Combo powers?

[Xev]

Ok, so. I've been using a combo power since the start but have never bothered trying to wrap my head around how they work until now. Until now there hasn't been a compelling reason.

I've got an attack that I think I could really use a lot better if I knew wth I was doing with it. Cleave.

I grabbed Defensive Stance, from that power, and, I took Until Morale Improves, from Bludgeon

I'm getting plenty of Disorients to fire off, but, I cant get Defiance to fire off reliably. Sometimes it takes forever to fire off and then other times it pops right up in the buff bar and is refreshing itself regularly..

I'm confused.

Any hints?

How exactly do combo powers work, anyway?


Edit:
Ok so it turned out to be a hotkey problem. Oops.

I still never see the Enraged buff. Is it because Defiant is popping up first? Then when an Enraged fires off, it just refreshes Defiant?

[Atlantea]

Just did a search of the official forums. Here's a few tidbits:

- each successive use of the power deals more damage, and has a longer activation time
- each successive strike has a different attack animation
- the third attack in the combo will often have some sort of extra effect.

Cleave, Thundering Strikes, Defensive Combo, Reapers Caress, Ego Weaponry, Bullet Beatdown, Shred, and Frenzy are some combo powers.

Defensive Combo is a useful one for example. I have it on Dynamo Joe - on the 3rd hit, you do a PBAOE that hits everything in melee range. And it cycles very quickly. So - say you're working on the boss, and the trash mobs are harassing you. Move over to this power and just start hitting the button. You'll be doing damage to the main guy and to a slightly lesser extent all the mobs around you and him. This is especially good if you're a Behemoth AT and/or your only other real option is roomsweeper. Maybe you don't WANT to be knocking all the enemies all around the map. This is the power to use.

[Xev]

The first quote is a good clarification.

Couldn't figure out why Defiance wasn't firing off but it ended up being due to me using two hotkeys for the same power (decided to switch hotkeys but then kept using both) and one wasn't set like I thought it was.

So when I used the one that was set right, Defiance was firing off and the other times it didn't (go figure) and it confused me.

Whooops!

At least this took the mystery out of combo powers : )

This is a nice combo of.. combos for a low lvl Devastator btw. I'm dying less in Fatal Alert Part 1 now anyway hehe.

[Xev]

Once the confusion cleared...

Fatal Alert part 1, completed, at lvl 11  : D

Amazing what happens when hotkeys are set right and I'm paying attention to what's going on.

[Atlantea]

Nice!

[Xev]

Tyvm! I'm kinda proud of that  : )

So far, Devastator reminds me a lot of my War Mace "Brutalist", from CoH.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Cleave, in particular, is an odd one among combos powers.  It's three cone melees, each one having a chance to give you a stack of Enrage.  The chances for each hit are 25%/25%/50%, but if your primary target is Disoriented, that becomes 50%/50%/100%.

As a result, Cleave is really good for building Enrage in combination with Arc of Ruin, which is also a cone melee, and is a guaranteed disorient when fully charged.  Hit them with it, and then Cleave three times.  Not only will you Disorient and heavily damage everything in front of you, but you'll also generate as many as three stacks of Enrage, all while hitting more enemies and using less time than using Eruption three times.

Cleave's damage is not inconsiderable.  I really suggest ranking it up for the purpose of disposing of mobs of enemies quickly.  The advantage allows you to gain a stack of Defiant when you land the third hit in the combo on a disoriented enemy - personally I don't see a lot of use for it, since you lack Defiance and thus you'll only ever have 1 stack.  The advantage on Arc of Destruction is much more useful, as it basically turns it into an AoE version of Rank 2 Demolish, and will make the followup Cleave attacks that much more powerful.

Arc of Ruin also sets up nicely for Skullcrusher with the Put Them Down advantage, too, for the same reasons.

[Xev]

The Devastator has some complexity. You have to time things, you have combos and buffs that take some paying attention to if they're going to be useful. And there's no heal to fall back on.

Cleave's damage is not inconsiderable

On the contrary! I've considered it, and it sucks. hehe sorry.. Couldn't resist. Well, it does! If you're used to the Unleashed's cone, for example, anyway. Man, I think my Unleashed's pbaoe out-dps's Cleave.

Cleave hasn't been a dps attack for me so much as a buffing attack.

I buff up/stay buffed with Cleave and then whittle/pound things down however is fastest and keeps me alive. Sure there's only one stack of Defiant but I'm a Con junkie even on toons where it's not one of their SS's and I plan to add some Rec, too, so the one stack I get should be decent and it's resistance and energy I wouldn't have otherwise had.

I'm thinking there's gotta be a better dps cone/way to do aoe dps coming down the road, too, If I have to depend on cleave for dps.. oi.

At low level anyway, when I went the brute force route and ranked for damage I was dying more. A lot more even. I couldn't finish Fatal Alert 1, for example. Soon as I ret-conned - no problemo.

Whether this turns out to be a great argument in favor of not rushing to level your toon (finding lil things that work for your playstyle), or, just being something that works at low level, remains to be seen (by me anyway hehe).

Bottom line: retconning for Defensive Stance and keeping Until Morale Improves was a power move at lvl 11. That, and patience with timing attacks was how I got through Fatal Alert 1. I couldn't finish it before that.

The advantage on Arc of Destruction is much more useful, as it basically turns it into an AoE version of Rank 2 Demolish, and will make the followup Cleave attacks that much more powerful.

Ok so first: I'm sure you meant Arc of Ruin. Ruin, Destruction, whateveh!  : ) With the 10% extra damage from this and ranking Cleave up to 3.. when I get to level 25, I'll retcon and see what happens.

I'm all for swapping out Defensive stance later if it stops being useful. The recon people luv to see me coming.

Worst thing about playing a Devastator so far is that it kinda throws me off when I go back to playing Lee. Lee's a shark while Meaty's a bear. Totally different approach and there's the size dif which I might end up changing to be less extreme, too.

Edit: Hey, I just realized that Cleave is my new Defensive Sweep (for now). I never depended on/slotted that for dmg either but I used it a lot to fill in the gaps when there wasn't another attack up and when I wanted a defense boost. I said before that Devastator feels like War Mace, and it does, but it kinda plays like Titan Weapons. First impressions so far, at least.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Destruction, Ruin, bah.  I played a Titan Weapons brute on CoH.  Semantics!

Anyway, comparing anything to The Unleashed is unfair.  The Unleashed is easily the most broken melee DPS archetype in the game.  Nothing compares to it.  Even so, Cleave's damage is a hell of a lot better than a lot of things you can compare it to, enough so that unless you jack up the difficulty, you won't even get to Cleave's third hit most of the time on Henchmen.  If you're going to compare The Devastator to the Unleashed, you may as well just play The Unleashed.  There's not a lot The Devastator (or any melee DPS AT for that matter) can do that The Unleashed can't do better.

Cleave isn't your most efficient damage dealer, and you don't need to rely on it specifically (Arc of Ruin/Skullcrusher is a better combo for damage if you have Rank 2 Skullcrusher and Put Them Down), but unlike other Devastator attacks, you don't have to charge it, so it's faster for busting groups of henchies/villains and getting Enrage up.  Having ranks in Cleave will ensure that they don't survive it.  Killing them fast keeps them from chipping you down as quickly.  Besides, what else are you going to put those advantage points into?  Once you've got Eruption, Skullcrusher, Arc of Ruin Unstoppable and maybe Enrage (if you're not confident in keeping your stacks of it high) capped out, that still leaves a lot of advantage points.

To be honest, Arc of Ruin/Skullcrusher is The Devastator's best attack.  Once you get the later attacks, they seem kinda superfluous.  Vicious Descent is just a lunge that AoEs when you hit (and doesn't disorient like Decimate does).  Earth Splitter is nice in that it's a ranged attack, but it's mostly useful for the knockto advantage.  Brimstone's a PBAoE, and since half of it is fire damage, it doesn't benefit from Arc of Ruin's advantage.  Earth Splitter suffers the same problem.  Unless they have really good scaling and CO-wiki's numbers are misleading (entirely possible - they were with Skullcrusher), then there's just not a lot to argue for them over just pounding dudes with fully-charged Skullcrushers once they're disoriented.

[Xev]

Yeah, once I got Skullcrusher and ranked it all the way up that pretty well settled everything.

I'm thinking Cleave, like Defensive Sweep, is situational depending on how you play and what you play against.

Me, now that I am just **punishing** mobs with Skullcrusher, and sending them on their butts with KD, I don't really care anymore how much DPS Cleave can do (although I went rank 2 for sure to make it not totally weak in dps) and I was the same way with Defensive Sweep (I'd slot as much damage as would fit but that was the last priority)..

Also - it is worth noting - in a team situation, many times, someone else has done the disorients for me already. So, all I have to do is take a few swipes, voila, free buff including an Energy boost so I can do... Moar Skullcrusherz!!

Comparing Unleashed to Devastator is like comparing Claws/Fire brutes to TW/Ele brutes. They are both leet (can be!) in their own way.

Unleashed slice & tear things up. Devastators punish you first. I'm hoping to end up with a boatload of hps with Meaty, too.

The ST damage with my Devastator seems sweeter, so far, than with my Unleashed. While still being *very* satisfying in the aoe department. Almost equally, even, if it were not for there being no pbaoe yet for those times when I get surrounded and no one wants to cooperate with the lining up of the cone. I want to say that The Unleashed has better survivability, but, I died a LOT with Lee in the beginning, too. So, the jury is still out on that but I do miss my heal (that I normally never need anymore..).

So far at lvl 20 with the Devastator, this is me anyway. I still prefer Lee but that's not unusual and he was my first so that works out good. Meaty has a long way to go still with lvls and gear, too.

I was kinda getting bored with my Devastator before Skullcrusher but I am fully back into him again now *whaaBAAM! whaaBAAM!* and then toss some Eruption action in there if they live long enough - just for the humiliation/entertainment/save your teammate from getting smacked factor.

Meaty's already earned the 4th spot in my list of faves. Senge only hangs in there at 3rd because his aoe dps in a good team is just good clean fun that's hard to beat.

[Xev]

Pfft it's all good. We're just talking shop. If we all played our toons the same way and had the same opinions that'd probly be boring.

Cleave seems like one of the less interesting things about a Devastator too, so, yeah, it's not worth going on about.

One of the things that's been fun about playing Meaty is experiencing a new combo of SS's. The effects that I don't normally get to use, like KU & KD have been entertaining. I haven't leveled a newb for awhile either, so that's been fun too.

I've got a FF slot coming up pretty soon and I'm thinking about trying The Master or something equally tanky, too. Soooo I dunno what that means for Meaty's future but he's been fun and I'll probably level/gear him eventually since he seems worthy. If nothing else he should end up being decent in alerts for some entertaining farmage that works different from my other guys, for variety.

Edit:
Hey! Yer post disappeared hehe