Power customisation used well

Dark Armor has always looked like a mess to me, graphically. It's a big black blur of particles that evokes nothing.

Then a few days ago, I saw that guy named Living Sand (link to picture), a spines/DA scrapper. The screenshot doesn't do it justice, ingame it really looks like he's some kind of sand monster. That's a pretty awesome use of power customisation, turning a poor looking set (IMHO) into a whole new, good-looking concept.

So it got me to wonder, have you seen any really cool and inventive uses of power customisation out there? Any screenshots to share?

I saw at one point an illusionist with the decoys coloured to look like Longbow mobs and it actually made me do a double-take for a moment.

I've had the Sand Armor thing going for quite a while on my Dark Armor tank that Sucks.

I've seen the same treatment given to dark miasma and even storm summoning. I really like how it looks.

My dark scrapper is a white cloud like thing

Dark armor also makes a fairly good 'sea mist' type set if you color it with pale blues/greens. The default is pretty boring, I agree, but it definitely seems to have a lot of potential when you start fiddling with the colors.

Eon Scar, my now-31 Dark/Kin Tanker. His powers are colored Dark Blue (primary) and Sky Blue (secondary) for a watery, murky feel. It's beautiful. I plan to take him into Void Judgement and color it the same way.

I was actually going to make a thread like this after seeing a few cool uses of power customization while playing my SD brute and scrapper.

Not anything special but, when exemplared on my MA/SD, I witnessed one teammate with Rain of Fire colored white. Yeah, nothing special, it just looks really cool, like a meteor hail with the occasional big 'chunk' that hits the ground and explodes into smaller chunks. So I stole the idea and refined my Fire/Storm corruptor's concept to use this.

Another is a FA scrapper I teamed with on the same character. He had his armor flames dark and black and his Burn bright and white. He stood in stark contrast to the white background, which I thought was awesome. I'm trying to think of a FA character I could use that on. I don't actually have any FA characters tho, so I'd have to make a new one.

Another 'not anything special' but I teamed with another scrapper named [something] Arcane or something like that. He had a hood, glowing eyes and looked like a new-age melee-mage. Coupled with bright white-blue Power Siphon from Kinetic Melee, really looked like a flashy magic spell and I'm planning to do something to that effect if I ever make another KM character.

Anyways, please do post more ^_^ I need ideas to steal. The sand armor thing is nice but I doubt I'd use it. Just don't really like the concept (although Gaara is still in my top 10 bad-a book).

That looks pretty cool Nalrok.

I've also seen Dark Armor done in a toxic pukey green. It fit the character well, he was a Spines/DA with a, well, poison theme.

Personally, I'm liking Invul with everything set to "minimal FX" except Temp Invulnerability, which is done in a light color that matches the costume. Kind of gives it a "shining armor" feel.

I've also seen a few Energy Blast characters go for a prismatic theme, with every power in a different color. It can look very cool if done well.

when i took rock armor on my ill/kin for my second build, i decided to change his native 'light' and energy powers to powers of sand and rock.

the illusion powers all got a gold recoloring, making them gleam like the golden sand from Aladdin - which i thought made total sense esp with PA distracting the enemy. the kinetics powers got recolored to the pale sections of the palette, with transfusion getting an earthy green/brown combo, and transference getting a pale blue (i like heals to be green and end recov to be blue...), siphon speed getting a pale yellow and FS getting a pale red, all of which has the effect of swirling sand.

if we ever get epic customization, i'd like to change to the gem effects instead of stone, but i don't know what i'll do with illusion and kinetics. maybe leave them be as sand, and make the stone mastery powers look like polished glass (since glass is made of sand...).

I have a fire/storm corruptor named Nuee Ardente - colored his fire powers deep red/yellow and colored his storm powers brown, and when he gets going it's like being inside a volcano. Snow Storm turns into a dust storm and Freezing Rain becomes a rain of pumice.

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki

Dark Armor is especially nice for tweaking. I love that you can set the colors of the screamy faces in Cloak of Fear to really make them pop. Energy Blasts and Melee also look pretty sweet with the right colors.

I was playing around with my Fire Blasters colors and got a cool sickly dark green that looked a bit like smeared paint. Sort of like the graphics on the recent Street Fighter.

It's sad when some sets, like Plant Control or Earth Control/Assault/Armor have boring, limited pallets. I really want to recolor Carrion Creepers to look like licorice whips so I can make a Candymancer, or make Earth into "cheese" colors so I can finally make my Earth Dom "Government Cheese"

Four to mention:

- Worm that Walks, a Fire/Dark Corruptor, has her powers colored a dark sickly green, resembling clouds of toxic spores.

- Chris MK, an Elec/Earth Dom, uses the Crystal geometry and blue and white coloration to turn her Earth attacks into comets/glaciers.

- Basalisque, a Spines/Regen Stalker, uses the Organic Armor pieces in conjunction with dark-red Slate spines and red-black Regen coloration to portray her blood crystallizing on contact with air.

- Sublime Razor, a Plant/Elec Dom, has her Plant powers colored blue-black to simulate the tentacles of her pet subterranean eldritch horror, Tickles.

A couple of times now, I've recolored Fiery Aura the darkest possible grey in the "Bright Flames" version. This gives a pretty good approximation of steam. This works really, really well. Presumably, the enemies are getting scalded by the superheated steam rather than directly burned by fire. As an outgrowth, I've redone Burn as Steam Bath and Soot Patch (Bright and Dark Flames in grey, respectively). The first character on whom I did this is notable because, frequently, when I fire off his heal, I shout, "Healing Steam!" here at my desk. It's this sort of thing that keeps me away from voice chat.

The Lava setting for Earth powers has a lot of potential. My swamp-themed earth/earth dominator has it set to brown rock and green "magma," which makes for a nice mud-and-tainted-water look. The green and brown also give a great "swamp gas" look to Mud Pots and Volcanic Gases.

Stenchor, my skunk-like dp/rad corruptor, has his Radiation Emission recolored to a yellow-orangish Dark Radiation. It looks just like the Stink Waves emitted by, say, Pigpen in the cartoons.

I recently saw a fire/dark scrapper with the Dark Armor recolored to look like flames. It looked really good!

A while back, I made a plant/thorns dominator who's a plant faerie with different seasonal outfits. His Plant powers always look the same (a pretty standard dark green), but his Thorns are green and brown with his spring/summer outfit, red-brown for his fall one, and replaced with icy white Crystal Spines for his winter one.

And, to bring this up to date, I unlocked Judgement on the dominator the other night. Since none of the options really fit the themes of plants or thorns, I considered the spiky Cyronic, but it looked gross when recolored. Instead, I went with Pyronic and played up the "faerie" angle. The fall outfit has more or less ordinary flames, but the spring/summer one has pale yellow ones meant to suggest a will o' the wisp, and the winter one has blue-white flames that I find oddly appealing.

This made me laugh-

Quote:

Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan - Sublime Razor, a Plant/Elec Dom, has her Plant powers colored blue-black to simulate the tentacles of her pet subterranean eldritch horror, Tickles.

If I ever play my quasi-Lovecraftian dominator from CoV beta, the Ghastly Priest (plant/psi), again, I am so doing this. Except his eldritch horror is named Fluffers, That Which Does Not Use The Litterbox.

black and red rain of fire, I've been told looks quite a bit like a rain of blood.

I have a Bots/Poison MM that has all of the poison powers shaded to different tones of grey in order to simulate nanites.

My Dark/Rad defender is supposed to be one of the Nuclear 90 and has his dark powers set to different colors to suggest the use of many different types of particles and energies. Who says all radiation has to be bright?

I had a DB/DA scrapper named Rusty Scissors that looked like a rusting robot; colored his DA to orange tones, which worked out well. I never got him up past 10th I think though.

I also currently have a small girl named Blood-Gusher who's body exudes ectoplasm (that might be mistaken for blood) in such quantities that she has to let loose with great gouts of the stuff or she'll burst and die. She's an Energy/Dark Corr, and all of her powers are colored red, of course; the idea/recolor fits better with Dark than the Energy, but so it goes.

My favorite extant character as far as power customization is probably Silverbuilt, my liquid metal Stalker.



Favorite of all time was probably Neon Jenny, a Fire/Rad Corruptor whose fire was colored green and brown to make a nice pollution blast appearance, or Magatama, a Rad/Energy Blaster whose powers were light yellow and white for sunlight blast.