Adeon Hawkwood

Yep, worse case scenario is you will lose your name, but currently that can only happen to characters under level 5. There are no garuntees that PS won't choose to change the level range though.

Well there has been a lot of new stuff since then. The Highlights:

1. The Invention system adds a lot of potential power, but SO builds are still perfectly viable. Soft-capped Defense and perma-hasten are probably the most popular goals

2. The Rikti Crash Site got replaced with the Rikti War Zone which has a series of story arcs starting at level 35, a co-op task force, a raid on the mothership and (after doing the first mission) Vanguard Merits to buy the Vanguard Uniform costume pieces.

3. Ouroboros allows people above level 24 to re-run any story arcs or badge missions that they have out leveled

4. The Midnight Club has a story arc that once run allows you access to Cimerora: a Roman themed zone with repeatable missions and a co-op TF (min level 35)

5. Day Jobs mean that your characters get bonuses based on where they logged out and for how long. All logged out characters (regardless of location) gain Patrol XP which is basically anti-debt. You gain 50% more XP as long as it lasts.

6. The Mission Architect allows people to make interesting stories and share them with other people (Sturgeon's Law applies). It's also used as a PL'ing/Farming tool but the devs try and smack down the worst exploits.

7. It is now possible to change the colors of your powers in the costume editor (some exceptions apply) and choose between different weapon models for the weapon sets.

I've played both sets (not together though) and I think it should be a reasonably decent combination. Archery is very accurate and has a lot of damage (especially once you get RoA).

The only thing I would note is that the idea of using it to pull is probably a suboptimal way to play. There are two reasons for this. First is the practical one that despite the static nature of the powers Traps doesn't really need to pull enemies into prepared locations. While it can be done the only power that really requires it is Trip Mine. The other powers work just as well if you place them during combat rather than trying to predict your enemies (in fact, PGT works better this way since if you pre-place you generally only hit one enemy). The second reason is to do with RoA itself. It's the heavy hitter in your set and as such you really want to soften opponents up with Acid Mortar before unleashing it.

As a side note, from what I understand because of the way the power works each of the 3 ticks of damage will check for Scourge independently which greatly increases your chance of one-shotting minions with it.

You can also use power analyzers:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Temp_P...nalyzer_mk_III

Why do I use Mids'? Because I am to a large extent a min/maxer and Mids' takes care of the addition and record keeping for me so that I can focus on important things like selecting which set to use in a power and deciding how many slots to assign. For me planning and tweaking a build to maximize it's potential is a lot of fun. In fact, I get a lot more enjoyment from that than I do from actually playing the tweaked builds. I enjoy playing the characters but the difference in enjoyment between an IO'd character and an SO'd character is, for me, pretty minimal. I IO characters because I enjoy it as an activity not out of any real desire to play IO'd characters.

Given this, I like to spend time reviewing my build before respecing. Looking it over and deciding on places to tweak it. Agonizing over power selections and wondering if I should shift slot assignments. Now I could plan it out by hand, the question is why the hell would I want to? I've made RPG characters by hand and even in systems which are designed with the assumption that you are doing them this way it's a pain. In a system like CoH which has effectively 182 variable (24 powers, 67 slots, 91 enhancements) trying to do it by hand is just painful.

One of the things I love about CoH is that the build and gear relationship is so complex. In other WoW (for example) the relationship is pretty weak. There is gear for your particular spec but the particular items that you're going to want aren't very different from someone else with the same class and spec even if they have a different build within that spec (there might be one or two different ones, but for the most part you want the same things). In CoH your build and your gear are heavily entwined and that gives very broad scope for min/maxing.

In the last set of interviews with War Witch she said that they are not adverse to doing new EATs but that they are not currently working on any. Like you I would like to see some more. However I think that there are plenty of options for EAts that don't involve Preatoria. However, I disagree with having them unlock at 50. The devs stated that was a mistake with the original EATs (a mistake they are now rectifying) and repeating that mistake with a new set of EATs would be silly.

I wouldn't bother with endurance reduction in RoA. Using standard enhancements you'll only get it down to a 30 second recharge. Persoanlly i never bother with endurance reduction in any power I'll be using that infrequently.

Personally in an SO or common IO build I'd give it 3 recharge reduction and 3 damage enhancement. It's got a 1.6 base accuracy modifier so it's effectively got 2 accuracy SOs in it already.

Some people like to only stick a single recharge enhancer in there because that keeps it's recharge roughly the same as ED capped Aim (45 seconds). There is some validity to that approach but personally I prefer to have RoA up as often as possible and if Aim isn't up I just use a couple of red inspirations before casting.

Also, Aim lasts for 10seconds and the casting time of RoA is 4seconds so you've got a bit of flexibility and can get another attack or two off after RoA that will still benefit from Aim.

It's important to note that the DPS numbers don't tell the entire story. The crashless nukes (RoA, FA and HoB) are up often enough that you can use them on almost every spawn. The downside is that they have lower absolute damage and don't apply any sort of debuff. In general the crashless nukes are better but the other ones do give you more ability to front load damage when required.

They actually have the same in-combat defense (Stealth gives a little more against the first attack though). Personally I take CJ on nearly all of my characters simply because I find the immobilization protection and extra mobility in missions to be useful.

My opinion: don't bother. +Dam is ok, but you get a much better damage increase with +Recharge than you do with +Dam.

Assuming that you slot your attacks with damage enhancements then the actual benefit from +dam IO bonuses is very small simply because it's only enhancing half of your damage. Personally I slot my blaster for Recharge and Defense.