VII: Supernatural
The two Supernatural Frameworks are both very similar in what they do, but are night and day in how they do it. Both straddle the line of damage and survivability, but Bestial does it through quick-hitting, energy efficient melee attacks, and Infernal does it through crowd control and highly damaging ranged attacks. Both share many synergies with other frameworks (like Bestial with Single Blade and Infernal with Fire and Ice), but at the same time stand well on their own. Both sets work very well, and don't have any real weaknesses, other than the lack of a glaringly powerful strength.

Bestial Supernatural - Nozark

Super Stats:STR/CON or CON/DEX, geared for roughly 70 STR

• Play Style: Energy Efficient, Survivable Melee DPS
• Preferred Passive:Defiance, Way of the Warrior, Lightning Reflexes
• Preferred Block: Energy Shield (w/ Laser Knight Adv.) or Parry (w/ Elusive Monk Adv.)
• Key Powers: Massacre (w/ Bloody Mess Adv.), Frenzy, Howl, Resurgence, Pounce, Bestial Fury (w/ Rip and Tear Adv.), Shred (w/ Penetrating Strikes adv.), Aspect of the Bestial
• Secondary Powers: Bite, Aspect of the Bestial (for Defiance), Venomous Breath, Supernatural Power
• Out of Framework Powers: Dragon's Bite, Enrage (for Deifance) or Form of the Swordsman (for DEX builds), Bionic Shielding

Reasoning: Blending quick and powerful melee damage, with a high level of survivability, Bestial is an incredibly versatile and effective powerset. A variety of attacks for multiple situations, and tons of bleeds mixed with very good survivability. On top of that, it comes with some crowd control in Howl, which grants a enrage stack and refreshes current ones while fearing enemies . The fear helps limit how much damage you are taking and allows you to shred your foes while they cower.

Bestial Supernatural is a low end costing powerset with a strong damage output, which makes it really shine. For the best overall damage paired with survivability, Defiance is your best bet for a passive, giving you high damage resistance, but also giving you access to Enrage, which will stack with Bestial Aspect toggle but not with Martial Arts' Form toggles. However, Way of the Enlightened Warrior, gives a bit more predictable damage, but slows your progression to maximum stacks of Enrage. Form of the Unconquered Swordsman will out buff Aspect of the Bestial when comparing each other alone, and Focus stacks are much easier to maintain. Dexterity will increase the +dmg granted from focus stacks and the end gain from Rush. Aspect of the Bestial's +dmg stacks and buff cannot be increased by any current stats, however you can pair it with Enrage which scales off of Str, and is easily built by the Defiance then very easily maintained by Howl, which will refresh the stacks.

The Rush buff from Dragon's Bite and the Focus stacks is a great way to gain endurance during a major boss fight, or to get that little bit of end for a fully charged massacre. Defiance is the same way with it's end gain amount, however much larger, and will easily allow bestial supernatural users with Defiance to use their powers much more end efficiently with their already low end cost.

Resurgence and Bionic Shielding are amazing heal powers for a Bestial user, Resurgence is a large heal, where as Bionic Shielding is a DoT heal that procs 5 times when taking damage for a large heal amount (around 400-600, depending on Rank) and a relatively short cooldown. Bite is lackluster on damage compared to other Bestial Powers, but is the fastest way to build bleeds there is. With all the Bleeds you'll be stacking, Reaper's Embrace is a great addition so that you can rupture for a massive amount of damage, and if you have the Reaper's Embrace advantage, No Mercy, it has a 50% chance to grant 2 bleed stacks when you fully charge it.

Infernal: - Zeroi

• Super Stats: Pick Two: END, REC, DEX, PRE
• Play Style: Kncokdowns Mixed with good DPS and can Support
• Preffered Passives: Ice Form (Dex-based) or Fire Form, Aura of Radiant Protection
• Preffered Block: Any
• Key Powers: Defile, Venomous Breath, Devour Essence, Aspect of Infernal
• Secondary Powers: Vile Lariat (w/ Kotetsu Shoge Adv.), Vicious Cyclone, Supernatural Power, Condemn
• Out of Framework Powers: Life Drain, Immolation, Toxic Nannites, Circle of Arcane Power, Choice of Heals (for PRE version), Flashfire, Thermal Reverb (Pre version), any Power that Knocks multiple enemies

Reasoning: The majority of your damage as Infernal is based around maintained damage during a fight. Because of this, powers that help keep you full of energy (such as Supernatural Power or Circle of Arcane Power, Flashfire with Thermal Reverb) will allow you to keep your maintains for longer and use more of them without relying on End Builders for energy. Toxic damage is considered elemental damage, so both Fiery and Ice form will give a boost to all of your damage by a large margin, Ice Form tends to be the more widely used due to its inherent Crowd control abilities. Infernal's passive, Pestilence, will never match the damage compared to either form, however it is quite useful in AoE situations and in fights where the target is being healed, like Vlad in Therekiel's Temple.

The ample amount of ways to play this tree are shown in the number of SS you can go and have it work just fine. For maximum damage however, PRE/DEX or END/DEX with either Fiery or Ice Form slotted and enough powers to keep your energy up will pull through. Because of Aspect of the infernal, knock down moves will temporarily boost your damage based on how many targets you knock down. This is where Ice Form helps the most, by using it's Chill effects to keep enemies within the AoE. In a fight against a single target boss, you are out of luck for boosting damage through this, however if there are mobs nearby that you can AoE, one to two uses of Vicious Cyclone will give you max stacked damage for the duration.

With the addition of Defile, the tree has evolved slightly. Defile is single target nuke that applies a toxic debuff. Because of this, many new builds are preferring END as a SS to allow for full charges with room to start maintains afterwards. The last power to understand for DPS is Toxic Nanites. Because it is toxic damage and has a very short cooldown, it can be popped almost every time it is up during a fight, and the Nerve Damage advantage stacks with Ice Form's Chill effects.

As a final note, it should be understood that Devour Essence is melee move and as such, will not be buffed by Avenger Role the way the rest of Infernal's powers are. To allow Devour Essence to be used to it's greatest effect, you'll want to stat PRE. This will buff both Devour Essence's Toxic Damage and it's heal. For just that little bit extra, Vile Lariat with the Kotetsu Shoge Advantage, or Scything Blade will cause a target to bleed, taking advantage of Devour Essence's Phlebotomist advantage. Fire Form also allows for the same versatility with Infernal that it gives to the Fire Framework, allowing you to switch between healing and damage roles.

Recently, I've been seeing a number of builds for Infernal pop up that use INT/PRE and switch between Fiery/Ice Form and Aura of Radiant Protection. The technique is that you seem to be able to switch back and forth between Avenger/Guardian Role with Fiery/Ice Form for incredible levels of Toxic Damage, or switch over to Sentinel Role with Aura of Radiant Protection and become a potent Healer that also has a number of knockdown and control abilities.

Appendix I: Mix-Match Frameworks

This Section will expain a couple of the more common and more synergistic Cross-Framework syergies that can be found. Note, that I will not be created a summary for every single combination, only a couple that seem to work together extremely well, or are very common among players.

Muntions and Martial Arts - Pulsewave, WillBlack
For best results, pick either Dual Pistols or Military Weapons and one or more type of Martial Art.

• Super Stats: DEX/INT, Stack EGO and STR. DEX/EGO, Stack STR for Lightning Reflexes
• Play Style: Energy Efficient DPS at a Range, Hard-Hitting in Melee
• Preferred Passive: Quarry or Lighting Reflexes
• Preferred Block: Parry (w/ Elusive Monk Adv.) or Force Shield (w/ Force Sheath Adv.)
• Key Powers: Bountiful Chi Resurgence (w/ Resurgent Reiki Adv.), Form of the Tempest, Killer Instincts, Lock and Load (w/ Two Smoking Barrels Adv.)
• Secondary Powers: Thunderbolt Lunge
• Out of Framework Powers: Evasive Maneuvers

• Dual Pistols Powers: Two Gun Mojo, Lead Tempest
• Dual Pistols Secondary Powers: Holdout Shot (w/ Stimpack Adv.)
• Mixes Best With: Unarmed, Dual Blades, Fighting Claws

• Military Weapons Powers: Assault Rifle, SMG (w/ Aggression Adv. for Single Blade)
• Military Weapons Secondary Powers: Gatling Gun
• Mixes Best With: Single Blade, Dual Blades, Fighting Claws

• Unarmed Powers: Dragon Kick (w/ Lashing Dragon Tail Adv.), Burning Chi Fist
• Unarmed Secondary Powers: Inexorable Tides
• Out of Framework Powers: Bullet Beatdown (w/ Not Without Incident Adv.), Howl

• Single Blade Powers: Reaper's Embrace (w/ No Mercy Adv.)
• Single Blade Secondary Powers: Dragon's Bite, Scything Blade

• Dual Blades Powers: Dragon's Wrath, Eye of the Storm
• Dual Blades Secondary Powers: Sword Cyclone

• Fighting Claws Powers: Dragons' Claw
• Out of Framework Powers: Ice Sheath

Reasoning: Okay, the main idea here is that you are a very deadly DPSer at all ranges and you always have a ton of energy to work with. You're going to want to make sure you're familiar with the key synergies of Munitionsand Martial Arts, but the basics will be touched on here. The key is having both Form of the Tempest and Killer Instincts. This will cause all of your attacks to give you back energy when you crit, but your Munitions' attacks will get back energy twice when you crit. This is why you tend to want to use the most energy-efficient attacks Munitions has to offer like Assault Rifle, SMG or any Dual Pistols attack. The idea is to use these attacks to generate as much energy and stacks of Focus through critting while you close into melee range.

Once in melee range, you should have built up alot of energy as well as Focus Stacks. Charge up your chosen Dragon Attack for the Rush Buff, and start unloading hell on them with your most devastating melee attacks. Just make sure you DO NOT pick up Bullet Beatdown. Bullet Beatdown, although powerful, steps on the toes of all Martial Arts attacks as it is both single target and AoE damage, but doesn't specialize as well as dedicated Martial Arts attacks do. Adding in Bullet Beatdown adds redundancy to the build. Best to just focus on Munitions for Ranged, and Martial Arts for Melee damage.

If you're using Claws or Dual Blades, The technique is very simple since you'll use your Dragon attack for Single Target Damage. With Dual Blades, use Eye of the Storm or Sword Cyclone for AoE Damage. For Claws, you will need to find yourself an AoE. However, with Single Blade and Unarmed, it gets a little more complicated.

Single Blade Reasoning: With Single Blade, you're going to want to make sure you pick up SMG, and make sure you get the Aggression advantage to go with it. The technique is still the same as with other Martial Arts/Muntions combinations, except that you want to make sure you use SMG while you're closing in so that the Aggression advantage can start putting Bleeds on your enemies.

Once in Melee, immediately use a fully charged Reaper's Embrace to rupture the Bleeds for some hefty damage (you may use Dragon's Bite if you want the energy from Rush first, though). This will likely have killed whatever you just hit. If it didn't the process is very easy. Did No Mercy proc 2 more bleeds? If Yes, fully charge and rupture again. If No, maintain an SMG until it stacks 2 Bleeds on your target and rupture again. Repeat.

Against multiple targets, either kill them one-at-a time with this technique, or use Scything Blade to take them all down quickly. Swallowtail Cut is a pretty good advantage for Scything Blade, but because you've likely already applied bleeds with SMG, it's probably better to just take it to Rank 3 and fully charge repeatedly for some really good AoE damage.

Unarmed Reasoning: With Unarmed, you're going to want to use Dual Pistols. The reason for this is that Unarmed doesn't have very good AoE or Single Target damage that is easily applied, but you do get a good deal of Crowd Control stemming from Dragon Kick and Inexorable Tides. To cover for this, you want to use Bullet Beatdown for your main attack. Bullet Ballet has a very good damage-to-energy ratio, and adds another layer of Crowd Control to the build. This is why it's good to have Howl in your build. Again, the technique is to close into melee using Two Gun Mojo to fuel your energy and Focus Stacks, but also to give you a stack of Enrage.

Once in melee, use Dragon's Kick, Fully Charged, for the Rush Buff and to Stun all nearby Enemies. Then, target the biggest enemy you can find with Burning Chi Fist (make sure you have the Fists of the Righteous Flame advantage) and fully charge it. Whether that killed it or not, everything nearby is about to be in a world of hurt. Fists of the Righteous Flame gives all melee attacks for the next few seconds a chance to deal some extra dimensional damage. Use this time while you are affected by both Rush and Fists of the Righteous Flame to unload a Bullet Beatdown Barrage. The constant fuel of energy and the Dimension DoT from BCF on top of the Dimensional procs from Bullet Beatdown will melt everything around you in seconds. You can even throw in the occasional Inexorable Tides to keep enemies grounded. If fighting a single large boss, once Rush and FotRF have expired, just Howl to refresh your Enrage and start the combo over again. This technique works great for both AoE and Single Target fights.

Appendix II: Talents

Over the course of my stay with Champions, one of my other more common questions has been how to choose Talents. There are many different tactics out there for picking talents, and many of them are quite effective. However, when it comes to Talents, I usually recommend using The Hero, unless you plan to min-max and there is another Innate Talent that focuses on the two stats you want to max out. If you plan on focusing on 2-3 stats, then a different Innate works fine, however, if your build or concept requires you to focus on 4 or more, the Hero really is the better choice.

As far as what talents to choose, there's a formula that I came up with that really has really helped my SG when it comes to picking talents and maximizing what your character is capable of. First, pick 3 stats. For for example, I'll say DEX and EGO as Super Stats and REC as my secondary stat. Find the Talents that give 2 of those, so you'll be taking:

5 DEX, 5 EGO
5 DEX, 5 REC
5 REC, 5 EGO

Then, from there, you can either pick an additional 1 stat to focus on, or 2. If you pick one stat, pick the talents that give both it and your primary and secondary stats. For example, if you chose INT to be your tertiary stat go:

5 INT, 5 DEX
5 INT, 5 EGO
5 INT, 5 REC

However, if you chose to focus on two additional stats instead of one, INT and CON we'll use as an example, then pick the talents that give your tertiary stats and your secondary stat, avoiding your Primary stats, like this:

5 CON, 5 INT
5 CON, 5 REC
5 INT, 5 REC

The math involved is a bit hard to see, but this gets you more than just picking the +8s. Also, it gets your secondary and tertiary stats much higher. With that you should be able to get your two Super Stats to 200 while getting your secondary stat over 100 and your last two tertiary stats should sit just under 100 by level 40.

Just to show you everything at once, let's use a different example. Let's say you want to make a Might-Based damage machine.STR and CON will be your Super Stats, and you'll want REC as your secondary one. You don't need PRE since you don't want to tank, so you pick END as your 4th stat. DEX and EGO won't do much for you either, so you decide that you're just going to focus on those 4 stats (STR, CON, REC, END). The Talents you'd want to pick would be:

5 STR, 5 CON
5 STR, 5 REC
5 CON, 5 REC
5 STR, 5 END
5 CON, 5 END
5 END, 5 REC

As one final example, let's say you want to make a Sorcery character and choose PRE and INT as your Super Stats. Your next choice is that you want REC as your secondary stat, and pick your fourth stat as END and your fifth stat as CON for some extra energy and survivability. The Talents you'd choose for this combination would be:

5 INT, 5 PRE
5 INT, 5 REC
5 PRE, 5 REC
5 REC, 5 END
5 CON, 5 REC
5 END, 5 CON

There are more advanced ways of picking Talents that exist, and can help you out if you know what you're looking for. This is just an easy way for beginners to make sure they don't gimp themselves. Other ways exist, but you'll have to learn those on your own :D

Thanks to everyone who helped! This Guide is just as much your doing as it is mine.

• Puck.Dragon, I would have never learned Fire without you.
• Pulsewave, thank you for your help with Power Aromor.
• Nozark, you're my nerf-herder for all things melee.
• RynoHound, you and Roxtar are truly the Champions of Might.
• Dr.Sage and Iotronis, thank you both so much for your help with Support Role stuff!
• Zeroi, I wouldn't ever have figured out Infernal if not for you.
• ShaolinWind, thanks so much for you help with Dual Blades.
• The_Last, thank you for not letting anyone give up on Archery.
• Ashen_X thank you for your help with understanding Archery as well.
• FrozenBones, thank you very much for your advice in Ice. With your information, I actually felt powerful using Ice again.
• Mr.Funsocks - You've done so much work with the wiki, but thank you for taking time and explaining Force during the F2P Beta. You really helped me out.
• Empyreal10, thank you for your help with Telekinesis, but thank you for always being there for build advice, mechanical know-how and to bounce ideas off of.
• mirth81, thank you for putting this at the top of your list of guides and helping spread the word to make this the most viewed topic on the Champions Online Forums.

And thank you to everyone else who responded to the Calling All Build Gurus thread - the thread that made this Guide Possible. I could never have done this alone. This is not only a guide for new players, but a testament of how great the CO community is, and what good can be done when it comes together.

Awesome. This will help my alts tremendously. Thanks for the compilation!

This is incorrect, though in a harmless way. Int only actually affects the damage scaling on true pets (in this set, attack toys and munitions drones); other powers, even if mechanically implemented as pets, use your general offensive bonus. This means that orbital cannon, for example, scales with superstats (including int if appropriate) and other offensive bonuses (such as electric form), but does directly scale off of Int.

However, you should still superstat Int, because basically all of your good powers have cooldowns, and Int reduces your cooldowns.

Wow look at that, 13? 14 builds and not a single one uses Regen.

STICKY FOR GREAT JUSTICE!

The testing I did with this couldn't concretely prove this one way or the other, but I'm inclined to believe you on this, and so it has been changed.

Thanks for the guide!!

Thanks a ton Willblack and friends, this will help for sure with my altitis, sticky please.