Devastator edit:
Wow!
It's free... It's good! This deserves it's own topic.
As you know from playing an Unleashed, cone energy builders are nice. Cones in general are nice and there are plenty of them.. Disorients are nice.. The SS's are right up my alley as something worthy to try. Con for hp's, Str for damage and KB protection and Rec is always good. Some ppl prefer End, and I can kinda see why with Xev, but I still like Rec.
I like everything about Devastator except the same problem I have with Behemoth - no heal. But that's personal taste, and me.
Due to them being tanks and having Con as their primary SS I would think Behemoths would be naturally tankier than Devastators when things get down to the nittiest gritty and my guess is that the Devastator (way?) out dps's the Behemoth. People are going to gravitate towards one or the other based on all kinds of personal tastes. Behemoths must be good. There's too many good players playing them for them not to be.. I'd think!
Xev is The Mind, so, yeah, I can see how that would be a good partner to have with some good room-clearing DPS/tankage : )
When it comes to ATs, you can't have everything. If I were building a freeform Heavy Weapons character, he'd definitely have a self-heal - Resurgence at the very least. But honestly, with the sole exception of The Master (Gold AT, natch) and
maybe The Invincible, none of the tank ATs in Champions have self-healing ability worth a damn. It's something you have to live with if you intend to tank on an AT, and it's a big reason why AT tanks fail compared to freeforms.
The solution? Either make a freeform to tank, or get out of the tank role. The Devastator chooses the latter option. Freed from the restrictions of "being a tank" he can put his tankiness to use as an off-tank or excessively-sturdy 'scrapper' character, akin to Brutes in COH. Getting scrapperlocked as a Devastator is far less detrimental to you than less burly melee DPS characters, because you have the hit points and the general sturdiness to survive being a little reckless. You also kick out a positively scary amount of damage (I broke 4 digit damage on this character for the first time at level 12, the earliest I've ever done this on any character), which makes holding aggro (when you need to hold aggro) a cinch.
Having a cylinder for an EB is a tremendous advantage, and it's one of the reasons why I prefer Devastator to Behemoth. Your EB remains a viable weapon longer, and generates energy ridiculously quick if you're fighting multiple enemies. One or two swings will fill you pretty much instantly. Kinda limits its use when it comes to triggering Disorient, but that's what Arc of Ruin and Brimstone are for.
Speaking of,
every power the Devastator gets has a purpose. There's only one or two powers I'd consider 'redundant' or 'iffy'. Cleave is a bit meh, but once you get Arc of Ruin it's a fairly reliable means of generating Enrage when facing multiple targets - hit them with a fully charged Arc, and then Cleave them three times. Skullcrusher's a bit substandard, even with the Put Them Down advantage (you'd get more damage on average from a fully upgraded Skewer, and Skewer guarantees a stack of Enrage if you hit more than one target), but since Skullcrusher and Skewer are both part of the same power choice, you can safely skip Skullcrusher. Vicious Descent and Earth Splitter are both good, but I'd give a slight edge to Earth Splitter - it lacks an after-use recharge time and with an advantage it provdes you with a Knockto and it doesn't require an advantage to provide a knockdown. Besides, you already have a lunge in the form of Decimate.
This is the biggest thing that makes the Devastator so much more fun to play with in my eyes. I don't have to choose between suffering with Knockback (Roomsweeper) and needing a crowd to generate Enrage (Thunderclap). I don't have a bunch of powers that do roughly the same thing (Demolish and Uppercut/Haymaker). I'm more able to deal with groups (my EB is AoE, my basic combo is AoE, hell
every single attack I get after Decimate is AoE). Best of all, I don't have any neat tricks that are sadly locked off because of the way my power choices are structured (the Uppercut/Haymaker combo is impossible on a Behemoth because both Uppercut and Haymaker are mutually exclusive).
And I'm not a tank. People see the fist icon and they don't
expect me to tank. So I can leverage my tankiness without people expecting me to throw myself into tanking situations that are way over my head without support. When that mob gets free and rushes the supports, I'm the one flying at it with Decimate and then slapping it twenty feet into the air with Eruption. When a field needs cleared of trash, I can rush ahead and knock some heads, and clear the path a little quicker. When the crowds of enemies get ugly and the DPS can't take them down fast enough, I can start throwing damage at the entire crowd at once until one or two split off to come pound me, and relieve some pressure on the tank. And then, I'm just sturdy enough to tank the things I pulled off him until he can take over again. And if you need a single tough enemy juggled for a little while, I got the knockup to do it without throwing it around the room and forcing the DPS to chase after it.
Sure, the Behemoth, strictly speaking, out-tanks me on the high-end. But that's okay. I don't have that Sword of Damocles hanging over my head in the form of that Shield icon by my name. I don't have people asking, "ur a tank y rnt u tanking?" 'cuz I'm not a tank. I'm a brute, happily scrapperlocked into small crowds of enemies with just enough durability to survive my own crazed recklessness. It's a beautiful thing.
