Adeon Hawkwood

Probably still say Dark Mastery. There is some advantage to Soul since you get Power Boost (for Fortitude) but Dark Mastery has Oppressive Gloom and a better version of Soul Drain.

For a defender:
FFG: 13.3%
CJ: 2.5%
Maneuvers: 3.5%
Stealth: 2.5% Suppressed
Weave: 5%

If you slot them all for +56% defense (i.e. ED capped) you get a total of 45.7% Defense.

The low damage is technically not a concern except that it increase the change of the RNG killing you. The sleep hole is also not a huge risk, half of your defense comes from the FFG which is a pet and as such is not suppressed when you get mezzed.

Three things:
1. The heal in SL is "free". The recharge and endurance costs for the attack were not increased above the standard for a 1.96 damage scale attack.
2. As Arbegla mentioned Epic Pool Attacks use different balancing metrics compared to other attacks. Gloom does less damage than SL but has the same end cost and a longer recharge.
3. They aren't suggesting you use SL as a heal but as an attack that happens to heal you (although as Uberguy mentioned you can do both)

A Traps/Dark Defender with the Fighting Pool, CJ, Maneuvers, Stealth and Charged Armor (the Mu Mastery Version).

Soft Capped all 10 Defenses, mez protection, ~65% S/L Resistance, ~42% Energy Resistance amd a self heal. Slightly more vulnerable to spike damage than some melee toons but with Triage Beacon and Life Drain it should be ok. I think it would be hard to make a tougher character on SOs alone.

EDIT: Just to clarify, this post is mostly tongue in cheek. I'm not actually following the argument I just figured I'd post it for amusement purposes.

Correct, procs work irregardless of proc level (as long as you ahve access to the power). Link:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...ncements#Procs

Yep. Perma-DP is not a bad thing to have but when you look at it from a Healing over Time perspective Siphon Life blows it completely out of the water. And of course that doesn't even consider what adding extra Defenses (especially S/L Defense) would do for his survivability.

Recharge is a lovely thing for any build, but my experience is that support characters get a lot more usage out of it than damage characters.

This. Well actually I wouldn't have introduced PPPs at all and have instead given Villains APPs.

Don't drop hasten if that is your goal. You need 300% recharge to get Soul Drain up permanently. With 95% enhancement in Soul Drain itself that means you need 205% from global bonuses. It is theoretically possible to get that much in a build without violating the Law of Fives but I don't think it's actually possible given the IO Sets available and even if it was doing so would severely gimp the build.

My understanding is that they should, the Alpha Slot applies additional enhancement to each slot rather than global bonuses. I haven't had a chance to check it on the test server though.

If that is the case I'll be going for either Musculature or Spiritual on my MM. Musculature in particular seems like a nice option simply because compared to other ATs MMs have fewer options for increasing their damage though IOs. I can add recharge IO bonuses in to give me more uptime on Traps powers but this doesn't help my pets deal more damage (excluding the obvious fact that having Acid Mortar up more means more resistance debuffs). Once the Rare and Very Rare options open up the Musculature Radial tree seems nice since you can get damage and endurance reduction.

Given the price I would assume they are level 50s. Judging by the last 5 the level 10 ones are still going for 100million to 150million.

It's been bought up a lot. The devs have acknowledged that they recognize it's something we want but apparently it's a lot of work to implement.

Well technically destroying the inf takes it out of the economy which lowers prices by some (admittedly minuscule) amount. So it's to the benefit of a larger portion of the player base than most server events reach.

Well according to je_saist that describes 95% of the player base:

Yep, unfortunately there are plenty of people who don't realize that (in fact the seller may not realize that).

I think you're severely underestimating the value of the IO for someone trying to reach the softcap. Slotting that one IO is roughly equivalent to slotting 3 sets which each have a Large Defense Bonus (ignoring, for the moment, the psi defense which few people bother to slot for). Considering that defense bonuses tend to come quite late in the set that means three powers you can slot for other things (possibly more defense if you're inclined). Alternatively it provides about half the defense Weave does (with slotting and depending on AT) so it can potentially eliminate the need for taking the Fighting pool.

Fro someone making an ok build it is, as you say, not really worth it. But for someone who wants a high end softcapped build it is invaluable.

That is one of the most bizarre mixed analogies I have ever seen.

By making a bid of 100 inf you have set the price you are willign to pay for the IO. However, we have a free market with limited supply which means all of the people who want something specify how much they are willing to pay and the person willing to pay the most gets it and pays his bid. You can put a bid for 100 inf up and set your price point but your bid will not fill until everyone else who wants one and is willing to pay more than 100 inf has gotten theirs.

Sellers generally want to sell for as much as possible but (are you listening closely? this bit is important) they cannot make a sale unless the buyer is willing to pay that much. Almost everyone here can tell you stories of times when they misjudged how much the market would bear and had items that didn't sell forcing them to pull the items and relist them, eating the market listing fee in the process. The devs set the market up this way for a very good reason, it's not profitable to list items for more than you can reasonably expect to get for them. If you do then either you get a bunch of inventory clogging your market slots (and thus preventing you from selling other things) or you end up relisting it which cuts into your profits (in some cases substantially).