Difference between revisions of "User:GuyPerfect/Bob the Biohazard"

Revision as of 04:29, 27 November 2009

Another Day, Another Beaker

Another day, another beaker. Working at WetWare Engineering has its ups and downs. The pay is great, but working as a research assistant could bear to be more exciting. Instead, it's boring. Dreadfully boring. Time that could be spent performing actual research is replaced instead by refilling the researcher's no-spill coffee cup and gazing longingly at the eyepiece of the microscope while it's already in use. Just how long does this kind of internship even last? Such were the sentiments of Rachel Biggers, the assistant of research in the Biological and Cybernetics department. She'd rather go work at a coffee shop, where at least there will be a sense of satisfaction in filling cups all day long.

Rachel is an endeavorous type who finds inspiration in every corner of life and seeks ways to put these ideas to use. Using the knowledge and techniques that she learned at WetWare, she privately conducted her own research and development on various short-term narcotics. These toxins could either be beneficial or detremental to the subject affected by them, but their effects are entirely harmless and wear off after a few seconds. She sold a few recipes to the highest bidder on an underground scientific website run by one of Dr. Vahzilok's former colleagues, but didn't find the proceeds worthwhile. Many villains in the Rogue Isles are making good use of these narcotics, which they simply call poison, but they're only making a minor splash in the grand scheme of things. Rachel eventually took to finding other ways to apply her skills and curiosities.

Not too long ago, Rachel found through her channels that Arachnos was planning to execute a jailbreak on Zigursky Penitentiary in Brickstown, supposedly to retrieve someone whom they thought possessed the qualities necessary to fulfill some kind of destiny. Rachel saw quite a bit of opportunity in such an event, and got straight to work. She integrated her poison technology into a combat-capable suit and tested it out on some of the lesser gang members in Paragon City before instating herself into the Zig. It's not certain how she managed to infiltrate such a powerful prison and register herself as an inmate without ever even having been arrested, but if the records say she should be there, then prison security isn't going to argue with it.

Sure enough, in came Arachnos and out went the Destined One. And of course, Rachel followed. She managed to escape detection and boarded the flier that Arachnos had waiting outside the prison, and stowed away while the target inmate was also brought on board and returned to the Rogue Isles. Disembarking at Fort Darwin in Mercy Island, no one seemed to notice that she wasn't supposed to be there. Just as well. If any of those Arachnos personnel were bright enough to realize that something was amiss, it would be difficult to talk her way out of it. But fortunately, it didn't come to that.

After registering with the Arbiters, Rachel was taken in for an assessment and classification in the Arachnos record books. Her combat suit completely hides her identity, and the special potion-emitting gas mask she wears alters her voice to divert suspicion of her true nature. Masquerading as a male villain, she was officially registered in the Rogue Isles under the moniker Bob the Biohazard. Psychological testing revealed Rachel's--or Bob's, as it were--ability to plot and execute schemes in a role of battlefield commander to be superior to other villains, and she was thusly identified as a Mastermind. When asked where she would be recruiting for minions, she expressed no interest in doing so. Much to her delight, none of the personnel took her seriously, which is just what she wanted. Now she would be able to set out on her own and finally have a job worth waking up to in the morning without the ever-watching eye of Arachnos keeping tabs on her activities.

The idea of taking down Lord Recluse on his own turf was a wonderful notion, and Rachel couldn't pass up such an opportunity. She'd also get to spend every hour of every day bashing in the heads of real villains. She'd even get to lay some smack-down on Longbow, who have a history of opposing the Vanguard, an organization defending the entire world from the Rikti menace. It's a win-win-win situation, and it sure beats sitting around in a lab coat all day every day. Once she makes a name for herself in the Rogue Isles, Rachel plans to bring her new Bob the Biohazard identity back to Paragon City where she can fight evil as a bona fide hero.

Another day, another beaker. Rachel prepares for her activities once again by concocting a new round of poison for her combat suit. Each time she busts some evil laboratory, she gets some more toys to play with, and is constantly designing new and unusual ways to intoxicate her foes. Though only armed with a pair of handguns and relatively weak body armor, Rachel has finally found one place that makes her happy in a twisted sort of way.

Character Details

Statistics: Name:   Bob the Biohazard Server: Pinnacle Alignment: Villain Archetype: Mastermind Threat Level: 34 Primary: Thugs Secondary: Poison Updated: November 26, 2009

Powers: (Hover mouse)

Why on Earth!?

If you read through the wall of text that is the character biography, you'll probably be wondering what was or was not going through my mind when I decided to make a Mastermind with no Henchmen. If you're not disappointed enough already, also know that the build focuses on melee damage as well as ranged. A gimp doomed to fail you say? Well, maybe so, but I've played this concept in the 30's before a number of non-performance-related issues convinced me to delete it. Well, things are different this time, so I've re-rolled.

With the advent of Dual Pistols coming with (or before) the Going Rogue expansion and the introduciton of Knockout Blow and retention of Bile Spray for Masterminds, I've made a decision. Bob the Biohazard must have guns and shark vomit. Corruptors will be getting the guns, but they don't have access to the shark vomit. Ergo, Bob the Biohazard must remain a Mastermind. This is the what of the situation. Now for the why...

Poison is... well, it's downright amazing. A relatively uncommon decision with Masterminds, which itself is a relatively uncommon (on most servers, at any rate) decision when choosing an archetype. You simply don't see much of Poison, and most people don't have any extensive experience with it. But that doesn't change the fact that it's completely awesome. It's generally overlooked in favor of Radiation Emission, so Corruptors tend to ignore the fact that Poison even exists. What's left are the few Masterminds who pick the set, and of course they'll be playing it as though they were a Mastermind, which kinda cobbles together the aspects of their primary and secondary powersets.

Why #1: I will be playing Poison as a Corruptor would to showcase its features without having the usual Mastermind aspects getting in the way. I simply find this fun to do.

Next comes the issue of archetype attribute modifiers for Mastermind. Masterminds have the lowest HP of any archetype and no defensive capabilities, which places Bob the Biohazard in a rather compromising situation. Masterminds can draw HP from their Henchmen when in Bodyguard mode, but with no Henchmen, this Mastermind is completely unprotected. Next, Thugs only gives access to three ranged attacks, which, coupled with the Mastermind's low ranged damage output, makes for a rather unimpressive display when dispatching enemies. The archetype's inherent power, Supremacy, is completely worthless in this situation and all of the aforementioned drawbacks need to be addressed. Ah, but I have a plan!

Why #2: Can a Mastermind with no pets, but with clever use of Set Bonuses, outperform the average character? I intend to find out.

In the end, I remember how much fun it was to play the character even though it underperformed. So I've decided to play it again, even if I can't get it to overperform.

Number Theory

Masterminds come in seven pieces, usually: the Mastermind himself, then six Henchmen. All of which have low damage and low hit points compared to characters of other archetypes, but the catch here is that just one player is in control of all seven pieces. More aggro, less impact of enemies ganging up on a single target, damage from more angles, and of course higher overall damage output. For the concept of Bob the Biohazard to play out, those six henchmen need to be cut out of the picture, which leaves this particular Mastermind at only one seventh what it could be if it bothered to obey the laws of the universe.

To outperform stock archetypes of any kind, the base stats of the Mastermind will need to be boosted. Of course, this is only nominally effective, as any self-respecting character of another archetype will find ways to boost their own stats, thereby surpassing the Mastermind once again. But for the sake of this experiment, we're going to say that it won't happen that way. The Mastermind will outperform something, assuming the something doesn't buff itself outside of ordinary Enhancements.

Since the Mastermind has, for the most part, the lowest stats of any archetype, it'd make sense to set the sights on the next-lowest archetype and work up from there. In this case, we're talking Hit Points and Damage Scale specifically:

• Masterminds have 803.2 HP at level 50, and Defenders and Controllers both have 1017.4. This means that if the Mastermind hopes to compare on this front, his HP will need to be boosted by at least 26.7% just to match that 1017.4, let alone surpass it.
• The Defender becomes the target again for damage output, as it's the next-weakest class with dedicated ranged damage. The melee damage modifiers for Defender and Mastermind are the same, but Defenders have 0.65 ranged damage and Masterminds have 0.55. This means the base damage of the Mastermind needs a boost of at least 18.2% to match that of Defender.

I've done a lot of crunching on the numbers that I'd like to use with this particular Mastermind build; using powers I want to have, raising the stats to the levels I want, and enhancing everything so it fits my personal criteria for "acceptable performance." My standards are generally pretty high, too: I like at least 1.9X Accuracy on all powers if I can manage it, for example. The following are the goals I defined prior to specing the build:

• No "purples" or PvP sets will be used, due to their low availability. Sets should be at most Rare.
• The Poison powerset, along with Bile Spray from Leviathan Mastery, fit in with the "biohazard" concept really well, so the character will need take that Epic pool.
• The character will use melee as auxiliary damage in light of the void left by excluding the Henchman powers. Since Knockout Blow happens to be in Leviathan Mastery as well, this works out really nicely.
• Following up on the "biohazard" scheme, additional Toxic damage should be introduced. The only way this is possible for this character is to make use of two Gladiator's Javelin: Chance for Toxic Damage enhancements, and PvP IOs are extremely expensive on the market. Either way, their inclusion has been accounted for. This seemingly violates the first specified goal, but keep in mind that these Enhancements are being used for concept purposes and not in the same way as the other IO sets.
• As stated above, the character's base HP must be boosted by at least 26.7% and its base Damage must be boosted by at least 18.2%.
• Since there are no Henchmen to distract enemy aggro or provide the protection of Bodyguard stance, survivability is paramount. Damage resistance and hit points should be maximized in the build, and knockback protection should be present.
• The character should be fun to play. Like, duh!

After much time, counting and mixing/matching Enhancements with powers, I've prepared a build that accounts for all of these, and actually surpasses my expectations:

• 1144.5 HP - Set bonuses, when stacked with the Accolades, make for a 40.25% boost to hit points; a much higher boost than the specified requirement. Not only does this surpass Defender and Controller, but it trumps Corruptor and the Epic Archetypes as well (1070.9). I am convinced that a 50% boost is possible, which is the amount needed to match Blaster hit points (1204.8), but I wasn't able to work that much into this build AND keep powers enhanced the way I wanted. I had what I thought was a 50% HP build, but I'd forgotten about the Law of Fives and had to re-examine which sets I used.
• 0.67 Damage Scale - Damage boosts from set bonuses come to an even 22%, which is 4% more than what I was shooting for. Since Mastermind ranged and melee scalars are both the same, this makes the dual pistols and makeshift Super Strength clones more powerful than Defender attacks, and are technically closer to Corruptor level than traditional Mastermind level. There's still a lot of room to buff damage with IOs, but between available Enhancement slots and those used for hit points, I had to cut it short to make it all fit.
• 66.75% Damage Resistance - Smashing and Lethal in PvE; all damage in PvP. Bodyguard at full effect will trim off 75% of all incoming damage to the Mastermind, although the damage is distributed to each of the Henchmen. In this case, Bob the Biohazard will shrug off two thirds (rather than three quarters) of all Smashing and Lethal damage, which are the most prominent forms of damage in the game. This stat comes from toggle powers rather than IO set bonuses.
• 8 Knockback protection - A couple of Enhancements in Hover make Bob the Biohazard one steadfast renegade.

At least on paper, it's looking like a Henchman-less Mastermind can indeed outperform various base stats of other archetypes. Again, it'd be trivial for those other archetypes to buff their own stats to get far out of reach of the Mastermind, but that's not the point! We'll see how this goes in a month or two when Bob the Biohazard can start slotting level 50 Enhancements.