FlashToo

To convert my minor ego threadjack back onto topic, I will say this: If you need a concept, look at nature, because nature does crazy badass stuff like mind-controlled fungus zombie ants. In the age of the Internet you can find lots and lots of pictures of whatever awesome thing you make a character based on, so all that's left is to look at said pictures and ask yourself, "What powers or costume parts can represent this?" Don't try to come up with a visual concept all at once - look at it one piece at a time, scroll through things, find maybe even just one or two parts that work for your idea and build the rest around what looks good with those pieces. Once you have something cobbled together from the parts, that's when you stand back and think about how you can perfect it, or post it in the re-design thread so another pair of eyes can help you.

But yeah. Nature, man. Wild.

Your first concern is not an issue. Choosing something as your primary could just lock it out as a choice for your secondary, the way Dual Blades, Katana, and Claws lock out Shield Defense. As for two instances of Build Up, the easy way to fix that is to just take it out of the "secondary" versions of the sets and replace it with something else.

OK guys, much as GG creeps me out with her belief that I am a bad person for so much as touching redside and her deliberate blindness to Longbow's habit of burning people alive, I'm siding with her on this one. She gave a reasonable reply to the statement "Not sure if it's been scooped yet" and was given a needlessly venomous response - to which she continued to reply reasonably.

Really, guys, wtf?

Currently, the devs have said "because pain domination is for villain archetypes and empathy is for heroic archetypes." I postulate that this is a load of bull:

1. In the next issue, you will be able to have a heroic Mastermind or Corruptor, or a villainous Controller or Defender, who has never even set foot in Praetoria, let alone the opposite side's home turf. With that, there is no longer any such thing as a "hero or villain AT" besides the Epic Archetypes which will still have to be created on the original side regardless of what you do with them later.

2. Even if there WERE such a thing as a "heroic or villainous archetype," Illusion Control - available only to the "heroic" Controller - can be colored dark, so that's a precedent.

3. Pain and Empathy are not identical sets with different colors, as I understand, but they are similar enough visually and game-mechanically that a heroic Mastermind or Corruptor who wants to look like a real Empath or a villainous Controller or Defender who wants to look like they're channeling pain should be able to.

Honestly, what is so hard about this?

Since I make a lot of characters who are supposed to be part of NPC (or PC-joinable, sometimes) factions - yes, at least for them. The Hour Thief in particular is a big one, given how he's 92 years old and has not only lived through but participated in a fair bit of the city's history, because it makes no sense to me that someone who's been with the Midnight Squad since 1939 wouldn't have worked with the Dream Doctor, fought in WWII, responded to the first Rikti invasion, or otherwise become involved with events by now. Another is my teenage Praetorian mutant dominator, who's angry with the world in the usual confused teenage way due to Praetorian politics and her father being with the Syndicate, a fact she didn't learn until he was arrested. The less-tied-to-canon characters I make still care, for the same reason Techbot cited for his: They live in the game's world, and events in the world affect them such that they'd at least know about the major stuff.

However, in all cases, I don't say that any of my characters is personally responsible for any game story arc's completion, because if everyone can do it, it's just hubris to say that I was the one who, for example, took down all the Praetorian Archvillains even if that character has done Maria Jenkins's missions. I'll acknowledge having fought them, but will word it less like "I rescued Statesman from Praetoria" and more like "I've had one or two encounters with Diabolique... there is nothing I loathe more than an enemy who can phase shift," thus leaving room for whoever I'm RPing with to fit their own history in.

Usual method: A name comes to me, and I see if it's free. If it is, I snap it up so nobody can take it from me while I solidify the costume and power sets, then save the costume and power customization. I then delete the name-holder and zip through character creation with the Load button and fill in the bio later. My characters Plasmette, Paindemic, Hour Thief, Illumineer, Power Balladeer, Caffeind, Argent Provocateur, and Geiger Contessa came from this method.

Otherwise: I'm a costume hobbyist and sometimes I come up with something I think is amazing while I'm playing in the tailor. The costume sits in my Saved Costumes folder until I can think of something to do with it, which might be immediately and might be a long, long time. Sometimes they get tweaked slightly and used on a method-one name grab (Plasmette had this happen), sometimes the costume is specific enough to inspire a character all by itself (my escaped-product-of-mad-science Fortunata, my power-armor-anime-space-lizard-princess BS/Shield Scrapper, my evil-ocean-spirit Dark/Storm Corruptor, my djinn Fire/Dark Scrapper).

Very occasionally: I'm doing something that's not even remotely CoX-related and I get a flash of inspiration for a concept from whatever it is I'm doing, without a name or anything more than a general costume idea to go with it. From this I have gained a sentient black hole (Grav/Rad troller), a noble knight and his retainers who still fight to protect their lord's family despite being dead for about a thousand years due to a sacred oath that was perhaps worded somewhat poorly (necro/fire MM), a mutant with a power over fungus that was pretty useless utnil she was infected with this (Mind/Thorns dom), a bright and shiny magical construct (Kin/Shield scrapper), and a mech pilot (AR/energy blaster swapping between petite female and maxed-out Huge costumes using Science pack).

And sometimes I make a character who's supposed to be part of an NPC faction: Sideshow Suzy the Steel Strongwoman, Mistress Leonette the demon tamer (inner demons are even worse when they've been psychically moved to the real world and are literally breathing down your neck!), Archon Stuart the Galaxy soldier (surprisingly, I see very few Council warshades), Menders Lathrop, Epoch, and Zeal who are even more thinly-veiled references to things that aren't CoH than the Mender NPCs, Allorast the Circle of Thorns mage, Silk Talon the Tsoo madam, Nurse N33dl3z the Freakshow Meat Doctor with stolen Arachnos tech (Crab pack!)... this method is especially fun for villains, as I'm sure is apparent by now.

Free to good homes - one mysterious sorceress and one magically-oriented alien/somethingorother:



Seriously I have literally nothing at all to use these costumes for, despite loving both of them to bits. IMO the first one would look good with ranged Fire or Energy powers and the second is begging for Forcefields, Kinetics, Gravity, Empathy, Psionic, or something else I haven't thought of in the not-really-elements-just-screwing-with-reality theme. They both might also work with Kinetic Melee, even, since its animations are more like point-blank magical blasting (including all those fancy gestures) and less like plain old punching guys in the face.

Yeah, I've been awful with IO sets since they were introduced, and have been running all my characters still with SOs straight up to now. The feelings of inferiority have gotten to me ever since I got my boyfriend, an EVE Online player with a hobby of using Eve Fitting Tool to optimize his ships' setups, back into the game and showed him Mids (which he immediately yelled at me for, because now CoX Fitting Tool is apparently going to eat up all his time). I'd get him to help me but he's never played most of the ATs that I've played, including Fortunata and NW.

So anyway, the builds and what I want to do with them: This IS a concept-type character and her powers are chosen that way, but I don't think it will have to cripple her. That's why I have Widow Training attacks in the Fortunata build and the two psychic attacks available to Night Widows: whichever build she's in, I want her to be able to both stab people from stealth and hit them with psionic attacks, though of course the two options are heavily weighted for one or the other. Generally, I use NW for soloing and Fortunata for teaming, unless the team wants big ST damage instead of AOEs and control (Keyes, etc) or if whatever I'm soloing/teaming against has significant resistances to psionic or lethal in which case I'll swap to whichever build is better at chucking damage around.

Most of the problems I'm experiencing are with my Fortunata build, which relies on tier 4 Cardiac for endurance stability and therefore folds like a book whenever I'm exemplared. Lately I've not been using the NW build much, so I haven't identified problems with it, but I'm bad at that anyway so I've posted it just to let another set of eyes have a go.

Again, I have no idea what I'm doing with either of these builds, though I have a vague sense that recharge bonuses are the most important thing to look for and that for the Fortunata, I need to figure out how to not lose all my endurance right away while still managing to do decent damage, which has always been a head-scratcher for me because if I slot my attacks for EndRedux that means I'm not slotting them for Actually Being Able To Hit/Hurt People or not slotting them for Using Good Stuff More Often. The problem with both builds is that there are so many powers in them that want to be slotted that I can't figure out where to skimp, because when I last tried to come up with something I ended up missing a lot of damage bonuses by just one slot.

Current Fortunata build:

Your statement that villains' inherent powers bring people to fight in a villainous style is untrue: there is perhaps nothing better for a heroic melee character than the Brute's Fury mechanic. While I agree that becoming angrier and smashing everything isn't heroic, pulling your punches until an enemy proves to be a real threat absolutely is, and Fury can represent that exactly as well as it represents what it was originally thought out to be.

I keep hearing complaints about how Gravity could use a buff, and since my only control-centric character that isn't a Gravity user is an Illusion user I don't have much to compare it to, so I'll take the complainers' word for it and say it could use a buff... but only a minor one, seriously, I love Gravity.

1. I think Propel is fine on controllers, at least the ones that aren't Kinetics, because chucking damage everywhere isn't one of the Controller's purposes - but on Dominators, it is flatly awful, since their entire secondary is about throwing damage everywhere and Propel is therefore completely obsoleted for them. However, because I like being Darth Vader in that one scene from Empire Strikes Back, I keep taking it anyway even though it is BAD. Can Dominators get a quicker-animating version of Propel, maybe one that lacks the whole "summon the object" half of the animation and has the object appear during the "throw" phase instead? This would make Propel worth taking as a Dominator, and while I know it's not like Doms really need another blast power, speeding up its animation would at least make it feel like a viable option and everyone likes options.

2. Wormhole is currently way too likely to get the user killed, because not every map has corners you can hide behind while it's activating. Can the stun be applied at the beginning of the animation instead of the end, so as not to subject the user to a nasty alpha strike? Otherwise Wormhole is great, I just would like to be able to use it on big outdoor maps and inside those large, open areas you see in some caves without dying.

Yes please. This is so thematically appropriate I can't even

Look at those beefy shoulders! I call drag queen.