Gulbasaur

Thank you very kindly! I am planning on doing a bit of an update when the next patch is out to add in some newer content and a possible pathway I missed!

... they are literally tanks! Back in the early game, peacebringers and warshades were the second-best tanks in the game!

With a robot victorian burleque dancer demons mastermind as the leader, named Angle of Satin, one assumes.

I'm currently slow-levelling a Peacerbringer and, baby, the experience is smooth. Nova has AoE that keeps on giving. Dwarf is more durable than some tankers at equivalent levels. They do struggle at endgame because they don't fit any one niche really well, but they are very capable in the early-mid game. They also have their own story arc chain from 5 to 50 that is... better than I expected it to be.

The Atlas Park AE was causing a lot of lag. Pocket D or other locations.

I spend far too much time on Reddit and it seems like r/MMORPG has had a lot of recommendations for CoH recently. That subreddit is, generally speaking, only worth following because of how bad it is, but CoH does come up more than you'd think .

Yes but also there are two new story arcs, a new powerset, changes to how redraw works and a bunch of other stuff.

I think there's a good case for Shield Defence being the most team-friendly out of the box, just because Grant Cover provies allies with a ~8.5% defence buff in an AoE around the player. Shield Charge allows for some (sporadic) soft control with knockdown. Dark has two mez auras, so taking either one of those will basically take minions out of the fight, which provides team-wide benefits. That's less relevant at 50 when everyone is overpowered, but while levelling or if you have sidekicked-up teammates it's actually quite helpful. Dark Melee also has an AoE fear, so you can stack them to hold higher tier mobs. Actually, the Presence pool has a load of Fear powers, including an AoE, so control through Fear might be a path you could go down. Radiation also has Ground Zero, which has a middling AOE heal among a load of other effects. It's an odd grab-bag of a power, but it's a nice little extra in an otherwise good powerset. The Leadership powers are pretty weak on a stalker, but a little defence goes a long way and Radiation has very, very good endurance management as long as your health is high.

My Storm Summoning Defender is my "I don't care, I just want fun" character and he rarely faces anything he can't do. I'd also give it an award for Best Abuse of Recharge as dropping three Lightning Storms at once really does feel great. I wouldn't call it underrated and it's arguably the least supportive support set, as half of it is kind of a blast set... But it's definitely fun. I will say though that the Kheldians are underrated, particularly outside of the IO'd-up end game. They peak a bit early and then plateau, but that means they exemplar beautifully.

The AoE taunt from the Presence power pool! I personally enjoy tanking on off-brand tanks and dark/dark deals so much ToHit debuff that it's quite good at it with some setup. I am actually a fan of Teleport Target as it's good for shunting lowbies around when running tip missions in Atlas Park because keeping lowboes alive is its own challenge mode. That makes a bit more sense with Vengeance so you can use their corpses as healing reagents, but that involves a bit of investment and Dark already has a strong heal. Combat Teleport or whatever it is works well because you can port in, drop some AoEs like Blackstar, teleport back with macro then start hitting the cones. If you set the macro to go just under your max range you can use it for positioning very well and dark dark likes positioning. Hmm. Combat Jumping or Hover are good basic Defence buffs, which you probably don't need.

I have a dark/dark corruptor and yes. There are a lot of good powers. I do think Hasten is skippable, though.

For reference, the episode this originated from came out twenty-nine years ago. I do think the beta/dev stuff would probably have been better off in the main forums/discord, but hey-diddly-ho.

As a person over 35, I have described this forum as a slice of "old internet" before and I don't mean that in any way negatively.

Having mained a kin defender on Live, I will say that it's a basic bitch of a set until you get Transference (which is much less relevant now with IO bonuses) and Fulcrum Shift at which point you're everyone's new best friend. You've also got to kind of hover in melee to mid range for the AoE parts of it.

There's a link in this thread in America's Angel's comment towards the end.

Most of that discussion goes on in the closed beta discord, which is very active. Instructions for joining can be found by searching the forums and entry is done in cycles but there's a "no spoilers on the main forums" rule that is pretty well kept. Basically, the discussions do happen and it's interesting being part of the testing process and seeing ideas that didn't work out etc, but they happen in an environment that doesn't take up space in the main forums.

The "res goes up as health goes down" mechanic is the only semi-unique thing that SR has (widows share the mechanic). I wonder if that triggers it somehow? Maybe the value/keyword/whatever that tracks the magnitude of the resistance buff is also reused by the threat calculation? Maybe it's confirmation bias? Maybe if that's true can I have a second Bug Stomper badge? Bug Stomp 2: Electric Boogaloo? Bugger Stomperer? Maybe we need an aggro test like the Pylon Test, the Trapdoor Test and the blast set one that I don't remember the name of.

From memory, the number of different debuffs you apply factors into your aggro generation. That's one of the reasons why debuff-heavy support sets generate so much aggro. Ice throws out a lot of different types of debuffs, so it generates higher threat.

A few more neutral-ish male hairstyles. A very, very slightly higher poly male head model so the cheekbones aren't so sharp. For the face textures to get a quality pass so the eyes on some of them are very, very slight lower.

I like everything about Dominators except actually playing them. Range and melee options? Beautiful. Control? Beautiful. Mez protection? Spectacular. Dominators? Utter bumhole. I will say that kinetics is dire solo. So little of it benefits you apart from a heal, a run speed boost and a small damage buff for much of the early-mid game.

My ex, nearly twenty years ago, had a character called Smelly Pants who channelled sonic energy through the power of magic farts. To my knowledge, this was his only character.

It me. Glad you enjoyed it. Roll a second toon and head to the dark side? I'd say the overall storytelling is better Redside, but there's a grungy bleakness I don't love. I agree with @Snarky, you have to lean into the villainy. The theme is that your character is out for themselves - you have to fight for your place in the Rogue Isles' hierarchy. Plots are less self-contained and things loop back round thematically.

I remember being slightly chastised for being off-meta for not taking the Fitness pool on my kinetics defender, who literally had an endurance refill power.

While I don't unilaterally agree with every choice HC have made... no. I think tankers and sentinels are now a tough too powerful compared with brutes and blasters and I wish alignment changes weren't instant and seagull-operated. I don't think everything with a clicky should be soloable, though I do understand why it is. I preferred the old flight powers where Fly and Hover cancelled each other out. I stopped playing Live in around Issue 8 or 9, maybe. For me, IO sets were new. Alignment changes were new. Incarnates were new. VEATs... maybe? I can't remember, but I want to say they were new. Salvage might have been around when I left, power customisation was a way off and I'm pretty sure Ouroborous and Flashbacks had been announced but did not yet exist. Force fields were an in-demand powerset and kheldians were respected as tanks. I miss having to change monorail lines and the slower travel generally. I think IO set bonuses are completely unbalanced. Everyone has their "the perfect period in the game was XYZ" idea. HC's stuff is mostly very good.

General play: fortunata! I prefer hybrid builds because they really can do a bit of everything. They're about as sturdy as a scrapper, but have T9 powers from a blast set and a control set, plus respectable ranged and melee damage. The only thing mine really struggles with is Nemesis who seem to resist a lot of control effects. If you're trying to solo AVs or GMs, it's arguable that a night widow is better at sustained single target damage, but you lose a hell of a lot of AoE and control to get there. I'd also agree with Tidge's statement about Hasten - it's a trap on a lot of builds that require endurance management, but especially fortunatas where you're effectively taking it for a few seconds less Mind Link uptime and really do risk burning through all your endurance when popping an inspiration would amount to the same thing.