Bright

Very spiffy idea!

My own Shouju-style gal is Ty'ree. She's a Dual Blade tank, just like her big brother. (She's my blue-side main's sixteen year-old kid sister. ^_^)

I'm having a total blast with my first (and only-) Mastermind character... She's Ninja/Force Field and still a relative lowbie, but knocking things all over creation and watching her henchmen go after them like a trio of evil, pajama-clad hamsters is just all kinds of fun. I've also enjoyed the sheer destructiveness of my fire/energy Blaster and favorite, ridiculously over-equiped DB/WP Scrap.

When it comes to pairs (since FCM and I duo a lot-), our Nightwidow/Crab pair, that Tazmanian Devil of a Scrap of mine and FCM's Shield Tank, and our pair of "mad cow" minotaurs (a Mace/Shield Tank and KM/Shield Brute) are all terrifying in the best possible way.

The Bane/Fire Dom combination is also proving to be fairly frightening... And that's only made worse by both being tiny little chibi-things. They're both highly dangerous and absolutely adorable.

It was Hequat for Grey Kestrel (my favorite stalker and red-side main-)...

Kes is my only dedicated RP character, and through-out leveling her, even before she had Cardinal, she always seemed to have a bit of an affection and affinity for the Mu mystics. In spite of the devotion some of those guys have for their goddess, she wasn't at all on-board when Hequat actually popped back up and promptly started turning groups of them into puppets. It annoyed Kestrel to see them treated that way, even if they'd gotten themselves into that mess by their own doing.

So, she was only too happy to go give Hequat a piece of her mind (accompanied by a sound thrashing-) the minute Scir asked her to.

I was soloing that arc and went in fully expecting that last mission to be fierce. It turned out to be one of the most knock-down, drag-out, throw-everything-you've-got-at-'em cat-fights I've ever played Kes through. It wasn't quite the hardest battle that character has ever fought (Automaton Posi still wins that distinction-), but it was definitely one of the most dynamic and most entertaining.

Kes happened to hit 47 from the XP smacking around the goddess gave her, and that actually made me chuckle, too. It definitely gave Cardinal (her Adept companion-) something of an "origin story" all his own.

These days, Kestrel is an Incarnate. The only one of my crew to have a VR Alpha, and one of the only two likely to see any of the post-Alpha slots. I'm particularly looking forward to getting Judgement slotted for her, for a certain AoE lightning attack that will promptly be recolored red.

Her friends are beginning to wonder if she might not have brought back a bit more from her encounter with the goddess than just a floating side-kick... She thinks the whole idea is ridiculous, but you never know. It's a risky business, kicking divine butt.

I do get that once in a while with my stalkers (It's amazing how quickly some teams that are suddenly "full" when you offer a stalker mysteriously lose members and start recuiting again a few minutes after they tell you no. ), but I can't say I've ever had anyone turn down one of my scraps, even when the group was already heavy on melee.

It's grindy.

It may not be "making my Aion sorcerer a grandmaster tailor"-level grindy (I still shudder a bit remembering how much of a boring, repetative time-sink THAT turned out to be- ), but the number of times we're going to have to run those trials to craft bits and fill those four slots is non-trival, especially given the "luck-based" aspects of the system. And it's likely to be even worse for people taking the shard-conversion route...

I would just be happy if they finished Power Customization. It makes me very sad-panda that Pool, Epic and Patron powers (along with PB and Warshade powers-) STILL can't be recolored or FX-supressed...

I love melee characters in general, and Dual Blades in particular... enough to have multiple DB tanks, scraps and stalkers among my 50s. (No brutes, though. I don't like the way they play.)

The vast majority of my 35-or-so characters are winged fliers; mostly members of the same species of (utterly, completely non-canon) Shard natives... Essentially they're Rularuu. Servants of Faathim, created to defend the Shard's surviving humans from other Rularuu.

There's a running joke among some of their Primal friends about how many ways they have to cook and eat Natterlings.

As fits a species of agressive, hunting creatures, most have stealth of some sort (Hide, IOs, pool powers or whatever-) and CJ. They also often end up with Aid Other and Aid Self. The Shard's a rough place to live.

If it suits them... absolutely.

Shiba, my little chibi of a Bane, for instance, just started Black Scopion's arc with the intention of picking up Mace Mastery. Zhen'kei, one of my hero-side Defenders, actually crossed over to the Isles as a villain long enough to do the same. My Praetorian mind/psi Dom will be making the same blue-to-red-and-back-again journey to pick up Scir's arc and a few of the Mu powers. (I have a great time with my favorite Stalker and her Adept, so I figured I'd try out running a Guardian with my Dom. )

Even the non-Tin Mage version of Bobcat has given my own pair of WP/DBs a hard time on occasion. She's just a nasty thing for them to face.

They tend to solve the problem by dropping a Vanguard HAV on her head.

Depends entirely on the character, for me...

My favorite stalker is usually run at +3/x1 as her "standard difficulty" (Now that she's finally got her VR Alpha and a level shift, I'm seriously considering making it +4), because she's very good at taking out one or two harder targets but can be beaten down pretty quickly by larger groups of individually less-impressive goons.

My favorite scrap is just the opposite. I run him on +1/x6. Ash (level-shifted DB/WP) absolutely thrives on huge mobs that are close to his own level. He would have a tougher time with the high level single targets that Kestrel goes after. For him, having big numbers to fight trumps level.

I still love Freaks... They're just so gleefully destructive. Like someone else said upthread, they really seem to enjoy doing their thing, even when they know it's going to end up in a pounding. That, and their goof-ball dialogue often makes me grin.

I'm also fond of the Circle of Thorns and pretty much everything in Croatoa. (Yes, even the ghosts-)

My TA defender is pretty darn fond of her little Primal clockwork pals. (And Edison, the non-buff one, has actually been fairly useful. Zhen spends most of her time in the air, and looking for Ed is an easy way for her non-flying partner to keep track of where she is.) She's looking forward to adding a Preatorian bot to her collection of mechanical minions.

That said, the existing pets really aren't as good a concept fit for most of my crew, and I'd love to have other options. Little DE underlings (Rubbles and such-) would be fun. Drones and orbs of various sorts would be entertaining... Even more whisp varieties and colors wouldn't be bad.

I'd have to pass on the Natterlings, though. My Shard-native bird-brains consider those guys food. Having one of them along would be a little too much like packing a lunch.

I use it occasionally with my Trick Arrow/Archery defender to snag strays and run-aways and toss them back into the glue or oil-slick. I've also used it to pull a few times... But, yeah. It's pretty limited in its utility. I only took it in the first place because there was nothing more useful I could take in its place.

Maybe the fire powers are an expression of her own potential rather than something picked up from her former Kheldian partner? The powers she would have eventually expressed on her own, even if she'd never become a Warshade.

I'd just be happy to have the animal fur texture apply to a toon's lower legs. My poor minotaur can't go barefoot without looking like he's bleached his calves. o_0

If the Well is Ishtar, my Anu is going to be really, really surprised when he gets to 50 and runs Remmie's arc.

"Wait... How did you-... *face-palms* No. I don't want to know..."