Poll: Archetype Solo Difficulty

maatmons

Brought on by a couple of recent threads. (<--- It's a link [to the poll])

markhawkman

well, I've only tried 3 so far, so...

maatmons

You can leave as many blank as you like. It'll only factor you in for the others.

chaelk

I can tick all of them, since I've levelled all except radiant and Behometh to 40. They are currently on 35 and 28.

The only ones I rank as average or worse are Inventor, radiant(until you work out how to use it as a DPS) and Behemoth(slow to get going)

That's levelling through missions, not spamming alerts​​

sterga

I normally find ATs to be irritating to level more than difficult. But I also have 8k hours into CO with Heirloom gear, so my opinion means almost nothing for "difficulty". An AT being "difficult" to solo with can be due to how terribly built the ATs are or it could be the content is not even remotely built with an AT in mind. There is a huge difference between the power of an AT and the power of a FF. There is also a massive difference between how someone like me plays and the experience a new player has to CO.

chaelk

The there's the
"I like melee, so I'll use this ranged character in melee"Dying repeatedly until explained, use at max range and shoot them as they run towards you.
" I don't need to read what it does, I've played MMO's before."
"Why can't I faceroll everything, like in my favorite game X?"
"Why am I dying at low level , when charging large groups of mobs? I'm meant to be a superhero."
"What do you mean, have I equipped any gear?"

etc.
some people read the powers and work them out, others just expect them to do what they think, they should do.​​

beezeeze

Unleashed is easiest of all the free ATs and quite a lot better than most of the premium ATs.

Tips for survival on low level ATs:
1. RANK UP YOUR PASSIVE ASAP!
2. Press Shift To Block.
3. Equip Gear.

Also learn how to pull enimes and use terrain to block line of sight to keep from getting overwhelmed. Remember even if you don't have any ranged attacks you can still pick up and throw objects.. so go ahead and smash that purple ganger with a trashcan!

riverocean

The Disciple, The Unleashed, The Scourge, The Savage, & The Void all level pretty easily. Behemoth and Invincible aren't bad but you have to watch your health. The support AT's need a look at. If you are cagey with your Grimoire it's surprisingly not as bad as many think. But that's with a smart player behind the wheel, who is also keeping their gear up during leveling.

markhawkman

Yeah, Grimoire works best when you choose your battles carefully and don't just run in guns blazing.

chaelk

Grimoire, you don't even near the gear. I've levelled one, through missions and alert dailies with no gear. It only had 10 more deaths than the FF with no gear. With the changes to Skarnes bane, oh boy do youget aggro.

get to near max range, drop sigils, attack and run to other side of sigils, block. shoot anything still alive after sigils.


also remember to shop at Karneeki from level 11 on, for healing items.
you should also have a 10pack of heals from your start box.​​

aesica

My biggest issue with AT difficulty is that most of the dps ones don't have any survivability options worth noting, coupled with the fact that the energy unlock doesn't seem to become available until 25 and that's absolutely terrible for people without heirloom gear. My soldier AT noticed a night-and-day difference once she leveled high enough to get her energy unlock. Both energy unlocks and forms NEED to be made available much sooner--for all ATs. Getting more and more damage-dealing abilities is pretty pointless when you're killing things too slowly due to having to do the EB->meaningful damage-EB dance.

reiwulf

100% agree, all ATs should have their energy unlock sooner in the skil progression.

spinnytop

I guess it just takes some people longer to discover that "survival ability" isn't limited to heals and active defenses.

gorinzachian

spinnytop said:

I guess it just takes some people longer to discover that "survival ability" isn't limited to heals and active defenses.

Exactly. Sometimes, the best way to survive the enemy is to take them down before they can hit you. Other survival abilities include stuns and knocks.

aesica

If it seems like not everyone has "discovered" the survival capabilities these powers offer, there's a reason for that. Stuns and knockbacks only go so far and make poor substitutes for survival powers which heal or reduce damage. Since DR on a given target is shared by all attacking it, a fellow team member who might have automatic, short-duration knocks or stuns in their standard rotation abilities can completely shut down the knocks or stuns you might've had for survival purposes.

chaelk

I find, running away fast, always a good option. some missions, you can literally run through, without stealth.

If in doubt, block, if a large group. RUN. you are allowed to run and get them as they chase you. melee opponents.
ranged ones, a lot stop attacking when you engage them in melee.​​

spinnytop

chaelk said:

I find, running away fast, always a good option. some missions, you can literally run through, without stealth.



If in doubt, block, if a large group. RUN. you are allowed to run and get them as they chase you. melee opponents.

ranged ones, a lot stop attacking when you engage them in melee.​​

^ some good thinkin' right there

meedacthunist

I find it impossible to gauge. Are ATs harder than FFs? Yes. Provided said freeform has a reasonable build and wasn't put together in a really bad way.

Estimating difficulty between different ATs? This is situational. Obviously tanky ATs with self-heals have it easier. Some people would say that Inferno is hard. I find it easier than other f2p ATs due to how fast you can kill things before they can hurt you.​​

magpieuk2014

The Inferno gets worse the longer you play it. Presumably diminishing returns on super stats is part of the reason, but it plays nicely up until around lvl 30 and then falls off a cliff; total glass cannon. This may have improved, post power-tweaks, but I have no intention of going back to find out. And that's the main problem with AT's; very few of them make you want to take them out for a spin once you've got them to level 40, as they just seem to become less effective and less fun to play.

theravenforce

I think some AT's are very much down to player skill more so than anything else.

I sort of want to blame the distinct lack of block tutorials in the tutorial. It was a very bad idea to remove that. The replacement they have is weak at best sadly.

Are some AT's built badly and could be built better? No doubt, but that may sort of be intended to get people to sub. But it also has the negative effect of people thinking X power set is just plain bad.

aesica

theravenforce said:

Are some AT's built badly and could be built better? No doubt, but that may sort of be intended to get people to sub. But it also has the negative effect of people thinking X power set is just plain bad.

The problem there is that this game already does too much to "get people to sub." I get that they want to incentivize it, but CO does so by making the game largely unappealing to anyone who doesn't. Who would want to sub for a game they didn't like when they played it as a free player? Literally the only carrots they should be dangling are 1) freeform access, and 2) the monthly zen stipend. If they turned around and gave literally everything else to silver players, there'd still be a heavy incentive to sub for those two things--primarily for freeform.

spinnytop

aesica said:

but CO does so by making the game largely unappealing to anyone who doesn't.

Blatantly false. As someone who played only Archetypes for several years I can assure you that you are way off the mark.

markhawkman

Yeah, ATs are very playable. They may not have ideal setups... but newbie players wouldn't know a good freeform build if they saw one anyways.

aesica

spinnytop said:

aesica said:

but CO does so by making the game largely unappealing to anyone who doesn't.

Blatantly false. As someone who played only Archetypes for several years I can assure you that you are way off the mark.

*Groan*

There you go again, thinking an opinion you disagree with is wrong. I'm pretty sure you're gold, probably lifetime, so there's a pretty good chance that you've forgotten how crummy it feels to be silver in this game, which is bad because you don't want players to feel crummy. You want them to think, "wow, this game is awesome. I should throw money at it for even more nice things!"

1) I've said this before, but I guess I'd better say it again: As a silver player with only ATs to choose from, I played this game for a bit and then left because the experience was so mediocre. At the time, I didn't even know freeform existed. What I did know was that my various chosen ATs weren't very enjoyable. They played slowly and felt weak--either in terms of squishiness (soldier, grimoire) or in terms of damage output (glacier). I know people will say those are great ATs in some way or another...but that's at 40 with proper gear, or maybe even in the upper 30s with heirlooms. When I was new, I played them to about 20 without heirlooms or anything but basic quest gear. I found each one awful in various ways, and just gave up thinking "this game just isn't very good." If they hadn't given out the free freeform slots back in december, which showed me what this game could really do, I wouldn't be here today. (Which some people such as yourself would probably like, but that's not the point)

2) You can't tint your powers. In a game that boasts customization, this kind of limitation only serves to make every, say, silver inferno AT look alike instead of just playing alike.

3) You're excluded from certain ingame content. Granted, onslaught kind of sucks, but excluding free players from actual content is still bad practice and seldom done these days because you want to show the player everything your game can do. Enticing them into handing over their wallets becomes harder to do if you only show them a few select parts.

4) If a silver happens to buy a freeform slot (or is lucky enough to be around for a free one) they're going to get pretty discouraged when they see how expensive it is to undo inevitable newbie mistakes. If there is one thing I can attest to, it's that being silver with several freeform slots makes respecing out of mistakes extremely punishing. We're talking many days of endless smash grinding here. I know some people have suggested giving a free freeform slot to every account to give silvers a proper taste of freeform, but I think that might be a mistake unless retcon becomes less atrocious for silver players using freeform slots. The number of mercy/free retcons silvers get from 1 to 40 and beyond is literally 0.

markhawkman

you could in theory grind guardian tokens to unlock villain play.

I was serious in my earlier post. If I'd tried to build a FF as my first character I'd have had no idea what I was doing and would have made something LESS effective than an AT.

reiwulf

just because someone didn't have a bad experience with ATs as a silver player, it doesn't mean that it is in fact a very limited experience in general. ATs are already pretty restrictive, plus non coloring of powers, plus a gold limit, it really plays like a different game.

beezeeze

I started as a silver player with only ATs, and I am glad that I did because by playing those ATs to lvl 40(unleashed and behemoth) I learned more or less how a character should be built and when I did get a gold account I was able to build passable FF characters using ATs as a template... without that I would have been pretty lost. These days I play on a silver account with several ff character slots unlocked...I don't really mind the drawbacks of playing as silver and my experience from having a gold account means I rarely have to spend very much on retcons.

Also ff characters get the same perks when it comes to OV tokens regardless if the account is gold or silver.

chaelk

also some at's work better WITHOUT heirloom gear or with a partial set. yes, I know sacrilege.I didn't get my first set of heirloom gear till I'd been playing for 2 years. It was mission gear.

for ones with energy problems, I use mercenery or normal mission utilities, with rec/int/ cost discount in them.
you can get a +30 rec or int utility from a level 10/11 mission from cheif surhoff
a lot of times I haven't swapped that till the worm temple. partly due to the crappy utility rewards and partly because it works great.
remission gear- recovery plus cost discount and the blue level 40 gives you more recovery than the purple in the store

ones with survival/hps problems. defence with con/dex statted plus a def mod.

despite how useful heirloom gear is, it isn't always the best to use. and no you don't have to change your gear every couple of levels.
Mercenery gear I find useful for about 10 levels.

---

as for defences, my FF's. their active defence is usually resurgence. active offence, most don't have as i rarely remeber to use it anyway. heal is usually bcr or vala's light(?)
I get eb, blast, passive, aoe, form, block, then heal/energy unlock, depending on the character. so I still get the unlock about 20 or 23.

no, my characters aren't min maxed, I go for workable, albeit with some odd combinations.
NO, I very rarely have to retcon one at 40 and that will usually be, swapping 1 thing for another in the last few powers.
I have several with spare powers empty because I didn't want anything else.
I ALWAYS stock up at Karneeki and max my block fast.

as for the powers people say you need end for like, force cascade and gigabolt. you don't , I have them on builds with ego/dex/con and they work fine. You just stack cost discount instead of cooldown.

---

it all depends on how you play​​

aesica

I think you guys are selling yourselves short. This isn't meant to be a Spinnytop-style brag, but when I came back, I jumped straight into freeform and even though I made a ton of mistakes with it, it was more playable in basic content than the ATs I'd previously played. As a reminder, my prior experience was next to nothing and aside from 2 gun cheese (which everybody used) what I picked was a pretty random hodgepodge.

Freeform would be a legitimate thing to throw at new players if enough instructions were given to educate players on the basics, regarding things like the right energy unlock, form, etc for their chosen powers and superstats.

The problem with the ATs is that they're designed as something you'd play as a complete package at level 40. It seems to me like not a lot of consideration was taken about how well (or poorly) they'd be to play during the leveling experience. It would also be nice to have more "choice" tiers, as well as the option to utilize 2 different roles instead of being stuck in just 1 the entire time.

chaelk

they were designed to give people a taste of the powers. then hopefully the people sub and go FF.

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problem with a list of the 'right' things. That varies by people's method of making FF. a lot of people think in terms of min maxing. hat's not the ony way to make a build.

---

mine, I'll stick to half arsed and "I wonder what happens if"

---

you had problems with AT's but not FF. I had no problems with at's except inventor/radiant/behemoth.

as I said before it depends on how you play and what you expect to be able to do. These 2 will affect what you think of at's.​​

markhawkman

yeah poor play decisions will result in you getting trounced as FF.

decorumfriends

"And why do we fall down, Bruce?"

spinnytop

aesica said:

so there's a pretty good chance that you've forgotten how crummy it feels to be silver in this game

I had a lot of fun those several years I was a silver. I've only been gold since last December. I played back before On-Alert, back before they sky rocketed player power level.

So yeah, I had fun for a lot of years as a silver, playing archetypes, in more challenging conditions than what you've experienced. I mean what, are you really so delusional that you think I would have played a game for years if it "felt crummy" just to be a Cryptic fan boy? Nah, it's because this game is actually pretty fun - but you can make it not fun pretty quick by being overly negative and melodramatic about what little challenge you might face.

Face it, I experienced exactly what you do, probably for much much longer, and I actually experienced it during a period where it was more challenging - what you would consider even worse, and I considered better. Yeah, you like to talk a lot about opinions, but let me guess that once again instead of accepting my opinion you're going to try to play me off as someone who's just bragging so you don't have to listen to an opinion that doesn't match yours, right?

theravenforce

aesica said:

The problem there is that this game already does too much to "get people to sub." I get that they want to incentivize it, but CO does so by making the game largely unappealing to anyone who doesn't. Who would want to sub for a game they didn't like when they played it as a free player? Literally the only carrots they should be dangling are 1) freeform access, and 2) the monthly zen stipend. If they turned around and gave literally everything else to silver players, there'd still be a heavy incentive to sub for those two things--primarily for freeform.

You know...if anything...CO has actually improved AT play introducing the specialization system.

Back when I was a Silver Player, we didn't have that. Hell some didn't even have form powers to increase our damage or healing abilities. (This is in reference to Compassion and Concentration not yet being a thing. MA forms still existed)

AT's are far more appealing than they used to be. So whatever you as a Silver Player experience now...is far less problematic (IMO, when you compare to trying to run an AT without a form and specializations) than it used to be.

If they handed everything bar FF access and monthly Zen...why would you sub?

New AT's with new powers and abilities are being pumped out on a fairly regular basis, so in order to experience new powers, you only need to purchase the AT and away you go.

AT's are a way to experience freeform but from a more limited perspective. Don't forget that CO's biggest selling point is arguably the fantastic tailor it has and the ff system.

Silver Players already have free access to the tailor and no, I'm not saying that should be taken away from them, before anyone tries to pull that notion out of thin air.

Basically, AT's could be a little better and they likely will change as more reviews and nerfs come about, as well as power additions.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

aesica

theravenforce said:

If they handed everything bar FF access and monthly Zen...why would you sub?

For me personally? I'd sub for FF. I did sub just for FF. What I personally get the most enjoyment from in this game isn't finishing lousy fetch quests or slaying internet dragons. There are plenty of other, more modern games with richer, more dynamic questing experiences and better-designed internet dragons for groups to overcome. What makes this game stand out to me is the customization. It's literally the only game where I can truly make my own unique character, both in appearance as well as ability selection.

theravenforce said:

AT's are a way to experience freeform but from a more limited perspective. Don't forget that CO's biggest selling point is arguably the fantastic tailor it has and the ff system.

I'm not sure I get what you mean here. ATs are generally pretty fixed in what you can do, especially the older ones which only offer about 2-3 slots worth of A-or-B choices. Thankfully the newer ones offer more choice, but even still, a choice between two different preset powers isn't nearly as interesting as getting your pick of everything available.

Besides, freeforms get 2 additional power slots, for more powers total.

gradii said:

markhawkman said:

you could in theory grind guardian tokens to unlock villain play.

I was serious in my earlier post. If I'd tried to build a FF as my first character I'd have had no idea what I was doing and would have made something LESS effective than an AT.

This is EXACTLY what I did when I went gold for the first time years ago... and had more fun anyway.

Likewise. The first iteration of my freeform slot character was an absolute trainwreck, but it still worked better than the glacier AT I started out with. And unlike the glacier AT, it was fun enough to make me want to stick with the game this time around.

chaelk

For this year, I've been playing entirely on my silver acct.
The only FF on that is the freebie. ranged support- 3 attacks, heal, palliate, res, self res.

Yes I know some of these are purchased At's and some I got from grinding the events.

to 40 so far, Grimoire, soldier, marksman,Icicle, inferno, specialist,Unleashed, cursed, Tempest.

IN transit, Rocker, Devastator, Radiant, Night Avenger,Predator, Void, Glacier, Disciple.

OK, I have a concentration problem.

---

taking part in Cosmic hunts, Soldier, Unleashed, Tempest, Icicle.
taking part in Nightmare collosus, all except the radiant and some started at 11.*grimaces at handing out a straight line* rotating balls.
I am very little trouble getting aggro ,(whether I want it or not). I love it when someone in the team has CC or CS because I don't have that on anything.​​

markhawkman

Yeah, I did Colossi on 3 chars, and Lautna, because she was primarily melee, spent most of her time on balls. Maybe not rotating them, but that or giving those who were covering fire.

decorumfriends

I have a second account that's FTP that I self-restrict myself to spending absolutely zero real money on. I have not experienced all this "Oh, it's so haaaaaard." at all. But that's because I already knew how to play. The archetypes are NOT difficult for anyone who knows the ins and outs, and both freeform and archetype are going to be difficult for someone new until they learn.

Part of the problem is we have a bunch of whiny spoiled children that think if they're not completely steamrolling the content, that the AT is "broken" and "sucks".

chuckwolf

Of All the ATs I've found the easiest one to solo with is the Impulse if you choose Personal Force Field as your passive, and rank that and IDF up. You still do decent damage and are all but immune to mob attacks, the only exceptions being some bosses, and Viper brickbusters. You don't even need any heals.

chaelk

Just for laughs, here's a FF I made last year. It's bestial plus poison with regen. Predator is Bestial with poison plus epidemic.
​​

aesica

decorumfriends said:

Part of the problem is we have a bunch of whiny spoiled children that think if they're not completely steamrolling the content, that the AT is "broken" and "sucks".

That's not an entirely fair thing to say about people who say "negative" things about ATs. I'm all for harder content that can't be steamrolled--at higher levels when more tools are available. Most MMOs I've played start out easy and get harder as you progress. This is how it should be, because you want the content to be easy starting off so players can get used to the gameplay (and get hooked!) despite their limited set of starting abilities. As they level and get stronger, the enemies and challenges they face get progressively harder. That's manageable though because they have more tools to work with. With a few exceptions, Champions Online is the complete opposite--everything gets easier as you approach 40, but starting out is really rough. If you want hard content, just make a group of only level 10 ATs and hop into a grab alert. Bonus points for anything with viper trash mobs. No scaling gear allowed either, because new players don't have those things in most cases.

With freeforms, I always try to get a form, energy unlock, and passive as early as I can to make things bearable during those early levels. And it does. ATs thankfully do this with forms and passives, but why they wait until 25 for the energy unlock is beyond me. Aside from earlier access to energy unlocks, I'd think a bit more highly of ATs if they had more choices involved in power selection. Thankfully, the newer ones do that, but many of the older ones (the free ones new players are going to be seeing and trying out) only offer power choices for around 2-3 slots. How is that appealing to anyone?

The lack of choice in a customization-heavy game, combined with an inverted difficulty curve and energy unlocks being delayed until 25 makes for an uninteresting starting experience. Now I know it's easy for people to dismiss this as "whining" or whatever, however: I'm not a new player anymore. I have a fairly strong 40 on my second account that is capable of carrying any new characters I make, so unlike most people in this game, the starting difficulty curve doesn't even really apply to me anymore. What I'm expressing here is concern about how this game could be putting its best foot forward by offering a much more attractive starting experience than it currently does.

decorumfriends

aesica said:

decorumfriends said:

Part of the problem is we have a bunch of whiny spoiled children that think if they're not completely steamrolling the content, that the AT is "broken" and "sucks".

That's not an entirely fair thing to say about people who say "negative" things about ATs.

I neither said it was all or even most, nor that that was the entire problem. But my statement stands. They're out there, and there are a lot of them.

spinnytop

It's true. Some people feel entitled to steam roll everything just because they want to always be "Hulk on a rampage". Is it a major problem for the game? Nah, some of those people are just very vocal and try to make it look like it's a major problem. It's actually a very minor issue, and it's primarily only an issue for those people themselves - the rest of us aren't affected by it. We can play the game just fine because we're willing to play the game correctly, rather than playing it wrong and demanding it be changed so that what we're doing wrong becomes right.

The game is in fact easy starting out. NPCs die very quickly and deal damage at a low enough rate that you can very easily survive them, so long as you're using the tools given to you. It's that second part that new players might struggle with, and it's the part the people who feel entitled to steam rolling will definitely struggle with. And no, those tools aren't forms and energy unlocks - ATs get those in a timely manner and are given much more relevant tools early on.

If they actually do implement some sort of "combat tactics tutorial" in the game it might help some of the new players who aren't familiar with some basic tab-target MMO strategies. However, those entitled folks won't be helped by it - in fact, they'll probably just take it as something else to claim that they're being oppressed by. They're very stubborn you know, that's what leads them to head butt bee nests and then complain that they're being stung.

magpieuk2014

Part of the problem is we have a bunch of whiny spoiled children that think if they're not completely steamrolling the content, that the AT is "broken" and "sucks".

They're not here, though, so what we actually have is people complaining about the whiny people, which is actually
slightly worse
and just sets people off on their usual peacock displays of excellence.

The recent power changes have improved the lot of ATs a fair bit. A number of them used to have Crippling Challenge/Challenging Strikes on key powers by default, which meant they attracted aggro they weren't used to and simply weren't able to handle (as anyone who's ever tried to take a Marksman AT into a Grab Alert would find out). Now those advantages are a build choice, it's become much more straightforward, which should be a good thing for new players (if there are any).

I'm going through a bit of a phase of playing ATs at the moment (there are some power sets I still don't quite know inside out, especially with all the recent changes, and ATs are a good way of trying them). Might be time to make one or two more available to F2P/ Silvers, as there seems to be some duplication (Rockstar/Devastator, Predator/Savage)...

markhawkman

There's a special AT that is literally a duplicate except the power colors.

magpieuk2014

Actually... I take that back. The changes have stripped Crippling Challenge/Challenging Strikes from existing AT toons but they haven't replaced either with "Challenge!" - which means anyone with an existing AT has got rid of all the Aggro-attracting nonsense but new ones haven't. (I could be wrong, the power window is a bit hopeless, sometimes - did I read they're changing it on FF to show all the advantages taken, too? Hope so...)

Anyway. If I could think of one thing worth doing with the F2P/Silver ATs, it would be to remove the default application of "Challenge!", altogether. The game doesn't explain the aggro mechanics anywhere and I'm entirely sure it's responsible for making the default F2P account experience much harder than it needs to be (full disclosure: I checked, and I don't have that advantage anywhere on any of my FF toons. That might be because I don't really do tank characters, but I suspect it's because I don't really see the point....)

There's a special AT that is literally a duplicate except the power colors.

Is that the Cursed? I have that one. Colour changes are good....

chaelk

CC/CS were all adv, you didn't have to buy them.
how hard is it to understand " IF you use this power, the target will attack you for X seconds."

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I have ZERO characters with CC or CS because I have ZERO specific tanks.

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and yes I have several marksman and no problems with going into alerts with them.​​

reiwulf

certain ATs do need some more work to make them have more survibaility. of course a DPS AT should do mainly DPS, but still he needs *some* way to defend himself and not die at the first hit.

magpieuk2014

CC/CS were all adv, you didn't have to buy them.
how hard is it to understand " IF you use this power, the target will attack you for X seconds."

As hard as "The Powers window on an AT isn't showing you the powers and advantages you have, it's showing you the ones you have and the ones you could have if you spent all your advantage points." Dear lord, this game, sometimes....

pantagruel01

magpieuk2014 said:

A number of them used to have Crippling Challenge/Challenging Strikes on key powers by default

This statement is complete nonsense. Yes, a lot of them had crippling challenge or challenging strikes available as advantages, but nothing ever forced you to take those advantages. DPS ATs usually draw aggro because the tanks are nonexistent or bad (they don't have threat wipes, which doesn't help, but if the tank is good enough that doesn't matter).