City of Heroes / City of Villains - Guide to the Corruptor Archetype

What is the role of the City of Heroes Corruptor?

The Corruptor is like the inverse of a hero side Defender. In many ways, the Corruptor plays like the player created archetype known as the “Offender” or “Offensive Defender.”

The Corruptor combines good ranged attacks with a variety of buffs, debuffs, and other support powers. Corruptors also have a unique archetype trait called Scourge that enhances their offense significantly. Whenever a foe is below half health, there is a percentage chance that any Corruptor attack will deal double damage. The lower the foe’s health, the higher the chance. This is especially powerful against Bosses, Arch Villains/Heroes, or large groups of mobs when using area of effect attacks (or rains).

What Primary Powersets Are Available To Corruptors?

Assault Rifle - At release this was an excellent set, but the heavy smash/lethal damage is highly resisted by foes. It has a combination of single target, cone area of effect, and stun attacks.

Dark Blast - This blast set has a number of damage over time and control type powers.

Electric Blast - This set has decent single target attacks with one mediocre area of effect. Each attack has a bit of end drain, that sadly ends up being mostly irrelevant. A nice looking set.

Energy Blast - This set is very similar to electrical blast but it has slightly better area of effect damage. Unfortunately, the high amount of knockback in this set makes it very group unfriendly.

Fire Blast - The best area of effect set and also good at single target. It also looks absolutely gorgeous. Burn, baby burn. Fireball, Rain of Fire, and Fire Breath are particularly good with scourge.

Ice Blast - Far and away the best single target set. It has a chain of single target ice attacks that animate rapidly and hit hard. Ice Storm, Blizzard, and Frost Breath are particularly good with scourge.

Radiation Blast - This set has good single and area of effect attacks. They animate fast and have built in defense debuffs in every attack. Scourge really ramps up the potency of the area of effect attacks in this set.

Sonic Attack - This is a damage and support set, as every attack debuffs the damage resistant of its victims.

What Secondary Powersets Are Available to Corruptors?

Cold Domination - Cold domination has a variety of strong debuffs. They are not as good as radiation emission, however. This set also has a very rare maximum health buff that is quite good.

Dark Miasma - This set has good debuffs and a few powers that are almost controller like. It also has an excellent pet in the Dark Servant.

Kinetics - This is the most purely offensive based set for the controller. It drains foes of their ability to deal damage while massively buffing the controller and its team. It can also boost speed, endurance regeneration, jump height, and more.

Radiation Emission - This is the best debuffing set in the game. Radiation can debuff regeneration, defense, to-hit, and damage resistance. When you can debuff these things, Arch Villains become significantly easier. A lot of end game content practically requires a radiation emission team member.

Sonic Resonance - This set is similar to force field but the “bubbles” protect via damage resistance rather than defense. This set also provides status protection to the controller and the controller’s team.

Storm Summoning - This offensive/PvP based set is popular among soloists and PvPers but it is not group friendly.

Thermal Radiation - This is the closest thing the Villain side has to the defender’s Empathy/healing set. It has resistance based buffs, a very good single target offensive buff (forge), and two excellent debuffs (heat exhaustion and melt armor). The annoying part about this set is constantly having to re-apply the two resistance shields on your entire party. Also, none of the good buffs work on the corruptor itself.

Traps - This is possibly the most unique of the Corruptor sets. It is like blaster /devices re-imagined. It has some control powers as well as some Point Blank Area of Effect (PBAE) buffs.