Gorgar

Can't advise on the build, as I went human-only, but I wasn't sure I was keeping mine at 19 either. Turned out to be worth it in the end though.

Bill Willingham? That's really cool. I've never checked out Fables, but I really liked Shadowpact. Definitely will run that as soon as I'm on, probably with a dark defender who gets some inspiration from his take on Nightshade. I'm looking forward to running the current and future Guest Author arcs.

Where do I send my contribution to the Gail Simone Writes An Arc Fund?

Having played ill/storm to mid 30s, energy/energy with repel to 50 and storm/energy to mid 40s (sorry, no slots for knockback in any of them), my vote goes for the storm/energy defender.

They're all capable of pretty decent chaos, but the defender has far more powers for sending things flying than either of the other two, and is the only one I could solo on Invincible with a strategy of keeping everything airborne so it didn't kill me.

I use it on my mind/storm to somewhat compensate for the fact that I have no other way to heal myself. I also dropped one in Mesmerize, which is just once chance for the proc to go off, but I use it a lot. The proc is no replacement for a defender with a healing power, but it's a lot nicer than not having it.

You can do a lot with IOs. I think mostly I learned from this guide by Fulmens: http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=119641

Common IOs at your level (45) provide more bonus than the shiniest SO you can get. Set IOs that add to more than one aspect to a power (like Acc/Dam, Acc/Dam/End, etc) provide more total enhancement to a power than any common IO or SO does. Two basic approaches: put most or all of a set into a power, reaping the benefits of the improved IO enhancements as well as the often tasty set bonuses, or "frankenslot" your IOs by using IOs of more than one set along with commons to get seriously huge enhancements to the power, but skipping set bonuses.

So, for something like Energy Torrent, you could put 5 or 6 Detonations in there, which should give you better pluses than your SOs did, plus the set bonuses, and Detonations are cheap. (Alternately, Positron's Blast is a much nicer set in that the bonuses for the set are way more useful, but those aren't so cheap.) Or, for frankenslotting, you could put an Acc/Dam/Recharge in from both of those two sets, then a Dam/End/Recharge, Dam/Rech, and a Dam/End, and in five slots you should be ahead of where you were with six SOs. Slot saved, minor set bonuses for any set you used at least two of, and they don't go red. Or put an end reducer in the sixth slot. (The actual best slotting for targeted AoE at level 45 is not something I'm going to claim to know, so that was an offhand example.)

Don't be afraid to try weird things. /Energy shines at weird things. Power Boost makes the Medicine pool more effective, and Boost Range permas easily, so you can really haul with Teleport. My first and only 50 is energy/energy, with perma range boost, TP, Hover for combat, three recharge in Power Boost, which doubles as a turbo button for Hover, and she's a hell of a lot of fun to play. No purples, nothing esoteric, just 4 sets of Thunderstrike and 2 of Posi's Blast. However, I've also done the blapper thing with her, and that was fun too. I would say definitely pick up and slot Power Bolt and drop Leadership, whatever else you do.

Strongest is probably my dark/sonic/dark defender, Chord of Souls. If you got a problem, yo, she'll solve it.

After that, flying inv/axe tank Princess of the Dawn. She only solves one problem ("we're dying!"), but she handles it well. I'm pretty sure the flight is part of what makes her effective, in that it's easy for me to keep tabs on what's going on because I'm a bit above the action.

Weakest: elec/elec blaster, dark/dark scrapper are both kind of janky combo characters, in that either they get their tricks off and everything dies in a heap, or they don't, and they die in a heap. Also, fire/fire blaster, which I'm not even going to try to make soloable. He's just damage. Gorgeous, unsullied-by-I16-because-original-fire-is-so-pretty damage, but there's nothing else going on there.

Edited to add: I think it's interesting that it probably depends a lot on what the player wants out of a character. My two strongest are team-savers that don't solo well, and I left off the stormies that do solo well, as well as characters that bring a lot of damage. But to me, saving a team is the best thing to do in the game. If I had an AV-soloing scrapper, I'd still list the defender and the tank first.

Disclaimer: I have a lower-damage, more controllery build, so this may not be too relevant. It's based more around winning hard fights in the end than speeding up steamrolling.

I also went with the dark epic for Oppressive Gloom. Not only for the single-boss stun of Screech + OG but occasionally for Howling Twilight + OG.

I find Siren's Song useful. Some fights are a bit big to cover just with Fearsome Stare, as awesome as that power is. If I can put a few guys to sleep for even five seconds, that disrupts the pressure the team is under, briefly. Skipped Amplify. Dark powers need to hit all the time, so I based some IO sets around +acc, always am runnning Tactics (unless exemped), and don't do enough damage to get much help out of the damage buff. Also skipped Howl entirely and put Darkest Night off for quite a while, as it doesn't get used much outside of EB/AV fights. Kept Petrifying Gaze but don't use it much, as I have nothing reliable to stack it with other than itself, but in the event that I really need to keep one thing stunned and another held, I can do it.

For AVs, I have Dark Servant slotted for 3 Dark Watcher's to-hit debuff and three common Heal IOs. Tactics + his natural accuracy + set bonuses mean his heal hits, and since it goes off fairly often and is as strong as mine, it's pretty decent to have around. Am giving up the damage bonus from Dark Watcher's to do it though. Anyway, Servant and Darkest Night keep the AV from hitting much, and then it's Shriek/Scream/Screech for -resist, Twilight Grasp whenever it's up for the -acc, the heal, and I think there's a minor regen debuff. And of course Tar Patch.

Must be. Works for me too now. Wasn't working before.

What they said. I tried skipping Stamina, but found it ultimately frustrating. It's probably something you could do, but it will be fiddly and require special slotting. I prefer to save Conserve Power for just before the nuke, which doesn't save anything on the nuke but makes everything after it cheaper.

The sleep IOs are pretty decent. Grab a set if there's a bonus you want, or frankenslot for acc/sleep/range/recharge. I don't mind having extra duration in sleep, as higher level enemies will wake up faster, and a heavily slotted Siren's Song lets you keep a lot of guys out of the fight (at least, on a defender). Also, if you go Call of the Sandman, consider making room for a chance to heal self proc. I don't use it on my defenders (dark and emp) because they have self-heals, but I use that proc on a mind/storm and find that it definitely helps. And, since Siren's Song does do minor damage, refreshing the sleep on a group isn't a complete waste of endurance.

Now I want to try a sonic/energy with Power Boost, Aid Self, and all the self-healing procs I can fit, just for the hell of it.

I'm going to give you some advice that runs counter to what's already here. I won't claim this is the best or only way to play, but I've used these principles with lowbie tanks and had fun and kept the team alive and happy, which was success, to me. Also, this is not intended to be applicable to scrankers, kheldians in tank form, or those who don't intend to take taunt.

Take every active defense your primary offers, as soon as you can. I tend to just use three slots, all damage resist or defense. (Later you can slot more if you want IO sets.) Take them as soon as you can get them. Staying alive longer gives the team longer to defeat the enemies, heal up, etc. Live tanks protect the team much, much better than dead tanks. If there are active defenses (toggles) available at levelling-up time, that's what I pick from. Passive defenses don't give as much protection, so I've let those go longer.

Take the heal if you get one. Same reasons.

Don't take a lot of attacks, and make the ones you do take count. Pre-SO (and really, pre-IO sets), tanker attacks don't do a lot of damage, but they do cost a lot of endurance. When you run out of endurance, your attack chain is what you spent it on. Pre-stamina, you can stand around all day with every armor toggle running and still keep a full blue bar even with no end reducers slotted. You can turn them all off and run yourself out of endurance pretty easily by using a bunch of attacks. Thus, attacks are where most of your endurance is going, and you can do two things about that: take fewer attacks, and slot the ones you do take to do more damage and cost less endurance. You will stand around between swings a bit, but you won't let the team down by running out of end and dropping your shields, then dying and letting the aggro loose.

If you get a damage aura, take it. Slot it with accuracy and end reduction as soon as you can. It's not that much damage against any one thing, but it's one or two less attacks the team has to make against every enemy that spends the whole fight in your damage aura. Also it will help in holding aggro a bit. If my primary offers a damage aura, I don't tend to take a second attack until I can pick up an AoE or something with additional use like Siphon Life.

Take, slot, and use Taunt. Though tauntless builds can work, Taunt is a very direct way to affect the outcome of the battle. I think of it as a control power, except instead of status "held", the mobs are status "wasting time trying to kill the tank". If your defenses are strong and the team is backing you up, it's just as good. I'm a fan of frankenslotted Taunt for duration, range, and recharge.

As far as the sets you've tried, Inv is strong. Fire seems to require a bit of help, and works better for an offensive build. Dark is very solid (other than knockback, which you'll have to fix at some point). DB isn't a set I'd pick for a tank, as I get too distracted by the combos, but I'm sure it could work. I've had good results so far with inv/axe, dark/dark, will/dark, and dark/mace.

So, in short, my approach is to invest heavily in the defenses and limit my attacks, especially the single-target ones that don't do anything but more damage. Fun for me comes from being able to do this and hold the front line, letting the team do its job, and ignoring the relative lack of orange numbers, trusting that they will come when the AoEs are available in the 30s.

Gorgar was a pinball machine from '78 or so. It was the first one with speech. Very limited speech, about six words, but it was still cool. And, Helloween did a song about it. Chorus included "Gorgar will eat you". Couldn't resist it when I was going through my music collection looking for character name inspirations.

There's been a long line of handles before this one, and I wouldn't mind switching to a new one, but this works.

For me, I took CJ on my winged characters that are good at flying. I've got some winged melee types for whom flight is life. It's a lot of fun to chase down a runner with Flight on, or to go into a tram at full speed because I've got enough air control to negotiate the map.

In contrast, all of mine without wings that fly (mostly squishies) generally don't get CJ, and therefore might be fast but aren't particularly agile. It makes sense to me, as they're more concerned about blasts or buffs/debuffs, and flight is more a tool for getting from A to B than a lifestyle, as it were.

Details like this are a big part of what I love about this game.

My storm experience fairly well matches Sailboat's. Storm has multiple chaotic powers. Using them all the time forces a playstyle that doesn't mesh well with a lot of teams, and when it does help, it's not the nice comforting easily understood sort that a bunch of green numbers or a mass hold will give. It's still good stuff, but I've found that it seems to work best to hold the storm powers in reserve. If the tank starts to lose control, I can generally fix the situation. And, Freezing Rain is such a good power that just using that and Thunder Clap (slot it up, perma stunning minions has its uses) and then blasting away and using O2 on the squishies works pretty well.

Thinking about it, if you're fighting enemies that behave and cluster around the tank, though Storm is great, that situation doesn't really cry out for a stormie. However, for something like Red Caps or Cabal, which behave horribly and won't gather at the tank for their beatings, storm's chaos is less of a disadvantage.

Meanwhile, plenty of good things can be said about Dark, so here are some bad things: It lacks a demezzer. Other than Tar Patch, it won't really speed up a steamrolling team. And, it doesn't have any endurance-granting powers. Kinetics and Empathy will do two or three of those. (Not sure how much Empathy speeds up steamrolling.)

None of that stops my dark/sonic/dark defender from being my favorite defender (and, kind of, my favorite controller), however, as well as probably my most powerful character overall.

Short Circuit is a pretty good PBAoE. If that style of power fits your tactics, it's worth having just for damage, in my opinion. Also, even if you aren't built for endurance drain, it's such an effective beast that if you team with anyone who is built for end drain, you can help them out considerably.

I think Lightning Field has value for an endurance drainer. I have an AoE end drain build: Short Circuit and Ball Lightning are slotted entirely for acc/end drain/recharge. Lightning Field is slotted for acc/end drain/end reduction. The only damage slots I have are in the punches, which I use between waves of SC/BL. I notice a difference in endurance remaining after the first wave if LF is not running.

If you're intending to mostly play from range, maybe skip Lightning Field unless you want it for concept or appearance. Also may not be that useful if you're planning to go melee but stay single-target. I don't think Elec/Elec is particularly well suited to either of those approaches, though. Without the standard short-range high-damage ranged attack in the primary, I tend to prefer to use Elec/Elec as AoE and melee damage, whether you go for the end drain or not, and therefore would grab and slot up both of those powers.

Minor thread necromancy, but I figured I'd provide some update. Thanks again for the feedback. I did start one of each. Wound up taking to the PB more, so she's level 27 now, where the WS is still at something like 8.

I found that for me, having the self-heals made a lot of difference. On a team, I generally won't run the shields, as I'm running out of endurance too much, and the tank is keeping me from needing them. I'll just flip on the energy shield when a void or quantum shows up, then turn it off again when it's defeated. It seems more efficient to just heal myself now and then. But, I took and slotted two of the shields, so I usually have the option to be less squishy, especially solo. (Didn't wind up with the smashing/lethal one, which was a mistake. Waiting for the I16 free respec, at which point I'll tidy up.)

Haven't gotten to the ally heal yet, but am looking forward to that and will slot it up as soon as I get it. So far I wound up with the two heals, the two shields, two single-target melee attacks, and every ranged attack I could get, along with Stamina. It's a bit of overkill in that I have about nine ways to damage something, but it's pretty rare that I run out of attacks. When I'm done, I think it's going to turn out feeling like a cross between a blaster and a storm defender.