TheOtherTed

My other point still remains, though - "taking it on the chin" is not the only way, nor even the one true way, to mitigate the alpha strike in this game. Many other MMOs are designed that way (too many, IMO); this one isn't. I'm glad to see, however, that you acknowledge that the tank does not have a natural monopoly on leading the team.

Thing is, this is one of very few games where debuffs, controls, and blasts can significantly disrupt the alpha so that nobody has to actually take it (hence my previous comment about Dark defenders being the best tanks). This game also allows the team to divvy up aggro, so long as the players have a pretty good sense of what their characters can (and cannot) do. When I teamed regularly on live, I found that teams did better when players were allowed to play to their strengths. My three rules whenever I had the star were 1) stick together (except maybe Brutes), 2) watch each others' backs, and 3) take what you want but eat what you take. Those rules were almost always enough - tank or no tank, the team would generally find a way to synergize and get the job done.

Huh. I thought it was boils because of the tea. I can't stand tea.

Nothing against melee tanks, but give me a Dark/anything defender any day. Barring that, anything that brings the chaos (Storm, Illusion, whatever).

Are you sure that's the real Positron?

I tried the Mongolian bow, but ran into two issues. First, there's a bit on each horn that can't be re-colored, and that can't be matched with anything on the palette. Second, while it otherwise looked fine in the character creator, it looked tiny in game - my tall, fierce Amazon looked like she was plinking away with a toy bow. I went with the composite bow instead. Not necessarily true to form, but it looks "good enough" for me.

Hey, I'm just glad I'm not the only one who remembers...

Was never really a fan, but I went ahead rolled up the Archery / Martial Combat Amazon with a vaguely Greco-Roman outfit, and it's been a crazy amount of fun. I had tried MC with Dual Pistols, but for some reason, I found that combo surprisingly boring. Maybe I'm just hooked on Archery. Possibly.

Off topic, but, meh...

Is it weird that the first powerset combo that my brain vomited up was an Archery / Martial Combat Blaster? Anyway, if I were to create a classical era Amazon, I probably wouldn't go with a bare-handed fighting style. As an example from a parallel myth, I've been running a Valkyrie as a War Mace / Shield Brute, and it's been lots of fun (although I have no idea if it's "optimal" in any way). I could also see pairing Battle Axe, Broadsword, or (as someone suggested) Titan Weapons with Invulnerability, Willpower, or even Super Reflexes, but, again, I can't make any claim for relative strengths. Edit: Specific AT - really your choice. Personally I'd lean away from Tanker, and slightly on the Scrapper side of Scrapper or Brute.

Illusion/kinetics can work - but so could ill/dark for a different type of power drain (not to mention "curses" and stealth). Also, if the illusions really are just in the minds of the victims, a mind/kin or mind/dark controller could work as well. And just to muddy the waters further, I could see a mind/psionics dominator playing the role too.

For me, the best moments have been when a chaotic (or newbie-heavy) team actually comes together as a team. Usually after a team wipe. Or two. Or four. Sometimes all it takes is someone saying "stick together" or "watch each other's backs," and it just happens. Seeing my teammates (and myself) become a bit more aware and tactically-minded, a bit more confident, and a bit more willing to take on greater challenges - that's a good session. Naturally, it all falls apart again when people got overconfident (or when someone with Speed Boost joins the team), but, hey, that's part of the fun too. I also like playing with "trouble children," i.e., players who are genuinely trying but are fighting the odds in some way (due to lag, say, or inexperience with their powers, or, occasionally, disability). It suddenly becomes a sort of one-on-one game of helping them out, and keeping them going, and giving them the space to find their niche.

You've got Siphon Power! You've got Transference! You've got farking Fulcrum Shift! *drops to his knees and pounds the floor in rage* "YOU DON'T NEED SPEED BOOST!!!" ...whoa, flashback. Sorry about that.

Back in old Galaxy City, there was an NPC in an alley who would yell, "Help! Help! I'm being mugged! ...oh, fine. Fire! Fire!"

I used to play a Kinetic Defender on live. Never again. It had the most annoying effect I've encountered with any set - the never-ending spam of "SB plz" "SB plz" "SB plz". Beam Rifle is a close second - I expected "pew pew," not... whatever that noise is.

To you, maybe. To me it's popcorn.

I take it you didn't say anything? I definitely would have. There's always a chance that the tank is relatively new to team play, or has solo'ed so long they forgot they even had a taunt. And as for kin defs, my experience on live was that nobody knew how to take advantage of the kin's strengths unless the kin spoke up. I had a keybind to tell the team, "When playing with a Kinetics Defender, melee is the safest place you can be." People would "lol" at that, of course - but not when I repeated it after the first team wipe. A little communication can bring together a team, so long as the team members are willing to listen. If not, what's the worst that can happen? Either you get kicked, or you have a story to tell on the forums

I'd vote story lines (since the Imp and Pub ATs were mirror images of each other). However, even within each story, I felt like I had more flexibility with regards to my character's "place" in the grand scheme of things. I loved playing my Imperial Agent, precisely because she walked a "thin red line" between doing the bidding of the Sith, while trying to contain collateral damage caused by their excesses. She was loyal to the Empire, but recognized that the Empire really wasn't just the Sith (whatever they might say). You could also go full-on dark side with your Agent, or play in a way consistent with a deep-over Republic saboteur, or go the route of a career-minded officer and walk a different thin red line. Maybe I could get that here, but not without some metagaming (or at least where I draw my personal line). ...and now the only thing keeping me from booting up SWTOR again is the endless walking you have to do...

I've never played a Katana scrapper, so I couldn't offer advice on that front. I did play SR way back when, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that people prefer Ninjitsu, now that it's available to scrappers. I could be wrong about that. I'll offer some general advice - if you're new to the game, I wouldn't worry about builds or slotting or even optimal rotations just yet. Explore the powers and see what seems to work. Ask about specific problems if you have them (like, you feel like you're not doing enough damage, or you're running out of endurance, or you get mobbed by enemies on a regular basis). Team up when you can, and if a vet offers constructive criticism, follow up on it. Also, play a few other archetypes - you might be surprised what you can learn from that (I didn't really "get" scrapping until I'd played a controller). Anyway, sorry I couldn't offer more direct advice. Maybe some kindly Kat/SR will jump in.

I don't know if I'd recommend this for a first character, but there are also "Blapper" builds that might work for your concept. Blappers (a mash-up of Blaster and Scrapper) are Blasters who focus on melee attacks in their secondary powerset. Martial Combat is pretty much made for exactly this, and gets a self-regen and a self-heal a bit later on. I haven't really given it a fair shot myself, but it seems to be popular, and might work for a "street samurai" type of cyborg. Energy Manipulation is still my favorite Blapper set - so many melee attacks heavy on stuns and knockbacks - and I made it work thematically on a "natural" martial artist (with an Archery primary). I don't have much familiarity with the other Blaster secondaries, but it looks like almost anything but Devices or Tactical Arrow could be used to blap. A little imagination (as Philotic Knight and Oubliette_Red pointed out) and a little quality time with power color customization could make anything cyborg-appropriate. But, again, blapping might be a bit rough on a first run. Scrapper and Brute are safe "CoH 101" bets; blapping is for full-on, no-holds-barred, skin-of-your-teeth offense. Edit: stray parentheses

Disclaimer: I'm not the guy to go to for optimized builds. That said, I tried DP/MA, and I got bored very quickly. Part of that, I think, is because I couldn't find much interesting synergy there - with every power pick, I felt like I had to decide if the character was ranged DPS or a Scrapper with a glass jaw. It felt like the two sets were competing with each other rather than acting together. DP/EM (energy manipulation), on the other hand - now that's a fun Blapper! It may be my imagination, but it felt like the melee attacks in EM were much better at keeping the baddies at bay than MA. Or, if you're smarter than me, EM can instead provide strong ranged support with Conserve Power, Boost Range, and, of course, Build Up. Edit: Just in case, by "MA" you meant "Martial Combat," yeah? Apologies if not.

The only reason I'd play classic WoW would be roll a shaman, take a hit of something trippy, and groove with the invisible spirits that are, like, all around us, man. Even then, I'd probably have flashbacks to leveling lockpicking in Azshara.

I doubt I can say anything that other people haven't, but figured I was overdue for saying "thanks." So - thanks! CoH was my first subscription MMO. I picked it up as a lark - I was no fan of superhero comics or movies, but it stood out amongst the sea of fantasy games on the market, so I figured, why not? Had no idea that this would become the MMO against which I'd measure all other MMOs. And looking back, no other MMO has yielded anywhere near as many "war stories" as CoH has (with apologies and respect to any reader who has actual war stories...). So glad to be able to play this again.

Is there a music sharing thread on this forum? If so, I missed it. If not...