MMORPG.com City of Heroes Correspondent Dana O'Shea writes this introduction to the Archetypes available in Paragon Studios' superhero MMO.

The world needs a hero - but what hero will you be? Creating a character in City of Heroes is an exciting process that presents you with the opportunity to harness your imagination. You get to choose your character's "Archetype", "Power Sets" and have the flexibility to craft a unique personal costume.

An Archetype is a character-class. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses and differing play-styles. Your choices are: Tanker, Blaster, Scrapper, Defender, and Controller. This is the single most important choice you will have to make about your hero.

Tanker: Out of all the Archetypes in City of Heroes (and even City of Villains!) nobody can withstand the enemy's attacks as well as a Tanker. They do moderate damage but their real strength is taking the damage dealt by the bad guys and protecting the more fragile Archetypes.

Read Archetypes for Beginners

Just out of interest, how much experience does the author actually have with CoH? There are a lot of statements in the article that sound like the opinions of someone who's played only for a month or two. Blasters' AoE-focus, scrappers being inferior to blasters and tanks, controllers being somehow weaker than defenders in buffs or especially damage and the need for melee archetypes are assumptions that simply don't apply a lot of the time.

Originally posted by MaXimillionX

Just out of interest, how much experience does the author actually have with CoH? There are a lot of statements in the article that sound like the opinions of someone who's played only for a month or two. Blasters' AoE-focus, scrappers being inferior to blasters and tanks, controllers being somehow weaker than defenders in buffs or especially damage and the need for melee archetypes are assumptions that simply don't apply a lot of the time.

As someone who has played since launch, this poster is correct.   The information in the article is mostly correct, but some of it is misleading.

Some of-the-top-of-my-head points:    blasters and scrappers do roughly equal damage, and both can rightfully be called the main damage dealers of the game.   Not all blasters focus on AoE.   Some do, like fire blasters, some are more single-target focused, like energy blasters, where others, like electricity, excel at draining opponents endurance (mana/energy).

The differences between builds even within one archetype are true for all of them.   A spines scrapper (AoE) is different from say, a katana scrapper (fast, less endurance heavy).   I could go on, but you get the idea.

Controllers only do poor damage until they get pets at level 32.   A maxed fire controller is very powerful, and can easily solo large groups, and can even tank (somewhat) in this way.

Defenders are your buffers/debuffers, with some half-decent blaster abilities.    Not all heals are AoE (as mentioned in the article), some target one ally, and some even target enemies, leeching health from them and giving it to the players.

Tankers are hellafun.    A little tough at first, but once they get their defensive powers up to snuff, they can really take a pounding.  Often you can get away without having a "tank" on the team, but against really tough bosses (Giant Monsters, Arch-Villains, etc), it's a very good idea.

This doesn't even mention the 5 archetypes available for villains.   Some are similar to the hero ones (but not exactly the same), and some are way different.   The Mastermind is a master of pets, starting with one and eventually having 6 or 7 of them, with varying abilities among them.

Another way to look at classes is that there are 7-9 primary trees available for each class (with some overlapping), and about the same number of secondary trees.    So, you could create a fire/devices blaster, or a radiation/empathy defender, or an invulnerability/super strength tank, etc.    These variations and the way they play differently is a big draw for me and lots of others.

In 5 years, the game has released 14 (15 in beta) updates or "Issues", all free!    There are millions of different ways to enhance (or slot) your powers, and a fully enhanced max character is truly powerful indeed.

The combat is very fast-paced and flashy (I thought I was playing in slow motion the first time I tried Wow after CoH).   On a large team, expect combat to be full of bursts of colors and sounds with bodies flying everywhere.

I encourage anyone interested to download the free two-week trial and if you need help once you get in, send a tell to me, global chat name is GammaWave.

Perhaps there shouldbe an article on types of powers: melee, range, PBAoE, TAoE, SelfAoE, etc. That might eliminate some of the confusion about the blaster's AoE focus.