Best Character Combinations and Why : City of Heroes - Submissions

Best Characters Guide

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Best Scrapper

The best scrapper, said by almost everyone, is the dark melee/regen scrapper. While regen pays off in the end being the best secondary set, dark melee is not the best primary. Yes, it DOES have the best single hit damage, but that's ALL it has. Spines is the best primary because of a few reasons.

1) BUILD UP: Spines has the second highest base damage, but it has build up, which can be slotted multiple times and put on auto attack to have it on all the time. The dark melee set has soul drain, but it requires more time and doesn't increase damage or accuracy as much in most cases. Build up nearly DOUBLES ALL DAMAGE, as well as increases accuracy, which is the opposite of the secondary effect of dark melee, which is decreasing accuracy of enemies. Having regen as the secondary, why would a person need to decrease damage done by enemies to himself? This also makes ONE of the secondaries of spines better than the secondary of dark melee.

2) SLOW: Spines has another secondary effect to its attacks besides build ups accuracy increase, slow. Slow not only slows foes attacks, which could help if every single enemy goes aggro on you, including bosses, but it slows their movement, which is the real good part. Many enemies decide to run away if you hurt them enough, but with slow on, even if you turn off sprint to fight better, you can run in front of them and continue hitting them.

3) CONSTANT DAMAGE: While dark melee has only attacks that damage single foes, and the life drain area attacks have weak damage, spines have quills, which damages while you fight. Quills is a toggle skill, so you can fight while it's on, giving two damage sources from your character. Quills also can be boosted by build up, giving it insane damage for a toggle skill.

4) AREA AND CONE ATTACKS: The dark melee primary only has its 2 area attacks, which are weak. Spines has 2 cone attack skills and 2 AoE skills, if you include quills, so not only fighting single enemies is easier, but group fighting is way easier, too.

So the spines primary might not have the same BASE damage as dark melee, but it's combination of secondary effects, skill types, and build up give it the best damage in any situation, as well as the best effects.

BEST SCRAPPER PRIMARY: SPINES
BEST SCRAPPER SECONDARY: REGENERATION

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Best Blaster

There are actually two best blasters, depending on how you fight enemies. Most people have figured out that the energy secondary is the best, because again, it's the only one with a build up skill, and it also has conserve energy, which along with hasten, can be very ly. But the primary can be divided two ways. Since the blaster has nothing that makes him unstoppable defensively, the energy primary can come in handy. The energy primary has the second best damage, but it has knockback, too, which gives it a little more defensive power over the other best primary, fire. If you think you will be soloing whites or higer alot, or have a group without too much controlling, go with energy. Fire is one of the best primaries because of it's sheer damage and AoE attacks. Fire has damage over time with it's attacks, too, so it is great for pure power. If you plan on making a character for farming lower level enemies, or you are in a group with a good controller or two, go with fire, because damage is the only thing you need for those things.

BEST BLASTER PRIMARY: TIE BETWEEN FIRE BLAST AND ENERGY BLAST
BEST BLASTER SECONDARY: ENERGY

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Best Tanker

I find the tanker is usually only needed when a group is dying alot and requests someone in front to absorb damage. I would not recommend the tanker to many people, the only reason I would recommend it is if a person wants to look cool or not be a high level, because scrappers can be invulnerable too and do more damage. Since you are probably going for looks or low level power, I can't really recommend a "best" tank character. The stone, fire, and ice primaries all look cool to different people, which leaves invulnerability. Invulnerability used to be able to make damage resistances over 100% before the patch, but now it can only get to 90%, making invulnerability weaker for those who want a great defensive character. Keep in mind when choosing a primary, that some enemies deal damage that is opposite to yours, so they do almost the max damage they can do to you, while enemies that use your primary do weak damage, so it is different alot of the time. Invulnerability isn't as good against some damages as the others, but it is the same resistance to all damages. For the tanker secondary, you should also go with the one that looks coolest to you, because they are all good at different things. The tanker archetype is very versatile to people choosing a character in it, because there is no combination that gives you enough damage to really make a ton of difference, and all the primaries make a tank near invulnerable at high levels. Go on what you think is nice, and take a look at the skills in the manual.

BEST TANKER PRIMARY: WHATEVER YOU THINK IS COOLEST
BEST TANKER SECONDARY: WHATEVER YOU THINK IS COOLEST

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Best Defender

For the best defender, you can basically have any primary, because they are all awesome in groups and everyone loves you for them. For a primary, either pick one you like from the manual, or pick one you haven't seen many other people with. This way, every team can have a variety of defenders if they have multiple ones, that have boosts that aren't the same. The best secondaries for the defender depend on what you want to do with your character. If you want to help a group with secondary effects like knockback or disorient, then choose dark blast, psychic blast, or energy blast, but if you want to decrease accuracy or defense or boost your teammates in the same way choose electricity or radiation blast.

BEST DEFENDER PRIMARY: LEAST COMMON ONE AT THE TIME
BEST DEFENDER SECONDARY: EITHER DARK/PSYCHIC/ENERGY, OR RADIATION/ELECTRICITY

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Best Controller

Because the controller is a low damage low health character, it is almost impossible to solo most mobs at high levels. Therefore, the best controller would have to be one that helps the most in groups the most. Since all controllers get skills that can pretty much stop a mob from fighting, what determines the best controller primary is what the other skills in the set do. The two skill sets I think are the most useful to a group are illusion and gravity control. Fire, ice, and stone don't really have skills that do much besides stopping mob attacks. Gravity has dimension shift, which can get a teammate out of trouble if he gets aggroed by a large group of enemies. Also, gravity has wormhole and fold space, which are basically variations of teleport foe and teleport friend, which are both helpful. Illusion actually has good damage if you can kill the enemy before the illusion damage wears off, and it has 2 summons. Illusion also has superior insivibility, which can get you out of tight situations to heal or regain endurance. All of the controller secondaries are defender primaries, so all of them are good. Pick one that is uncommon at that time and keep in mind that the skills in that set open up later than in the defender's primary.

BEST CONTROLLER PRIMARY: GRAVITY OR ILLUSION
BEST CONTROLLER SECONDARY: THE ONE THAT IS LEAST COMMON AT THE TIME

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Pool Powers

Depending on your character, different pool powers may be useful to you, but there are a few pools that all archetypes can benefit from.

Fitness: Health and stamina are great for any character, boosting regeneration of health and endurance.

Speed: Hasten is almosta gimme because it is so good. It increases recharge speed of all your powers by 40%, which is huge. Add slots with recharge reduction to have it on more frequently, but keep in mind it may deplete your endurance quickly.

Leadership: Maneuvers, assault, and tactics are all helpful to a group, so if you have extra power slots, get these.

Other than that, pick a travel power that reflects your character type and what you will be doing with him. Super speed has the fastest base speed, then goes super jump, then fly, with each slower one being more versatile. Teleport is similar to fly and faster, but fluctuates in different situations and areas because of obstacles.

If this guide gets some good feedback, I'll probably make a guide that covers the individual skills for these characters. If you want to, you can post your character idea and I'll tell you the good and bad points of it.