HellPlate

on my laptop, it was my firewall. When i would check the exceptions, it showed that CoH was on the approval list, but it still failed to access the interwebz. What i wasn't seeing was the little pop-up that would come up behind CoH that would cuase it to flicker a little bit when i was trying to log on, and went away when i got angry and closed the whole mess. After every update, patch or anything it was asking telling me that the program had changed, and asking me if i still wanted to allow it access to the interwebz.

Either alt+tab when you try to log on to see if you have one of those notices, or just add it to the exception list again, and see if that works.

( if you turned off your firewall or already did this, i just wasted 3 minutes of your life, sorry )

... sometimes anti-virus software'll do it to, becuase tthe updater changed and the allow button wasn't clicked ( mcAfee was killing my CoH on my desktop for awhile ) you could check it...

First thing that comes to mind for me is Claws/Regen. The fury claws could be seen as some of the large wicked barbs on some vines, or the widow claws as the smaller thorns on things like roses or blackberry bushes.

Regen, since it's green and health related, and you described the character origin being having regeneration in it.

When I16 goes live, a tintable earth armor set, changing the lava set specifically, to something resembling moss covered stones could also fit... so.. Stone/Warmace. Give the character the big stick mace.

Blaster-wise, I'm having trouble thinging of anything, and you said no controllers.. Dominators after I16 and some color changes... an earth/earth set...

Other than that i can't think of much without tinkering around on the costume creator...

Hope it helps, good luck.