Rodion

I just did the same. I had a character stuck in Praetoria at level 16. You can't join a supergroup, or run a sewer trial, or associate with other players, so there's really no point in having a character there unless you really enjoy the content solo. I've done it once, and it's not compelling enough to do it again.

Having more starting options is great, but when there's forced segregation as there is with Paragon City, the Rogue Isles and Praetoria, it seriously hampers teaming on all but the most populous servers.

Looking at it from a practical point of view: if people were to spread out among the starting zones evenly, it would reduce the number of potential team mates by 2/3. The most common question people have when selecting a new server is, "How busy is it?" Players want there to be lots of activity on a server. In a social game, most players want to be where all the other players are. (Not all, of course. I actually like playing on less populated servers. Since the players need each other more, they tend to be more civil.)

The availability of other players becomes especially important with TFs and trials, which have minimum team/league sizes. That's the main reason why all the incarnate trials are co-op. On small servers it would be all but impossible to put a trial together if heroes and villains couldn't team together. That is, until all the villains become rogues or heroes.

Wormhole is a mass teleport power, so I think it's already covered in the basic concept. Given you're a controller with multiple holds and immobilizes, and a big area slow in your secondary, you don't really need to worry about picking one mob out with Teleport Foe. In practice I've found that Teleport Foe doesn't work very well. Bosses and LTs often resist, it's kind of slow, and it always seems to miss when you least want it to.

If you're getting squished with all those holds and immobilizes, you're probably trying to run at too high a difficulty. Running at +0/x1 you should have everything locked in place or held within a few seconds. Since damage is not a Gravity controller's strong point, trying to run solo against larger spawns is mainly an exercise in frustration.

Also, the +Stealth in TP Foe will be very inconvenient to use. As I understand it, it requires that you attack a foe to activate it for two minutes. Not a good way to turn on invisibility. Better to put a Jump or Run +Stealth in Sprint instead. That way you can activate it at will.

Not sure the extra slot for Rectified Reticle is worth it, considering how much +Perception Farsight is already giving you.

Yeah, there's a deal for 99 cents that I used to upgrade a trial account to VIP. Not sure if it'll work for the OP, but heck, it's only 99 cents.

I use sub-50 IOs for most of my characters on most of my powers, including Reactive Armor, and don't have any issues.

Because of ED, the difference in primary bonus (usually damage resistance and defense for amors or damage for attacks) between a set of level 35 and 50 IOs is about half a percent for four-slotted damage resistance and defense sets like Titanium Coating, and 2.5% for five-slotted damage sets like Crushing Impact. Using lower level IOs is useful if you exemp a lot, or prefer to outfit your characters as you level up instead of trying to buy 70 IOs all at once when you hit 50. Because IO sets make character play snappier, I prefer to go through the process just once, slotting IOs that I keep forever starting at about level 27. It's much cheaper in the long run because you don't waste inf every 5 levels on SOs that you just throw away.

There is a price to pay for this, however. The difference in the secondary bonuses (endurance, accuracy, recharge) is much higher because those bonuses aren't affected by ED. Which means characters using level 35 IOs for attacks will have 6-10% lower bonuses for accuracy, endurance reduction and recharge. Since accuracy set bonuses are so common, the acc is usually augmented so much that the difference there is usually not noticeable.

These IOs can be bought for 1 or 2 alignment merits, which are easily had by running tip missions with a minimal investment in time.

Additionally, they can be bought for 16 or 32 astral merits. Considering that you get 4 or 5 astrals per trial, it's another relatively painless way to get them, especially if you're running trials to get that last very rare you need for your T4.

The advantage of the Concealment pool is that Stealth takes defense buff IOs, which means you can slot Luck of the Gambler: +Recharge.

I have a couple of dominators and controllers who need massive recharge, so on those I've put the +Stealth in one of the sprints, and LotG: +Recharge in Stealth. I prefer Fly to Super Speed, so I can get full invisibility with just Stealth and Sprint on (putting the +Stealth in Fly is bad because you have to be flying for it to be on).

I don't usually have trouble with my tankers and Longbow until I run into pairs of wardens that have powers that complement each other. In particular, Illusion/Empathy wardens are basically impossible for a Fire tanker to deal with. They bring up Spectral Terror, and you get debuffed and can't hit anything, and feared and can't move or attack for a while. Meanwhile, they've healed everyone in the spawn, and once you moved out of its range and are unfeared and undebuffed, Spectral Terror is recharged and the cycle repeats.

On the other hand, how many super heroes in the game world would put up with a supercilious jerk who thinks he's better than they are? I'd wager that, just as in the real world, super heroes and villains would quickly tire of them.

I imagine it would go something like this:

If you're going to act like a jerk, don't be surprised when players and their characters treat you like one. They may decide to do some roleplaying of their own.

Yeah, this is probably the source of your (the OP's) problem. If you look at the end use/recovery stats, the recovery is 2.48%/sec, while the toggles alone are using 1.74/sec. Firing off 10 quick attacks will drain your end bar quickly, especially if you use Flamethrower liberally.

Going after defense with SOs is probably a lost cause. Without IOs, it's almost impossible to get maximal defense (what they call soft-capping) with a blaster. You're currently sitting at 8%, which means that an average minion has a 42% chance of hitting you instead of a 50% chance. That's not a really big improvement.

Unless you have a big base of defense from a combination of IOs, Frozen Armor or Scorpion Shield, and Weave, or a similar build for Ranged defense, that 8% isn't going make a substantial difference. Even if you did take Combat Jumping, Boxing/Tough/Weave and Scorpion Shield you would still only have 28.1% Smash/Lethal defense (11.7% vs. most other types), which would give minions a 21.9% chance of hitting you with Smash/Lethal damage (the most common), which means that about 2 out of 10 shots will hit you instead of 5 out of 10. Which is decent enough, but the question is whether that's worth the other sacrifices you have to make.

Tactics is kind of redundant with Targeting Drone, though it does provide Confuse and Fear protection. I'd dump it myself, but if you want to keep it you should two-slot it with End Red, and also two-slot Assault with End Red if you don't already have that.

Personally, I'd also go the Cloaking Device/Super Speed route to get effective invisibility, pick up Trip Mine, and dump Leadership altogether, perhaps keeping Assault.

In this game you generally get the most effective SO builds if you follow the mindset of the devs when they designed the powers. AR/Devices is designed for stealthed toe bombing. Going against that mindset requires an IO-based build that's probably fairly expensive.

I've got two stalkers, one at 45 (Dark/Ninja) and one at 41 (StJ/Energy Aura), and I have no trouble at all soloing, and started doing so at x4 around level 35. I've gone up to +0/x6, but that's pretty tedious because these sets don't have a lot of AoE compared to the sets that I normally solo x8 spawns with (Fire/Fire tanker, SS/Electric brute, etc.).

I'm guessing the difference between your stalkers and mine are that I build my characters with IOs as I level, instead of waiting till 50 and trying to do buy dozens of expensive IOs at once. I use alignment merits from SSAs and morality missions to get the rare IOs. Because I play lots of characters, it has taken months for my StJ/Energy stalker to get to 41.

But that character is already soft-capped out of Hide for defense against everything except negative energy and psi, and is surprisingly durable. I mostly solo with it, but on teams it's always the last one standing. My Dark/Ninja 45 stalker is similarly robust, and with two heals and tons of mitigation can solo x8, but it's kind of tedious because it's basically all ST damage.

You can get very good survivability if you build for it. The stalker's lower hit point total is a potential problem, but if you're soft-capped you're not getting hit very often. If you're playing resistance-based stalkers I can see that you'll have a harder time surviving because it's a lot harder to get decent defense with those power sets early on.

Right. All sales are instant sales, there is no time limit, and the first person to bid your asking price gets your item, as long as there are no cheaper ones.

In a way, this system pits sellers against sellers trying to underprice each other, instead of pitting buyers against buyers trying to outbid each other.

The definition of hoarding is independent of motivation.

In general hoarders do not hoard to keep things away from others. They hoard things because they think they'll need them later. They keep a newspaper because they'll need to wrap a fish tomorrow. Then they keep a week's worth of newspapers because they haven't had time to read the comics. Then they keep a month's worth so they can clip all the coupons. Then they keep a year's worth so they can give it to the Boy Scout's recycling drive. But then they never get around to giving them away, because they need to hang on to them in case they need to refer to the articles about car maintenance, but don't have the time right now to cut them out and file them.

Compulsive hoarders can hoard almost anything: cats, dogs, rabbits, books, newspapers, household items, old tin cans. In the beginning they keep stuff that they need outright, then stuff they'll need next month, then stuff that's just too useful to throw away, then stuff their kids might need, then stuff their grandkids will need (after they're born), then stuff that it just would be damned a shame to see in the trash. It's a real obsessive-compulsive psychological disorder that ruins people's lives.

There's a fine line between hoarders and collectors, but collectors are usually more discriminating and cognizant of practical limits.

In the game people start keeping drops that they don't have enough inf to craft just now. Then they start keeping things that they'll need when they do a respec. Then they start keeping things that their alts will need when they level up. Then they start keeping things that their Titan Weapons scrapper will need, whenever that gets released. Then they start hoarding IOs that they think their friends' alts will need when they finally get around to rolling them. Mostly they justify this by saying it will save inf and time later. And that's true enough.

At first people just hoard purple recipes, then high-demand oranges like Kinetic Combats, then generally useful oranges like Positron's Blast, then high-demand yellows like Reactive Armor, then useful yellows like Thunderstrike, and then ubiquitous yellows like Ruin in case they want to Frankenslot an alt some day.

If you're saving things on a character that you're not going to use in the immediate future, you're hoarding. I'm not criticizing you for doing it, and I'm not saying it's wrong, because I hoard IOs and admit it freely. I'd classify myself as a level 4 (Reactive Armor/Steadfast: +Def) hoarder. But I'll gladly sell off a purple in order to get enough inf to buy a different purple, or give one to a friend who needs it if I've got spares.

If you're keeping large quantities of salvage and IOs in a bin for months and years without using it, you're hoarding. Just admit it.

By placing limits on the number of recipes characters can hold on to, and adding hurdles to make hoarding IOs harder, the devs encourage greater circulation in the market.

Not that long ago rare salvage often went for 2-4 million. Now most pieces are about a million, and often less. If salvage bins could still store thousands of items, most of that rare salvage would be sitting in bins instead of being bought and used. Because, you know, I might need it some day.

Since RMTers are usually involved with credit card fraud, it's easy enough for them to use a stolen credit card to create a VIP account and spam any server they want.

Only amateur RMTers will use free accounts to advertise their wares. The pros will rip off their previous customers' credit cards to create respectable looking accounts in their quest for new suckers.

"Bloody" as in "Not bloody likely" was once considered profane in England, and even in the 60s and 70s BBC got flack for using it on the air. In the States it's simply considered quaint. But people aren't even really sure what the origin of the usage is: some think it's a contraction of "by our lady," while others think it comes from the oath "By God's blood!"

Many words are profane only in a certain context. I doubt anyone would object to you saying "Damned if you do, and damned if you don't" but if you use as an oath against someone you're angry with it takes on another role. Many English slang terms for human anatomy have completely innocuous meanings in other contexts, something that occasionally annoys CoH players when selecting names.

Word meanings change constantly, and words considered profane now were completely innocuous at one point, and will become innocuous again in the future.

The word "suck" is an example in America. Forty years ago you would never hear it on TV or radio, and now four-year-olds use and it doesn't raise an eyebrow.

A similar problem exists for me in the auction house window. The strings at the top of the window read as "ForSale" and "BiddingString".

And we also need to recall that the first time you affirm your alignment you do not get an alignment merit -- you get 50 reward merits. You don't get an alignment merit until you run a second morality mission with that alignment.

Though I was rather disappointed with this change as much as the next guy, it makes the reward consistent across the board.

Most leagues form before they queue for incarnate trials. If the league is at max size you'll never get in if you're queued solo. People prefer to form leagues so that they're sure they have the required roles filled to guarantee success. For example, if your league has no tanks or brutes the BAF can be difficult.

The Halloween trial was limited to four and could be successfully completed by most any team composition, so many people didn't bother to form teams before queuing.

Players generally congregate in Pocket D or RWZ to form incarnate trials. Different servers have different customs. Try RWZ first and then Pocket D.

There's a thread (CEBR) that tells you to do exactly this in order to PL your Claws/Electric Brute. Since such a character can obliterate several large spawns and the subsequent ambushes within seconds, the advantage gained by using the inspirations before entering the mission provided a pretty decent advantage, because your insp tray replenishes very quickly when you're hopped up on reds and purples. Which allows you collect more reds and purples.

Buffing before entering could mean the difference between easily surviving the onslaught of six +4/x8 ambushes and going off to the hospital.