It's been a year, finally coming 'home', so...what to play now?

Wow did I miss this game. Had to force myself to away from gaming almost entirely for about a year so I could deal with real life. Well, real life is dealt with. So...hi again! Not that anybody knows me ~_^ but still hi anyway.

Anyway, to the actual question now. Apparently with the new expansion your free to jump between factions and all that so it kind of opens up a new can of worms for me. I am most definitely rolling up a new character since I've been gone so long, get a feel for the game again, enjoy myself, blah blah blah. If I plan on staying mostly solo (I have plenty of group toons after all) and just want to basically collect all the badges I can, any recommendations?

I would normally have said tank instantly, I love how hard they are to kill and I can deal with the low damage. I prefer the hero side, but now...I can get badges on BOTH sides. My poor head she does spin, how do I decide the best solo character when I now have access to both factions? So hard to decide, so very hard...

Any ideas on this one? I know the whole 'best solo' question is more than likely overdone (search doesn't seem to be working for me for some odd reason) but I figure if I can at least get a quick idea I'll have something to work with. I've never even really looked at the villain side past level 20, not enough players, but now I have access to their powers on the hero side. I have the feeling I'm going to be rusty as anything after a year absence.

so, going solo for most of the game (which is what i'm doing now, up to 44 yay), i would recommend brute or scrapper. both tough enough to solo and do enough damage to get thru the content. my problem soloing a tank was how long it took to kill....... anything really.

i'm running a brute, tougher then scrapper by a bit, because of my "tanker' background. scrapper would be fine if you want to front load the damage. soloing anything else has tricky spots, not that they aren't doable.... just harder is all, especially if you prefer a melee style toon (or just seem to be better suited to it). but there are new power sets, a whole new 1=20 lvl content area, any AT, you want, and alignment mish's when you get out, couple all of that with the weekly strike target and doing all the TF's you want to do should jump you up to max level pretty quick. once out of praetoria, i ran tips, TF's and the arcs i really like (striga, croatoa, maria jenkins, etc..) and i'm cruising along just fine. then once you're 50, all the incarnate fun can start.

wow, lots to play with that's new.... welcome back, hope you have fun
and once you get started, come back and tell us what you went with and how it's going

Welcome back to the game.

One word to answer your question:

Brute.

Brutes are like Tankers, but fun. For primaries, I suggest Claws, Dual Blades, or Super Strength. For secondaries, I suggest Electric Armor, Shield Defense, Super Reflexes, or the good ol' standby of Willpower.

A Brute with Fly and the new Rebirth Destiny power can get any badge there is in the game with no difficulty.

Hard to decide, I've been poking around the forums while I waited for replies.

Tanks apparently won't die solo, you just have to have some coffee to keep you awake while your doing it.

Scrappers and Brutes seem to be about the same for solo preference, they basically do the same thing with Scrappers being better damage at low rage and Brutes being better high rage. Brutes can take a few more hits apparently.

Mastermind apparently can solo anything if you take traps and robots...I do not think I want to play either traps or robots however. A group of 3-4 thug masterminds (not solo I know) is apparently hilarious with buff stacking :P

Nothing else really seems to come up as great solo toons.

On the plus side, my girlfriend is now back in the game also when she found out I came back so now I have TWO toons to figure out. I normally play a tank in our duo but now I have the option of a brute. Maybe tank for group and brute for solo...

A contrarian opinion: do a Mind/Fire Dom. They can solo just about anything. Much higher damage than a Tank. If you grow fond of the character and want to invest in it, you can discover the friggin' awesome world of perma-Domination in which you suddenly become mez-proof.

There are literally a plethora of options now!

1. Tanker which can solo well and kill relatively quickly: Elec/SS
2. Brutes, of course! Dark/Shield, SS/Fire or /Elec or /Inv, or Stone/Elec
3. Many Scrappers, but if you're used to Tanker survivability, you may (just may) find them lacking
4. Bots/Traps or /Dark MMs
5. Fire/Dark or Fire/Traps Corruptors

Plenty of others I'm not thinking of in this moment as well.

I'm very much used to survivability, I pretty much always play the 'tanky' classes in any game I play so I have the feeling Tank and Brute are where I'm heading. More than likely Willpower...on both >.> I love Willpower.

I would highly recommend a Stone Melee/Will power brute. It has lots of smash, and great mitagation and a high level of single target damage. I have a fifty sitting in the garage that I soloed back to unlock the VETs. One of the most fun brutes I have played.

I guess I missed the memo on stalkers not being great at soloing. Saying that, if you like tanks so much, brutes will be the way to go.

Welcome back

A couple of fun toons to try would be either a Fire/Shield scrapper or a Spines/Elec scrap. I am not a numbers person so my reasonings as to why you should try them are "They are fun and soloable" They say /Shields takes billions and billions of influence to IO one out, but I did mine at a fraction of that, and she is GREAT fun.. I may not be able to do 4/8 or solo Giant Monsters and AVs or such things on my build but oh well

Hmm..and if you should want to dip your toes into Energy Melee....know that it seems to be a set that blooms solo. I am having a blast in Praetoria with my Energy/Elec Brute, but reading about Energy Melee in these forums, I come way with the idea that I should not be enjoying it as much as I am ...I should be instead doing a lot of weeping and gnashing my teeths ? No telling what I am doing wrong.


Ohhhhhhh...I know....you need to try a Electric Control/Earth Dom. Don't judge it until you get the sleep field though. I forgot what level you get it, but once you get it, it is a game changer It is an AOE Sleep that reapplies itself



And one more thing, Praetoria is full of bad guys doing Energy Damage. Choose your first Praetorian toon with that in mind and you will do well.

Welcome back.

well if willpower is a given, any primary will work, but i will second the above opinion of stone melee......sm/wp is awesome sauce over a sundae made from 3 scoops of awesome. build in some recharge and you are a non-stop smashtastic beast.

It's not a 100% given, Invulnerability is also a possibility. I've never really been sure which of those two is harder to kill, both are incredibly tasty. I just know I'm definitely going with something hard to kill for my solo toon.

Leaning a bit more towards Brute over Scrapper after digging around in Mids for a while, I like the extra cushion more than I like the extra damage. May give a look at that stone melee, never really liked it since I thought it was kinda ugly but I may give it a shot.

Will more than likely take WP/Fire or WP/SS for my group tank to get in the AoE goodness, but that's a whole different story.

Brutes definitely wind up being tougher when you sink money/time into them. They have higher base hit points and a higher resistance cap. Scrappers solo more easily with less investment, since they're much more front-loaded, but with a Cardiac Alpha slot, a Willpower brute will never run out of endurance and will average much more damage. And properly buffed, you'll have tanker resists and the best damage output in the game.

Now if only I could figure out which primary I liked the best. I would say Broadsword but sadly brutes can't use it, and I really want the extra survivability from Brute. I could always try that stone melee out I suppose.

mace has lots of mitigation and some decent single target attacks too

Why not DM/INV? Dark melee has a heal built in to one of its best attacks, as well as to-hit debuffs and an endurance recovery tool. There were some VERY durable DM/INV builds floating around the scrapper forums awhile back, for both brutes and scrappers I believe.

Edit: For your consideration, the previously mentioned threads:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=254520

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=254520

Hey, welcome back!

To address your questions:

If you like tanker durablility but still want damage, may I strongly recommend the Old School Classic, the fire/fire tank.

I have one up near the peak of incarnate that I started a few months back in Praetoria, and I can promise you, you will NOT be disappointed in your damage output.


If that still isn't enough damage, may I point you to an elec/elec scrapper. Since you like fly, take air superiority for more single target goodness, and slot one knockback reducer for the times you get shot while airborne. I can say with certainty: Build Up, thunderstrike and lightning rod may be the most fun combo in the game.

If you want a compromise toon, may I point you at an electric/super strength tanker. These take a while to mature, but are UNHOLY once they get going.

For a slightly more challenging build, I feel electric/stone might be the best Incarnate toon around right now. I was teaming with one last night, and OMG, he was easily keeping up with my scrapper. Amazing.

You're coming back at a great time! Enjoy!

Thanks for all the ideas. I ended up making a SS/WP brute. Thing is it ended up in a duo with my girlfriend so now I'm back to being stuck for my solo toon (gah T_T). Lots of ideas in this thread though, am going to have to mess with some of them.