Tips to Survive Champions Online Post Defense-Nerf

Disclaimer: I originally posted this in the Champions Online forums, where it was quickly buried under gripe posts. I grabbed it, added a little and posted it here so that it would see the light of day. For those of you playing Champions Online and having trouble with the patch, I hope this post gives you some ideas and saves you grief.

The launch day patch for Champions Online has hit many headstart beta players pretty hard and at least from the rumblings on the forums, a lot of folks are upset. I enjoyed the game during the open beta and the headstart, but I did remember thinking, “If I can defeat everything this easily and level this quickly, will this game have long term appeal?” Even so, logging in after the patch and playing some of my characters was pretty rough. The defenses upon which I relied now seemed like paper.

After a couple extended evenings of play, I have a few thoughts on the patch I would like to share. This is in no way intended to belittle those who are upset, or to suggest that everyone needs to scrap their concept build and switch to a min/maxed one. One of the things I like about CO is that you can have concept builds in the first place. These are just things to think about and possible suggestions that you might consider to have an easier time post-patch.

0. Take a deep breath — The patch is pretty ugly and sudden. Things probably went a little too far and I think we will see corrections in the future that will make people happier. This seems to be Cryptic’s MO. Ultimately, things will get better from here and once a few more patches come down the line, the game will be better overall.

1. Switch out Personal Force Field for Regeneration — I have a couple of characters that were PFF users and it seems to have been hit much harder than regeneration. There are several reasons for this, but I think the main one is that PFF repairs too slowly to be useful in extended fights. If a fight is over quickly, PFF wins, but you probably didn’t need it anyway; Regeneration is better for most fights now.

If you are building your character on a concept, then Regeneration is nice simply because it does not have any noticable graphics with it, thus the fact that you are hard to hurt could be explained with almost any effect, including “I have a force field… you just can’t see it.”

2. Don’t Ignore the Little Guy Anymore — I think a lot of the problem soloers are having have to do with the damage henchmen are doing. Most builds with any passive defense could stand in a small sea of henchmen with little fear. Doing that now is suicide in most cases; the damage the henchmen will do to you is significant. You need to mitigate this damge to survive the pull.

3. Big AoE Damage Helps — One way to do this is to kill as many henchmen in a group as quickly as you can. AoE damage is a great way to do this and so the mines in Power Armor and Munitions are good, as is the Gadget chainsaw and the Force explosion. Once you deal with the henchmen, and thus have reduced all that incoming damage, you can now deal with the tougher opponents.

4. Get a Crowd Control Power — Aside from PvP, I saw little need for crowd control pre-patch. Post-patch, you should consider picking up a CC power. Most sets have one, or you can dip into another pool if it makes sense. In a spawn of three, hold one and start working on the other two. If you can defeat one enemy before the hold ends, you have effectively reduced your incoming damage by a third… that’s great damage mitigation for a single power pick! If your set has holds that affect multiple enemies, even better.

5. Throw Stuff — Even for characters without Super Strength, throwing stuff is a great opener. It is a low endurance attack with potential knockdown and area of effect. For certain characters, throwing stuff really doesn’t make sense, “This is my scrawny telepath, Eat Mailbox Man”. If you can conceive of your character tossing a lamppost at enemies, try it.

6. Team More — Yeah, I know everyone wants to make the lone-wolf hero, but teaming is a great way to cover holes in your build without breaking your character concept (unless your concept is the “Shadowy, Anti-Social Avenger”). You don’t have AoE mines and don’t want them? Find a munitions guy and team up. Can’t be bothered with crowd control? Ask The Mesmerist if he wants to team.

7. Turn Off Hyperactive Ferret Mode — We were teaming the other night, getting our butts kicked when I realized, the game had changed, but we hadn’t changed our behavior. We were still charging into quest areas, scattering, and aggroing half the bad guys, heedless of danger. Slow down, just a little.

On a team, that means staying together and taking a brief rest between fights. It doesn’t mean a nap after every pull, just enough time to stop, make sure everyone is still here and no one has gotten dragged into another battle, and take the 10 seconds or so so that your “rest” healing kicks in. I think (though I am not 100% sure of this) that no one on your team gets their out of combat healing until the entire team is out of combat. Also, that few seconds allows Personal Force Field time to repair, and cuts time off of cooldowns for certain powers. All good stuff.

When solo, this means taking a few seconds before combat to assess the situation. How many opponents are there? Are there groups nearby I am going to aggro? Do I have an escape route if things go bad? Instead of Superjumping into the middle of a dangerous area, try starting on the edge and killing your way into your target. While adventuring in a tight spot, pay special attention to enemies that wander, or will respawn behind you.

8. Learn to Juggle — Many attack powers have useful secondary effects (holds, fears, knockbacks). Take Telepathy for example. The Ego Blast power applies a hold to its victim. This is great against a single opponent, but against three, you may find yourself taking more damage than you would like. One useful tactic is juggling, which means quickly tab-targeting between the enemies and hitting them so that your effect can be applied to all of them before you start your main attack. So, your attack sequence might look like this:

Target baddie #1
Long charged blast
Tab Target baddie #2
Short blast
Tab Target baddie #3
Short blast
Tab Target baddie #1
Start your regular attack sequence

Of course, this depends on the specific attack and your energy situation. In the case of Ego Blast, you can be charging the kill shot on Baddie #1 as he comes awake. You will still take damage, but a heck of a lot less than if you would have just charged and spammed attacks on Baddie #1 until he was dead.

9. Get a Heal — Just like holds, I never saw much need for a heal pre-patch. Post-patch, the game plays a little closer to a traditional MMO in that everyone needs access to healing. This could be a matter of teaming more, but if you are trying to make your character an island unto himself, you need a heal. There are heals in the Telepathy, Gadget, Martial Arts, Supernatural and Sorcery sets. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages. Unless I was creating a team healer, I would be wary of maintained heals (that break on damage) and heals that scale with Presence (since you probably don’t have it). That still leaves lots of options for you to try and if none of those powers suit you, remember you can craft healing consumables as you level your crafting skill.

10. Consider an Escape Power — If all else fails, you may need to escape and leave the field to your enemies. Teleport is insanely good at this, as is tunneling, but is not very concept friendly. I have had a bit of success with superjump, swinging and to a lesser extent acrobatics, since all of them have a nice jump component that can be used to open the distance quickly. Flight is horrible at escaping, though I can occassionally escape by going straight up. I haven’t tried superspeed yet, so I cannot comment.

However, you don’t need one of the “class A” travel powers to escape combat. The Smoke Bomb power will drop aggro for several seconds and Evasive Maneuvers, if slotted with an advantage, will do so 50% of the time, on a 17 second cooldown. Also, if the worst happens, you can get away with a little bit of forethought… you did plan an escape route after all, didn’t you? One of the best tactics is to fight near a corner or doorway, using it to cover your escape until your travel power kicks into “non-combat” gear.

11. Watch the Runner — When teaming (or when multiple players are nearby) one NPC out of any group will say, “I am going for reinforcements” and head to the nearest other group and aggro them. This guy then brings his friends and suddenly, instead of fighting three enemies, you are facing six. Stop that guy! It is often tough to kill him before he gets to the next group, and if you chase him, you risk wandering into the aggro range of yet another spawn. If you have crowd control powers, a root, a snare, or a knockdown, this is the time to use it. Assign “runner duty” to the guy on your team best equipped to handle the runner and make sure he doesn’t get to that next spawn.

12. Get Under Control — A friend of mine who absolutely rules CoX is having quite a bit of trouble playing CO. We talked about it and even went as far as swapping accounts to look at each others’ builds and try them out. While I admit that his characters were more fragile than I would like, I found I had considerably less problems than he said he was having. I think one reason for this is that he is a “clicker”, meaning he uses his mouse to click powers instead of using the keyboard. Not a big deal, even in a fast game like CoH, but it seems to me that CO ramps up the speed even further and that extra second or two to get to the click heal, or to fire the AoE could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Consider working your keybinds to get all the important powers on the 1-5 keys, the alt 1-5 keys, as well as Q, E, R, X, and C. Move non-timely stuff to keys further from your driving hand. Or… and I have not tried this myself, invest in a 360-style controller and play the game that way. Everyone I have talked to that has tried it has indicated that “the game is made for it” and that they have had an easier time since switching from mouse and keyboard.

13. Pets Do Help — The general opinion on the CO forums is that pets stink. I agree that there are tons of problems with pets. My Gadgeteer bots have a disturbing tendency to get stuck or lost and I have to unsummon/resummon them way too often. My wolves seem to be better at following me, but have the disturbing tendency to eat any crates, boxes and cars they find. Nonetheless, on characters where pets make sense, I have found them helpful. The bots do decent AoE damage, and the wolves do a good job of grabbing and holding aggro… to the point where they can almost tank a master or super villain. They will die during a tough fight, but not before my head-start in damage has already decided the outcome.

Anyway, I hope some of these tips will help ease your way through Millenium City. Good hunting heroes, and I hope I helped you avoid this fate…