AT's that rock on Common IOs and SOs

Archetype Power Combos that Rock:  Common IO/SO-Only Edition
---
You wanted some ideas on powerset combos that do well without dipping into the Invention stuff at all (or too heavily), so I’ve compiled a little list with some commentary.  Many of these I’ve run myself.

First off, AVOID the following ATs: Soldier of Arachnos, Peacebringer, Warshade, and Widows.  Those are the Epic Archetypes, and while they don’t strictly REQUIRE IOs to be good, they’re damned tricky to build without ‘em and you’ll often be better served by a regular AT until you figure out high-end IO builds.

Peacebringers and Warshades in particular are hard to assemble, as they have a HUGE selection of powers, way more than regular ATs, but only have the same number of power picks and slots that regular ATs get, so you have to choose very carefully.


MASTERMINDS:  I’ll start with MMs, since they’re my specialty.

Necromancy/Dark Miasma/Fire Mastery:  Yep, the same sets that Decaying Rose uses.  This is the game’s Grand Master of -toHit debuffing, and it’s still THE smoothest 1-50 Mastermind experience you can find.  You don’t have to use IOs to get that massive set of -toHit debuffs and controls, those are baked right in.  It’s not the most damaging combo, but the very balanced mix of heals, debuffs, damage, and control makes a combo that amplifies any team it’s on and that rocks any mission content.  This just about the only MM combo that can tangle with Longbow Ballista Elite Bosses and completely *neuter* them...all by itself.  Almost all other MM combos require a team to take down one of those.

Thugs/Force Field/Mace Mastery:  Just about the tankiest tanky Mastermind there is.  Thugs get you great damage, and between the leadership buffs from the Enforcers, the Leadership powers you have room to take, and your bubbles boosted with Power Boost from Mace Mastery, your pets are gonna be FINE.  Gets all the necessary bits for great team buffing by L10, and the pets add more capabilities as you go up.  This set benefits greatly from one single IO—the Gaussian’s Chance for Build Up.  Slap it in Enforcers once you hit 32 (they get the power that works with it then) it’ll boost their damage a BUNCH.  This set DOES lack in control, so the arsonist’s burn patches will make stuff scatter, a problem that’s not really all that big on teams.

Thugs/Cold Domination:  Frickin’ EASY MODE.  The rockin’ debuffs of Cold don’t come until you hit 28 and above, but the early shields and the pets make this a grand solo combination and a god-tier late-game buff+debuff combo.  Not as tanky as Thugs/FF/Mace, but it doesn’t really need to be, and frankly, few things ARE that tanky.  Has controls in the form of slows and knockdown (snow storm and sleet, respectively), so the burn patches from Arsonist aren’t as much of a problem.

Bots/Force Field/Mace Mastery:  Pretty much the same as Thugs/FF above, but more DISCO BARBECUE and TANK.

Other MM combos are harder to build without IO sets, and do work with SOs, but require lots and lots of practice.  These four, on the other hand, are pretty well a UNLEASH THE HOUNDS kind of deal.  All the bits and pieces mesh so well that fine control of the pets isn’t necessary, and they are tolerant of mistakes and oh-crap moments.


BLASTERS:  I’m emphasizing easy-to-use combos here, that work well and do cool things.

Energy/Energy, as you’ve seen. :)

Assault Rifle/Devices is another good one.  Pick up ALL of the AoE powers, slot a little range into Buckshot and Flamethrower, use Caltrops to keep yourself safe, and you can sit back and hose down a spawn on a team with great abandon.  The new effects on Targeting Drone, which gives you a 100% boost to damage to your first attack, makes Full Auto into a real carve-up-the-spawn power.  The Gun Drone is particularly good.  Trip Mine’s a great solo tool, but not as awesome in teams—they move too fast.  Ignite is still no good, skip.

Water Blast/Fire Manipulation/Fire Mastery:  Surprise, it’s the same combo Pyroclastia uses!  Pick up the Tough and Weave powers from Fighting pool, grab the Fire Shield epic pool armor, take Stealth and Combat Jumping, and you can dive right into a spawn.  The fire sword attacks are great, fast-activating melee attacks, and combined with Water’s knockdowns and excellent AoE capability and you have a premier all-around blaster combo.  Lots of AoE and can live as a ranged blaster and has more than enough tools to get into melee as well.  Can be dangerous to run, but it’s quite effective.

Ice Blast/Ice Manipulation/Cold Mastery: A “blasttroller” from the old days.  Skip Bitter Freeze Ray, it’s terribad, but other than that, this is a combo that’s great for solo and brings just ridiculous amounts of slow to a team setting.  Slow’s a subtle debuff, in that it cuts down on incoming damage by making things attack way less.  Combine with the various holds available in the set (get Freeze Ray ASAP!), along with the knockdown in Ice Patch, and you can safely hold a thing and beat it to death with your ice sword.  It’s not flashy, but damn does it work.  Blizzard is also a premier “set it and forget it” nuke—it’s the most damaging nuke in the game, but it’s a 15-second DoT.  Fire it off at the start of a battle, along with Ice Storm, then wade in and blast and melee while Blizzard damages them. Blizzard applies a MASSIVE -toHit debuff, so that debuff combined with the +defense armor from Cold Mastery really adds up and makes for a safe operating environment.


CORRUPTORS:  Just two corruptors here, and these ones take advantage of the way Corruptors “cheat” with their SCOURGE mechanic.  Scourge kicks in when a baddie gets below half-health, and you get an increasing chance to do double damage as their health drops.  For normal attacks, that’s pretty cool, but you have to time it right, because SCOURGE only checks at the start of the attack, not during.  However, for “rain” type powers (like Rain of Fire, Blizzard, Ice Storm, etc), the SCOURGE mechanic checks every single time the power ticks damage on the bad guy.  Each rain power has 75-100 damage ticks over its lifetime, and as a spawn melts under the rain, the chance to SCOURGE happens…a LOT.   Used appropriately, Corruptor rain powers are bloody DEVASTATING and can make other ATs weep with envy.

Ice Blast/Cold Domination/Dark Mastery:  My Arctic Wrath character.  This one works great on SOs and gets better and better if you decide to use IOs to up its recharge bonuses.  Why is it great?  It’s a single target bruiser thanks to Ice Blast’s ST attacks.  It’s an AoE *monster* once you hit 35 and can combine Ice Storm (L12), Blizzard (L32) and Sleet (L35).  Those three powers together can melt a spawn of even +4s in short order.   This is a very late-blooming set but it is SUPER effective for high end teaming, because Cold Domination brings some awesome shields and debuffs to the party in addition to those blast powers.  The Dark Mastery stuff is there so you can wade in with Oppressive Gloom running and keep all of the spawn’s minions stunned permanently, plus the +damage buffs and self-resurrect that Dark Mastery contains.

Fire Blast/Dark Miasma/Dark Mastery:  AKA “The Church of BURN”.   Where Ice/Cold is a late bloomer, Fire/Dark blooms waaaay early; you literally get all the necessary AoE powers (Fire Ball, Fire Breath, Rain of Fire, and Tar Patch) by level EIGHT.  Slap a Tar Patch under the spawn, drop the rain on ‘em, fireball and fire breath, and watch ‘em melt.  Dark Miasma is a premier support set, and once you get Fearsome Stare at L20, watch out bad guys! You’ll get a pet at L38, too.  Fire has some great single target damage in Blaze and Blazing Bolt, and timed right those two powers let you SCOURGE-snipe a boss like nothing else.  Absolutely godlike on teams.


CONTROLLERS:  Controllers are not all that great solo, so you have to be prepared to team with these.  That said, these will be some great support and control for any team you join.

Plant Control/Nature Affinity:  Take Seeds of Confusion as soon as it’s available (L8) and don’t look back.  This is a premier “hands-off” controller combo.  Fire off Seeds at the start of the battle and you’re free to concentrate on using your other controls and your Nature powers to help the team out.  The only group you’ll have problems with is Nemesis, as they resist confuse powers, but EVERYBODY has trouble with Nemesis, so don’t worry about it.  Nature has some pretty sweet buffs, like a massive +regen bonus, +absorb shields, a nifty cone heal you can fire off into a battle from afar, a location +recovery/+regeneration drop, and a damned good +healing/+damageboost L38 power.  Plant Control isn’t all about Seeds, either—Carrion Creepers is a hugely effective debuff+damage+control pet, and Fly Trap is a damage pet that really rounds off the set.  Plant Control also has the highest-damage AoE immobilization power in Roots, so it’s no slouch in the damage department with Roots, Carrion, and Fly Trap all working together.  This runs great on SOs and just gets stupidly good if you use IOs to increase its recharge rate.  A prime candidate for the Earth Mastery epic pool, which gets you some hard hitting attacks.  Heck, I think I’m gonna roll one of these myself!  We should duo this, it would awesome.

Plant/Nature also has some just jaw-dropping visuals, too, so this is a fun set to watch in action!


Gravity Control/Dark Affinity:  Same as my Jova controller.  THIS one can solo just fine, even from the beginning.  Gravity has some really awesome battlefield control abilities that require some knowledge to use, but as a soloer, it’s grand because Grav is GREAT at beating down single targets.  Between Lift, Crush, Grav Distortion, and Propel (throw a car at that guy!), Grav will beat the SNOT out of things.  Once you get the pet, Singularity, missions are even more of a cakewalk.  As a teamer, Grav/Dark has most of the support tools that Dark Miasma does, but it swaps out Fearsome Stare for a really great +defense buff, and the Soul Absorption power that comes a little later means you will NOT have endurance problems at all.  This is one of those sets that gets better the more +recharge you slap into it, but it works fine with standard slotting, too.  Of note is that combining Wormhole (which stuns) and Howling Twilight (which ALSO stuns, and auto-hits!), you can grab an entire spawn, bosses included, and stun the crap out of it reliably.  If you want to run this, let me know, I’ll give you the full tutorial, but rest assured, this is a set you can use to make other controllers rage-quit a team because you’re so awesome.  (I mean that literally, it’s happened a few times with Jova.)

Earth Control/Storm Summoning:  A Controller’s Controller.  This one blooms really late as a soloer, but as a team-support-and-control type, it blooms early.  Roll this, team early and often.  Most of Earth’s good controls are location-drop types, and they do stuff like slow/-defense, knockdown patches, a gas-field that holds everything in it.  Combine with a massively good AoE stun opener (Stalagmites), Storm’s Freezing Rain debuff, and Storm’s other damage powers and this set will take an area and make it theirs.  Flashy as hell, too.  This is one combo where you can’t really go wrong—the only kinda useless power is Salt Crystals and the single target immobilize. Everything else is useful!  Doesn’t need a lot of +recharge since it has so many controls to fire off, but of course more recharge means mo’ better.


DEFENDERS:  My previous specialty before Masterminds. Just the one here, but it’s top tier. Other Defenders work with just common IOs (including the classic Dark/Dark combo) but it’s often more useful these days to run that buff/debuff set with a Mastermind primary.  Rad/Rad’s an exception, because it gets really awesome buff/debuff numbers thanks to Defenders’ inherent awesomeness at the buff/debuff game.

Radiation Emission/Radiation Blast:  This combo gets overlooked by powergamers because it’s not very “meta”.  Don’t let the subtleties of the power effects fool you, Rad/Rad always has been and always will be a premier do-anything Defender.  It slices, it dices, and even makes julienne fries!

Rad Emission’s four big powers are Rad Infection, Enervating Field, Accelerate Metabolism, and Lingering Radiation.  Infection and Enervating are toggle debuffs—slap ‘em on a guy and that guy and everything around him get hit with -toHit, -defense, -resistance, and -damageoutput debuffs.  They’re like giving everyone on your team two SOs of +defense, two SOs of +accuracy, one SO of +damage, and two SOs of +damageresist.  Accelerate Metabolism makes your teammates (and you!) run faster, do more damage, recover endurance, and shake off status effects more quickly.  Lingering Radiation makes an Archvillain regenerate less health per second, a crucial debuff for high-end teaming.
Rad Emission’s other tools are an AoE heal (which you really just need to top off your teammates), a resurrect, an “ally corpse bomb” (think Corpse Explosion from Diablo, but on dead teammates) power, an aura that holds minions, and a big PBAoE oh-shit hold.

Rad Blast does something few blast sets do—loads and loads of -defense, especially with Defender debuff numbers backing that up.  Once you hit something, you KEEP hitting it.  The blasts are pretty pedestrian, but have neat visual effects and if you’re willing to dip into some cheap IOs (like Achilles’ Heel and Lady Grey) you can make your blasts have other awesome effects like -damageresist and extra damage.  Even without IOs, Rad Blast makes a team hit things very reliably, and that’s super handy for teaming.


DOMINATORS:  Dominators are tricky, because they’re a mashup of Controller + Blaster and have no defenses other than controlling or killing the other guy first.  Plus, their inherent power, Domination, works best when its “perma”, which requires investment in IOs for recharge bonuses.  That said, fun can be had even without a Perma-Domination Dominator.

Plant Control/Firey Assault:  This is a two-trick pony, but they’re good tricks.  Trick 1 is hosing a spawn down with Seeds of Confusion, waiting a second or so for them to clump up, then locking them in place with Roots and then unloading with Fiery Assault’s AoE and heavy hitting single target attacks.
Trick 2 is doing all of that with Carrion Creepers mixed in and Domination going.  Even confuse-resistant Nemesis will be confused by a Seeds of Confusion boosted by Domination.
Teams LOVE Plant/Firey, and with good reason.  It makes things loads easier and is no slouch on contributing damage, either.

Earth Control + ???:  Earth Control doesn’t benefit much from Domination, as its big controls come from what are called “pseudopets” that don’t inherit Domination.  So, if you’re looking to explore a Dom and don’t want to fuss too much about perma-Domination, Earth is a good set to do that with.  Pair it up with an assault set you’re curious about and see how it goes.



MELEE ARCHETYPES:  I’m just going to bundle all of these together for simplicity’s sake.

Scrapper, Katana/Super Reflexes:  You don’t get a LOT of AoE with this set, but you do get enough.  Katana’s got fast-animating attacks that hit plenty hard, and it’s Divine Avalanche power really helps with survivability by granting a big boost to melee defense every time it lands.  Combine with the comprehensive defenses of Super Reflexes and this combo does well as an all-around boss-killing scrapper.  The defenses are a little later-blooming with this combo, just like any Super Reflexes type, but they’re really good and Divine makes that late bloom far less painful.  One notable thing about Super Reflexes is that it’s the only +defense set that gets to pretty well laugh off defense debuffs, as it has godly resistance to those debuffs.

Tanker, Bio Armor/Staff Fighting:  This one’s allll about layered effects, both defense and offense.  Bio Armor works by using +absorb shields, well-rounded damage resistance, debuffing auras, a self-heal, and three different “modes” that can either make it more survivable, do more damage, or reduce its endurance consumption.  Staff Fighting also has lots of moving parts, but it also has “modes” that either boost damage, boost recharge, or grant an endurance discount.
The trick is to combine those six modes as needed.  You can double the damage boost, for instance, to make this tanker hit really hard.  Layer on the endurance discounts to solve endurance problems.  Or swap to survivability.  You can mix and match to find the performance you want!  This tanker is really good for exploring story arcs, as its tough enough to survive anything, strong enough to kill all standard enemies (and it’ll do just fine starting in the extra-hard Praetoria, too, if you want to try that out—that’s how I started this guy and it did great!), and studly enough to main-tank for leagues, too.

Bio Armor has minimal FX options, too, so you can cut off the big bulky armors and go with just some particle effects.  I have a guy I can show you that on, if you want to preview it.  The costume creator doesn't really show you how it looks in the end.

Brute, Titan Weapons/Bio Armor:  This is a “meta” combo, mainly because it bloody well works.  Take all the benefits listed above for Bio Armor and combine with Titan Weapons’ godly damage and AoE, matched up with Brute fury.  Titan Weapons’ first attack grants melee defense as well as doing AoE damage, further adding to the sets’ survivability.  It’s heavy on endurance usage, though, which Bio Armor can offset.  Once you get a lot of slots to throw around in the 30s and get the final pieces of the armor set, you can swap to offensive mode and really tear up the town.
While this combo doesn’t “need” IOs, it gets so stupidly good once you add them it's well worth investing in and planning for.  I can help you work up a build if you want to try this out.  A fully IO’d Titan/Bio Brute can easily shred Task Force content.


Stalker...well, I’d skip Stalkers until you’re ready to explore the IO system a bit.  They tend to need a little help in the defense department, and they all but require the Stalker Archetype Origin Enhancements to keep up on teams.  That said, once you do DO have those things, they can out-scrap scrappers.  The sets require careful assembly, so some planning is needed to determine what play style you want and what kind of effects you want to stack or mix together.