Adeon Hawkwood

Cytoskeleton is the "official" HO to slot in protector bots.

However, there is a bug with HOs which means that certain HOs work in powers that they shouldn't. Due to the way the enhancement system works several enhancement types are functionally the same:
Damage and Resistance
Defense Buff and Defense Debuff
To Hit Buff and To Hit Debuff

Now for the most part this doesn't matter since you can't slot the "wrong" enhancement type in a power. However since HOs count as being all enhancement types associated with the HO it is possible to slot them incorrectly. In this specific case Protector Bots can slot Enzyme enhancements since they can take Endurance Reduction enhancements and if they do the Defense Debuff Enhancement will actually count as Defense Buff enhancement for their shields.

For promotion of this excellent new powerset they should do a cross-over with Team Fortress 2. After all both are combat themed clothing simulators, the only difference is that CoX focuses on entire costumes while TF2 focuses specifically on hats. As such Hat Defense would offer an excellent opportunity to implement some of the signature hats from one game in the other.

For example the TF2 soldier would look really cool with a Statesman Mask and implementing the Towering Pillar of Hats in CoH would enable proper costumes for quite a few of the hat-based character concepts I have.

Dual Archery, like Dual Swords but with bows.

Personally though I'm still holding out for Dual Assault Rifle.

That's weird, they worked for me. Did you use Enzyme Exposures or Lysosome Exposures? I used Enzymes which did work although from what I know Lysomes would not work since the bubbles themselves do not take Accuracy enhancements.

I'm guessing knockback will be important to stop the AVs from stealing bases.

Well I only have one MM (Bots/Traps) and I took two of the laser attacks. Personally I can't imagine doing it any other way playing a character with no attacks at all would bore me to tears so I'd find room for at least one or two attacks in any MM build.

The fact that they help me Tankermind more effectively is a nice bonus but I mostly took them because it's how I want to play. There are other powers I could potentially take that would make me tougher but I'd rather have a character I enjoy playing than one that is the absolute best he can be and oftentimes that means taking powers I want even if they aren't the best possible option.

Minor quibble here. The fact that incarnate enemies are +4 does not change whether or not people are softcapped. +4 enemies get an accuracy bonus against you, not a to hit bonus. However Incarnate enemies have a higher base to hit chance which is why the soft cap is higher even once you get the level shifts.

Yes. Endoplasm's count as both an Accuracy and Mez enhancements so any of his powers that can accept either type will get the full benefit.

Detonation offers an AoE defense bonus in the 5th slot compared to recharge from Positron's Blast. Personally I consider Positron's Blast to be a generally superior set since the AoE Defense bonus is so small and the other set bonuses in Positron's are more useful. However, depending on your build it might be worth it if you need the AoE defense.

It's useful for an SO'd build, but less so for an IO'd build. Most IO builds pick up a good chunk of accuracy bonuses without even trying. Combined with TT:Leadership you should have no trouble hitting even against +4s (to test this in Mids you can change the base to hit value in options to 39% and check the final to hit of your powers).

To To Hit debuff resistance is 33% which is nice but not essential.

A Crab can be perfectly fine without pets. Personally I like having them out but I don't feel particuarly weak while waiting for them to recharge.

I suspect you mean Longfang since that is the power equivalent to Burst. It is slightly worse due to a longer animation time (2s compared to 1s) however the lack of redraw might make it preferable.

I wouldn't get your hopes up for this one. I recall BaBs mentioning that he tried to do something like this for Shield Charge but couldn't make it work which is why we have the current animation.

Why? Sure, if you're a power gamer the mid-30s is when characters start to get really good, you get your really high level powers, which are often the best in the sets and have enough slots to really start fleshing out lower level powers. But if you just want to punch bad guys in the face and get new powers to play with then it's the worst part of the game. The time between levels stretches out and most of the time when you do level you "just" get slots which are boring compared to new powers. At that point rolling a new character can seem very appealing. You'll get two new powers to try immediately and probably get another 3 or 4 before the evening is out.

You have to remember that this forum is primarily populated by power gamers. There are plenty of other players who really do not care about that, they just want to try new things and punch ad guys in the face and there is nothing wrong with that.

As Remus said Stugeon's Law says 90% of everything is terrible. A book that has been published means that at least one person other than the author read and enjoyed the book before it was printed and it was proofread/edited by someone who specializes in that and was not the author. A self published book simply means that the person publishing it can put up the cash to print it.

Now that doesn't mean that all self-published books are inherently bad, the collection of Schlock Mercenary books on my shelves proves that adequately. However, self published books have absolutely no guarantee of quality whereas a professionally published book means that at least some professionals thought it was good enough to sell.

Again, quality. While there are a lot of good Web Comics out there there are also a lot that are absolutely awful. The barrier to entry for creating a webcomic is so low that anyone can do it and the results show that. The good ones tend to float to the top and receive advertising through word of mouth but they represent probably the top 1% of web comics.

Additionally Web Comics tend to have a much more niche appeal than newspaper comics. So while I personally consider certain webcomics to be far superior to the comics that are published in a newspaper they lack the broad appeal required for mass popularity.

Here's the thing, what Return on Investment do you expect to get from playing a video game? As far as I know Paragon Studios does not pay you for every level 50 you get so from a strictly money point of view everyone is paying their $15 a month and getting absolutely nothing back, what a rip off, we should all quit and invest our subscription fees in lottery tickets which have a much better ROI (you'll still lose money, but you'd occasionally win $5 or so and therefore lose less money spending $15 a month on lottery tickets).

Now, obviously, that is stupid. We don't play City of Heroes to make money (well, ok technically the Inf sellers do but they are a minority) we play it because it's fun. If your friend is having fun leveling characters to 20-30 then making a new character who are you to tell him that he's doing it wrong? As long as he's getting his $15/month of fun out of the game he's getting a positive ROI.

Now, your friend is not the only person doing this, when the level to unlock the EATs was reduced to 20 the devs mentioned that there were a surprisingly large number of players who lacked even a single level 50 character. The thing to remember is that different players find different things fun. You enjoy leveling characters and maxxing them out. That's fine but it's not the only way to play. Other people like playing new characters but get bored of them in the mid-30s when leveling starts to really slow down and move on to something else.

At the end of the day as long as you're having fun then you're dding it right.

The "natural" characters that I always think of as being Willpower are characters like Malcolm Reynolds, Indiana Jones and Harry Dresden. They don't actually regenerate wounds (well ok, Harry does but it takes years) but they are not slowed down at all by minor injuries and will keep going to some degree even with major injuries (Out of Gas is a good example of this for Malcolm).

In general I consider hit points in RPGs to be an abstraction that does not literally represent "how many injuries can I take" but instead is a measure of the character's ability to keep going. The Willpower set is, to me, an excellent example of that in action. It regenerates hit points at a rapid rate not because the wounds are healing but because the character will not stop fighting for anything other than a major injury.

To some degree all powersets in the game exhibit a degree of Gameplay and Story Segregation since abilities can often times affect enemies they shouldn't be able to, (how exactly is hitting a Khronos Titan on the foot with a sword supposed to help?) but Willpower is probably the one where it really matters.

Essentially, the way I see it a Willpower character is not getting injured by most of the attacks that "hit" him. He is getting a dramatic scratch somewhere and his clothing is getting torn a lot but unless he gets unlucky and takes a lot of hits at once or takes several huge hits he keeps fighting anyway. This works well with the mechanics of the set, a steady stream of small hits won't bother him, you'll regen hit points faster than you lose them. However, if he takes to many hits in quick succession or takes several large hits you'll lose the time needed for the regeneration to work and he'll go down (of course he then staggers to his feet because that's what Willpower characters do).

This is my view. I was playing my AR/Dev Blaster last night and didn't really feel like doing trials so I just ran some tip missions and had fun smashing enemies since between IOs and Incarnate Abilities I can run at +0/x8 without faceplanting to much.