Father Xmas

Balance issues occur in all MMOs. Most of the time it means a power will be altered to be less effective than making all the other powers more effective. The game is six years old. Balance issues are pretty much taken care of. There's a tweak or two every Issue but I can't think of a recent change to a power that raised the cry of NERF!! YOU BROKE MY CHARACTER!! You missed out all of the really big drama inducing changes by showing up now. However villain ATs doing hero content and vice versa may reveal something that wasn't foreseen.

No Tankers are relatively simple. You hit a bad guy, now he and his friends now want to hit you back, repeatedly. As long as you keep hitting them and your squishier teammates don't draw too much attention to themselves with large amounts of damage, your teammates be relatively safe and your biggest concern is surviving all the attention from your new "friends".

Now "hitting" doesn't necessarily mean damage, causing a secondary effect on a bad guy is just as effective in generating aggro. For example Ice Armor has Chilling Embrace which slows and weakens foes around you, Invulnerability has Invincibility which buffs you while ticking the foes around you off and Ice Melee has Ice Patch which causes the foes immediately around you to slip and fall (knockdown/knockback effect). But usually just causing damage is the way to hold their attention and some powersets have powers with small PBAoE damage auras. Tankers can take group taunt to pull foes if you wish to spread out mobs or lure them into a trap.

I can't think of how you can break a Tanker build other than not taking attacks or just taking attacks. Most Tanker power sets have one power that grants mez resistance, take it as soon as it's available.

Depends on the makeup of the team. A team with multiple Controllers may not need a Tanker. A team with multiple Defenders who can buff a team so they are just as survivable as a Tanker may not need a tanker. That's the thing about this game, just about any team composition is playable unless bum rushing every room full of critters three levels higher than your team is the team's only concept of strategy, in which case a Tanker or two would come in handy. The downside of a Tanker is lower damage than Scrappers and Blasters so if a team is forming and are looking for damage dealers, Tankers aren't that high on the list (exception Fire Tankers).

Controllers also have buff/debuff powers like Defenders, but a bit less effective, so they have a second "occupation" to fall back on if control isn't needed.

Yes but they tend to level slower than the Architypes (AT) that can do a lot of damage, like Scrappers and Blasters. Also depends on the power sets you take. Fire Armor trades protection for additional damage. You may not be as durable as an Ice or Invulnerability tank but you can take out crowds somewhat quicker.

Same is true with Controller power sets. Their secondary sets are buffs/debuffs and in some of those sets you can't apply the best buffs to yourself. Also it doesn't help being able to freeze a group of bad guys in their tracks at range while you are the only valid target. They then tend to all try to shoot you with their range attack. Solo Controller play is more about divide and conquer, mezzing one or more while damaging those still free to chase you. Also Boss ranked bad guys are more of a problem requiring multiple mez attacks to affect them. But you can set the mission difficulty to avoid Bosses for the most part.

As you get past the low levels you will start getting component drops that you can use to craft what passes for equipment in our game, called enhancements. There is a tutorial that you are told about at Level 10 I think where you get to learn the very basics of crafting and end up with one useful crafted enhancement when the tutorial is done. The later you take the tutorial, the better the item you can make, up to Level 25 I think.

Crafted enhancements, called Invention Origin Enhancements or IOs for short, are "better" than store bought Training Origin (TO), Dual Origin(DO) or Single Origin(SO) enhancements since they don't get weaker as you level and become useless, forcing you to buy new ones every five levels. IOs can also offer addition bonuses if ones from the same set are slotted in the same power and some enhancements provide global bonuses or chances of additional effects occurring.

You can sell these components (but not buy them) in stores but often you can get more for them on the player market.

The player market isn't an auction house. I can't stress this enough because if you go in thinking it's the super hero equivalent of eBay you will be confused and disappointed. It's a consignment house. Currently it is cross server for each faction, one for heroes, one for villains. After I18/Going Rogue comes out they will be unified, one market for all.

When you put on item up for sale you are listing the minimum amount you are willing to accept for it, before the 10% market fee. It will cost you 5% upfront (minimum 5) to list the item. If the item sells you will get that fee back but if you simply pull the item the fee is lost. Putting an item up for sale with a minimum price of one million will cost you 50,000. If you don't have 50,000 you can't set the asking price to one million.

When you are putting in a bid you are saying you are willing to pay that amount, right now, for that item. Not up to that price, that exact price. That amount is taken from you as soon as you bid. Bids are free so you can pull them, get your money back, and change them frequently if you want to hunt for a price. Now if your bid is equal or greater than someone's asking price, the transaction is made immediately. No give backs. If you meant to bid 1,000 and your finger slipped and bid 10,000 and it sold, tough.

Now the interesting part. If the seller was asking for 100 and the buyer was willing to pay 1,000, the seller gets 900 (1,000 minus 10% market fee, minimum 5) and the buyer gets the item. If the buyer was willing to pay a million, the seller gets 900,000 even though he was willing to accept only 100. The way the matches are made is the largest bid is matched to the seller with the lowest asking price. There is no timer, items for sale and bids will stay on the market until the player removes them or a transaction is made.

The thing is that as a buyer, you have no idea what the sellers are willing to accept and as a seller you have no idea what prices the outstanding bids are for that item. All you have is the price that the last five transactions went off at and how many of that item are for sale and how many bids are outstanding. If you want to sell quickly, set a low asking price but be aware that you may only get exactly that. If you want to buy quickly bid high, knowing that you will likely paid too much. You only have a limited number of slots at the market for items and bids, you can earn more as you level and by other means, so that limit encourages you set your asking price and bids so they don't linger there taking up limited space.

Depends. The two busiest are Freedom and Virtue on the North American servers. There are no exclusive PvP or RP servers in the game but RPers tend to cluster on Virtue while PvP tend to cluster on Freedom. PvP is done in special zones or combat arena so no PKing mobs of players are roaming in the standard zones in the game but I've found some of the PvP crowd to be similar to the maturity level found on XBox Live. And the RP crowd can get a little uncomfortable if you overhear them cybering at the game's pocket dimension bar and dance club.

Be aware that in this game most of the content is instanced and with the numerous ways you can travel quickly you normally won't find lots of players out in the world or in one area unless that area is new. Also due to past problems with real money for game money spammers and an influx of new players that quickly got power leveled via a new game feature before it was fixed (creating a class of player who couldn't even travel between zones or even knew other zones existed), you may not see a lot of players listed when using the basic in game search. Together it makes the world disturbingly empty of other players. You can still find crowds nowadays at the markets, the costume tailors and the universities (for crafting). Also there are certain in game events that may draw a crowd.

Oh yes, as long as you didn't get to Level 50 in two days so have no idea how to get to Kings Row and think standard missions at standard difficulty are hard. This game encourages players to make multiple characters so there are constantly characters of all level ranges running around. Plus the game's Super Sidekicking system allows teams to be composed of players across all levels. Yes being a Level 3 character with your two unenhanced attacks isn't going to be anywhere nearly as effective as the Level 30 character with their four or five enhanced attacks but you can still contribute.

And if anyone hadn't mentioned it yet, Paragon Wiki is your friend.

The Architect Edition only allows you to choose between the Tech Booster Pack with it's Cyborg pieces and the Magic Booster Pack.

Paragon Wiki: Super Booster

It's multiple graphs, swap is the time between graphics buffer swaps. Not sure what the CPU or GPU represent, time spent by each rendering the frame? Big graphs, tall bars, standard colors, green/yellow/red bars, green good, red not so good. Maybe you'll see a similar rhythm in those graphs which could shed some light, or not.

The Asus is a TNT2 card. No idea what a VisionTek p85 has as a GPU. I'll say you're right about the FX5600

No idea about the heatsink. Never built a P4 system because I loathed the whole P4 CPU family so I don't have a clue what the normal heatsink retention mechanism for a Socket 478 is like.

You remind me of a friend who has a closet full of old computer stuff and every so often he builds a system for a friend or relative from the pile of parts.