Fulmens

[Basilisk's Gaze: Chance for -Rech (Recipe).20]
[Cloud Senses: Acc/End/Rech (Recipe).20]
[Executioner's Contract: Dam/Rech (Recipe).35]
[Expedient Reinforcement: End/Dam/Rech (Recipe).35]
[Mako's Bite: Acc/End/Rech (Recipe).35]
[Miracle: +Recovery (Recipe).35]
[Numina's Convalescence: +Recovery and +Regeneration (Recipe).35]
[Sting of the Manticore: Chance for toxic damage (Recipe).35]
[Tempest: Chance for end drain (Recipe).20]
[Trap of the Hunter: Acc/Immob/Rech (Recipe).35]

edit: I went and crafted some of those.

To the OP: Welcome to the game! Don't feel that you're stuck with the first character you try. Many people [I'd say "most" but I have no real idea] have a lot of different characters. (We call this "Altitis". It's about as serious as Morton's Toe, but much more common. )

What blaster powersets did you pick? Most of them play "more or less the same" but there are outliers [/Devices, I'm looking at you] and subtleties [Ice and Energy seem fairly similar from just reading the descriptions... I play them very differently.]

The devs came up with lessons from CoH that they applied to CoV. Some of those lessons were real [pretty much every CoV arc is tight, integrated with the world and the backstory] but some of those were overlearned [every damn thing in the Rogue Isles is designed to kill Invulns.]

The problem with the "All killer no filler" nature of the Rogue Isles content is that you need two or three times as much content to give the same XP in play. Arbitrarily picking the Omega Clearance stuff : Timothy Raymond has nine missions in two arcs, revealing the Big Rikti Secret; Steven Sheridan has about nine missions in one arc [plus hunts, plus talk-tos] for that secret and then has something like eight standalone missions [plus hunts, plus talk-tos.]

Timmy's got basically no unnecessary talk to, hunt, run through six zones stuff. But he's also got less content. (Science fiction convention! I love that mission for no good reason.)

There are THREE main ways for heroes to go 1-50: a full set of TFs, the original missions, and the hollows-faultline-striga-croatoa-RWZ path. Villains have, barely, one.

I'd like more official villain content. I don't have the skills or patience to trawl AE for good stuff.

I'd like to repeat a previous point: Mother's Love had some great designs. I don't know the history between CoH and Mother's Love, but if there's ANY way to get those designs licensed, sold through the CoH store, or whatever- me and mine would buy about eight of them.

People have mentioned the "You don't find groups the same way in this game that you do in WoW" thing, so I'm going to mention the other thing that WoW'ers seem to get caught by.

There is no "holy trinity", no "If you play this, you get no teams ever* " class, no One Right Way. Eight defenders is a steamroller team; tank, three blasters, two scrappers, two defenders is a steamroller team; six blasters, a Force Fields defender and ANY OTHER CHARACTER is a steamroller team.

More importantly, healing is not king. This is a game where one player [a Force Field Defender, L17 or higher, in this case] can make everyone else on the team around 10 times tougher. That's the "heal-equivalent" of healing people for 10x their hit points, every fight. And they can do that in 25% of their playtime, leaving the rest open for hobbies.

And Force Field defenders are not the most powerful support character out there. I just picked 'em because they do one thing, which is very easy to explain. There are support characters that add 30% to everyone's damage, that cut incoming damage by half or more, that give the whole team stealth- and that's only one character, using only one of their two powersets.

"Pulling" is often used to refer to bringing groups of ten.

*OK, maybe stalkers don't get teams.

Insanity: Which side?

I very much prefer Fire/Mental.

I love it. I tend to burn things, then slow the survivors, but that's sort of a matter of taste.

Shiver is a ridiculous cone (nearly half a circle, eighty feet long) that can stack with itself to put people at the rech/runspeed floor very fast. If it's not the best mitigation Blasters have, it is very close.

Fireball/Firebreath drops even-con minions even without Aim or Build Up. You'll get a lot of five second fights- not that you'll WIN all of them, but they'll be short either way. And you'll win more with practice.

I play a little more aggressively than most, but I love this combo. Love love love.

Raaaar!

I think of it as "three levels of power" although the middle level is a lot less popular.

First is SO's, or generic IO's, with the [very] occasional thing like a KB protection special in there.

Second, "frankenslotting." This is where you buy cheap sets, ignore set bonuses, and treat them like budget Hami-Os. (two Acc/Dam/Rech gives you the equivalent of one Acc, one Dam, and one Rech in two slots.) It's around the same price as two sets of SO's if you do it with patience.

Third is where you go for set bonuses and start rolling out the big money, limited only by your budget (so your patience) and your desire.

It is very common, when people ask for build advice, for other people to start rolling out Mid's builds that cost billions of influence.

What kind of character do you have, what is your budget, and where do you feel your character could use help?

I'd probably frankenslot the two cones- you want "enough" accuracy, whatever that is, you want 95% recharge, you want debuff [I'll come to that in a sec] and you want some damage.

You can get that all in 6 slots. Without doing actual math: Two THD/Rech, two Acc/THD, two Dam/Rech and you're around 50% Damage, 57% ToHit Debuff, 95% Rech and 50% Acc. There may be a better way (Acc/Dam Hami-o? Depending on your global acc bonuses.)

The reason I put the debuff in there is that 40% Defense-equivalent is HALF as good as 45%. And 30% is half as good as that. It's a HUGE difference and you want to get your team there as fast as possible. Combined with "You don't always get everyone in both cones" and "your teammates are going to be squirmy" and "not everyone has Fortitude" and "+3s only get 2/3 of the debuff" and you're going to need all the extra bonus you can get. [Disclaimer: I play Force Fields. It's a bad day for FF if someone's health drops to half.)

The reason I put the damage in there is that, while a Defender doesn't do much compared to a Blaster, without damage slotting the Defender is doing half what they could be. Or around 1/4 of what a Blaster would do. At that point you've got the self-fulfilling prophecy that "Defenders do no damage." I couldn't [on the first try] get to 80 or 95% damage, but I got a good start in there.

Apparently "bidding twice" is worth more than 8 mil to some people. The first time I had an item that I listed at [I don't remember exact numbers, but they were in this ballpark] 26 million sell, THE NEXT DAY, for 43 million... I realized that some people don't care what they pay.

Not to tell other people's stories and screw them up, but I believe PumBumbler made his billions by doing stuff that he woulda done for free. He's hardly the only one.

If you want to talk the economics of the game I will talk that all day. If you want to just sit there and act shocked, I have a little less tolerance.

... I've got a level 46 who hasn't "played" the market with something like 400 million. Are we going to need to do a version of the 1-10 challenge that goes 1-40? Sell everything at wents for 1, do 50/50 solo/teamed, see what you get, something like that?

It was me. I can't really explain it. File under "plans, misfiring of."

One thing I will say:

Normally, Nethergoat, I kind of agree with you. Maybe I'm not as extreme, maybe I can stand back and look reasonable because you're saying it ... but this time you're wrong.

Remoras just grab a free ride. They don't actually suck the blood of the critter they're riding on.

Banshee: Yup!

Yeah, but check the date on the news report...

We've already got a death spiral in sub-50 IO's. Nobody rolls them because nobody will pay for them, nobody buys them because nobody rolls them, on and on till you ding 47 and can finally find stuff to buy.

Stratos, you're offering a solution that will make the death spiral a WHOLE LOT WORSE. You may not care, but it's one of my hobbyhorses.

They're in short supply for a variety of reasons.

I don't have big, expensive builds so I have to find something else to do with my money. Bribing people to create lower-level rare recipes is one of my projects. I would estimate I make about 50% of my money back selling them- every once in a while someone will roll a LoTG or a Stealth or an Impervium Armor: Resistance, but mostly I'm paying good money for bad rolls. That's why I pay in advance.

You can do random rolls and get direct-buy prices,if you're under level 41...

Sometimes they come with horrible misfires, does that count?

I hereby vote we change this to "Best embarassing internet rumor" thread.
Alternate history!

I have to agree with PumBumbler: Hoarders hoard because it is their nature.
*curls up on pile of gold*