Char Advice

[Luther]

I have three different builds for three different purposes, and I wanted to get playability reactions and suggestions for them.  Basically, I was going to play:

1) For Solo - Mercenaries/Poison or Robots/Traps Mastermind.  Thinking here is a couple-fold - I think it will be much easier controlling multiple ranged minions then multiple melee minions (hence no Ninja or Zombies), and according to most forums, your only shot at solo-ing an AV is to have meat shield pets to hide behind (alla any Mastermind), and something to debuff Regen (alla Poison - Envenom, or Traps - Poison Gas Trap).  And before you say it - Merc/Traps seems wierd to me aesthetically, as does Robots/Poison (among other things, Poison being able to heal Robots is just plain stupid).

2) For Duo (with Nalroth when is home) - Ninja/SR Stalker.  Nalroth is going to play a Dominator - so I will be getting lots of free Crits on Held and Sleeping folks.  Reason for going with sword was that it is (if I am not mistaken) the highest straight damage of all of the Stalker Primaries, and would therefore yield the best crits and assassinations.  SR was selected because of Quickness for further enhancing recharge rates (even better when stacked with Hasten), and for Def rather than Resistance, because avoiding hits makes the assassin strikes harder to interupt.  Also - if I ever get there, Elude is pretty bad-ass.  I thought about Ninjitsu, too - but its utility powers didn't hold that much interest for me - and it is otherwise just like SR w/o quickness and passives.

3) For SG - Dark/Dark Corrupter.  I never got into playing Defenders, so even though both of these are inverted Defender setups, I never played them.  Dark/Dark Corrupters almost look more Controlly then a Dominator - lots of AE immobiles - and I think going Dark/Dark will have good synergy with all of the Acc Debuffs, and the Def Buff from Mass Stealth power.

Thoughts?  Advice?

[Brak Zanagin]

Build 1: I have no idea how survivable pets will be when you reach high levels.  It will be a LONG time for you to see an AV that is in the realm of what you read about in CoH.
One thing to keep in mind about melee vs range is that the game places higher value on melee.  The reason I say that is that it is more difficult to keep a melee ally up on their feet, thus they tend to do more damage.  Robots rarely engage in melee combat, so they do less damage.  If you're soloing you might want something that is better enabled to take the punishment.

Build 2: so you want to be an assholestalker    I imagine that most builds will work fine.  Not sure about the survivability of SR.  I like me some powersets with resistance, instead of just defense.

Build 3: AE Immobiles are great, but your targets can still fire at you.  The advantage of this in a group is when corruptors get too much aggro and need to run the fuck away.  If you're immobilzing, they should be able to do that much easier.

[ElCheop]

For the solo build, I'd favor zombies or ninja.  Mobs seem to focus most on the things right in their faces.  Also, Zombies puke and we all know how much that sucks.  Ninja do some ranged, and a lot of melee, pretty much the best of both worlds.

I like the look of the stalker.  I've always been a fan of SR, it was just completely outclassed by regen or Invuln for scrappers.  I don't know much about the stalkers secondary sets, but I seem to recall there not really being much of a Resistance option.

For Corrupter, if you want to most Buff/DeBuff bang for your buck, I'd mix up the power sets.  I'm doing dark/rad, but it's a tough call versus rad/dark.  Both of these sets do horrible things to the opponent's accuracy, and a bunch of other stuff as well.  Rad/Dark is a lot faster, and thus probably more DPS, but I realy like the dark blast powers (Hentai Tentacles for Everyone!).  The biggest problem with Dark Blast is that it's slow, very very slow, the damage is almost entirely DoT, and folks can outrun the blasts if they have sprint and swiftness. Dark Miasma is probably one of the most mixed bag sets of powers out there, it does a little bit of everything, and that makes it really nice.

My suggestion for the Corrupter is to find the blaster power set you enjoy the most, and the deffense set you enjoy the most, and run with it.  The point of teaming is that everyone will learn to work with what we have.

[Luther]

I think what I reconsidered into was this (and I have spec'd all these out using a builder - I'll put the levelling plan up later):

1) For Solo - Ninja/Poison Mastermind (an Evil Alchemist)

2) For Duo - Ninja/SR Stalker

3) Big Change - seemed like too many Doms and Corruptors in the Ministry - so I decided to try a Brute instead - Fire/Fire - reasoning is thus - I want to maximize damage output, and Fire is the best secondary for that - and also has a good spread of utility powers, including an End producer, a Heal, and a great self-Rez.  With Fiery Embrace, Fire Primary has good synergy with Fire Secondary.  I also considered either Fire/Dark or Dark/Dark - but I like the fact that Fire has higher DPS (with the DoT secondary effects), and burns a hair less End then Dark as a Secondary (with its own refill) sealed the proverbial deal.  I think I am still going to look at a Fire/Dark and Dark/Dark build, however.  Actually - I guess Dark/Fire would also be woth thinking about - I would have to nix Fiery Embrace, but two End restore powers would probably mean no Stamina - which saves a handy couple of slots.

Oh - and Fire is pretty.  Dark is pretty, too - but Dark makes horrible sounds that hurt my ears.  Thank you - drive thru.

[Brak Zanagin]

Apparently, if you make a DM/Fire brute you can find yourself never needing endurance.  Stamina is something for other classes to cope with.