New efforts!

[LaughingAlex]

If by "viable" you mean literally, as in reasonably functional in standard content at standard difficulty, it was hard *not* to be viable.  A random number generator would probably make a standard difficulty-viable build more than 80% of the time.

But if by "viable" you really mean "reasonably optimized to do at least one useful thing" I think some powerset combinations presented more options than others.  Ill/Rad, for example, had lots of small variations but not a lot of big ones.  I'd say the biggest variations revolved around whether one took or didn't take Spectral Terror, EMP, and Deceive.  The core build tended to be similar in goals.  Energy/Electric blasters had a number of different ways they could go: Fire/Fire not so much.  As an archetype blasters covered a lot of ground, but on the other hand that ground often had only one or a few ways to get there.  AR/Mental is really good with a gigaton of recharge, otherwise its relatively pedestrian.  Energy Manipulation has all kinds of potential to go in different directions, Fire Manipulation less so.  Dominators have more options than Brutes.  Masterminds a little more than Tankers.  Controllers probably have the highest diversity footprint as a class.  Stalkers probably the least.  But even with stalkers, there was always more than one way to do it.

I believe some of the largest amounts of depth were found in the various power sets, due to the sheer number of secondary effects.  Regarding AT flexibility, my personal opinion, well, as follows from best to worst:

1: Controller
Good crowd control(though dominators tend to consistently outperform), and buffs/debuffs, we've a clear winner here.

2: Defender/Corruptor
Buff/debuffs are very solid and attacks have secondary effects.  Better buffs/debuffs vs better damage, you decide.

3: Mastermind
Can soft-tank, very tough AT played right yet also buffs/debuffs and dishes out a lot of damage.  I'd even say the AT is tied with the two above AT's, but this is an AT for veterans, not newbies, kicking it down to 3.

4: Villain Epic AT's/Dominator
Villain Epic AT's have decent crowd control potential, good AoE damage, and good buff potential but are over-shadowed by the above AT's.  Dominator crowd control is better than controllers(superior magnitude in domination) and can even block being effected by CC, as well as having damage not far behind a blaster.

5: Brutes
The "best" melee class to many, near scrapper level damage(even exceeding scrapper pre-going rogue), taunt effects and taunt enables them to crowd control and they can become nearly as tough as a tanker, and as tough as a tanker with buffs.

6: Tankers/Blasters
Blasters have solid debuffs, but are not going to force multiply as effectively.  Tankers can taunt and grab agro, as well as have unmatched durability, but the trade-off in damage to me is to high imo.  After all, to an advanced team, sadly a brute can do the same thing as efficiently as a tanker.  Your trading damage for defense with tankers vs brutes.

7: Scrappers
Confront is a very poor agro control power compared to taunt, often skipped and no taunt effect in attacks, debuff effects exist on attacks and can make a difference, but the scrapper is not someone who's kingly at holding agro and is very damage oriented.  It was close for me to say whether scrappers or kheldians were more versatile.  Scrappers were still an immensely strong solo class and were still good to invite in teams, but they were pure muscle, not supportive in any way.

8: Kheldians
To focused on trinity gameplay by design, while changes made them far more efficient, they tend to cater towards only a few playstyles; Damage, or maybe crowd control.  They lack buffs for teammates, and while the warshade gets very good CC, the peacebringer to my knowledge had very poor CC in exchange for healing, which to me is a non-factor in team performance(better to prevent damage than heal it).


9: Stalkers
Rated last due to consistent lack of AoE damage, and general tendency to only focus on single target in most power sets.  The only crowd control for this class to my knowledge, was assassin striking something to AoE fear close enemies and debuff them some.  But Stalkers were far, far over-specialized in every set, and some sets even gutted desirable traits for assassin strike.  This is an AT that'd be awesome to review to address this problem; give it more AoE's and it'd tie with scrappers/kheldians.

Edit: Note that this isn't a "This AT is best and this AT is worst", just how I felt about the AT versatility in doing more then one thing in solo or teamplay.  I also did not factor in incarnate powers, which did let you add things you otherwise did not have to any AT.

[pinballdave]

If by "viable" you mean literally, as in reasonably functional in standard content at standard difficulty, it was hard *not* to be viable.  A random number generator would probably make a standard difficulty-viable build more than 80% of the time.

But if by "viable" you really mean "reasonably optimized to do at least one useful thing" I think some powerset combinations presented more options than others.  Ill/Rad, for example, had lots of small variations but not a lot of big ones. <snip>

Yes, I did intend for 'reasonably optimized to do at least one different useful thing from the other builds'. I had an Ice/FF controller that included a specific build to exemp down and do the Positron (original version) Task Force with two other damage dealers. I had a traditional Ice/FF controller build that was meant to utilize the optimal controls and defense on a team doing non-Incarnate content. I also had a build for blitzing taskforces for merits taking superspeed/stealth to grab glowies quickly such as the Sister Psyche or the Manticore TF.

[Ironwolf]

Brilliant! I never even considered having a built meant for exemping!

I used to solo the old Positron TF on a few special built characters and had a build slotted especially for that. I have it down where I could do the entire TF solo in under 45 minutes.

[Auroxis]

9: Stalkers
Rated last due to consistent lack of AoE damage, and general tendency to only focus on single target in most power sets.  The only crowd control for this class to my knowledge, was assassin striking something to AoE fear close enemies and debuff them some.  But Stalkers were far, far over-specialized in every set, and some sets even gutted desirable traits for assassin strike.  This is an AT that'd be awesome to review to address this problem; give it more AoE's and it'd tie with scrappers/kheldians.

This is why Elec/ stalkers were fantastic, the synergy was off the charts:

1. Lightning Rod didn't break hide and gave that AoE power Stalkers lacked.

2. Elec Melee's low DPS was now high DPS. You could have an attack chain of AS(+ATO proc) -> Chain Induction (which had some AoE as well)->Jacob's Ladder (which could fit a -res proc and a purple damage proc) -> Charged Brawl (solid DPA, low animation time allowing your heavy hitters to shine and could be removed if your recharge was buffed).

3. Thunder Strike gave a hard hitting secondary AoE power with crit out of hide.

4. With high levels of recharge and Spring Attack, you could combine Lightning Rod+Spring Attack with only several seconds difference in recharge for a massive AoE nuke combo of BU+LR+Spring+TStrike every 30-40~ seconds.

I was leading the charge in incarnate trials with my Stalker. By the time the brute/tanker rolled in, I already had the mob nuked (and me still hidden).

[Minotaur]

I used to solo the old Positron TF on a few special built characters and had a build slotted especially for that. I have it down where I could do the entire TF solo in under 45 minutes.

What did you use, I used a fire/nrg blaster IIRC pegged at level 18 with level 21 yin-Os, yes a purple laden monstrosity would be quicker, but I could do it in around an hour with only a -KB IO.

I also had a PB that never played in human form, and was the best tank around for level 20-30 TFs as it had 85% res all but psi with the team buffs.

[brothermutant]

This is why Elec/ stalkers were fantastic, the synergy was off the charts:

1. Lightning Rod didn't break hide and gave that AoE power Stalkers lacked.

2. Elec Melee's low DPS was now high DPS. You could have an attack chain of AS(+ATO proc) -> Chain Induction (which had some AoE as well)->Jacob's Ladder (which could fit a -res proc and a purple damage proc) -> Charged Brawl (solid DPA, low animation time allowing your heavy hitters to shine and could be removed if your recharge was buffed).

3. Thunder Strike gave a hard hitting secondary AoE power with crit out of hide.

4. With high levels of recharge and Spring Attack, you could combine Lightning Rod+Spring Attack with only several seconds difference in recharge for a massive AoE nuke combo of BU+LR+Spring+TStrike every 30-40~ seconds.

I was leading the charge in incarnate trials with my Stalker. By the time the brute/tanker rolled in, I already had the mob nuked (and me still hidden).

Can't believe I never thought of that. I will roll an elec/energy aura one or an Elec/Nin one today. Good stuff.

[Sinistar]

This is why Elec/ stalkers were fantastic, the synergy was off the charts:

1. Lightning Rod didn't break hide and gave that AoE power Stalkers lacked.

2. Elec Melee's low DPS was now high DPS. You could have an attack chain of AS(+ATO proc) -> Chain Induction (which had some AoE as well)->Jacob's Ladder (which could fit a -res proc and a purple damage proc) -> Charged Brawl (solid DPA, low animation time allowing your heavy hitters to shine and could be removed if your recharge was buffed).

3. Thunder Strike gave a hard hitting secondary AoE power with crit out of hide.

4. With high levels of recharge and Spring Attack, you could combine Lightning Rod+Spring Attack with only several seconds difference in recharge for a massive AoE nuke combo of BU+LR+Spring+TStrike every 30-40~ seconds.

I was leading the charge in incarnate trials with my Stalker. By the time the brute/tanker rolled in, I already had the mob nuked (and me still hidden).

You know...you just may have made me like Stalkers at last. Only one I had was ninja, got it to 50 for grins and then retired it.

[LaughingAlex]

This is why Elec/ stalkers were fantastic, the synergy was off the charts:

1. Lightning Rod didn't break hide and gave that AoE power Stalkers lacked.

2. Elec Melee's low DPS was now high DPS. You could have an attack chain of AS(+ATO proc) -> Chain Induction (which had some AoE as well)->Jacob's Ladder (which could fit a -res proc and a purple damage proc) -> Charged Brawl (solid DPA, low animation time allowing your heavy hitters to shine and could be removed if your recharge was buffed).

3. Thunder Strike gave a hard hitting secondary AoE power with crit out of hide.

4. With high levels of recharge and Spring Attack, you could combine Lightning Rod+Spring Attack with only several seconds difference in recharge for a massive AoE nuke combo of BU+LR+Spring+TStrike every 30-40~ seconds.

I was leading the charge in incarnate trials with my Stalker. By the time the brute/tanker rolled in, I already had the mob nuked (and me still hidden).

Wow, nice.  I'll have to try that sometime.  I also know that kinetic melee had an AoE in there to, though it was a lower damage/faster recharge AoE.

[Eskreema]

Exemplar building on stone tanks was a no-brainer.  As soon as granite was available, I'd burn a respec

[hejtmane]

I believe some of the largest amounts of depth were found in the various power sets, due to the sheer number of secondary effects.  Regarding AT flexibility, my personal opinion, well, as follows from best to worst:

1: Controller
Good crowd control(though dominators tend to consistently outperform), and buffs/debuffs, we've a clear winner here.

2: Defender/Corruptor
Buff/debuffs are very solid and attacks have secondary effects.  Better buffs/debuffs vs better damage, you decide.

3: Mastermind
Can soft-tank, very tough AT played right yet also buffs/debuffs and dishes out a lot of damage.  I'd even say the AT is tied with the two above AT's, but this is an AT for veterans, not newbies, kicking it down to 3.

4: Villain Epic AT's/Dominator
Villain Epic AT's have decent crowd control potential, good AoE damage, and good buff potential but are over-shadowed by the above AT's.  Dominator crowd control is better than controllers(superior magnitude in domination) and can even block being effected by CC, as well as having damage not far behind a blaster.

5: Brutes
The "best" melee class to many, near scrapper level damage(even exceeding scrapper pre-going rogue), taunt effects and taunt enables them to crowd control and they can become nearly as tough as a tanker, and as tough as a tanker with buffs.

6: Tankers/Blasters
Blasters have solid debuffs, but are not going to force multiply as effectively.  Tankers can taunt and grab agro, as well as have unmatched durability, but the trade-off in damage to me is to high imo.  After all, to an advanced team, sadly a brute can do the same thing as efficiently as a tanker.  Your trading damage for defense with tankers vs brutes.

7: Scrappers
Confront is a very poor agro control power compared to taunt, often skipped and no taunt effect in attacks, debuff effects exist on attacks and can make a difference, but the scrapper is not someone who's kingly at holding agro and is very damage oriented.  It was close for me to say whether scrappers or kheldians were more versatile.  Scrappers were still an immensely strong solo class and were still good to invite in teams, but they were pure muscle, not supportive in any way.

8: Kheldians
To focused on trinity gameplay by design, while changes made them far more efficient, they tend to cater towards only a few playstyles; Damage, or maybe crowd control.  They lack buffs for teammates, and while the warshade gets very good CC, the peacebringer to my knowledge had very poor CC in exchange for healing, which to me is a non-factor in team performance(better to prevent damage than heal it).


9: Stalkers
Rated last due to consistent lack of AoE damage, and general tendency to only focus on single target in most power sets.  The only crowd control for this class to my knowledge, was assassin striking something to AoE fear close enemies and debuff them some.  But Stalkers were far, far over-specialized in every set, and some sets even gutted desirable traits for assassin strike.  This is an AT that'd be awesome to review to address this problem; give it more AoE's and it'd tie with scrappers/kheldians.

Edit: Note that this isn't a "This AT is best and this AT is worst", just how I felt about the AT versatility in doing more then one thing in solo or teamplay.  I also did not factor in incarnate powers, which did let you add things you otherwise did not have to any AT.

I have to disagree on scrappers there where 4 sets that could tank I know I tanked TF's, pugs you name it with three of those sets and if I24 would had happen we would had a 5th.

Invulnerability, Will Power, Shield and Energy Aura all had a taunt aura Will power being the weakest; you could also mix in provoke if you wanted to but there was no need for it I never had a problem controlling agro.

Now if you want semi control there is one real option Dark armor COF or OG you could stack with DM or MA (they had things that stacked with that set). There was a sweet spot for DA; I3 to I5 where controllers complained about Dark armor when it had COF at mag 3 no aoe limit + the ridiculous -tohit you could achieve. More than a few controllers complained about DA back in those days then ED came along made it useful but no longer stepping on controller toes but still useful in groups

Scrapper had a lot more utility than you think it just depended on what you picked and how you did your build.

Then again I started in I2 back before the resistance caps, perma elude perma unstoppable Perma controller shaving multiple pets out perma hasten was in every serious build. 5 slotted damage so I may be a little warped in my view

[HEATSTROKE]

This is why Elec/ stalkers were fantastic, the synergy was off the charts:

1. Lightning Rod didn't break hide and gave that AoE power Stalkers lacked.

2. Elec Melee's low DPS was now high DPS. You could have an attack chain of AS(+ATO proc) -> Chain Induction (which had some AoE as well)->Jacob's Ladder (which could fit a -res proc and a purple damage proc) -> Charged Brawl (solid DPA, low animation time allowing your heavy hitters to shine and could be removed if your recharge was buffed).

3. Thunder Strike gave a hard hitting secondary AoE power with crit out of hide.

4. With high levels of recharge and Spring Attack, you could combine Lightning Rod+Spring Attack with only several seconds difference in recharge for a massive AoE nuke combo of BU+LR+Spring+TStrike every 30-40~ seconds.

I was leading the charge in incarnate trials with my Stalker. By the time the brute/tanker rolled in, I already had the mob nuked (and me still hidden).

SERIOUSLY now I gotta fire up Mids.. This give me a reason to actually make a Stalker build.. and it fits a theme as I was building a little theme team called " The Electric Company"...

[LaughingAlex]

My choices were also based on the resistance caps yes.  Scrappers would at resistance cap take a whopping 2.5x more damage than a tanker or brute at their respective caps, which reduced scrapper tankability a good amount.  I also factored in AoE taunting availability, more sets available = higher in my rankings for that particular front.

[Hells Wing]

DAmmit. A whole year and still no new info!

[Balince]

DAmmit. A whole year and still no new info!

No kidding, we better get the game back. Was watching a video of my favorite set which is spines. I miss all the CoH music/noises.

[Pyromantic]

I have to disagree on scrappers there where 4 sets that could tank I know I tanked TF's, pugs you name it with three of those sets and if I24 would had happen we would had a 5th.

My "main" scrapper was fully capable of tanking AVs in the STF before incarnates, sometimes without any support at all.  On one occasion we needed to split up two of them, so I pulled Mako away from the team and kept him at an indefinite stalemate while they handled the other.  On another occasion I was on a team with a tank that couldn't handle GW, so held back while I tanked her.  That build was ridiculously sturdy, and once or twice I waded into things I'd just seen take down a granite tank and came out alive.

I actually plan to remake her a brute though when I can.  She was built for sustained dps and great survivability, and the brute AT will just suit her better.

[LaughingAlex]

I been roleplaying plots out in paragon chat every so often myself, which to me is far funner than roleplaying in CO.  Also been playing with a new mod in new vegas, or rather an updated mod, which I'm finding to be especially fun.

It keeps me sane while I wait.

[Arcana]

I have to disagree on scrappers there where 4 sets that could tank I know I tanked TF's, pugs you name it with three of those sets and if I24 would had happen we would had a 5th.

Invulnerability, Will Power, Shield and Energy Aura all had a taunt aura Will power being the weakest; you could also mix in provoke if you wanted to but there was no need for it I never had a problem controlling agro.

Two of those have strong taunt auras: Invulnerability (via Invincibility) and Shield (via AAO).  Willpower and Energy Aura had "weak" taunts, meaning their duration was very close to their toggle's activation period.  That means if you attacked a bunch of even con critters with Willpower and you tried to use Rise to the Challenge to hold aggro the taunt effect would last for 1.25 seconds and be refreshed every 1.0 seconds - taunt would be perma.  But at +2, those taunts would only last 1.0 seconds and be barely perma.  At +3 the duration would drop to 0.81 seconds and be no longer perma.  You'd still have decent control of aggro, but it would be impossible to consistently control aggro in the face of high damage from team mates.

Although people thought RTTC was the "weakest" taunt due to its low duration, in at least one sense it was actually Entropic Aura's 2.25 taunt that was the "weakest."  While it was up it was stronger than RTTC, but more important was the fact that at +2 it was already non-perma: 1.8 seconds of duration compared to a 2.0 second tick rate.  RTTC was perma to +3 (invincibility was perma all the way up to +8 and became non-perma at +9, although I don't think any Invuln scrappers could reasonably test that fact).

Now if you want semi control there is one real option Dark armor COF or OG you could stack with DM or MA (they had things that stacked with that set). There was a sweet spot for DA; I3 to I5 where controllers complained about Dark armor when it had COF at mag 3 no aoe limit + the ridiculous -tohit you could achieve. More than a few controllers complained about DA back in those days then ED came along made it useful but no longer stepping on controller toes but still useful in groups

Of course, back then non-stacking armors meant DA didn't just have mag 3 CoF, they *needed* mag 3 CoF or they'd be dead.

Scrapper had a lot more utility than you think it just depended on what you picked and how you did your build.

Then again I started in I2 back before the resistance caps, perma elude perma unstoppable Perma controller shaving multiple pets out perma hasten was in every serious build. 5 slotted damage so I may be a little warped in my view

As you say, if you wanted something other than a straight-up damage dealer your only real option was Dark Armor.  As an archetype, Scrappers were diverse in how they dealt the face-smashing but not so diverse in doing anything other than face-smashing. 

Also, the scrapper res caps were revised in I1.  If you started in I2, you didn't get to enjoy perma-unstoppable for very long (it was made non-perma with I3 I believe).  Sadly, none of us got to enjoy perma-elude for long, as it made its appearance in I2 and disappeared in I4.

[Arcana]

My "main" scrapper was fully capable of tanking AVs in the STF before incarnates, sometimes without any support at all.  On one occasion we needed to split up two of them, so I pulled Mako away from the team and kept him at an indefinite stalemate while they handled the other.  On another occasion I was on a team with a tank that couldn't handle GW, so held back while I tanked her.  That build was ridiculously sturdy, and once or twice I waded into things I'd just seen take down a granite tank and came out alive.

I actually plan to remake her a brute though when I can.  She was built for sustained dps and great survivability, and the brute AT will just suit her better.

The secret to Ghost Widow was defense.  She couldn't kill what she couldn't hit.  My SR scrapper used to tank her all the time.  *Any* tank, scrapper, or brute could easily tank her if you just remembered to pack some purples before that mission/fight.  Conversely, it was incredibly hard to build enough resistance to tank her**: she just hit too hard (resistance + a lot of heals could do it, if you had heals that didn't rely on hitting anything: she debuffed tohit a lot also).  I saw regen scrappers capable of tanking her, but you had to have a very strong regen build to do it.

A well-built granite tank was genuinely almost impossible to kill except for two things.  One: heavy psi damage, particularly purely-typed psi.  Two: heavy defense debuffing critters.  Outside of those two things, if you see a granite tanker die, it was a weakly slotted one or the world's most unlucky MMO player driving one.


** Dark Armor tankers could do it given their enormous negative energy resistance, once you could actually make Dark Armor tankers.  But Dark Regen was an exercise in frustration to use against Ghost Widow; without massive tohit buffs or yellows, you could still eventually die from sheer lack of ability to ever connect with DR.

[Pyromantic]

A well-built granite tank was genuinely almost impossible to kill except for two things.  One: heavy psi damage, particularly purely-typed psi.  Two: heavy defense debuffing critters.  Outside of those two things, if you see a granite tanker die, it was a weakly slotted one or the world's most unlucky MMO player driving one.

Too long ago for me to remember the details, but I do believe a cascade defense failure was involved.  Most likely high-level Cimerorans.

[hejtmane]

Two of those have strong taunt auras: Invulnerability (via Invincibility) and Shield (via AAO).  Willpower and Energy Aura had "weak" taunts, meaning their duration was very close to their toggle's activation period.  That means if you attacked a bunch of even con critters with Willpower and you tried to use Rise to the Challenge to hold aggro the taunt effect would last for 1.25 seconds and be refreshed every 1.0 seconds - taunt would be perma.  But at +2, those taunts would only last 1.0 seconds and be barely perma.  At +3 the duration would drop to 0.81 seconds and be no longer perma.  You'd still have decent control of aggro, but it would be impossible to consistently control aggro in the face of high damage from team mates.

Although people thought RTTC was the "weakest" taunt due to its low duration, in at least one sense it was actually Entropic Aura's 2.25 taunt that was the "weakest."  While it was up it was stronger than RTTC, but more important was the fact that at +2 it was already non-perma: 1.8 seconds of duration compared to a 2.0 second tick rate.  RTTC was perma to +3 (invincibility was perma all the way up to +8 and became non-perma at +9, although I don't think any Invuln scrappers could reasonably test that fact).

Of course, back then non-stacking armors meant DA didn't just have mag 3 CoF, they *needed* mag 3 CoF or they'd be dead.

As you say, if you wanted something other than a straight-up damage dealer your only real option was Dark Armor.  As an archetype, Scrappers were diverse in how they dealt the face-smashing but not so diverse in doing anything other than face-smashing. 

Also, the scrapper res caps were revised in I1.  If you started in I2, you didn't get to enjoy perma-unstoppable for very long (it was made non-perma with I3 I believe).  Sadly, none of us got to enjoy perma-elude for long, as it made its appearance in I2 and disappeared in I4.

I got Perma elude and enjoyed the heck out of that my first scrapper was katana/SR and I ran him to perma elude with the default toggle and 6 slotted passives (no respec I had it all mapped out); I also started a DM/DA scrapper in I2 quickly benched him and got him to 50 in like I6. I just had other scrapper projects that took over during that time spines/da was my favorite until IO's yes all sort lived but was fun while it lasted. I knew EA had weak aura I tanked several TF's with my DB/EA I knew it was along the lines of WP did not know it was weaker but not shocking by any means. Shield was tanking on easy street