 The Paragon Wiki Archive documents the state of City of Heroes/Villains as it existed on December 1, 2012.
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User:GuyPerfect/Bob the Biohazard
Another Day, Another Beaker
They laughed when I went to work at WetWare Engineering, saying I'd never have the patience to reverse-engineer biological slop. They laughed when I crafted my own little combat narcotics, claiming chemical warfare is worthless if it wears off so fast. They laughed when I told them I would infiltrate the Arachnos flier when it attacked Zigursky Pennitentiary and stow away to the Rogue Isles. And even Arachnos laughed when I told them I wasn't interested in recruiting for henchmen. I've got my own ideas; my own goals... There's no reason I have to obey some preconceived laws of the universe just because everyone else does. That's not the way I'm wired up.
My name is Rachel Biggers, though friends call me Bobbie. Long story. I say friends, but I don't suppose that's entirely accurate... I've never really been too close to anyone. I can't stand the way people embrace tradition like it's the only way to do things. Heck, if people weren't constantly shoving it in my face, I'd forget about Christmas and be happier for it. I long for the day when I can stand out doing my own thing--proving to everyone else that it not only works, but works well--and watch as their jaws sway in the breeze in amazement. The rules of life can be broken, but they say it can't be done. If I present myself as a living example, on the other hand, how can they hope to refute my hopes and dreams?
I'm a registered villain now, but I'm not super in any way. I have no extraordinary strength or ability to shoot flames from my fingertips. I'm unremarkable in every way, except one: I'm smart and I'm determined to make the most of it. If it weren't illegal for non-metahumans to arbitrarily fight crime in Paragon City, I'd be spending my time there. Registered heroes are allowed to beat up anyone on the streets who happens to have blue skin even if they're not breaking any laws, but civilians like me get in all sorts of legal trouble if we attempt to put a stop to a warehouse raid or bank robbery. I figure I can beat up the same villains for the same reasons in the Rogue Isles, and no one will even toss me a suspicious glance. A win-lose situation, perhaps, but it gives me an opportunity to do what I believe I can accomplish.
Bob the Biohazard is my villainous handle. I can get away with it because my gas mask alters my voice, and my costume has disguised the fact that I'm a woman. The mask isn't just for filtering air intake, mind you: in battle, it dispenses powerful toxins in a huge cloud in front of me. In fact, my costume as a whole is a custom combat suit designed to introduce the fruits of my WetWare training to the battlefield. Every time I bust down an evil laboratory, I get more toys to play with, so I'm constantly improvising and improving my chemical arsenal. The way I see it, even though I'm not super, I can still take you on by making you less super.
All I have to fight with are a pair of lightweight firearms and my own two fists, but I can build better bullets; I can vitalize my body with new potions; I can improve my combat armor. It's just gonna take some time and a lot of money, but I'm in the right business for that. I will become super, at least to an extent, and then I will return to Paragon City to show them what I've become. Another day, another beaker, and it won't be much longer before it will be my turn to laugh.
Character Details
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To Gimp or Not to Gimp
The question passed down through the ages is "Why make a Mastermind with no Henchmen?" The answer, quite unsurprisingly, is generally "Because I can." It's something different to do, and after making a few characters that completely demolish anything that manages to squeeze its way into the targeting reticle, it's a welcome change. The game's been in easy mode for the last few years, so why not do something people think is impossible and make a decent character out of a Mastermind with no Henchmen? The initial knee-jerk reaction to the suggestion is typically that such a character is doomed to fail. Even after being presented with evidence that it may be closer to "limp out of it barely breathing" rather than "fail," people still seem to insist that it's a dead end and the only way it can end is if you wind up dead. Well, that's their problem, I suppose. If I can prove otherwise, I just might have my chance of making history in the course of character builds in the community.
Combat effectiveness is a two-fold interweaving of one's survivability and aptness to dispatch one's enemies. If you can take a hit and dish one out, you'll come out on top. Masterminds have a different approach to this equation than any other archetype, however: they come in seven distinct pieces, and any one piece will be terribly inadequate in battle by itself. To remove all six Henchmen from a Mastermind, therefore, is to trim off six sevenths of what the Mastermind as a class was designed to be in the first place... and that's a lot to make up for. Fortunately, it's not as hopeless as it seems. A lot of a Mastermind's potential is lost due to babysitting the Henchmen, so they generally underperform compared to what they're technically capable of. Set bonuses also give a convenient way to buff one's base stats, and as I've come to find out, a Mastermind with no Henchmen can actually be made more effective than certain other stock archetypes.
I've chosen Thugs for the Dual Pistols attacks, as at the time of this writing, it is still prior to the release of Dual Pistols and I wanted to be the one who says "been there, done that" when it's all said and done. Now that I know about Swap Ammo, it's a bit of a different story, but I already got to 50, so nyah! I also opted for Poison, because it's a really cool concept and powerset design and you simply don't see a lot of it. Besides, it's the only buff set that's currently exclusive to Masterminds. If I'm gonna be different, I'm gonna be different, darn it! So I had Thugs and Poison and no Henchmen and I got to see what I could do with it. Sounds like fun, eh?
Now, Masterminds are severely clamped down in both the survivability and damage output scenarios since they're designed to work with Henchmen, and those are the problems that need to be addressed. Let's take a look at the situation with a point-for-point perspective:
Hit Points
The deciding factor of a character's survivability during battle is whether or not their Hit Points are greater than zero. If you can keep the HP above 0, you will live and therefore succeed. The most direct approach to keeping this number greater than zero, of course, is by raising the starting point. To buff one's hit points is to make one last longer in battle. This is part of a two-fold survivability technique that also incorporates Damage Resistance, but we'll get to that in a moment.
Of all the archetypes, Mastermind has the lowest base hit points: weighing in at only 803.2 at level 50. The next-lowest are Defender and Controller with 1017.4 HP, then Corruptor and all four Epic Archetypes at 1070.9 HP, then Blaster at 1204.8 HP. For the Mastermind to get to those levels, he'll need +26.7% HP, +33.4% HP and +50.0% HP, respectively. Anything else is effectively out-of-reach, because the likelihood of a Mastermind being able to boost his own hit points even 50% are pretty slim due to the number of Enhancements that can be slotted and the Law of Fives.
Fortunately, there are three +HP Accolades that make up for that first +20%, meaning IO set bonuses need only account for +6.7% to match Defender and Controller.
Bob's final build comes out to +40.62% HP with the selected +HP set bonuses and all +HP Accolades. This amounts to 1129.46 HP, which is effectively unheardof for Masterminds. It is more than Defender and Controller, and is even more than the epic archetypes. I've managed to push this particular Mastermind into the upper half of the "hit points per archetype" list. I'm convinced that a +50% build is possible, but I had to balance the HP buffs with other considerations to make the character work the way I wanted to, so some of the boost had to be cut out to make everything fit.
Damage Resistance
Next up for survivability is Damage Resistance, which eliminates incoming damage; making the Mastermind lose fewer hit points each time he gets hit. When coupled with a boost to the hit points themselves, this means a smaller and smaller percentage of the Mastermind's total hit points are lost every time he is attacked, so the higher the resistance, the better.
IO set bonuses have a variety of damage resistances, but they usually require 5 or 6 of a set to be slotted in the same power, they are only minor boosts, and they only apply to one or two damage types. From IOs, the only one I'd consider slotting in Bob the Biohazard is Shield Wall: Teleportation Protection, +Res(All): it's a +3% Resistance buff to all damage types and only requires one Enhancement. Plus, it's teleport protection to boot! But alas, this particular Enhancement has "really expensive" written all over it, and the fact that it's a PvP Enhancement doesn't help, so I'm not counting on this one ever making it into the build.
Otherwise, the only Damage Resistance a Mastermind will get comes from toggle powers. Fortunately, Mastermind gets the same Damage Resistance modifier as Tanker, which is the highest in the game. There's Tough from the Fighting pool, which grants Masterminds +15.0% Resistance to Smashing and Lethal damage. There are also the shields from the Patron Power Pools, which grant +27.5% Resistance to Smashing and Lethal and some other thematic damage type. For Smashing and Lethal, therefore, there's 42.5% resistance, which can be Enhanced to around +64% with Single Origin Enhancements. In PvP, if for some reason something possessed you to take a petless Mastermind into PvP, this would apply to ALL damage types, meaning you'd shrug off two thirds of all incoming damage in addition to your HP buffs.
Bob's particular slotting grants +66.75% resistance as described above.
Knockback Protection
The remaining survivability simply comes in the form of Knockback protection. There's a simple fact that you can't fight very well while laying on your back, so staying on your feet is important. Karma, Steadfast Protection and Blessing of the Zephyr all offer Enhancements that grant 4 points of -Knockback to the character, and multiples of each can be slotted in the same build.
Bob has 8 points of Knockback protection.
Damage
The other half of the combat effectiveness equation is how much damage you can dish out. While the Mastermind doesn't have the lowest Damage Scales of all the archetypes, they're not very high. The values for Mastermind are 0.55 for both melee and ranged damage. While this places Mastermind on par with Defender and Controller for melee damage, Defender has a 0.65 ranged modifier, requiring a +18.2% boost to match it), and the next lowest is Corruptor at 0.75 (+36.4% boost) for both attack types. There are enough different kinds of damage boosts in IO set bonuses that require only two or three Enhancements from a set, so getting a Mastermind to do +36.4% damage is not out of the question.
However, there's another aspect that numbers can't show: Masterminds do not get dedicated attack powersets, and the attacks they get are often the three weakest of their corresponding ranged damage powersets. In case of Thugs, we get some extremely wimpy attacks that, even when boosted with incredible damage buffs, end up doing depressingly small amounts of damage in the long run. Enhancing Thugs for damage is like enhancing Sprint for Endurance: a lot of effort for not much good.
Fortunately, there's an alternative, and it's one that Mastermind in particular can thrive on.
The Mastermind damage scale happens to be low enough that damage procs do a considerable amount of damage compared to the character's base damage. Damage procs deal a fixed amount of damage for any character that has them slotted: 71.75 damage at combat level 50. Pistols deals 30.59 damage unenhanced, and Dual Wield 40.37. Naturally, these can be roughly doubled with Enhancements, but that'd still only be 61.18 and 80.74, respectively. the 71.75 from damage procs, while considered "minor" damage for other archetypes that slot them, end up doing just as much damage all by themselves (the 20% of the time that they trigger) as the Mastermind's attacks otherwise, so sticking a few of these into the build is a great way to boost the average damage output.
Since the act of using damage proc Enhancements essentially disables the slots they go into from being used in boosts to the powers' attributes, certain considerations need to be taken to use them effectively. Bob's build in particular all but removes damage entirely in order to make room for damage procs. To squish down a little extra space, most of Bob's powers shoot for 1.6X Accuracy instead of 1.9X with the idea that Envenom makes up the difference. In the resulting build, there are 17 damage proc Enhancements; six powers with 1 each, four powers with 2 each and one power with 3.
Additional damage to the ranged attacks comes from Power Pools and Leviathan Mastery.
So what's the character like with all that stuff on it? Awesome, that's what. When facing foes that deal primarily Smashing and Lethal damage such as Malta Operatives, Council or Longbow, Bob steadily cruises on through like a melee class with dedicated defensive powers. The AoE debuff and attacks make for good damage splash, and the multi-proc'd / low-endurance / fast-recharge melee attacks make an unorthodox warrior that nonetheless works out very well. The character can tackle groups set for more than one player as well as single-handedly take down select Elite Bosses.
I know, I know: pics or it didn't happen. I'm looking into getting a recording set up.
