Seldom

Eh. I've always said, if it's boring/easy, it's an excuse to crank stuff up. My forcefielder was set to invincible after level 22...when the new settings hit, she never dips below x6. in fact, I have to notch up the x8 to at least +1 or +2. But on the plus side, It's one of those that could defeat archvillains without losing a single minion.

Not days after Going Rogue released, chaos hit paragon's streets when the NPC's realized that they, too were allowed to strike out on their own. Here's 'captain clatter,' a newly registered blaster. Unfortunately, the public seems uneasy with the new recruits...

If I am a winner, I permit NC Interactive, Inc. and NCsoft Europe Limited to use my name, likeness, photograph, hometown, and any comments that I may make about myself or this contest that I provide for advertising and promotional activities. I also certify that I am at least 13 years of age and am eligible to participate in this contest.

Best powers for me in order:

Ninja Run (ninja)- a 'natural' travel power...even though the hunched pose is odd, just running fast/jumping high is great for character that couldn't leap over sky scrapers, aford jetboots or have the power to fly, possess spells/tech to teleport, and cannot run superfast.

Mission transporter (mac)
This is excellent. On a team, but I want to switch characters? They don't have to wait up at all. one minute to switch, and one short load later, I'm right there in the mission. Have to go two zones over to a locale a mile out in the biggest zone? TP! Want to make it to rome in one load? Call the general, set his mission, and one teleport later I'm in Cimerora!

Pocket D (GvE)
THE easiest tailor to get to. Trina may have zero style, but when she's one click away, I have no problems with her. Also handy for getting to odd zones.

Mystic Fortune (magic)
A good buff for a team member: you won't live or die on it, but a handy thing nonetheless.

Science gender/model change:
Handy on a few 'transforming' characters, or when a concept needs drastic rethinking, but only used rarely.

Self destruct: (cyborg)
Handy for getting a death teleport without any hassle. Good for logging of there for the day job. Not worth it as an attack.

Unknown placement:secondary mutation (Mutant)
I haven't had this long enough to see how it sizes up to the other powers.

For costumes, my best to worst:

Magic
capes at level 1? Yes, please. (especially ones that look like cloaks.) That and the jackets are great. Not a fan of the witch parts, though.

Wedding
The bridal/formal looks are handy for fancy characters. Combines very well with the magic pack.

Cyborg
Excellent tech/armor abilities

Mac (Valkyrie)
The armor is good, combines well with roman/cyborg parts.

Mutant
Good for plant/mutant/crystal looks. I love how plant parts look with organic more than I expected. The organic headpiece is excellent, the shoulders as well. Not a huge fan of the overall body textures/boots, though.

Science
The masks/goggles are good, combine well for full face covers and custom 'masks.' The coats are hard to use, but do work well in the times they get used. (Though their coloration has a wierd too bring/too dark interaction with other sets. They can be made to work, but it's tricky.)

Good vs. Evil
The heroic gloves/boots are great, with their arm guards and kneepads. Same with the heroic shoulder pieces. The body textures and sinister options are a bit hard to use well.

Ninja
The gloves/shoulders are nice, as are the masks/hats. Not crazy about the robes, but to each their own.

Masterminds are good on SO's. Recharge doesn't help most that much, as they do fine as-is, and extra defense can be 'meh' as well, as bodyguard and support sets make you plenty survivable.

Best safety primaries: (in order, from my estimation)
Mind/
Earth/
Plant/

Best AoE secondaries: (in order, from my estimation)
Fire
Thorn
Psy

Note: Fire/fire for AOE goodness is HIGHLY damaging, but sacrifices safety for a while until you get flashfire well slotted.

Eh.
My 'Main' villain is a Mind/Psy dominator, my 'Main' hero is an Illusion/emp controller.

The dominator has leverage both control/damage to the maximum of her capacity, soul drain up half the time, and triple domination.
The controller has leveraged her pets/buff as much as possible, phantom army down for 6 seconds, and permanent adrenalin boost, fortitude up for 4-5 people.

Mind/, especially permanent domination mind/, has its specialty in direct control. She's the only character I've seen that can solo permanently hold any AV (except those with unstoppable...that extra mez protection+triangles are a pain.) Everything is safe as nothing can attack.

My Illusion/empathy can't lock everything down...but with max defensed fortitude, decoys grabbing aggro, AB on whoever's vulnerable in the thick of things, RA's up half the time, and heal other up almost immediately as it goes off, and rampant confusion? Few allies are ever in danger, even IF they get attacked.

Therein lies the difference. Dominators have the best control, better than controllers, as that's their first and last line of defense most of the time. It's their armor.

Controllers don't have that, as they have a second line of defense. The enemy can attack? No problem. There are bubbles/healing/debuffs etc. to make that not hurt so bad. Dominators? If the controls miss on a boss, there's less leeway.

As to damage, that comparison varies wildly. Not on the dominator end, as they are pretty straightforward...it's the specific controller buff/debuff powers that will make controller damage differ. If you don't have those, you will have a very different experience than those that do.

I have both an EM/ brute and a /FA brute...though not one with both.

EM/ gets a lot of hate because it used to tear through stuff with crazy fast speed, now it's got a lot of weight to its heavy hitting time. It has very good mitigation, though you'll have to cycle through enemies peppering various foes to get mitigation vs. more than one target. Likewise, the big hitters are best used as 'spikes.' Opening with total focus/energy transfer without good fury and/or buildup means more energy used for something that gives less. The first three attacks can be cycled to give good fury, and once that's up, BAM! kill something else in a couple hits. Likewise, DON"T finish a target off with total focus/energy transfer. (Unless they're a really tough target that actually needs the big orange numbers to finish them off.) It's a waste. Rather, go to a new target and start afresh with one of those. After that, you'll probably need just a few light punches to knock 'em down.

/FA on a brute plays something like regeneration on a scrapper. You can have good resists, but a lot of your survival can come down to heal slotting/timing. With EM/ you may have a bit more leeway, taking out high damage targets fast with damage or stuns.

If you skip total focus, you will lose your second biggest hitter and your earliest one, as well as you second guaranteed stun. Skipping this power skips a lot of the reasons people choose EM/. (High burst damage/mitigation.)

I like the control set...the reinforcemnts could be black-clothed style mercs with riot armor elements. This makes the concept flexible beyond a pseudo-cop, to a more grenade/mercenary/cop/military etc. theme availability.

I'm wondering about the assault set. While melee gun attack are present in the game, they're more consistent with lower damage, higher stun-type attacks. None that I can think of compare to an 'extreme' damage set.
To this I think you may be focusing too much on the riot control idea. It's cool, it makes sense, but it's a bit focused. Fire/ice? Earth/Psi? All kinda generic. Gravity/riot? Riot/electric? Not so sure. I'd actually losen up the gun theme for the assault set and make this a dual weapon set: Gun for ranged, a large combat knife for melee. The Knife animations could 'offhand' for stabbing, the gun staying present in the right hand. When returning to shooting, the knife goes bye-bye.

Still, cool powers and the best tech/natural set suggestions I've seen for doms, the control powers particularly.

Side note: I'd actually make the tear gas an oddity: a high -tohit power. I know it's wierd for a standby 'control,' but with enough it would be mitigation.

Looking at /poison's numbers, and having played it, I'd have to say it has two powers going against it: poison trap and noxious gas. It has one big hole as well: little regular mob mitigation, so aside from the enemies weakened so badly, you'll have a crowd bearing down on you/your team full throttle. Making noxious an ally toggle, the consistent -res helps as quicker death=mitigation.

Poison trap's sleep is not applied to newcoming mobs, but it's actually not the sleep I'd tweak. I'd have it do a pulsing, continuous -end that could completely drain endurance from a mob after some time. As there'd be no -recovery with this, they could do a few counter-attacks between drain ticks, but it would still help reduce damage.

If you can tweak those up, you'd have a more viable solo AND team performance, something very important when you don't have minions to take hits for you à la corruptors.

Eh...age is a sticky thing in comics. In fact, it, alongside superpowers, is one of the most decidedly different things than reality. How does superman resist gravity to fly? It's a comic, they do that. How is Batman still 40ish after over 70 years? It's a comic, people do that.The only time age comes into play is as a plot device, and is limited to a character-by-character basis. Hence why teenage heroes grow into adulthood and fight alongside the still-middle aged mentors.
Since this game bases much upon comic book workings, I'm not surprised to see the age issue get wonky...so long as heroes stay fit and active despite real life passage of time, this will always be the case.

If we're talking about synergy purely through power interaction, he're's how I'd look at it:

Synergy through compensation:
When the powerset closes a weakness in the primary/secondary. Dark melee is an example of this in many cases, as it supplies a fast recharging heal/endurance boost to many armor sets that lack a heal or have a high endurance cost. Katana and Broadsword supply defense to sets that are easy to hit. You get the idea.

Synergy through layering:
When both the primary and secondary have an ability that can be combined to greater effect. Electric blast and kinetics both have endurance drains, so this combo is very good at sapping. A power that lowers accuracy works well with defense that makes enemies have difficulty landing hits anyway, which is why dark works well with defense. (Think dark blast/cold domination or something similar.)

Synergy through setup:
One power lets another do something it couldn't usually do as well. Tenebrous tentacles from dark blast can immobilize a group inside of a lighted oilslick, and other trick arrow locational debuffs, ensuring the foes take the fullest possible damage/debuff. A wormhole can teleport a group of foes directly onto a minefield, so all foes get hit.

Synergy through position:
Powers from the primary/secondary that all have the same positional limits, making the character capable of executing attacks in easy succession. Think powers that can all be activated from range, or powers that can all be used from the middle of a group of enemies.

If you can get powers that have as many of the above as possible, you'll find good synergy.

If you still need to do the LGSF, I'd be willing to put myself on the reserves...I'd like to be more concrete, but I'd need a hard and set date to be sure. (And real life cooperating, gol'durnit.)

@chicagodoodler, 'Dreameater' (Mind/psy dom)

Radiation has 2 ally-based powers.

But yeah, self targeting would blow stuff away. An emp that can clear mind/heal other (self) adrenelin boost and clear mind themselves? A kinetic that can speed boost/ increase density on themselves then fulcrum shift/siphon speed/siphon power? A sonic resonance that can give themselves all their shields, then put their -res toggle on themselves?

There goes any AT BUT support AT's.

Good to hear. I have a good many friends waiting on the expansion before they return, it's good to hear 'when' before they grow impatient and lose interest.

...It's also good to know that it's just a few weeks longer than anticipated.

If you've been playing around for awhile, you'll have met a variety of different players. Meet enough folks, and you'll find people on all sorts of different servers. Likewise, as you play your different characters, you'll find ones you really enjoy. You invest time in those characters, and want to play with said people you've met, befriended. Alas, the servers won't let you, should said people play on different servers. You can restart your character, perhaps, but you can't do so in time to all of a sudden help a friend on a new server with a level 50 strike/task force. Going Rogue will make this even trickier in some cases. I'm not sure how often it's the case, but some people keep factions on different servers to get enough room. With GR, the mingling of said factions is set apart by the server divide. Let's face it, people play on different servers. Wouldn't it be great if characters could be as flexible with servers as the players are?

Here's my suggestion: A 'global' character slot page. This would be accessed via an arrow to the left of the 'first page' of character slots on every server.

The global page would be shared by all servers...the characters in said slots would still hold a character slot on their "home" server. (The server on which they were originally created.) If the player chose to remove that character from the global list, no harm, no foul. They'd keep whatever progress they made on other servers, but would be otherwise unchanged in their original spot.

Naming Globally:
When imported to a new server, their name would be checked. If that name were taken, they would be asked to choose a new moniker. This moniker would be specific to the new server, and would not change their name on their original server. Likewise, while visiting a new server, their name on the original server could not be used. The moniker claimed on the new server they were visiting, if valid, would be reserved for them if they wished to re-visit. If they did not visit the secondary server for 90 days, however, another player could claim the alternate server name.
When selecting from the global list a character from another server, the original name would be displayed, as well as the Moniker chosen when visiting that new server. Like so:

GammaGuy
"Gamma Gary"
level 30 science blaster
2 days offline
23 days since last visit to triumph

If a player grew tired of their server designation on an alternate server, they could select a 'relesase name' button, which, if their original name was still taken on that server, would prompt them to choose a new name when visiting.

Slots:
When visiting a server 'globally,' one would not need extra space on the 'new' server. (That is to say, 100% of that server's slots could be filled, but as one is visiting globally, they don't need an open slot to 'transfer into.' If a global character had visited recently, they would still not be found in the server character list. They would have to be selected from the global list once again.

VG/SG designation:
Any Villain/Super Group affiliation the global character had on their home server would not be lost either- however, on the server they visit they could not gain prestige, join another VG/SG, or operate in VG/SG mode.

Business end:
Making a character global would be accessible via the store: there would be a $5 one-time charge for making the character global, along with a 50 cent a month charge per global slot for the global service to your account. A player could use no more than 12 global slots. There would be no fee for removing a character from the global list.

Oh, one more thing. The global character page? It would have a 'global friend' list as well, with the ability to chat with those on said list.

So, does it sound just like unlimited server transfers for a character? Kinda, but it allows for more stability in naming, doesn't disconnect the character from their home VG/SG, and makes having a free slot on all servers unnecessary for importing a character. So, it's a pretty hassle-free way to visit any shard at any time.

*Note: it could also free up slots on servers with 'name reserve' characters, to an extent.