Coyotedancer

Allow me to recommend a Human-only Peacebringer. That's how I did my Heliomancer character. He pretty much plays like a photonic Sentinel who isn't afraid of melee, and has a good mix of ranged and in-your-face options. They also have a heal and some self-support powers if you really want to lean into the classic Cleric thing.

The Shivan will be good fun... I'd love to have a big, stompy Tuatha option myself.

Mine were still bouncing around all over the place, but..... yeah. /Willpower scrap. She's used to getting more of a "Pffft. Whatever, man-" reaction from the goons than a proper "We hate you! MUST STAY AND SMASH!" 'Shaggy nutballs gonna nutball.

Alright, I'm going to start off by qualifying this a little... While I do prefer red side, generally, I don't play Big Bad Villains. My CoV characters are, to a one, Rogues. They were rogues-in-concept years before rogues-as-an-alignment were introduced. I actively avoid the mission arcs and contacts that would make them act like complete bloody monsters. Selfish? That's fine. Untrustworthy? Well... yeah. The Isles are just that kind'a place. Up to no good? Define "good"... Interested in furthering THEIR OWN GOALS over Recluse's? Absolutely! Being a murderer or a world-destroying terror? Err. No. Not so much. The world is, after all, where they keep all their stuff. Anyway. I find myself liking the content that was added late in the game's commercial run. We get to plot, and scheme and make our own plans... and we get to KEEP the things we gain by doing so. At least on proverbial paper. (My main back-in-the-day was all about her new ship, for instance. And I was giddy that the old devs actually let our red-siders keep it at the end of that signature arc. I fully expected us to lose it, like CoV characters tend to lose any other potential gains they might make along the way, in way too many arcs. If the game hadn't ended, I hope it would have been mentioned again in later content, or that we would get to use it again.) So... I want to see more of that kind of content. I think it would go a long way towards getting rid of the impression that a lot of players seem to have of the red side being "Oh, It's just City of Minions. Red-side characters are all chumps working for The Man".

IIRC what's been said about the pieces in the past... The top and bottom parts don't quite meet in the middle, so to speak. You can't see that mismatch when it's worn with the very wide sybil belt, but it's obvious with thinner ones or no belt at all. That's why I wondered if the wider belts we have like Elemental Order (I think?) or the Imperial one might work.

Oh boy. After putting a Kestrel-shaped hole through the new high-level Circle, I decided to take my DB/WP Scrap and her Adept partner Council-bashing, just to see what a solo melee run at them would look like. I went +1 (So, even level for an Incarnate character-) and x8 (Just to have a better chance of spawning some of the new goonies-). Kes herself handled them pretty well. Poor Cardinal got pancaked INSTANTLY. *With* a fresh T4 Barrier and T4 Support Hybrid running. I was fully expecting the poor guy to get beaten up with spawns that size and AoEs flying all over the place, but not like that. Not that quickly. I feel sorry for any not-very-well-built/equipped squishies who wander in there. O_O

Sybil costume bits work just fine with a KM Stalker's animations and the Spectrum under-bits. I do find myself wishing we could use some of the other wide belts with it, though. That Roman one is a little.... loud, let's say.

Over-all... fun stuff. But I also think that the Think Tanks skull is a fair bit smaller than it ought to be. That head-to-bod ratio makes him look a little more Jojo's Bizarre Adventure than he ought to. 😅 And... yeah. Aside from that I'm with others up-thread who aren't pleased at all to see locked costume parts make a return. In a game as much about customization as City is, that was always a bad idea. It was silly when Paragon did it twenty years ago, and it's still silly now. I get that a certain segment of the player population won't be happy until they have a bucket full of things they have to grind for.... But costume parts should not be among those things. Stick to vanity pets, special effects and transformations if you feel like you absolutely MUST add more unlockables and grinder status items to the game.

Over all, I'm pretty fond of the changes... Although the new Thorn Casters really do up the "visual clutter" a fair bit. Not quite to high-level-Talons-levels, mind, but their effects aren't exactly subtle. Also agree on the lt. succubus Placate maybe being a bit much. It's not awful as-is, but they seem to do it often enough that it may put them closer to the annoying-challenge end of the scale than the fun-challenge side. ETA: I was running around stabbing them with Kestrel & Cardinal, a DB/WP Scrap and her perma-summoned Adept companion, for reference. And yes, the explosive magi did a real number on Cardinal a few times. Kes herself is tough enough to handle a couple of them going nuke-boy on her. A Mu Adept? Not so much... Call it the Oranbegan's revenge for that whole Ancient War business, I guess. 😝 ) STA 2: After a bit more Circle-bashing, the Succubi really only get annoying when you've ended up with more than one of them. Especially when they're the only targets left of their respective spawns. I suspect that level of hateability is intentional.

I'll play through the usual low-level missions if I'm using a powerset that I'm unfamiliar with, just to get some familiarity with how it handles at low level. Typically, I do that solo or duo/small team. If the character is made of sets that I already know well? I usually avoid the low-level game entirely, and just toss them into a round of fire farming with Sunni, so that I can start actually playing them at mid-level. That's especially true with lowbie Hero side, which at this point I'm inclined to avoid like the proverbial plague. I've seen that content so many times now that I'd rather let Leonard have the Hollows than slog through the place again. 😖

When we were teaching the CoyoteNephews and their mom to play, we spent maybe ten minutes describing the Origins and the basic tiers... and then pointed out the colors matching across types. That's all it really took for them to understand the system, what they needed and what to look for. They honestly didn't seem to find it all that difficult.

Being able to fine-tune your mission difficulty came along after your time playing. It's useful. You can change both the level of a mission and the group size, giving you more goons to fight than a solo/duo/small team would normally spawn. If you look at the text entry box on your chat UI, there's an arrow on the right. Click it to get a really useful fly-out menu... Notoriety settings are one of the things you can change via that menu. Emotes are there as well.

The snakes deserve it. They're total jerks.

Red Side is Best Side. But it's not as populated as the Hero side of the City, so if you're a "constant teamer"-type of player, do keep that in mind.

Eh. The game is free to play now, Comet. Why not just jump in with a new tank and give it a try? See what you think this time around? If you left "back in the day" before the invention system came along, do read up on Invention sets, set bonuses and all that, though. THAT's the real ticket to making a character who feels like a proper comic book hero or villain. Inventions go a long way towards countering the "nerfed"-feeling that enhancement diversification brought on. Dumpster Diving may be a thing of the past, but with a solid IO build you can still make a mess of a fair-sized pile of goons. Or... if you really want something that kind-of feels more like Old School mass-murderization... You can ALWAYS build a good specialist Fire Farmer and check out one of the AE fire-farming patrol maps. That may scratch the "Torch ALL THE THINGS!!!" itch. 😎

Some people would complain if they didn't have anything to complain about. The game's here. We get to play it without a subscription fee. Anything else that comes along is just extra icing on the cake.

'Kinda fun seeing that many people bouncing around the City...

Dude did seem to make pretty much every blunder he could, there... And yet, still seemed to have some good fun with it. The game having at least a little bit of a learning curve isn't necessarily *DOOM!!*.

Our ability to beat up well-nigh-endless hordes of what are explicitly called out as "immature Paragon Protectors" in one of the recent arc additions makes me doubt that the MiniMe's bobbleheadedness had much to do with the Homecoming devs wanting to avoid putting what might be mistaken for childlike pixels in potentially violent situations. 😝

Scraps are a pretty forgiving choice when you're just learning how to play. (Brutes, too, though Fury management adds a wrinkle that Scrap players don't have to worry about-) I'd say avoid Masterminds for now, along with Peacebringers and Warshades, and the Arachnos VEATs. (They're complicated.) If you're not into melee and plan on teaming extensively, something like a Force Field Defender might be an option. Their bubbles are easy to use and being a little back from the action gives you a chance to learn by watching what your team-mates do. Their personal force field is also a pretty good "panic button" if you get in over your head. They're slow soloists, though, so you would be more team-focused than someone playing a Scrapper or a Brute.

That was never a thing, I'm afraid.... It would be a fun option to have, but the Potion emote from the Mad Science pack never changed your character gender. As mentioned, you CAN do that at Icon/Facemaker's, though. You may be remembering someone who made separate male and female costumes for their characters and then used that emote to switch between them. RE: the costume bits, some items only show up as options with specific others. There are some limitations on what you can use with the trench-coat type coats IIRC (I rarely use them myself, so I can't recall which torso selections work with them and which don't-), so you may have to do some experimenting to find a combination that works.

I have /facepalm bound on every single one of my gang. Every one. Mr. Coyote has /fancybow on most of his and has since way back in the live days. The only one I have macroed is on my Demons MM. Amtes habitually puts her hellishly loud minions all into /PraetorianSalute if I'm going to have her staitonary for any length of time. Those guys are just obnoxious otherwise.

/Fire stalkers are rare birds... I have a Claws/Fire and a KM/Fire I'm fond of, but it's just odd to play.

I never!

When I moved my speed-farmer over to Excelsior, I had to... I'd had the name Haroeris for him on Everlasting (my main server-) from the very early days, but found it taken on Ex a few months in, when I decided to migrate all of the "bird things". I wasn't willing to call Harry anything else, so he's been HAR0ERIS ever since. It was a concession I was willing to make, mostly because he's a soloing farmer. No one ever sees his cheater-name but me.