For Freeform, character building is much harder in this game than it is for many others. Archtypes often do not need to worry about many of the complexities that come into play when trying to create a Freeform character, having most of their decisions already plotted out in their level progression. In addition, Archtypes specifically build themselves to fulfill class roles in this game: Hybrid, Tank, DPS, and Support.

However, while Archtypes are easier to build, and have much more direction initially, the Freeform's flexibility and versatility can prove to make for a much better game experience, once you understand how things fit together. While a poorly-built freeform will flounder, a well set-up freeform can use whatever powers in the game the user might want, while still performing competently, and in some cases, even better. In addition, freeforms can be built to tailor their playstyle to be anything the user might want, ranging from complex to simple, focused to adaptable, or conventional to eclectic. Once you get the hang of making builds in freeform, a whole new gameplay experience opens up to you in Champions.

Usually, this takes a lot of playing around and experience to discover what works and what doesn't. Good thing we've got this guide to step through things quickly, then!

Though things can get very divergent and nutty down the road, each character still starts from the same basic building blocks. Understanding how these components fit into the bigger scene will be imperative to sorting things out later on in the process:

Powers
The most diverse and divergent part of characters are their powers. For freeforms, you can choose up to 14 combat-related powers. These powers come in a wide gamut of general types:

• Energy Builder - This power you automatically get at level 1, and is required for practically any character type. The important things to know about the Energy Builder is that it does very low damage, and that instead of using up energy, it builds it up, so that you can follow up with more powerful attacks. This all said, the energy builder is not meant to be a mainstay attack.
  
• Attacks - The bread and butter of any build, attacks do damage to enemies, and can often apply other effects alongside that. They come in a wide variety, including single, area, melee, and ranged:
  
  • Melee attacks have a range of 10 feet, no more, no less. They usually come with great damage, decent energy costs, and varieties of side-effects. Melee attacks are very important to distinguish, as only certain other abilities will boost their effectiveness.
    
  • Ranged attacks have a range of above 10 feet, and come in a very wide variety. The majority of attacks in the game fall under this category.
    
  • Area attacks come in a fair variety: Spheres, Cones, Beams, and Point-Blank Spheres.
    
    • Spheres will hit in an area around the selected target, and includes attacks such as Rocket Launcher, Fireball, and Avalanche.
      
    • Cones hit in an expanding angle from your character. They have some of the largest areas of effect of most attacks, but usually are somewhat weak. This includes most elemental breaths, as well as attacks such as SMG burst, Skarn's Bane, and Throwing Blades.
      
    • Beams hit in a cylindrical ray out of your character, hitting anything that lies between you and your target within the cylinder's radius. Hard to line up, but most are quite powerful as a result. Includes attacks such as Gatling Gun, Chest Beam, and Gigabolt.
      
    • Point-Blank Spheres (PBAoE) hits in a large sphere around you. They are some of the only attacks that do not require you to target anything. Most are quite powerful, but also energy-heavy, and have shorter range than most other ranged AoE attacks. This includes abilities such as Havoc Stomp, Hurricane, and Force Eruption.
• Healing - These will restore health to allies, or yourself. Heals are some of the biggest differences that lie between Archtype characters, and most Freeform builds, and encompass a wide variety, including self-applied heals such as Bountiful Chi Resurgence and Conviction, to single-target heals such as Bionic Shielding and Empathic Healing, to AoE heals like Vala's Light and Arcane Vitality, to even compound defense buffs, such as Mindful Reinforcement.
  
• Buff - These apply bonuses to you or your allies. These come in a very important variety of subtypes:
  
  • Toggles - Abilities you can turn on and off to apply extra buffs to your character's performance. Usually, these are always turned on.
    
  • Passives - These are the defining part of what your character will be able to do. Passives are abilities that are always enabled, and give you extra bonuses that define what you do best. These will be discussed in greater detail later on.
    
  • Actives - Actives serve as a temporary extra boost to your characters' capabilities, usually used to break out of holds, do extra burst damage, or save yourself in a tight pinch (defensive active abilities; aka "Oh crap!" buttons).
    
  • A very slim subset of buffs are click/charged abilities that apply extra bonuses to your allies, including Illumination, Protection Field, and Redirected Force. In general, this aspect of powers (and the game's whole team dynamic, really) is underplayed.
• Blocks Defensive abilities that can be activated with the shift key to protect yourself from harm. I've actually written a detailed guide on what possible powers can be chosen from this category, as well as how they are used:
  
• http://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=131419511
  
• Energy Unlock - A special, completely automatic ability that enables you to get energy from fulfilling certain conditions. Only one of these can be taken, and they are usually tailored to work with specific build types.

Superstats
Each character has a primary superstat, which grants major boosts to your character's performance, and two secondary superstats, which also grant performance boosts. The basis on which ones to take lies in their innate characteristics (how the stat itself boosts performance) and, in the case of your primary superstat, what their Specialization Tree looks like. For more detail on what superstat you might want to look at, refer to the guide on Superstats/Spec Trees: http://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122228214.

Specializations
Over the course of levelling up, your character will get access to 3 spec trees: Their primary superstat spec tree, and two other spec trees that can be custom-selected at levels 20 and 30. Again, this is a subject I give advice about in the guide on trees, linked above.

Innate Characteristics and Talents
These provide small boosts to any stats you might prefer. Usually, they are used to boost your superstats to their peak, but can also be utilized to give your character extra rounding or versatility to use their powers better. Over the course of your hero's lifetime, they will get one innate characteristic, which provides a baseline boost to all stats, as well as larger boosts in a chosen suite, and 6 talents.

Powers come in a very wide gamut, meaning that there is a huge potential for a build to go wrong if you overload on abilities that are redundant, or forget key powers that boost your performance. This all said, these are the bare bone essentials for a functional character:

• Energy Builder: This is a given. You'll need a way to build up your energy reserves to fire any other attack off, of course.
  
• Attacks: Preferably one AoE: You're going to need a mainstay source of damage output for your character - at least one attack you will use regularly to lay the hurt on enemies, and at least one that hits multiple targets; having to go through the entire game dealing with henchmen one-by-one would suck, you know!
  
• Toggle: This is basically a free boost to your capabilities, all things considered. Most of the toggles out there are versatile enough to work with any sort of build setup you might be looking for, but determine carefully! Certain toggles work much better for certain superstats and functions than others!
  
• Passive: And finally, this power. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is ultimately what pulls your entire character into a role, and guides you to the final build. If you have no passive, none of the other powers you will use have much effect.

Other good utilities to have on hand include:

• Block: Since the basic block has much worse damage reduction that any other block replacer out there, it's advisable to get something else- even if you don't invest any points in the replacement.
  
• Heals: Being able to heal any damage you take is a huge bonus - to the point that taking such a power will likely boost your survivability tenfold, especially if you know how to handle enemy aggro.
  
• Energy Unlock: Having one of these will often make your lives much easier. Being able to use special tricks to get energy boosts, instead of having to stop and use your energy builder for a couple of seconds, becomes quite imperative when fighting at high levels.
  
• Active Defense: As said before, a defense active will serve as your panic button if anything goes horribly wrong.
  
• Active Offense: This is also a good utility to have, as these often come with a special 'break-free' effect, which can be used to end holds and paralyze effects on you much sooner. The damage boost they offer also is a good bonus.

First thing to really decide on what to do, though, is what stats to use. In many cases, your superstats are going to determine what powers will work for you best - melee, ranged, high-energy, healing; all this is largely determined by which stats to use. This said, it also becomes important to choose superstats for the specializations they might utilize, as well as determine what other stats you might need (outside of superstats) to keep your character functional.

There are 8 stats in this game. Each have their own innate function, and scale up specific powers and toggles you might encounter in levelling up. These traits, along with the details of their primary spec trees, are covered in more detail in the superstats and spec-trees guide. For a general rundown, though, these are the superstats and their rough functions.

• Strength - Melee DPS and tanking
  
• Dexterity - General DPS, Chance-based abilities, Dodging, Stealth
  
• Constitution - Heavy tanking, Survivability
  
• Intelligence - Moderate ranged DPS, Energy Management, Ability recharging
  
• Ego - Ranged DPS
  
• Presence - Healing, Control, Support, Survivability
  
• Recovery - Energy Management, Alpha Strikes
  
• Endurance - Energy Management, Heavy power use

Because of the fact that this is perhaps the only part of an Archytpe build that isn't already plotted out for the player, this section should be of particular importance, even to players of AT's

Usually, the function of the Characteristic and Talents are to boost your superstats to as high as possible, since they are determining factors of how much general buff you get when running in any specific role. This is made easier by the fact that your superstats, when choosing talents, are highlighted on the specific choices that offer said stats.

When getting into in-depth building and determining what fine balance of stats you might need, talents can often boost a lot of stats you might not expect. However, here's a few general patterns that work out well for pretty much any build:

• 8/8/8/10/10/10 - Pick talent clusters that boost nothing but your superstats: 8 point talents that boost a single stat, and 10 point talents (5 in one stat, 5 in another) that boost pairings of your 3 superstats.
  
• 10/10/10/10/10/10 - Pick nothing but pair talent clusters. This provides sizable boosts to 4 stats instead of just 3, and usually, this can be used to offer just a little extra energy management, damage, or survivability, while not devoting an entire superstat to it.

A relatively new part of character creation, specializations offer small boosts to your character. These trees can drastically change how your character generally plays and handles, and are one of the more complex parts of character construction. I highly recommend, once again, checking out the specific guide on spec trees that was written earlier; it goes into detail, and also includes advice on how to use primary superstats, as well!
http://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122228214#16487


We now have the very basic components of a functional character - powers that protect and support our character, superstats, spec trees, and talents, which all work to boost the character's performance. However, there is certainly much more to creating a functional character than that! There still lies questions about how all of this stuff works together, and if you're shooting for a specific role to fill, you will need to understand the goals your character will need to meet, and how to reach said goals!

Hybrid Role is the default role of all freeform characters. Optimized for soloing and using all powers at equal effectiveness, it is notable for having no weaknesses, and comes with a few small, but effective benefits:

• Hybrids can use any kind of passive possible. Because of this, it's possible for a Hybrid to fulfill any of the more focused roles, while not sacrificing any other real functionality.
  
• The superstats offer a bonus to character damage - around 30% damage boost from the primary superstat is expected.
  
• Superstats also offer bonuses to healing strength - around 15% is the target, from the primary superstat. This healing strength buff is part of the reason why the Hybrid Role is so good at solo-play; self-heals become a much more effective tactic while running in this role, and (unlike in support role) you will still be able to do enough damage and have enough defense to keep enemies at bay.
  
• Secondary superstats offer higher boosts to the above bonuses than in any other role - whereas other roles only get a 50% boost from statting in secondary superstats, the Hybrid gets 75%. This means that it's more acceptable for Hybrids to focus heavily on their secondary superstats.

Because hybrid doesn't really fit into any sort of team dynamics, the real goal of the hybrid is completely up to the player. However, in general, if you're planning to use a hybrid to do solo-play through the game, one implicit goal does exist, and it's this: strike a balance.

Very generally, the roles get divided up into 3 different main characteristics - Offense, Defense, and Support. Offense is a measure of how quickly you can kill things, while Defense is a measure of how much you can slow enemies killing you. Support, by extension, refers to how well you can buff or heal allies (and sometimes yourself.) By principle, where we want to land in this area of roles is somewhere between Offense and Defense, especially if we're planning to just fight through everything on our own. If seeking to do team play, though (especially for major encounters), there is clear value in having support to buff or heal your allies.

Of course, because each power (passives and toggles) and each specialization (avenger, sentry, etc) are geared to fit specific roles, being a versatile blend of all roles becomes quite a task, and soon the question arises on whether one should focus more strongly on some aspects, rather than others. In short, a Hybrid could best be summed up as any of the other roles, but equipped with extra necessities to allow the Hybrid to cover any weaknesses the other role building styles might not cover.

As a simple checklist for hybrids, make sure you got all the following:

• Passive that supports the role-slant you might want to take (offense, defense, or support?)
  
• A toggle that works with the superstats you choose
  
• Basic offense capabilities, with attack powers that are appropriate to your superstats and passive, both for single targets and multiple.
  
• Basic defense capabilities, with a block, self-heals, and active defense powers to protect yourself when you get in trouble (Stealth and other heals work as well.)
  
• Spec trees that round out your character, making up for any holes that might remain in offense or defense, or boosting up capabilities in areas such as support or control.

For more detailed information on how passives, powers, and general roles interact, check the other role sections below!

DPS is, in a way, the heart of the game, and pretty much any character out there. The faster you can kill things, the less it will be necessary to have team members to take damage for you, and the less healing or control that will be needed in the long run. On the other hand, however, focusing too strongly on DPS can leave you very vulnerable to taking damage, meaning you will need to find ways to either protect, heal, or hide yourself in times of danger - sometimes while not wanting to compromise your damage output!

In its finer points, DPS gets separated into two roles: Ranged and Melee. The two receive generally similar boosts and adjustments to their capabilities:

• DPS roles can only use Offensive Passives. In general, these passives provide boosts to specific damage types, light defense, and usually some other mixed bonuses.
  
• An increase to base damage. The boost is equal for both ranged and melee, but applies only to the appropriate range of attacks.
  
• Increases in energy generation. This means that DPS characters can gain more energy from energy unlocks, and generate more energy from energy builder hits. Because ranged characters generally have much more energy-intensive powers, they get a higher boost to generation than melee does (30% vs 10%)
  
• Superstats give DPS roles increases to their damage, and decreases in threat generation - this means that people running in DPS roles will be less likely to be attacked when landing attacks. However, the sheer damage that these roles do means that, unless a tank is around, they will be attacked by enemies.
  
  • In specifics, the primary superstat offers a roughly 30% boost to damage, and a 15% threat reduction, while the secondary superstats offer half this buff.

The DPS role, however, also has a few penalties:

• When blocking, the DPS roles only gain half the energy they normally would from receiving hits.
  
• Control powers they might use (including Holds, Stuns, Confuse, Sleep, and so forth) get their strength reduced by 20% - this means they become shorter, and easier to break out of with damage. However, the actual ability to apply a control power in the first place (to interrupt an enemy, for example) is not impacted.
  
• Compared to Hybrid, there are a few more implicit disadvantages that DPS roles get:
  
  • Their smaller damage/threat buff from secondary superstats means that DPS is best off when pouring all stats into its primary.
    
  • DPS characters also do not get a bonus to their heals, so when using such defensive precautions, they will benefit less, and will also be less capable of healing allies as well.

This is a list of the different power classifications that qualify best for doing pure damage. In this case, they're separated into two different lists: One for ranged, the other for melee.

Ranged DPS sets:

• Fire - Placing emphasis on extreme fire-defense debuffs and stacking DoT effects.
  
• Ice - Emphasis on extreme single-target damage through critical hits.
  
• Electricity - Emphasis on rapid energy generation through offense, and maintained damage.
  
• Wind - Emphasis on mixing damage types (synergises well with Ice and Elec) and very rapid maintained damage, alongside some bursts.
  
• Munitions - Emphasis on critical hits, varying scopes of range, and maintained damage, alongside light debuff application.
  
• Power Armor - Focuses on stacking multiple attacks on one another - this makes this perhaps the most difficult to play in terms of both power and energy management, but it stands up to the challenge.
  
• Telekinesis - Focus on burst damage and high critical stats by building and using stacks of Ego Leech.
  
• Sorcery - Utilizes a mix of tricky Cursing debuffs on enemies along with Enchanting buffs on the user, enabling their magic to do disastrous damage to both single-targets and masses.
  
• Infernal - Focus on extreme DoT effects and heal mitigation, with liberal application of poison.

Melee DPS sets:

• Laser Sword - A solid but complex melee set with moves that do high damage, but also cost a lot of energy. Focuses on building stacks of DoT Plasma Burn effects, and ending them for bursts of damage.
  
• Unarmed Martial Arts - Focuses on landing powerful blows and weakening foes, while boosting its own defenses and keeping enemies at bay with light control and knock.
  
• Dual-Blades - Utilizes rapidfire slashes and critical hits to rack up damage against multiple targets.
  
• Single-Blade - Builds up and maintains DoT stacks of bleed, and ruptures them on single-targets for extreme burst damage.
  
• Fighting Claws - Largely focuses on Single-Target damage through combos and vicious critical severity.
  
• Might - Focus on light crowd-control for mobs, and extreme burst damage to single-targets with massive punches.
  
• Heavy Weapons - A slow, but effective style that has many attacks that hit multiple targets.
  
• Telekinesis (ego blades) - Similar to the ranged style, but incorporates a bit more AoE effects and raw damage into the mix. Unique for scaling off of ranged stats instead of melee ones.
  
• Bestial - Places focus on DoT through bleeds, while ripping foes up with strong and consistent swipes.

The nice thing that discussing character creation in terms of roles allows us to do is to assess exactly what we need to accomplish filling said role. This also becomes key, due to the fact that the ambiguous Hybrid role bases a lot of building principles about ones we'll see from other roles.

With that said, the DPS role must:

• Deal damage quickly enough to either a single target, or a group of targets - if you're pulling aggro off of other people regularly, then it's probably 'enough'.
  
• Have some means by which to deal with aggro or damage - either by light defense or aggro wiping.
  
• Have a way to keep your targets in range, either by personal mobility or sheer reach of powers.

We'll assess each of these one by one:

To deal damage as a DPS character, you'll need three basic things:

• Attack Powers
  
• Offense Passive that backs up the attacks
  
• Toggle that is appropriate for your superstats, and provides a damage boost to your powers.

As you can see, all these components interact in one way or another, meaning you'll need to base your character strongly around a single general damage type. Because almost all Offense Passives provide a damage boost to only specific damage types (Physical damage, Elemental damage, Magic, Energy, etc), you'll need to pick attack powers that will get boosted by your passive of choice. Once you determine what attacks you're compatible with, though, it becomes free-game, and you can figure out what powers can do the most damage, debuff the best, or hit the widest areas, within your subset. Check the supplementary material for details on what powers do the best!

Depending on what you're basing the build off of, though, DPS might not be something that you can take at face value. Some moves that might seem to have only average performance, for example, can be boosted to have much better efficiency or output if certain conditions are met. Since every set can accomplish these sorts of bonuses in different ways, it's important to pay attention to the details, and figure out how different moves - whether for pure damage or for applying debuffs - can bolster one another. This can also be key, due to how similar mechanics can play into the operation of energy returns and unlocks. More energy equals less time spent using your energy builder, which equates to more DPS!

Toggles are a bit more general, but tie more closely to what superstats you chose, and what general type of damage you're looking to do. Each of these toggles will boost different general damage types better than others - Enrage and Focus are more suited to Melee than Ranged, for example, while Concentration is the opposite. To add to that, said forms also differ from what stats will boost them - Enrage gets most of its damage from Strength, while Concentration can draw buffs from Ego or Intelligence. Make sure you got a solid value in the stat in question, and pick based on this criteria.

Survival reaches beyond defense, in that the goal might not even be to withstand enemy attacks. In general, survivability can be one (or a combination) of the following things:

• Having enough rudimentary defense and healing to deal with incoming damage
  
• Lightly controlling enemies, using knock and stun to hold off enemy attacks
  
• Dropping aggro with a threat wipe or stealth, forcing enemies to switch targets

Having defense is very common among most Melee DPS characters - Melee Passives often come with defense bonuses (such as Way of the Warrior's Dodge and Avoidance Buff), which allow the character to survive a bit longer than the user of a Ranged Passive, with only a specific defense. In addition, melee characters can also get access to block bonuses from abilities such as Elusive Monk or Laser Knight to provide even more protection. Aside from this, defense can be boosted on any DPS character simply by choosing the right equipment and powers.

Enemy control will provide protection against lesser enemies, who can be stunned or knocked. Control works well, because many control abilities (Dragon Kick, Force Geyser, etc) also do damage while applying their effect. The one problem is that these techniques don't work against high-rank enemies, who are immune to control effects.

Finally, there is dropping aggro, by using Threat Wipe abilities. This is often the best option for multiple reasons, including the quickness of the effect, the ability to do more damage while waiting for threat to ramp back up, and any side defense benefits you might receive (Evasive Maneuvers' +Dodge, Palliate's heal, etc.) This option also pairs up finely with Shadow Warrior, the 'rogue' passive, which boosts all damage slightly and provides you with the ability to sneak and backstab with Shadow Strike. The one problem is that stealth often requires delicacy to use, as one false hit from you or an enemy could uncover you instantly.

What's ultimately most important, though, is that surviving doesn't become a liability to your main job of doing damage. Whatever path you take, make sure you can minimize the amount of blocking or healing time needed to get back into your attacks.

Your damage output will not make a difference if you can't keep your target in range. Probably the most intuitive way to do this is to simply follow your target in such a way that keeps you in firing distance. Most ranged characters also don't suffer often from enemies out of range, but sometimes some extra precautions could be needed:

• Lunges - A very useful utility for melee characters, lunges will instantly cause you to fly forward and hit your target in melee range. With a maximum distance of 60 feet, these attacks are great for starting combat or getting into the thick of battle.
  
• Pulls/Knocks - Moves that knock or pull targets inward, such as Iron Cyclone, Implosion Engine, and Quicksand, serve as great ways to gather enemies around you for powerful PBAoE's or ranged AoE attacks.
  
• Snare and Root - The ability to slow, or stop, your enemy from moving. Thunderbolt Lunge is the classic example of a root, which prevents the target from moving for a short duration after being hit. Snare, which is a slowing effect featured on debuffs such as Chill and Stagger, and on some melee moves, will not stop the opponent from moving, but has the advantage of not being possible to break out of. For melee characters, these effects are usually used to keep targets in range for followup melee attacks. For ranged characters, they're used to make it easier for their large-scale AoE strikes to hit everything on the battlefield.

It's also key to learn how to manage or deal with a rather contentious effect that can occur in battle:


When dealt to enemies, the knock has the advantage of preventing the target from attacking for a while. The disadvantage, though, is that for knockback, the effect will usually force you and your allies (if you have any) to chase after the knocked target, which can be a big problem if time is of the essence. In short, there's two sides of the situation that the problem can be approached from:

• If low on knock effects and teamed with characters who have high knock, you can mitigate the problem by using the techniques described above - particularly, if melee, a lunge can be used to effectively close distance while wasting minimal time. As a tip, though - when using lunges to approach a knocked target, wait until the target lands. This way, your character will fly directly to the stationary target, whereas lunging while the target is still flying backwards, more often than not, will cause you to jump into the air and stop several feet short of the final landing spot of your target.
  
• If you either have high knock attacks, or wish to help with the situation, make sure to take a few skills that have either knockdown or knockup (or, if adventurous, knock-towards). These effects do not disrupt the formations of enemies, meaning that Melee Characters will not need to chase after their targets, and ranged ones will not need to reposition their AoEs (In the case of knock-to, this can actually make the job easier.) To add to this, all knock effects add stacks of knock resistance, which will prevent targets from being knocked any further, and also causes knock-attacks to do a bit more damage. Use these skills to keep enemies in range and maximize the power of your mighty knock-happy friends!
  Good examples of abilities with these sorts of properties include Inexorable Tides, Brimstone, Havoc Stomp (half-charged), Uppercut, Force Geyser, Vortex Technique Iron Cyclone, and Reverse-Polarity Energy Wave.

Tanking: The art of being a meatshield. Because so many other players sometimes simply don't have the resources or openings to defend themselves, being able to sidetrack enemies becomes valuable, as well as a good way to ensure a good damage output for yourself. Because Tanks have to concern themselves less with hiding or healing, thanks to naturally higher defenses, they can place more conscious focus on attacking enemies. However, even with their full attention turned to offense, tanks, by nature, will never reach the same kinds of damage DPS-built characters can. The tank role reflects the heart of this, with its bonuses:

• Tanks can only use Defensive Passives, which apply major buffs to character survivability, and protection from all types of damage.
  
• A 25% increase to base HP. Higher HP means that tanks will naturally last longer in battle than other heroes, with healing powers taken out of the equation.
  
• Increased defense. In addition to the higher HP, Tank role also has naturally higher defense, making them even more resilient.
  
• Resistance to control effects. In other words, tanks will suffer less downtime when affected by a hold or stun.
  
• Naturally increased Threat generation. Every hit Tank characters land naturally draws more attention.
  
• Increased energy generation from blocking. Taking a hit through a block will give you 25% more energy.
  
• Superstats offer Tanks an increase to their damage output and a boost to their threat generation.
  
  • At decent statting, the primary superstat offers roughly 15% extra damage output and 30% extra threat generation. Secondary superstats offer 75% of this buff, meaning that it is a wise choice to focus heavily on high secondaries.

Unfortunately, to balance out this sizable buff to survivability, tanks also have some setbacks:

• Naturally smaller energy reserves. Both the maximum energy capacity of a character, as well as their equilibrium, is reduced by 20% when running in this role.
  
• The rest of their weaknesses are implicit, when compared to hybrid - and they're pretty damning actually:
  
  • As mentioned before, tanks only get a 15% increase to their damage from primary superstat, making their attacks substantially weaker than either the Hybrid or DPS roles. Combined with a lack of passive offense boosts, this means Tanks will take quite a bit longer to actually get around to killing a target.
    
  • Tanks also don't get the same heal buff that Hybrids get, meaning that, while their overall base defense is higher, they are not as good as hybrids when it comes to emergency healing.

Because most sets are largely defined by their thematic style (i.e. bricks, telepaths, magic, etc.) You'll likely notice some considerable overlap between these lists. That said, the same powersets very well can apply to different roles for entirely different reasons. In addition, many of the DPS sets can still apply to be played in a tank style, even if not explicitly listed here - the following sets just feature useful tactics for grabbing maximal enemy attention or slowing foes down.

• Force - Boosts personal defense through forcefields. Meanwhile, uses knockdown and knockback to keep enemies from attacking allies, while dealing burst damage.
  
• Electricity - Has the advantage of light control (knock mostly) and AoE coverage to attract large crowds. Lightning Arc is an excellent option for Crippling Challenge.
  
• Ice - Can slow enemies down and interrupt them with ice cages to protect allies, as well as having laudable area coverage.
  
• Wind - Liberal application of the damage-debuffing effect of Disorient, combined with pushing enemies away and very large areas of effect.
  
• Archery - Contains ample tools and abilities used to boost dodge chances, as well as good crowd-control options. Attacks focus heavily on maximal coverage and range, alongside high mobility - none of the Archery attacks will root you in place, while many feature enemy debuff effects such as disorient or root.
  
• Power Armor - While still difficult to use and lacking stopping power (very few knocks and stuns), Power Armor has some of the best defensive options available to it, through its passive and block.
  
• Unarmed - Has a plethora of skills that can be used to boost dodge chance, and take advantage of dodges for healing. Also features a lot of light crowd-control moves.
  
• Dual Blades - Of the martial arts sets, Dual Blades has the most in terms of AoE coverage, and comes with useful defense-boosting skills.
  
• Might - AoE skills are largely used to keep foes at bay, and the set does come with some fairly specialized skills for grabbing aggro or getting coverage (Shockwave, Defensive Combo, Havoc Stomp)
  
• Heavy Weapons - Similar to might, but has even more AoE options open to it, including some ranged abilities, and attack power debuffs.
  
• Earth - Emphasizes heavy knock and crowd control effects to slow enemies down. Requires some power buildup to do good damage with, though.
  
• Telekinesis - The melee loadout of this set features some quite effective self-healing skills and defense boosts, alongside knocks for crowd management.
  
• Darkness - Built entirely around a debuff that reduces all enemy damage by 10%. Base damage of darkness is low, but is offset by generally high survivability, thanks to aforementioned debuff, impressive control skills, and a slew of light health-restoration effects from life drain.
  
• Bestial - Home of the regeneration passive and the very potent Devour Essence ability, which very well might be the single highest aggro-generating skill in the game.

• Have enough defenses and utilities to survive any onslaught you might take.
  
• Use threat and taunts to distract and draw enemies away from your allies.
  
• Keep up pressure - once you got enemy attention, don't lose it.
  
• Above all, keep your allies safe.

As noted back in the DPS section, a lot of the principles behind being able to fight consistently also apply here. In the case of the latter two points, being able to keep up pressure and protect your allies is all about maintaining an offense, keeping energy up, and the capability of staying in range.

Whereas survivability mostly aims to bypass damage by temporary or unorthodox means, Defense is much more direct - and this is important, because being able to have solid defense means that you don't have to drop threat or interrupt your attack pattern to implement it. This becomes the essential benefit to having a Defensive Passive ability, and, by extension, being a tank.

The best defense in CO, though, is not about specialization, but combination. Instead of chiefly aiming to buff a single defense type through the roof, it's best to assess what kinds of defenses you can have, and mixing them together:

• Health - Being hardy's probably the first step to defense. High health can basically be thought of as the baseline of being able to survive something like a huge explosion, as well as making it easier to react to rapidly incoming damage. Health can be increased by having high Constitution and using tank role, as well as using health-increasing gear.
  
• Damage Reduction (DR) - Simple, percentage-based reduction of how much damage you take, gained from the Defense stat, and passives such as Invulnerability, Defiance, and other defensive passives to a smaller degree. DR can also be boosted by using defensive maneuvers such as Energy Shield's Laser Knight and Breakaway Shot. High DR is the best way to mitigate high-damage bursts, such as a Haymaker or Force Explosion.
  
• Damage Subtraction - Flat subtraction and damage ignorance. Sometimes, this is granted passively as a constant effect, as with Invulnerability and Inertial Dampening Field, where it is mostly used for rapidfire damage mitigation (maintains and machine guns). In other situations, it works as an extra HP buffer, as with the case of Personal Force Field, Eye of the Storm, Protection Field, and other such effects.
  
• Dodges - Dodges are broken up into dodge chance and avoidance - the former determines how much of a chance you have for a dodge to take place, and the latter determines what percentage of the damage is ignored. Dodge is granted by many abilities in varying amounts, and can even come from some equipment. To top it off, dodge is very easily synergised, with Bountiful Chi Resurgence's Resurgent Reiki being a heal that triggers whenever a dodge is successfully done. Dodges can be thought up of as a sporadic variant of DR, meaning they work best against burst damage.
  
• Healing - The ability to straight up restore your own health. Passives like Regeneration offer this capability, while others, such as BCR and Conviction, apply extra healing for emergency situations. If you can survive a burst of damage, you will have time to heal. In general, Healing works best to counteract consistent damage, and in the case of tanks, has the added benefit of drawing a little more aggro from enemies.

As a rule of thumb, you will want to choose a passive that focuses on one of these schools of defense, and then back it up with other varieties to round it out. In some cases, however, synergy tactics might differ wildly - usage of Personal Force Field will heavily encourage Field Surge, and limit the effectiveness of traditional healing, for example.

Threat, by nature, comes from multiple sources:

• How much damage a character does to an enemy
  
• How much healing a character does to themselves or an ally
  
• What role the character is running in
  
• Extra effects that might layer on top of this (taunts and challenges).

If running in tank role, all your attacks naturally will draw more threat. That's great, but usually this ends up not being enough, thanks to your lackluster damage output. It's also possible (and quite feasible) to tank in Hybrid role, but is made a bit more difficult due to lack of threat bonus.

Thankfully, for both scenarios, there exist the "Challenge!" advantage. This advantage causes the attack with this advantage on it to generate threat over time for each target it hits. The debuff also reduces the targets' attack power. The effects, on AoE attacks, are more pronounced on the primary target hit, and halved for the secondary ones, and the effect can be applied once every 10 seconds - thus, single hits that reach a wide number of targets work well.

Placing this on the single target and AoE moves you will use regularly is not a bad idea at all. It is wise to remember, though, that threat is a combination of multiple factors. The Tank's threat buff works well to overcome these other factors, but hybrids can also gain a bit of this benefit by taking the Bulwark specialization in the Protector tree, which can work to their advantage, thanks to higher base levels of damage and healing done.

For tanks, moreso than other roles, energy management becomes quite an ordeal. That's not to say it isn't a task for other roles, though. At the heart of it, there's one thing that should be remembered:


Unlike in most other games, where your basic attack is the norm, and special abilities are bonus bursts in damage output, combat in Champions Online essentially makes that the opposite, with the Energy Builder just being filler/downtime, and your main source of effectiveness coming from every other ability you can use. With that, the value of being able to handle your energy and attack at least somewhat consistently (without energy builder) becomes that much more key.

That said, there are several ways the problem can be solved:

• Taking advantage of energy builder - have special buffs and bonuses on EB use that facilitate minimal use of it.
  
• Energy Unlock - have an ability that grants you energy as you use other abilities.
  
• High Reserves - use stats such as Endurance and Recovery to grant yourself extra energy efficiency and reserves.
  
• Gear - and sometimes, all you need is some good equipment to circumvent the whole problem.

The first solution doesn't so much eliminate the problem, as it instead transfers it into a minor bonus. Specializations such as Intelligence's Revitalize or Vindicator's Initiative aim to turn a single EB hit into a buff or debuff, providing ample openings for your later attacks. Some of these bonuses, as well as special advantages, can be acutely built into your setup for a maximal bonus - examples of this include the use of Force Refraction on Force Bolts to prepare a low-cost Force Cascade, or using Automated Assault on Wrist Bolters, alongside Endurance's Kickback, to generate energy as you use your power armor weapons.

Energy Unlocks are probably the most standard solution to take to this problem. If statted correctly, these can usually flood your energy bar to full, allowing you to keep up the fight in most roles. Some powersets (electricity and fire) build almost entirely around mechanics such as this, featuring many moves with high energy costs - and only their associated mechanics and energy unlock are powerful enough to fuel it!

High energy reserves are useful for times when you build up a character, only to discover that one of the abilities you might have taken costs you too much energy to use, even at a full energy bar. Stats can sometimes solve this problem - Intelligence can slightly reduce the energy cost of abilities, while Recovery allows you to start out battles with more powerful attacks. Endurance is the most straightforward solution to the problem, increasing the amount of energy your energy builder gives you, and your maximum energy capacity.

Finally, Choosing utility gear that boosts your energy efficiency sometimes proves to be enough to make a character sustainable, even without the support of stats. Especially when taking into account very high-grade efficiency items, energy stats can be entirely substituted for other, more direct buffs from alternate stats.

The last point on the Tank's goals notes that it should strive to protect allies in any way it can. While one way this can be done is through pure damage and threat, there is another method as well, and this is where the Support Role's principles come into play.

Support, essentially, is the be-all end-all of team play. Support Characters, while weak on their own, can use unique and varied tactics to swing the tide of battle in favor of themselves and their team, and can apply quick and powerful heals, shields, slowing effects, buffs, and debuffs all across the board. When getting into the higher-level content of Champions Online, a single Support character can be the difference between failure and victory.

Built around providing allies with buffs and consistent healing, Support gets buffs that accentuate this characteristic:

• Support characters are limited to only using Support Passives - the majority of which provide buffs and bonuses to allies you are teaming with, or otherwise bolster your ability to heal or help.
  
• Increased healing strength. Base healing strength is upped by 25%.
  
• Massive improvements to energy management, including much higher resting equilibrium, heavily improved energy-building rate, and a reduced rate of energy decay.
  
• Increased control effect strength, allowing you to slow enemies down with stuns and holds.
  
• Reduction to threat generation - your abilities generate 10% less threat, making it less likely enemies will go after you.
  
• Superstats offer further bonuses to healing strength (30%), damage (15%), and threat reduction (15%).
  
  • The superstat threat reduction, combined with their natural threat reduction from role, gives the Support role the absolute lowest threat generation of any of the roles - and for some good reason, we'll see below.
    
  • Secondary superstats offer 50% of this buff, making your primary stat the stat of choice to spend in.

Much like the other specialized roles, Support characters get some limitations:

• 10% reduction to health reserves, making them more vulnerable to direct attacks.
  
• 10% reduction to damage output. This is the only role to get an explicit damage (and health) debuff, making them, by far, the weakest in combat.
  
  • This is even further compounded by their superstats offering only half as much damage buff as that of the hybrid or damage roles. While the Support role can certainly provide help to allies or pets, it's usually a very bad idea to try solo-play in this role.
    
  • 'Usually', because if you use pets, they will not receive any advantages or disadvantages based on your role - because of this, in pure ratio of character to pet effectiveness, as well as the natural pairing of pet energy costs alongside support-role's improved reserves, means that most petmaster builds are designed to run under this role.

Support Sets
These sets mostly stick out like a sore thumb, being unique among the rest of the sets for featuring mostly buffs, heals, and pets - not that this is a bad thing, as many of these skills can be useful to even non-support characters.

• Force - Though a bit light on this aspect, force does have the ability to boost ally defenses through usage of shields.
  
• Gadgeteering - The majority of Gadgeteering is devoted to the usage of minor crowd control (combined with some high-energy attacks like Gauntlet Chainsaw), pets, and some rudimentary heals.
  
• Telepathy - Emphasizes extreme debuff and control effects, combined with some of the strongest healing skills in the game, and some surprisingly effective temporary pets as well.
  
• Celestial - Built to be a sort of DPS/support hybrid, celestial moves can actively switch between attack and healing modes. This said, the best components of this set are almost entirely the ones that are specifically tailored to be one or the other - some of the heals in this set are tied with Telepathy for being the most effective out there.
  
• Darkness - Yes, this counts. With its fair share of pets and holds, darkness does an impressive job at holding down crowds while holding its own offensively. Creative use of life drain can also be used to keep your allies alive.
  
• Sorcery - A varied and complex smorgasbord of spells makes for a set that prides itself on team-wide buffs, powerful pets, and extremely potent (albeit stationary) AoE effects on the battlefield.

The variety of ways that various support moves operate makes it perhaps the most versatile of roles within its own realm. In general, though, the goals remain fairly clear.

• Improve the effectiveness of your allies, either offensively or defensively.
  
• Help actively in combat, either with attacks, pets, heals, or control abilities.
  
• Most importantly, keep allies alive.

A large number of Support Passives provide buffs to your allies. Of course, the kind of buffs that can apply vary wildly:

• Offense - The ability to boost the attack power of your allies, either by directly raising damage, improving energy management, or reducing defenses of enemies. Skills that offer this sort of support include Aura of Ebon Destruction, Aura of Primal Majesty, Defense-down specs on your stuns, and extra pets.
  
• Defense - The ability to boost ally survivability, through application of shielding, heals, direct defense buffs, or reducing enemy attack power. Skills that offer this sort of support include Aura of Radiant Protection, Medical Nanites, Seraphim, Inertial Dampening Force, and Sentry and Sentinel Auras.
  
• General - Providing a general boost to character capabilities, allowing your allies to use their abilities more consistently or maintain more mobility. Abilities that carry out this sort of support include Aura of Primal Majesty, Aura of Arcane Clarity, and most Control tactics.

Regardless of what kind of path you pursue, the simple matter of the fact remains - buffing allies is easily what the Support role does best, thanks to its passives and their effects. In general, though, debuffs do play a major part in all roles to an extent, especially if applied naturally from moves. These actively-applied effects can serve for either offensive purposes (Fire's Fire Snake and Unstable Accelerant, as well as Ice's Chill) or defensive ones (Darkness' Fear and Telepathy's Regret). If building a tank or DPS, it will be wise to see what kind of side-effects and debuffs you can get to further improve your performance for your role.

While the support role can be tailored to offer passive bonuses to allies, it's also quite important to actively help on the battlefield. The vast energy reserves available to the Support character makes them actually quite versatile in this regard:

• Damage - If you really feel like it, Support can be tailored to supply a bit of extra punch with its own attacks. The extra energy also means that Support can utilize some high-power attacks that other roles would likely need express statting or energy unlock to use consistently (Laser Sword, Force Cascade, Plasma Beam, and Ebon Ruin, to name a few.)
  
  A support character with this sort of function would facilitate the use of Damage-boosting toggles, such as Concentration. However, it should be noted that both of the other 'support' toggles, Compassion and Manipulator feature a damage-buffing component to some degree.
  
  
• Healing - Probably the most intuitive and classic path to pursue is to stand ready to keep your allies well-healed. This works to your advantage, because a support unit really isn't much without its allies. To compound this, Support also would be wise to carry around other first-aid utilities, such as a reviving skill (Redemption, Resurrection Serum, etc), or even an ally panic-button (Iniquity or Palliate).
  
  A support character with this sort of function would be best suited to using the heal-boosting toggle, Compassion.
  
  
• Control - Support characters naturally get access to stronger control abilities. This said, more often than not, Control becomes less a matter of actively stopping the enemy from attacking, and more a matter of extreme buffs and debuffs. In fact, out of these listed active roles, Control likely does the absolute best when it comes to this aspect, with ample specs and advantages that can reduce enemy defenses, stymie enemy attack power, and even heal allies.
  
  Control-based support characters can boost the duration and strength of their abilities by using the Manipulator form. However, do keep note that most debuffs and effects associated with control don't require consistent or successful application of the hold - only that it's attempted.
  
  
• Pets - FInally is the matter of using pets. Pets are optimal in many ways to the Support role - aside from their synergy with high energy efficiency and reserves, they also gain any buffs that support auras give out. Pets are all about strength in numbers - if you're looking to make a pets build, it's best to go all out if you want to provide good damage support using them.
  
  Pets are unique in that most traditional toggle buffs won't provide any advantage to them. That said, any form could be considered free-game for the petmaster, but Inertial Dampening Field has the perk of also providing a bit of extra defense for your pets and allies.

All said and done, the way to build characters comes down to a lot of pattern recognition and testing. The task of making a build from the ground-up can be daunting, but can ultimately work out in your favor when your goal is clear, and you recognize what can be done to cover the gaps.


As a last word, here's a few extra resources out on the web that can be used to sort out builds and characters:

• HeroCreator[aesica.net] - By Aesica. The character builder of choice, HeroCreator is useful for storing and sharing build layouts for any freeform (or AT!) characters you might make. Being a fairly recent resource, HeroCreator is also quite consistently updated, meaning that even new powers are included in the listings.
  
• CO-Wiki[www.champions-online-wiki.com] - By Lohr et. al. The champions wiki is useful not only for the troves of information ingame (both past and present), but also contains some data on how different powers operate and scale. Look up the name of a power, and you will likely find numbers pertaining to how powerful it is for a level 40 ungeared character.
  
• Official Champions Powers/Combat Board[co-forum.perfectworld.com] - The official boards contains this section for discussing the effectiveness of different moves. While silver players normally are unable to post new threads here, there are many topics one can browse through to ask questions for, and even a subsection that includes many tried and tested freeform builds!
  
• Official Champions Public Test Server[co-forum.perfectworld.com] - If you're a gold-level subscription player, the game's public test server (PTS) is useful for not only getting a small taste of future power mechanics and gameplay additions, but also allows you to instantly level up and test characters for build testing. If you're unsure of whether or not an interesting idea of yours will work out in combat, and really don't want to spend the money on respeccing a character, copy or create a character on the PTS, and examine what works out.