Have you found your ‘forever character’ yet?

[CaptTastic]

The struggle with altitis is real, yet the love for a main never dies. 
 

Just wondering how many among us have found that forever character that will always be special for you above all others and played considerably more? 
 

And, if so, what was it that made it special? Power set combos? Play style? Costume/looks? Sentimentality? 
 

Very curious to learn. 

[Gulbasaur]

Doctor Fortune has been my main for a while now. Fortunatas are strong all-rounders and very team-friendly.

 

Best at any one thing? Not by a long shot.

 

Okay at everything? You betcha.

 

They have armour, control, ranged damage, melee damage and ally buffs. I can just about maintain aggro well enough to tank through debuff stacking.

 

Aggro gets thrown off when a basic bitch scrapper gets too slap-happy with the AoE, but that's what Provoke is for. I've definitely out-taunted safety-scrappers brutes before. My power pool choices are almost entirely utility powers and it's nice being able to hoick lowbies around with Teleport Target and be able to use Grant Invisibility to bypass mobs like nature intended.

 

The cheap, strong Leadership buffs are great because they make teaming less hassle - you can just quietly carry people from a fairly low level for minimal endurance.

 

Maybe the real Arachnos is the friends we buried along the way ❤️

Edited February 25, 2021 by Gulbasaur

[Bill Z Bubba]

I'm still playing the first character I ever created in CoH. A joke character I planned to use to learn the game and then delete. What is it now... 17 years later and he's still my favorite?

[Rejolt]

I mained an elec/nrg blaster on live and kept it until the end. Rerolled as a SS/Elec brute on HC which is now the main. I OCD to alts so much I have more a forever grouping of toons.

 

If I were to stick to one it would be the SS/Elec because it is nice to stare AVs in the face and (mostly) not flinch.

[Shred Monkey]

When I make an alt, if that alt out-performs my main, it becomes my new main.  That said, my fire/energy blapper has been at the top of page 1 for a very long time now.  I have some other toons I solo with, but for teams, I just can't find anything I'd rather be playing.

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Shred Monkey said:

When I make an alt, if that alt out-performs my main, it becomes my new main. 

Poor Bill would be screwed if I followed that philosophy. There's a LOT out there that outperforms Claws and SR. However, for an all rounder, jack of all trades, master of none, it's still an awesome combo.

[Luminara]

It used to be TA/Dark.  TA was the only defender primary that held my interest, and Dark Blast complements TA so well.  I even recreated the same character here.  TA/Dark with the same costume, every detail.  Daughter of Hades and Persephone, out for adventure in the world above Tartarus.  I spent years logging in just to play this character, even when I had no interest in playing the game at all.

 

But that's not my main now.  I don't love the character any less.  She's certainly not less playable after the TA balance pass.  But several factors have diminished my interest.  There were a few animation time passes done on TA over the years, leading to a watering down of the set as a whole.  There wasn't much variation in TA animations before, but at this point, they're visually indistinct.  Watching one animation repeat over and over again isn't the most delightful way to spend free time, sadly.  The recent balance pass done for TA has also resulted in several powers being changed in how they work.  Glue, for instance, being location-targeted instead of critter-targeted.  It's usable with a powexec_location bind, but the command isn't entirely smooth.  As often as not, it simply refuses to activate the power, or activates the power and creates the effects under the target, often under the map.

 

TA doesn't play or feel like it used to.  So I've been moving away from it.  Having unrestricted costume options allowed me to create another Greco-Roman character, my Staff/Willpower brute, a character I never would've even considered on the original servers, but have fallen hopelessly in love with.  This is my main now.  I'm having trouble even logging into my alts, or creating more, because I can't find anything that I enjoy as much as this character.

 

2 hours ago, CaptTastic said:

what was it that made it special? Power set combos? Play style? Costume/looks? Sentimentality?

 

A combination of factors.  The name, Legionette, just hits all of the right notes for me.  It's heroic, it's suggestive of immense power, and it's feminine without being girly.  The Staff Melee animations keep me visually engaged.  All of the poses and movements are wonderful to behold (even Toe of the Camel), and suitably varied to prevent boredom.  Willpower is both fitting for the character concept and completely self-contained, so I don't have to fiddle with extra clicks, I can just focus on combat and let my secondary do what it does.  The costume is exactly what I always wanted for a character like this, especially now that we have asymmetrical shoulders.  It's not flashy or immensely creative, it's just so incredibly right for the character.  Even her back story is perfectly matched to her appearance and powers.  Everything about the character meshes.

 

I can even recall exactly when I knew Legionette was my main.  I was in Skyway City, trying to get to a mission door when my ping shot up to 1800+.  I stopped fighting it, perched Legionette on a wall and typed /em kata.  That was it.  That was the moment.  That emote fit the concept and appearance so beautifully that I knew, right then, that I'd be playing her until the day HC shuts down.

 

I found my Wonder Woman.  I'll never let her go.

[catsi563]

Ive got multiple Bale Fires and Pandas across all the servers

[JnEricsonx]

I come up with too many concepts for any to be my Big One.

[Crysis]

I think this game, more than most other video games I’ve played over the years, lends itself well to diversity since there’s so many pairings of power sets and so many set bonuses you can attempt, and respecs let you easily change a character even long after it’s been retired.  I’ve even taken some long-retired alts and all but totally remade them as experiments.  For example, taking a Blaster that was built for softcapped Ranged defense via Hover to a Melee Blapper with extremely high recharge.  Same Primary/Secondary but two totally different characters from a play style perspective.

 

So no, I’ve no “forever” characters.  I mean some have existed in one form or another since early Beta of this game prior to 2004, but I’ve remade even those several times over....Red vs. Blue versions, different power sets, different play styles/slotting, etc. etc. etc.

 

I guess I’m stuck in the multiverse version of this game, with my role as Writer/Director constantly re-casting the same character, but putting them in very different roles.

[Techwright]

Not one, no. Three, maybe four.  

 

Energy/energy blapper (with all powers set to knockdown)

Dark/dark corruptor 

Illusion/storm controller 

Martial arts/Super Reflexes scrapper

 

 

 

 

[Mirai]

My original main character was Yukihime, an Ice/Ice blaster. I recreated Yukihime in Homecoming, but I'm afraid I've fallen in love with sentinels. I now have a sentinel for each primary. My main is a Fire/Willpower sentinel named Lisliren, and she's my only level 50 character so far.

 

My very first character in CoH was an Inv/SS tanker named Birdy. With a science origin. And I'm a solo player. Imagine beginning the game for the first time soloing an Inv/SS tanker against the Vahzilok. That didn't work out well. Then later Enhancement Diversification plus the Global Defense Nerfs completely broke her build. But I kept that character until the game shut down, eventually getting her to 50, playing her entirely solo. I didn't recreate her in Homecoming, though. I'm done with playing tankers.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Mirai

[Olly]

I main a fire/fire blaster that I've come back to after trying other builds and ATs. I find myself cheating on my main because I want to find more builds that can solo the Khan TF. I might be at the end of that obsession, though.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Not yet.  I have an inkling it may be some sort of War Mace/Bio Armor melee character, but I haven't come up with a good theme yet.  Also, there are only like two war mace skins that work for me and I'm tired of them.

[Aeroprism]

Not yet either.  I have 35 characters on Homecoming so far and the count keeps rising. A solid 20+ of them I rotate and have fun with on a regular basis but still have to find that "little spark of something" that I will call love.

 

A while ago I had a huge thing for Controllers but now all my friends left the game to play WoW so, soloing Controllers is not quite as fun, and I'm wary of PuGs because most often I come across teams of super efficient players that just steamroll everything and, since I'm not very skilled to begin with, I just feel useless.

 

I enjoyed blasters a while but again, since I'm not very skilled, I tend to refer the safety of armored melee.  So now it's all Brute/Scrapper/Stalker/Tank but I have yet to find THE combo that will turn me on.  My Energy/Energy Scrapper has been good to me so far, and I have a Dark/Dark scrapper I love too, but I have a feeling that my heart will eventually not fall for a scrapper. 

 

I dunno.  I just love this game so hard that I'll just keep rolling alts and ask stupid redundant questions on these forums until people grow tired of answering.

 

And who knows, maybe some day I'll make friends with some of you beautiful people.

[Haijinx]

5 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

When I make an alt, if that alt out-performs my main, it becomes my new main.  That said, my fire/energy blapper has been at the top of page 1 for a very long time now.  I have some other toons I solo with, but for teams, I just can't find anything I'd rather be playing.

Fire/EM is what I'm currently contemplating.  

 

I've done Fire/Martial

and Ener/EM on homecoming. 

 

Fire really is hard to beat as a blast set.

[Coyotedancer]

I have a couple of favorites...

 

I'd still call Kai (the KM/Bio Stalker that I actually have two identical red-side/blue-side versions of-) my Main, but I'm also really fond of Semnai (Broadsword/Bio Brute) and Ivory (Time/Dark Defender).

[Grindingsucks]

I have a lot of characters I love to play.  It would be hard to pick one that I enjoy above the rest.  Maybe a top 3 or top 5, though.

 

Plus, I'm always hitting upon new concepts I want to try out.  I have a chronic chase of the altitis.  🤷‍♂️

[Snarky]

I started redside on SS/Invul Brutes.  Mostly giant robots.  Then Willpower dropped.  Ooooo.  SS/Will Mutant human.  Brute/Rogue.  Wore the traditional Hero costume set (which reminds me of a blaster...) but then used bright lego primary colors everywhere randomly.  uh-huh

 

Homecoming I was back on a SS/Invul Brute Rogue, with a build from Hyperstrike.  A giant human who started abusing HGH, Steroids, then Superadyne and Excelsior.  There were issues.  So...many...issues.

 

Now i am on a Dark/Dark Brute Rogue.  1030 badges (my highest count yet!) A Vampire.  Not twilight. More like original Nosferatu style by Murnau.  Good times.  Good ST, heavy armor, bag of tricks, if you kill him he pops back up and stuns the crap out of everyone.  He is fun.

 

 

[Machariel]

Since it looks like most people say 'no' let me indulge myself a bit with my answer of "yes, definitively."  Hopefully OP enjoys the detail:

 

Meet Blightfire (Rebecca Rogers), a Mutation Plant/Fire/Fire dominator, the character I was playing when Live shut down and the first one I recreated on Homecoming. I initially created her because I heard that the power set combo was strong (spoilers: it is), but what made her grow on me was the way her character design and personality were, in my mind, precisely reflected in her powers, slotting, and playstyle. 

 

She is a misanthropic, hot-headed, stubborn, and violently aggressive super who struggles with the fact that her power is basically to shoot napalm.  Long story short, Crey screwed over her family in legal proceedings back in the day and Rebecca inherited a dangerous power that required expensive equipment to contain, in a world of few legitimate napalm-based solutions.  So she wound up in the wrong crowd and, eventually, in the Zig.  She stayed pure redside until I got up to Westin Phipps.  When I decided that those missions were her moral line in the sand, she became my main, and that's where the RP really took off. 

 

Mechanically, she's slotted very aggressively - almost all recharge and damage procs, moderate defense, almost no resists - and rips through most content (+4x8) at lightning speed because seeds of confusion makes almost every mob in the game fight itself instead of you.  Solo performance is mostly binary - either everything is confused and she's stomping on everything, or she's on the floor - which I find engaging to play.  It also generates a lot of inf and drops, which helps fund my other characters because most of my characters start out as, "this level 50 build looks fun, let's try it out." 

 

But the coolest part to me is that in-character, she doesn't get along well with people, and ingame, she sometimes frustrates tank players because confused enemies can't be taunted.  She's independent and selfish and also, doesn't benefit as much from some support (+def, +res, heals) because those game mechanics are irrelevant if you aren't being attacked, and check this out - when she actually needs support she's almost completely incapable of keeping that support alive... so she kind of sucks at making friends. 

 

I also like that it's quite a flashy character as 12 foot spiked vines sprouting from the ground en masse is very dramatic.  I like her costume, but it's not going to win any awards... but it would be out of character for her to win, anyway 😄

 

[Clave Dark 5]

Not really, no.  My first HC fifty is a Beam Rifle/Rad Corruptor, and I can pick her up at a moment's notice and get right back into the swing of things, and have.  She's a good combo of direct action I can take against a foe, either with direct fire or Rad effects, without a sort of nebulous "I click this button and it apparently does good things for my team," I get to see and plot exactly what I want.  This seems to be a good template for what I like playing best.  I get bored of nothing but blasting or melee "hit them, then hit them again, then again again" without some sort of something extra in the mix.  And my recent Illusion/TA troller was too disconnected from the action to really fire me up much.  Right now I'm working up a Grav/Energy Dom and that too seems to fit this template.

 

Which illustrates another reason why I answered no, altitis is an ever present scourge.  This morning in fact I revisited a tank who's sat untouched for like 200 days and was enjoying that play (for now?).

[Clave Dark 5]

3 minutes ago, Machariel said:

in a world of few legitimate napalm-based solutions

Ain't that always just the way?

[UltraAlt]

15 hours ago, CaptTastic said:

The struggle with altitis is real, yet the love for a main never dies. 
 

Just wondering how many among us have found that forever character that will always be special for you above all others and played considerably more? 
 

And, if so, what was it that made it special? Power set combos? Play style? Costume/looks? Sentimentality? 
 

Very curious to learn. 

 

Er, what?

 

As a player with many characters, I will say that the player that insists on only playing one character is throwing a majority of this game's (any game with character options for that matter) gameplay out the window.

 

Don't repress the urge to be creative! Don't repress the urge to explore and experiment!

 

Give in to your inner Jack "the King" Kirby! Be the creator!

 

But - of course -  play the game the way you want to play it (hopefully to have fun). Fit into that pigeon-hole.

Be "One Slot Man"! Erase your alts! Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave!

Limit yourself to "there can be only one" to avoid what some call a disease ... this so-called "altitis" if you must!

 

Won't be me.

You'll run into me on one server or another, on one character or another, and may never know that it is me.

Always wear a mask <-- it's a superhero thing.

 

* "There can be only one"  from Highlander. Wouldn't have been much of a movie or multiple television series if there was only one of them in the movie or series, am I correct?

I know. Not really relevant in this case, but, still, even so...

Edited February 24, 2021 by UltraAlt

[Clave Dark 5]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

Be "One Slot Man"! Erase your alts! Be Pure. Be Vigilant. Behave!

Upvoted for a Nemesis The Warlock ref.  I'm soloing a stalker based on NemesisTW right now, matter of fact.

Edited February 24, 2021 by Clave Dark 5

[Darmian]

9 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Upvoted for a Nemesis The Warlock ref.  I'm soloing a stalker based on NemesisTW right now, matter of fact.