Underrated Powersets

[P51mus]

Most players thought if an attack was not positionally typed, it was going to be either psionic or toxic (although toxic attack typing itself wasn't introduced until very late in the game and rarely used).  An interesting trivia question I would occasionally pose on the forums was to ask if anyone could name a reasonably common attack that was not positionally typed, but was not psionically typed either (but was not completely untyped either).  It did not have to deal damage.

I dunno if you'd consider it reasonably common, but fearsome stare of darkness control / dark miasma is only negative typed, no positional.  I can only remember that because I loved dark miasma/control.

[Baja]

Can you slap the WoW development team with that? they got the moronic idea in their brains lately that "Too much information is bad and confuses players"

They must be taking advice from Jack Emmeret.

[Arcana]

I dunno if you'd consider it reasonably common, but fearsome stare of darkness control / dark miasma is only negative typed, no positional.  I can only remember that because I loved dark miasma/control.

Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

Indeed, my first main was Radiation/Dark Defender, The Toggles Melted AVs, Dark blast debuffed the crap out of non AVs..and Fallout + Vengeance was the ace in the hole that ended any fight.

[Ankhammon]

Winner.  It was not common for someone to come up with that on the game forums.  When PvP first came out and they were testing it, my perma-Elude MA/SR feared only two things really: Illusion Controllers and Dark Defenders.  Both pack mezzes that could trivially incapacitate me permanently: Blind was non-positional and could easily overwhelm PB, and Fearsome Stare was non-positional and SR has no fear protection.  Being perma-mezzed a lot by those two powers made it easy for me to remember them.

Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp. One short BF and any mezzes I had were null and my vaunted -tohit was negated by every single aim/BU/pocket EMP (betrayers of their own kind) a player wanted to pull. Even fluffy was so slow as to be more of a non issue than helpful.
There was only one power in the whole set that could be relied upon for protection and that was black hole (the one no one wanted to take) and it got the nerf bat about as quick as a dev could grab a hammer.

When pvp began, every other AT was superior to defenders.

Sure, a stormie could get a stalemate once in a while. I also played Rad, Dark and kin during the early days of pvp and they were all baaaaad. All you could do was debuff on the run and keep running. kills were for others.
And your HP allotment made you the first and easiest target for everything else.

Things started changing with TA (sonic came out at the same time and was meh). Then Ice was a good combo (Ice/Dark was great at POing your opponent). Then the pvp changes and more sets and pvp was ok for a defender to play.

Sorry, but early pvp was so broke it was ridiculous.
In a game where every AT was supposed to feel powerful to have a section of the game where only a couple of powers out of the whole of the defender AT were worthwhile was just sad.

[LaughingAlex]

Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp. One short BF and any mezzes I had were null and my vaunted -tohit was negated by every single aim/BU/pocket EMP (betrayers of their own kind) a player wanted to pull. Even fluffy was so slow as to be more of a non issue than helpful.
There was only one power in the whole set that could be relied upon for protection and that was black hole (the one no one wanted to take) and it got the nerf bat about as quick as a dev could grab a hammer.

When pvp began, every other AT was superior to defenders.

Sure, a stormie could get a stalemate once in a while. I also played Rad, Dark and kin during the early days of pvp and they were all baaaaad. All you could do was debuff on the run and keep running. kills were for others.
And your HP allotment made you the first and easiest target for everything else.

Things started changing with TA (sonic came out at the same time and was meh). Then Ice was a good combo (Ice/Dark was great at POing your opponent). Then the pvp changes and more sets and pvp was ok for a defender to play.

Sorry, but early pvp was so broke it was ridiculous.
In a game where every AT was supposed to feel powerful to have a section of the game where only a couple of powers out of the whole of the defender AT were worthwhile was just sad.

Pvp 1.0 was imo about as, change that, not just opinion, it was a bloody fact that pvp 1.0 was just about as bad as pvp 2.0.  It just had different problems.  Pvp 1.0; you had to use specific builds and flight was useless, and it was a chicken-fest(run away all the time after launching some attacks, thats not very in your face, which is what I prefer in pvp).  Pvp 2.0; it was in your face, but then builds were even more limited in it than before, also tried to make archtypes all play identically.  Also all travels were useless in pvp 2.0, but that was done to force an in your face style.

You cannot just make all classes play alike and then make even less builds viable but you also don't want to have movement so fast as to have chicken-fest gameplay.  Anytime I see high speed gameplay lead to people just hit and running all the time, I imagine the gif of a chicken chasing a kid away, only edited with the kid putting up a shield and running with the title UT2k3 over him, and the chicken with the title UT99 over him.  Because the analogy with UT2k3 and UT99 was bloody true.  And CoH pvp 1.0 and pvp 2.0...yeah....only pvp 2.0 was...yeah...just as bad.

[Ankhammon]

Pvp 1.0 was imo about as, change that, not just opinion, it was a bloody fact that pvp 1.0 was just about as bad as pvp 2.0.  It just had different problems.  Pvp 1.0; you had to use specific builds and flight was useless, and it was a chicken-fest(run away all the time after launching some attacks, thats not very in your face, which is what I prefer in pvp).  Pvp 2.0; it was in your face, but then builds were even more limited in it than before, also tried to make archtypes all play identically.  Also all travels were useless in pvp 2.0, but that was done to force an in your face style.

You cannot just make all classes play alike and then make even less builds viable but you also don't want to have movement so fast as to have chicken-fest gameplay.  Anytime I see high speed gameplay lead to people just hit and running all the time, I imagine the gif of a chicken chasing a kid away, only edited with the kid putting up a shield and running with the title UT2k3 over him, and the chicken with the title UT99 over him.  Because the analogy with UT2k3 and UT99 was bloody true.  And CoH pvp 1.0 and pvp 2.0...yeah....only pvp 2.0 was...yeah...just as bad.

I hear ya on PVP 1.0. It's where I started my loathing of fire blasters in specific and the whole fire set in general.
Honestly, it was never that I truly hated fire sets as much as the braggers who played them. the whole "I'm so awesome" because I can cause good damage and survive when either up against specific sets (AE fire farms) or were only good because of circumstance (had a pocket Emp).
That crowd really drove me away from pvp.

Well, it also bugged me that in order to make a pvp "playable" set you had to get rid of half of your powers so you could get hasten/sj/ss/weave/blah/blah/blah just to last long enough to attempt to do something.

Can't really comment on 2.0 because I simply wouldn't play pvp by then. Did some testing on it when it came out. My AR/Dev blaster buddy could unload on my Sonic/Sonic defender and it would take about 2 or more minutes to kill me. All I did was just stand there.
That may have been my entire experience with pvp 2.0.

[Arcana]

Funny, I always thought I was behind the 8 ball when on my Dark fender in pvp.

You probably were, but that's a different matter altogether.

[Ankhammon]

You probably were, but that's a different matter altogether.

Ouch.

[robo40]

after 8 years of playing almost everything.. I cant really think of anything that was underrated to me. Underrated means something that very good that should have been rated higher..

not something I didnt see everyone on the planet playing.. im a game where you have people spread across multiple servers with tons of alts.. you probably are seeing a snapshot every time you play and never the whole picture..

Right.  Virtually any power combo could be played effectively, but some were clearly superior to others (either easier to make effective or better at high end).  With so many of us having double digit level 50's, it was just a matter of which toon you enjoyed playing, and the server culture.  Not sure there were truly "hidden gems" - haven't seen any in this thread that were top end and under-represented, imo.

[Hagis]

My SG buddies and I enjoyed making toons with unconventional powersets. I ran with an Inv/Mace tanker (this was well before they buffed Clobber), another guy had a Sonic/Sonic defender, someone else had an Earth/??(empathy, maybe)? controller, and my wife ran an electric/electric blaster. We never set any leveling records or anything, but we always had an awesome time.

But, going to the original point, at one time, */Mace Tankers, Electric/* Blasters, Sonic/* Defenders, and oddly, Earth/* controllers were rarities, relatively speaking.

[Arcana]

My SG buddies and I enjoyed making toons with unconventional powersets. I ran with an Inv/Mace tanker (this was well before they buffed Clobber), another guy had a Sonic/Sonic defender, someone else had an Earth/??(empathy, maybe)? controller, and my wife ran an electric/electric blaster. We never set any leveling records or anything, but we always had an awesome time.

But, going to the original point, at one time, */Mace Tankers, Electric/* Blasters, Sonic/* Defenders, and oddly, Earth/* controllers were rarities, relatively speaking.

Back when I first started playing City of Heroes, and significantly before Issue 1 was released, I used to team with a Ice/Fire tanker.  Back then, you were more likely to see someone claiming to be a Strawberry Shortcake/Boomerang Fish Defender than an Ice/Fire tanker.

[Vee]

People have mentioned traps as underrated and awesome but no one has mentioned the hilarity of phase shift + high recharge + trip mine. Running the last mish of lrsf with multiple traps toons was great - we'd pop back out of phase shift and the rest of the team would barely have to mop up.

[ricodah]

Several players hated Assault Rifle/Devices Blasters due to the lack of Build Up/Aim.  I enjoyed it, always having 3-4 Gun Drones at he same time often with 3 Spiderlings and 2 Robotic Drones was pretty fun.  My battle cry was "Rise of the machines!" and the back story was called, "Skynet, the Early Years."  i24 would have made it great with Targeting Drone/Kismet unique making Sniper Rifle a perma insta-snipe.

[P51mus]

People have mentioned traps as underrated and awesome but no one has mentioned the hilarity of phase shift + high recharge + trip mine. Running the last mish of lrsf with multiple traps toons was great - we'd pop back out of phase shift and the rest of the team would barely have to mop up.

Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

[HEATSTROKE]

Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

I did it stealthy on my Arch/Devices all the time.. but no phase shift. Unbound Leap and Super Speed made me invisible enough to drop mines at her feet.

[Vee]

Are you telling me mines could be set in phase shift and I never knew about it?

Yep, most of your traps bag of tricks could be (sans web grenade). You could get trip mine down to about 4 or 5 seconds. So you could stealth into the mob, phase shift and get 5 or, if you timed it perfectly, 6 trip mines in the mob before it ran out. while you waited on trip mine to recharge you could drop acid mortar, drones, poison trap, ffg, and caltrops, so anything that happened to live through the stacked mines would be already debuffed to hell before its first shot at you. Obviously this was a mostly solo or go-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-map-from-the-team playstyle but it was a fun occasional diversion from the usual mode of play.

[doc7924]

What I remember from the real early days - 2004 - was Empathy was a must for a team and if you weren't a defender or controller with empathy, good luck getting on a pick up team. I was on teams where someone would get invited to a team - team channel "Are you a healer?" "no" - KICK!

Or even my toons got kicked off or passed on until I made my Illus / Emp  Doc Heal. Then I was very popular.

Kinetics was way overlooked those early days and later became almost a must have on a team.

[rebel 1812]

Yep, most of your traps bag of tricks could be (sans web grenade). You could get trip mine down to about 4 or 5 seconds. So you could stealth into the mob, phase shift and get 5 or, if you timed it perfectly, 6 trip mines in the mob before it ran out. while you waited on trip mine to recharge you could drop acid mortar, drones, poison trap, ffg, and caltrops, so anything that happened to live through the stacked mines would be already debuffed to hell before its first shot at you. Obviously this was a mostly solo or go-to-the-opposite-end-of-the-map-from-the-team playstyle but it was a fun occasional diversion from the usual mode of play.

couldn't you just use stealth and drop the mines or bombs?

[Vee]

one maybe. it'd go off and aggro even if you didn't draw aggro from the activation.