Continuing my series of City of Heroes characters, server by server …
If Champions was our first, best server home, Victory was where we moved afterwards. It had some of our top characters, and also represented the period when Going Rogue came out and we generated a truck-load of alts to run through Praetoria. Almost all of those ended up Blue-side after they hit 30.
Rita the Cat and Runt the Dog were modeled after the singing duo in Animaniacs (indeed, that was the name of our SG on Victory). They both got up to Level 47 as Scrappers — Rita was Claws/Regen, Runt was Dark/Regen, and both used Super-Jump as a travel power. They were amazingly effective and fun, and we told lots of jokes with them. I would have loved to have gotten them to 50 …
Runt stayed pretty constant in appearance, once the monster/villain costume pieces were out. (I was never quite sure about the kilt, but …). I was never happy with Rita’s appearance, though, toying with various costume bits and facial features over the years.
Gifted Kid and Special Educator were Level 44 Masterminds. GK was Robots/Bubbles (very high-tech), while SE was Gangs/Dark (a very dubious teacher). They were one of the very few Red-side groups we were successful with — the dual-Mastermind powers were just too much swarmy fun, and almost made the game play like a squad-level tactical simulation (with the two actual characters as the heavy weapons from the rear lines).
Bubbles — er, Force Fields — were a greatly underestimated power set. Not only were they an easy buff for the whole team (especially once CoH allowed you to cast them on one team member and have it apply to everyone), but the push-back-knock-down power was highly effective at knocking most Bosses on their butts. Plus, combined with MM, it was a fire-and-forget combo.
I found Dark to be an annoying Defender power, too, but Margie showed it worked quite nicely with MMs.
Another pair that would definitely have gone to 50 with time.
I’d enjoyed Kitsune-Chan on the run up to 50, as a character, that I wanted to do another one. We took the Praetorian version of her — instead of an Illusion Controller beloved by all, Kitsune-Sama became a bad girl Thugs/Pain Mastermind. She teamed with a re-rolled (alternate universe) version of Anne Koniki, here a Spines scrapper. They got up to 40, and were definitely on their way to being Heroes of the City.
Pistol Blasters rocked. Mine, Velorio, went to 38 alongside her fellow former Praetorian, Golden Judgement, a Shield Tank. Velorio was blind, but possessed by magical pistols of vengeance. Woo-hoo. We decided ultimately to make the Vigilantes rather than pure Heroes, because we could, but never saw any real effect from that.
We would have eventually taken them to 50, I have no doubt.
Another set of one-time Praetorians, Ms. Crackle was that universe’s version of my solo Electrical Blaster, Miss Crackle — except her suit was set up to make her an Electrical Controller instead. She teamed up with Positive Force, a Kinetics/Electrical Scrapper. The two of them were awesomely effective, with their electrical powers basically sucking the juice out of their opponents. Fun, fun times. This pair would have made it to 50.
Yet another Eliza Dee — this was was rolled up (in Praetoria) as a Super-Strength/Invuln Brute. She ran with Fragile Package (Rad/Kinetics Corruptor). They graduated from Praetoria, but jumped to the Villain side, making it up to 28. They were semi-regularly played.
Since we had done so well with Rita and Runt, we rolled up (when the animal makeup became available) two Brutes to try out along the same vein: Rhett Bull (lvl 26 Axe/Shield) and Phoenix Reburn (lvl 26 Fire/Fire). We colloquially called them “Cow and Chicken”. They worked out very nicely, even if the Brute bar had us running around like lunatics.
I’m really sorry I didn’t get pictures of them in action. In particular, he looked awesome with the axe and shield out.
Another fun pair we would regularly come back to, even if they were Red-side. I wanted another Fire Blaster, but Margie convinced me to try a Corruptor instead to be more offensive. We ended up with the horribly spoiled mage Finest Jade (23 Fire/Rad Corruptor), looked after (under orders from her parents) by My Lady’s Keeper (Zombies/Dark? Mastermind),
Shishiko was a Cat-person Thief I ran in a campaign many moons ago. I loved the idea of bringing her to CoH, and tried multiple times over the years. In this instance (probably the most successful), she was a Katana/Super-Reflexes Scrapper, teamed with a re-rolled version of Arctic Sugar, an Ice Defender who was always armoring Shishiko up in Ice … which was a good thing tactically, but sort of spoiled her look. They made it to 21, but never quite “clicked”.
We tried one pair of Arachnos troops — Cyanoglobin (lvl 10 Arachnos Soldier) with Wind-Up Spider a Widow-style Arachnos. They suffered from being Red-side, and not being very … exciting at low levels.
Motivation was a Kinetics/Will Scrapper I soloed up to 14. Kinetics was a fun melee set, but I just wasn’t in the mood for low-level solo scrappers.
We tried playing a three-player combo (with Katherine on F2P), right after the Steampunk costume sets came out. I created a new Steampunk Mollie Magpie 12 (Grav Controller); oh, Lordy, I loved those wings. Margie had Victorian Pride, a Scrapper of some sort. I don’t recall Kay’s toon. We never had much success playing as a trio, and only got up to 12 with them.
Cammie Kandachi was a Lvl 14 Electrical Brute, Red Side. I just loved the outfit, even if I never went far with her. Margie had an early version of Anne Kojiki with her, who later would team up (rerolled) with Kitsune-sama (above).
Honorable Mention to (yet another) Jack Byzantine, and Egnarts of Rigel