How do you folks build? Do you make a 50++ build in mids as a starting point or some variation of a leveling build?

[Spaghetti Betty]

I will have a maxed out build ready to go before I ever hit the creation screen!

If I decide to play a toon through progression, I usually have a pretty good idea of what to pick and slot on the way to 50 in order to have as smooth of an experience as possible. Any holes are usually covered up by all of the goodies provided by the START Vendor!

 

Some of my toons have quite a few holes in their arms from Recovery Serum abuse

[Crysis]

2 minutes ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

Some of my toons have quite a few holes in their arms from Recovery Serum abuse

a Stormies drug of choice!

[Lunar Ronin]

I absolutely hate respeccing in City of Heroes.  So I have a full level 50 character build made in Mids' Reborn before I make a character.  If it's a character with power sets that I've never played before, I'll take it for a spin on Brainstorm for a few to several hours to get a feel for it, and either make adjustments in Mids' Reborn as needed or scrap the idea of the character all together if the power set(s) don't jive with me.

 

For non-Praetorian characters that aren't on a static team, I'll just make the character and power level it to level 50 as there's no real reason not to do so unfortunately, and I already know the character from either playing the power sets before or from having taken it for a long spin on Brainstorm.  For Praetorian characters, I'll just go with the build I have but use SOs while leveling, and then start slotting IO enhancements at level 32.

 

The one exception was a Storm Blast/Sonic Blaster character I played on a semi-static team which I used SOs with to level 50, as I wanted to see what that was like with a team.  I hadn't used SOs past level 32 since around 2009.

Edited July 21 by Lunar Ronin

[WumpusRat]

Generally the way I build a character is about as follows:

 

1) Come up with a concept for the character, theme, and powersets

2) Doodle around with the build in mids, initially just throwing together a build and seeing where the numbers pan out, then trying to hit certain benchmarks 

3) Get the build to the point that I'm happy with it on paper, then go to the test server and put it together to try out

4) Fight random mobs in the portal corps parking lot, then do a 0/8 mission against Council, Carnies, and Malta to see how it fares before activating any incarnate abilities, then try it out at +2 or +3 using incarnate stuff

5) Take the build to DA and do a couple of Heather's missions (particularly the second one, since the first spawn in that mission has a tendency to be a 'double spawn' and has upwards of 20 mobs packed into a single fight)

6) Adjust as needed

7) If I'm happy with it, take it to live and start leveling up. Doesn't matter if it doesn't play as well at low/mid-levels as I know it's going to pan out in the late-game

 

But #1 is the most important. Without a concept that I think will be fun, I just won't make the character, even if gameplay wise it would be statistically really powerful. And some mathematically weaker concepts are some of my favorite characters just because of how fun they are to play, and the personality I created for them.

Edited July 22 by WumpusRat