Favorites

1. Stalkers. I haven't been around long and thusly have only had the time to try a few archetypes, but this AT stands head and shoulders above the others. Being guaranteed first strike, able to pick and choose my fights, and almost always starting the fight by one-shotting the biggest guy in a group all bring a smile to my face. I'm also a fan of Blasters and Defenders.

2. I'd say it's a tie between River Chance, my Nin/Nin Stalker, and Sunny Skies, my Weather/Ice Defender. The former for the reasons outlined above, but also for her ability to dodge nearly every attack thrown at her pretty consistently and her design. Ironically, I think she's one of my favorite designs, despite having the least effort put into it (at first).

Character-wise, it's a person who got into the hero business for all the wrong reasons (simply put, she loves gambling and risks and danger) but is still a good person despite that. Her magic origin comes both from several trinkets she's won in a few less than legal games, and a jade cat token that brought her back to life when she won one too many hands of poker against the wrong crook.

Sunny Skies, contrastingly, I put some elbow grease into making. I wanted a concept that was simple, like what I started with for River, but had room to expand, like with my other characters. Unlikely heroes have always been something I enjoyed, and a temp at a news outlet who was given a costume leftover from a 70s rating boost gimmick as a sort of hazing ritual is as unlikely as you can get.

I even made her costume with this in mind- something that looked good, but at the same time was something you could tell someone threw together on a budget. Raincoat and boot, a simple t-shirt with a sun, domino mask, a pair of thigh-high striped socks, a skirt, and a belt right out of the 70s.

My only regret, in retrospect, is not making her Weather/Electric instead of Weather/Ice, but even that ended up being the most fitting option by coincidence- the backstory had her accidentally shock herself and the mad scientist responsible for strange weather patterns she was sent out to look into, so it was as simple as saying she hadn't gotten the hang of using electrical powers without hurting herself.

Mechanically, it's a fantastic pair of powers. My first character was an Ice/Ice Blaster named Blue Memento that I still love dearly, and the Ice secondary on Sunny is nearly as good as it was on Blue as a primary. Weather is an awesome power set with plenty of variety in its effects, and it really makes you FEEL powerful, too- enemies being blown away by gusts on wind, sudden downpours causing them to slip over themselves, hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderclaps...

Combined with hailstorms, freezing people solid, and pitching giant balls of ice, you have someone who has much more power than you'd ever expect from them. Her mutation origin was as much a shock to her as it was to everybody, especially being such a late bloomer powers-wise, but she refuses to let anything get her down.

3. Like I said, I haven't been around very long. I've played with a total of 4 ATs: Blaster, Stalker (Twice), Corrupter, and Defender.

Of the four, I'd have to say Dominator was my least favorite. I like being able to hit hard and fast, and I never got that feeling with the Corrupter like I did my other characters. From what I've heard, the power sets I picked for the character are fairly weak, and that's likely the cause, but it's still disappointing.

Crush Knight, a former delinquent who became obsessed with the concept of chivalry after being rescued by a knightly hero. She entered an experimental program to create new heroes, and came out of the deal with shockingly no issues and powers over gravity. Guess with as many people who have done it SOMEONE was going to get off without trauma or accidents eventually.

Using her powers, she set out to fight crime, suspending one thug helplessly in the air while she ripped stone from the ground and shaped it into a hammer to chase his partner with. A violent, but ultimately noble person. She started off one of my more developed characters (being my second to last creation, Sunny being my newest), but had comparatively little development, probably because of my dislike of the power selection.

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

Defenders. Really Offenders, which would make you think I'd like Corruptors more, but they really never did anything for me... I just infinitely preferred having stronger support powers sooner.

2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.

Being an altaholic my favorite at any given time changed frequently, but in hindsight, all-in-all, I'd have to give this to my Time/Fire Defender, despite his relative youth (I honestly don't remember which came first, Time Manipulation or Fire Blast for Defenders, but I've obviously only had him since then). I really put everything I had into him and it showed. I'm still sad that I never got to fully realize his I24 potential on live, cause holy cow it was face melting awesomeness.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?

Melee in general.

I've always been a support type in every game I've ever played (be it pure Healer or Hybrid), and never really cared much for any melee class that wasn't also a healer in some way. CoH changed that a good deal mostly I think for 3 reasons:
1) Agro management in CoH was, for the most part, stupidly easy. Which was good cause I never liked playing tanks, and still fear filling the tanking role in other games, because I doubt I have the level focus and awareness to maintain agro and not let my team get killed.
2) It's entirely possible to build just about any character in CoH for considerable survivability, this eases the burden of tanks knowing that it's (generally) not going to be a death sentence should a lone mob slip past you to your support.
3) CoH is unlike any other game. Since no team really NEEDS any class/AT/role, there's never really that intense pressure for each person filling a role to be "the best" at it. With enough Control, you didn't need a Tank. With enough Damage, you didn't need Control. With enough Support you didn't need... well... anything else.

God I miss this game.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

1. Brute. The mechanics of the Brute AT played out perfectly with my characters concept in terms of powers.

2. Super Strength/Will Power

UserShadow7989: No worries! I was addressing long-time players but only because I figured the ones still on the forum are mostly composed of them. Yeah, stalkers are kinda like the WoW rogues in a sense - during CoV's launch I kept telling our SG that they were THE weirdest designed ATs in the game. Now they feel far better after several changes over the years, and I dedicated a video to it. So many dismissed their playstyle over the years and once the most recent changes hit I wanted to get the word out.

Oathbound: You sound a lot like me. I never got hooked on my time/fire but perhaps it was due to defenders getting shafted when it came to fire blast on top of already having such low damage. Regarding melee - I had a hard time subscribing to the mentality that survivability was everything (unless you were a tanker) and generally opted for a well rounded build that could survive most scenarios and ignored the edge cases that people tested themselves with.

Vitality: Did you ever grow to enjoy a class you dismissed initially? I had a wp/ss in tanker form so I know what you mean.

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

I'd say scrapper. That's not a slam-dunk answer, because I never really gravitated towards a particular AT. Still, I have two scrappers on my short list of still-fun-at-50 characters.


2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.

You might as well ask me to pick a favorite son or daughter. My archery/energy blaster was the oldest of my active characters, and probably the one with the most time logged. It was my favorite character to run Katie TF with before reward merits were introduced; I loved dropping RoA on Mary and company right as they spawned. This was my first character with an IO'ed build, and it's definitely the one whose build has changed the most over the years. More recently the blaster kinda took a back seat to other characters, but I was interested in trying out the changes in I24.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?

Dominator. Not so much disliked as completely ignored, because I had already tried out control sets using controllers. I didn't roll my fire^3 dom until after the GR expansion, but I had a ball with that character once I did.

1) My favorite AT was definitely the stalker. It might have been because my first stalker was an author avatar, but the Stalker is the only AT that I've made more than one of. It is also the one that I worked hardest at to be good with. With the melee combat, the burst damage, the stealthyness, the stalker itself was quite fun if not hard to use. Then, stalkers received a ton of updates, and I began to get better at IOing out my toons. After the ATO enhancements and the changes to assassin strike, my stalker went from decent to OMG THERE'S A GIANT HOLE IN YOUR CHEST!!! level of strength. It is no exaggeration that I call him an Archvillain, since he mows through AVs in 1 vs. 1 fights. It is at the point where, when fighting a team of 4 or so Heroes/AVs, I'll go "O.K., I got the one on the left, you get the one on the right, and you two get the two in the center". None of this concentrate on one crap; it is just a straight up brawl. I think the epitome of strength was when on Virtue we were attempting the Keep 'em separate badge, and my Stalker was able to nearly solo Nightstar.

Honorable mention goes to the Widow and the Dominator.

2)My favorite character was a Kinetic Melee/ Electric armor stalker.

3)The controller. The troller original drew my ire because it was slow and time consuming, but as I leveled up (Ice/Storm troller) and started getting more and more powers, the class became funner and funner. In my own personal storylines, my troller was written to be the strongest out of all of my toons. Sure, the stalker punches things hard and the defender shoots stuff, but the troller throws enemies around like ragdolls, so it fit. The interesting thing is that, after IOing him out, he became the strongest out of all of my characters in reality. Summoning Freezing Rain and Hurricane and Tornado and Jack Frost and all of my other pets, the damage that was initially low would rack up incredibly fast on single targets. The strongest "feat" he accomplished was soloing Ghost Widow as an AV at +2 his level; a feat that all my other AV killing toons found to be quite impossible. The second was when I was on a +1 ITF with 8 other players who were all so n00bish (just after double experience weekend) that they would take forever to kill a single spawn. I got frustrated then ran off ahead of everyone else and just started doing my own thing, and it turned out that my troller went through mobs just as fast as the rest of the group put together.

At that point, it was no longer a question of who was my strongest.

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

Masterminds. I loved the themed pets it reminded me of my necromancer from Dialbo II. Also pet classes are rare in MMO's now days, or if their is a pet class its nowhere near as many pets.

2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.
blems
Captain Den'Rath Mercs/Traps. Mercs have some prolblems (as anyone that played them can tell you) but I loved them all the same. He was the projection of my ideal villain. Man of honnor still nurseing an old gruge. Traps is a set I love no matter what. Its got tools for every situation and preplaning pays off, it also has/promotes a slower pace which I find more fun.

My other faveret is my DP/Traps Cor Victoria Von Heliwig. DP's ainamation were funky yes but dammit if it wasen't fun. Not to mention how well DP and traps meshed. DP also avoided my big issue with AR, in DP every attack came from the weapon in your hands. Whereas with AR you would have to cary around 3-4 diffrent guns; not being able to see those realy made playing AR difficult for me.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?

VEAT. when I heard about VEAT's I knew I wanted to try one, but those first 30 or so levels man... Ya see I diden't take stamna untill L30ish and I went with Crab so.... I couldent fight 2 even con without running out of end. There were so many time when I said thats IT I'MA DELATING THIS TOON! only to keep coming back and working on him. Eventualy got him to 50 and kitted out. he's quite the bad *** now.

Hrm, I may have to change my favorite to my new 50, an Elec/Elec/Mu Dom. Dominators are still definitely my favorite AT. If only I had more time to level more of them...

...and apparently I have played my Dominator so little I thought she was a Corrupter. Whoops. Edited my post to be more accurate, but yeah. I think my issue with the Dominator requires a lot more thought and focus for less returns- my Blaster hits harder and crowd controls better, as does my Defender, and my Stalker can one-shot stuff that is several levels above her.

Hm. Maybe I should try deleting/remaking them as another Archetype? They're only level 12, so no big loss.

Edit: And immediately after I say that I give them another shot, and do fairly well. Hm.

1. Tanker. Back when there was no aggro limit, nothing made me feel more heroic.

2. Ice/Elect Tanker. Started as a pure ice blaster. Loved it. Then moved to a Ice/Ice tank. It was terrible. I loved my defense. I loved that I felt immortal but the damage was extremely bad. As soon as I could make electric I did. Fell in love with it. I always played Ice shields loved every thing about it since the electric attack just put it over the top for me.

3. Defender. I came to love them. More like I came to respect the play style of a debuff/buffer class. I think the entire Kinetics Set is one of the best/unique power sets created in any game. Its going to be a shame to not be able to play it anymore. I personally haven't seen anything like it but I wish other games would take note of it.

Favorite Set that never made it live: Ice/Ice Brutes. They were there in the beta for COV. It was before Electric was a melee set for tanks. I fell in love with it and did not care about the problems it had with rage. Wish they kept it in the game.

[QUOTE=JayboH;4420110]Ok, perhaps this might sound silly at first, but please think about it.

Now that we are nearing the end, and several of us have been around since the beginning...

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?


1. Scrappers. I had more scrappers and more effective scrappers than any other AT.

2. Bully the Clown - ss/fire tank. Was my favorite concept which for my final few months on the game I made one costume on every toon a Bully the Clown. Then at some point I made an electric melee/fire armor brute and wished he had been Bully all along.

3. Easy - plant/fire dom hands down. I never thought I would have liked plant anything. I played a plant/rad troller to 50 and he was okay but when I finally hit on the plant/fire dom I was very impressed. Now he can solo so much content it just isn't fair to the NPCs most of the time. I named him Grassoline from one of the threads here on the forums.

Lol... Grassoline...

1. Oh man. Scrapper, or brute. Unsure on this one.
2. Favorite characteR: I couldn't say. Probably my first 50, Cripple Commando, a BS/Regen scrapper on Guardian. But I stopped playing him long ago.
3. Definitely Blaster. I never played a blaster past level 10 or so for a long time. Then Dual Pistols hit. LOVED it. Made my 3rd 50, Officer Heckler, and pretty much played him non-stop since the powerset was released until now.

1. A toss-up between Defenders and Stalkers. For much of my CoH career, I was known as something of a Dark/Dark Defender specialist, and near the end that extended to Dark/Dark Controllers. I also definitely made Stalkers something of a second specialty, particularly ones designed to "stick around and scrap."

2. Probably my favorite single character, however, is a WP/DB Tanker, of all things. Mirka is the character that best represents to me what it feels like to be a hero. "First in, last out, and if you want to get to them, you have to go through me. Bring your 'A' game..."

3. It took me years to warm up to controllers, despite teaming with more than a few who were absolutely game-changing additions to any team they were on. Finally made something of a novelty character (a Luna Lovegood tribute, of all things), with powersets chosen solely for thematic reasons and no consideration of effectiveness. Turned out to be among the most effective characters I ever made (and there were literally hundreds...). I was hooked...and had to listen to the smug "told you so" comments from some of the players of those game-changing controllers mentioned above. =P

As an aside, I never really warmed up to Masterminds. Only one ever got past level 30. Not bothered by the relative complexity (some of my fave powerset combinations are complicated to play)...just never really enjoyed playing them.

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

I haven't really been playing that long but based on what I've messed around with, I think overall I enjoy Blasters the most. They have a really limited set of tools to stay alive, compared to other ATs, and I think that forces you to play the most "cleverly", if that makes sense. Then again I'm mostly speaking from Assault Rifle / Devices here, so take that with a grain of salt.

2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.

My favorite character on the other hand is Blightfire, my Plant/Fire/Fire dominator. She became my favorite RP character because she was (and is) my favorite character to play in-game. Perma-domination, high ranged defense (not softcapped), and frankly ridiculous AoE damage output from Seeds, Creepers, and the Fire Assault/Fire Mastery combo...

I think I like playing her the most because her actual defenses (Defense/Resist/Regen) are marginal, and yet she not only tears through pretty much everything that doesn't resist confuse (looking at you, Vengeance'd Nemesis and Rularuu Overseers), but also never really gets defeated. That she plays, in-game, the way her personality says she should (i.e. hyperaggressive, lacking fine aim or control of her powers, doesn't play well with others) is icing on the cake.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?

The Dominator. My first two tries were both with Gravity as my primary and I found it super frustrating. I guess there wasn't much evolution here - I switched to Plant Control with Blightfire and she's spoiled me so thoroughly I've never looked back.

I'm glad - I too grew to love Dominators quite a bit and didn't think much of them initially.

1. My favorite archetype in the game: Defenders. That said an empathy defender is as much like a sonic defender is as a stalker compared to a blaster.

My favorite defender was, and is, my forcefield defender. He mitigates more damage with 95% soft cap defense than any healing set can proactively heal given the proximity, recharge and endurance factors would allow a healer.

2. My favorite character to play is my Bot/Storm. The KB mitigation and higher damage than my defenders is an amazing thing coupled with one of the most effective debuffing sets in the game.

3. Peacebringer. I could not bring myself to get my first Peacebringer to level 20. The late twenties are hard for the kheldians, but once you get your aggro/mezz sponge lobster form, it's LIGHTS OUT. Tri-form play is truly breathtaking.

[QUOTE=JayboH;4420110]

1. Looking back, considering everything, which was your favorite archetype in the game?

2. In possible contrast, when it comes to your favorite character, what kind was it? List AT and the two main sets.

3. What AT did you evolve to enjoy over the years that you disliked initially?

My answers:

1. Brutes. Hands down. I remember rolling a tanker in i6 before I bought CoV and really liking the no nonsense animations. I enjoyed scrappers, but they always seemed to be about martial finesse. I liked the raw feeling of the tanker secondaries and I remember thinking "it's a shame there isn't an AT where the primaries and secondaries are reversed"

2. Volkanik was, and still is my favourite character. Stone Melee / Firey Aura brute. I've detailed his history in other threads so won't repeat it here. While he may be forced to "die" next weekend, I'm going to be changing my name from SteelRat to Volkanik in any future forums that I log in as. Might not sound like much, but SteelRat has been my online monicker since about 1997. I've always felt a bit "cheap" using it because it's essentially someone elses character (the late Harry Harrison). Volk though, is truly mine.

3. Dominators. The one AT I tried a number of times and just couldn't get on with. Towards the end though I really found them a lot of fun to play. Had a Dark / Dark, Dark / Fire, Earth / Earth and Grav / Energy. Think the highest one I had I got to about level 40, but with all the brute alts I had too, fitting them all in was a bit of a task

Yeah again I think I will regret not giving Gravity another try after the revamp.