DarkGob

The official story is that Hamidon was defeated during the Hamidon Wars. I haven't progressed enough in Praetoria to know if anything else has been revealed about this, but it was even hinted in the promotional materials for GR that he may not be gone for good. Perhaps he'll be involved with the some of the end-game raid content?

Set IOs be used to buff characters up pretty well, I don't think Hami-Os are used too much any more (not to say they aren't used, but they aren't the be-all-end-all anymore). Like Kyzock said, the "new" Hami-Os (in terms of highly sought-after and powerful enhancements) are PvP IOs (drop off PvP kills only) and purple IOs (extremely rare -- estimate are something like 1 in every 1000-2000 kills -- IOs that only drop from enemies capable of dropping level 50 stuff). Hami-O's will still sell for quite a bit, but they're no longer the most valuable item in the game, and the days of doing an entire raid to get a single enhancement are gone; inf is much easier to come by these days, and you can get quite a bit of what you need just from the markets.

You're wrong, this is an awesome time to come back. Yeah, there's a lot to learn, and yeah, it's overwhelming, but once you understand it you'll realize how much better the game is. My suggestion would be to start here, pick the first Issue that was released after you stopped playing (sounds like you missed Issue 9), and work through the wiki to see what you've missed. (Note about the wiki: DO NOT follow any link to a CoH wiki hosted at Wikia, that wiki is plagued with spammers and malware. paragonwiki.com or wiki.cohtitan.com are the links you want.)

As for which you're better off doing, new vs. existing character...gosh, that's a tough one. I suppose the most obnoxious thing with an existing character would be respeccing, yeah.

Even still.

It makes sense, but in practice it doesn't really interfere that much with Fury generation. Although as I think about it, I'm making this statement based on the pre-I18* rules for Fury generation, I haven't played my Dark/Dark Brute since I18 went Live. Since Fury now decays more slowly below a certain percentage (what is it, 80%?), I'm thinking this will improve a Dark Brute's ability to maintain Fury post-I18.

This.

*I typed this as I8 at first...can't believe the game has come this far.

This is literally a Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, and it's actually over something more stupid than sexuality.

It's the same badge for heroes and Villains, isn't it? Pain Killer certainly is, I don't seem to be able to find information on the supposed badge you get if you select the IoP reward.

Anyway, at this point I've given up on the CoP until at least the AV firing through its shield is fixed. Even then, I might wait a bit until people learn a bit more about it and I can at least get a guarantee of being with a group that can coordinate those stupid towers.

EDIT: Doy, it's Power Liberator/Master Thief. No wonder why I couldn't find it on the list of badges added in I18 -- it was added in I7! Anyway, yeah, there should be no reason for you to remain Vigilante until the CoP is fixed for badging purposes.

I yield to your point and depressing reality.

Not being able to slot them could have been a possible trade-off for them becoming inherent. That's not the case, but when we first found out about this we weren't sure.

You left out "Beginner's Luck", which is arguably the closest "unpaid" buff to Fitness becoming inherent.

Of course, there actually IS a tradeoff for making Fitness an inherent -- it's still enhanceable, so those additional 3 powers you get in your build? You still have to enhance those with the same amount of slots if you want to retain your original performance values out of Health and Stamina (and, uh, Swift and Hurdle I guess, if for some reason you've added slots to them).

I've looked at the builds for my major characters and don't see too many of them changing in any significant way. Hell, I probably won't even bother respeccing my Bots/Dark MM, just because there's literally no other power I would want to take on him. But my Crab Spider? I abandoned him at 32 because he performed poorly due to a tight and badly put-together build. But getting 3 extra powers will help immensely, even if slotting them will be tough.

Right, except he can still use the difficulty slider to make the game as hard as he wants (and frankly I think he's exaggerating that +4/x8 is too easy for him, or he's outright trolling). It doesn't work as well in the opposite direction.

To be honest though, I am hoping that this won't be enforced for every existing build. Although it would certainly help some of my characters by freeing up a couple slots, I think most of them would probably end up taking Fitness anyway just for a lack of anything else to take. The only benefit I'm seeing here is not having to sit around and wait for endurance to recover (or use Rest if it happens to be up) at low levels. if you define "too easy" as "less tedious" then yeah I guess that would make things too easy.

Hi, don't tell me how to play my game and I won't tell you how to play yours.

Regards,
DarkGob

Ooo, can I be the first "can I haz ur stufs"?

Thankfully we have a difficulty slider in the game, allowing you to make it as hard as you want no matter how "easy" the devs make the game.

Which actually reminds me. Any comment on a difficulty slider in Praetoria?

I saw it as a joking statement, I don't think he was actually saying "change your global d00d", just "hey, you don't have the global you thought you had".