Panzerwaffen

Absolute, 100%, unadulterated BS. If they told you that, they are spinning you a bit of a tall tale there. No U.S. military unit has ever used the Desert Eagle handgun. To my knowledge, no 'real' military unit anywhere in the world has ever used them either. They were designed purely as a sporting/recreational handgun design.

If the Leadership pool is mandatory, and I agree it should be, then I think Assault should be a mandatory power, and Maneuvers/Tactics optional. With the damage buff from 8xAM and 8xAssault the team will be just shy of the 500% damage cap at all times once fully slotted up.

Just a couple comments..

For an all Rad team: Accelerate Metabolism (this is a no-brainer), Choking Cloud, RI, EF and LR. Some, but not all, may want to add in Vengeance, Fallout and Mutation (especially if Scrappy is involved ). Maximize AOE damage powers as early as possible. Add in Assault and Hasten from power pools. Stamina would be completely unnecessary with stacked AM's.
Most of us already have our own SG's. Seems best to stick with that to me. I'd say global channel would be the way to go, although perhaps we should simply stick with one of the existing channels. Maybe STF Masters...
This is always a tough one. Especially for me, as I have an odd schedule where I work 7 days on/7 days off.
*Passes star to Impyre*
Personally, my preference would be redside, especially if a secondary goal is supplying the market, although I'm more than happy to go blue. Blueside might need a little more discussion about powersets though, especially if there is a mix of Defenders and Controllers.

Total Focus actually does fairly mediocre damage for its cast time, roughly 60 DPA. However, it does have other uses. The 100% mag 3 stun can be very useful when stacked with another control power to mez bosses. I regularly use a combo of Power Thrust, Beanbag & Total Focus on my AR/EM when fighting bosses.

I've been using Mid's since the day I started playing City of Heroes, and it is an amazingly useful tool. It has helped me with every single character I have ever created for the game. If you can't figure out how to utilize it to help you out, I really don't know what to tell you. As far as the rest of your little screed, I'm not even going to waste time putting a reply together. I'm sure that regardless of what anyone has to say, it won't actually make a bit of difference to you...

Are you aware that Flares & Fire Blast both do less damage for their animation time (DPA) than Energy Punch or Bone Smasher from Energy Manipulation or Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch from Electricity Manipulation?

Base DPA at level 50

Flares: 63
Fire Blast: 51

Compare that to:

Energy Punch: 131
Bone Smasher: 96

So, Energy Punch or Charged Brawl does over TWICE the DPA of your second best ranged attack, which is Flares. Bone Smasher or Havoc Punch do about 50% better damage. The only attack you have that does better DPA than your melee attacks is Blaze. An attack chain incorporating your melee attacks will do significantly higher DPS than using only your blasts.

Plus, which has already pointed out, Fire Blast has an atypically good ST attack chain to begin with. Other sets will benefit even more from using their melee attacks.

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You are correct, of course, that any mez will drop your offensive toggles. However, I personally never found that to be a significant issue. Please keep in mind though, that I am basing my responses on an IO'd build, which the OP seemed to be asking about as he mentioned possibly soft-capping defense and perma-AM.

With nearly 170% recharge from perma AM, nearly perma Hasten and set bonuses, my fire/rad's CC & HF recharge in just under 7.5 seconds with no recharge slotting at all.

About the only effect having those toggles drop will have is reducing kill speed briefly, until they can be re-activated. A well slotted Choking Cloud should keep enemies held long enough to re-toggle, and if not, that's a great time for a panic-button shot of Cinders to carry you through. Again, this is obviously based off of my own personal experience and playstyle, but I have never found that situation to occur very much at all in the first place, or be a significant issue when it did. I'm not sure I can even recall the last time I was defeated because of being detoggled, whether running in TF teams or solo on +1 or +2/x8.

Valid reasoning, of course. Personally, I find RI to be very situational and rarely use it. Losing EF will, once again, only slow down your kill speed for a short period of time when it happens. Not a significant issue in my opinion, for the rarity of it actually occurring. Don't get me wrong, I find getting mezzed to be frustrating on the rare times it does happen, even though it doesn't last long with AM's status resistance. I just don't find it troublesome enough to give up the benefits of the other AP pools. I also did not want to push my build to the point of getting perma IW, which seems to me to be the only point in taking it to begin with.

Status effects are not quite so much an issue with perma AM, as it gives you significant status effect resistance, so when you do get hit with them, they don't last very long anyway.

I have a Fire/Rad/Stone, and I only have about 30% s/l defense, and it has never been an issue. You only really need the defense to help mitigate the alpha strike a bit. After that, once you're in the enemy spawn, Choking Cloud has everything except bosses locked down. Once you hit the bosses with Char they're out of the fight too.

I'm running 70% global recharge and have AM up all the time, and Hasten is only down for a few seconds.

One thing I did not see mentioned so far about Stone mastery, is the ability to have perma Earth's Embrace. Having capped HP is very nice on top of all the other mitigation you get.

Yeppers... If you're not popping insp as fast as they drop on you, you're just slowing yourself down when farming. But then again, so is farming at +3 w/ bosses enabled, for the most part.

A SG can coalition with up to 10 other SG's.

Yes, but they cannot use enhancement storage tables.

We're really talking semantics here, versus any hard & precise definition. For example, one of the most iconic SMG's of WW2 was the German MP-40. Or more correctly, the Maschinenpistole-40 (Machine Pistol-40). Yet this firearm is a classic example of a submachine-gun: a compact shoulder-fired automatic weapon, firing pistol caliber ammunition.

To be considered a pistol, a firearm would generally have to have only one grip, and be designed to be held and fired by hand only. If a shoulder stock is added to the firearm, it is generally no longer going to be considered a pistol, even if nothing else is changed.

Actually, both of those machine pistols have rates of fire much faster than most automatic weapons. The Glock 18 and Beretta 93R have a cyclic rate of fire of approximately 1100-1200 rounds per minute, as opposed to most SMG's and automatic rifles which fall into the range of 700-800 rounds per minute. Needless to say, a pistol with a magazine capacity of 20 (93R) or 33 (G18) rounds, does not take long to run dry when firing nearly 20 rounds per second.

There are powers that do provide some limited status protection.

Acrobatics provides mag 2 Hold protection.

Combat Jumping provides mag 8 Immobilize protection.

I tend to be skeptical of claims of regular sub-hour times on this as well. I've run dozens of solo & duo Posi TF's, and just zoning and traveling between missions eats up a HUGE portion of the time even with shortcuts like Ouro, WW & base dayjob TP powers, mission TP power, Pocket D porter, etc. Sure, someone could get lucky with mission placement, and easy maps and pull off a really good time every once in a while, but to do so regularly? I'd have to see it to believe it.

Fair enough. Sometimes I forget to account for my own professional bias and background when responding. I carry a firearm every day at work, and much of the time when not at work as well, and that certainly colors my thinking. In retrospect, there is nothing wrong about your statement, in the context in which you have framed it.

I'm not too sure about that.. If I remember correctly, from when the Desert Eagle first showed up on the firearms scene, it was developed by a U.S. company who then sold the design to an Israeli company, Israel Military Industries for production. Despite their name, IMI is a private company, and the Desert Eagle was never intended to be anything more than a "sporting" firearm. I have never heard of any military or law enforcement unit anywhere in the world using them, although I think Saddam Hussein had a gold-plated one to go along with his gold-plated AK.

Love the car/gas analogy. Hope you don't mind if I shamelessly steal that!

That's what instructor body armor is for!

You're on the right track here. The bolt serves a couple different functions, depending on the type of firearm. It encases the base of the cartridge, and seals the gap at the rear of the firing chamber when closed, holding the cartridge in place. When the cartridge fires, the brass (or other material) cartridge case expands, fully sealing the chamber and preventing the hot gasses being vented rearward. The rearward motion of the bolt will extract the empty cartridge case from the firing chamber, followed by ejecting the empty case from the gun, as well as c0cking the hammer or striker for the next shot. Forward motion of the bolt will strip the next round off the top of the magazine, and load it into the chamber. That sequence of actions can be accomplished either manually, in the case of a bolt action or lever action rifle, or automatically in the case of a semi-automatic rifle.

One way to think of a slide on a semi-automatic pistol is as an almost fully enclosed bolt. The operations & functions are nearly identical. A rifle bolt's movement generally occurs inside the firearm, whereas the slide on a pistol is part of the gun's exterior.

On a pistol, what you refer to as the "plate" that covers the side of the ejection port is generally simply the rearmost part of the barrel. When the slide recoils and moves backwards the open ejection port in the slide moves back away from the barrel, allowing the empty cartridge to be ejected. On a rifle, what you refer to as the "plate" is generally the bolt itself.

Nothing personal, but I've got to jump on this one. It's one of my pet peeves. There is nothing that is inherently less safe about carrying a modern semi-automatic pistol with a round chambered as opposed to with an empty chamber, provided the operator is properly trained and follows proper safety procedures. Nearly 100% of "accidental" firearms discharges occur because of negligence on the part of the operator. In other words, the idiot with the gun pulled the trigger. All those news stories where somebody was cleaning their gun or some cop was in the bathroom and the gun "just went off"? Pure, complete, unadulterated BS.

Modern handguns are almost without exception all "drop safe", meaning that the gun cannot fire without the trigger being pulled, due to passive mechanical safety devices built into the design of the firearm. Long-guns such as rifles and shotguns are a different story, and it is generally a good idea to store or carry them with an empty chamber until it is necessary to use them.

Considering this is a thread about firearms, I think this is an excellent point to bring up firearms safety. There are four simple & easy to remember firearms safety rules. If every gun owner (including police and the military) followed these basic rules 100% of the time, no one would ever get injured or killed with a firearm accidentally.

1. All guns are always loaded. There is no such thing as an unloaded gun!
2. Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target AND you have made the decision to fire.
4. Know what your target is and what is beyond it.