WumpusRat

I can't believe nobody's mentioned it yet, but the arc that annoys me the most red-side is Vivacious Verandi's arc in St. Martial. Initially it's fine, you're running around causing chaos and having fun. Then "Hardcase wants to talk to you." So you go over and have a chat, and he threatens you. Claims he can utterly destroy your life, because he's a big bad demon-hunter. And your only option is to basically go "Oh gosh mister Hardcase sir, I'm sorry, please don't hurt me!" and grovel at his feet. Pisses me off.

While sappers are annoying, they're fairly easy to deal with. But you know who isn't? Vanguard bosses/elite bosses and their gee danged curse of weariness. 10 minutes of -50 max end. There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to wait it out.

For Bot/FF, I go with Leadership (more damage, more defense), Leaping (for CJ), Flight (because I like to fly), and one dealer's choice. Could be stealth, fighting (if you want to be personally tankier), or medicine (for a self-heal as well as backup heal for the pets if you really need it). Bot/FF can be a very "dig in and fight" style, as you can drop damping bubble and repulsion field and just let the bots go to work. It's also quite easy to get your bots to the defense cap, though stuff will still clock them and knock them around. The weakness of bots is that you don't have a spare pet power for the auras, so you basically only have 4 slots per power for enhancements. I tend to split mark of supremacy into 2/2/2 for the bonus recharge, and typically an acc/dmg and acc/dmg/end from another set to max their damage and get acc/end to around 70ish each. For epic/patron, energy is a thematic choice to pewpew your own energy blasts around (even more knockback/down), and temp invuln can be set to no fx, making it nice. Mace is another option if you want to opt for power boost, to kick the bubbles up for the pets.

A lot of times I'll just do the old-school Positron TF if I want to solo. It takes around the same amount of time as doing 1 & 2, and gives three times as many merits.

On the couple of (semi) finished bases I have, I use the Circle portal stones, and change the rotating rune colors to match the destinations. Blue for Paragon, Red for Rogue Isles, Gold for Praetoria, White for Neutral, and Orange for Hazard/Co-Op zones.

I added it to a couple of my characters for jumping, since they're "normals" with skills rather than super powers, so their big jumps (via athletic run + CJ) are boosted by little rockets on their boots. It's a neat effect.

She's not my "main", but for Maxima, I had a modified set of lyrics to Oingo Boingo's "Only a Lad" in her bio, replacing "lad" with "lass", and "Jonny" with "Janey" (since her real name is Jane).

The first time I tried a controller, and went with Illusions because I thought it'd be fun. Got to 20th, got Phantom Army, and just started laughing maniacally as they curbstomped the entire room full of enemies. Then they went away, and I saw that HUGE cooldown. "I must make this permanent!" And the power that really changed the game for me the very first time was Hover. Getting to 6th level for the first time, picking it up, and floating up into the air. Being able to actually fly in an MMO. It was a marvelous feeling.

I'm fairly similar. I rarely use them, and usually too late when I do. I'll end up face-down looking at my tray of purples and greens and think "Hm, I should have used some of those, I guess. Oh well."

Anything/FF MM Anything/Electric MM Anything/Time MM Anything/Rad MM Anything/Marine MM Anything/Kinetics MM Anything/Trick Arrow MM Anything/Nature MM Proceed to steamroll. If you want to make it extra over the top, make them all thugs, and all pop gangwar on the AV.

I'm curious what you're trying to fight that it feels like a slog at 5th level vs any other AT. Damage is so similar at that level that the differences in scaling haven't really kicked in yet. I primarily solo as well, and most of the time don't bother running DFB, I just do the arcs in Atlas. My first two attacks are always the single-target immob and the hold. Most fights go immob-hold, mob is dead due to containment doubling the hold's damage (or if it's a lieutenant, they're at half). Grab the prestige enhancements off the START vendor to get a little free damage/recharge into the powers (and the rare proc), and just murderhobo your way through stuff. Unless you kick the difficulty up at low levels, you should steamroll just about everything unless you're trying to fight orange and red-cons. And with illusions it should be even easier, as Spectral Wounds actually hits nearly as hard as any blaster attack at that level. It sounds like you may be picking on large groups of mobs, if you're getting just hammered like that. Trollers aren't any squishier than a blaster, defender, corruptor, or any other non-tanky AT at that level. With FF, you can pick up Repulsion Bolt at 4th and punt stuff off of you. But most things shouldn't be getting to you with your controls. Confuse one (now you have a buddy!), hold another, and just cycle back and forth until they're dead. Or just tank a few hits. It's not like white-con minions are going to be chunking your health at 5th level. If you really want some extra punch at low levels, you can pick up Sands of Mu, Nemesis Staff, Blackwand, or Ghostslayer Axe from the START vendor as well. Gives you a few extra attacks to pepper into things early on to help you through the first few levels. And don't sleep on your origin attack. It's free, ranged, and does a decent amount of damage at that level.

Initially I wasn't really sold on controllers or dominators. I didn't much like them, as I preferred being much more aggressive in my playstyle. I glomped onto masterminds the moment CoV came out, and they quickly became my favorite AT. Since coming onto HC, and being able to just make as many characters as I want, I decided to try out some trollers. And damn are they fun. I have almost more trollers than I do MMs at this point, which is a pretty massive switch for me since back on live, I literally had 30-35 masterminds. But trollers are tons of fun. Giving up at 5th level before you get any of the real powers of the set (most notably Phantom Army, the keystone of the illusion set) seems a little odd. Yeah, they don't curbstomp stuff at low level, but you can just slot your single-target hold and immobilize for damage and pretend you're a mini-blaster until 12-16th when you start getting some more serious powers.

I really disagree with this idea. The whole basis of controllers is that your powers are for making things helpless, not just steamrolling. Though you can certainly slot them that way. Most of my trollers can solo just fine, though large groups with numerous bosses do take a little bit to beat down. But allowing trollers to "overcome enemies solo at the same rate as their damage-dealing counterparts" would be overpowered, imo. It's the same reason defenders and corruptors don't do blaster-level damage. Controllers have the ability to completely lock down groups of enemies, making them easy to pick off. And they have support powers as well. Letting them do blaster-level damage when they're alone would be silly.

Champions (and Hero System in general) was definitely a very complex character generation system IF you used all the bells and whistles. Essentially, it was a lot of math. But you could make just about any character you wanted. They have (or had, at least, I haven't seen anything past 4th edition) general-purpose powers (Energy Blast, Armor, Flash, Killing Attack, etc) that you can buy, with various costs per 1d6, and then just say it's whatever special effect you want. A character with a high-powered rifle could have a ranged killing attack with it, or if they went with "slightly less lethal" rounds, buy it as an energy blast and say it's physical damage. If they wanted it to be completely non-lethal, they could apply a limitation on it of "no body-damage" (body being the stat for hit points, effectively) and make it cost a bit less, or if they want it to be some round that explodes on impact and douses the target in chemicals that knock them unconscious without dealing any other damage, you could buy the advantage "no normal defense" and say "the defense against this is having the power that means you don't have to breathe air", etc. It's a fun game, but if you've never played it before, you'd definitely need someone to help design a character, as it's definitely made for math nerds. 🙂