Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

The ability to quickly adapt to a given situation is one of the major things that sets true superheroes apart from the masses of masked vigilantes and can be the determining factor in whether you send your enemies off to cool their heels in Stronghold or you wind up taking a snow nap along the shores of Big Bear Lake in the Canadian wilderness. As superbeings continue to proliferate on both sides of the morality fence, the tactics employed to achieve one’s goals has also seen a dynamic shift.

Unlike traditional MMOGs, characters in Champions Online need not conform to rigidly defined classes, or perhaps more importantly, the standard roles typically associated with a class-based system. As you progress and unlock new powers, talents and advantages, you’re free to pick and choose exactly what path your character will ultimately follow. Want to be an unstoppable melee machine that shoots lasers out of its eyes? You can do that. Or perhaps you want to be a supernatural being that dabbles in necromancy but is also strong enough to pick up tanks and throw them with little effort; you can do that too. Within the framework of available powers in the game, the only limit truly is what your imagination can come up with.

Much like power selection, the role you assume in combat can also be altered through the use of Builds. The system is fairly robust and allows you to switch between offensive, defensive, balanced or support roles at the drop of an irradiated hat. Before diving headlong into the intricacies of what defines a given Build in CO, let’s take a closer look at Roles.

Defining Roles – The Basics

Roles could best be described as a set of interlocking elements that help define how effectively you can potentially tackle a given combat situation. If you’re familiar with the more traditional MMOG group make-up of tanks, healers, ranged or melee DPS (damage per second) and CC (crowd control) masters, then you could look at roles in CO in a very similar way; the main difference being that you can fulfill each of those archetypes within a single character if you want to.

You begin the game in a Balanced role, but there are three others that can be unlocked via Perks; Offense, Defense and Support. To do so you’ll need to deal, receive or heal 5,000 damage respectively. These tend to open up fairly quickly, and it’s worth noting that the Support role can be unlocked even if you don’t currently have any healing powers selected for your character. Watch for the small green orbs, called Boosts, which drop from fallen villains; the health gained from boosts factors into your overall total, and is an effective means of unlocking your support role fairly quickly.

Each of these roles will provide a specific set of benefits while active, altering how effective certain types of powers are in combat. Likewise, each role also has some associated disadvantages to help keep things balanced. For example, you can deal more damage with attack powers in an offensive role in exchange for a decrease in the effectiveness of incoming heals, or a defensive role can help you tank better but at the cost of increased energy decay.