so the games shutting down...

I can't believe it! It has been so great playing with you all! I think I might cry a little. I had so many plans for the next year and new builds I wanted to try out. Nature, another traps...maybe even a blaster. (maybe) I 'm sad to say bye to the most amazing class...the defenders....we weren't held by conventional "heals" we were something more. We were the most diverse AT I've ever seen in any game. We all functioned differently, with the same thought in mind. Other classes competed to be the best "scrapper" or best "tank" but we defenders always got excited when another came along.
We had our bubbles protecting our companions. Debuffs to dazzle the opposition. heals for when our teammates bite off more than they can chew, and of course soft control, so we can attempt to solo a single mission for 25 min.(
We took care of our friends and tried our best, no matter the situation.

This was always something a little more than a game to me. I drew comics since I was a little kid and had my own band of misfits characters i've had for ages. My main character in one of my first stories, Muse, was my first toon and drawing.(and lvl 50,accoldes,badge hunter, etc) As a child,I wanted to know what made that feeling inside me. The one that made me want to do things with such will and inspiration. Muse was the human embodiment and so I began to draw my bringer of creativity. Finding city of heroes years later, with the ability to bring my decades old drawings to life was like a god send. I found it to be the most fantastic thing! To bring my black and white drawings into color and sound. I will miss all the great memories and times i've had on here. I'm not sure what I will do next....still in shock....but I will never forget all the good times I've had here...

I will definitely miss the Defender/Corruptor ATs.

Few other MMOs have support classes that are as diverse and fun as they are..

A storm defender is/was as different from an empath as a tank is from a blaster

Rad/Rad was my favorite flavor.

-Vilka Patri, Victory Server

It's really sad. No other game has anything that's even a patch on the sheer schenanigans our "Support" AT's allowed their teams to get up to.

Herdicaning, transforming teamates into invulnerable juggernauts, fueling a well oiled engine of destruction, melting our foes and rendering them harmless.

Some of my fondest memories in this game are the opportunities, though brief, that I had to play with some of the regulars here. My brief stint in Green Machine was enlightening, and changed the way I looked at Empathy and Empaths.

I, too, will miss the various roles support ATs carried on a team. I was extremely happy to learn that support meant more than just "heal me!", but it meant that I was able to neuter the enemies, make tanks out of squishies and actually provide damage! I'm especially sad to see this game go. It was my first MMO and was a way for me to gain some sanity through working on my masters and doctoral degrees. Now, I need to find another outlet to get away from academic's and music. :-(

I'll miss all of you guys!

To everyone who told me there'd be no one on a defender when corruptors were available to everyone:

I'm still on mine. Suck it.

With several of my friends in this game, I am planning to be here when the lights go out, if we can indeed know when that's about to happen.

I don't have a "main". There's no UberGuy character. There are just a dozen or so level 50s who get most of my playtime attention. But we can't log in more than one character per account, so I had to decide which one I would be logged in on. My badger? My favorite concept?

Ultimately, I decided it must be the one with the most play time. The one with whom I did the most things. My Issue zero Dark/Dark Defender, who has 2699 hours on patrol, who I still played very actively.

Damn, am I going to miss playing her.

The defender archetype (and corruptors and controllers too) spoiled me for all other MMOs.

I expect it will be a long time before I find another world I can choose not to specialize in healing, tanking, DPS, or pets that do the same, and still be doing just fine in my own way.

This forum is the birthplace of Repeat Offenders, I'll miss it greatly. From the old days of the "healer" threads to the very beginnings of RO with Teklord's Pinball Wizards (all Kins) and Green Machine (all Empathy Def) to Tormentoso's Perfect Storm (all Storms). We in RO are very proud to have helped prove that Defenders were more than just "healers".

Thank you Defenders, for I am very proud to have played such a great Archetype in this City of Heroes.

Enjoy the game and savor the memories,

Alty

The support sets made this game for me.

My main and namesake was a Dominator, but I played plenty of Corrupters, Defenders and Controllers too, and loved having the ability to transform a team's performance by showing up.

I also loved having other supporters turn up to my teams. I ran PUGs frequently, and would count the support icons, and then check everyones info to see who did what, and often get a warm fuzzy feeling that we were about to kick ***.

I played on an Empath duo. Few people semed to get this, but I know how it rocked.

Thanks to everyone who helped me be super.

And to think support characters in many other MMOs are exercises in drudgery you only force on yourself because your friends bribed you with PBJs to play them.

Out of all the myriad reasons that CoH has ruined other MMOs for me, the support powers and ATs will be what I miss the most.

The huge variety of primary and secondary power combinations along with being able to actually fight and not just watching green health bars were revolutionary. I've got my share of tanks, scrappers, some brutes, a few blasters, some masterminds, but my heart was always firmly rooted in Defender, Controller, Corruptor land.

First char: emp/dark def (coh launch head start)
Last char: na/fire def (coh sunsetting)

This was my first MMO, and my first characters were a pair of rad/rad defenders, intended to compare leveling on a static team vs solo/PUG. One became my main, though I got both to 50. That kind of spoiled me for other defenders, and even other characters (I wondered why people made such a fuss about Vahz at low levels till I ran a scrapper against them, they really hurt without debuffs!). Despite my complaints to my friend about how often they nerfed Radiation Emission, we both knew it was STILL a bit on the overpowered side. . . I'm pretty sure I have more defenders and corruptors then all other ATs put together, especially since as was mentioned the support sets are so varied in how they play.

Thus I was a bit surprised to see how limited the role of support characters was when I tried another game, and I saw why people came to CoH and only looked at making a healer. I suppose other game designers are scared of the awesome power of stacked buffs and debuffs we have demonstrated so ably here.

Its an interesting dynamic, virtually everyone agrees having buffers/debuffers on your team is really helpful for hard content, and they are quite powerful, yet they are not a terribly common AT, so you rarely accumulate enough to make content "too easy" without concerted effort like superteams forming around them. Thus any team leader you would actually want to play under will never turn you away.

And my favorite recruit as a team leader was always a defender. A corruptor or controller may have built to emphasize blasting stuff and neglected or not understood their secondary, but if someone runs a defender there is a very good chance they actually appreciate the support powerset and have built for it and learned to play it. Not always, but I liked the odds.

I have always preferred playing defenders or controllers. My controllers actually use their secondaries.

Most of the time I was kinetic, or archery(once it became an option) but, I have played a little of most of the defender sets. I happen to know that archery was nerfed out of beta, but, the data they were using to nerf was from teams of archers and sonic defenders chewing through things the way that full teams do debuffers CAN. Once you hit the regular servers you were lucky to get one sonic or archer let alone two. My archer would join a team and see an orange glow and nearly clap for joy!

I am really going to miss this.

The Defender/Corruptor forums have always been my favorite place on the CoH forums. Sadly it now looks like I never will finish my Storm Guide (was waiting for the next update to post about LS to incorporate all of the proc changes... )

And indeed, as many have said, no other game I've tried has offered a comparable class, Having played since March 2004, I will certainly miss this game....

Storm Summoning is the only set I've played to 50 twice. I think one of my favorite moments in-game was a STF I was on that was going poorly—our team had overall low defense, and the team couldn't survive Recluse's beatdown along with the stream of Banes he spawns when low on health. After a few tries to take him the straightforward way... we pulled him on top of a tower and we two stormies used Hurricane to just shove all the Banes to the ground as soon as they spawned. We ended up with dozens of them running around in confusion trying to reach us.

Well, since the forum apparently doesn't have much else to talk about...

I can tolerate tossing the occasional heal when needed, but the typical MMO healer bores me quickly. 8 years of COH has finally got me hooked on support toons, thanks to the universe not revolving around a race between red and green numbers.

So in case NCSoft stuffs COH into the Disney Vault instead of keeping the game going, any ideas on other MMOs where heals are considered completely optional for support toons? Hopefully one that'll run on a computer that got put together in 2005 or so. Feca class in Dofus is an option, though I'd prefer a faster paced game.

Yep will really miss support toons too it was one of the things that made this game great - and even when solo they worked not seen any games like this but still hoping