Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
From wow to coh
dargonight
Member Posts: 255
I'm thinking of quitting world of warcraft and start playing city of heroes but i have a couple of questions.
1. The 2 things i like the most about wow was the community (things like events and instances where you had to work together) and pvp. What are those two thingslike in city of heroes?
2. Can someone explain what each of the character classes are good for?
3. I heard you can get super powers like flying or super speed. At what level can you get that stuff?
*Edit*
4. How does the guild system work?
Thanks
Comments
Also when you say "have to work together", there's a great interdependency of classes (archetypes in CoH), even more so in CoH than in CoV. More on that in the next section.
However, for the most part what you won't find are huge participation things like WoW raids. Teams are limited to 8 people, and 99% of the time that's the most you'll ever be working with. They've been trying for a long time to get more raid-like content where you can have up to 75 people in an instance, but for whatever reasons they keep having technical difficulties.
That 1% of more cooperation will be non-instance stuff. Basically like this: a giant monster appears and starts threatening a section of the city, it he's tough enough that 2-3 full teams can contribute. Fun, but limited.
Also the team search function is awesome. You set a flag for what kind of team you want, even include a description about yourself, and go about your business. I have never had to broadcast "LFG" (which is good because so much time is spent in instances where they wouldn't hear you.)
Events are also great, and tend to really capture the spirit. For example, right now there's a Valentines Day event, there are some special missions that reward you with custom costume pieces, special (limited use) powers, and badges to display. These missions are not just available to Heroes and Villains both, but give an opportunity for Heroes and Villains to work together, something that doesn't happen normally. In fact they need each other. For Christmas there was a special mission, plus a giant ski slope players could slide down. Halloween has trick-or-treating.
PvP is a separate matter. The potential is there in the system but in practice it hasn't quite lived up. First thing to realize is that it's balanced around team capability, not individual capability. If you take any two characters, sometimes it's two glass cannons in a short but frenetic battle. Sometimes it's totally lopsides. And often it's a complete stalemate, where neither can kill the other. But with teams it gets better, as they work together to pick off opposing members and protect each other.
The potential is there with 4 different unique (and level-appropriate) zones, plus an Arena system with options. But they're not overwhelmingly populated. You'll want to find a PvPing guild (Supergroup) and join the server-wide Arena channel to find out where people are when for good fights.
I only dabble in PvP, but I know a number of people on this board enjoy it so maybe they'll weigh in.
One thing tying both the grouping thing and the PvP thing together are base raids. The idea was, your SuperGroup can go on big 40-person raids and get an Item of Power, which sits in your base and gives buffs to the whole SG. Then SuperGroups can raid each other to capture the items for themselves, but since it's your base you've built in defenses and features. Very cool idea. However, as I said above, the big-group-raid thing hasn't worked out too well. They're trying, but it should have been live Nov 2005 and except for 2 very short periods when they tried to go live with it, it's never worked. So that's kind of sad, but if they ever fix the problems it should add a whole new dimension of grouping and PvP.
In CoH classes are called Archetypes (ATs). As I implied above, they can be pretty different - something that actually spoiled me for going to WoW. As different as they may seem to you, I actually found that a Warlock, a Paladin, a Rogue, and a Priest all played way too similar to me, each getting a ranged weapon, a melee weapon, some armor to put on, a boosted dmg effect, an AoE effect, a little crowd control, and an auto-attack that covered the bulk of the work. Here they are made with weaknesses that can be filled by other ATs. Also, there's no "default attack" in CoH. You can pick one of your powers to auto-fire, but it's never a substitute for a well-timed attack chain.Also something to keep in mind is that within an Archetype, you pick from 2 lists of Powersets, a primary and a secondary, but just because two powersets come from the same list they can still play very differently from each other. For example, attacking with a sword is pretty different from attacking with Martial Arts. And defending yourself by regenerating back quickly is very different from avoiding hits in the first place. So a Broadsword/Regeneration scrapper and a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes scrapper are both the same Archetype, but can be pretty different. And that's just a small example. Got it? Here's the rundown then:
Blaster: The first list of powersets blasters choose from is "ranged attack". The second powerset is "melee attack". Get the image? (OK technically the second pool is called "Support", but it's a lot of melee so think of it that way.) Blasters are the best at doing damage, but they have no defenses for themselves or teammates. Solo play is fast but risky (though personally I find that tremendously fun).
Defender: The defender's first powerset is Buff/Debuff, defining the AT. This includes, but is not limited to healing (which a lot of people coming from other games overestimate). These can vary tremendously. The Force Field set protects the team from getting hit; the Empathy set mostly heals them; the Trick Archery set makes the enemy slower, weaker, and less accurate; the Kinetics set makes your opponets faster and lets them do more damage (and heals some), etc. Very varied, but all very useful on teams. The second powerset is "ranged attack". However because it's they're second set it's less powerful than the blasters first set, despite having a lot of the same choices. Solo play varies based on which type of defender you are, but for the most part they're among the weaker soloers, being intended mainly to boost teammates.
Controller: The first powerset a controller picks from is the "Control" set. There are immobilizes (enemy can't move), stuns (enemy can stagger but can't use powers), sleeps (enemy can't move or use powers but wakes up when hit), and holds (enemy can't move or fight back even while you beat on them). And a few other controlls as well, but those are the big 4. The controller's second powerset is from the "Buff/Debuff" list, overlapping a lot with the Defender's first pick. But just like Defenders do less damage than Blasters, Controllers do less buffing/healing than defenders (though still enough to be quite good at it). Solo play on a controller is slow but safe - enemies are usually Held so they can't fight back, but neither of the sets are attack sets so Controllers do minimial incidental damage. Also most controller sets get a pet at level 32, which can help increase the damage dealing and/or suffice as as disposeable meatsheild.
Tanker: Well the name pretty much gives it away. Tankers' first powerset is "Defense", basically their shields to prevent or reduce incoming damage. The second powerset is "Melee attack", they don't get any range. On teams they'd do exactly what you think, taking the aggression (using a Taunt power to guarantee it) and being a meatshield. Soloing, it's also safe but slow, though not as slow as Controllers.
Scrapper: Tankers pick Defense then Melee. Well Scrappers pick Melee then Defense. This means they're better at dealing damage but worse at absorbing it. No range attacks, but shields or other defensive powers keep them safer than blasters. Scrappers are the best tuned to soloing, but are generally quite welcome on teams, where they are either the back up tank or a damage-dealer second only to blasters.
And then there are two more choices that aren't available to new players, they have to be unlocked. City of Villains I'll just do more briefly:
Corruptor: Ranged attack first, buff/debuff second. Like a reverse defender.
Level 14. Which will probably take you something like 15-20 hours of play to reach assuming you take your time since it's your first character. Travel powers are awesome and have also spoiled me for most other games. However, remember how I said there are a lot of stalemates in 1 vs 1 pvp? Part of that is how easy it is to get away.Any player, when hitting level 10, can form a SuperGroup and invite people, and the SG can contain up to 75 people. It's absolutely not required to play, as you can easily find pick-up groups or use your friend list to find people w/o being in the same SG. However, it's definitely there for working together and some of the more PvP-oriented ones have some nicely honed skills.Dominator: Mixed melee/range attack first, control second. Less effective crowd control than blasters and no buff/healing, but they get attacks while controllers do not.
Brute: Melee attack first, defense second. That's the same priority as scrappers and they are fairly parallel, but there are differences I won't go into here.
Mastermind: The pet class, the primary is a "summon henchmen" set. They can summon up to 6 pets of 3 different tiers, and train them with bonus attacks, then command precisely where they go and who they attack. (That's much better command than Controllers, whose pets follow and attack but don't obey specific instructions). The second set is Buff/Debuff like Corruptors, Defenders, and Controllers have.
Stalker: The "rogue" class, they are Melee first defense second but play nothing like scrappers or brutes, mainly because they have way less hitpoints. To make up for it, they spend most of the time "hidden" and do bonus damage when attacking while hiding.
As I said earlier, SuperGroups can build bases or lairs. The original purpose was to hold and defend Items of Power from each other. Again, that hasn't worked out so well, but they've found other uses. Storage bins can hold inspirations (like potions), enhancements (like gear), or salvage (like every other loot that isn't potions or gear
). You can set up an infirmary so when you die you have the option of being resurrected in the base instead of the closest hospital. And you can build teleporters to make it faster getting from one zone of the city to another.
Plus some people enjoy decorating or just hanging out in them. There's no player housing so decorating a base is the closest you get.
There are two forms of currency - Influence which you spend and Prestige which the Supergroup spends. When you play, you choose to be in normal mode or SuperGroup mode. If in Supergroup mode, ever time you beat an enemy or complete a mission you will earn some Prestige for your SG. At first this is pure bonus, coming in addition to the influence you earn yourself. However, after 25 if you play in SG Mode you'll start making less and less influence (while still making the same amount of Prestige), and after 32 you get only influence in normal mode, only prestige in SG Mode. This is done so that new players have every incentive to run in SG mode, while higher levels have to choose, and for that reason they tend to be quite welcome in most SuperGroups.
Long response. Hope it helps, and check out my "free trial information" post for, well, free trial information.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
1. IMO the communtiy is good, I never have trouble getting a team. You can go solo, but there's things like strike forces, respec trials and other things you need a team for. For pvp you can fight in the arena or go to a pvp zone where heroes and villains fight
2. Get back to you on this one
3. you can get your first traveling power at lvl 14.
4. Guild system is pretty easy. You can make a supergroup, and build a base, and keep it up and add more with prestige.
Wow amasir wrote an amazing post I quickly skimmed it looks like hes covered everything so forgive me if I am rehashing what he said.
1. yeah community is awesome in CoX I keep saying im gonna resub simply so i can get in touch with ev1. amasir already covered the pvp. checkout youtube and search "city of heroes pvp".
2. Think amasir covered this looks like
3. amasir probably covered this but yeah you get them ASAP in CoV (temp powers). but really you dont get the real ones til 15
4. limit of 75 ppl. you kinda grind prestige together for bases and stuff. certain guilds will powerlevel you to cap if thats what you want cause they earn prestige off you. I think this works well I used to help PL lowbies so they could tryout diffrent toons without investing lotsa time. We'd all just talk on vent or chat. but anyway not all guilds are like that of course- others will do fun missions and you can participate and contribute. [edit- ah amasir posts says 75 so corrected that error on my post]
hard to explain this game amasir already posted the trial information i dunno why the mods wont sticky it
Thanks Vajuras. Sometimes I just get rolling. ;-)
Can one of you guys give a PvP perspective? It's fine when I'm in the mood but I'm not a PvPer at heart.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Your best bet for PVP is to join a PVP-focused SG and copy your toon to the test server since the PVP-focused SGs hold a lot of matches there.
-Community is much better, I play on Infinity which is not one of the most populace and I can get groups quite nicely. Most people like to group, but soloing is not only possible but also done frequently.
An important part to realize about CoX is that both the diffculty setting and the number of people in the group affect spawns. So soloing and grouping are not the same thing, even if you are playing the same map. Many people freely switch between the two and prefer to play that way, doing an hour solo and then an hour of grouping. Different powers work different on different classes of opponents, especially controls. A boss is harder to hold, so if you solo at the easiest level you can hold things much easier than when you group since bosses do not spawn on Heroic/solo but they will spawn on Heroic when you are in a larger group. Simlarly AoE can become much more effective in groups versus solo since the spawns are bigger.
-Throw out the idea of classes as WoW has them. Archetypes are just general guidelines. Blaster do alot of damage, but the right kind of defender can do a whole lotta damage as well. Some defenders do not heal at all, some heal quite well. There is not such thing as Defender(CoH) = Preist(WoW) it doesn't work that way. Its all about the pirmary/secondary combination. There are important differences in how the AT's work, Blaster just do straight up raw damage and have a higher cap on damage buffs or higher base damage or both. So if you group together the Blaster has a higher potential for damage. Solo you may be able to get a defender up to some nice damage but in a group with tons of buffs the Blaster will start to do a lot more. The same is true for a scrapper. So its not really the case that some AT is the King of all Damage, it all depends on what the situation is. Similarly the melee damage AT, Scrapper, can be a very good AoE damage type. Its not limited the Blasters which some poeple would think equates to mage, ie. glass cannon but has AoE, Blaster vs Scrapper does not come out like Rogue versus Mage or even Fury Warrior versus Mage. And control is not limited to Controllers, Storm defenders have alot of control even dark melee/dark armour scrappers have quite a bit of control. In general a Controller will have a lot more control. In general defenders will only do decent damage. etc etc. But there are not real hard and fast rules nor are there meant to be.
However certain AT can never do certain things. For example only Tankers, Brutes, and Scrapper have taunts. Does that mean you have to have any of these AT in a 8 man group? No. There are many "Super Team" that do all Defenders or all Corruptors and simply rely on a bajillion buffs/debuffs/healings and never worry about taunts because every single person is a "tank mage". Depending on the group make up there will be certain way of playing. You can go the debuff the heall outta stuff and no healing route. You can go the tank and spank route. You can go for the massive control route. etc etc. The ATs can all do many things and things can get done in many ways.
Some group make ups are probably just not that great. An AT like defender is quite versatile, but Blasters are pretty much glass cannons. 8 defenders can be quite powerful. 8 blasters might kills things real fast but that would most likely be rather tricky. There is a lot of variation in how the various blasters do their damage or use their secondary effects. Some are AoE, some are range, some are insane razor-edge adrenaline junkies and become melee range blappers or they mix all three or two of them. If you bring a Blaster it is almost always for damage, but there are some Blasters that can provide quite a bit of control, such as Electrical sapper blasters (I think that is still viable) that drain foes of their ability to take actions. But Blasters probably can never really tank in any meaningful way (at least not without ridiculous buffage).
The ArcheTypes are very flexible and quite varied, but each one can only go so far.
-Travel powers are great I love super jump, missing rooftops and falling for damage is all part of the fun. I defintely reccomend getting the Raptor pack ASAP. You can do newspaper/police band missions at level 5. Do three of those than do a mayhem/safeguard and you get a raptor pack that give you 2 hours of flight. The Zero-g pack gives 2 hours of super jump and can be gotten at level 10 in the same way. Since real travel pwoers are not gotten until levl 14 this is a real head start and makes trying out flight for the new player a pretty quick thing(maybe a few+ hours work to get to your first mayhem/safeguard). If you can find a friendly llevel 20+ kinetics Ctroller/defender to speed boost you, that is essentially Super Speed. Unfortunately to try out Teleport you need to get someone to 14 and take it.
-The guild system is certainly better than WoW's since you can build bases, which have useful things like zone teleporters.
yeah you can solo pretty well. Maybe certain sets are harder to solo with that others. for instance brute is easy to solo I think I even soloed the epic bosses for my epic mastery stuff. my stalker cant claim that feat.
Hero side, if you know you're going to solo a lot and you only have a small amount of time, I'd take a scrapper or blaster - probably the first one. Both are welcome on teams, but do enough damage to solo a mission very quickly. Controllers and Tanks will be safe solo but slower if you have limited time. Most defenders (depending on set) are slower/riskier soloing, but I have and do run them that way.
Just make sure your difficulty is on "Heroic", no higher, unless you specifically know you can handle the challenge. Not everyone is intended to solo on Invincible, nor is it adviseable to try.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Hero side, if you know you're going to solo a lot and you only have a small amount of time, I'd take a scrapper or blaster - probably the first one. Both are welcome on teams, but do enough damage to solo a mission very quickly. Controllers and Tanks will be safe solo but slower if you have limited time. Most defenders (depending on set) are slower/riskier soloing, but I have and do run them that way.
Just make sure your difficulty is on "Heroic", no higher, unless you specifically know you can handle the challenge. Not everyone is intended to solo on Invincible, nor is it adviseable to try.
My Ill/kin controller and Storm/Sonic Defender solo at least as well as my Broadsowrd/DA scrapper. That may change later on since the two highest damage attacks are are later on. But right now my defender can tank like a maniac with hurricaine and easily apply -60% Resistance for quite decent damage and when the scrapper is getting his damage attacks the defender (really an offender) will get lightning storm and tornado for more damage and more soft control for tanking. Similarly the Illusion/kinetics will get phantasm and fulcrim shift in the higher levels and already has phantom army for some pretty crazy tanking. Pretty sure the BS scrapper will start to edge out my Ill/kin, but I don't think it will be by that much, especially if I can hit Phantasm with a nice fulcrum shift + speed boost.Anyway what Amarsis is true for about 80% of the combinations, but there are specific builds for each AT that solos comparably to good scrappers. But some cotnroller combo like Fire/kin or Fire/storm can put out tons of damage espeically on the 5+ (due to AoE containment and hotfeet and later on Imps) spawns you see on the secodn and 4 th difficulty levels.
Best thing to do is to read the guides in the forums. They are usually well written and will help you understand what a certain combination is capable of. For solo play an Empathy or Force Field defender might as well be a different AT than a Storm Defender. My Illusion controller does as much damage as my scrapper (because Illusion has a high damage single target attack unlike other controllers) when he has something held (containmen inherent give double damage), but when he can't hold stuff his damage takes a consierable hit and he has to rely on phantom army for the tanking. So for a single boss that requires > 1 minute of tanking the scrapper is superior, under one minute the Ill/kin is superior since phantom army is indestructible while both have very good single point damage. With containment my Illusion controller's Air superiority does blaster level damage. So with the +recharge from kinetics you can put together a very nice contintuous attack chain that does close to blaster level damage on the things you have held with Blind (blind also does damage), plus you can confuse bosses or leutentents to add to the damage, have pets and have +damage from kinetics buffs. Generally you can kill even con minons in three hits or so since contained spectral woudns nasty damage. This stuff is also true for and Ill/Rad controller, they may be even more effective. But some other controller primaries have almost no damage, or are substandard until 32 when they get a pet.
The rules are nice but in the end you can make any AT solo well, just not any combo in any AT (excpet maybe scrapper for whom all combo are at least decent). Well blasters can be tricky since if hte s*** hits the fan you pretty much die unles you are awesome.
Edit:
Oh yeah some of the stuff I was talking about such as the Sonic blast set and the Containment controller inherent were added in later issues (like i4 or i5). Without containment double damage controllers used to suck at solo, but now some of them are quite nasty. So yes CoH has gotten more solo friendly no question. The inherents (to some degree) and infinite police band misssions defintely helped. As Amarsir said CoV started like this, all AT (a few combos will kinda suck though) can solo and police band is just the hero version of the original villain newspaper missions.
Wait, youy LIKED the 'community' in WoW????/boggle
Did you enjoy the 'crafting' as well?
What are you talking about? I played a Mind/Rad troller on the freedom server from launch and have seen every nerf bat taken around and I could solo till I hit about level 30 or so.
On that note, once you hit level 30ish in game if you intend to solo you're going to hit a brick wall with that stuff. The xp needed for stuff is massive in comparision to other (western) games and its probably best to co-op with people for the greater good. The only problem with CoX is that the long term appeal is lacking. For all intents and purposes WoW did do something MASSIVELY right when they put in end game content the way they did because it makes people want to stay, effectivly killing a long time MMO problem. Of course there is that 16hours a week to clear one instance in WoW...
"And after blizzard takes over the world, they are gonna gather a bunch of lemmings, sit on their fat asses near a cliff, and watch the little fuzzy bastards suicide dive into the ground below. . . . . all just for their own entertainment."
What are you talking about? I played a Mind/Rad troller on the freedom server from launch and have seen every nerf bat taken around and I could solo till I hit about level 30 or so.
On that note, once you hit level 30ish in game if you intend to solo you're going to hit a brick wall with that stuff. The xp needed for stuff is massive in comparision to other (western) games and its probably best to co-op with people for the greater good. The only problem with CoX is that the long term appeal is lacking. For all intents and purposes WoW did do something MASSIVELY right when they put in end game content the way they did because it makes people want to stay, effectivly killing a long time MMO problem. Of course there is that 16hours a week to clear one instance in WoW...
Its funny you say that because WoW's endgame made me leave earlier than I probably would have otherwise.