Thanks to Doug's and Paul's mad mentoring skillz, my initial character, Magma Maid, has “dinged” third level! Woohoo! Actually, I probably could have advanced faster than that, but making new characters is too much fun. I now have five characters, all on the Pinnacle server:
- Magma Maid: Fire Tanker
- Thunderella: Electro Blaster
- Purple Rose: Mind Controller — I need some more advice from Doug on this one, I think, 'cause I really don't see how I'm going to survive the training mission
- Brawnwen: Super-Strength Tanker
- Thudmilla: War Mace Tanker
I played around a bit with making some male characters (in particular the character that became Thudmilla was originally going to be male, as a change of pace), but somehow I just didn't think they looked as cool. Something about the male body template just looks a little goofy to me; it's not the exaggeration–that's the way superhero comics are, and the female template is no less exaggerated. I think it's I'm looking for a Gil Kane, Curt Swan, or Alex Ross anatomy, and the game designers have more of a Rob Liefeld/Todd McFarlane thing in mind. Maybe a Huge would work better. Or maybe I should just not be as picky. But designing the character's look is mega-fun, and I think all of mine turned out pretty cool. I do wish I could tweak the looks a little now that I've seen them in action. Oh, well.
I also briefly tried a Claws Scrapper, but I found it difficult to play and the claws looked stupid (I thought)– I'd really like it if you could adjust the type of claw, so you weren't stuck with metallic back-of-the-hand Wolverine claws. I was looking for something more like, you know, claws. Oh, yeah, I saw my first real “lamer”: somebody actually made a Claws Scrapper and called it Wolverene.
Tales of the Rambling Bumblers 
Rumor is that a “tailor” will be offered eventually which will allow you to change the look of your character for a small outlay of inspiration. Congrats on third level. 😉
The MC is actually a very easy character to play for the first few levels, especially solo.
For the initial level, use “sleep” and “brawl” as your attack powers. Once you reach level 2, take Dominate, and then Sleep everyone you're not in direct combat with, Dominate the person you want to beat on, then “Dominate”, “Brawl”, “Brawl”, “Brawl” — wash, rinse, repeat.
Up to level 6 I had a much easier time than I have so far with my tanker up to level 6. It takes a little longer to kill stuff, but when it doesn't hit back, you don't feel in a lot of danger. With the MC/emp character I have, I can easily take out 3 yellows. (Sleep closest MOB, Dominate 2nd closest, Sleep 3rd closest as he runs up to you, then run up to Dom'd guy, Dom again, punch, punch, punch, Dom… after 3 cycles sleep the 1st guy, then punch, punch, Dom, sleep 3rd guy, and repeat 3 cycles…)
More than 3 people, you start to run into problems with end, but if you're taking on more than 3 guys at at time, you probably shouldn't be by yourself anyway. 🙂
For Oranges, you have problems hitting, which starts to hurt when your sleeps fail to hit and the secondary guys start beating on you.
My personal complaint about the MC section is that it's a bad character for large groups. The “sleep” and “Mass Sleep” are.. not totally useless, but certainly not as effective when you've got more than 1 person who wants to use area effect powers. If you've got a small group, you can coordinate a little better. Also, the higher level MC powers are… not so good. Confuse and mass confuse are cool, but you don't get XP credit for any damage/kills that they confused MOBs do to other MOBS. This can seriously drawback your/your group's XP. So if you take a MC characer, I'd only do it if you're planning on focusing on your secondary powers and power pool. Also, you can't sleep Bosses at all.
So if you want to do MC, I'd take Mesmerize (since it does damage as well as sleep unlike “Mass sleep” which doesn't do damage, (whatever the level 2 power that brings down flyers is), Dominate, and Mass Dominate only. Then use your other slots for secondary and power-pool stuff.
Doug
Hmm. Maybe I'll scrap the character, then. The lather-rinse-repeat approach doesn't sound like that much fun, and I made her secondary power group Empathy precisely so that she would fit in better with groups…
Well, I wouldn't be too down on it — It has its place (which you can say about a lot of the archetypes.
I took emp as my secondary power and, since I've concentrated a bit on it: 3 MC powers (Sleep, Dom, Mass-sleep), 4 emp powers (Heal Aura, Heal Other, Absorb Pain, Resurrect), 2 TP powers (Recall Friend, Teleport).
The only think I'd have done differently is taking (the flyer pull-down) instead of Mass-sleep. The other night I was playing as a group of 8 PCs only healer and we were rockin pretty hard. I was throwing in a few Dom's to help out and we were doing pretty well.
Note: The mass stuff still is very helpful for smaller groups (4-5 PCs). You can launch a Mass Sleep, You'll miss some which will come for you, then your big guys can bring down the hammer on the ones that come, leaving the ones in the back still asleep.
Note: If you want to play a healer for a group, you'll have to get used to “COH – the spreadsheet”. You've got a good view of how everyone's doing, and if you can get a group with voice-chat together, you can be the general, but it's hard to both keep everyone alive and type commands at the same time, so you end up concentrating more on the team bars, and less on what's actually going on. Don't let this fool you, it's still pretty intense when you're trying to decide who gets the healing when you're running low on End, and knowing that the other person has a good chance of dying, but that's the healer role. 🙂 Also, if you're in a big fight, and you're using “Absorb Pain” a lot, you can find that it's you who's in the most danger of dying. 🙂
I started a new healer character (Defender, so I can take Emp as my primary) and will be using my other 10 slots (you have to spend 1 slot on your secondary) on Power pool powers.
Recall Friend/Resurrect work well together, I'm also going to take the first two powers from the “Stealth” pool, which make you and your teammates “hard to see”. I'll then work on the “Leadership” pool, which gives bonuses to all your friends.
Should be fun, but I don't expect to survive should I actually get into a combat. 🙂
If you're looking for a more offensive-style healer… you might try a stone or ice controller with emp. You can fire those area effects into combat and still help out your team.
Note: Mass-Dom may turn out to be a really really nice power. I'll have to see when I get it. Not a lot of things have Dom resistance (not even bosses)and your team can hammer on the stunned guys without making them wake up.
Can you take Power Pool powers at the start, or do you have to wait 'til you level up?
It sounds like it makes more sense to make a Mind Control + something else (if I want MC) and a Defender as a healer.
How do you do voice chat?
Check out http://www.teamspeak.org
I can't seem to manage to get it and ZoneAlarm (I downloaded Pro 6 last night) to play well together. I finally got it to accept connections, but it drops them after a short time period.
Now I just need about 256 more megs of memory to keep my computer from thrashing…
Doug