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Tell me if I understand roles correctly
DeathStroke
Member UncommonPosts: 41
So from what I've been able to gather each character can fill 1 of 2 roles. For instance. Fire can either tank, or be a dps character similar to a scrapper or brute in CoH. Where as say Mental can be either a controller or dps blaster. These roles are determined by the powers you select for your tray.
Is this correct? Or am I way off?
Comments
Well... sort of... Roles really don't have that much effect on game play, other then to reduce your damage output and limit the powers you can get. Tanks can't taunt, Healers don't have enough power, and the less said about Controllers the better.
The limiting of powers isnt as bad as it sounds, as DCUO gutted the PC UI to make it fit for the consule. Really bad game design, but does make the reduced powers loadout per role not seem so bad. :P
So when all is said and done, roles really have little to do with the game at all. So tanks can take more damage but really don't serve the team at all because they can't taunt? And Healers can't heal because of a lack of power? And apparently controllers are so bad its best not to even mention them? Wow, you say it isn't as bad as it sounds but that REALLY sounds terrible!
This may have in a single post turned me off to this game.
When in Controller Mode your and the Parties Energy Regen is increased by quite a big amount and your ability to stun is increased . When in Healer Mode , your Heals are twice as stronge as in Damage Mode.
Dont know about Tank since I have not played one yet.
True, your healling is increased quite a bit in Healing mode. Although you will run out of power after the first big heal. It seems to work best to parcel out the small heals you have while trying to build up the overchage heal, but that can take quite a long time, and in a tough fight you will die before then anyway.
tanks can take more damage at a DPS penalty and i beleive there was and inheritent threat inicrease attached to it. I rarely need to go in tank mode, that is why the details are fuzzy. i did tank early on and dont remember threat as an issue.
Attention everyone! 6 powersets and buttons sux..... That is all.
My 2 'mains' in beta where the tank sets, Fire and Ice. In a boss fight, I could not keep the big guys attention in tank mode. If there is an inherent taunt in tank attacks, it is very minimal. I generally was the last to die though. lol
Regardless of what some people may tell you, roles do change your play style quite a bit. Some roles will limit what powers can be used and what the effects of those powers are. Your entire class changes when you select a role, including energy regen, health stats, attack power, and any role specific abilities.
For example, a Nature user in damage mode and a nature user in healing mode are two very different players, and if played the same will find themselves very unhappy. A controller in damage mode and controller in controller mode too, not really prudent unless you know what you're doing and even more important to know what to do and how to do it when in a group.
Tanks are pretty much the only ones where the majority of their power sets don't take on an entirely new role. Ice sets for tanks lay pretty heavily on cryogenics for defensive help, but most other powers really don't change effectiveness between tank or damage mode, while the fire set can utilize both its sets without really seeing much of a penalty or boost. The fire tank set buffs differently then Ice last I tried it though, and really revolves more on regen then defense.
Once again MaskedWeasel has summed it up pretty well. Roles do make a big difference. Roles are not determined by the powers you select. It's the other way around. The role you are in determines what your powers do. Some of the powers are simply more effective in the specialty role, and some change what they do depending on which role you are in. The changes they made to the game were to make roles more important. Prior to the changes many people were staying in damage mode all the time.
There is no real correlation between roles in DCUO and archetypes in CoH. You don't have different powers for each role. You have the same powers, but they may behave differently depending on the role you are in. You can switch the loadout of the power tray to be different in each loadout, if you want.
The change to more role dependant group gameplay caused them to make modifications to the game mechanics. They seemed to put a lot of the focus on power, making you use more power and making controllers more focused toward active power regen. They took decent powers from controllers to replace them with power regen powers. This ended up sucking for everybody. However, the controllers were updated in a recent patch to make their power regen stuff work off of existing powers and gave back some of the powers they had taken away. Controllers are fine now, in my opinion. There is a HUGE difference between playing a controller or healer in damage mode, and playing them in their specialty mode. I had 4 healers (2 nature and 2 sorcery), and 3 controllers (2 gadgets, and 1 mental). All of them were fun.
Aslo, keep in mind that you don't have to be in a group to use the specialty modes. Some people use only damage mode when soloing, and I have found that certain fights go better in the specialty modes.
I think that a huge part of the problem with healers is that you can't just sit back and do nothing but heal. You need to attack to regen power. Another part of the problem is that some controllers don't use their powers properly to regen the group. Something else that was probably a huge factor is that there was no documentation for the beta, and many power descriptions were vague, so some people didn't understand how certain powers worked. Hopefully descriptions and documentation will be greatly improved at release.
Yes, tanks need a boost to their taunt ability. No question.
I read a few of the threads here, and I am wondering if people here actually tested different builds and roles... Here is the deal with roles.
First: Roles shift your characters focus. One may increase defense but reduce damage... one may reduce damage but increase defense. They can change the amount of power that is regened by your skills.... etc...
Second: They modify or even completely change your powers(many powers say something like "tank role: x controller role: y" in addition to normal effect).
Third: They are not determined by your skills on your hotbar. You have to set a "loadout" for each role, and when you switch to that role, your bar automatically updates to that role. For example, a level 20 ice/dual pistols with points in cryogenics(to get the ice elemental form) will have 3 roles: tank, dps, and ice elemental. In dps I will have the AoE pull, the AoE knockback, damage reflection shield, damage debuff, ice elemental form, and snow devil. In Tank I would have AoE freeze, damage reflection shield, damage debuff, targetted freeze, ice elemental form, and snow devil. I can hit the hotkey to change roles and my character will shift focus AND my hotbar will switch to the appropriate loadout. This also means that (contrary to people who say you only have 6 effective powers) I can configure my powers situationally and switch between them on the fly.
Fourth: Controllers role sucks? wow... I watched a lvl 29 controller solo booster gold in the duo after the patch(when the thing was crazy)... I've watched controllers solo the final battle in hive moon base when we all got locked out of the room cause of a wipe... we thought he would go down and it would reset... and we got to stand at the force-field and watch him solo queen bee and ALL THE ADDS. And before you ask, no I do not know his build, though he was using a big ass 2h hammer.
You don't NEED to use roles, but used effectively they can make your char much more interesting... Most of my chars I had my primary loadout on the role I used the most(i.e. damage role on a dps), and just used the other roles to store loadouts of powers that I might need situationally but didn't want on my main bar... Some of them, however, actually swapped roles for the effects they got from the roles...
This question is really stupid....but I got to level 12 or so without actually realizing how to change a "role". So, how do you change roles? Is it in the "Loadout" menu? I know that the little skull next to my character HUD would mean I'm in a regular damage mode right? Thanks guys.
Disclaimer: This is not a troll post and is not here to promote any negative energy. Although this may be a criticism, it is not meant to offend anyone. If a moderator feels the post is inappropriate, please remove it immediately before it is subject to consideration for a warning. Thank you.
Hehe took me till 10 as well, to change roles it is in the Loadout, for example tank/damage or whatever
as for that little skull that means pvp
"All expectation leads to suffering" Buhhda
once you have the loadout sorted, press "T" to swap between the roles.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
Yep, its the loadout menu. Hence I went down the Flash line and was able to switch my characters role (tank or dps) I believe.
I underlined the most important parts of this post. They sum up nicely the roles in DCUO. My controller was the only character that I tried out group content with and I can assure you, the fights went quite differently when I was in damage role compared to when I was in controller role. Also, I noticed that when my group's tank and healer didn't switch to their off-damage role, the fights were a lot tougher.
Also, each power has a tooltip that tells you what it does in damage or off-damage role.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Don't worry about not knowing the role swap, you can't do it until level 10.
The flame icon next to your name means damage mode. In controller role, it will be a lasso-ish looking thing. But I can't for the life of me remember what the tank and healer icons are. Also, when you switch roles, the appropriate icon will flash above your characters head for a few seconds.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Almost certainly due to 'bugged reflects'. And there's the thing roles,skills and whole skill 'branches' are yo-yoing between uber and pretty much worthless, sadly that's not hyperbole. Really the whole feel of somethings changes completely patch to patch and really this is not too good so close to release.
Controllers don't have much in the way of reflects Nature healing and ice's deflection do. I hate how on these boards they played 15 minutes of a limited beta and suddenly know everythnig about the game. I have not found one tree skill powerset that is completely useless so explain which ones are? Don't worry I'll wait...
Actually the mental tree has reflect problems I'd say more then nature, and a few other bugged powers. The most well known reflect issues are of course, with the Ice tree.
No powerset is completely useless, though I think illusion was probably the least tested build, can't recall ever seeing anyone using it apart from a few people on the PvE servers just for novelty. There are some powers that are just not prudent though, mostly in the iconic tree. Not useless, just not prudent.
I agree, no power set is useless. Some are more difficult than others.
You are also right about Illusion. i found it to be one of the weaker sets, after the patch that changed the power structure of the game. They removed some powers that were good pre level 10 to put in Power regen powers. It became extremely frustrating to play, but i kept pushing forward so that I could provide as much feedback as possible. Thankfully they replaced those removed powers in a recent patch, but you couldn't select them until level 12. After the last controller fix, the Illusion set is much improved, at least after level 12. By the mid teens it is much better, as it has more defensive capabilities. Unfortunately, i have no idea how well those work in PvP. I'm thinking the won't work as well.
One disappointment with the illusion set is the lack of illusion effects. There are a couple of very good ones, but most have none.
I was on pvp server and illusion was used alot of times for the different holds and all it brings. Maybe it was just my spec but I really didn't find illusion as weak as others have suggested. I even made another illusion with a different spec but was more concerned in testing all the trees so I didn't level that character up that much.
No, roles are important. It's a synergistic type of setup. Tanks have the health/mitigation required to take the big hits, Healers roles are necessary to heal the damage being delivered, and Controllers are required in order to supply the Tanks/Healers with energy to continue doing their job, as well as mitigate damage via CC/debuffs. I'm not entirely sure how aggro works, but I really haven't had any trouble w/ in on my Fire based tank. I'm not sure if he gets some sort of bonus, or if its just because I'm always the first one in and have lots of AoE type of damage.
In PvP, specific roles have damage bonuses to other specific roles. IE controllers do bonus damage to healers, Healers to tanks, and Tanks to controllers. This allows people to use roles in PvP while still doing respectable damage to targets as long as they target the proper counter role.
It was weak after the patch that removed powers from the set to replace them with active power regen abilities. One whole branch of the tree was dedicated to it. One of the last patches put those powers back, though with a higher minimum level restriction. It is much better now that it was. I was mid teens after the fix, and it was fine there, but I think that pre-level 12 may still be troublesome. Two of your offensive can't be taken until you are level 12, meaning that 1-12 you only have 1 offensive power, and it will go through and around your target and can aggro wandering mobs or those in another group. That is problematic when doing PvE quests in high traffic areas, since you don't have defensive spells that other power sets have at lower levels.
Levels 1-10 were fine prior to the restructuring patch, and mid teens were fine after the controller fix. The part between patches sucked, and I didn't get to try the early levels again after the controller fix. It might be OK.
I questioned the PvP aspect, because two of the powers make you enemies attack others instead of you. I have never seen anything like that actually work in PvP, in other games. But as i have not played PvP in DCUO, I can't say. maybe they do work.