macskull

I think it was around I11. They decreased the stun mag of Total Focus (don't recall if that was only for Blasters or every AT though) and increased the animation time of Energy Transfer to an abysmal 2.67 seconds (used to be 1.0 seconds). EM went from a set with poor AoE but excellent single-target damage to... a set with poor AoE and subpar single-target damage. Your two highest-damage attacks are now locked up in long animations which means you're not going to be building Fury efficiently.

Honestly, EM is passable as a set but it's now outclassed by every other set out there. It used to be one of the only viable melee sets in PvP because of its unique ability to put out lots of damage really fast, but that's no longer the case. SS is the go-to set for that now.

I used to think this too, until some people started pointing out that Claws actually outperforms SS even after factoring in Rage.

No, they use the same scale 0.67 damage as regular procs (about 71.75 points at level 50).

There's a point at which spending more money will not get you performance gains proportional to the extra money spent. I think $200 is the sweet spot for that right now - the cards in that price range aren't a lot worse than the really high-end cards which can run $400-500. Unless you want the absolute best money can buy (and if you're primarily running this game you shouldn't since this game's very poorly coded) you might as well get a low-high-end and be happy with that for a few years until something better comes into your price range.

I sometimes find myself just throwing around a few slots because I can't find anywhere to put them, but more often than not I'm left wishing I had more. I tend to build for PvP, where you can't really afford to waste a single slot and you need to squeeze as much as you can out of set bonuses, though.

...Because some of us don't enjoy the game at that level?

In most cases of high-priced items on the market, demand is just as much to blame as supply for the price, but in the case of most PvP IO pieces it's more the supply side than the demand. There's probably a very small demand for the proc among the playerbase as a whole (higher among the PvP population but I doubt that's significant enough to have a large impact) but supply is extremely low.

Same here. The first 49 levels are just an annoying hurdle to get over.

The only real difference is the proc rate is 20% in PvE and 33% in PvP. PvP IOs have a second set of bonuses that only apply while PvPing but that doesn't really account for the higher price. The sole reason for the higher price is how common it is. Even if there's less demand for the Glad Strike proc than other melee damage procs, the Glad Strike proc has significantly less supply due to dropping only from PvP kills (and even when PvP farming the drop rate is abysmal). It's the same reason the Steadfast Res/Def is relatively cheap and the Gladiator's Armor +3% def regularly sells off-market for above the inf cap.

Assuming you take Hasten (and, I think, that's one of the almost-required powers for a clicky set like Regen) you need a little north of 70% global recharge for perma DP. Won't have it double-stacked often with that amount but you can crack 100-120% before Hasten if you go crazy with IOs and then you should have it stacked for a decent amount of time.

I'd do Cardiac for Alpha since SR likes to gobble end (3 toggles plus CJ plus Weave), though the +range and +res may not be useful (the +res would only apply to Tough and I'm not sure if it'd apply to the scaling +res from the SR auto powers). I'm finding that endurance issues on every character that's grabbed T3 Cardiac (+endredux/+range/+res) have all but disappeared.

Lore, you could go with the Cimerorans - several of their T3s and one T2 have a surgeon. One of the T3s has a surgeon with attacks and another has a surgeon that only heals but is untouchable if that's more to your liking. Longbow, Clockwork, and Nemesis also have pets with heal powers, but I'm not sure about any of the other groups.

Agge hit this one mostly. You've got two options for PvP - arena and zone. Arena is generally where the more competitive PvP occurs but there isn't much of that in this game anymore. There was a set of large, sweeping changes made to the PvP system about three years ago that drove most of the PvP population out of the game and it's been limping along since. Large events happen every few months but there's nothing ongoing like there used to be.

At any rate, you're probably better off getting into zone PvP to start out with though it should be noted that as a premium/free player you're going to be at a disadvantage because you won't have access to IOs unless you pay for them and in today's PvP build is nearly as important as skill. The four PvP zones are Bloody Bay (15-25), Siren's Call (20-30), Warburg (30-40), and Recluse's Victory (40+), with Warburg being the only free-for-all zone. Of those zones, you're only going to find activity in RV and occasionally Siren's, and only on the Freedom server these days (Virtue and Infinity especially used to have active zone populations but even RV on Virtue's dead most nights now).

Give PvP a try and don't be expecting anything to work like it does in PvE, because PvP uses a very different ruleset now, meaning some powers that are garbage in PvE are very useful in PvP, and vice versa. Don't get discouraged by dying - a lot - and the trash talk. Those are all normal parts of PvP and if you don't have thick skin you probably won't enjoy it.

Pretty much this.

The same way they did it until IOs came out.