Grouchybeast

I took End reduction/Range on my Fire/Ice blaster. I have Recharge and Damage fairly well slotted up into ED on most powers, whereas End Reduction and Range both give a nice benefit in most powers. Maybe when we get into a greater amount of the boost passing ED, I'll rethink.

You need to be a villain or rogue.

You could try PMing Arbiter Kim, who was supposed to be handling bug reports on the forums. He might be able to help, although he's only made one post on the forums this year, so I don't know if he's still in that role.

Assuming that you're talking about Common IOs, not Set IOs...

- As other people have said, with just a little planning ahead, you can bid and get the salvage and recipes you need at reasonable prices. Or, as you say, buy the ready crafted one. People who are making the IOs for badges often dump them on the market at sell-it-now prices, just to clear out their inventory.

- There is a page on the Paragonwiki which lists salvage for all Common IOs, to save you having to write them down: http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Cheatsheet. I think you can also open your recipe window, and choose 'Show unowned recipes' to get a list of all the Common IO recipes, which will show you what salvage you need.

- If you craft a certain number of each type and level of Common IO, then you'll get a badge. You'll then be able to craft that IO without a recipe, and for a much lower crafting cost. E.g., if you craft 11 level 35 and 11 level 40 Damage IOs, you get the Arms Dealer Badge, and can then craft those IOs without a recipe, and for roughly 50% crafting cost. You might want to consider designating one character as your badge memorising character, and they can then supply IOs to your other characters. You can find all the details here:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Badges

The only reason I'd be in favour of something like this is because rerolling loses the no longer obtainable badges which are toon-specific. And for that issue, it'd be a lot simpler just to make that small number of badges account-wide.

Just a quick note that to 'afford' a Luck of Gambler +recharge, all you need to do is run tip missions for four days (on either pure hero or pure villian character), and use the 2 resulting Alignment Merits to buy a recipe outright from the Alignment Merit vendor. You can then slot it if you want one, or sell it and use the resulting inf to but a *lot* of sets of Thunderstrike. :-)

Re: buying IOs.

It is almost always cheaper to buy recipes and salvage and craft the IOs yourself. That said, it is also often worth browsing through the listings to look for pre-crafted bargains. Which brings me to point 2...

It's helpful to understand that there is pretty marginal improvement between level 35 IOs and level 50 IOs in terms of the basic % bonus they grant. E.g. a level 35 acc/dam IO gives a total of 45.88% in acc/dam bonuses, while a level 50 gives a total of 53%. This leaves a pretty wide range of levels in which to hunt for bargains. The highest supply and, generally, highest prices, are at level 50, but with a little patience and being willing to leave in lowball bids for recipes over a range of levels, you can make big savings.

Lower-levels IOs have the secondary benefit of letting you keep the set bonuses when exemped down. My FF/ defender is largely outfitted with level 33 IOs, which let her keep the set bonuses down to level 30. (She has an unusually matching collection, though, simply because I vastly prefer playing her in teams to plinking things to death while solo, so I exemp down a lot.)

Really, you should have a look at IO sets. Once you get into them, designing builds can get fun in its own right, and they're perfect for doing exactly what you want to do here -- what seems like a small amount of +def, +rec or +dam really adds up.

You can find everything you need in BillZBubba's excellent guide:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=120140