Hopeling

The Average Damage in Detailed Info for Energy Transfer includes the self-damage. You need to look at how the damage is broken down below to see how much it will hit an enemy for.

I second this - my StJ/FA brute is very nice. Blazing Aura, Burn, and Spinning Strike are all relatively small AoEs, though, so I imagine they would be much less effective if stuff scattered without a taunt aura.

I'm... slightly confused, why are people talking about this as a hypothetical change, rather than a feature which we already have?

I'm not great at reading City of Data, but that page says "Type: Toggle" for Assault.

However, NPCs in general don't use toggles the way players do. They never have. This issue isn't specific to the Polar Lights - Tsoo Sorcerers switch their Hurricane on and off, for example.

Plus, there's just the issue of the pet's Assault power being terrible (+7.5% damage?), so you should go for the Core pets instead

I... guess it could be preparation for something else, but this by itself has long been a stated goal, so I don't see why they need further justification to do it.

It doesn't even matter how many people used the exploit. If a lot of people used it, it was a widely abused exploit and needed to be fixed. If not very many people used it, fixing it doesn't affect very many people, and it still should be fixed.

This change hasn't altered HOs being used for their INTENDED purpose, which is basically frankenslotting. Nucleoluses will still give great acc/damage in attacks. It ONLY changes HOs being used in ways that are considered exploits.

Better than me, then.

I'm really into CoH and only a little into cosplay; some of my friends are really into cosplay but not into CoH, and they do most of the legwork on the costumes. Sadly, I doubt the intersection there is enough to get together a submission for your contest, but good luck!

No, Soul Transfer!

The "issues" with the set have more to do with "SS wildly overperforms with extra attacks like Burn or Gloom, but is lackluster on its own", more than "people don't like this set".

I once encountered a great prank: in my high school physics classroom, someone from the previous year had written "GULLIBLE" on a piece of paper in large letters, and taped it to the ceiling. I noticed this during class one day, but my attempts to get people to believe me and look that, yes, "gullible" really was written on the ceiling met with little success.

Don't say that, I'll get hate mail. "You got my HOs nerfed!"

I wasn't the first person to discover HOs in power boost, nor the first person to post about it. I got it from another thread some time ago, don't remember who or when. Plus, it wasn't even three weeks between that thread and the change going up on beta. Development turnaround is NOT that fast.

Now, if you mean that the issue of HO'ed Power Boosted Farsight in general prompted this change, rather than that thread specifically, yeah, that's possible.

Well, some of the people in the channel might be on other servers. On the other hand, your search shows 50, which actually means "50 or more" - to get an actual number you'd need to hit the Search button multiple times and see how many pages you get.

Since Shield is also the strongest set offensively except /fire, I don't see this as an actual balance problem. It is certainly enough to make a character less appealing, though.

Red Fortune has good set bonuses - both defense AND recharge, a lovely combination. The problem with defense/resist sets, though, is that unlike an attack, you don't WANT to put 5-6 slots in most defensive powers. 5 Crushing Impacts or 6 Mako's Bites in an attack is fine, every enhancement gives you something useful, and you'd usually be 5- or 6-slotting an attack anyway. 6 Red Fortunes in a defensive power gives you lots of endredux and recharge enhancement, and most defensive powers don't need or want at least one of those things, plus you'd use 3-4 slots at most if you didn't want a set bonus.

I didn't say no one would buy them. I said it would remove that aspect of their allure, which is to say demand would decrease, which would result in less sales. Not NO sales, but less sales. Note also that I haven't said I dislike the idea. I only said that I doubt the devs would want to reduce the appeal of their own product.

I really am not going to discuss the realism/concept aspect of this any further at all, because it is a pointless line of reasoning, and usually leads to making the game worse, not better.

I disagree with that last part. Indeed, even the already-existing, relatively-difficult methods of PLing, etc have quite often affected the market and/or made the game more frustrating for the rest of us.

Currently, the Paragon Market enhancements have a distinct advantage over normal IOs: they level with you, and exemplar down with you. This is part of their allure. Giving this feature to normal IOs removes that allure from the point-bought enhancements.
Again, arguments based on realism carry very, very little weight here, but if you insist: Why do YOU have a level? Why do your enemies have a level? Level represents power. If you're fighting a level 10 enemy, his weapons/armor/spells/mutant glands/whatever are not as strong as a higher-level enemy's would be. If they were, he wouldn't be level 10.

Arguments based on realism carry very, very little weight here. Especially when it's nearly a non sequitur anyway, because age and level are only vaguely connected.

Plus, I'm not sure the devs are too excited about reducing the allure of one of their own sources of revenue.

Because, just like Mind Link, it is affected by recharge but cannot be slotted for it directly.