A Mild-Mannered Reporter: In the case of Corruptors
From a design standpoint, the archetypes offered by City of Villains are just straight-up more interesting than the ones in vanilla City of Heroes. The older archetypes were designed to fill specific holes, but the villainous types were designed for filling more than one role at once. It's true even of the most vanilla of all the archetypes, the Corruptor -- an archetype perhaps notable for being almost identical to a Defender, except in reverse.
But there's more to the archetype than just having a damage primary and a support secondary -- if everything were that easily summarized, I would have been finished with this series on the first week. There are a lot of similarities to Defenders, sure, but the devil is in the details, especially with this particular class. So let's take a look at the insidious and powerful influence of the Corruptor, whether you're new to City of Heroes in general or just haven't played the class before.
Corruptors in a nutshell
Not every villain stands on the front lines trading punches with heroes. Where Defenders were the back-row support with a few extra damage powers as supplement, Corruptors are the back-row influence with a hybrid twist. Depending on build and party makeup, Corruptors can play the role of straight-up support, straight-up damage, or (as is most common) one of several members blasting away and slowly reinforcing the team's abilities at the same time. Think of characters like Songbird (née Screaming Mimi) or Polaris (during one of her frequent villain jaunts) and you'll have a good picture of the archetype.
While Corruptors might sound like the exact inverse of the Defender from the powersets, the change in innate powers makes a difference. Scourge doesn't help keep your teammates alive; it helps finish off enemies who are close to death, starting at a slight chance for Scourge damage at half health and reaching near-certainty as the target bleeds out. Slowly accumulating wounds become much more dangerous as the Corruptor brings down her target gradually, giving a much more damage-oriented twist to the archetype and letting players stay aggressive.
The biggest weakness facing the archetype is the fact that all of its abilities are ranged -- there are no real defenses for Corruptors, and they're not burdened with a surfeit of health to begin with. They also suffer from being a healer-type hybrid, which works best in tandem with other support characters. A lone Defender can usually keep a whole group going, but multiple Corruptors (or a single Corruptor and a Mastermind or two) are going to provide better overall support to the group. Like any hybrid, Corruptors aren't quite as good as their pure counterparts.
Primary sets
A Corruptor's primary sets are oriented around ranged damage, mostly mirroring Defender secondaries or Blaster primaries. Since Corruptors can very easily be straight-up damage, there's a bit more preference for sets that don't provide any sort of debuffing aspect -- your damage abilities are going to be more omnipresent than those of a Defender.
Dark Blast, Dual Pistols, Electrical Blast, Ice Blast, Radiation Blast, Sonic Attack: Pretty much the same performance as for Defenders. The sets are solid and their debuffs are solid, which makes them all good picks for a hybrid build.
Archery, Assault Rifle, Energy Blast: I panned these sets as picks for Defender secondaries, largely due to the fact that none of them features much in the way of useful debuffs (which is what you're really looking for). Since Corruptors can aim in a much more damaging direction, however, these sets rise considerably in my estimation.
Fire Blast: The only primary that Defenders can't pick up as a secondary, this has solid area capability at the expense of any real debuffs. It's another offensively-tilted set, but the idea of wreaking flaming Scourge-powered death via Rain of Fire is a tempting one. (And if it's not, it should be.)
Secondary sets
Also largely but not wholly mirroring Defenders, a Corruptor's secondaries are healing and support. Here is where the damage-oriented nature of Corruptors really comes into play, as several sets that both archetypes can access perform better in the hands of this week's subject.
Cold Domination, Dark Miasma, Kinetics, Radiation Emission: All good Defender sets, and all good Corruptor sets, too. While I adore the latter two for Defender builds since they're far more support-oriented, the former two are far more flexible for the not-always-supporting Corruptor. (Dark Miasma's toolbox in particular better suits the villainous archetype.)
Sonic Resonance, Storm Summoning, Traps, Trick Arrow: These sets all shine much better with an archetype that doesn't expect them to pull full-on team support status. The debuffs and damage in these sets all scale nicely with Scourge, and you have a bit more freedom to build yourself as damage/debuffs instead of damage/support.
Pain Domination: The antithesis to Empathy in theory, it shares the same problems Empathy has -- namely, it's functional but boring. There's a bit more buffing in here, but it's still under the aegis of sets that work well but aren't particularly exciting unless you like mechanical elegance. It's also much more of a healing-oriented set rather than a more broad toolbox.
Thermal Radiation: My functional analysis of this set is always skewed by my love of the fact that this set heals people with fire. Setting people on fire to make them better is just awesome in concept. In practice, this is one of thoes sets that I think really shines under another archetype, due largely to the fact that it is entirely group-focused -- most of your powers won't help you, although the many buffs you can offer to others is pretty nice. If you wanted to pair it up with Fire Blast for a thematic hybrid build, though...
As for me...
If I had to pick a villainous archetype that I'm traditionally least enthusiastic about, it's got to be Corruptors. There's nothing wrong with them, but I always felt that I was lacking the tools to fill a party support role effectively. That's strange, since most groups that I've run have had more than one Corruptor, and as a result the net effect has been that things die faster and everyone's safety is at less risk while large heals get spread around almost haphazardly.
That having been said, the design side of me appreciates the synergy between the sets as working a bit better than the usual setup of Blasters with ranged and melee, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't fond of watching a series of Scourge procs go off in quick succession. If you like being able to jump between damage and healing, there's no better option. Plus, there are some sets that Defenders have that are so much more appealing for Corruptors, since you have a legitimate reason not to have a straight-up heal.
As always, feel free to espouse your own pet sets in the comments or via mail to eliot@massively.com. Next week, we're going a bit meta, as I'm halfway through these rundowns and wanted to talk a little more about the ethos behind each one. And then the week after that is PAX... so that's going to be all kinds of interesting, isn't it?
By day a mild-mannered reporter, Eliot Lefebvre unveils his secret identity in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles every Wednesday. Filled with all the news that's fit to analyze and all the muck that's fit to rake, this look at City of Heroes analyzes everything from the game's connection to its four-color roots to the latest changes in the game's mechanics.
