Transhumanish

It's based on an Eisner-nominated comic series of the same name, by Garth Ennis (same person who wrote Preacher, and what is likely the best run of the Punisher ever made), that ran from 2006-2012. It's a deconstruction of the genre intended to shock that looks at what would happen not only to superpowered beings, but to corporations, governments, and to the non-powered dealing with collateral damage, if a tiny group actually had so much more raw personal power than everyone else. And what some people would risk, would do, to keep that kind of power and how it corrupts in check.

Star Wars was even explicitly made as space opera/space fantasy. Lucas was not vague about this. It intentionally had fantastical, magical elements, because he'd recently seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, and thought that was likely to be the best hard sci-fi film ever made for quite some time at the least. And a lot of other sci-fi would follow in its footsteps. So he quite purposefully went the opposite direction, to old sword and sorcery, pulp magazine, Burroughs style space fantasy with mystical, magical elements. He himself consistently uses the terms space fantasy and space opera and quite intentionally does NOT use science fiction when talking about SW. His own words, in 1977: “Well, I had a real problem because I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, "You know there's no sound in outer space". I just wanted to forget science. That would take care of itself. Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science-fiction movie and it is going to be very hard for somebody to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't want to make a 2001, I wanted to make a space fantasy that was more in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs; that whole other end of space fantasy that was there before science took it over in the Fifties. Once the atomic bomb came, everybody got into monsters and science and what would happen with this and what would happen with that. I think speculative fiction is very valid but they forgot the fairy tales and the dragons and Tolkien and all the real heroes.”

I always felt Cap was a tank. Captain America is the one who will stand in the front lines, taking a beating, so people can escape. He is one who will, without a moments hesitation, put himself between an enemy and basically anyone else. He is one who does not believe in the phrases 'collateral damage' and 'acceptable losses'. He is one who will without hesitation, or any thought of self preservation, sacrifice himself to save others. Cap is a tank. Yep. I completely agree with this. Everything about Cap's fighting style, teamwork style, and leadership style screams being a highly-competent-in-melee tank with a maxed out leadership pool. While he can put a beating down when necessary, he is constantly protecting, protecting, protecting, and drawing all fire onto himself then absorbing it with his shield, as his primary role on the team outside of just leading them with highly refined sense of both strategy and tactics.

Superman is a Natural origin hero, as is Supergirl, Zod, and all the other Kryptonians. ALL of whom inherently gain those powers under a yellow sun as part of their species. Yes, in some stories now and then, Kal-El is somewhat modified beyond standard Kryptonian by super-science. However, every other Kryptonian displays similar powers--some to even greater degrees (Kal has on more than one occasion indicated his cousin, Kara Zor-El, is actually more powerful than he is--or at least has greater top-end potential). Thus, because basically every single Kryptonian we've ever seen has displayed the same levels of extreme strength, durability, heat vision, speed, flight, etc, Superman has, it is clear that the vast, vast, vast majority of his power is simply an inherent part of his entire species, which makes him Natural. Any modifications he might have simply enhance his overwhelming Natural origin strengths rather than define him. Remember, this is his origin. His origin is coming from a species that gains absurd levels of powers under the light of a yellow sun, and through circumstance growing up under just such a sun. If he had been exposed to the light of a yellow sun under any other circumstances, he would have discovered he possessed the same kinds of extraordinary power; if he weren't Kryptonian, the technology that sent him to that other planet would have just saved his life but he'd still be a "normal" person; in other words, it's still his Kryptonian genetics that made him a superhero, not the ship that flew him to Earth. Batman is also a Natural origin hero, but does use a significant amount of technology. However, push comes to shove, he relies more on his natural ability and training than anything else. Always, they have him using his natural intellect and his intense combat training to overcome, with technology being nothing more than a side tool he uses to enhance his natural strengths. Same deal. The origin of his powers isn't technology, it's honing his own body and mind. Tony Stark, conversely, might have a brilliant mind, but his origins as a superhero are because of the technology he developed and used, thus his origin as a hero is Technology, without which he is highly unlikely to have become a superhero. Wonder Woman is magic. Magic isn't merely defined as being powered by magic in CoX, but alternatively as having inherent ties to divinity in some way, which makes magic the core aspect of what gives her supernatural abilities, which she enhances with training. Diana is straight-up directly linked intimately with the divinity of the Greek gods, from which her powers derive. Thus, Magic origin. Like Superman, the Martian Manhunter is a Natural origin hero. Inherently, all green Martians have the same suite of abilities J'onn has. Official DC sources plainly and unequivocally state that his abilities are common to almost all members of his species. In fact, his BROTHER was a mutant who was born without the ability to manifest telepathy--unlike everyone else in his family, who were standard Martians, J'onn included. Thus, because the shapeshifting, phasing, telepathy, etc, are all simply inherent and utterly normal parts of being a green Martian, the Martian Manhunter is a Natural origin hero. Flash is a Science origin hero. His powers came from a scientific accident with a cocktail of chemicals and lightning that bound him to a fundamental force of the DC universe. He grew from there, and found a web of connections to the Speed Force he never knew about involving all sorts of time travel shenanigans. But his ORIGIN as a hero is Science. Green Lantern is a Technology origin hero. His powers and his origin as a superhero flat out come from a single piece of mind-bogglingly powerful technology: his power ring. Yes, there might be very specific side-stories involving entities like Parallax inhabiting his body, but his origin as a hero is acquiring a single piece of technology, without which he would have remained merely another human being. A talented test pilot, sure, but still just a human being.

The closest I've found, by far, for a Green Lantern or similar construct-generating character, is an Earth Control and either Force Field or Cold Domination controller, with Primal Forces epic pool. With the Earth Control powers reskinned to crystals of the appropriate color. Yes, it means that all your constructs have a very specific crystalline look, but at least they're transluscent and almost glow, so come closest to a ring-bearer. This also puts them more in line with the very control-centric seeming powers they often have in the comics. At the cost of the raw energy blasts earlier on, sure, but eventually you do get some solid energy-based ranged attacks.

The OP literally asked for a comparison between WoW and CoX. I personally also like CoX better, and it's easily the best superhero MMO to ever be released. And yes, there are TONS of details in the world in CoX, as well. Conversely, with those many small details comes a sometimes frustrating level of repetition you don't see to anywhere approaching the same degree in games like WoW. The utterly identical mission interiors (that don't even remotely match the building the door is in most of the time, mind you, not to mention the identical office buildings that would get any architect run out of the industry for doing). The overuse of buildings that look identical or nearly so; it's fine to have buildings in a neighborhood look really similar, but it's another entirely to have dozens of neighborhoods all look nearly the same, having the exact same power station stuck in the middle of areas, and so on. The repetition of the aforementioned tiny but fun details, and so on. Where a Blizzard game might only have this fun movie poster Easter Egg a single time in one zone, period (and have thousands upon thousands of Easter Eggs similarly unique), many, many, many games--including CoX, but it's hardly close to alone in this--instead take a fun detail and repeat it all over the place. I adore CoX, warts and all. But again, I was quite literally responding to a post directly asking for a comparison between the two games. Thus, I compared the two games.

Polish. People can decry Blizzard all they want, and not personally like [insert thing they make or policy they have here]. But damn, their games are overwhelmingly very, very clean experiences, with tons of detail tossed in everywhere that you might miss the first 1,000 times you walk through an area. Be it WoW, Starcraft, Overwatch, what have you, their games are smooth and clean and people can and do dive into them en masse on day one (and no, crashing because too many people are logging on at once is not a polish issue in the least). That's what Blizzard has traditionally done better than most other studios. Their games are, by and large, whether you like the style or no, polished as ****. Even dropping to their current 1.65 million active population numbers, that still makes them... *checks worldwide MMO population numbers*... oh yeah, still the most populated MMO on the planet. Followed by Old School Runescape at 1.55 million, FFXIV with 1.4 million, then it plummets all the way down to 335,000 with ESO. Those are the top four MMORPG active populations at the moment, and the falloff is tremendous from that point on. And checking the population number curves in MMOs in general? Oh, right, yes. Almost every MMO has been seeing a similar decline in populations at the same rate as WoW. MMORPGs in general simply aren't pulling in the numbers or garnering the same interest they once did in their heyday. So yeah. Love it or hate it or utterly apathetic about it, WoW is still the most popular MMO in the world, one of only three that breaks 1 million active numbers with nothing else going above 350K beyond those top three. That says a lot. And I do believe it comes from their consistent levels of polish few other companies achieve. What does WoW do better than CoX? Polish. By quite a significant amount, at that. Can you imagine if CoX--while keeping its own special feel--had the game world's look itself was as polished as WoW or Overwatch or other Blizzard Games? I mean without giving it WoW's cartoony look, either. Keep the gritty city feel, where people are literally being abducted for body parts on the streets by techno-zombies, cops are getting punched out by punk death cultists wearing skull masks who are asking them with each punch if they're getting the message yet that this ain't the cop's turf no more, and so on. That's what WoW does better.

Some more characters: Crystal Lynn isn't merely the superhero moniker of this mutant hero, but the actual name her hippie parents gave her. It was serendipitous--in a way almost torn right from the pages of the comics she grew up reading--that she manifested mutant powers of telekinetic control over crystalline substances, particularly of the mineral variety (earth/earth dominator, with each effect given its own color of crystal reskin): This young hero likes Pokemon. A lot. A whole lot. Perhaps too much. When his mutant abilities sprang forth, giving him the ability to create fire, and solidify these flames into searing fire-crystal spines, he knew exactly what he had to do. Thus, was Cyndaquil born! Well, Nixon's back yet again. He was doing just fine as a head in a jar in the 31st century when some upstart tried to kill him via time travel. Unfortunately, it almost worked, and Nixon's head was grievously wounded, leaving only his brain and eyes. He used the very time travel equipment the young assassin used to get to him, but it misfired and broke, leaving him in an alternate earth a millennium in the past. Now, he's building a criminal empire in the Rogue Isles. This woman appears to be made of purest smoky obsidian, with a red glowing light flowing through her veins just under the surface, lighting up her eyes, and the crystalline rose in her ebon glass leafy hair. A druid who was trapped in this body as a curse by an evil magus, the Obsidian Rose turned weakness into strength, turning the fragile glass body into crystal harder than steel. Her ability to summon and control flora now creates similar obsidian plants, and her once fiery spells are now deepest blood-red, similar to the light in her veins: The vile villain who goes by Scarab Beetle summons swarms of insects to plague others, to tear them to pieces. These swarms look like darkness, until you get close, at which point you hear the skittering and see the "darkness" is made from thousands to millions of scarabs or other insects: The being known only as the Techno-Lich uses technomagic to power their ancient immortal self in these modern times, having kept up with technology and mixing it with magic for millennia. Their undead form is encased in a rust-colored iron suit reinforced, with magics that make the weathered-looking armor nearly indestructible. They infuse their magical flames and searing plasma with copper and boron to give it a vibrant green hue, and they craft billowing shapes of seeping darkness made of magic-powered nanites, which they then manipulate via control runes:

Piezoelectric is a mutant electric/spines tanker. Creates bizarre green crystals from his own body--which he can safely remove. These crystals generate then store large quantities of electricity when impacted; even a mere flick of a finger generates significant amounts of electricity. He uses the crystals and the energy they generate as weapons and tools, including to power the armored suit he designed and built for himself. This armored suit allows his crystals--and only his crystals--to phase through them when he wishes, in addition to greatly increasing his speed, strength, and durability. And with his crystals extended during combat operations:

A couple more: Hemorrhagic is a magical blaster, who telekinetically controls vast quantities of flesh and blood, attacking others with it or even causing peoples' own blood to betray them, which can cause fatigue, sudden aging, or worse. (He's a water/temporal blaster, with every power recolored to be dark, deep red blood). He wears a suit made of human flesh that is still kept alive, his cloak's interior still exposed, living muscle. He constantly bleeds from his many open wounds (yes, he was the slime aura colored to be dark blood red), and can fly by telekinetically lifting all of his own flesh and blood at once. No one knows where the seemingly endless supply of blood he can summon comes from--that's probably for the best: The being known only as Metaconcert is a telepathic alien, who seizes the minds of random people around him to fight his battles for him, pulling them into a communal hivemind where he is in control, and all the minds of his servants are as one, a part of his own telepathic metaconcert. His powers manifest through swarms of tiny purple-pink psionic crystals, which grow from the flesh of those who are particularly empowered by him. The minds of all who have died while part of his metaconcert float around him as purplish wisps, still a part of the concert even after death. The holographic runes floating at his head, chest, and belt spell out "Metaconcert" in his native tongue--which is read from bottom to top. He's a thugs/cold mastermind, with all the cold stuff recolored and minimum FX to purple-pink so it looks like crystalline shards sticking out of people rather than icy. The thugs are renamed to "Random Person", to represent them all being just any ole weaker-willed person whose mind he has enslaved.

A few more costumes. I definitely don't have an alt problem, you have a problem! Beat Sabre, a technology dual blades/willpower brute. I like her enough that she'll probably be my primary villainous brute character: Gravity Well, already my heroic main controller, a mutant gravity/time controller: Typhaon, a magical staff (trident)/willpower brute, named after her great grandfather, the original Typhon (who, along with his mate Echidna, spawned many of the monstrous creatures in Ancient Greece):

I am reasonably sure this is what's going on for many of these listings. The Auction House used to be a major means of trading influence from alt to alt on an account for people not in trusted supergroups. It's very possible--likely even--that a plethora of people are unaware you can email influence and items to your global chat handle, now, and trade items not only across characters but across servers.

A few more costumes from my ever-growing pool: Gutter. An elemental of the actual refuse left above the ground in gutters, back alleys, and so on. A pretty ticked off elemental who viciously punishes his enemies, and occasionally heals allies with the tossed but perfectly intact medical waste left all over the city (a water/poison corrupter, the water recolored to look sickly browns and greenish-yellows). Quagga is a mutant with many traits in common with a now-extinct relative to the zebra. A fast, dangerously strong, and incredibly agile melee combatant, this hero does his best to keep the people of the city safe: The Stirge is a nasty little customer, a magical creature who uses their proboscis to suck the blood from targets to power their own abilities, and can in general use blood for other magical effects (a kinetic/dark stalker, with everything recolored to look like dark blood). Thermal Equilibrium (who is usually called simply, Equilibrium)--easily one of my favorite costume designs--is a mutant hero capable of controlling heat in a myriad of ways, including directing it away to cause intense cold (a fire/cold corrupter): Transmitter is a newer hero, involved in a lab accident that left him with power over electromagnetic energy, sufficient to generate or direct electricity and radio waves, as well as transfer energy to and fro from various sources (an electric/kinetics controller):

Lackadaisical is taken as an insult because it does not mean "carefree"; carefree is not, in fact, a part of any definition of the word whatsoever. Lackadaisical means: "lacking enthusiasm and determination; carelessly lazy" (Oxford), or, "lacking enthusiasm and effort" (Cambridge), or "lacking life, spirit, or zest; languid" (Merriam-Webster), or, "without interest, vigor, or determination; listless; lethargic; lazy; indolent" (Dictionary.com, ironically the most brutal of the bunch). And has no common usage that is anything but negative; every example across the board of usage of the word in every source is an insult or demeaning in nature. So "lackadaisical" is an insulting word, full stop. There is no kind or even neutral definition of the word. At all. So yeah, actually, people will not take kindly to being called lazy, or lacking enthusiasm, or having no life or spirit to them, and so on. Whether or not that was your intent, your word choice was highly insulting in nature.

I agree with the hard no on this. For many of the reasons others have expressed. In addition to the toxicity caused by them (and sorry, but it's a lot more than just some tiny percentage; in many MMOs the absolutely absurd levels of using DPS as a metric is widespread as hell, and causes a lot of quite toxic behavior ), damage meters seem to strongly encourage cookie-cutter builds above all else. If your build isn't this 2% most efficient build in the game, you often feel consistent pressure to just change to the "better" build, and by better they simply mean slightly higher DPS. But, as has been repeatedly pointed out, these are metrics tools that, in a game like CoX, don't even accomplish very much of worth at all. The effects of buffs, debuffs, and pets, are enormous in this game. Hell, in many games they are, and the DPS meters don't accomplish jack to measure it most of the time. The support character buffing the team or debuffing the opposition doesn't have their DPS adjusted and the "DPS characters" reduced to actually account for the reality that no, as a matter of fact, 17.33% of the damage ALL of you people dealt this fight was actually from this support character's buffs, and another 12.54% was from the debuffing caused by that support character's debuffs. "Your" DPS wasn't, in reality, your actual DPS. Unless your meters are actually giving you credit for all the damage increases you're causing due to the many debuffs and buffs you might be tossing and, and giving you credit for all of the damage and buffs/debuffs your pets provide, it's not even giving you anything approaching a clear picture of who is contributing what to the team anyhow. So even as merely a meter measuring DPS, unless it includes all of that, it isn't even doing the one job it's actually supposed to be doing. While having some sort of measure of your own damage output is nice and all, and can serve a function, unless it is far more robust and actually accounts or all the buffs, debuffs, and pets it isn't going to do the lone task it's intended to: measuring your actual contribution of damage output. And as usual in such games, that's before taking into account control powers. A control power might not directly seem to influence DPS. But, if slowing the enemies down gives your team an extra 3.5 minutes to dish out damage than your team would have without that extra time, the control's contribution to DPS was shockingly huge. Pretty much all of the DPS output for every single character spread out over that entire 3.5 minutes of the fight is 100% because of the control powers providing your team with a more efficient action economy. DPS tools measure one thing--and do so largely-incorrectly--in a game like CoX, and that's pretty much it. And frankly, the utterly pernicious nature of "most efficient damage" cookie cutter builds that flood games due to damage meters in particular is my least favorite part. And you WILL see pressure regarding it. There's a reason a lot of new players are coming in and specifically asking what the "best" builds are, and that's because of the cookie-cutter builds in the countless games where damage meters (and their counterpart, healing meters) are a primary metric tool for what makes a build good. So yeah, no thanks. Unless the tool is hugely robust to account for a whole lot more than raw DPS, it doesn't do what it's even intended to, and I have zero interest in seeing it even for personal measurements of damage output.