Recommended Powers

[Charged Mastermind]

Give us some convincing on powers to use for new characters, assuming we get CoH back. Maybe you like Ice Control and want more people to use it, or maybe Dual Pistols, or Stone Armor, the list goes on.

I, personally, would recommend Force Fields. I ALWAYS go on about Force Fields but they grant a lot more Defense than you would think. While I think it's better meant for players that prefer teaming, it is a great Buffing power for Controllers and Masterminds.

[Blackshear]

I myself became enamored of Water Blast and Street Justice, there at the end.  Not together, of course, but each one individually rocked.

[Angel Phoenix77]

I would recommend trying grav/storm, this was my favorite type of controller :)

[ukaserex]

I can tell you, I love any forcefield from an ally, especially during an MSR. Darn magus' can stun my blaster at 200 yards, it seems.

I think - well, there are still so many powersets that I haven't tried. I still haven't gotten a PB to 50, although I have gotten my warshade "Galactic Kegger" to incarnate levels. Without Blinkie Finder, well, it probably would have taken me a lot longer. Hated those void stalkers until I got the hang of getting them before they got me.

So, me, I'd love to see more PB's, more ice blasters, and there's just too many others that I want to try and master for me to list.

[houtex]

Brawl and whatever secondary you want.  Go.

[Ankhammon]

I had a very interesting combo from test that I wanted to take live. It was a Bio/Ice tanker that used the magic power pool. I didn't get him into the 40s so I could try it out with Leviathan for the nice cone damage and immob. It should have been able to wreck faces pretty well.

[Taceus Jiwede]

I had a Dark/Kin Corrupter that I loved.  It was a nice combo of buffing allies and debuffing enemies.  But the big one I think people should try out is Energy blast.  Now I have gone on about how much I loved my Energy blaster countless times on this forum.  But it really was the bee's knees.  It did really good damage and had a very nice balance of ST and AoE.  And once you got a hang of the knockback you could use it to your advantage.  Only certain moves had knockback so you could use them to push enemies near each other for the AoE's.

[Supermax]

I, personally, would recommend Force Fields.

After getting an Illusion/FF controller to 50 and beyond, I wouldn't suggest FF to anybody. While defense is nice, the set doesn't provide anything else, while some other sets provide defense and plenty of other tools.

I often got to watch as Ill/Rad controllers demolished AV's while being no less safe than me....while I was spending 5 minutes just to kill one boss. Sure I was safe, but killing anything was a mind numbing chore. The playstyle was also pretty boring...just turn on the shield, give bubbles to teammates, and then you can forget that the set even exists, because you won't be using any other powers from it.

I'd go as far as to say that FF was the weakest of all the secondaries, simply because it was such a one trick pony. A few minor changes (for example changing the mostly useless Force Bubble to some kind of PBAoE team buff) would have made it much more competitive.

[Undarl]

But the big one I think people should try out is Energy blast.  Now I have gone on about how much I loved my Energy blaster countless times on this forum.  But it really was the bee's knees.  It did really good damage and had a very nice balance of ST and AoE.  And once you got a hang of the knockback you could use it to your advantage.  Only certain moves had knockback so you could use them to push enemies near each other for the AoE's.

Energy Blast could be amazing, in the right hands. I saw it on a few occasions. Sadly, as a player of a lot of melee characters those occasions of brilliance were drowned out in my mind by the legions of Energy users who insisted on blowing every mob away from me. :P After a while I'd get tired of chasing them and just sit and watch. :)

In the last days before the sunset I'd become rather fond of Staff Fighting, which I'd recommend to anyone. Does it much resemble actual staff fighting? No. But it's a lot of fun.

[Eoraptor]

I always told anyone starting the game for the first time to take Willpower, it was a well rounded secondary that didn't require too much micromanagement or fine tuning to get a lot of effect from. beyond that, I rally can't offer a lot of advice, as all the powers work so nicely with a variety of play styles.

[Blackstar5]

kinetics... as a pri on defenders and as a sec on trollers or corrupters. heals, fulcrum shift, a nice little end boost when needed.

[Supermax]

More on topic, I'll mention the best powersets, in my opinion, for each hero AT. Pretty much what I'd recommend to maximize the AT's effectiveness.

Blaster:
Primary - I still don't think anything can hold a candle to Fire. Other sets are good, but nothing else can do as much consistent ST or AoE damage. Archery is probably second, but its long animation times on the main powers made it a lot less fun for me.
Secondary - With I24 I think EM was going to become the best (with the addition of the self heal). But since that never happened, probably the most useful set is Mental. Drain Psyche can give insane levels of survivability, pretty much completely changing the blaster playstyle.

Controller:
Primary - One of the few AT's where I can't pick a best. All were good in their own ways. Towards the end of CoH's existence, I really became a fan of Plant Control. Someone else put it best - "It's a one trick pony, but the one trick is amazing." That trick was Seeds of Confusion. Again, it completely changed the controller playstyle and made it infinitely safer.
Secondary - No way to pick. All were good.

Defender:
Primary - All were good.
Secondary - Definitely Sonic. Out of all the AT's where Sonic Blast was available, it made most sense to use it on a defender. The -res debuff was a lot more significant, and you could apply insane amounts of -res on everything.

Scrapper:
Primary - Not all were good, but most were. Too many good ones to list, but towards the end I really fell in love with War Mace. It was added for scrappers pretty late, so it was very rare, but after getting a WM scrapper to around level 28, I could see it had tremendous potential. Pretty sure Clobber was the best single target scrapper attack by quite a large margin.
Secondary - All were good in their own ways.

Tanker:
Primary - Too hard to pick, but my favorite was Fire. It had plenty of survivability and lots of extra offensive power. My Fire tank could stand next to a Stone tank without taking any more damage, but doing like 10 times more damage.
Secondary - Definitely SS. Not even a question in my mind.

[HEATSTROKE]

 Any powerset can be good.. if built well and played well..

[Taceus Jiwede]

Energy Blast could be amazing, in the right hands. I saw it on a few occasions. Sadly, as a player of a lot of melee characters those occasions of brilliance were drowned out in my mind by the legions of Energy users who insisted on blowing every mob away from me. :P After a while I'd get tired of chasing them and just sit and watch. :)

Heh yep I agree completely.  You just had to set some guidelines because I at least understood why people didn't like you blowing the enemy right out of their face.  Although I am guilty of it but that is how I learned not to do it.  I basically stuck with what I consider the knockback rules.  Pick one target at a time and burn it, it had good dps so never took more then a few hits.  Only use aoe knockback as control to keep them in place.  If you must nova, make sure its corpses you are knocking back.