Rhetorical Response

I had actually typed this out to post in the CoH forums. Then I thought the better of responding to FivefifteenA since he's a troll and I swore not to contribute to troll threads. The only good response to a troll is silence anyhow.

Anyhow, in order not to waste a purrrfectly good essay, here we go…

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Oddly enough, I was despairing of ever finding a CoV AT to play up to max level.

Brutes were a little too solo-friendly and I didn’t want to repeat the alpha-strike absorber role in a team so soon. Corruptors weren’t my cup of tea, too much long range pulling and blasting and buffing. Stalker melee was fun, but consisted of way too much running away madly at low levels waiting for hide and AS to recharge. Either that or just zipping through missions by completing objective – efficient but not exactly fun in combat. Masterminds were interesting, but meh, you’re basically watching your minions plevel you while you buff and debuff.

Oh no, what’s left? Dominator? Some cruddy controller with damage tagged on, no doubt. I hated controllers in CoH. I don’t think I’m going to like a dom…I’m doomed, never gonna enjoy CoV.

Then I actually tried playing a dominator. Hahaha. Playstyle clicked immediately. Situational awareness and knowledge of mobs very important. Hold and render helpless primary threats. Decimate at leisure with many spammed attacks, with fun melee to boot. Strategic play with immediate feedback if you screw up and attack when you should have held, or held the wrong one. Critical crowd control function, like a different kind of tank.

Sure, I wasn’t too happy when I kept running my end bar dry in the teens. So what? Adapt, queue up for stamina, wait for SOs, problems solved. Managed it with no infamy transfer either – the dom was my first CoV toon to break through to high level.

Do doms still need some tweaking? Sure, maybe look at some end costs. If you want to raise my damage, I’m not arguing. PvP-wise, they still need some help to be equivalent to controller-level threat.

But the dom playstyle isn’t for everyone. Even if you up their damage. Just like tanks aren’t for everyone now that they’ve stopped being god-mode. It’s a bit more hard-core, better off being experienced with CoX gameplay before trying it out, like a kheldian, but it has its own rewards if you get it just right.

Before tanks plummeted to the lowest popularity in CoH because of preconceived ideas about being nerfed and low level survivability, I’m willing to wager that controllers were sitting in the least played spot pre-containment. Why? Crowd control + buff/debuff isn’t for everyone. Some AT has to be least played…

I tried the Auto-Assault Road Rage Weekend recently. It’s funny. Nearly all of the vehicles and characters I passed by were Terminators, ie. Heavy assault + combat focused. I saw a couple of Agents (special ops), a lone Constructor (repair/support), zero Masterminds (not sure what they do).

Moral of the story: Many people like to do high damage. It’s seen as the easiest route to progress through a game. The big dumb warrior/fighter syndrome. An AT that is perceived to be unable to deliver it is not played by the majority, and is thus seen as “least popular.”