ClawsandEffect

Except for the fact that, you know....they DID sue CoH.

And it was partly for the ability to clone Wolverine in the game, as well as many other reasons.

The problem isn't with hitting someone with the shield. Shield Charge and the Brawl animation with a shield out are both examples of doing that.

It's throwing your shield that raises the trademark issue. Many characters over the years in any media you can imagine have used a shield, and hit people with it. But when you start talking about throwing a shield, there is only ONE character that comes to mind: The one that would be sued over. It is a lot more trademark infringing to copy a character's signature move than it is to make it possible to copy their appearance.

And that's on top of game engine limitations that would make it impossible or at least highly difficult to pull off.

It would probably be a pointless lawsuit that they probably wouldn't win, but now that Marvel is owned by Disney they have a LOT more money to give lawyers for frivolous things like this.

And if they decide to do an MMO of their own, a good opening salvo would be to make life difficult for the strongest competitor by filing a trademark infringement lawsuit.

Would they do it? Maybe not, but why should the devs invite it?

Since it was the second most requested set back when they did the survey that gave us Dual Blades, Willpower, and eventually shields, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.

I didn't spend any cash on them. I got a few by accident with Reward Tokens. Unless they show up in Super Packs, it is highly unlikely I will use any more of them.

The Windfall gives you MORE drops.

It's not a guarantee that they will be GOOD drops.

I mean, it's not called "Purple Drop Temp Power" is it?

Unlikely.

At the end of SSA 6 it mentions his eyes being colder than before.

I'm betting Manticore will be a hardcore vigilante or full blown villain by the end of this.

Redside purge is unlikely. If anything, they have been cutting down the number of Freedom Phalanx members to match that of Recluse and his inner circle.

Positron, Synapse, BaBs, Numina, Citadel.

Recluse, Mako, Ghost Widow, Scirocco, Black Scorpion.

Even if Manticore survives this, his remaining a Freedom Phalanx member is pretty unlikely at this point. My bet is he will become a full blown vigilante and publicly take control of Wyvern, instead of being their shadowy benefactor like he's been up to now.

Yes.

It does drain a lot of end, but that's deceptive. The 3 armor toggles have a base cost of .21/sec, which is lower than the toggles of most sets. Oppressive Gloom costs less than Combat Jumping, but drains HP instead. Cloak of Fear is an end hog, and inaccurate to boot, I usually skip it.

The power that makes people think DA is an end hog set is Dark Regeneration. It's base endurance cost is a whopping 33 end per cast, or a full third of your end bar if you don't put any end reduction in it. Thankfully, IOs have all but eliminated that problem as the Theft of Essence +End proc can actually GAIN you endurance when it is used in Dark Regen (it has a chance to proc for every enemy you hit with it, and gives back 10 endurance per proc). Fortunately, since you're rolling DM/DA you'll have Siphon Life, so you won't need to lean on Dark Regen as heavily as other combos do.

Your first priority is getting your endurance use under control, which isn't all that hard. After that you should look into adding some defense. DM/DA can get up to 32.5% S/L/E/N defense pretty easily, which puts you within a small purple inspiration of the soft-cap. (Remember, Soul Drain and Dark Consumption will accept PBAoE damage sets, so they can help soft-cap Energy and Negative)

You will need KB protection via IOs, or Acrobatics will be a must. I would go with either 4 points or 12 points. 8 points is pretty useless, because there is nothing that it will protect you from that 4 won't, and the things 4 won't protect you from, 8 won't either.

You can select the No Fade or Pulse option in the character creator to ensure that Cloak of Darkness won't turn you into a featureless black blob when you run it, and it is a very nice power to have, giving you the sam amount of defense as Weave and stealth as well. It also doesn't suppress its defense in combat, unlike other stealth powers.

I would go with either Cardiac or Agility for your Alpha slot (assuming you're planning on being an Incarnate with this character), and consider Body Mastery for your APP if you haven't got your end consumption under control by then. Soul Mastery is a good option as well.

In short, yes, DM/DA is worth leveling. But I will warn you, there is a spot in the mid 30s that kind of sucks. Once you get past that hump it's smooth sailing to 50 though.

The Theft of Essence proc does indeed affect the target of the power.

When you put it in Dark Regeneration, you are the target of the power's affect. It is listed as a PBAoE Self Heal, which makes you the target of the power. You are the target of it because a target is not required to use the power and it has a specific effect that is cast on you.

I haven't tested it with Siphon Life or Life Drain, but I suspect that it would give your enemy end back because those powers do require a target to be used.

1) Just because the set has accuracy does not necessarily mean that you are meant to slot all 6 of them in every power.

And 2) Transference IS a friendly power, it gives both you and any nearby teammates endurance back.

The proc works on the power's target, not the power's caster. That is how ALL procs in the game work. It is not a special case with just this one.

I believe in this case it gives end to both.

And the proc was intended to be used in powers that positively affect players. Powers like Speed Boost and Stamina benefit positively from this proc.

Just because it benefits enemies when used in certain powers doesn't mean it is a bug. It just means you shouldn't use it in those powers.

For another example of the same kind of thing, look at another End Mod set. It contains a proc that has a chance to stun the target of the power. That proc was intended tro be used in things like Power Sink, Short Circuit, and Transfusion/Transference. But, when you put it in Stamina, it had a chance to randomly stun your character.

It wasn't a bug, though it was fixed as though it was one. It was just a case of people putting something in a power it was never intended to be put in.

Or, you could just play the game the way you always did and use Merits to get the pricy stuff.

And you can learn how to slot your characters to be awesome on the cheap, like I do.

I have an AV soloing Scrapper and a GM soloing Defender, and paid well below 2 billion for both builds combined. Compared to the 6-7 billion single builds I see on a daily basis, that's dirt cheap. If I'd bought everything fro the "buy it NAO!!!" price, I probably would have spent 3-4 billion per build, but I didn't. The majority of my expensive stuff was acquired with merits or Alignment merits. The spending sprees I went on were fueled by purple drops that I sold for anywhere from 100 mil to 600 mil.

If you're not in a hurry about it, you can build anything you like without having to do things in the game you don't enjoy.

The ones with damage auras probably should be taunt auras as well, but the ones that have no damage aura don't really need one in my opinion. Which I think is just SR and Regen at this point. I actually appreciate my ability to disengage from combat on my regen and get some breathing room to heal without the whole group following me.

Not a big enough deal to me to argue about it though.

My Main Claws/Regen is built for 3 things: Recharge, Defense (which will get even better once I get some ATIOs), and passive regen.

I have perma DP capability, can soft-cap S/L with a single purple, and I have just over 700% passive regen with just Integration, Fast Healing, Health, and Physical Perfection.

End result: I can sit at scrapper HP cap and make most S/L attacks miss, and I rarely need to hit a click heal until my defense gets debuffed.

On the other side of things, my Willpower Brute has more resistance, and better defense (S/L and E/N are at 32.5% instead of just S/L) and my regen is at 600% or so with a single enemy in range of RttC.

The two characters are equally tough, just in different ways. The relative lack of debuff resistance in Willpower doesn't seem to affect that character's toughness in any noticeable way.