Behind the Mask: Primal Rage
Before we get started, let me note that I'm pretty aware of the current progress on the new Devastator Archetype and the Heavy Weapons set. Things seem to be going well for both, so when we finally see them (soon!) I'll be giving some in-depth coverage. Normally I give a preview prior to the content's going live, but in this case I wanted to talk about something else first.
That something else is Aura of Primal Majesty. Champions Online has four different aura passives, and for a long time, all but one of them (Aura of Radiant Protection) were pretty bad. During the Free-for-All launch, the three underperforming auras were buffed extensively. After the buffs, the Primal aura emerged as one with the most unique and interesting interactions. In fact, it is one of the most truly interesting powers in CO, because something as simple as raising stats has one of the most unusual consequences in CO's complicated stat system.
The basics
Aura of Primal Majesty's effect is pretty simple. It raises all of your stats by a very large amount, which scales with your superstats. This bonus doesn't "double dip," so to speak; the self-benefit to your own superstats doesn't buff itself. The second benefit is a buff to your team's stats, which buff is smaller and scales with PRE. This bonus is buffed by the self-buff provided by AoPM, so even characters with lowish PRE will give a decent teammate boost (since AoPM raises your PRE by a large amount). At level 40, the self-buff is around 70 points to each stat, assuming your superstats are in order. The team buff caps out at a little over 40 points in all stats.
CO's stat system has changed a fair bit since F2P, since passives scale to superstats rather than a specific stat. This has made builds looser, and more people have switched their superstats to energy-generating useful stats such as REC or INT. We've also seen a general increase in CON among builds, even for crit builds like DEX/EGO dual blades/munitions characters.
Is this because people are taking my advice? Maybe!
The team benefits
AoPM's team benefits are simpler and less interesting than its self benefits, if only because the team buff is typically a lot smaller.
The first thing AoPM does to your team is completely fix any energy problems. While Aura of Arcane Clarity does more to fix energy issues, the Primal aura does just fine, and it's often far more than anyone needs. It boosts the power of secondary energy unlocks and gives everyone a mild power cost discount (due to increased INT) as well as a big jump in max energy and energy strength (due to higher END and REC) that ramps up the power of your team's energy builders.
AoPM also grants a boost to everyone's superstats, although this mainly benefits people who spread stats too thin and neglect their superstats a little. Most players will get a meager 2-4% damage buff (additive with other damage buffs) from even a very pimped out Primal aura. Likewise, it may provide a small boost to passives, although generally the benefit will be very tiny if it does anything at all.
The next little buff is a nice boost to crit chance and severity. Since most characters do not have any significant DEX or EGO, the boost is pretty noticable. For characters with high DEX and EGO, it does almost nothing. However, it does boost the power of Focus, since Focus scales linearly with DEX. The buff is small per stack, but the total benefit ends up much higher than the superstat damage increase. Enrage characters also get a moderate boost to damage, since STR affects Enrage in much the same way that DEX affects Focus.
Naturally, AoPM also makes your entire team more survivable by giving its members a few more hitpoints. The buff is reasonable, but it's unlikely to dramatically change the course of a battle except on allies who are already tanky. Defiance characters gain a few extra percentage points of defense; due to diminishing returns, the real benefit to survival is relatively small unless the Defiant character has skimped on CON.
Lastly, and certainly not least, AoPM raises the power of all teammate heals, raises the threat of tanks, and reduces the threat of everyone else. Because PRE has linear scaling, this benefit is non-trivial at high levels, especially for healers and tanks.
A quick note about the Grimoire
One important thing about Aura of Primal Majesty, especially as a team aura, is that it is the passive of choice for Grimoire characters. The aura does not especially benefit the Grimoire (in the exciting ways we'll see below), but it does make the Grimoire perform better than average, and it makes him incredibly attractive for teams.
AoPM lacks the raw punch or effect of other passives, so the Grimoire may feel as though his passive does little. I'll talk more about the spell-slinging archetype in a future edition of Behind the Mask, but I do want to emphasize that even without a really ridiculous, optimized build, the Grimoire is a huge benefit on teams -- and he gets all of the benefits above for himself (including better energy performance, boosted crits, better average survivability, etc.) in much larger doses.
Rage of majesty and other strangeness
While I prefer the name Primal Rage (which is amusingly a reference to another game published by Atari), forum member Pulsewave coined the term Rage of Majesty to refer to Aura of Primal Majesty builds that use Enrage. The two powers are a natural fit; Enrage relies on specific stats (STR for damage bonus and CON for duration; INT also helps by reducing the cooldown of Enrage) and has linear scaling. The lack of diminishing returns on Enrage makes it ripe for abuse with AoPM.
In fact, AoPM benefits Enrage builds even more by adding crit chance, which multiplies on Enrage's massive damage boost. The build is most suitable for ranged attacks, since melee characters can maintain Enrage fairly easily without resorting to AoPM. Also, AoPM is a support passive and precludes the use of the Brawler role, which buffs melee damage and is multiplicative. Because the Avenger role is generally kind of weak, missing out on it hurts less for ranged characters. Also, offensive passives provide less damage boost than Enrage does, making this combination particularly effective.
Another cool interaction with AoPM is Mindful Reinforcement, which has linear scaling (at least, last I checked) and scales to PRE. For a team-oriented Primal aura user, stacked PRE and MR are amazing at keeping teammates alive. In general, because PRE scaling is linear, healing powers benefit a lot from AoPM. Other tricks include using Palliate, which provides a PRE bonus to the recipient (and a massive heal) that scales to PRE.
"Yo dawg, I heard you like PRE, so I put some PRE in your PRE so you can heal while you heal."
If you're not planning on high PRE, you should consider pairing the Primal aura with Protection Field. While it's not particularly synergetic (PF scales to superstats), the Primal aura has minimal defense, and PF gives a large amount of buffer hit points. If you've got high PRE, it's better to go with Mindful Reinforcement.
There are a lot of creative builds with AoPM that haven't been explored. It's really a very quirky power with a lot of interactions.
What can't it do?!
Unsurprisingly, AoPM has some limitations. It must be used in either Guardian or Sentinel roles. As mentioned above, this prevents its use in the Brawler role, which would help Primal melee builds a lot.
The Primal aura is also unable to assume the Protector role, and even if it could, it would be awful at tanking. It does increase self-survivability a little bit (by adding HP), but Personal Force Field has proven that it takes a lot more than extra HP to make a good tank. Even though the Primal aura buffs healing power too, its defense is pretty bad. In team-oriented combat, the Primal hero needs to function more as a squishy DPS and less as a semi-durable hybrid. The Primal hero's defense relies a lot on active powers (especially clicky bubble shields). If your goal is to heal allies or deal out damage, you don't want to be constantly bubbling yourself or blocking.
In many ways, the Primal hero is very flexible; he can switch cleanly between healer, team support, or DPS, and excel at any of these roles. It's possible to devote yourself to one and still do other things, just because having +70 in all stats is just that good.
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.
