Sailboat

I failed to get Beam Rifle last time it was on sale, so I resolved to wait grimly for another sale. I was pleased to see it appear this time!

But when I went to purchase it Sunday morning (10:30 AM or so EDT) it was not yet on sale. Had to do some chores, and when I came back in the evening, it was for sale, finally. Snapped it up!

Maybe the sales are on West Coast time or something...I'm not really complaining, just that I was surprised the sale didn't roll out at "midnight" (when Saturday became Sunday) in any North American time zone.

One thing that might not be immediately obvious, even though it's touched on in the summaries given so far, is that having several characters will help. Rewards that are time-gated like SSA and Alignment Merits are, as far as I know, always "per character," but you can alt and run them again if you have the stomach for it.

Also, spending Alignment merits is time-gated -- you can only buy one recipe, for example, every 20 hours. So if you have 20 merits on one character, it will take a while (like, almost ten days) to access them all. But if you have 20 merits on ten different characters, you can cash them all in in one sitting -- no waiting!

Now that we can e-mail recipes, enhancements, and influence to our other characters, the alts don't even have to be on the same server or same faction. My villain on Infinity can mail a recipe to my account name, and my hero on Guardian can claim and slot the recipe, or vice-versa. So not even the number of slots per server limits this strategy.

The game is often called alt-friendly. But the reward system is more than friendly -- it really rewards you for having numerous capable (decently leveled up and slotted) characters.

Couple of points tyhat jump out at me from casual perusal of the build:

You're not soft-capped to AoE.

You're not soft-capped to any position if you turn Stealth off (not sure about when it is merely suppressed). Do you fight with Stealth on?

You have 3 knockback protection IOs slotted. Shield doesn't need any additional -knb if you run Active Defense constantly, unless there's some reason specific to the iTrials I don't know about.

Speaking of Active Defense, you have a Membrane Exposure HO in there, for 33% recharge bonus. I think they removed the effect Membranes had on Active Defense's DDR, so all it's giving you is 33% recharge -- you'd get over 42% from a lvl 50 common recharge IO.

You can hit the ED cap to recharge with only two lvl 50 common recharge IOs if you use +4 Enhancement Boosters to each. A few boosters are available to high-tier Paragon Rewards vets for free, otherise you have to buy them, I think; but the ability to save a slot in every power I normally 3-slot for recharge (Hasten, Build Up, Aim, Tar Patch, and so on) is so good I sometimes use them anyway.

That's really just tidbits and does not address your main point, sorry.

I'd also like a little "notes" field associated with each build where I could type a quick reminder to myself, such as "investigate dropping Aid Self" or "can replace Set X with the purple set if I get the money" or what have you. That might be too limited to hold all the info for the purpose outlined in the OP, however.

Happens to me occasionally -- did so last night, in fact. I went out to the server selection screen, changed servers, and it was fixed. (Then I had to go back out and change back to the original server, of course). Irritating but minor.

Get yourself a knockback>knockdown proc (Overwhelming Force set) and stick it into Tornado. That'll give you TWO nice pseudo-pet damage powers.

Not sure if this is a joke or not. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have respecs look dramatic.

Another quality-of-life issue I'd like is to be able to see chat tabs -- at the very least, tells -- while respeccing. For all I care they could just have the chat windows sit on top of the screen, in your way, and you'd have to drag them aside to put slots there, then drag them back to put slots where they just were. That would be ugly and awkward, but still better than being in The Cone of Silence™ for 10-20 minutes.

Well, I was referring to the way 45% defense is equivalent to 90% resistance.

I thought they implied that they're replacing the bonuses with resistance, and that whatever they're doing, it's already decided.

Generally good suggestions, but one I don't understand:

Don't have Mid's available from here, but it looks like Tornado isn't well slotted for damage, which seems counter to the intent of the build. Wouldn't you at least want it at the ED cap for damage?