Adeon Hawkwood

Actually the purple patch applies to any level shift and increases/decreases the effectiveness of powers. It doesn't apply a To Hit bonus until +5 but it does apply an accuracy bonus at +1 and higher though so +4s do have a higher change to hit than +1s.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Purple_Patch
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

When you buy it it will go to your enhancement tray which can hold 10 enhancements. Open that tray up (click on "Enhancements" above your power bar) and then click on "Manage" at the top of the enhancement tray. This opens up your enhancement window and you can drag enhancements to any slot.

You can create them through recipes but for now I recommend you use SOs to get the hang of it first. To get some go to Talos Island (I'm assuming you're a hero) and look on your map for an icon that says "Origin Store" where Origin is whatever your origin is. Got there and talk to the shop keeper. Look in his inventory for the ones that have the same border all the way around and have a "30" at the top those are SOs (the other types are DOs which have a border that changes half way around). If you right click on them and select info they will say something like "this enhances X by 38.33%".

You can buy them and then open your enhancement window to slot them. SOs only work when your level is +/-3 to their level so you have to replace them every 5 levels or so.
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Enhancements

Invention Enhancements are slightly better than SOs but require a little more effort so I would recommend waiting until you have the hang of it before using them, it's easy to waste a lot of inf slotting the wrong type of IOs.

Yep.

I think you are misunderstanding the point of Slots. When you add Upgrade slots to your powers the stats of the power don't immediately change. Instead the slot allows you to put an additional "Enhancement" in the slot which increases the power's effectiveness. All powers start with one slot and you can add up to 5 more.

Enhancements increase the effectiveness of one aspect of the power (i.e. Damage, Recharge Time, Accuracy or others). Due to ED it is not worth adding more than three of the same type of enhancement to a power.

What server do you play on?

Actually you haven't missed the chance to use the respec trial. 24 is the minimum level to do it but you can do it any level after that as well.

Regarding Respecs, you can get ones much more cheaply than the market (i.e. for free). Here are the three main ways:

1. The Devs give them out after most major updates. These ones are called Freespecs and you can only have one per character at a time. As Chad mentioned the Devs will be giving out two of them very soon. One with the release of Issue 19 (probably on the 16th but it could be delayed) and one exactly a week after that

2. You can run the Respec Trial for a free respec. This can only be done three times per character. Hero Trial and Villain Trial

3. Veteran Rewards. At the 9month mark and every 12 months after that you get a respec for every character through the Veteran Reward system.

There are a couple of other ways but those are more specific, see the Wiki article on Respecs if you want:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Respec

From Wikipedia:
Based on the rest of the articles it looks like the difference is a Syndicate is a group working together to accomplish something none of them could do alone while a Cartel is aimed at reducing the impact of conflicts between members.

That really gets at the entitlement issue Uberguy was mentioning above. Does your $15/month give you the right to experience purples or the right to earn purples?

MMOs are all designed not around getting you to play the MMO but getting you to pay your $15 again next month. The carrot is an integral part of that process, sure you don't have insert shiny item this month but surely you'll get it next month. CoX in unusual for an MMO in a number of ways. First off it is very flexible in what it allows you to do to chase the carrot. There are no Bind on Pickup items so as long as you are doing something that generates you inf (mostly playing the game or using the market) you can work towards having the very best gear in the game, the only issue is how long it will take. Additionally the difference between the very up-most top end gear and gear that is merely "pretty good" is actually very small.

Compare that to [Name Redacted] where the best gear is all Bind on Pickup which means that the only way to get it is to go and run specific high-end content and that gear makes you significantly more powerful than someone in gear they've gotten through lesser content.

Actually in the I18 Beta all of the higher level Boosts required a lower level boost as a component. So the answer is technically no, you can't "deconstruct" boosts, but you aren't wasting the components either.

Quite a few Pseudo Pet powers are the same, I know Rain of Arrows is.

Based on the numbers in the GR Beta it sounded like Incarnate shards were quite a bit more common than purple. The statistic given in Zombies guide was that clearing a farm map set for x7 normally yielded 1 or 2 shards. So even if you run at lower difficulties you should get a shard every couple of missions.

I agree with you regarding Caltrops and Hide but disagree a bit regarding Smoke Flash and Blinding Powder. The best example of a similar set already available to Scrappers/Brutes is (I think) Dark Armor. It has less passive mitigation than other sets but uses control in the last few powers to make up for it. Taking that approach I think the set can work with only minor modifications. Smoke Flash is a bit of a problem since Placate is less useful for other melee ATs than it is Stalkers, but I think replacing it with a BPAoE Stun power would work (maybe mag 2 with a 50% chance for mag 3?).

Blinding Powder I don't see any problems with. Solo it allows the character to sleep enemies and use ST attacks if necessary. Solo and Teamed it provides a to hit debuff which stacks with the defense already present in the set.

As you noted Caltrops should probably go (at least for the Scrapper set). My suggestion is to replace it with a passive power that increases max HP and provides some S/L resistance. This would decrease the set's vulnerability to bad luck.

Hide could then be changed to not have the Stalker specific bonuses and moved back in the set.

The only remaining issue I can see is a Taunt Aura. The only obvious option is to take the Super Reflexes route and make one of the Armor Toggles a Taunt Aura. However, to me this feels wrong. My suggestion there would be to leave it out and just not proliferate it to Tanks (sorry Dechs). There is precedent for a Brute set not to have a Taunt Aura (Energy Aura) but I think making a Tanker set without one would be a poor idea.

The net result is a set that sort of merges Super Reflexes and Dark Armor. You've got positional defense but lack the scaling resistances of SR instead having a smaller passive resistance and making up the difference with limited control ability.

Heh, I plan to take fire on my Earth/Storm for exactly the same reason (although I also used the lava theme on most of my earth powers to give them a fire and earth combined look).

Maybe. On the other hand you'll need a significant quantity of recharge from IOs and Purples/LotG are often the most slot efficient way to get them. The increased supply of purples from people playing their 50s more should increase supply though. For LotGs in particular I think with Inherent Fitness a lot of people will end up taking Concealment or Leadership powers to fit in more of them.

Honestly I don't think so. I did the math and for a Shield Defense Tank using the defense Alpha Enhancement would add approximately 2% defense (about 3% if he has Weave). Now obviously that isn't insignificant but it's still going to take significant IO'ing to hit the soft cap. Not to mention defense sets are also very popular with powersets that have little or no inherent defense and thus can't benefit from the +defense Alpha enhancement.

I think the +Damage tree will be popular in some circles. For a Blaster/Scrapper/Tank/Brute/Stalker with a solid attack chain +Dam could be more useful than +Recharge. Recharge is mostly useful if you need to tighten your attack change or if you have powerful abilities on long timers. Also the damage tree has one with Damage and Endurance reduction which I can definitely see being popular.

A and B both work, it depends on how you've got it slotted and your personal preference. If you can keep the enemies with kb protection for the entire duration then the damage from Bonfire isn't that bad (although unfortunately it doesn't benefit from containment), it ends up being about one-third of the damage per second you'd get from Hot Feet so it's ok but probably not critical. Using it as a positional tool to help the tank hold aggro (either proactively or re-actively) is probably an easier option just because it means you don't have to remember to reuse Fire Cages every 12 seconds.

The mitigation from the fear effect is useful, especially when solo, but on teams the positional control is generally more useful. The risk of using it for mitigation on a team with melee characters is that you can end up actually decreasing their mitigation. Most tanks have a Taunt aura that also provides mitigation (either by buffing them or debuffing enemies) so if the enemies move more than 8ft from him that is no longer having any effect.

It's a power (probably incomplete) that was added tot he game files, but it's not actually available in any way at the moment. If you want to see the stuff he's showing in the screenshots for yourself say [Ion Radial Final Judgement] in any chat channel (copy it exactly including the brackets) this will create a link you can click on to view the power window.

Caltrops is 80% slow unslotted which is slightly less than Tar Patch, it's pretty hard to tell the difference though.

I once teamed with a Fire Controller who insisted on casting Bonfire directly underneath me and scattering the group all over the place BEFORE using Fire Cages to immobilize them (and provide them with KB protection. I asked him why he was doing so and his response was "for the extra damage", I pointed out that since they were getting bounced out of the patch almost immediately it wasn't doing more than one or two ticks of damage, he responded that he disagreed with me but he stopped using the power so I let it drop. I don't mind knockback but use it sensibly.

Pop quiz, which of these would have been a sensible use of Bonfire under the circumstances (a full team with a mix of characters and a competent tank who can hold aggro and is tough enough not to need more mitigation):
A) Use Fire Cages to give the mobs KB protection and then cast Bonfire under the tank
B) Cast Bonfire a short distance (about 15-20 ft) away from the tank between him and the squishy characters
C) Cast Bonfire under the tank wait for mobs to scatter and THEN use Fire Cages

We're not questioning the existence of the content, we're questioning the devs claim that the content is balanced around having the incarnate slot. Supposedly it's going to be extremely difficult to do without the Alpha slot and frankly I don't believe it (although if that is the case I will happily eat my words). I just don't see the small bonuses and the level shift making enough of a difference to allow content to be balanced such that it is completable by a decent team that has the Alpha boosts but not by the same team without the boosts.