And the mask comes off.

[Power Gamer]

For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

I admit, invulnerability didn't feel that invulnerable. lol

Is it possible that his scrapper had mondo amounts of defense/dodge and therefore the math behind inv did not come as much into play as it does with a tank who might not take as much def?

[Prism Almidu]

My main was a Dark/Dark/Soul corruptor... fun to play the entire level range, even before I really got into a groove with it. Corruptors were always my favorite archetype idea... ranged damage and support abilities, with more of a focus on damage than the defenders had. Scourge is always amusing to see ticking away. I ended up using the Reactive Interface, though I'm beginning to think Diamagnetic would have been more defensible given the -tohit. Speaking of Reactive, does anyone know if there was a reason that Reactive's damage proc was moderate where every other Interface that did damage was minor? I'm not really fond of fire magic/powers, I initially wanted to use Spectral, but the damage won me over.

[Relitner]

Is it bad that I miss the scrapper forums and Mid's almost as much as I miss City of Heroes? The scrapper forums were/are the gold standard I hold all other MMO forums to; there just isn't another official forum I've seen that is as good. Elitist Jerks comes close, but it isn't official, nor was it as friendly at least from my experience.

Moonlighter~

Did the title not give it away? 

[HEATSTROKE]

I actually liked my Grav/Time controller myself.

Grav/Time was excellent.

[Relitner]

I was once told that statistically speaking, Blasters and Scrappers did roughly the same amount of damage on teams.  Given that statistically Blasters were dead more often than Scrappers suggests that when they were alive they did deal somewhat more damage in teams overall as you suggest.  However, that's just one situation among the totality of the game, and even in that situation Blaster damage dealing was only somewhat more effective, and only when they were alive, and their overall net contribution to the team still did not outstrip Scrappers.

That statistical data point was another confirmation of my analysis that Blasters were not in fact outdamaging anything nor could they on average.  One individual Blaster might do a lot, but that would be in spite of their design not because of it.

I played many, many blasters, and really hated the argument that blasters didn't need defense because they had range. It didn't make much difference when the mobs had ranged attacks that could easily neutralize a blaster in just a couple hits (base damage plus DOT).

Then there were the bosses who'd add spam holds to the mix (Insanity Mages, Gunslingers, Rikti, DE...). Seemed like range wasn't really that much of an advantage.

Energy/Energy had a few nice attacks that could keep a boss on the ropes long enough to whittle it down, but if either bone smasher, stun, or total focus missed, you were out of luck. Come to think of it, they were basically scrappers with no defense, anyhow.

[Remaugen]

It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.

[HEATSTROKE]

I played many, many blasters, and really hated the argument that blasters didn't need defense because they had range. It didn't make much difference when the mobs had ranged attacks that could easily neutralize a blaster in just a couple hits (base damage plus DOT).

Then there were the bosses who'd add spam holds to the mix (Insanity Mages, Gunslingers, Rikti, DE...). Seemed like range wasn't really that much of an advantage.

Energy/Energy had a few nice attacks that could keep a boss on the ropes long enough to whittle it down, but if either bone smasher, stun, or total focus missed, you were out of luck. Come to think of it, they were basically scrappers with no defense, anyhow.

At the very least Blasters should have been given some innate ranged defense..

[KennonGL]

OK, enough talk about Blasters, lets talk about something else.....hmm....Controllers?

My first "real" character, made about a week into the game (this would have been somewhere around I2),
was a Mind Control. 

Now, remember this was pre-containment day, damage for Controllers was admittedly rather low.

I remember how the boards would explode anytime the subject of Mind Control not having "pets"
came up and how so many folks said that Mind Control was worthless because of it. 

Of course, when folks talked about Controller pets, what they really meant was "fire imps"...

Meanwhile, I'd been happily solo'ing darn near everything the game had thrown at me up to that point,
thinking "Weak?  Not a chance.  OK, so yes it takes forever to actually kill anything....but everything I
see is a statue the entire time I'm killing them."  Well, except for those 5th Column robots, those were a pain.

Controllers remained my overall favorite AT from then on.  I played every AT (many many many alts worth),
but Controllers always felt the most "super" to me.

PsiBorg was one of my few permanent 50's, immune from possible deletion, and just as much fun to play
on the last days as he was during I2.

[HEATSTROKE]

It is amazing to me that so many others had great luck with Dominators, all of mine frustrated me to no end. I usually played solo and honestly, I never learned all the tricks for each AT, but some of them worked so much better for me than others. Maybe is was just the RNG playing with my head.

Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

But yes it can be rough going..but once you get there.. you can steam roll...

My Fire/Psi regularly farmed the wall in Cimerora for drops and influence.. I had an Ice/Thorn that would make scrappers ask me.. what the heck is that ??

In all honesty I think ANY toon can be played well in this game.. Some combos will work better than others in circumstances but anything can be effective..

[Beltor]

For any archetype position, you can always find at least one person that earnestly believed it.  I knew someone that believed his Invuln tanker was more squishy than his Invuln scrapper, even though that was literally mathematically impossible.  He was one of those players that believed the numbers did not necessarily represent actual game play.  There's exactly zero chance that was due to anything other than an extremely weird perception, but nothing I said ever dislodged him from it.

It may have been because scrappers don't always have to tank as long as Tankers. Because scrappers do more damage than tankers they take out enemies faster and don't have to endure the beatings as long. I noticed that on my Brute.

[Relitner]

Dominators were kind of tricky. If you played one before the Dominator buffs that came later certainly it could lead to frustration. If you were a person that utilized IO's then you could achive Perma-Dom. Once you got there... Dominators become a very strong class because of their ability to control, their resistance to Mezzing and the damage they can put out..

But yes it can be rough going..but once you get there.. you can steam roll...

My Fire/Psi regularly farmed the wall in Cimerora for drops and influence.. I had an Ice/Thorn that would make scrappers ask me.. what the heck is that ??

In all honesty I think ANY toon can be played well in this game.. Some combos will work better than others in circumstances but anything can be effective..

I had a Mind/Psi Dom (Moral Decay) on Victory. He was the only redside toon I played to 50, and if I recall correctly, it was all coasting downhill after about level 30. It was very fun toon to play, with VERY different strategies between solo and team.

[kierthos]

I only had a couple level 50s (even though I played for years). My first was a Shield/Superstrength Tanker, but my favorite character was my 2nd level 50, a Rad/Rad Defender named Brass Reactor. Rad/Rad is a pretty solid combination, and for the most part, I solo'd.

[Ironwolf]

After playing since the first day - I got to where just rolling a character up was boring, so I would either make a concept or study all the powers and then design a playstyle that often was beyond what you were supposed to do or was done in a completely different manner.

My first character was a blaster and my last alt was a blaster. I loved the blaster playstyle and so I designed one specifically based on using range as my best defense. I chose Sonic/Ice/Ice as the best ranged choice.

Primary:

Shriek - Ranged, Minor DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res
Scream - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res
Howl - Ranged (Cone), Medium DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res(All)
Shockwave - Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe Knockback, -Res(All)
Shout - Ranged, Heavy DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe -Res(All)
Amplify - Self +To-Hit, +DMG
Siren's Song - Ranged (Cone), Minor DMG(Energy), Foe Sleep
Dreadful Wail - PBAoE, Extreme DMG(Smash/Energy), Foe Disorient, -Res(All), Self -Recovery

Secondary:

Chilblain - Ranged, Moderate DoT(Cold), Foe Immobilize, -Recharge, -SPD
Chilling Embrace - Toggle: PBAoE, Foe -Recharge, -SPD, -DMG
Build Up - Self +DMG, +To-Hit
Ice Patch - Location (PBAoE), Foe Knockdown
Shiver - Ranged (Cone), Foe -Recharge, -SPD
Freezing Touch - Melee, Minor DMG(Cold), Foe Hold
Frozen Aura - PBAoE, Foe Sleep

Power Pools:
Super Speed, Combat Jumping,

Cold Mastery:
Snow Storm - Toggle: Ranged (Targeted AoE), Foe -Recharge, -SPD
Flash Freeze - Ranged (Targeted AoE), Minor DMG(Cold/ Lethal), Foe Sleep
Frozen Armor - Toggle: Self +Res(Cold), +DEF(Smash, Lethal)
Hoarfrost - Self Heal, +Max Health, +Res(Toxic)

Looking through the powers I found a gameplay style that was based completely on slowing the enemy or repulsing them from me so that I could destroy them at range. I had 3 sleeps, one mass knockback/knockdown (when slotted) that when used when they hit Ice Patch would even send bosses flying or flopping - I had multiple slows -Damage toggle if they close, a self heal, Armor and multiple holds. I could sleep nearly anything in the game and then tear them apart at will. In team the stacked sleeps still worked and the enemy slowed to a crawl and with -resistance in every Sonic attack and -slow with every ice attack was the safest and most powerful blaster I ever had.

I was able to tank Lord Recluse for over 30 seconds when the tank died using my armor and the -damage from Chilling Embrace and my self heal. After we got the tank on his feet I stayed with him debuffing Lord Recluse's damage and we had no further trouble. The rest of the team was amazed to see me surviving when the tank had the defense catastrophic failure and died in seconds and yet there I was still fighting and slowing recluse.

The only problem with Sonic was the god awful sounds effects. Mix a Sonic Blaster in with a Demon MM and everyone had a headache.

[Thunder Glove]

My first Dom that I seriously used was Gravity/Electric/Mu.  It took me a long time to get the hang of playing him (possibly hampered by the fact neither powerset is considered all that great), and I don't think he really came into his own until I hit 32 and got the Singularity, but he became one of my favorite characters, and Dominators became one of my favorite classes.  I made a second one (Earth/Ice/Leviathan) a couple of weeks after the shutdown announcement was made, and got her to 50+2 before it was all over.

I was just starting to get into Controllers when the game shut down, but I was enjoying my Dark/Dark 'troller, and I really wish I could have gotten him to 50 before it was all over (but I only got him into the 20s).  If the game comes back I'll probably try again.

[pinballdave]

I tried an ice/ice? dom first. It was very frustrating. I put doms aside, but then they changed the dominators so I tried the new electric  dom set with electric attack. Wow, that girl really let me learn dominators solo, and I soon was an asset on teams. It was a dom, yet it had a defendery feel with all the debuff and drains, the patch of doooooom. The only drawback was when the classic team 'boss' told me to stop using jolting chain because of too much kb.

[Thunder Glove]

Oh, yeah, I did have Elec/Elec and Fire/Fire Doms, too, but they never got too far.

I'm just sorry I never got to try Plant Control or an Illusion 'Troller..

[pinballdave]

I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded

[Surelle]

Oh, yeah, I did have Elec/Elec and Fire/Fire Doms, too, but they never got too far.

I'm just sorry I never got to try Plant Control or an Illusion 'Troller..

I had a 50 plants/thermal troller that I loved, and an Illusion/kinetics troller that I only pulled off the road at 46 because I got sick of being looked upon as a speed boost dispenser.     But the plants/thermal was pretty effortless to play on teams, and the illusion/kinetics I was planning on soloing from 46-50 but didn't get to it before the closure; illusion/kin is actually the most solo-friendly troller to me.  They do more damage than the rest.  I also had a 50 fire/empathy troller and she was about my favorite on teams.

I had a 50 dark/dark fender, but he was more a "hallway-style troller," which is probably why I played a fender at all.    I liked teaming with the trollers better, but that's just my own opinion.

[MM3squints]

I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded

Time manipulation was everything I wanted Rad to be. You replace the toggle debuffs with consoladated click debuffs that could be furthered powered with your initial debuff (Time Crawl I think it was called), a powerful heal with HoTs, and they got rid of less than useful powers (Mutation, EMP (these two are not entirely less than useful, but what Time replaces them with is certainly an upgrade), Lingering Radiation (used to be a real killer, b they nerf the crap out of -regan so it was only useful in PvP, then i13 made Rad pvp toons useless) and Fallout (I used this power once in i2 then realized vengeance was better use for dead players) for useful powers: ground AoE Hold, a single target hold, Farsight, temporal selection (give an ally the crack version of fortitude :O) and an upgraded version of Accelerated Metabolism.

[JanessaVR]

I alted a little before sunset on Illusion/Time. It seemed very offense minded

This was my main character before the shutdown.  Illusion/Time was the very best combo I had found for locking down whole groups of enemies.  And they go well together thematically as well - "time is an illusion."