WumpusRat

What do you mean, "bodyguard mode" ...? Bodyguard mode is when your pets are in defensive stance, but haven't been told to specifically attack something. Any damage that strikes the mastermind is split between the MM and the pets, so if you have your full group out, the MM takes 1/7th of the damage, and the other 6/7ths is split among the pets. It's what can make masterminds incredibly tanky. The downside is that when you (or they) are attacked the pets will just randomly start fighting, instead of focusing down one enemy at a time to be more efficient.

(Mongolian heavy metal, really cool)

From a purely "new archetype" standpoint... Duelist -- Think melee blaster. Melee/Support powersets. Like Psi Melee/Mental Manipulation, or Staff Fighting/Devices. Would definitely be more squishy than the blaster (since you don't have the advantage of range), but it would be a fun setup to play. The ultimate "kill or be killed" archetype. Possible passive: Thrill of the Fight. The more damage the Duelist takes, the harder they push to win. Increasing bonus to recharge and lowered end costs based on damage taken. Leader - A more offensive-focused mastermind. Summon/Assault. Demon/Fiery Assault, or Ninja/Martial Combat (shuriken everywhere!). Instead of building a walking fortress via minions and bodyguard mode, you hit the enemy headon, leading from the front, with the Leader being in the thick of the fight. With less ability to protect the minions (and themselves), it might have shorter cooldowns on the minions, and perhaps even slightly weaker tier-2 and 3 minions to keep the damage output more balanced. Possible passive: Rule of One. As more of your minions fall, the rest are galvanized to fight harder, spurred on by their glorious leader. For each minion that dies in combat, the remaining minions get a bonus to damage and accuracy. The Leader gains a smaller version of this bonus.

Eh. I disagree. That's one of the things I hated about CO, was seeing like 10 different characters with the same name running around, and that it would take your @global onto the end of EVERYTHING you did.

*raises hand* I was there for day-1 as well, and remember the massive cut in power (and exp!) that everyone got. It definitely made the game feel a lot more sluggish and annoying, rather than superheroic. Even in the teens you'd be fighting random street thugs, and 3-4 minions could make you have to struggle to take them all down. Imagine a fairly experienced superhero struggling to take down a couple of muggers. It'd be embarrassing! The villain groups were far too jokey and full of puns, and the game clearly didn't take itself very seriously. Which means players didn't either. The way they did powers was interesting, but it tended to promote a very "best at level" mindset, where you'd take the single best power for that level, or level up a bit more then completely rebuild your character to take the newest, best power, dumping the old one in the process. Too many powers were overly-weak and not worth taking at all (the pet powers were all notoriously bad), and other powers (such as super strength's "uppercut") were far too powerful compared to anything else you could take. For a game with tons of power options, you saw a lot of very similar builds running around. I gave it a few months at launch, then got bored and went back to CoH. I really wanted CO to be a good game. I really did. I played the tabletop Champions game for years and years, and when CO first announced I was giddy with the idea that, since they had bought the actual Champions IP, that it would be somewhat similar. That you could build a character concept and run with it. Instead, we got a watered-down, powerset-limited mishmash of a game that had no real heart. I've popped back in from time to time to see how it's doing, but man is it lifeless. And there's not really that much more content than was there when it went live. The fact that it's still around when CoH got shut down by NCSoft still angers me. To this day I refuse to buy any product that NCSoft puts out.

I'm working on a ninja/cold at the moment. Given how squishy the ninjas are, I wanted something that would make them as durable as possible, and since they're def-based, I figure either /FF or /Cold would be best. /FF is very dull, though, so I went with /Cold. The -recharge debuffs combined with the +def means the ninjas rarely get hit, so they've been pretty survivable so far. Occasionally one of the genin will eat a nasty attack and drop, but it's been workable. The lack of a heal in /Cold is annoying, but taking Aid Other works well enough. Just wish you could change the animation for it, as my mastermind is meant to be a magic-based frost-spirit, so pulling out a little tricorder and tossing a heal seems a bit out of place. Other than that I've had good success with it, solo and in groups.

Control secondaries might be a bit overpowering for us. I mean, the ability to lock down an entire spawn and then vaporize them with aoe damage? Might be a BIT much. Especially since immobilize is set to turn kb into kd now. Imagine taking the aoe immobilize power, and letting your pets just decimate the spawn... Would be glorious, but a bit op. :)

Easiest way to fix that is to have a macro set up to specifically control the drones. The protector bots and assault bot are generally safe enough to just let do their own thing (or part of the "turn that enemy into a grease stain" overall command), but the drones do tend to be a bit more cavalier about rushing around. I usually have a key or two dedicated to shepherding them. Leave the prots and assault in bodyguard mode, and specifically target the drones on enemies, or tell them to park their butts next to me and then resume firing. If you have a set that isn't seriously busy (such as /FF), you should have the spare moments to give the drones a kick in the butt to keep them busy and increase your damage output.

Someone was asking last night in chat about "cool bases to go look at", so I pointed her at this place. She sent me a tell a while later gushing about how cool it was. :)

Back before the Fitness pool became inherent, and people would gloat about their set not needing it, so they saved 3 power picks. Pre-ED, and 6-slotting stamina. Pre-ED, and having attacks with 1 acc + 5 dmg mods. And yeah, I remember the walking turd granite armor. :) Taxibots. Saying "empathy defender lfg" in broadcast would get you a half-dozen desperate group invites. The first time taking hover, going into Perez Park and floating above groups of Hellions laughing maniacally while zapping the crap out of them. Green line / blue line tram stations. I think there was a yellow line too, wasn't there? Man, so many fun memories. :)

I don't remember what my old global was, since I changed it so often. Character-wise: Tiny Whispers Fantasy Star Viperia Fleure Technopath Sophia Rivalsa Monolithica Clemency And a ton more.

Another thing to remember is AE. There are some very quick little "farm" maps in AE that you can run, even as a lowbie with no enhancements, in less than 10m. Do one run with it set for AE rewards, and get about 200 tickets. You can use those once you hit 12th to get a few DO enhancements to pop into your powers. They cost 35 tickets each, and will be +3 levels above you, so they'll be good for 3-4 levels. Do your missions, explore, level up, then run another little quickie AE farm mission to get some more tickets, replace your now-outdated DOs, and go back to enjoying the storylines, and save your influence to buy other stuff. You can also use tickets as you level up to purchase generic IOs, invention salvage (including rare salvage), etc. AE was always a good alternative to just grinding out in zones and hoping for rare drops.

Speaking of AE, the rewards for running content through there seem to have dropped off substantially as well. I was running some maps prior to the patch, and it would get roughly 220-240 tickets per run. Post-patch, those same maps are giving 150-170 per run. Larger/longer maps are giving the same reduced rewards, or about a 30-40% reduction in what you used to get. I don't know if this was an intentional nerf, or something that just slipped in, but it wasn't documented in the patch notes, so if it's another "undocumented nerf", that's a bit annoying. I'd hope it's simply a bug, or if it's intended, that they'd announce it.

I had a thug/dark as well, a little imp named Tiny Whispers that was the "bad conscience" of a bunch of criminals. :)