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AT vs Custom Build.
smuggl3r
Posts: 56 Arc User
I get the idea that custom characters have more options than classes. Is this about versatility, or real power level ?
Trying to get an idea about buying classes or custom character slots if I like the game. I am cool with playing a class that focuses on one thing, but would I be less powerful too ?
Trying to get an idea about buying classes or custom character slots if I like the game. I am cool with playing a class that focuses on one thing, but would I be less powerful too ?
Post edited by smuggl3r on
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much ways .. i really wouldn't play them. Biggest point for me is maybe the lack of healing
powers on most of the ATs.
However .. i woudln't buy a freeform slot, because for that price you can nearly go gold
for 3 months, and then you also have 6 char slots, 4 bags slots, more custume options,
and you get a new character slot and free retcon for every level 4 character.
Also .. this game is not a typical "endgame" MMO, but more about having a lot of alts.
Concise version: The only thing that ATs lack is power choice, and one of the only crippling factors is that they're built extremely specialist (to encourage teaming). The lack of power choice tends to lead to a bit of power bloat (multiple redundant attacks) and a lack of defense. Other then that, ATs can and will compete hard in the areas of their specialization with Freeform characters. However, the specialization means that they tend to be less survivable (however, you can easily get to end-game solo with any of the ATs; The Support-focused ones have it the hardest, but even they can pull off some crazy things).
The debate is long and terrible on this matter, and that's the concise distillation of it. If you don't tend to play multiple characters (IE: You only ever get the one character and make them your 'main' forever and always), Freeform slots can have some value. If you do tend to play around with multiple characters, then the value of a subscription/LTS increases, as does just buying individual ATs and additional character slots as your needs change.
The only 'real' benefit to Freeform is versatility - and for some people, it really is worth just that much.
[SIGPIC]Also, this poster rambles.[/SIGPIC]
Both of the posters above me are right.
Some ATs will be nearly as powerful as a Free Form build of similar concept. Others will be much less so. All ATs will be less versatile than a well built FF character, and most will lack self healing capabilities.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
The ATs are actually pretty good at their designed roles. The DPS roles can do very competitive damage (In some cases even more then FFs) The Tank roles, likewise, can hold their own. AT's can, for the most part, solo all the way to 40 with little problems. (some will be easier then others. Tanks are easier then squishies, for example). No AT will be kicked out of a team or group for simply being an AT. They are good builds. Just limited to one function in the holy game trinity.
That is their limitation, that is all they can do. You cant, for example, be an insanely durable DPSer. Or a Tank who can also act as their own healer.
That is the advantage of Free form. Its the land of the odd concept player and the min maxers. Its the place where you can combine powers and abilities to create near unkillable DPS spammers. Where you can go from tank to super tank that can solo nearly anything in the game. Even things designed for entire groups.
Role and trinity is less a factor in free form. its really more about expressing what you want to do and what you want to accomplish with the character. Something, a lot of folks feel. is a pretty important thing in a super hero based game.
FF is effectively the original CO experience, not to mention ATs don't get as many powers (1 or 2 less, can't remember atm).
The real issues I see are things like how much cryptic *loves* superstatting Rec, which is a useless stat all across the board. It also seems like they intentionally leave out a vital part of every character, or make you pick between 2 powers that work in synergy. Example: no lunge on the unleashed, the behemoth makes you choose between the very synergistic uppercut and haymaker powers. I switch between gold and silver rather regularly, and going back to AT after playing with a freeform is *awful*. ATs play like a badly built single purpose freeform, which as seckse mentioned also get robbed of 2 powers.
RIP Caine
with 40 while as freeform you can maybe get them already at 16 or whatever.
REC is one of my prefered secondary Superstats since on alert. Especially of course at 40
when you also have good gear with cost reduction.
For Infernal REC is great because your Energy Unlock scales with it, and a high equilibrium
always helps for alpha strikes like Defile. Also Energy Builder scales on REC, that helped
me alot for my current Earth char, because its hard to find a good energy unlock for earth
so its a big differnce if your EB give you 13% or 23%. Also .. always enough energy to
start with a full charged Tremor to on-shot henchmen
My Munitions / Gadgeteer also works good with REC and Overdrive as energy unlock and
she again has so always enough equilibrium for an Orbital Cannon :cool:
10k hp. Sigh.
RIP Caine
The current metagame revolves around crits for DPS, and the current top 3 ranged powersets are Fire, Lightning and Infernal. These powersets are represented by ATs that don't have primary superstat Ego or Dex as one of the superstats, so they don't get enough crit chance and severity to compete.
The 3 ranged ATs that do are Marksman, Soldier and Squall. Of which Marksman is held back by a generally low DPS powerset and lack of buffs. Squall is held back by too many knocks and a lack of DPS-increasing out of set powers like Ball Lightning and Sigils of the Primal Storm. Soldier is alright, except it pulls aggro too easily and isn't really equipped to deal with that, other than throwing Smoke Grenade.
For melee DPS, in just about every other MMO the melee DPS is actually somewhat beefy to deal with the random AoEs that they put themselves at risk of. Dead DPS = 0 DPS. But in CO, the only melee DPS that has either End as a primary superstat or Con as a superstat is the Devastator, and Heavy Weapons has generally been an underperforming powerset ever since the Enrage nerf.
Tanking has already been covered. Lack of self-heals really hurts their ability to tank.
For Support... Radiant is alright in a party. I'd have preferred superstat Con instead of Ego because they need to get close to melees to rez them and the extra Con would help, but Radiants don't lose as much by gearing for Con instead of a secondary superstat.
The bottom line is that comparing AT to FF, a well-built FF is going to see a very noticeable jump in performance vs a comparable AT. On the flipside, it can also be argued that the underlying problem isn't so much with ATs, but with the game as a whole having an overemphasis on crit, a lack of methods to gain HP other than superstatting Con and inherently unbalanced powersets.
My build directory (work in progress)
Guide list
Freeform Builds
In loving memory of AngelofCaine.
What use is doing UMPTEEN BAJILLIONTY DAMAGE when a stiff breeze kills you? That's what I don't like about ATs. With FF slots I can break set to get defenses and self heals and aggro drops. With ATs you're stuck with what Cryptic gives you, and what Cryptic gives you in many cases is multiple redundant attacks.
Superstats is another big one. If I want to make a DEX primary Electric build in FF, nothing can stop me. The AT has primary END, which while decent, isn't great and frankly is wholly unnecessary due to how much cost reduction you can get from gear these days even without INT as a super or even gearing INT, you only need secondary END and cost reduction to make most of its attacks pay for themselves. (The AT also has secondary REC if I recall correctly, which is horrifyingly unnecessary when END is primary)
And as someone else noted, ATs often get key powers very late in the game. The Tempest doesn't get Ionic Reverb until level 25. Most players making an elec Freeform will have it by level 10, it's that key to playing Electric successfully.
While ATs do not suffer from diminishing returns, Freeform characters can shore up weaknesses and optimize much more efficiently.
You don't need dex to have decent criticals. You can get over 20% criticals with just proper gear and mods at level 40, which is the only time one should worry about optimizing.
Obviously, it's better to have dex, since that can get critical rate to 40%, but a character's dps is not totally gimp without it.
@chalupaoffury:
Primary recovery can be awesome for powers that need a lot of energy. It can majorly boost energy return. This probably only matters for power armor--with primary rec, you can get over +20 energy per tick per stack of overdrive, which would let you fire off all 3 power slots without lock and load. It could also help if you want to use force cascade frequently without having to use the energy circle. Yeah, I know that doesn't help ATs at all =P Just thought I'd mention it.
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So, yeah, the ATs are all just a little short of optimal.
Among the ATs, one of the best overall, in terms of ease of play, is the Unleashed. It has eye of the storm for defense, it has a heal, it can do lots of damage with one of the best damage powers in dragon's wrath. When I was still silver, I tanked bosses with eye of the storm without too much trouble (except for things like Mega-Destroyer).
If you were to go gold and FF it though, it would be even better, as you could get parry with the dodge advantage, replace unstoppable with way of the warrior, get a lunge power instead of having to use force snap, get MSA to give you some bonus energy every time you lunge, and add more active buffs--giving a freeform version of an unleashed that is vastly more survivable from the great dodge, and has more energy. You could also add Devour Essence and heal yourself while dealing great damage.
The same could be applied to every AT. With freeform, you can tweak any of them to be better by just substituting out some of the poorly fitting powers, or make cool hybrid concept characters. I quite like my Shepard-inspired Mass Effect build that has munitions and force cascade. And even with a melee character, it's nice to have one of the huge PBAOE powers like hurricane just to get rid of trash mobs.
Even for those silvers that were lucky enough to get a ff slot in a bag, I'm sure they're going to be grinding A LOT of resources to keep respeccing to try out different things (unless they're flat out copying a good build from the forums).
And even when copying a great build, you'll find you want to do things your way. Pulsewave's gyrojet power armor build is fantastic and highly optimized, for example, as it does tons of damage and ends up with dodge equivalent to lightning reflexes, but even after copying it I still ended up using different superstats, specs, and powers so that it played the way I like.
Just one ff slot will only whet your appetite and you'll find yourself spending money for retcon tokens.
For me, after some months of playing champions online, I realized that I played it enough hours that it's given me well over the value of 6 video games. 6x50=300. So it was already worth it to me to get a lifetime sub. Even with the release of silver ff, I've not regretted the LTS. I can mess around with many ff slots, have more costume pieces, and there's the monthly stipend forever. TOTALLY WORTH IT (if you enjoy Champions Online enough to be playing it for 6 months+).
Yeah .. i also like to play with invuln as passive, but with a good crit build a do in the end
maybe more damage than an AT that is not really made for max crit. And my damage is
even with level 40, where it is halved in alerts, mostly high enough to have aggro all the time
no matter if i play hybrid or with an offense passive as ranged / melee.
Even better : Inferno - Flashfire at 40
also Glacier - Avalanche at 40
The Force power set is awful. I don't even want to think about playing with an Impulse.
A huge amount of content is accessible even if you stick with just silver ATs and never spend a buck, so CO is still one of the best f2p MMOs in terms of not completely screwing free players, while giving pay-players lots of things that are just more fun.
It's not just crit rate, crit severity has to be taken into account too. Taking the Inferno with Conflageration for example. Suppose an FF's Conflag hit for 1000 a tick and has 40% crit rate with 120% Crit severity (pretty easy with Dex mastery). Over 100 hits, the FF's Conflag will do 148,000 damage on average (60,000 from 60 normal hits and 88,000 from 40 crits)
For an AT to do the same amount with 20% crit rate and 70% severity, it will need to hit for almost 1,300 a tick (104,000 from 80 normal hits and 44,200 from 20 crits). But the diminishing returns gap isn't anywhere near wide enough to account for a 30% difference in base damage.
The ATs can be improved a lot going to FF, but their damage is still okay enough to let them solo 90+% of the content and to group for the rest... so it's adequate. It's more than good enough. Many freeform players don't bother to optimize to that degree.
Contrast that with other F2P MMOs. In Allods, the F2Ps do miniscule damage and are vastly squishier than paid players, so much so that it's not remotely close. In Perfect World, it takes hideous grinding. In DND Online, you can't even get to a lot of the quests without paying for them, or grinding for points for weeks to unlock them.
Overall the way Champions Online did the ATs is fine--they don't make freeform meaningless, but they're not totally awful in comparison. Obviously, freeform is better, but it's also that with freeform, it's possible to just be overpowered for nearly all the content.
If that, "stiff breeze," is dead, it can't kill me.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I really don't suffer from durability issues since I stacked dodge and avoidance on my defensive gear... in alerts usually I end up tanking the bosses without an issue at all.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Click up there if you want to find more about the costumes behind my heroines.
Sounds like custom built characters are more powerful.
since pvp is fail in this game and ive already spent money for my ATs and Single costume slots i dont think i wil go GOLD or Lifetime...
If i dont have money to pay my gold status i cant play my characters created as gold.. thats to unsafe for me...
and the 50 euro for a freeform character is just out of my price range...
also i play my soldier alot , in my case its not useful to get freeform ...
BUT if you realy want the most power ingame and have lots of money then i suggest going GOLD , Lifetime or atleast buy teh freeform slot...
**edit**
Also if Cryptic wants me to buy more stuff they should remove the character slot.. ... i dotn see why i should pay 10 euros for a single archtype AND another 11 euro for the character slot to play my bought archtype...
this is madness
@Quincy-St-Moth's PRIMUS page
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
ATs are definitely playable - I played Grimoire from 1-39 before switching to Gold. And I agree CO is one of the more generous F2Ps out there, but the OP was asking if FFs are better than ATs at their specialized role, and that was the point I was trying to make is that they are in some ways.
The big draw though is that Freeform can combine any sets they like to realise concepts you're probably never going to get in an Archetype.
If you're satisfied with the single-set concepts found in Archetypes, I'd say stick with them. Freeform is for those who cannot tolerate being limited to single set concepts with singular roles in battle.
| The Phoenix - A Fiery Jack of All Trades | The Nightmare - Dark Summoner | The Ranger - Archery/DB DPS |
| The Packleader - Bestial Petmaster |
I think basically if you try to build an AT in a certain way it can do crazy things. E.g.
I was on a team of FF's today and my tempest came top each time on Tako quests.
Some AT's which really need some sort of healing mechanic like Tempest or Squall, are defensively at a disadvantage. And AT's with healing abilities like Mind AT, do considerably less damage than normal. However exceptions are the Radiant AT and Inventor AT, they do alot higher damage I believe than their other mentalist support counterpart the Mind AT.
Some DPS AT's do great damage even above and beyond some freeforms if stats are pushed. But as soon as attention is put on them they fail and die quite quickly, which is were the fragility of some AT's is shown.
Also Every AT has some sort of weakness which is clear and exploitable. With FF's it's not so easy to find weaknesses sometimes. As usually their builds are water tight. But it is very easy to mess up FF and make it suck, but it is also easy to make it work very well and take advantage of different power synergies.
AT's arent necessarily weaker than FF's when compared to other FF's which fulfill the same role as the AT, but there are stark differences between DPS FF and DPS AT, one will have decent room for a good heal and an active defensive, the AT does not.
Again, I think alot of ppl have reiterated this but, as long as you know what your doing both AT's (to an limit) and FF's can be very good at whatever they are meant to do.
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