Hero A Day - Bituminous Man

One of my earlier tanker concepts was prompted by the "stone" costume - what if it was coal, rather than something like granite? Thus was born...

BITUMINOUS MAN

The idea was that coal as stone armor might not be great but coal is known for burning, so I went with Fire Aura for the primary - one of my first fire tanks as a mater of fact. I went with a an almost black base color with a red-orange blend pattern towards the midsection.

For the secondary I liked the way the big hammers of Stone Mallet looked so I went with Stone Melee using the lava option and making the colors match the rest of the costume - black and orange.

This ended up as both an effective character (see my many other postings on my love of fire tanks) and a visually unified one (the colors lined up well for all of these powers and costume parts) and a thematically it's funny (or "light" at least) while still being unified - if a man fell into a burning coal bunker and gained super powers from it this is what he might look like.

I enjoyed running Bituminous around so much that I also created Anthracite Man with the same setup (more red less yellow) on another server and briefly created Lignite Man as well. Though now deleted both of them may make a return appearance, one of them probably as a brute just because I'm trying to avoid duplicating powerset combinations on the same archetype. I may also try out the Omega aura as a supplement to the Fire Armor glow - we'll just have to see.

The Man of Coal currently lives on Freedom server.

Hero A Day - The Awesome Charcoal Man

Continuing the theme of stony tankers I decided a few days ago (after some forum browsing) that I needed to try a Dark/Stone tanker. I have played Dark Armor on a scrapper but not on a Tanker so I thought it would be interesting to see the differences. Having already made stone-based and coal-based stony looking tankers I decided that I needed a new look other than the basic stone costume. Playing around with the new Omega costume set, aura, and looking at how to customize the Dark Armor look I realized that a suitable tank could be made with the right color choices and so was born...

The Awesome Charcoal Man

The brief and not-too-serious concept is that a horrible grilling accident involving experimental charcoal and way too much lighter fluid transformed an ordinary backyard barbecuer into something more than a man, and he decided to use his new powers to fight for what's right - and to speak out about grill safety.

Dark Armor is his primary and gives good resistance to most attack forms including psionics, which is rare among defense sets. It does have a reputation as an endurance hog but inherent Stamina will mitigate that somewhat. It also has a nice smoky look on many powers which fits the theme.

Stone Melee hits hard and hits early, inflicting significant damage and doing knockdown as a secondary effect which helps slow down the incoming damage - they can't hit you when they're picking themselves up off of the ground.

His movement power is Super Leap - I considered Fly but there just isn't much besides Fly itself that interests me for a tank. With Stone Melee it's not like he needs another attack in Air Superiority, and I never use Hover on Tanks, so there isn't much point to taking it when Super Leap has 3 useful powers instead.

For his look I went Omega for his whole body, leaving off the hair and the jaw, shaded as a black and a dark gray. I added the Omega aura in a dim flickering orange over his whole body including the eyes. hen paired up with the dark gray/light gray Dark Armor defensive toggle powers, he looks like a smoldering piece of charcoal, which is the look I was going for. His Stone Melee powers are done with the Lava look using a dark gray base with dark orange glowing cracks, emphasizing the burning charcoal look. When he hits 30 one alternate costume may involve the fireflies aura in a bright orange but I will figure that out when I get there.

Overall I'm very happy with this character - from the initial "hey these two powers work well - try them out" concept to coming up with an unusual but appropriate look - that's what really makes me happy when all the parts of a character concept come together into something decent, and perhaps a little humorous as well.

Hero A Day - Arctic Crush

So I started off COH with a fascination for Blasters and I do still enjoy them, but lately I've had a thing for Tankers. With the right power choices they are very strong in solo play and they are always welcome on a team too so there is a lot of utility in playing a tank. Certain types of tank have been my major interest, namely Fire Aura tanks, but to start off the Hero-A-Day concept I thought I would go with my latest creation. I give you...

Arctic Crush

I wanted to try an Ice Tank and I liked the Stone Melee powerset already so I decided to pair them up and go with the concept of a mountain climber who fell into a crevasse and emerged much later as something new - the classic "accident" hero or "Altered Human" origin from the old MSH RPG.

Arctic Crush is an Ice Armor primary, giving him good defense at the expense of resistance (kind of like Super Reflexes for Scrappers). I have not played an Ice Armor character before so this is my first experience with it and so far it is fine at the low levels. The defenses are good and the taunt aura seems to work very well. Mez protection is a toggle power (my preference) and is available below level 10 so you do have options on when to take it.

He is a Stone Melee secondary giving him very strong (and very endurance-heavy) melee attacks. Stone is unusual in that the first 3 powers are all single-target attacks so that a tank who goes for offense can have a very strong 3-power single-target attack chain at level 6! Normally I try to work in more defense early in a tank's career but it's too good to resist and makes solo leveling quite a bit easier.as there's no waiting around for something to recharge. Issue 18 added bruising to the first attack in all tanker secondaries which reduces a target's defense, so a chain of Stone Fist -> Stone Mallet -> Heavy Mallet with an occasional use of brawl or a vet reward attack means he can throw attacks almost continuously. With the addition of inherent Stamina in issue 19 he also has the endurance to keep doing this for a while, though he will eventually run low without an occasional pause for breath.

For his travel power I took Super jump - I didn't see him as a flyer, a teleporter, or a super-speedster so concept-wise jump made the most sense. Mechancially SJ is a good choice for tankers anyway, especially with a defense based set as Combat Jumping adds to an already strong defense at low levels.

For the look I wanted an over all bluish icy/stony look and had a "glacier" concept to begin with.  I started with the basic Stone costume that I have used for multiple characters - usually tanks - with a light grey to blue blend. I toyed with the idea of going to the Huge body type but didn't want to look that hulking. I tried the Armored look for chest and legs but it was too fat looking and certain costume choices are unavailable with that format, so I stuck with "Tight".I wanted him to have some gear on like an explorer or mountain climber so  I gave him the Stealth harness for chest detail and added a complimentary belt.   I knew he would have the ice armor up much of the time so I didn't want to go overkill on the auras but I did give him the Omega Aura on his hands during combat in a light blue-white color so it hopefully looks like frost evaporating off of his arms as he makes his attacks. I like it so far and I may go back and put it on his whole body. To complete the look I went back and put Resistance Goggles on his face.

For power customization I started with the stone melee powers as I wanted them to look more like Ice than stone. Choosing the "Crystal" look I went for a light blue shade with some lighter blue highlights until I was happy with the look, then I set the colors to "all powers", ensuring that his ice armor has the same shading as his fists and mallets.

I am very happy with the character right now and expect that he will get a lot of play during the winter event this year. he is on Justice server so if you see him give me a shout-out.