wine-5.15 staging. Hmm, it is what I got when I used dnf, I hadn't considered type, I don't know the difference between staging, stable and development so I will do a littler reading. I was following one of the install guides for city of heroes on linux when I did it.
It turns out settings matter. So far the following are problematic: water effects, ambient occlusion, advanced occlusion, shader quality.
I have water effects off, occlusion off and shaders are set to low with world bump map and I can log in to atlas fine now. Also, no more hang on leaving the dam. I haven't tested hospital elevators (faultline at least) and trainers (independence port at least).
At this point I *think* I have all other options at fairly normal levels (as found when using set default) or higher. Curiously, I can get away with better settings even on the problematic options *IF* I log another character in first.
Quick edit: some of the settings turn shaders up if you turn them up and don't inform you. I'm assuming those are all low, but I forgot to list them. Shadow Quality when higher than low, Environmental Reflections when on.
Another edit: I need to read all the responses carefully first. I did check DXVK (thank you for mentioning it) and it is enabled.
At this point I'm pretty satisfied with my workaround. I hope if someone else has my issues this information will help them out. I will be keeping an eye out for updates and I will be checking here, because I would like eventually to have some of these effects back (it's just losing them doesn't break the game for me).