Adeon Hawkwood

As near as I can tell from looking at it visually, the way Ninja Run and Beast Run work is that when you use a power it moves you into the normal "running" stance and then activates the power using the standard animation. I would have thought that a similar method could be used with Walk but it could easily be programmed differently.

Except as soon as they spend those 10 bucks they are no longer free players but are instead premium players. Remember premium players = players who have spent money.

I don't think the devs are necessarily "ok" with it. I think it's more that they don't bother to fix exploits until they go mainstream. I'm not particularly thrilled with that approach myself since it tends to breed an attitude amongst players that exploits are ok.

Characters below level 5 (or around there somewhere) can enter into a level pact. While the pact is active any experience either character earns is split between the two characters.

Well, I'm less sure about Darkness but I think the power choices in Weapon Mastery are fine although a few could use number tweaks.

Web Grenade is a solid immobilize and recharge debuff so it doesn't really need changing. Caltrops is an awesome area denial power so it's fine as is, it's a slightly unusual power for a Scrapper so it's not generically useful but Stalkers get it in Ninjitsu so there is precedence. Targeting Drone accomplishes it's primary purpose of providing protection from to hit and perception debuffs although since Weapons Mastery lacks any endurance management powers it would be nice if it had a slightly lower endurance cost.

I do think the Shurikens could use some tweaks though. Shuriken is a 3 second recharge blast which makes it of somewhat limited utility for a Scrapper who mostly uses ranged blasts for pulling or picking off runners and, as such, generally finds a longer recharge heavy hitting attack more useful. I'd like to see the recharge and damage increased somewhat. Exploding Shuriken is easier, it's a standard 16 second recharge AoE (doubled to 32seconds as it's an Epic Power) except that, for some reason, it only has a 10ft radius instead of the usual 15ft. I think increasing the radius to 15ft would be a fair change.

I haven't tried it myself but I don't think it would work that well. Rndurance drain just isn't that effective against NPCs unless you also have reliable -recovery and the -recover for lightning storm is very short (4 seconds) and unreliable (30%) so even with slotting I'd be surprised if it was strong enough to be noticeable.

They have a really high resistance to it so it's not particularly effective.

No, Incarnate powers do not get enhancement slots.

What you are ignoring here is fight duration. A lot of EBs (especially ones with a god mode power) can take longer than 1 minute to kill on a Blaster. From a comparison point of view doubling the number of purples/oranges you have (and maybe throwing in a few greens for when you do get hit) is more effective than taking more reds. Taking 4 reds increases your damage by about 50% of your uninspired damage which decreases a fight duration by one-third. However another 4 purples doubles how long you can remain soft-capped.

When I'm fighting EBs on a squishy character I always pack my inspirations around at least a 2 minute fight duration which normally means 8 purples, 8 greens and 2 breakfrees (I find greens more useful than oranges since the softcapping means I don't get hit that much).

Yes, but you aren't going to like it.

Legitimize farms. Add a "This is a Farm Arc" tag and allow players to filter for farms/non-farms. When you implement it set all existing arcs (and the new arc template) to "this is a farm" by default (I figure story tellers are more likely to go back and change their arc to "this is not a farm" than farm writers are to change their arcs to "this is a farm"). Make declaring a farm arc to be a non-farm arc an actionable offense (arc and slot gets locked). It's not a perfect solution but it provides a system to allow players who want to play stories to more easily find them.

Yes and no. In general stories tend to have good to triumph over evil but at the same time a well-written villain is often more popular than the hero simply because the villain is a more interesting character. For example Vader is a lot more popular than Luke because he's mysterious, well-written and can choke people with the Force.

There's a reason TVTropes has the Draco In Leather Pants trope.

Well that's because it does, why do you think Europe is in the center of most maps? Don't tell me you're one of the Round Earth crackpots?

That because Caltrops is not a damage power. It's a debuff/area denial power that happens to deal damage. You don't drop Caltrops to kill enemies, you drop it to keep enemies off of your back while you kill your friends. The fear debuff makes enemies (generally) turn around and run out of the patch on the side they entered making it really hard for them to cross the area and resulting in them making fewer ranged attacks.

On the general subject I'll just say I think you're overly focused on damage (*sigh* Scrappers. You can't change them). Most of the powers you dislike in the sets are the various control/debuff powers available to Scrappers. Now while some of them (*cough* Melt Armor *cough*) are practically useless the majority are there to provide Scrappers some options for Active Defense if they desire it. Yes, Torrent is a high magnitude KB power, some people LIKE a high magnitude KB power. Powers like Char and Petrifying Gaze are not there to deal damage, they're there so a Scrapper can neutralize problematic LTs/Minions before they debuff him (things like Sappers for sets that are vulnerable to them). Caltrops are there for Scrappers who want to split a spawn up and have an easy way to keep extra foes off their back. Web Grenades and Ring of Fire are there for Scrappers who want to stop their enemies from running away.

In conclusion I'd just add that not all Scrappers are soft-capped AoE death machines. Even a small amount of active defense can, if sensibly applied, provide a surprising amount of damage mitigation and some people liek to take advantage of that.

I took them on a couple of tech characters for the same reason. Their small size makes it easy to imagine them floating out of a small compartment somewhere in the character's power armor.

I think the better question is why would anyone take Invisibility? Stealth + Super Speed or Stealth + Stealth IO provides sufficient concealment to make you invisible to most enemies and unlike Invisibility does not prevent you from attacking allowing you to run it in combat for the defense bonus if you want (or to avoid having to retoggle it after combat if you have multiple objectives). Between inherent Swift and the buff to Sprint in I18 the run speed debuff doesn't really matter than much.

Can I have a flying shark mount?

A while back there was a thread about this in the suggestions forum. My suggestion for a T9 power was "Lightning Assault" as basically a reverse-wormhole. Activating it would teleport you and any nearby teammates to the chosen destination while giving any allies near you a damage buff and applying a stun & knockdown to enemies near the destination. Thematically it's like Shield Charge, you aren't actually teleporting, instead your entire team is charging forwards and attacking before your foes can react (represented by the stun/knockdown).

As a side note (having recently done this on a few characters) while you are there consider picking up some Accolade powers. Demonic is a lot easier to get than Archmage and having it will automatically award you Archmage when you switch back. Born in Battle is also potentially worth getting if you already have Adamant/Ironman. Invader and Force of Nature are technically easier to get than their Hero equivalent if you do Mayhem missions while leveling up but probably not worth it if you didn't. Marshal I would say is harder than Atlas Medallion while High Pain Threshold and Megalomaniac are about the same on both sides (yes, I find killing 1000 Rikti Monkeys to be about the same effort as killing 200 Shivans).

Well since all ATs (except EATs) have equal access (APPs immediately, PPPs if you are villain alignment) I doubt they are planning to make changes. Now I'd like it if they changed it but I'm not expecting them to do so.

I've seen the idea of a Hero themed PPP before and that is one option but in many ways I'd just like to see more APPs for all ATs.