Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...

[Codewalker]

Not a buff, but at some point the base tohit for low level characters was increased to avoid the "whiffing in the tutorial" syndrome. It gradually fell off as you approached level 20 or so:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Beginner's_Luck#Beginner.27s_Luck

[Primantis]

I always hated having to take my Blueside Defenders/Corruptors to full-Villain in order to pick up a PPP that had a +defense armor (Black Scorpion's)

AFAIK they were the the only two ATs that had to switch for a +def armor epic power.

I was slightly hopeful that some day the Devs would add either Ice or Energy Mastery to the APPs to equalize things a bit.. But alas..


Also, what about way back in I6-7 or so when Villains were locked into their PPP choices permanently? That was pretty cruddy too.

[Colette]

"...on the last two mission of an ITF a 8 MM team was the very definition of awesome. I ran one of those, 7x demons and 1 bots. (the former) Lag valley was a blast, watching our giant horde tear through those poor traitors."

:: Slobber! :: That does sound fun! But does anyone have experience running such a team in a cave, or Oreobagel?

"I always hated having to take my Blueside Defenders/Corruptors to full-Villain in order to pick up a PPP..."

Hmm... I took a hero scrapper 'round the alignments to pick up maces. It was fun! I just RPed it as an infiltration mission.

"I somehow ended up on an all-defender team in Bloody Bay.  The leader had Team Teleport, allowing all eight of us to move and fire as a unit."

Very nice. I expect that was fun.

My necro MM had TTport, grant invis and shadowfall. I called it a stalkermind. Good times.

[Aggelakis]

EDIT:  Regarding an accuracy falloff around 20 - a lot of it is perceptual, of course, but I seem to recall hearing of an actual coded "beginner's luck" buff (meant to compensate for the nigh-uselessness of TOs, and not wanting to drive off new players) that was supposed to end about that time.  Can Arcana or someone else who's delved into the code and/or the numbers confirm or deny this?

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Beginner's_Luck    (table)

Started at +15% tohit bonus at level one (final base tohit 90% at level 1) and downgraded to standard (base 75%) at level 20.

[Colette]

Aha! With tactics giving an unslotted bonus to "to-hit" of 10% (varying by AT, from 7 to 12.5) I only lost 5% when beginner's luck shut off at 20. At 22, with two slots, the loss is only 1%. And the bonus applies to the entire team.

That explains why people liked teaming with me despite my being a bossy jerk. 

[LadyShin]

Aha! With tactics giving an unslotted bonus to "to-hit" of 10% (varying by AT, from 7 to 12.5) I only lost 5% when beginner's luck shut off at 20. At 22, with two slots, the loss is only 1%. And the bonus applies to the entire team.

That explains why people liked teaming with me despite my being a bossy jerk. 

  Being a level 50+3 natural Stalker (MA+Nin) with purple and event-earned IO sets, over 15 reward tokens earned, I still had to beg to team with people! in the last few months I couldn't hardly find a team willing to run an incarnate trial at all. I began noticing many people forming up teams silently (maybe on Skype?) and not responding to join requests or inviting anyone else. Nothing was spoken or typed in the game, people would form up and assemble without a word and begin their missions.

[Heroette]

Near the end, I wanted to run an "All Storm Controller" ITF and I managed to get a team together.  It was the most fun ITF ever.  Watching all the Lightning Storms at one time on Lag Hill was epic.  That is something I will always have fond memories of.

[Colette]

"Being a level 50+3 natural Stalker (MA+Nin) with purple and event-earned IO sets, over 15 reward tokens earned, I still had to beg to team with people!"

RPers on Virtue didn't team by AT. They teamed because they knew their teammates were awesome. (And they let me tag along, too.)

[srmalloy]

Near the end, I wanted to run an "All Storm Controller" ITF and I managed to get a team together.  It was the most fun ITF ever.  Watching all the Lightning Storms at one time on Lag Hill was epic.  That is something I will always have fond memories of.

The all-Kinetics ITF that Kay ran on Guardian was utter, screaming chaos and some of the most side-splittingly funny play I've been involved with; eight stacked Speed Boosts, people unconcerned about being in melee range because that's where all the heals were, stacks of Siphon Speed, Siphon Power, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift grinding through Rommy's resistance...

[LadyShin]

Personally, my favorite mission to run was Emperor Cole's personal story, where you got the option of facing off against the entire army of Arachnos single-handedly.

For some reason my client would crash whenever I kept up the area attacks, so it was pretty much dropping one Arachnos soldier at a time until I got to Lord Recluse.


 

Then I dropped him with a Zeus bolt. 

[dwturducken]

My Friday night group made an all-Stalker team. (I feel like I've talked about this one, before...) It wasn't much until level six, when the assassination strikes came available, but it was still breezy on the "find the glowy" missions. Once we had the assassin strikes (there were six of us that first week), we were pretty unstoppable. We only got to the high 20s before the end came, but it was probably one of the more fun team concepts we came up with, as far as playability and mechanics are concerned.

Also, no knocking enemies back into walls with a stalker team.

[doctorlurkin]

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Beginner's_Luck    (table)

Started at +15% tohit bonus at level one (final base tohit 90% at level 1) and downgraded to standard (base 75%) at level 20.

I never knew this existed! After reading, I started digging through the Sentinel+ file for my Widow.  I stopped playing her at lvl 23 becaue the hit rate was just awful. I had Combat Training: Offensive slotted with 2 lvl 25 SO accuracy ans 1 DO accuracy, but I haven't crunched any numbers to see how much the buff was. I didn't know there was such a huge difference between accuracy and to hit buff.  After some more looking, I think the build wasn't near as good as it could have been at that point.  When CoH comes back, I think I'll try it again.

Personally, my favorite mission to run was Emperor Cole's personal story, where you got the option of facing off against the entire army of Arachnos single-handedly.

For some reason my client would crash whenever I kept up the area attacks, so it was pretty much dropping one Arachnos soldier at a time until I got to Lord Recluse.


 

Then I dropped him with a Zeus bolt. 

I ran this one too & enjoyed it immensely, although it took forever because I also had to pretty much aggro one or 2 at a time also.  It took me quite a few tries because of mapserver disconnects.  After a bit of research I found out that the client and server could barely stay in sync during that mission.  Apparently there were just too many items on that map for them to keep track of. 

[Illusionss]

Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping through the portal - hated that one (especially solo) but i have to admit, i'd jump at the chance to go for that again right now.

I used to park on top of the barn near the mission entrance and go make a sandwich, get a drink, whatever. Unless I needed to level up, then I would turn it into a kill-all, ignoring scurrying Fir Bolg as I went. That mission was a massive failure of the "fun" factor, no two ways about it.