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Are the holy trinity roles dead in 5man elite content?
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
So I managed to get myself into something of an argument in the MC Powerhouse zone chat last night...
I had been talking about building a toon capable of full-time healing (which I then referred to as a "dedicated healer", which triggered the flames). The argument being put forward to me was that I was wasting my time thinking about such things, apparently because the only valid measurement of my contribution in a theoretical 5-man elite run is my damage output, which had to be at a bare minimum 100k damage per minute. Apparently they weren't even interested in taking "tanky" heroes either. They were apparently used to running as a team 5 generalists who could all take a beating and heal themselves.
I would like to hear the opinions of a broader sample of people, so I'm bringing this question here: Is there any value in this game, as it stands today, for heroes in 5-man elite content specialising into "Holy Trinity" roles? Not to the exclusion of all else ofcourse, but if I wanted to build a glass cannon, or perhaps a hero that is perfectly capable of soloing but focuses primarily on healing once inside a lair, would I just be wasting my time?
I had been talking about building a toon capable of full-time healing (which I then referred to as a "dedicated healer", which triggered the flames). The argument being put forward to me was that I was wasting my time thinking about such things, apparently because the only valid measurement of my contribution in a theoretical 5-man elite run is my damage output, which had to be at a bare minimum 100k damage per minute. Apparently they weren't even interested in taking "tanky" heroes either. They were apparently used to running as a team 5 generalists who could all take a beating and heal themselves.
I would like to hear the opinions of a broader sample of people, so I'm bringing this question here: Is there any value in this game, as it stands today, for heroes in 5-man elite content specialising into "Holy Trinity" roles? Not to the exclusion of all else ofcourse, but if I wanted to build a glass cannon, or perhaps a hero that is perfectly capable of soloing but focuses primarily on healing once inside a lair, would I just be wasting my time?
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Yes, there are a lot of people who can deal good damage and hold their own against hard hitting bosses, however those arn't the only builds that should be around.
Every time I've done TT we had
1. Healer
2. Tank
3. DPS
4. DPS
5. DPS
Or it was something like that anyway. Pure healers can actually be very useful. I was never scared for a second that we would wipe on him even on Elite. In fact no one even died, and that's with 3 "glass canons" on the team.
1 Tank, 1 Ranged DPS, 1 Melee/ Survivable DPS, 1 Healer, 1 Hybrid
Theres not enough powers with so many uses to create 100% heal only character.
"The healer" - Should be hero which will be responsible to heal if something bad happens, and maybe to free DPS from using their self heals (BCR for ex. reduce dmg done by 10%)
...But theres no mana like in other MMOs so you don't really have to just wait to fill the health bar. In meantime you should deal damage. (Even check passive like seraphim, increases healing and damage)
In the end its about the fact that Any Free-form hero in CO is 2in1 class. (Theres no 100% tanks either, 100% DPS always have some survival tools simply because they don't need more Damage powers)
Granted a full healer isn't need on normal, it is always nice to have. The worst that will happen is that you end up on a dps team where everyone chickens out and switch to protector with regen (yes this happened to me once). Now you would be bored without some attacks.
For build advice, I suggest you run an hybrid support/dps with seraphim until the 30s (or even at 40) then switch to full support as there isn't many instances (except adventure packs) that need a full healer to be done.
Just like when picking damage powers, you don't typically need more than one or two heals for healing others on a support toon. My level 40 support toon has 3 heals total. Iniquity as her only way of healing others, Conviction and BCR as ways of healing herself. The rest of her support comes from buffs (AoRP, IDF) and debuffs (Ebon sigils). Oh, and a rez which you may or may not construe as a heal.
As far as the 100k damage a minute "requirement" goes... don't bother listening to that kind of crap. Sustained DPS of about 1667 without an offensive passive is possible, but it generally requires use of high STR and Enrage or high DEX and a Focus toggle w/ melee powers. The majority of players in CO do not have a combat log parser. I think a lot of people would be surprised at their actual sustained DPS numbers.
For those interested in the Cryptic combat log parser:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/combatlogparser/
/combatlog 1 <-command used to start logging
/combatlog 0 <-command used to stop logging
Open the Combatlog file with the parser which can be found Cryptic Studios\Champions Online\Live\logs\GameClient
As to the question proper, 5mans elite or otherwise do not need the holy trinity roles but nor are they wasted/inconvenienced by them. You can run TT with a Healer/Tank/DPS, or you can run it with 5 self sufficient hybrids. Both work, they just work differently.
As was touched on above the issue is more with the issue of what "Dedicated Healer" means to people. I would guess from what you posted it means more along the lines of "When people need healing, I will heal and when no ones need healing, I'll do something in the interim like damage, control, etc." However, the image people having in their head when someone says "Dedicated Healer" is someone who heals the group when healing is needed, but then sits around or follows and does nothing until someone needs healing again. Again, right or wrong, this is the perception of that term because there are some people that try to do this.
Ultimately? If you wanted some advice on the matter, I'd just a different term for such a character. Support, or Healer, or Support Hybrid, whatever. It might seem a bit silly or unnecessary but this way it at least puts across that during those times when there isn't anyone who really needs healing, which will happen at least now and again, it's understood that you'll have something else useful that you're willing to do.
I have like 3 tanks thats could pull it off, they can also solo the 5 man lairs at their respective level. Exept for therakiel's temple, but can manage to get past Valerian Scarlet solo.
My fire tank can pull off 2k dmg per second which is 120k per minute.
what healers are in the super hero comics?
(A dedicated healer meaning a character that focuses purely on healing, and has no significant contribution to offer other than healing.)
In addition to being not a superhero comic staple, its simply not needed in this game. You can make an effective character capable of healing and having a worthwhile damage output.
Simply calling yourself a supporting healer, would have probably generated an entirely different discussion. Avoid the term, and concept as described above, and you'll be good.
One of the new xmen or maybe two specifically lean towards healing others.
Then you have heroes tv show with Linderman, claire and adam.
Thats an outright lie. When you say it isn't being a stample your being an idiot, how many powers are staples?
Pyrokinesis? Hmm I'd say in the main brands only up to 6 or so people have that as their sole power.
Elixir from one of the many incarnations of the xmen also was a healer when he was gold skinned.
Hell, if we're going to argue canon rather than MMO strategies, though, we could all be here longer than most of us have....
*edit: OP, why not just make the toon you wanna make and forget what everyone else thinks... I'd imagine if I'd opened a can of worms like that you'd have seen me doing the whole hunker-and-slink thing out of the powerhouse, while whistling lol
Bottom line we won - I healed, I rezzed (a little) I gave AORP but almost no DPS.
Advantage to this being that in the many mob fights I can be in the middle of a raging hellstorm but draw no aggro so no one attacks me. Even in the boss fights I only get bugged by AOE's I've gotten too close to. So I can maintain constant healing and concentrate on the team rather than the enemy.
If we were doing it on normal then I might be more tempted to run seraphim and or/add to the DPS output but it would take the AORP sentinel so long to do anything to the average nasty on Elite I just thought sod it I got better things to do than make trouble for myself.
When I'm soloing it's Seraphim and good DPS even in Sentinel but in a team I have to make compromises, people like AORP on their healers and I can understand why. Tanks often have to compromise their DPS in order to be good tanks and I figure this is more of the same.
It's unlikely that you can do 120k damage per minute on a fire tank, you should check out the combatlog parser in Falchoin's post. Real dps numbers are usually 1/4 - 1/2 of these "theoretical maximums" like you quoted, so about 500 - 1000 real dps is the likely outcome.
+1
Even my min/maxed purely offensive Fire build cannot sustain 2k DPS for a full fight. A tank hybrid will not have anywhere near his DPS. Finding true DPS over a longer period of time, like a Cosmic fight, is dwindled a lot by stopping to block, casting heals/bubbles, and general moving around downtime. That is also assuming that you NEVER are using your END builder...again, highly unlikely because even with proper innates and END return mechanics "Stuff Happens" - flashfire misclicks, CD gets triggered prematurely, etc.
I would be surprised if a Fire/Tank can break even 400 DPS against Shadow Destroyer. Just him being untargetable during the transforms DRAMATICALLY lowers your DPS...its adds a lot of seconds worth of "0" damage
Yeah I had been hovering around that many healing powers in my build as well.
Woah! Nice! Thanks.
I was Raven@Sungrass. I agree completely with your statements, and it was never my intention to build anything other than what you describe. I used the wrong word, I know. It feels a little surreal being given the same advice I'm usually dispensing to others.
Well, because there's no point building something into your hero that isn't going to get used. This toon always has been and always will be a DPS/heal hybrid, but whether the heal component can only handle occasional incidental healing, or whether it's strong enough that I could keep a party of 5 alive through anything that might get thrown at them, is up for debate.
well my conflagas hit for 1k someitmes even more per tick thats 2k per sec, add around 165 from flashfire nad around 125 add firesnake, flashfire to that and there you go. Meet me in game if you dont believe it.
Just tesetd it btw, on the lv 40 dummies in the PH, they have 22k hp and it takes me 6 seconds to drop them. So yeah, my conflaga dmg by hovering over it it's 724, fire snake 125 and flash fire 165. this is withotu buffs and debuffs on enemies.
I just used flashfire, fire snake with unstable accelerant and dealed 12k dmg in 11 seconds. So that should give you an idea. Again this was on the lv 40 test dummies at the PH.
Once I get unstable accelerant on, firesnake debuff my conflag goes up to 1.3k fire snake to 190-200 and flashfire to 245. Now add the extra dmg from clinging flames and there we go. I may even do more dmg than what Im claiming.
Look, I believe that your conflag ticks for over 1k, but that is not the same as doing 120k damage in a minute. Doing a calculation is totally different from actually fighting a boss and doing that much damage.
There's no reason to debate. Just use /combatlog 1, fight a boss (for example Ripper in Viper Lair, or Qwyjibo on PTS), and load the combatlog.log file into the program that Falchoin linked. If we meet up in game, it won't be in the powerhouse to show me how high your conflag ticks on a dummy, instead we will go fight an actual boss and I'll combat log the fight to measure actual DPS. Or you could just log it yourself, up to you.
Ok just did a test with Falchoin my dmg was 1,542 per sec 92,820 per minute against kigatilik. tried ripper afterewards and my dmg was 1756per sec 105,360 per minute Against regular mobs its much higer Falchoin can back me up on this.
I say this every time someone asks in zone chat, it's not being a 'dedicated' healer that's the problem, it's.. thinking that exists. it's more.. the "healing" set in the game (celestial), also has a damage component on about half of it's powers (if you target an enemy, it hurts them, friendly, it heals.) -- so you are getting a damage power with your healing.
Stack this with the fact that most people have active defenses or self heals, and you end up with a condundrum -- while healing is VERY useful at staying alive, most people have some self-sufficiency, so instead of playing bounce-the-bar like in other games, you are spot healing, keeping them up when their defenses are down or when a big attack is coming
When they aren't? You attack. you don't have to be l33t dps, but.. if you aren't using the damage half of your heals when you aren't healing.. you are going to be standing around a lot doing nothing, which in turn does make you dead weight.
So yea, while that guy was just a douche, he is right in one sense
Now a dedicated SUPPORT hero is possible, I mean, you wouldn't be able to solo your way out of a paper bag, but.. healing, when not healing controlling and debuffing.
Edit: and as a second note, healers aren't a comic book staple because how comic books work. The good guys never really "lose", if they get defeated, it's a strategic defeat (they're attacking the robots put in the south as a distraction while xanatos' armies conquer the north!) -- because a true "defeat" -- death, would end the series or be a major turning point in an arc, not something common enough to have someone pop out as a healer (seriously, remember the original batgirl? how she became oracle? because "I don't want anyone healing me until the technology is available to the masses!" -- now, you are going to tell me that with all the supertech flying around in the DCU, bruce wayne couldn't drop a few million and have a mass-produced cybernetic spine replacement? Her "injury" was a plot device to kill off batgirl) -- the healers that do exist are mostly there for collateral containment. "OH NO HE'S KILLED 30 CIVILIANS AND WOUNDED 300 MORE, IF ONLY SOMEONE COULD SAVE THEM!"
That said, they're more common in anime where getting defeated isn't a bad thing -- double so in shounen where getting defeated just means you get a training montage and a new host of powers -- as such people who can lessen downtime appear there.
Gamewise? we get defeated all the time, just because it's not a comic book staple doesn't mean it's not an ingame staple.
Don't forget that bosses have more defenses then a test dummy, and you cannot compare a 10 second DPS maintain to a full prolonged boss fight.
My pre-patch build exceeded your firesnake buffed numbers with just conflag/UA and still could not sustain 2K DPS in a real boss fight. On the contrary, in fights like Shadow Destroyer I rarely passed 600 total DPS - even when my total damage far outweighed anyone else on the team.
I have numbers and graphs to prove this
**edit** My new build has even higher DPS, but has only been used a few times so far and has not done any lairs yet
Raven, in the Teen Titans, had some minor ability to heal, but it sure didn't work like any healing power in CO.
You should look at my post above...... still managed 100k per minute on boss fights and, I was main tank and still got the highest DPS. Off tank as just dpser I could probably manage bigger numbers, but I tank with damage, which makes it hard.
We did Kigatilik like 4 times; by the time we were on the last I had perfected my rhythm. The tank that was there could not get aggro from me, and with the support we had on the team, we didnt need a *tank* so I just kept aggro.
I pulled 3.7k DPS on that last fight according to Falchoins log.
So, with proper support (a good debuff/buffhealer build), it is possible for a DPS to tank through sheer damage.
That was with Dragons Claws critting for 12k-15k and nearly non stop charging them.
I'd really like to see either of these actually happen in game. The numbers you two are talking about just aren't possible to sustain constantly. You may get spikes up in this range, but not over the course of an entire fight.
Perhaps if you actually tried using some of the tanking advantages that exist in the game instead of trying to tank through DPS, you may find your job a bit easier. Ryno wrote an entire guide for it. Because all it would take is for someone like Puck, who's running a Fire Toon in Avenger, or for you to block for 3 seconds to stop Valerian's Death Laser, and aggro will be peeled off of you ever single fight.
And as for 12-15K Dragon's Claws, There's no way you're doing that regularly. My main (pre-F2P) was pushing around 280 Dex and Ego, leaving me with very precious-little else for stats, leaving my under 100 Con and with only around 40 Rec. I also had 2 items to raise my crit severity , giving me a 35% Crit Rate and 101% crit severity. There really is no way you could possibly gear yourself any more into those two stats, unless I gave up my 20 rec on my Primary Offense for +7 more Dex by switching to a SL Blue, but that would have increased my damage by ~0.02% from Dex and wouldn't have budged my crit rate. In Brawler, with WotEW and without Laser Knight or BCR to detriment my damage, the most I ever saw out of Dragon's Claws was 4-4.5K on a non-crit. If I was running Immolation, I could push 5K. Even so, that's only 12,550 damage when I crit (35% of the time, and only when Immolation was running). In order to get your Dragon's Claw to crit for 15K, you'd have to be using the exact same setup I was, only eliminated all Con and Rec out of your build (leaving you barely capable of taking a single hit from a Cosmic, and incapable of using Dragon's claws from Equilibrium), and you'd still have to find a way to add on another 1663 damage (an additional 33% real damage, not bonus damage). There's just no way you can boost your damage that high, that you can sustain over what a max-out character can do with an active energy form, without an energy form running. Not if you're "Tanking" from Brawler Role (read as: using Laser Knight and Bountiful Chi Resurgence), since the two staple powers combined are decreasing your damage by 20%. So in reality, your toon is somehow has an extra +100% damage in your build somewhere what's possible (considering ~ +35% for each Super Stat, ~70% for WotEW, +20% for Brawler, ~80% for Toggle, ~10% for Offense Gear, -20% for LK and BCR, you still have to have another +100% somewhere to get your Dragon's Claws to hit for 2600 more pre-crit damage than my tests showed the power was capable of). Considering on the F2P Beta, we got someone up to 1274 Presence, and they only had +52% damage from that Super Stat, I don't see this as being possible.
Or better yet, how about we actually talk about the topic being discussed instead of whipping out our epeens and skewing our numbers up because we're posting on the forums.
Yes, our Tank had Support Drones to heal a bit. That doesn't change the fact much that he/she was mainly tanking, and our healer did have Gatling Gun, but I really don't see that relevant. They're still mainly one role, being in Protector and Sentinel.
After all, that's why the roles are there.
While this is true, you're neglecting the fact that there were at least 2 or 3 PA toons debuffing resistances via U-238 Rounds and Chest Beam. The numbers that alex33x posted were only from his own debuffs and damage, at least as far as the Kigatilik fight goes.
It's easier to tank through DPS on this particular toon, when I said which makes it hard I meant, makes it hard to get mydps higher when I have to worry about healing, getting knockedback etc. I didnt say makes harder to tank, I have yet to meet someone who can take aggro away from me.
In the fight agaist kigatilik I tanked the entire time, falchoin kept healing me and never once took aggro. Also the dps we posted is per sec not spikes. Falchoin used the parser to measure it.
Yup, we invited 2 of my SG mates to kill the dogs faster, but neither had fire debuffs or any debuffs at all.
Healing doesn't generate alot of aggro. Even so, healing aggro can never pull anything larger than a Master villain, but even then, I've never actually seen a Master Villain pulled via healing aggro, only henchmen, and villains if henchmen aren't available.
No, I get what you're saying. However, without using aggro tools, an optimized DPSer will pull aggro from you at some point. Think about it: despite everything you do to keep your DPS up, you're still using a defensive passive, and you're blocking big attacks. Another fire user can play off all your debuffs, and will also have an offensive passive boosting their DPS as well as [likley] Avenger Role, and will be able to attack near-constantly, blocking very little, if at all. There's just no way you can do the same damage as a person with an offensive passive when you're using a defensive passive. You may start off with aggro, but that fire DPSer will be generating more DPS than you, and will eventually pass you if you aren't laying threat on top of your DPS.
Most likely the case. Ebon sigils completely wreck his damage output, so I suspect he has very little, if any, resistance to debuffs.
Kig is not an end game boss, but I can see exceeding 2K DPS on him with an offensive build. He's weak for a Cosmic
This is a 10 minute piece of a Shadow Destroyer run, and the log showed around 1K DPS. The time that he is non-targetable during transformations drops the DPS considerably, but even in ideal conditions I rarely maintained 2K DPS for any reasonable amount of time. Keep in mind that my fire is Avenger/Fiery Form with quite a bit more damage then yours, and had no energy downtime due to massive PRE boosted TR returns. I don't see a weaker build out DPSing him...
Other names censored.
I've run Therakiel's Temple three times on normal - once with my "pure" Might character as a pseudo tank / DPS, once as my main retconned into a somewhat mediocre "pure" healer, and once with my main respecced into his original "pure" dual blades style, who was something of an alright DPS guy.
On the "healer," we didn't do too well, even though we finished it, because honestly it was my first time going through it, and we went in with five men but lost one along the way. I like to think I did a pretty good job of healing given the circumstances (couldn't use Arcane Vitality, since it caused that buggy "greenish-yellow" glow on people that persisted until we relogged or something.) On the "Might" person, we did really well - think we only had to redo Therakiel once, if even. On my DPS-ish person, we rocked it - I had a good grasp of what was going on and an amazing healer backing us up.
So in short, it's not dead, but it's not always needed. I'd say it's still high up there to get a "trinity" thing going, though, mainly because not everyone has a BCR / LR / RR combo who's tanking, and not everyone's throwing out 3k Dragon's Wrath taps (that still confuses the hell out of me - on a crit at full charge, I might get 3k!)
You're welcome to try, It's very rare for anyone to pull aggro from me, I've done nemcon, therakiel temple, all the 5 man lairs pretty much and hardly anyone has pulled aggro from me and when they do it's not for more than a few secs, I rarely block also. I only tap block for the force sheat advatange but its rare for me to hold block specially now withthe full C-Store heals.
You think I would have 20 40's and not know how to build a better tank by now? lol. I actually tank better on this than my tanks that do have challenging strikes and cripling challenge, and made tests with my SG mates to see if they can pull aggro from me using them and no go.
Excluding trinity builds will also probably cost you at some point.
But really, you're probably best off not running with a team of leet superawesomes anyway. Especially if it's Therakiel's Temple, where things can get real weird come wing-time.
100k damage per minute? Please do not pay attention to foolishness like that. Damage is just a very poor measurement for your contribution to the team. It doesn't account for your:
- debuffs (which raise the entire team's damage and cost you energy, power slots, and adv. points all the while costing your teammates none of those things)
- heals (same as the above but allow your team to stay alive, block less, spend less energy on their own heals, and more on dealing damage)
- damage you took (which, in case of single target attacks, is damage that would have slowed your teammates down or killed them outright)
- any team buffs (see debuffs above)
All of these ways to contribute to the effort, and likely more, are left unaccounted for when just looking at damage output. Perhaps a better way to measure someone's "usefullness" would be to measure the entire teams' damage output with that person and then measure it again without them.
Even when just looking at damage things can get complex. Many people refer to spike damage vs. sustained dps, but there's a whole range in between. 100k/minute may be extremely sub-optimal for some lairs/bosses.
Maybe your build is set up in a way that you can only do 50k/minute. But in that minute you have a combination of buffs/powers that does 30k dmg in 5 seconds. Pull in 3-4 of groups of mobs in Elite TT, nuke them sky high, and you've just single handedly advanced your team that much farther through the lair.
If someone throws out generalized numbers without proper context then you can stop listening to them as they most likely underestimate the importance of details when it comes to builds and performance.
Its like computer specs; we always want to know what happens in the real world, but we certainly do not ignore specs and raw numbers or call them foolish.
Yup. I think most people here will tell you that a dedicated (no teeth) healer is just a liability.
Well in this case.....
Vixy thinks it's pretty safe to call that foolish.
Suppose it depends on what you mean by "support", but the level of your excellence will vary from team to team. If grouping with 4 squishy dps types, your group is likely to perform better if you focus on keeping them alive and reducing the time they spend blocking as opposed trying to deal damage yourself.
Grouping with tankish characters could be a different story. In the end it comes down to style, but Vixy is sure that a healer/support build doesn't need to do damage to be a great asset to the group as anyone that's teamed with Medikipz (my healer) can testify.
Ahh...agreement. I haz it. Medikipz only has one power that can heal another player (2 if you count MR).
Got rid of it after f2p patch since I placed more emphasis on pre.
Since I know you used to play CoX, think of it this way: Your average Controller or Defender, Corruptor or Dominator, etc, could have heals, buffs, debuffs, damaging attacks, holds, etc, and then stuff from their epic pools and the pools that were open to anyone, which could be all manner of things that don't necessarily fit the class.
A good Empath Controller could completely skip the big heal that hurt them, and do just fine with the little heal and PBAoE heal with the right slotting and powerset combo. Likewise, some sets like Thermal could be so potentially strong, they didn't even have such a big heal. Ones like Storm, had a heal, but specialized in control and debuffs.
It's really no different than the other game, the combat is just faster and redundant powers are less necessary. If you ask me, that's a huge improvement.