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Classes are really unbalanced, IMHO
trancejeremy
Member UncommonPosts: 1,222
As I've now played about a dozen characters up to 20th level, I have to say that the balance between them is not very good. I guess some of this is deliberate as it's a solo vs group play thing, but still...
Mostly it's a melee vs ranged thing. In virtually every other game I've played, a ranged DPS class can just about kill an enemy before it gets into melee range - or when it gets there, it's easily finished off. The catch being sometimes you needed to fight 2 or 3.
Here, in virtually every ranged class I've tried (be it blaster or corrupter or dominator) you're lucky to get an enemy even down to half before he hits into melee range.
It depends on the powerset - fire is pretty good, dark is okay, but ice and dual pistols are very weak, and electricity is downright pathetic.
Defenders are just plain pathetic.
And survivability is very, very low and all of them except dominators - since they can easily stop enemies in their tracks. But actually killing them takes ages.
By contrast, Brutes are amazingly lethal and incredibly sturdy. Most enemies take 2 hits to kill, and taking on 6 enemies at a time is a breeze. Yes, teleporting/fleeing enemies are a pain, but still, it's just so much easier to play.
Scrappers are almost as good as Brutes, don't seem to do much more damage, but die easier. Tankers are tougher but kill slower.
Stalkers on the other hand are remarkably weak - yes, they can basically one shot most enemies, but then they have to cope with 1-2 more and for whatever reason, they don't handle combat very well. They don't have many attacks and they don't handle taking damage very well.
I realize some of this is a solo vs group thing, but at the same time, characters are apparently expected to do a decent amount of soloing. On some charactrers, I really can't (like my electricty character or my defenders) while brutes are just so much more powerful.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Comments
Every class in the game can easily solo to max level, no matter the combinations of sets they choose. Sure some are easier than others, or should i say some start out easier than others, but Co* really isnt designed around running around solo but rather grouping up with 7 other people right from the first few levels.
Your assessment of the classes completely puzzles me, i don't think i would agree with a single point you made apart from Brutes and Scrappers being good... but then so is every other class.
"Range Classes should be able to kill things before they ever get to melee to hit you" Wait what? That sounds unbalanced.
Sounds unbalanced to me too, but it isn't the way CoX works. That said, I had no real trouble getting my Kin/Energy Defender to 50 (the only reason it took so long was because of rampant alt-itis). I guess she was a bit more of a solo build than a team player, because the energy blasts kept knocking back the targets. Repel sucked though, and was quickly discarded: it sucked power like crazy when you get mobbed, AND it let them all get in a hit before throwing them back!
Archtype dynamics are quite different, but I wouldn't necessarily say unbalanced, especially after level 32 when you can pick your final primary power (which you really haven't made it to). Also, to be frank, I prefer not to have cookie cutter classes...1 for you and 1 for you....CoX is a different beast, you can solo it entirely if you so choose, but the ATs all bring something different and achieve a level of synergy in teams that you just don't see in other games.
Making judgements about balance around lvl 20 is very flawed. In my experience it seems that many classes didnt come into there own till about 24 at the earliest. Hell, i just got my katana/dark scrapper up to 36 before it seemed to balance out with my other charachters (endurance issues). The various combinations of powersets are so different in terms of ability, that im not even sure that a generalization about Archtypes alone is actually universal as far as when certain charachters will be as capable as others.
I've never understood why there isn't a normal Support/Melee or Support/Defense archetype in this game.
For every type of ranged damage, there is a more powerful/hardier version of that type of damage for Melee, with the exception of Psionic and Cold damage. Psionic is considered to be one of the strongest forms of damage due to their being very little defense and the fact that psionic damage increases the enemies recharge time on skills with each hit. Cold damage can increase enemy recharge rate as well, but to a much lesser degree, but also snares enemies at the same time. The only issue with Cold damage is that you can mitigate it much more easily than you could mitigate Psionic damage.
I feel exactly where the OP is coming from, my first character on my second account was an Emp/Energy Defender, quite possibly the worst character I've ever made. At the time I didn't realize that energy was the worst type of ranged damage to pick, mainly due to the enormous amounts knockback that almost all the energy skills have, which results in any type of damage I try to do, I end up causing grief for other people trying to do damage.
I also found it very silly how you can't target yourself with your own single target support buffs in this game, had you been able to, how OP would it really be? I've brought up the suggestion before, and every ostrich that plays the game automatically retorted with resounding "LOLNO, TOO OP!" When in reality, the lack of this forces all normal support archetypes to stay far far away from enemies in group content, or risk being easily cc'd due to lack of proper resists and defense. Essentially this turns the game into the all too common "Wack-A-Mole" where you stare at grid of health bars and rotate between them as to not let any of those bars reach 0.
Over all, ranged archetypes are weak in terms of damage and defense, and find their best use as 2nd-chair controllers/dominators.
Normal Archetype supports are also weak in damage and defense, but find their best use as healers, buffers, and debuffers.
Melee have high defense, and high damage, and for the most part all have a taunt(aside from stalkers) which can be used to keep people alive by making sure those people are not the main focus of attacks. Though scrappers and brutes may do the same damage, scrappers can crit causing double damage on their attacks. The only problem as a scrapper is that you have to tank purely through your threat caused by damage, where brutes have access to poke-voke, in contrast Tankers just enter the room and everyone becomes angry.
As for the accuracy of my post, I have no idea what has happened since the game has gone free to play, but I doubt that balance was on the "to do" list. Frankly if you're looking for balance, I'd have to say you're not going to find it in this game.
1. Corruptors and Defenders are not weak in terms of damage, not sure where you pick this up from.
2. Blasters are the only ranged AT that has "surivvability" issues but you can pick up epic/patron armors to fix that in in the 30's.
3. Some buffs can be applied to yourself whiles others are only teammates, balance reasons.
4. Emp/Energ is a very strong combo, and it is not causing grief if you are defeating enemies.
5. There is Support/Melee in the game already.
Not true at all.
Yeah most ranged classes are rather squishy for early to mid game, there really isn't something like a ranged scrapper or even stalker. That being said this game has one of my faviorite class systems of all MMOs i played.
1. Stalkers are amazing since they got their damaged buffed. Survivability is below Scrappers, but not by much and in a team they can keep up with them damagewise while enjoying all the sneaky goodness in solo.
2. Brutes have very high damage due to their rage mechanic, but this also causes them to hit the damage ceiling sooner, they also have low base damage on attacks.
3. In this game classes enjoy mobility like in hardly any other MMO, you can actually FLY which understandably makes it somewhat hard for melee to punch you. If you combine flying with high defenses ... lets just say it becomes imbalanced rather quick.
That being said, one of my faviorite classes is the SoA aka the crab. Tough, mean, killing machine. Also keep in mind that its very easy to make pretty much every char tanky with the right sets, i had no problem tanking stuff with my MM for my pets, it was hilarious.