Archived Post
09-05-2009, 10:15 PM
By "pan-framework" I mean I pulled stuff from a whooooole bunch of different frameworks. I'd like to link you all to a video I just uploaded to YouTube; it's footage from the end of beta, by the way. I'm only like.. level 15 on this character now, and I'm actually going a slightly different route with my build this time. 'Couple more dual blades powers, but for the most part I'll be getting a lot of the same stuff. Defiance, Bionic Shielding, the Energy Shield with Laser Knight advantage, Spark Storm with Electric Personality, Mini Mines, Sword Cyclone, ALL of that good stuff that lets me wade right into the middle of battle, keep myself alive, and layer AoE's on top of each other. Mmmmmm..
Also, if you look reaaaaaally closely you might notice that my Nemesis was myself. And that I took off about 95% of his health in one blast, unintentionally, by firing a Giga-bolt (with the death bolt advantage, of course!) right through a very large cluster of chairs. HAH! :D
Now, without further ado: Champions Online - Crash Style (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBENmdnJyE)
Edit: Someone suggested I actually give a list of what my build contained, so... here it is in no particular order because I certainly don't remember all the specifics. Heck, I don't even remember the precise names of some of the powers and advantages!
Defensive Role, Super Endurance (because I like to have several toggles and maintains going at once, and you need high energy reserves for that) and Super Ego (Because I wanted what few crits I got to be big ones, and I don't particularly like being held. Unfortunately, my crit rate was like 0.03% so, big help this was)
Dual Blades Endurance Builder - Grinning Ghost advantage - At the time this footage was taken, you still needed to be in Focus in order to charge Dragon's Wrath, and as I played in Defensive role, well.. this was the best way to get it.
Chain Lightning - It's a good power, if you use it right... and if you're more of a stand-back-and-blast type. Which is the reason you never see me use it in the video. I don't, because I'm not.
Spark Storm - Rank 2 - Electric Personality advantage - I didn't use it a lot there, except in conjunction with Sword Cyclone, but.. normally I have this going pretty much all of the time.
Mini Mines - Wall of Fire advantage - You just tap the button, go back to smacking whoever you were smacking, and a second later everything nearby goes boom. What's not to like?
Energy Shield - Laser Knight advantage - I think I remember a dev saying somewhere that this gives you damage resistance equal to about a third of what you'd get if you were actually blocking. All I know is that it looks pretty cool, and it lets you wade recklessly into battle.
Defiance - Rank 2? Maybe 3? - I can't remember if I took that other advantage for this or not.. I mean, I love the sound of not getting held or knocked around much when I'm hurting bad, but I think the fact that they don't give you ANY idea HOW much benefit you actually get from the advantage turned me away from it. At any rate, I just like the concept of defiance. "You better kill me now, because if you don't... you'll regret it". Makes you feel like such a bad dude.
Dragon's Wrath - It does a good amount of damage. Supposedly, it cuts through most of the victim's defense, but I can't really confirm that myself. What I DO know is that I needed it to gain the Momentum state for the following.
Sword Cyclone - Without Momentum, and even with super-endurance, and not having other toggles going, you'll run out of endurance about halfway through the maximum maintain limit here. But once you get Momentum, this BUILDS endurance. Lots of endurance. That means you keep it going until you run out of things to chop, run out of momentum, or get so dizzy that you throw up. Oh, for those curious about the Butcher's Blade advantage, I tried it out in the Power House once. You charge it up like any other chargeable attack, and when you finish you do a really brief spin and everything around you takes lots of damage. LOTS. I was doing a good 3000+ on a full charge, if that tells you anything.
Bionic Shielding - Overloaded Circuits? advantage - Bionic shielding is a nice healing power because you activate it, then forget about it. And then you forget about the next 5 attacks to hit you... unless they're really big ones. And if you're only expecting little attacks, you'll actually find yourself TRYING to get hit just to make sure all 5 ticks of healing get activated. The advantage makes it reflect damage from those five attacks, which is just fun. You won't notice it much if there's a crowd attacking you at once, but if it's just one guy and he triggers all five with fairly big attacks? He's going to be hurting, and you're going to be at full health. Beautiful.
Rebirth - You come back to life right where you dropped with no loss of stars. I think it'll prevent you from failing a mission that requires staying alive, too... maybe. Then, allegedly, you have really good defense and a huge attack bonus. I never really noticed the attack or defense part, to be honest... and make sure you have some form of healing to counteract the self-damage.
Electric Sheath - Energy Matter Union advantage - Okay, the power itself is just an energy form. You do more damage, and you can consume it to charge certain powers, like Gigabolt. There's some other beneficial effects there but they aren't really the biggest concern to me. The REAL shining light here is the advantage.. Having health damage convert to energy loss may sound like you'd wind up with 200 extra health and no energy, but another part of the electric sheath was that you also get energy when you're damaged. That part happens at the same time as the health damage being converted to energy damage. End result? YOU ARE INVINCIBLE for the duration of this power. A rediculously large attack might get through, but most attacks you'll just shrug right off, especially if you're in defensive role so that you can block and get a bunch of energy from each block.
Giga Bolt - Death Bolt advantage - I'm not really a "stand back and blast things" kind of guy. With this character. But Giga Bolt is just so gosh darn fun, who could pass it up? Everything in a general direction takes large amounts of electrical damage. Then, if you kill something with it, some unlucky person within a long distance will be hurt very, very much. Possibly killed outright if they're just a henchman. And if you get a whole group of weak enemies near death and then blast into them all with the Giga Bolt, well.. I laugh maniacally every time.
That cooldown-shortening whatsit - Rank 2 - The advantage that makes it heal - Lol, I really can't remember what this was called. Something about nanites? Anyways, you all know the power I'm talking about. If you have more than two powers with cooldowns over 30 seconds, you probably have this power already. Those long-cooldown powers would just be painful to use, otherwise. And I took the advantage because, well.. I can never have enough things keeping me alive.
Ice Storm .. or is it snow storm? Whatever - I love the way that the duration of the effect increases at a disproportionally faster rate than how long you maintain it. At earlier levels the damage itself is decent, though you'll have to keep the ranks up if you want to use it against stronger things. I got it because it CHILLS things. Sometimes it even puts them in ice cages. That's very important when most of your attacks are either Melee or PBAoE... close range attacks cannot work unless you can make your opponent come to you, move slower, or not move at all.
Not shown, but Acrobatics is a great travel power to have for a build like this, if you take the Versatility advantage.
Also not shown is Ice Slide, because I don't use it in combat. Ice slide really only works for combat if you're going to use ranged attacks. Preferably long-ranged attacks. It's really fun for just getting around, though.
There... did I forget anything?
Also, if you look reaaaaaally closely you might notice that my Nemesis was myself. And that I took off about 95% of his health in one blast, unintentionally, by firing a Giga-bolt (with the death bolt advantage, of course!) right through a very large cluster of chairs. HAH! :D
Now, without further ado: Champions Online - Crash Style (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBENmdnJyE)
Edit: Someone suggested I actually give a list of what my build contained, so... here it is in no particular order because I certainly don't remember all the specifics. Heck, I don't even remember the precise names of some of the powers and advantages!
Defensive Role, Super Endurance (because I like to have several toggles and maintains going at once, and you need high energy reserves for that) and Super Ego (Because I wanted what few crits I got to be big ones, and I don't particularly like being held. Unfortunately, my crit rate was like 0.03% so, big help this was)
Dual Blades Endurance Builder - Grinning Ghost advantage - At the time this footage was taken, you still needed to be in Focus in order to charge Dragon's Wrath, and as I played in Defensive role, well.. this was the best way to get it.
Chain Lightning - It's a good power, if you use it right... and if you're more of a stand-back-and-blast type. Which is the reason you never see me use it in the video. I don't, because I'm not.
Spark Storm - Rank 2 - Electric Personality advantage - I didn't use it a lot there, except in conjunction with Sword Cyclone, but.. normally I have this going pretty much all of the time.
Mini Mines - Wall of Fire advantage - You just tap the button, go back to smacking whoever you were smacking, and a second later everything nearby goes boom. What's not to like?
Energy Shield - Laser Knight advantage - I think I remember a dev saying somewhere that this gives you damage resistance equal to about a third of what you'd get if you were actually blocking. All I know is that it looks pretty cool, and it lets you wade recklessly into battle.
Defiance - Rank 2? Maybe 3? - I can't remember if I took that other advantage for this or not.. I mean, I love the sound of not getting held or knocked around much when I'm hurting bad, but I think the fact that they don't give you ANY idea HOW much benefit you actually get from the advantage turned me away from it. At any rate, I just like the concept of defiance. "You better kill me now, because if you don't... you'll regret it". Makes you feel like such a bad dude.
Dragon's Wrath - It does a good amount of damage. Supposedly, it cuts through most of the victim's defense, but I can't really confirm that myself. What I DO know is that I needed it to gain the Momentum state for the following.
Sword Cyclone - Without Momentum, and even with super-endurance, and not having other toggles going, you'll run out of endurance about halfway through the maximum maintain limit here. But once you get Momentum, this BUILDS endurance. Lots of endurance. That means you keep it going until you run out of things to chop, run out of momentum, or get so dizzy that you throw up. Oh, for those curious about the Butcher's Blade advantage, I tried it out in the Power House once. You charge it up like any other chargeable attack, and when you finish you do a really brief spin and everything around you takes lots of damage. LOTS. I was doing a good 3000+ on a full charge, if that tells you anything.
Bionic Shielding - Overloaded Circuits? advantage - Bionic shielding is a nice healing power because you activate it, then forget about it. And then you forget about the next 5 attacks to hit you... unless they're really big ones. And if you're only expecting little attacks, you'll actually find yourself TRYING to get hit just to make sure all 5 ticks of healing get activated. The advantage makes it reflect damage from those five attacks, which is just fun. You won't notice it much if there's a crowd attacking you at once, but if it's just one guy and he triggers all five with fairly big attacks? He's going to be hurting, and you're going to be at full health. Beautiful.
Rebirth - You come back to life right where you dropped with no loss of stars. I think it'll prevent you from failing a mission that requires staying alive, too... maybe. Then, allegedly, you have really good defense and a huge attack bonus. I never really noticed the attack or defense part, to be honest... and make sure you have some form of healing to counteract the self-damage.
Electric Sheath - Energy Matter Union advantage - Okay, the power itself is just an energy form. You do more damage, and you can consume it to charge certain powers, like Gigabolt. There's some other beneficial effects there but they aren't really the biggest concern to me. The REAL shining light here is the advantage.. Having health damage convert to energy loss may sound like you'd wind up with 200 extra health and no energy, but another part of the electric sheath was that you also get energy when you're damaged. That part happens at the same time as the health damage being converted to energy damage. End result? YOU ARE INVINCIBLE for the duration of this power. A rediculously large attack might get through, but most attacks you'll just shrug right off, especially if you're in defensive role so that you can block and get a bunch of energy from each block.
Giga Bolt - Death Bolt advantage - I'm not really a "stand back and blast things" kind of guy. With this character. But Giga Bolt is just so gosh darn fun, who could pass it up? Everything in a general direction takes large amounts of electrical damage. Then, if you kill something with it, some unlucky person within a long distance will be hurt very, very much. Possibly killed outright if they're just a henchman. And if you get a whole group of weak enemies near death and then blast into them all with the Giga Bolt, well.. I laugh maniacally every time.
That cooldown-shortening whatsit - Rank 2 - The advantage that makes it heal - Lol, I really can't remember what this was called. Something about nanites? Anyways, you all know the power I'm talking about. If you have more than two powers with cooldowns over 30 seconds, you probably have this power already. Those long-cooldown powers would just be painful to use, otherwise. And I took the advantage because, well.. I can never have enough things keeping me alive.
Ice Storm .. or is it snow storm? Whatever - I love the way that the duration of the effect increases at a disproportionally faster rate than how long you maintain it. At earlier levels the damage itself is decent, though you'll have to keep the ranks up if you want to use it against stronger things. I got it because it CHILLS things. Sometimes it even puts them in ice cages. That's very important when most of your attacks are either Melee or PBAoE... close range attacks cannot work unless you can make your opponent come to you, move slower, or not move at all.
Not shown, but Acrobatics is a great travel power to have for a build like this, if you take the Versatility advantage.
Also not shown is Ice Slide, because I don't use it in combat. Ice slide really only works for combat if you're going to use ranged attacks. Preferably long-ranged attacks. It's really fun for just getting around, though.
There... did I forget anything?