Local_Man

The above is correct. The Miracle, Perf Shift and Numina procs should be put in Health (or some other always on power, but Health is generally best).

As for damage procs in Choking Cloud and Hot Feet? Since Hot Feet is a damage power, you generally will get more overall damage from slotting the power with Damage rather than procs. The only exception might be the procs from purple sets. With Choking Cloud, you should max slot Hold and EndRdx before worrying about procs, but it is possible to fit a damage proc in the power, and even 2 at level 50. However, your first choice in that power should be the Lockdown +2 Mag proc.

The key Plant powers are Roots, Seeds, Strangler, Creepers and Venus Fly Trap. Everything else is optional, but Vines is strongly recommended. Roots is a key power for several reasons: (a) it is one of the main sources of damage, since it does twice the damage of other AoE Immobs. (b) By Immobilizing the foes, you keep them together so that the Rad debuffs get applied. Also, you somewhat reduce their attacks on each other, allowing you to get more of the XP. (c) While Seeds is recharging, Roots + Radiation Infection is nearly a hold because foes can't move and can't hit you very easily thanks to the ToHit Debuff.

With Rad, you have everything except Fallout, Mutation, and maybe EM Pulse as key powers, although EM Pulse is so good, it should be taken.

Plant/Rad has a few weaknesses. One is a lack of single target damage. If you miss foes with Seeds, you might have problems. Dealing with multiple bosses is a problem, unless you stack your holds (Vines and EM Pulse).

I generally go for puns . . .

since he will be wearing pieces of Silver, how about "Silver Wear"

If you wanted to go for a more pirate look, you could use some connection to "Pieces of Eight."

Welcome to the game! There is so much to learn! Fortunately, you found the forums early, where you can learn a ton of stuff a lot of players never knew.

Use the Forums -- there are a lot of player-written guides that can provide a lot of help. Some are better than others. Some are out of date, since there have been a lot of changes in this game over time.

For the most part, this is a very friendly community. Ask questions in game or here, and you'll probably get helpful answers . . . however, a few questions are "hot buttons" that will bring out the snarky responses.

Be willing to try stuff out. My first character was a scrapper. Then I tried a Blaster, then a Tank, then a Defender. I thought I had found my favorite in Defender . . . until I finally tried a Controller. Now I have far more controllers than anything else.

Here's a quick suggested outline on how to play a Hero character for the first 22 levels: First, do the tutorial and READ EVERYTHING -- lots of good info there. Start in Atlas, and do your missions there until you get up to level 5. If you get any drops of Enhancements and Salvage, sell them. (You may want to use the yellow Accuracy ones, but the others generally are not worth slotting.) Run to the Hollows and click on Officer Wincott, but don't take any missions from him yet (you can if you want, but trust me on this). Then go back to Atlas, to the train to King's Row. When you arrive, you should have a Detective on your list of Contacts. Run to the Detective and click on him to get a scanner. Do three Scanner missions.

Then either get a team or go to a Field Analyst to drop your difficulty to -1 (to make this next mission easy) and do the Atlas Bank mission. Run straight to the bank and defeat the baddies. You will get a Temp Power that is a type of jet pack called a "Raptor Pack." You can do more stuff in the bank mission if you want, or you can exit. Talk to the detective again to get a new contact. (By now, you should be level 6-8.) Go back to the Field Analyst to bump your difficulty back to 0.

You can either do missions from contacts, go to the Hollows and do missions there, street sweep, do more missions from your scanner or do missions in the Mission Architect building (not recommended until later). You want to get up to level 11, and then do more scanner missions until the detective offers the King's Row Bank mission to you. This one gives you the "Zero-G Pack" that gives you a temp power with Super Jump. By now, you should be level 12. Travel to Steel Canyon or Skyway and buy Dual Origin Enhancements, mostly focusing on Accuracy and Endurance Reduction (EndRdx), but that can vary with the character and what you want.

Then you have a bunch of choices: Join a Positron Task Force (there are actually 2 parts, so it is more like two shorter task forces). Do more missions in the Hollows. Do missions from contacts -- if you get one that says something about rescuing a mystic, take that one, as it gives a badge needed for an accolade later. However, don't be upset if you miss it, as you can go back to get it later through the Piller of Fire and Ice (Flashback system), but don't worry about that now. You can do more scanner missions, you can kill (er, "arrest" because heroes don't kill) bad guys in the street -- Perez Park is good for that. Or you can do Mission Architect missions (still skip this for now).

Plan ahead as you choose your powers. To get a travel power by level 14, you have to take one of the pre-requisites by level 12. You also want to get Stamina from the Fitness Pool by level 20 (or maybe 22) on almost all characters. To do that, you have to take either Swift or Hurdle, then Health, before level 18.

At level 15, you can do more scanner missions to get the next bank mission. This one will give you a self-rez Temporary power. The you can use any of the above options except the Hollows, as you are getting too high for that. Instead, go to Faultline to do the fun stories there. It is located at the far south end of Skyway. If you take the train at the North end of Steel, it will drop you off right near the entrance. Pocket D also has a way into Faultline. You can also do a Synapse Task Force -- Synapse is located in Skyway, and you will be fighting a ton of Clockwork.

You may have been having a lot of trouble with your endurance. Getting to level 20 and getting Stamina will make it much better. At level 20, you can do more scanner missions to get the Bank mission -- that will give you a team teleport temporary power that is handy. You can to missions from contacts (there are some fun stories in the 20's), scanner missions, missions in Faultline or a new zone, Striga. Striga is a favorite zone with a good series of missions and some nice temporary powers get awarded. You can get there from Talos Island or Independence Port -- look on your map for the ferry to Striga.

A key is to get to level 22. That is when you can buy Single Origin Enhancements for all your powers, which will make your powers much better. When buying enhancements, put no more than three of the same type into any one power -- no more than three red Damage enhancements in an attack. Under a system called "Enhancement Diversification," more than three will give very, very little benefit.

There is more content than you can play on one character -- That's why it is fun to make more characters and try different things.

Phantom Army has a 60 second recharge, but there is a 3 second period when the three phantoms are summoned, and three seconds at the end when they blink out one by one. Thus, a lot of folks feel that recharge of 63 seconds is good enough, as you can re-cast just as the third Phantom is disappearing.

That's cutting it a bit close for me. I want to be able to cast the new bunch BEFORE the old ones start to disappear, so I want the recharge to be under 60 seconds ideally. That gives me a little bit of "fudge time" for when I might be caught in another animation or didn't pay close enough attention. 61 seconds Recharge is probably good enough, but I prefer it to be under 60.

Frosticus's story about Lord Recluse is very true, but that dude is FAST. The moment PA drop, he immediately starts looking for another target, usually finding YOU unless something else can grab his attention very quickly. I have tried tanking LR on a couple of all-controller Statesman TFs using two Illusion controllers, and we usually die a lot even when we try to alternate PA.

This thread is great! Lots of great ideas.

My guess, 992 mil.

While the smaller servers DO have closer knit communities, the people on CoH are very friendly to new players and willing to help folks get integrated into activities. One of the best ways to introduce yourself is to post something in the server-specific forum boards. Say hello and that you are new and that you are looking to find some good folks for teaming. Say what times you expect to be on. I bet you will get lots and lots of volunteers.

Also, there is the Mentoring Project, which puts you in contact with a veteran player. One thing often cited by players from other games is how friendly our community is.

As others have said, try out lots of stuff. I started on Liberty with a scrapper. Now, Guardian is my main server, and I have far more Controllers than any other archtype ... and Controller is the last of the 5 Hero basic archtypes that I tried.

I have a Mind/FF in the 40's, and surprisingly, I have solo'ed him most of the time. Solo in the low levels was pretty easy, but in the upper levels, the amount of damage he can do is more limited. Pets really help out other controllers.

Because he is built to solo but still has the ally bubbles, he is always welcome on any team. Key to both team and solo play is the single target attack chain that is also a mez chain -- Dom-Mez-Lev. I can focus on one target to take him out, or I can spread those around to mez three foes. Therefore, I suggest the first four powers you take are Mesmerize (slotted for damage), Dominate (which can be slotted for damage, mez or a combo) and Levitate. The first two set up Containment for the third. Mez does more damage than Dom and the hold lasts through the next attack, so I lead off with Dominate. Then, Mezmerize does double damage, or if Dom missed, Mezmerize set up Containment for Levitate, the big hitter. And Confuse gets sprinkled around to keep other foes out of the fight. (I'm a big fan of Confuse -- just take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide).

Force Bolt is a fun power, but will probably frustrate your team if you use it much. Wouldn't a Sleep like Mezmerize be more team friendly?

PFF is over the softcap on its own without any enhancement. Why waste slots in it? Only if you expect to be going up against +4s.

Well, here is a common IO, leveling up-type build. The allocation of slots might be different, however.

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.707
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Mind-FF: Level 40 Magic Controller
Primary Power Set: Mind Control
Secondary Power Set: Force Field
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Speed
Hero Profile:
Level 1: Mesmerize -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(3), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(9)
Level 1: Personal Force Field -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 2: Dominate -- Acc-I(A), Hold-I(3), RechRdx-I(9), Dmg-I(13), Dmg-I(19), Dmg-I(19)
Level 4: Levitate -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(5), Dmg-I(5), Dmg-I(7), Dmg-I(37), RechRdx-I(37)
Level 6: Confuse -- Acc-I(A), Conf-I(11), RechRdx-I(11), Acc-I(37), Conf-I(39)
Level 8: Deflection Shield -- DefBuff-I(A), EndRdx-I(13), DefBuff-I(17), DefBuff-I(39)
Level 10: Mass Hypnosis -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(15), Sleep-I(15), RechRdx-I(17), RechRdx-I(40)
Level 12: Hover -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 14: Fly -- Flight-I(A)
Level 16: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 18: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 20: Stamina -- EndMod-I(A), EndMod-I(21), EndMod-I(21)
Level 22: Dispersion Bubble -- DefBuff-I(A), EndRdx-I(23), DefBuff-I(23), DefBuff-I(31)
Level 24: Insulation Shield -- DefBuff-I(A), EndRdx-I(25), DefBuff-I(25), DefBuff-I(40)
Level 26: Terrify -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(27), Dmg-I(27), Dmg-I(29), RechRdx-I(34), Fear-I(34)
Level 28: Total Domination -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(29), Hold-I(40)
Level 30: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(31), RechRdx-I(31)
Level 32: Mass Confusion -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(33), Conf-I(33), RechRdx-I(33), Conf-I(34)
Level 35: Repulsion Bomb -- Acc-I(A), Dmg-I(36), Dmg-I(36), Dsrnt-I(36)
Level 38: Force Bubble -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(39)
Level 41: [Empty]
Level 44: [Empty]
Level 47: [Empty]
Level 49: [Empty]
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Containment
Level 6: Ninja Run

There are too darn many good powers in Earth/Storm to give up two for Aid Other/Stimulant and then Aid Self. And keep in mind that Aid Self can be interrupted, so it often does not work in combat. As MM suggested, you can do fine with Hibernate from the Ice APP set or Earth's Embrace from the Stone APP set. Neither of them can be interrupted.

The nice thing about Hibernate is that it acts as an emergency Heal, an emergency Endurance Recovery, and as a general purpose "panic button." Since Storm has neither a self-heal or self-endurance recovery, it covers both. I get the Ice APP on most of my Storm controllers for this reason.

Earth's Embrace provides both a heal and a huge boost to hit points, but no endurance recovery power. If you go this way, you will probably want to build for a lot of Recovery and keep a bunch of blues on hand.

Scrappers and Brutes are a dime a dozen. Try a Controller. Take a look at my Illusion/Radiation guide, linked in my sig. It is one of the most flexible and powerful builds in the game. Fairly easy to play moderately well, not easy to play really well.

This build is slotted all over the place. You probably need to get a better idea about the use of the powers before worrying about an IO build.

You are enhancing for damage in powers that have very, very low damage. It is not worth it. It is a waste slotting Stone Cages, Stalagmites, Volcanic Gasses and Sleet for damage. The damage is so low in those powers that procs actually do more damage, but you should slot for the primary purpose first. Stone Cages need Acc and EndRdx, and then add procs. Stalagmites is a key control power, and needs Acc/Stun/Recharge -- don't bother with procs there. Volcanic Gasses needs Recharge and Hold first, then procs. Sleet needs max Recharge before any procs.

Stealth and Invis? Try Hasten, then Super Speed with a Stealth proc. That way you can get rid of CJ/SJ and combine your travel power with Invisibility. Combat Jumping is way overslotted -- there are other ways to get more Defense if that's what you want, but you may not need it.

Take a look at my Earth/Rad guide to get a better idea on the basic slotting and uses of your Earth Control powers. The link is in my sig.