Bastille Boy

The most fun I've had roleplaying in CoH/CoV has been on villain teams. Villain teams are harder to find, though. I recommend being a rogue and either making a base or joining a supergroup that has portals to both sides of the game. Then you can live primarily on redside but switch easily to blueside when there's a team you want to join. It's perfectly in character. Rogues are mercenaries, after all.

Sometimes I just want to crush things, and then anything difficult is annoying. But sometimes I'm in the mood for a dangerous fight. I actually enjoy fighting enemies that sap endurance, blind, or stack holds, if they're not too overpowered. Getting temporarily disabled while my HP is still high gets my adrenaline going. I'm in danger, but I could still win. The threat has to be dramatically visible or audible. The sound of my toggles shutting off. A cloud of smoke and enemies vanishing. My toon stuck in a Tesla cage. Debuffs aren't fun to deal with because my toon is ineffective and I don't viscerally understand why. Sure, I can see the little icon in the corner. The most annoying enemy groups are the ones that can teleport away, like Sky Raiders. Chasing them down is an annoying grind.

Thanks for pointing that out. I hadn't thought about tertiary pools, so I hadn't even thought about playing this character as a Defender or Corruptor. The hypnosis powers, domination, and terrify are the three things that are thematically important. Perhaps I could make do with two of the three. Confusion powers would be very much in character for this toon, but they're not essential. I'm in danger of getting a severe case of alt-itis! It's tempting to try out a bunch of combinations (including the original plan) and see how they work.

Update: I'm going with Mind/FF. Thematically almost as good as traps, and a less unusual combination.

These are really helpful answers. Thanks! The comments about group play make me hesitate about this. I want this toon for redside roleplaying, so having a build that works in groups (especially small groups) matters. Mind control is essential to the character concept. I know that mind control has a better reputation as a dominator power, but Mind/Traps would fit the character concept really well. Mind/FF would be a good fit, too. Mind/Pain and Mind/Emp are also possible. [Edit: I considered TA, but it's not a good fit.] Thematically, the only dominator secondary that really fits the character concept is Electric Assault. Mind/Psi is possible but a bit of a stretch. I've rolled one controller and one dominator before and played them to mid-30s. The Mind/Emp controller is great fun on teams but painfully slow solo. The Elec/Elec dominator is too squishy for me. I'm used to playing tankers and scrappers.

I have a character concept for roleplaying toon. Thematically, mind control and traps would be the perfect powerset combination. But I notice that this combination is extremely rare. In the September data, only two people had played this combination up to level 50. I'm tempted to try this out on the theory that any powerset combination is viable with patience and skill. But I'm worried that this could be unpleasant to play. Would this combination be a total train wreck (in a bad way)? Will it be near-impossible to play solo? Would it contribute anything to a high level team?

I have an ice/WP scrapper, currently level 44. It is amazing for solo play. The -Recharge and -Speed debuffs, along with Frozen Aura and Ice Patch, help with surviving difficult encounters. It's not ideal for a team with brutes, since the debuffs interfere with the Fury mechanic (or so I understand). On a team without brutes, an ice melee scrapper is effectively damage plus support. You want Greater Ice Sword as soon as you can get it. It's your most important single-target damage dealer. Freezing Touch is great for fighting lieutenants, but for bosses and above, the debuffs are more useful than the hold. I would take Boxing on the way to getting Tough and Weave, but I wouldn't slot it.

I disliked AE farming until I started designing my own farms. Creating costumes is the best part of the game. The grind of farming is less of a grind when your opponents look interesting. Those poor devils...if I keep this up, I will kill Kenny more times than South Park has. AE can also be good for testing builds and powersets and for answering absurd questions like, "If the police had to put Bastille Boy (my main) back in jail...not that he'd give them a reason to...should they bring guns or 'less lethal' weapons?" Answer: They should leave their pistols and their assault rifles at the station. A few advanced stun guns, with conductive aura enabled, will have him on his knees, fast. Regular guns + lots of smoke bombs = stalemate (they can't hurt my toon, but he can't hit back once he runs out of yellows). I've seen some great story arcs in AE. I'd like to see more. The most interesting ones play with game mechanics to tell the story. There's one arc (can't remember the name or number) in which a ghost named "Regret" follows you around. It doesn't attack, it's just...there.

The line between natural and mutation is also fuzzy. Mutation is a natural process. So is training hard to develop a genetic gift. We have to identify a single origin for all of a character's powers, but in character bios and RP, it often makes sense for the primary and secondary powersets to have different origins. Since the official origin setting only has a minor effect on gameplay, I don't worry about it too much. I do care about making my characters' powers consistent with their origin story. (So, e.g., I chose super jump rather than flight for my Invuln/SJ tanker, since his origin story involved a genetic gift for taking punches + training at the gym.)

The cheapest way to get new content is to support player created content through AE. Here are some easy ways to help. Give creators who are writing stories with plots a clear way to distinguish their mission arcs from farms. Maybe there could be a set of radio buttons, searchable by players: "complete story," "farm," "build testing," and "other." Some villain groups that appear in the game aren't available in AE (e.g., Prisoners). Why not include them? Keep both standard rewards and ticket rewards. I've read old AE guides that say specifying an enemy group is optional. It's required now. It'd be good to make this optional again. Maps with no enemies except for specified boss groups can be good for certain plot lines. It would benefit all players, but especially AE content creators, to add more costume options and more options for body shape (ideally including androgynous characters). Like many others in this thread, I'd like to keep the characters I have without starting over!

I caught the base-building bug. I'm not currently looking for a supergroup for these toons...but I am looking for opportunities for roleplaying. Especially roleplaying with morally ambiguous characters!

I read the post subject and thought this was about David Hume. If 18th century Scottish philosophers are resurrected with superpowers, they should definitely be required to register with the authorities.

Are there any roleplay-oriented supergroups on Indomitable? I'd like to find one, especially for my redside alts. Toons I currently play: Thetawave (controller, mind-emp, currently rogue): student of mind control techniques, including hypnotism and lying. Albrecht's Boy (dominator, elec-elec, currently villain): contrary to rumor, becoming a mad scientist's test subject was his free choice. Bastille Boy (tanker, invul-SJ, hero): sent to prison, learned to fight, stopped unprovoked attacks, escaped, pardoned, regrets escaping. A redside group would be the best fit for (1) and (2). That said, they could switch to blueside for the right group. The hypnotist could decide to use his powers only for good. Sparky isn't leaving Dr. Albrecht's lab, but the doctor isn't evil, just mad. (The test subject, on the other hand...) I know that Indominable isn't the main roleplay server. But I'd like to stay on Indominable.

Thanks for these suggestions! It sounds as if I'm going to have to get creative with the narrative on some of these missions. Rather than "X has been unjustly imprisoned," I could say "X has been arrested and is being held. They'll be unjustly imprisoned for 20 years unless they're rescued now." That would explain why the rescue target isn't in a cell (or a dormitory surrounded by dozens of other prisoners) and is kneeling with their hands up. I saw that AE makes it easy to design prison uniforms. It's possible to make striped ones, too.

I'm working on a mission arc that involves rescuing several wrongly imprisoned people. I set the first mission in the Zig Breakout map. It works great. The three people to be rescued automatically appear in the map's three cells. The other missions have to be on other maps for the plot of the arc to make sense. Are there maps other than the Zig Breakout map that include a jail or prison area? Are there any such maps where rescue targets will always appear in jail? Am I right to think that it's not possible to use either the Prisoners standard mob type or the Prison Guards type in an AE mission?