Behind the Mask: Eight ways for free-to-play
A little while ago, a full list of Champions Online's first eight archetypes was given to the public. Originally I wasn't going to talk about them much, but a couple people came up and asked me, "Are you going to write about archetypes this week?" I told them I probably wasn't, but after reflecting on it, it seemed a hot topic that I should probably talk about.
Cryptic has a habit of releasing ideas and content that are ridiculously bad in their first iterations. Over time, these ideas tend to get more and more polished, until we get something ranging from playable (melee) to almost exactly right (pets). The first pass at archetypes really isn't any different. The archetypes are bad. I am pretty sure the team will tweak the little problems, so talking about them seems sort of like jumping the gun.
But hey, you guys asked for it.
Developer intent
One of the things we can glean from the design of the eight archetypes is a fairly good idea of what the devs wanted to make each F2P player capable of. Even though the classes presented are pretty bad, we can make a lot of assumptions about what the devs were thinking when they designed each of them.
It's obvious that self-sufficiency is very low on the devs' list of priorities. With the exception of the Savage archetype, none of the characters presented play well without a team. No self-healing skills (such as Bionic Shielding or Bountiful Chi Resurgence) were included, so the DPS characters are virtual glass cannons and the tanks benefit a lot from healer support.
While the archetypes as a whole are kind of bad, one of the things that troubles me most is the glaringly bad stats. Several of the archetypes don't get the essential superstat for their passives to start with, and several don't get the appropriate stat at all. I can only attribute this to laziness or ignorance on the part of the devs in charge of creating the builds for these characters. It would take me about 5-10 minutes to produce builds more appropriate.
I think this may have been a case of "too many cooks spoil the broth," but honestly I have no idea.
The Inferno
: Mostly playable
The Inferno is probably one of the more polished archetypes and has few problems. I mostly agree with the order in which his powers are selected, with the exception of the block power, which I'd put off to get Thermal Reverb and Conflag earlier. A block power isn't essential to a DPS character, so encoding a hard rule that forces DPS to take a block at lower levels is kind of a bad decision.
The main problem with the Inferno is that he gets Super Recovery, and he gets it before he gets Super Endurance. Recovery doesn't do anything for a Fire character (other than just generally being a decent stat all-around). Endurance scales up Fiery Form's damage, so it's essential. Because this build doesn't get any heals, getting PRE (the normal Fire stat build) seems questionable, but at the least, REC should be put off and END should be first.
The Soldier: Not just bad, really bad
The first thing we notice about the Soldier is his new energy builder, Steady Shot. Is that a typo? I hope it's not. I'd love to see a single shot rifle or single pistol energy building power.
The next thing we notice is the awful passive. Targeting Computer is decent in teams, but it is a very nuanced power and is worthless in most fights. Is this intentional? The Soldier deals less damage than the other DPS-focused characters, partly due to his awful passive but also due to the low damage present in Munitions. Like the Inferno, the Soldier gets an effectively useless block power early when he really could use something like Killer Instinct, an essential power for Munitions (which he doesn't get until 22). Lastly, Submachinegun Burst is an awful power, and the Soldier depends on it for cone DPS. I'm hoping that SMG gets buffed in the next balance patch, since it is currently only useful in a handful of builds. The Soldier is not one of them.
The Blade
: Someday, I'll get my good powers
The Blade is an excellent example of why theory fighting is often bad. The Blade has most of the key elements of a Single Blade character, but there are some massive flaws. The Blade doesn't get her core essential powers until literally the very end of her leveling career.
Some people used to other MMORPGs might be OK with getting their top-end abilities at the end of the game. However, putting all the fun stuff at the end of the road is just a bad idea. If someone picks the Blade archetype as her first character, it will most likely bore her to tears. Reaper's Caress is the only real attack she has until level 17, and Reaper's Embrace, the most important skill in Single Blade, is not gained until level 40.
Even the Soldier has better tools in the early game. Instead, our Blade heroine has a ton of cluttered utility powers such as Shuriken Throw and Thunderbolt Lunge, none of which is very good at dealing damage. On the plus side, once she hits level 40, she's probably the best PvP archetype.
The Savage: I'm the best at what I d... OK, no I'm not
The Savage is almost a pretty good build. It's really evidence that it's easy to make a functioning Bestial character as a free-form character. The Savage hero starts with a good mix of single and AoE claw attacks, although his damage is on the low side until he gets Massacre at the end. Still, I can forgive the devs because he has Bite, Shred, and Frenzy fairly early on, and they're pretty decent attacks. At least he's not depending on SMG Burst.
The first trouble I have is obviously the delayed Massacre. He doesn't really need Supernatural Power so early, or really at all; after all, he's Regen and he has super REC... oh wait.
As we all know, Regeneration scales to Recovery, so having a high REC is very important. A Regen hero without super REC? Is this a typo?
And we're only half done with these, geez.
The Behemoth: Missing something very important
Of the two Protector role characters, the Behemoth is the more appealing at first glance. He's super-strong, has kind of a rage-type thing going on, and he's ready to tank for a team... but something is missing.
He doesn't get an area taunt until level 40.
Area taunts are of limited use as it is, as I've mentioned before. However, Shockwave is his only area attack (other than Thunderclap), and at level 40, he won't be tanking for anyone until he reaches the endgame.
Are his other powers good? Yeah, he gets early Defensive Combo. Thunderclap is pretty good as a taunt if it's combined with area damage, and so on. He gets Strength first instead of Constitution, which is bad, since his passive (Defiance) uses CON. He just needs Havoc Stomp, or maybe just get Shockwave earlier, like in the 20s.
The Glacier: My favorite concept; the worst execution
Of the eight Archetypes, the Glacier is my favorite. She's an icy Invulnerability tank with an area chilling breath at a low level, so she can shell out decent damage and grab threat from a lot of foes at once. Could this be love?
Unfortunately, she decided to skip on getting STR (which is needed for Invulnerability) and picked up END and DEX instead. Again, her design isn't bad, just terribly sloppy. Any other issues? Nope! Ice Breath covers her attacks, she has a nice active defense, and perhaps coolest of all (OK, pun intentional), she has a new power, Avalanche, at level 40. Could it be an Ice nuke? An Ice version of Force Cascade?
We can hope!
The Mind: I can't think of anything witty
I'll go straight to the heart of the issue here. Telepathy is kind of neutered. There are some other issues I'll get to with our mentalist heroine, but the core of the problem is that she picked a bad powerset. It's no secret that Telepathy is underpowered; it's been slowly getting gutted since the Collective Will nerf and almost nothing is left.
Our mentalist heroine doesn't exactly pick the best powers, but I can hope that maybe Telepathy will get buffed as a whole.
Ego Sleep, for instance, is just a useless power; it does almost nothing in PvE or PvP, due to the way hold powers are coded. A lot of Telepathy is like this -- cute mechanics that would be neat but are awful in practice. The Mind is full of these kinds of powers.
She is billed as a healer type character, and she even has Aura of Radiant Protection, a Sorcery passive, to help with team support. However, her only heal is Psionic Healing, which is a charged heal and not so good for quick saves. She gets Mindful Reinforcement, but only at level 40. Thus her ability to help the team, or really do anything besides sit around and grant her aura, is kind of limited. Honestly, the Radiant aura is so good that maybe that's alright, but it makes for boring, un-fun gameplay.
Lastly, she is lacking Ego Storm, an essential part of Telepathy's offensive package.
The Grimoire: Are we saving the best for last?
The Grimoire is a magic-oriented hero, and like Savage and Glacier, she's one of the better designed builds in my estimation. The main weakness comes from her passive, Aura of Primal Majesty. This aura is terrible. It grants bonus stats to allies, including pets, within its radius. However, the effect is pretty marginal, generally resulting in a very small damage buff (since it raises superstats) and a little bit of energy management benefit. Most of the Sorcery auras (except the Radiant one) are bad, so we can only hope for a buff to the Primal aura here for the Grimoire.
A bad passive doesn't mean a character has to be awful though, and the rest of the Grimoire's powers are pretty well organized. Granted, I have no idea what Pillar of Poz is (a new power?) but she gets the Primal sigils very early, ensuring a solid offensive game. At 17, she backs this up with Arcane Vitality for solid team healing, making her a good functional team choice in the early game. At 27, she gets the mighty Skarn's Bane, so unlike all the other archetypes, she doesn't have to wait for her top-level attack. Of all the heroes, the Grimoire is the most stable and versatile, although she can't take hits well.
So... now what?
I'll be honest, most of the archetypes presented thus far are awful, and all of them have at least one or two terrible power choices (Grimoire's sin is the ebon sigils, which are giant aggro magnets and do her almost no good). Even within the given frameworks, these builds are lackluster at best.
One of the reasons I didn't want to talk about Archetypes is, quite frankly, I have very little positive to say about them. They're bad, and they reek of lazy design. It feels like the people who designed archetypes have minimal or no actual in-game experience with the powersets they used and chose powers like Ego Sleep based on some arbitrary coolness factor.
It could also be that Targeting Computer and the other awful powers are getting a massive buff. We can hope.
When he's not touring the streets of Millennium City or rolling mooks in Vibora Bay, Patrick Mackey goes Behind the Mask to bring you the nitty-gritty of the superhero world every Thursday. Whether it's expert analysis of Champions Online's game mechanics or his chronicled hatred of roleplaying vampires, Patrick holds nothing back.
