Part 5: Crash-Course On Controls - WeX Majors

One of the things that I feel like you can't really capture in an LP, is just how weirdly intricate the combat is in CoX, and how much Knockback represents the greatest weakness and strengths of it.

See, because you're supposed to be a Superhero, you don't really fight anything one on and one. Even in the very beginning of the game, you're fighting mobs of 4 enemies all at once


Because of this, a large portion of the combat revolves around your ability to either contain or defeat as many enemies as possible. Almost every single power set gives you an AOE of some sort. The most powerful sets (even though this game REALLY doesn't have sets that could be considered OP.) will give you multiple AOEs, PBAOEs, cones, TargetableAOEs etc. etc. that allow you to fight multiple minions solo.

Let's take a look at some powersets that I can show off how well this works


This is Shower-Man, at level24. Note the fact that before he's even half way to Max Power (although it's arguable that the first half doesn't really end til like...35, but YRMV.) he's already got an AOE attack and a Targetable AOE. By 35, he's gonna grab himself a cone attack AND his Uber-PBAOE.
But let's focus on the basic way you would go about fighting a group at this level.


Step one, throw down a Whirlpool, your PBAOE. If this was a real fight and not "go find something to beat up for screenshots." this would cause every single minion to get aggro'd to Shower-Man and they'd move into melee to beat the tar out of my poor controller.


So this is when you pop your AOE attack. This attack doesn't scale down depending on how many enemies you hit either. Each enemy takes the same amount of damage. This is the crucial bit because while you're hitting the AOE, they're still taking the damage tics from the whirlpool.
You'll also note that I've got my Toggle that give me and any team-mates a shield granting +defense, while the Whirlpool also gives any enemies hit a -def. This is why healers are damn near irrelevant. Each character brings some sort of buff or debuff to the party that makes it so that when you have a full team of 8, a heal won't become nearly as important as making sure everyone pops their unqiue buffs.

Speaking of buffs, let's move onto a power combo that is almost entirely based around the idea of Buff/Debuffs in exchange for pure damage.


Ignore the fact that my enhancements are terrible, I've never been able to slot Gravity/Kinetic properly. Thankfully, it's never really mattered that much as it only really needed to focus on two things with a group.


The Group Immobilize and Group Hold.


And the group Debuff/Group Buff. Fulcrum Shift here is a blast, as it acts as a -DMG to the Group, which then immediately bestows that as a +DMG to your team. This makes a Kinetic, a Scrapper/Brutes Best Friend.


Of course, if you REALLY need to do damage, you can just open a rip in space, and hurl a random object at the group. I think these dudes got smacked in the face with a gargoyle.


Or, if you're feeling like Trolling a group, You can simply teleport a large group 200 feet into the air. The game doesn't have falling damage, per-se, but it sure is fucking fun!



Dimension Shift on the other hand, is something you want to use Strategically. This is what's called "How to let the squishie take the Alpha Shot". Run up to a group, make it impossible for them to hit anything, let everyone get all Buffed up, detoggle Dimension Shift, AND RUN LIKE HELL. Never know when a giant pile of goo will carry a grudge.