EarthWyrm

I'm trying to figure out how you can take so many facts that are individually (more or less) correct and still say something so wrong. I suspect it's your tendency to talk in absolutes (e.g., "totally at odds," "only worthwhile"), but there are also some factual issues present.

First, it takes virtually no time to use the Kinetic buffs, since SB and ID were made AoE. FS only involves finding a target that isn't going to die before the power goes off.

Second, sonic has an excellent cone -res power in Howl, so, no - it's not all single-target. That being said, I have more time for blasting on my kin/sonic than I do on almost any other defender. Spawns go like this:

1. Run in with (or before - SS+celerity...) melee characters. Fulcrum Shift.
2. Jump back. Howl.
3. Use single-target blasts/SP and Trans. powers as needed while spawn melts.
4. Rinse, repeat.

The synergy of these sets (+dam plus -res!) is nothing short of amazing. I have to assume anyone who says differently has never played them together.

100% agreed. And it's one of the things that makes this combination so stupidly fun to play for people who love running in (I'm a melee player at heart...). Run in, FS, nuke, Catch a Breath, TF, Siphon Speed the nearest un-stunned threat and back off while the team finishes the spawn.

And has been stated a number of times, this is currently bugged. ATO's that have not been catalyzed are supposed to be able to be sold on the market.

And it's possible that the person with whom the correspondence was being held works a flex schedule with a shift that ends at a non-standard time, had to go pick up a kid, got sick, or otherwise became unavailable, and the communication did not automatically go to someone else.

Things happen. When I communicate with tech support electronically - for anyone, not just CoH - I don't expect any response other than whatever automated stuff the system sends out in anywhere near an hour and a half. The folks who work in support typically are juggling a lot of issues at once.

Oh goody. A pedantic wall of text. I can do those too, being (I presume, based on your most-precise punctuation) similarly over-educated. It's kinda like the "upset" thing, though. Not much ROI.

When you refer to two positions as "main" you (explicitly or implicitly) diminish in importance all other opinions on the matter. I object to any classification system that does this. There are legitimate options other than "upset" to this decision. The people who will be loudest will be those who are upset, but that's just reality. The people who are satisfied with and support decisions don't tend to say so unless someone basically calls them out.

You called, I support. Feel free to add me to the, "The strategy makes sense to me" tally.

I'm not upset the weapons weren't included. I'm not upset that things I can (and have, and will continue to) earn in game are being made available for puchase. I prefer to reserve being upset for things that are actually worth the emotional investment.

/em wanders off, muttering about why he ever became a homeowner...

One clarification, related to the LotG: 7.5% is that it does not follow the same rules as the "chance of" procs. It functions as a set bonus, so if you go more than 3 levels below the level of the IO, you no longer get the 7.5% global recharge bonus. So a level 33 LotG: 7.5% would only keep working down to level 30, whereas a level 25 would work down to 22 for exemplar purposes. As you correctly noted, though, something like the Mako's Bite proc does exactly the same thing in its level 50 incarnation as in its level 30 incarnation, but the level 30 version can be slotted 20 levels earlier (and is in much lower supply, for a variety of reasons).

The "Pool A/B/C" distinction comes from how the sets were originally implemented, and there is not a perfect equation to understand why a given IO is Pool A (random mob drops) vs. Pool B (end of mission drops) vs. Pool C (TF/trial drops). Most of the procs are in Pool C (the combined TF/trial pool), but some (e.g., the Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance) are Pool A. Similarly, most of the rare triple-enhancers are Pool C (with several having been in Pool D, back in the day when the trial and TF pools were separate), but the Mako's Bite and Devastation quads have always been Pool A.

p.s. Sorry for the threadjack, Fulmens!

Are you talking about rooting? Because most toggles don't. I can toggle on while running, jumping, and flying just fine, so long as the toggle in question isn't one that affects an enemy.
As to the bolded text...

For bolded sections 1 and 2, where in the WORLD do you get that out of what CW01 said? I didn't see repetition of "it fluff" (?) or "not necessary" or anything else your quotes would intimate CW said. I saw a statement that it would require revisiting and revising every animation in the game. You also insert your own verbiage in the second bolded question; CW didn't say you're asking for the world. What you ARE asking for is a non-trivial amount of development time be spent on something that is unlikely to ultimately justify the person-hour cost. I mean, [Walk] is free (ROI = $0), and how long would it take, realistically, to get all the animations fixed to allow just all the toggle powers in the game to work with the new travel power models? If your answer is, "Long enough that anybody who wanted the things probably bought them anyway when they went on sale and just decided to cope," you're probably right. If it's anything else, you're probably wrong.

The third bolded section... honestly, I don't know how you can read "every animation currently existing in the game" and then have the gall to call anything you're proposing a "simple request."

Mob drops, reward merits, alignment merits, Empyrean merits, and Astral merits.

I think that covers how you can get them.

As you can see, at least one person was talking about the every-3-days version.

Your idea of a "best solution" strikes me as... odd.

I don't expect such a "solution" would be received particularly well.

Might have something to do with the ITF being... oh, wait, what's that word?

I remember!

"Fun."

This change affects me virtually not at all (I only ever tried to tag along to get the badge without doing the arc once; generally I just find a time when there's nothing else to do and slog through it), but the arc is simply not entertaining. Having the option removed is an annoyance.

It's also worth pointing out to all the folks saying, "Oh, quit whining and auto-complete your way through" that the very first mission can't be auto-completed. Just logged in and got it on a character to verify my aging brain wasn't mis-remembering, and I have the option to abandon it, but not complete it.

If you could use abandon to chain-complete everybody level 10 or higher on your server into the badge and access, I agree that's a problem. This just seems like a rather ham-handed way to deal with the issue.

hoooooorb!

Pretty much. Or, never, for travel powers that de-toggle me. Guess I'm too addicted to melee.

I'm still boggling that the price point on the Carnival bundle (13 pieces) and the Barbarian bundle (36 pieces?) is the same.

The short answer is, whatever you find most fun. The longer answer depends somewhat on your server, since lower-pop servers may make some recommendations (join some global channels, since you've got at least a month of VIP available to you) more or less useful.

However, "whatever you find most fun" is not helpful.

Each level band (~5-10 levels) has its own set of story arcs and contacts. As with anything, the story arcs offered by those contacts are of varying quality and length. You've probably seen that you can get introduced to contacts by doing either 3 (lower level) or 5 (higher level) newspaper missions, then doing a Mayhem or Safeguard mission, at the end of which you'll be introduced to a contact who usually has 1-2 story arcs and possibly some one-off missions. Your contact will often also introduce you to at least one other contact in that level band, provided you don't level up too much and find yourself at too high a level to "meet" anybody new.

A lot of the in-game story is contained in those story arcs, but not all of it. There are also task forces and strike forces, in addition to the trials (such as DFB, but currently not implemented in the same way), which require a larger team to start and have a different reward structure for completing them.

You can also get to Ouroboros by using someone else's Ouroboros portal. Once you're there, you want to go up to the top of the sundial (it doesn't look like one from where you enter the zone, but it is!) and find the badge marker. Once you have the badge, you'll get your own Ouroboros portal. The portal will automatically be granted by the completion of story arcs that deal with time travel, or a few other mechanisms within the game, but I typically "hitch-hike" my way in as soon as I can, because the portal is both a great way to explore content, and a useful travel power.
Different story arcs give different rewards; the O-portal is probably one of the most game-changing rewards, though, and that's why it's not strictly limited to story arc completion. Other arcs might give things like temp powers, but for the most part you're not going to hose yourself by missing any particular arc. Plus...
Part 1 of this question is mainly going to be answered with a resource you already know about - Paragonwiki. Or the forums. Always feel free to ask questions.
Part 2 is nice, because once you have an O-portal, you never have to worry about out-leveling anything. You can always "flash back" and experience older content that you missed in the process of leveling up, and get the rewards (badges/temp powers/etc.) that you might have missed. I took my level 50 brute last night and ran a couple of level 24-ish badge missions with my wife, so we could get the badges and so forth that go with them. Ouroboros is in my top 5 favorite additions to the game since I started.

I've never played that combo as a corruptor, but I have played its reverse (traps/dp) as a defender, and that character is currently sitting at something like level 36. I've not tried to solo her much; I think I could do so in relative safety (the debuffs in traps are extremely good), but doesn't fit with my solo play style, where I tend to prefer melee. I'll let others talk about the best way to manage this combo, though.

You don't want to skimp on accuracy. At least one accuracy SO is strongly recommended. In the absence of IO sets, I tend to default to dam/dam/dam/acc/end/rech, or sometimes damx3/accx2/end. Endurance reduction in your attacks is surprisingly important.

This is where the VIP ability to access global channels is helpful. I'm a member of ... I dunno, 5 or 6 on Virtue, so that I can see what all's forming up that I might want to try to get in on.
I described TF/SFs a little above, and they are the main "team-mandatory" content in the game. I think pretty much every zone above level 10 has at least one TF/SF contact in it. There are multiple trials (respec trials on both sides, the Eden and Abandoned Sewer trials hero-side, plus the incarnate trials), but currently the only trial accessible through the LFG queue for non-50s is DFB. Look for that to change in the near future, though.

There's also a Weekly Strike Target on each side that gives extra rewards, which tends to get run more often for that week as a result. There's a sticky I think in the Announcements section listing what the current and upcoming WSTs are. If they're ones you're level-eligible to run, often just hanging out in the right zone during prime time and watching Broadcast for teams forming is all it takes - though again, this depends on the server.

Broken record time: Global channels. Check your server's forums. Most of them have a list of popular global channels for teaming. And that's actually the answer to both 6 and 7. People do like running the SSA's, because the rewards tend to be pretty good for the time investment, and each one has at least one fairly unique map.

They are soloable, but with the caveat that each one also has at least one elite boss, which can be something of a challenge for squishier or lower-damage characters. In those cases, it may take a lot of inspirations to get you through on a squishy.

There really is a ton of content out there - which there should be, for a game the age of CoH. Part of the fun is exploring and finding the different contacts (some are unlockable based on things you do or earn in-game), but you shouldn't feel like you have to see everything the first time through. The reason CoH has held up so well (IMO) is its re-play value. If you miss something with your corruptor, you can make a point to try to catch it with your next character. It's very difficult to see all of the content in the game on a single character; I think that it's still technically impossible to do as the mission holder, because of how the patron arcs on villains are structured.

At the same time, though, it really can be overwhelming, which is why the community here is so important. There are a lot of players who've put a lot of time into this game, and who continue to be excited to see new players coming on board.

Feel free to ask for any other clarifications or whatnot. We've all been where you are. =)

So, reversed - 10% recharge for 3 slots, or 20% recharge for 3 slots each in two powers?

Not gonna happen.

I guess I may not be clear on what you specifically envision when you say "swapped in reverse order," and think that any discussion of a modification like this probably needs to be in the beta feedback forums rather than the general AT forums regardless.

(I also don't think S/L defense is hard enough to come by as it is for brutes to make this something I'd worry much about.)

It doesn't "concern" me, but it did make me shrug and decide to wait for a sale. There's nothing I can make today that I can't wait 4-6 weeks to make.

And now we know the real reason that [Walk] was put into the game.

To detoggle and kill Statesman.

The same logic applies to people assuming things are WAI if they don't care how they work. Your guess happens to be supported by how the mechanics currently work, but absent a redname statement about combined Hami's, it's still just a guess about intent.

Not that I care one way or another about the change; the only time I ever combined HOs was when I planned on keeping them on that character permanently anyway, even back when they could be gifted.

It's referring, I suspect, to combined Hami-O's, which got caught by the same non-trade restriction as boosted enhancements but that I don't believe are subject to improvement by enhancement boosters.

So, yes and no.

These two words should never, ever, appear beside one another.

Ever.

Not to be redundant with all the other praise, but /EA is excellent. I still think a single toggle for taunt aura and mez protection is ridiculous in a set with built-in stealth, but it's workable.

I have never gotten stunned on my /EA brute by anything short of Rommie's uber-stun or an AE-created group of Tsoo ink men all firing stun powers at me repeatedly with no toggles running other than Entropic Aura. Entropic Aura is really good mez protection.