Tell me about your 50s

I didn't read the whole thread, but I skimmed it . . . do I get partial credit?

My 50's:

Djinniman (inv/fire tank, Victory)- my first character and still one of my favorite costumes and backstories. The first tell I ever got was within a minute of entering Outbreak, complimenting his look. Ah, memories. I leveled him up back in the heady days of i3-i4, when tankers were kings and Dreck and wolf farming were the order of the day. I remember feeling like I had to spend a lot of time being powerleveled just to burn off all the debt in the high levels back then. Because tanks were so common back then, I was only ever a "backup" tank, and I didn't really learn how the AT worked until relatively recently. In the meantime, I discovered I prefer other AT's more in gameplay terms, but Djinniman remains one of my favorite concepts of all.

Kid Eros (archery/fire blaster, Liberty)- My second and most-played 50. With an emphasis on pure range, fighting from the air, and exotic IO's (he was 35 when i6 hit), he's one of my most effective characters. He's also one of the most interesting as a character, having a very different concept and outlook from the average superhero. I come up with new Kid Eros stories all the time, some of which have become AE arcs and some of which have become comics or scripts for planned ones. Check the link in my signature for more about him.

Rikti Mage (ice/fire dominator, Victory)- My first villain 50. He was leveled up back before all the dominator buffs. It was slow, slow going, but I still recommend ice/fire as a good dominator combination, and dominators remain one of my favorite AT's, though I haven't played one recently. My friends had pretty much decamped from Victory by the time i10, which meant that this character, who was all about finding a way to return to the Rikti homeworld while killing as many gods and quasi-gods as possible, never really got to finish his story. Also, he's jealous that the revamped Rikti look neater than he does.

Operative Bay (crab spider, Liberty)- This character just leveled up in a blur during i12. I just found crab spiders that easy and fun to play. Plus, I like his costumes. They're blue. Blue crab, get it? Okay; no one else thinks it's funny, either. "Old" Bay (his bio is all about crab jokes) is my most-played villain 50, probably because he's so handy on teams. Even the speed-running, min-maxing teams that seem required to finish some of the tougher challenges in a reasonable amount of time can find a use for him. He's also the only character I will take on farms (I don't enjoy farming, having sat through too many on Djinniman, but I have a friend who does almost nothing else), since he's all about mowing down large numbers of enemies. Bay is also administrator of my VG, which is mostly alts of mine and a few friends'.

Knight of Gears (broadsword/shield scrapper, Liberty)- Another character whose sets just spoke to me. He was probably the fastest-leveling of all my 50's. He is the most min-maxed of my characters, with lots of special IO's and set bonuses. Despite his effectiveness, the real reason I played him so much was the fact that I love his story and his outfits. His concept is that he's using advanced technology to replicate the abilities of his deceased brother, who was a Magic Origin, sword-wielding hero. His costumes are all meant to suggest knightly armor, but they're mostly made of techy-looking parts, which made for an unusual take on the bs/shield scrappers that were so common around the time he was created.

Mr. Foudroyant (peacebringer, Liberty)- I created "Mr. F" the day Djinniman hit 50, but I didn't play him much, partly because my CoH friends had decamped from Victory to Liberty. After about two and a half years, he had reached 32 or so. The last round of Kheldian improvements made him viable as a soloist and more effective on teams, so I finally decided to move him to Liberty, where I could finance some IO's for him. He soon reached 50, after a quick respec. I enjoy his versatility, his funny costume (it's classic superhero stuff, but in an odd shade of mint green, which I explain as his favorite color), and his amusing backstory. His human portion is James A. Foudry, professor of Frislandic and Oranbegan literature, who teaches such courses as "The Maniacal Rant in Oranbegan Art" and "Literature by Bodiless Authors."

Rain Scarecrow (fire/storm corruptor, Liberty)- Like Mr. F, this corruptor began his career on another server (Justice, in his case). I made him as a way of preserving a bio that I really liked. I finally decided that I liked it so much that I wanted to use it in some non-CoH work, so I deleted it and replaced it with a throwaway story about his being an actual scarecrow animated in a mysterious, horror-story-like event in Croatoa, which I ended up enjoying even more. In the meantime, I found that I enjoyed playing the character so much that I decided to move him to Liberty to team with friends more often. Fire and storm are a great combination, though rough on the endurance. Again, I also leveled him up because I liked looked at his costume, a figure in a checked shirt and a long coat. The pumpkin head, which was released midway through his career, was perfect for him.

Sidereal Knight (radiation/energy blaster, Liberty)-My newest 50, just hit this past Monday. I'd always liked the look of both radiation and energy, and I'd never had a character with yellow powers, even though my favorite color is yellow, so I made this character on the second night of i16. He's a sort of tribute to the '90's DC Starman, being a reluctant hero with light powers, though his look is somewhat different and his story involves magic rather than superscience, including a connection to the Legacy Chain and other aspects of CoH lore. I had great fun watching him zap enemies with pretty, yellow lights for 50 levels and came up with some interesting costumes to compliment his original "street clothes" outfit. He's also loosely connected with an AE arc I have about the Legacy Chain. Even though I'm not a roleplayer, when I finished that arc with him and afterwards had him switch to his Legacy Chain outfit for the first time, I really felt a sense of achievement.

I have five level 50's.

1) My main, SoulTrain, a Kinetics/Energy/Psychic def, started as my third character back in 2005, and sllloooowly leveled up through two supergroups and a LOT of soloing. This is odd because she absolutely rocks on large teams... altho' my "Aim - Team Teleport - Fulcrum Shift - Nova" combo tactic tends to make a lot of teammates go WTFJH?? I tend to want to be holding the star when I do that, lest I be summarily kicked. Still, no one's ever faceplanted as a direct result of that maneuver.

2) Feral Tigress, the 'token catgirl' that turned into my main 'teamed' character. She's a Claw/SR/Weapons Scrapper build, that I LOVE taking on ITF and LGTF runs, as well as ship raids.

3) Dame Demolition - Robotics/Traps/Mu MM - One of my first villains, started to 'give MM's a try' in CoV Beta, and then rerolled when CoV went live. I tend to use her to farm IO's, now, and I've got her set up as a 'wrecking crew' with both builds and macros to make robot control very precise and flexible.

4) Mistress Ohm - Elec/Elec/Elec "Blapper" - another early character, my first serious RP character. Build is short on long-range attacks and heavy on high-burst-damage, lockdown, and sapper powers. She's got three holds (two ranged, one melee) that together can chain-hold a boss without help.

5: Daisy Chain - Martial Arts/Ninjutsu/Soul Mastery Stalker - My second villain 50 and my very first villain character. Much like the scrapper, she's fast and deadly, albeit a bit more fragile.