Gotta be emotionally connected to your character huh Trips? what characters?
As far as the non established main eventers go the best gimmicks we've got is what...Ziggler maybe? doing some show off antics mid match because he's "the show off" and that's pretty much all he can do with that astounding character, still it's miles ahead of such great characters as TYSON KIDD (he went to the Hart Dungeon!), and MICHAEL MCGENESIS (his dad is better than him!) for example.
The thing is HHH is still absolutely right, see R Truth and Rhodes last year and how they got over with their insane warped characters, Truth in particular was great but these situations are few and far between, on top of this Truth is now bland face whose only signs of being unstable come from gesturing at the invisible little Jimmy, Rhodes had his gimmick removed, hell he's not even acting very dashing these days either, throw Ryder in here as well and it's almost as if getting a character over is punishable by character removal or a depush.
The problem is WWE is in this "reality era" where you can't really have a strong character/gimmick. You can have a certain personality (ie Ziggler, Rhodes, Truth) but we'll never see Kane/Undertake type gimmicks again.