you can keep with it until lvl 32, you'll be fine. I say 32 becase by then, you will have most, if not all, of your attacks.
I don't have any experience with the VEATS yet, but everyone loves them so, so.. yeah hehe.
One last thought, there is no reason to keep Sibrina a human natural origin. You can set it up where she gets armor, special weapens, magical trinkets, or heck, a Kheldian(Rad/Dark, Dark/Rad Cor is a perfect example of a Nictus) to enjoy her more, or so you can pick a set you really want to play, but wouldn't make sense for her to get.
As an aside... what would you think of a Houdoun as a faculty (or Staff) member? I've a level 30-something Dark/Dark Corr that I could bring in, so you could sample her as far as teams and such.
Plus Baroness Samedi is SUCH the badass evil character.
*looks at Miss Samedi and melts* O.M.G. *swoons*
*grins evilly*
Oui, ma cher'... venez à moi, et dansez la petite mort!!!
Actually... not sure how well she'd go with Lust... she is... well she's ridden by the Loa of Death and Rebirth. So, perhaps.
The Voodoo sorcerer is a great archetype in comics and makes a great villain, but I think maybe not a good Lust. However, keep her on the burner, because turnover among the faculty is inevitable.
We are sort of like the Hellfire Club in that regard.
I'll start off by saying I've never, ever been able to play a MM past level six. My micromanagement skills are crap, and I've never gotten around to getting the binds set up right. This'll probably change, now that I've seen how much of a killer archetype it can be, but, as is, my faith is not in my Masterminding abilities.
When it comes down to it, I'm a Direct Damage proponent; it's always been my theory that if you're killing a shit-ton of baddies really, really fast, you don't need much in the way of defense, because, well, corpses don't kill you back (with apologies to Nadja's zombie army!).
As a result, I've got a real soft-spot for Corruptors and Stalkers (no duh, right?), especially Stalkers. I'll end up focusing on them mostly here.
Here's the thing, though; in the nine months I've been on CoX, I've seen hundreds of Level 50s in the other four Archetypes, but I can only count, like, a baker's dozen of Level 50 Stalkers. This leads me to believe one of three things:
1) Endgame gets a lot harder with Stalkers, since a lot of the Big Bads have auto-aggro (which, when you're playing a stalker, kinda turns you into a particularly squishy Scrapper; auto-aggro can suck a big, fat, magically conjured black cock).
2) Stalkers get boring later on. I could see this for a lot of people, since, even playing Greta, it DOES feel like there's very little challenge sometimes. It's a binary thing with Stalkers; you uncloak, and either you kill everything, or something gets lucky and takes you down. More than other Archetypes, Stalkers tend to be a very hit-or-miss character type. Either you're going to win, or you're going to go splat. Even with Superspeed, it can be VERY hard to escape a particularly nasty throwdown.
3) Stalkers are -tricky- to team with. Soloing, a Stalker is a mass murderer, a sentient scythe cleaving through the wheat and chaff of the opposition until it hits a rock and jerks back on the farmer. On a team, Stalkers need their own role, and playing one means you need to be at the ready almost constantly, since you'll be expected to target the biggest, meanest baddie in a group and take 'em out before the rest of the crew spreads the aggro around. This can be tricky, but, from personal experience, it's a blast to play.
All that being said, I think I'd recommend Corruptor for Sibrina, honestly; we can come up with a million and three different ways for Our Favorite Secretary to gain superpowers and, if not, like Kelli said, there are a metric fuckload of non-powered options now (with more to come, apparently, with I13, if the rumors are true). A lot of people don't like Corruptors, and with good reason; they squish, they can draw massive aggro with group-debuffs (as Ivy and Sendre learned today on my rampant push to 30) and Scourge can be a dodgy proposition. Still, these flaws aside, Corruptors have some of the best Redside group-support options available (hell, if you take Kinetics, you don't even need a travel power), and frankly, there's something to be said for click-fire powers, in my humble and easily faceplanted opinion.
Brutes are Brutes. Not much to be said there, from my point of view. You get mad, you smash. Deeply cathartic and very satisfying, but all the more depressing if you find yourself getting dropped to the ground over and over again. I've always wanted to play a Brute through to Endgame, because I -love- me some rage (Fury's fun, but I mean more along the lines of playing a character who just goes apewire in combat, punching holes in the enemy with a terrible sound and pulling the spitting high-tension wires down [Go Go Godzilla!]), but for some reason, I never get past the 20s with 'em.
I hope that made sense, and I hope that helps!
I would agree that Masterminds ARE indeed tricky. What I did with Dame Demolition was rewrite the stock 'macros' for attack, follow, heel so that they did NOT also switch between aggressive, defensive, and passive. I then created macros for those stances. So instead of three macros, Dame Demo has eight (three stance, five direction).
That plus robots/traps (and a LOT of IO sets) has turned her into a bulldozer for the last 10 levels.
On the other hand, my MA/Nin Stalker has stalled out at 41. Daisy Chain is a lovely bit of RP, and did quite well solo up to the mid-30's. And then things started shrugging off Smashing damage. So she's been respec'd into more of a stealth-scrapper, able to deliver the hard hit but mostly around for "boot to the head!" on whatever team I can wrangle. So... if you go Stalker... find a primary that does something other than Smashing, cos most of the top-tier bad guys shrug it off.
All of my other characters are low 30's.
Betty Highside has yet to bloom as a Kinetic Corr, instead focusing mostly on the AR primary. BaronesSamedi's Dark/Dark combo does wonderfully on teams and even does well in PvP with her debuffs and soft controls, but is very tiring as a soloist. Diablesse and Bitter December are wonderful Dom's... until you run dry on End. Then things get sucky.
I've never gotten a Brute past 15. Just... can't do it. Thought Dual Blade/Will would be cool, but.. nope.
I feel obliged to note that Sibrina has re-rolled as a Brute with Dual Blades and Dark Armor. We're RPing that as magic weapons which Nadja has enchanted and given to her.
Debate about Archetype play styles: Continue!
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