Dr Harmony

My way of looking at it - City of Heroes was drawn by Bryan Hitch. Champions Online is drawn by Amanda Conner. I like both art styles.

For Force Fields, grab Protection Field in Force - this allows you to bubble allies or yourself.
You could also go with Inertial Dampening Field in Force and/or Aura of Radiant Protection in Radiant Sorcery as a slotted passive to make your pets tougher.
You get one slotted passive and one Form power, so pick these for some solid defence.

For Force field-ish attacks, try Force, or just go for the Sorcery attacks, depends what your concept is really.

Demon pets - Ritual of Ebon Summoning is the obvious one - gives you a pet demon who you can have permanently tagging along with the Unbound Ritual advantage.
Tyranon's Familiar and Void Horror also make good magical-looking permanent pets. Add in Air eleemtnal from the Air set if you can handle a genie tagging along.
The Ritual of Arcan Summoning gives you a Tron-ish looking robot ally, this is actually a Lemurian construct from the magic-using undersea kingdom, so tastes may vary.
Telepathy's Summon Nightmare is worth looking at - the pets here are temprary but change with rank, eg rank 1 gives you a static giant worm and a dog, Rank 2 is a dog and monster, and so on. Try this out in the Powerhouse - I found some things I liked in this set for my Martian Princess with a GL-style power ring.

You can defeinitely make a magical pet user who protects their pets. I find its best when transitioning a character to forget their CoX powers (which you didn't choose, after all, but were foisted on you as a whole set) and go back to the idea you had in your head.

Ego Choke or Ego Hold may suit you. Pyromancers Blade's (short lived fiery swords) may work for you, even though your CoX character couldn't do exactly that.

Yeah, I think melee has improved a lot since then.

My early memories were of running slowly towards enemies who trotted backwards at the same speed while shooting at you, and it was generally a pretty miserable experience.

This time round I've got a mainly Superstrong Brick-type character to 40 no worries, and a Martial Artist who relies on putting enemies down fast to the lower 30s without much frustration.
(Both character have a ranged attack for tagging runners, btw)

Melee Energy Builders now have a taunt when used at range, which stops the AI from kiting the way they used to. That, and the game just seems a bit easier with the gear thats given out at level 6, and some overall tweaks such as making offensive passives better.
Plus, I may have got better at playing this time round.

Hi. PM'd you my global in CO.

Knockback does do damage to bad guys when they land. I'd opften punt someone over the horizon with Roomsweeper (a superstrength punch) and get an Xp notification and they wouldn't come running back.
I find knockback has a bit more joyful abandon in CO is that you're typically only facing a handful of enemies, so theres less stress about splitting up a group with knockback.

The closest equivalent to CoH archetypes really is your role and slotted passive I guess. If you choose a defensive slotted passive, you can go Tank role and pick up more hit points on top of your Regen/Force Field/ whatever.
If you pick up an offensive passive you can go Melee Damage or Ranged Damage role for extra damage and so on.

Of course, its trickier because you can have different builds on the same character at higher levels, and switch between them on the fly. I havent tried that out yet.

The archetypes in Champions Online are incredibly limited.
I'd recommend that anyone who tries the game out to dish out the $15 for a month's subscription so they can try freeform characters.

Energy Blast = Force powerset, for ranged blasts with knockback.
The only archetype who uses these is the Impulse, which you'd have to pay for anyway I think.

Kinetic Manipulation in Force would be your best slotted passive for a Blaster type character.

For Energy Melee you could take Burning Chi Fist from Unarmed Martial Arts (a good quick hefty punch with energy effects).
If you liked the Stun aspect of Energy Melee, I highly recommend Sonic Device in gadgets - its a 30-second self buff that makes your next attack do extra sonic damage, and a short duration stun. It creates a big spherical impact on the boosted attack, which looks great for a devastating "Cosmic Punch" kind of idea.

There's no real parallel to Energy Torrent or Explosive Blast. Force Cascade is a very fun all-out blast in Force, very much like what happens when Cyclops opens his visor fully.
Force Detonation is a ranged knockback AoE, but a bit more like Respulsion Bomb in Force Fields than an Energy Blast power.

You wont be able to mimic your character completely, but its pretty easy to create an effective character with knockback blasts and cool punches.

Yes, that's right. Champions is poopy, you adorable little moppet.
Please dont play it.

Champions Online is less restrictive than City of Heroes in terms of character creation, if you subscribe. Want an invulnerable tank with a psychic blast and pet robot? Go for it!
On free-to-play you're limited to archetypes with pre-selected powers that unlock at each level, but on a paid account you're selecting whatever powers you want.

Obviously, it still makes sense to try the free-to-play first, just to see if you like the game mechanics/can stand the cartoony look and so on. But I'd hate to see people dismiss the game purely on this count.

You pick two "superstats" and they go up very quickly. You can typically build up two other stats easily with gear (think enhancements) and attributes that you accumulate along the way. Its much better to do this tha focus everyhting on one or two stats due to diminishing returns at the high end.

Dex and Ego give you frequent hard-hitting critical hits. Strength will boost your melee damage. Con gives you more hit points.
I'd go with those 4 for melee and guns.

Passives like Lightning Reflexes are I think now just tied to your superstats, so whatever you pick works.

Presence improves healing, Int reduces cooldowns. You wont need them to be too high.

This information may be a bit old by the way...