Underdog Characters

Ever roll an alt that you didn't expect to play much, only it turned out to be awesome? Ever revisit a character years after playing it, respec and IO it and turn it into your new favorite toon? If you've ever rolled a character that's impressed you above and beyond your expectations, share your story!

My latest underdog combination is my Gravity/Dark Controller. I never in a million years expected to play Gravity Control. Since they made changes to it and added Dark Affinity, I figured I'd roll a Gravity/Dark simply because I wanted to try out both sets. I've found a lot of uses for this character on trials. It's extremely survivable, has great buffs and debuffs and I was able to make a relatively cheap build for it with everything that I wanted.

Edit: Just ran a MoM where I was able to pull the Voids using Wormhole. So fun.

My storm/elec controller. I thought he was goin' to be a pain in the @$$ to play, and somewhat was in the lower levels, but he can basically hold a BAF door on his own.

Late bloomer to be sure, but worth the time and effort, and he's a blast to play now.

I started this game playing Melee. Four of my first five 50's were melee. I tried a Corruptor early on (a Rad/Kin, my third 50), and I didn't care for much it.

Then I started Player One, my Fire/Cold Corruptor. At first, I was doubting creating her (I started her in Praetoria, and played mostly alone), but once I started gaining levels and teaming, she quickly became my favourite character. I'd say that I play her the most. I've invested the most in her (in terms of influence) of all my characters, and she's just so fun.

Thank you, Champion.

My Gravity/Storm Controller was so squishy and the controls were sketchy at best. Once I hit 50, IO'd, and Incarnated it's a beast!

I have several of these.

One of my favorite characters - Sara Thunderbird, my Elec/Elec Scrapper - is this. I played her till about Level 16 or so at first, and she was fun to play, sure, but pretty endurance heavy at that level. Then a few months later there was a Synapse TF and I dusted her off since I figured with the energy resistance to Clocks, she'd be useful (and she was). Got her to like 20ish.

Then there was 2XXP weekend last year or so and I madrushed her to 50 in that, and she's one of my best characters now, hands-down.



This has happened with a lot of my characters really (my Spines/SR, my Son/Son, DB/Nin, MA/Regen, WP/SS, and more) - I stop playing them for something new and shiny, then forget how much I love playing them.

The only one I can never bring myself to really enjoy anymore is my Emp/Archery Defender - and that's just because I absolutely hate both power sets now, and I'd delete her if she wasn't Level 48. Empathy feels outdated compared to all other support sets I feel since its buffs are all single target with longer recharges than newer sets (that give nice buffs for shorter recharges and maybe even for the full team) and its heal powers feel obsolete in the later levels. Meanwhile Archery on a Defender is just piss-poor damage.

My Shield/War Mace tanker. I started to toon mostly for concept. Shield Defense starts out kinda weak. There's just barely enough defense to soft cap SD at high levels, so before SOs it's still really quite vulnerable compared to something like Invulnerability.

Then SOs make a big difference, and IOs make an even bigger one. Now the sturdiness is great, War Mace provides self buffs, soft controls and AoE which mesh well with Shield Defense's self buffs and AoE. It's a very decent combo.


I'd include my Fortunata too, but that wasn't really a surprise, I was gung-ho on that character from the beginning.

My Fire/earth dom.I decided to rebel against the FoTM at the time (fire/psi). /earth seemed wildly unpopular due to its smash dmg type and heavy endurance cost. but a few failed builds to make my current one. Jenesis is now my 2nd in command. Funny thing is Jenesis was a name i used constantly with experimental lowbie but i told @electrohawk that someday this name would find an awesome toon to use it.

....guess i was right. moreso then i actually hoped.

earth/dark controller is fun. crap to solo, but can debuff anything. I am also enjoying my grav/elec dom. I think my fire/storm corruptor is still my favorite though. my kin/energy brute (made before the buffs) is probably my favorite melee toon. ( i HATE siphon power though)

Ice Ember

Quite a few of these for me.

My first would be an Em/DA brute, just after we got the Io system (and before EM was killed) and DA was very rare to see redside. It also had a pretty abd rep, mostly due to teh end usage pre IOs. I really liked him though, got a lot of comments on him like..'I thought DA sucked' etc etc, which is always nice. Even 'tanked' the old lvl 54 rsf with him, when it was almost all done by stoners back then. Then of course..em got spanked, and he has been on some dead server ever since...

Sonic/traps corr. Before fenders got it, and when I made it, traps was pretty much non existent on corrs, maybe a few mms had it. A few friends (that I share build ideas with, ask for advice, etc) told me I was crazy, making traps. And more so, something that was not fire/traps. Just about every team I joined would be like..Wow..a traps..I thought they sucked! And then, after seeing it in action..leave the team later saying..I am gonna go roll a traps!

Also have a dp/mm blaster..that I made just after Dp came out, who I totally claim was the first with this combo.

My mostly human form PB, added Nova at level 41 or 44 I think...slotted some Kheldian IOs, got her some recharge bonuses and extra HP, all the HP accolades and Clarion Tier 3 and now she rocks.

Hehe. This is a dangerous question for altoholic. What. I don't have troubles! 40/48 on champion means I still have space! To be honest my Mind/Psi dominator is my favorite, and won't be deposed any time soon. That said, there are several characters I made on a whim for a concept that steal time away from my 'main.'

Fire/fire (now fire/fire/fire) dominator
This one I made for concept, and made the mistake of taking the AoE immobilize early one, with hot feet. I could steel aggro from the best of brutes/tanks. He dies at least twice a mission early on, but it was fun. So I invested a few IO's in him, leveled him up. It was slow, but burning things is fun. Things started turning around when I got flash-fire fully slotted, now stuff died, and I didn't. Then came the late 30's, early 40's. A full fledged secondary, and fiery aoe's...then I finished out the /fire APP, grabbed incarnates, some purples....now it isn't funny how good it is. Well, maybe it is. I still disturb my friends giggling maniacally. Permanent domination, permanent rain of fire, blaze up in seconds, poyronic judgement, this guy is hell on souped up monster truck wheels. seriously, the question that is hard to answer is "what is not on fire?"

on the less overpowered side:

war mace/willpower brute.
This one is still young, but fun. The concept is a lady who's a mean drunk, she spends a night partying and wakes up in the Zig. Somehow she got wasted and hospitalized a third of paragon's police force with a pipe wrench. Arachnos breaks her out, and she runs around town in the rogue isles venting with said pipe wrench. With minFX on /will, she really does look/work like a tough person with a blunt object.

Archery/Energy archer.
I built this for range, and it's a blast. Between boost range, damage/range HO's, cardiac's +range, and clarion's +range, fistful of arrows is snipe range, and she can shoot things past the draw distance. It's a blast. It's fun doing the Lamda final fight and being able to hove rover the court and shoot marauder anywhere he jumps with little chasing.

Crab spiders
Even on SO's, these guys are as tough as a scrapper, and can do full AoE attack chains. It's hilarious how many 'splosions these guys can do.

Zombie/poison mastermind.
Underpowered, but still so much fun. Yes, i'm an immature child sometimes. I laugh when I watch as both the mastermind and the zombies start a fight with waves of slimey puke splashing in volleys against my enemies. Bonus points for using group flight, and having flying zombies rain bile from above.

Robots/forcefield mastermind
Bubble and go, the nothing gets close to scratching the bots' paint as entire missions are cleared out with missile and lasers to the face whilst things are lined up against walls with force bubble.

Those are the big ones. Of course that doesn't mention plant/earth dominators, dark/storm controllers, electric/SR scrappers, rad/rad corrs, rad/rad defenders, beam/rad corrs, fire/rad controllers, EM/dark brutes,ill/emp controllers, Invuln/SS tanks, Will/SS tanks, shield/axe tanks, elec/elec doms, kin/EA stalkers, NB/dark stalkers, fire/fire brutes, BS/regen scrappers, kin/elec defenders, StJ/Will stalkers, Grav/Nrg doms, Stom/ice defenders, tri-form warshades, human peacebringers, Titan/elec brutes, Dark/titan tanks, Elec/Nrg tanks...
...please help me....

I didn't have high hopes for my rad/rad defender when I rolled her. I know Radiation Emission's a great set, but after soloing my emp through most of the 40s I had fairly low expectations as to how well she would do solo.

The answer appears to be, "Perfectly well, thank you."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobalt Azurean My storm/elec controller. I thought he was goin' to be a pain in the @$$ to play, and somewhat was in the lower levels, but he can basically hold a BAF door on his own. Late bloomer to be sure, but worth the time and effort, and he's a blast to play now.

I feel more or less the same about my ice/storm troller, except I rolled her the first day I had the game so didn't have any expectations for how playing her would go. Nearly deleted her in the late twenties after one too many Banished Pantheon missions.

???


Still waiting on a 4-legged player rig for this.

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i think everyone has a Underdog, Mine was my Fiery/Fiery Brute. Started my brute back at the end of 2008 (Before every second brute you see is a /Fire farming toon) i've spent a lot of time over the last 4 year on that brute.....how much time? ....let me check....4104 hours HOLY CRAP.....wait how many months is 4104 hour?..... DAM...over 5 months.

I hated that toon when i rolled it and i don't even remember why I rolled it. hated how Greater Fire Sword sounded but now i've come to love it, hated how Fiery seemed soft for a armor set now i can stand toe to toe with rooms full of mobs and melt face.

Since than he's became my main and no new toon can replace or live up to the level of fun i have with that brute