If you could tell a noob one thing...

I was, until recently, heavily involved in another MMO (which shall remain unnamed), and, as such, I have been left with certain preconceptions. This other game was exceptionally action/customization focused, which are two things I love, so I won't be entirely leaving that one, but I have started playing CoH to supplement it. And, frankly, I'm playing alot more CoH than the other one.

My MMO background from my other game taught me a number of things, and I'm sure they will work against me, here. First, it taught me that DPS and HP are king. There was exactly zero effective damage mitigation at end-game, which makes for a whole lot of glass cannons running around. Second, it taught me that there is no better means for DPS than using tons of DoTs. AoE DoTs, if you can manage them.

ATM, I'm leveling up some kinda spider thing. I dunno. Just playing around with a bunch of different things. I'm not looking for build advice. I want your sage wisdom. I want that one thing you always find yourself screaming in your head at the noob in your party. I want you to tell me the things I definitely need to know in this community, be it build advice, gameplay tips, or community spirit.

Lay it on me.

1st off. Welcome to the City!

Things I would tell a noob?

1. You're standing at the train exit.
2. It's the journey not the destination.
3. Don't pay me back, I do that for all the cool cats, ya dig.
4. You will want to get Stamin... (wait, that's my notes for noobs circa 2006)
5. Homage toons are wonderful, just be sure to avoid outright copying of anything trademarked, as that can get you in trouble.
6. You are not a Healor. You are a buffer/debuffer.
7. Supergroups>Guilds. Missions>Quests. Inspirations>Potions
8. paragonwiki.com
9. Mid's Hero builder
10. Yes, SteelClaw actually enjoy's playing that way.

First welcome to City of Heroes. I hope you enjoy it.
And kudos to you that you come to the forums and ask for advice.

In your particular case I would say that there is no AT needed (even if some noobs claim they "need" a healer or they "need" a tank). In fact debuff is king or dps is king.... everything can work out in this game. Flexibility is what comes to my mind.

Of course some would say that you need debuffs for certain Arch Villains, but I saw all Scrapper Teams kill them evenly fast if not faster without debuffs, same goes for every "All-insert specific AT-here"-Teams.

First piece of advice that I would give is to lurk here and never post.

Now, let me be clear: This is NOT against YOU. You are better off reading what people have to say and drawing your own conclusions. Use the search feature (as borked as it is), do specific searches on Google, etc. but never open the door to the Forum Trolls. There are some really great people here, but the ***-hats will drive you crazy. Unless, of course, you are already there...

There is no "required" team makeup; you can have an All Blaster team, an All Tanker team, a 7 Storm Defenders and a Scrapper Team (If you hate the scrapper ).

Just about any combination of powersets and archetypes can complete just about any challenge in the game (with a few extreme exceptions) as long as the players know what they're doing and have reasonable builds.

Also, Mids, Mids, a thousand times Mids.

I have to point out how funny Aquila's Sig is when taking into context of this thread. :P

Yeah, if you've spent anytime at other MMO forums I believe you'll have thick enough skin to deal with the few... less reputable... posters among us.

Though, I would avoid the suggestions section. It's a minefield.

As far as her (I think Aquilla is a she) Sig goes, that appears to be a quote from Psychoti from years ago, I just noticed your name capitalized in it and did a double take. :P

Oh, those people exist, they're just not a prevalent in this game as some others You do sometimes get build or powerset zealots who'll refuse to let you join their team because they want an "X" Defender instead of a "Y" Defender for example, but it's pretty rare.

Honestly though, I would give Mids a play even at this point in your career if for no other reason than to get an idea of what powersets are available to you and to help avoid making the kinds of silly mistakes that we all made when we started playing (Though it's a lot better these days now that you can actually see what powers *do* before you take them).

For some idea of how Mids is viewed around here, take a look at today's thread announcing the release of an updated version with all the Issue 21 changes in it: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=273029 - we really do love it that much

Outside of a select few exceptions, any difficulty problem you might run into can be dismissed through a combination of easily renewable inspirations and brains. Mostly inspirations.

Just one other thing I thought of:

Never believe anything anyone tells you in game about how CoH works, because most of the time it's wrong

Or, more specifically, double-check anything anyone tells you in game about how CoH works because as with any game there's a huge amount of misinformation and misunderstanding out there. The old classic being "Don't click the glowies on the Respec trial, it makes the final room harder", which of course it doesn't, but it persisted as "fact" for years (and probably still does).

Only 1 simple thing:

Feel free to ask.

I spent already several hours in Atlas and help channel to answer people's questions, there is no 'answer to all and everything that can be questioned'.

As someone who's only recently come back after years in more "typical" MMOs, I'd say:

Firstly, ask in the help channel what channels people use on your server, and join them. There are no intrinsic CoH channels for chat & grouping purposes, so getting into these makes things a lot more active.

You can group with anybody that's capable of doing missions on the same side as you, no matter what level. That guy saying there's 1 spot on a level 50 mission team, will take anyone? He means YOU. Even if he actually doesn't, no harm in checking. You will be automatically raised or lowered to the team level, and still get xp.

Play what you enjoy. (Pretty much) nobody cares what AT or powersets you have, as long as you contribute it's one big happy family.
This even includes energy/energy blasters, who some people (ok, me) would happily burn at the stake.

1. Characters in this game can be unbelievably tough.
2. You don't need top end gear, and if you do want better gear the hoops to jump through are large and low to the ground.

Here's the Too Long Didn't read version, because that is my nature:
1. Through running up your own Defense and debuffing your enemies' ToHit, you can make 90% of hits into misses. This makes you live ten times as long. (the to-hit math is more complex than I really want to discuss right now.) That's not taking into account other effects like Recharge Slows [enemies attack less frequently], Resistance [they don't hit as hard], Damage Debuffs or more Hit Points. People are running around literally a hundred times tougher than an unarmored character. If you want to go "Beneath 150 billion enemies, [your character] stands!" this is the game for you.

2. There are two parallel systems of Enhancements. (you can't get an offensive power above 95% in any one category or a defensive power above 55% in anything, approximately. Math! ) The original system which you buy from stores is training/dual/single origin enhancements, TO/DO/SO . You have to replace them every five levels because they "go red" and stop working. They're easy to afford and work pretty well and they're simple to understand. A set of SO's, the expensivest, will vary from a million inf at level 25 to about four million at level 50.
You can get better performance from "Invention-origin" enhancements or IO's. This is a parallel system added about three years into the game. Salvage + recipe + crafting table + inf = IO enhancement. IO's can vary in price dramatically: at one point early in the game I redid an entire level 50 character over a weekend, and documented it as I went on the forums, for 6 million inf. That's about the low end. On the high end there are individual enhancements that go for more than 2 billion inf each. YOU DO NOT NEED THOSE ENHANCEMENTS. You'll be welcome on almost all teams [except the ones run by scrotes or trying to do gratuitously hard things] even if you don't have a single IO.

If you are wondering "how do I get 2 billion inf?" - it's not quick and it's not trivial, but you can do it in a month with a level 25 character. The Market forum is full of people like me who won't shut up about our secrets. For now, if you need inf, send a tell to this guy and they'll send you 20 million inf, which will cover a lifetime of SO's.

I've already gone over my "one thing" limit. But I will add:

3. Have fun!

This game is VERY player-friendly. A lot of folks might say that support ATs don't level fast on their own, or that you won't survive with only DPS, but really, there are so many ways to play any given set of powers, there are no wrong choices.

The only time that may not apply is with PvP, but PvP is a pretty small part of the game, and almost non-existent on many servers. And if you are looking to have a build that's good for PvP, this game allows you two different builds (three, once you become an Incarnate) so even that shouldn't interfere with playing the majority of game content your own way.

Welcome to the game.

My advice for new/first players is always the same.

Go to King's Row at lvl 5 and talk to the detective in the police station to get a radio. Do 4-5 radio missions until you get the Safeguard mission. Complete it for a jetpack to help you travel around.

You don't need it if you do the sewer trial but it helps if you want to solo the first 14 levels.

Have fun.

The most important thing IMO: when in doubt, ask someone. The large majority of the players here will try to help you.