New efforts!

[Ironwolf]

I knew in a given situation when my various tanks would fail and actually had a bind set up saying I AM ABOUT TO DIE - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE WITH ME.

If you experiment long enough you know when critical mass is reached and roughly how long you have left.

My best memory in the game was an Ice/Storm controller in a large room. We had our normal large herd of chaos going and a player got knocked back into a second group. Then got further knocked back into a 3rd group. I was going crazy locating myself dead in the middle of all 3 groups and keeping them all juggled at once. After the battle the entire team said without your controls we would have been dead. It was a great feeling and the reason people love CoH - you can do seriously heroic actions.

[Azrael]

I knew in a given situation when my various tanks would fail and actually had a bind set up saying I AM ABOUT TO DIE - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE WITH ME.

If you experiment long enough you know when critical mass is reached and roughly how long you have left.

My best memory in the game was an Ice/Storm controller in a large room. We had our normal large herd of chaos going and a player got knocked back into a second group. Then got further knocked back into a 3rd group. I was going crazy locating myself dead in the middle of all 3 groups and keeping them all juggled at once. After the battle the entire team said without your controls we would have been dead. It was a great feeling and the reason people love CoH - you can do seriously heroic actions.

The varied archetypes and how they 'sang' together made the combat in CoH an indelible experience.  Chaos and order and all the colours in-between.

Azrael.

[LadyVamp]

Speaking of Tanks, how many others participated in Tanker Tuesdays?

Always left me a bit of a problem which Tank to bring. Great fun regardless doing all Tank groups.

frequently when it was on Freedom.  Ran a wp/ss tank named Lil Snow Mouse.

[Drauger9]

So few people appreciated Electric Armor.

I lucked into it combined with Dark Melee...what a combo!

Late to the electric armor party but YES!! My first brute was an elec/elec brute. So much fun, e-specially when I finally slotted him with set bonuses. :).

I know some people didn't take (electrical empulse I think it was? The last tier in the elec armor set) because of the end crash and defense debuff. But if you timed it right, used you self heal (with a boost to end if I remember) crunch a few purple inspirations and a blue or two. You could live past the end reduction and debuff penalty while still farming. ;)

SS/Elec or elec/elec brute will be my budget farmer when the game comes back. I'll do SS/fire eventually but I think I'll re-roll my original farmer for nostalgia :).

[LadyVamp]

I knew in a given situation when my various tanks would fail and actually had a bind set up saying I AM ABOUT TO DIE - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE WITH ME.

If you experiment long enough you know when critical mass is reached and roughly how long you have left.

My best memory in the game was an Ice/Storm controller in a large room. We had our normal large herd of chaos going and a player got knocked back into a second group. Then got further knocked back into a 3rd group. I was going crazy locating myself dead in the middle of all 3 groups and keeping them all juggled at once. After the battle the entire team said without your controls we would have been dead. It was a great feeling and the reason people love CoH - you can do seriously heroic actions.

I ran an emp/rad def in the heady days with the macro, "Tank getting everything.  Run or die!" when that critical point happened, and it was all I could do to keep the tank running.  To my credit, I only lost 3 tanks in 8 years of doing that.  All of those were cases where I knew the tank wouldn't survive anyway.  I threw all buffs and heals and then ran like hell.  Tp'd tank out if still alive and pulled rest of team.  In all that time, only had one scrapper who argued with me about it.  Tanked kicked him.  Scrapper didn't like the fact I was healing but not attacking.  Funny that most of the heals were going to scrapper.  Talk about biting the hand that fed him.

[Joshex]

I knew in a given situation when my various tanks would fail and actually had a bind set up saying I AM ABOUT TO DIE - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE WITH ME.

If you experiment long enough you know when critical mass is reached and roughly how long you have left.

My best memory in the game was an Ice/Storm controller in a large room. We had our normal large herd of chaos going and a player got knocked back into a second group. Then got further knocked back into a 3rd group. I was going crazy locating myself dead in the middle of all 3 groups and keeping them all juggled at once. After the battle the entire team said without your controls we would have been dead. It was a great feeling and the reason people love CoH - you can do seriously heroic actions.

WP for the win, self rez that I can pull off so quick that 1; it negates the defeat (handy for those master runs), 2; I can taunt the group back on me before anyone dies, 3; untouchable for half a minute to get all my toggles up and slam through it again. defense and self heal/regen through the roof and enemy -accuracy; it will take about 20 minutes even for really rough content to take me down, and that my friends is long enough for self-rez to recharge, with the right speed ups and attack ordering.

the only content that can get me down quicker is +4 incarnate banished pantheon and only if there are certain masks and priestesses/shamen and only when tanking 3 mobs at once, that and can't handle arachnos easily which is one reason I never tried tanking recluse on it. please help me change that after the game comes back, need a good non-masters STF where I can see if I fall flat.

on rikti raids, I always found my own spot on the ship got us lots and lots of merits, usually I'd be surrounded by magus after a round or two of spawns, by tanking them I also took the brunt off the rest of the raiders so we got even more merits because of less hospitalization. good times.

[Arcana]

WP for the win, self rez that I can pull off so quick that 1; it negates the defeat (handy for those master runs), 2; I can taunt the group back on me before anyone dies, 3; untouchable for half a minute to get all my toggles up and slam through it again. defense and self heal/regen through the roof and enemy -accuracy; it will take about 20 minutes even for really rough content to take me down, and that my friends is long enough for self-rez to recharge, with the right speed ups and attack ordering.

Pthhthh.  Soul Transfer makes Resurg look like a wet firecracker.  In fact, while Willpower was no slouch, and in the typical build it was usually more powerful than Dark Armor, once you start throwing in high end invention builds and incarnate powers in my opinion Dark Armor had a significant edge over Willpower in most cases.  One on one, soloing AVs, I'd take Willpower.  One vs lots, taking on entire rooms, Dark Armor.  In high defense or high tohit debuff environments, Dark Armor could get shredded where Willpower would stand tall.  But if Dark Armor could connect consistently with Dark Regeneration, in a high recharge high defense build it was really, really difficult to kill.  And if you did kill it, best be standing at least 25 feet away.  I had a high-recharge build for my EM/DA that got Dark Regen down to about 7 seconds of recharge *and* have enough endurance to power it at that rate (barely).  Compared to that even RTTC pales.

Not entirely jokingly I once suggested that all Blasters get Soul Transfer as an inherent power, skinned to their primary.  With a 60 second recharge.

[Arcana]

SS/Elec or elec/elec brute will be my budget farmer when the game comes back. I'll do SS/fire eventually but I think I'll re-roll my original farmer for nostalgia :).

If and when the game comes back if I feel the need to farm up a bunch of resources, I would probably roll Claws/Fire brute.  Until you can make really strong builds, you're really mostly endurance bottlenecked on AoEs.  I think Claws/Fire is the most endurance efficient farmer you can roll although I don't have specific calculations to prove it.  But because of a glitch that got a pass from the devs, Claws has really efficient AoEs and Fire has both extra offense and endurance recovery.

Interesting question.  If you were starting from scratch and had to both level it from one without significant power leveling assistance and also build it with nothing but SOs and common IOs, what would people choose to build for a farming alt that could build up resources fast for their other alts, if they were so inclined to do so.  I'm curious to know what people think would be faster or better than Claws/Fire brute, and why.

[Vee]

Claws/fire was going to be my choice if the game came back for first toon out of the gate. I did one on a new server as an experiment to see how fast i could get up to 50 and IO'd with only enough seed money to buy a raptor pack. It was just silly how fast and easy it went.

[Golden Aurora]

Talking about all these builds really makes me miss the game. My favorite chara I rolled was a fire/energy brute.
The resists and Def went really well together. The tier 9 made her unkillable for a very nice long duration.
I remember the crash wasn't that bad either.
Combine that with high rech and fire sword circle spam... It was nice.
*sighs*

[duane]

Talking about all these builds really makes me miss the game. My favorite chara I rolled was a fire/energy brute.
The resists and Def went really well together. The tier 9 made her unkillable for a very nice long duration.
I remember the crash wasn't that bad either.
Combine that with high rech and fire sword circle spam... It was nice.
*sighs*

I could almost pick one powerset per archetype and then still have a hard time deciding the most fun. sigh.   

[worldweary]

I did a few when they rolled around on Virtue.. People seemed to like my Shield/Ice tank.. wasnt a combo you see very much..

This is a combo I will be trying.Shield Charge+Ice Patch alone would make it hard to kill.

[Golden Aurora]

I can remember back in the day when a fire/ice tank was what people rolled. This was back when there wasn't an aggro cap. Just herd them around the corner into an ice slick and spam burn. Or better yet: Dumpster diving! Jump into a dumpster on the dreck map and you're good to go.

[HEATSTROKE]

Interesting combo. One of my tanks was Ice Armor/Stone Melee

I had an Ice Armor/Stone Melee tank. It was pretty good. Perma Hoarfrost with Hibernate was pretty darn good.

[HEATSTROKE]

I knew in a given situation when my various tanks would fail and actually had a bind set up saying I AM ABOUT TO DIE - RUN FOR YOUR LIFE OR DIE WITH ME.

My tanks are unfamiliar with this death thing you are talking about....

[worldweary]

My Stone Armor/Dark Melee/Soul tank could run anything but it was kinda boring.No purples or billion
influence builds needed.

[HEATSTROKE]

My Stone Armor/Dark Melee/Soul tank could run anything but it was kinda boring.No purples or billion
influence builds needed.

I had the reverse.. Dark Armor/Stone Melee. The ability to perma stun bosses is awesome..

[brothermutant]

I had a Dark Armor/Claws build on a Brute I think, rolled it with Claws as I saw on Mids the Damage per Energy Spent was perfect for the end hog of the Dark Armor set. Once I saw how much AoE dmg I did, It was one of my favorite toons.

[HEATSTROKE]

You know what I was surprised I didnt see more of in game? I didnt see a lot of Shield/Fire. Maybe I wasnt looking hard enough..

I mean just the ability to Shield Charge, Fire Sword Circle, Fireball (with the APP), and Combustion was worth it in itself.. and then throw in a little Breath of Fire for kickers... lotta AoE and pretty much softcapped to every position..

[Sinistar]

My Stone Armor/Dark Melee/Soul tank could run anything but it was kinda boring.No purples or billion
influence builds needed.

Dark Melee...I honestly just couldn't get myself to like that set.  I tried it on a brute and scrapper and just couldn't get into that set. Mileage varies, but when the game does return I shall try it again.