Adeon Hawkwood

Not a bad idea. Shards seem to follow the standard rules for "anyone can get them" drops meaning as long as the team does 1 point of damage everyone gets a shard roll so just add 1 or 2 blasters/defenders/corruptors to the tank team and have them follow the assault teams, they should get drops from the blues/yellows.

Yes, it's a sort of jello-flavored chewing gum.

It's WAI and has been that way for as long as I can recall. Basically it's a time-saving device since at (for example) 33 and 34 you have exactly the same choices of where to put slots.

Does the /respec command cancel the AFK message though? I seem to recall it did last time I tested it.

Defender SMASH! puny healer.

I think it shows just how small a portion of time the player-base as a whole spent playing their level 50s.

I disagree somewhat. I think yuo're correct that the devs should not lower the difficulty of the content for the sake of lowering the difficulty however I do think the devs should think about lowering the difficulty, or more accurately the time required, to get a particular Incarnate bonus at around the time the release the "slot" two or three onward from it (so make the Alpha slot quicker to finish around the time they release the Interface or unnamed 4th slot).

The problem with any sort of progression content is that while it works well for people who progress alongside the content releases you risk locking out newer players (or at least newer characters) if they have to spend to much time running the older content (which often ends up being abandoned). In [insert name of other MMO here] they have a system where they constantly upgrade the gear rewarded from the basic entry level progression content to allow new players/characters to gear up there in preparation for the newer raids.

Now it's possible that the unusual nature of CoX (people having lots of alts, the nature of loot drops etc.) will make this unnecessary and even when we have the Omega (10th) slot people will still want to regularly run ITFs and LGTFs without discriminating against those who lack even an Alpha slot but I really hope this is something the devs are keeping in mind.

I'm the same way . I tend to use freespecs in my base since that is "safe".

As long as you have mutation I'll happily be your human bomb anytime. Mmmmmmm +100% recharge and +50% damage.

I'd go the other way actually. Getting stuck on the Rikti homeworld for several years in what amounts to a combat situation would be amazingly tough on the human psyche. One of the main ways humans cope with stress is by sharing with others (which is why group therapy sessions are often used for treating several forms of trauma). Of the two Infernia seems to be the extrovert while Glacia seems more introverted. Given that I could definitely imagine Infernia handling their return better while Glacia kept her problems bottled up inside until she snapped.

She got pissed off at all of the LGTF speed runners deliberately killing her to complete the mission faster .

EDIT: Actually according to the wiki Glacia wasn't a hero in the first place:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Omega_Team

If this is going to be your first IO build I strongly recommend making it up in mids and posting it on the board for advice before actually spending inf on IOs. It is very easy to make an expensive build that sucks horribly (I speak from experience here).
http://www.cohplanner.com/

See this is why I could never go into politics, I calls them as I sees them. A "combat only - no story" checkbox might be more palatable to some people but from a practical point of view the design intent is the same: separate the farms from the story arcs. After all, you never see people complaining about challenge arcs crowding out the story arcs .

The reason I excluded Stalkers was not because of crits but because it's essentially an inherent feature of the AT rather than something in one powerset available to them. It's a good point though, I should have included Stalkers in the list I'll update my post accordingly.

You might want to look at Mace Mastery then, it's not perfectly in character but the graphical effects on the shield are pretty low key so it would sort of work.

Tell you what, download Titan Sentinel, export your current build and post it here (the help file for Sentinel has instructions for doing this). That will allow people to offer advice for specific changes based on your current build.
http://cit.cohtitan.com/download

Well first off, you've significantly over-slotted your ancillary shield. You might want to read up on ED but slotting more than 3 SOs of the same type in a power is pretty much a waste:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Enhanc...iversification

In regards to your specific question the short answer is no and the long answer maybe . The relationship between defense and resistance is very complex. In theory 1% defense is worth about 2% resistance but in practice the over advantages of defense mean that for a Blaster it is a lot more than that since it allows you to dodge mezzes.

From your description it sounds like you are basically playing a Blapper. As such what I would actually recommend instead of taking the fighting pool is to switch from Electrical Mastery to either Cold Mastery or Mace Mastery (the latter is more useful but you'll have to switch to a villain and do the patron arc to unlock it first so Cold may be more practical for you). The advantage of both of these epic pools is that instead of a Smashing/Lethal resistance shield they have a Smashing/Lethal Defense shield. While it only boosts S/L Defense the bonus it provides is three times the bonus provided by Weave so against attacks where it works it will be a lot more effective (and with the I19 change it might be worth trying to take both).

Now, you're probably wondering why I advocate simply taking S/L defense rather than the more well rounded coverage of Weave. The answer is that a lot of power's you'll encounter are defended against by S/L defense. A very high portion of melee attacks deal part of their damage as smashing or lethal so it protects against them. It's less generically useful against ranged attacks but a lot of groups (like Council) use guns and it does provide protection against them. In general as a Blapper you spend a lot of time in melee so protecting against melee attacks is higher priority than ranged attacks and a S/L defense shield is the best way to do that.

In general the Fighting pool can be useful for a Blaster (particularly if you use IOs to further build up your defense) but I would generally not recommend taking it in place of an Epic shield for most blasters, the numbers are a lot lower.

I don't think it was ever really a huge deal, in combat run speed isn't that important (although it's semi useful against a few specific enemies) and out of combat it's pretty trivial to turn on a travel power. The I18 and I19 changes (plus Ninja Run giving people an out of combat run based travel power without taking SS) simply trivialize it further.

They are identical.

Personally my opinion is to simply make a "farm" check-box to allow for farms to be easily filtered out and then make it an arc lockable offense to not use it on a farm arc (obviously farm arcs using exploits would still be subject to the current rules). Of course I can't see the devs actually going for this since they seem reluctant to officially condone AE farming but I think such a system would, long term, help people who want to use the AE for stories by allowing them to easily filter out farms.

Heck some of them were getting up above 1million.