rsclark

I would love to know which characters:
A. have 5 melee attacks
B. need 5 Mako or FoD
C. have those melee attacks 6 slotted early enough to make buying these worthwhile

Wow. So you wouldn't buy a Kinetic Combat set?

If you had done either of those, then you should have gotten a merit from the SSA. The only way to complete 10+alignment without reinforcing is to change sides. If you change sides, you don't get the 50 merits OR the alignments merit. So, if you got the 50 or the alignment merit, then you should also get one from the SSA.

And a lower damage base and no rage.

If by "take care of" you instead mean "limit character concepts", then yes.

Mako's isn't great, but ToD is the easiest way to get melee positional defense on a melee character, and the proc is the only non-purple way to get a non-s/l damage proc on a single target melee attack for a scrapper or stalker. A full set, pre-crafted (as these are) will run you 50 million in the game.

Depending on price, they might not be a great deal, but to call that crap demonstrates a vast misunderstanding of this game and the resources available to most players.

A power unused is a useless power. Anything that causes a power to be used less makes it less powerful. You can discuss theoretical power balance all you want, but it's meaningless in the face of real, functional power balance. And SB adds more, consistent bonus with the ability to turn off the movement portion than it ever could with 1/3 of the people refusing to accept the buff.

Yet, team-heavy people get to do all of that content as well. It's not like you get to choose to either do the open world, content that allows soloing and small groups OR the specific large group mission, but instead you have one group that can do all the content, and another that does not get access to a big chunk of it.

And that in what way changes the fact that it was a large buff to the power, which you earlier said it was not?

This map is the reason all my characters have "no speed runs" in their LFG message. You would think there was a time limit on the mission.

I have no data on which to base that.

With the exception of SS for the stealth and teleport for Stone tanks/brutes, travel powers are essentially vanity powers. Something that looks cool, but does not contribute to effectively playing the game.

Taking a travel power is an opportunity cost with no gain other than "cool", so I would be largely surprised if skipping travel powers was not fairly common among people who care primarily about effectiveness. Add to that "roleplayers" playing the vast array of basically normal people with powers (your batmen and gadgeteers types), and I'd be really surprised if the people taking no travel power was a particular small group.

If it is only for you and not for others to read, why would it need to be in the game at all?

I also have bios for my characters that I don't care if anyone reads - so I don't bother typing them out and they stay in my head.

What do you gain by typing out a bio and linking it to a character inside the game, if it is NOT there so others can read it?

Nope.

How do you get from people working together towards a common goal to "self-loathing, appalling"?

All those people in groups who used to request NOT to be speed boosted now no longer request that. Because of that, they attack faster and have more end. The change had a major affect on game balance.

START>All Programs>Notepad

Using knockback already does that to other players.

So, your vindictive, worse case scenario is an exact mirror of the way the game is now - with KB players being able to negate the powers of other players. It's like you're only willing to give up your current way of disrupting a group if you're granted some other way of disrupting the group.

You would be wrong. If I do choose a travel power, it is at level 49 and used as a mule for winter's gift slow resist on melee characters.

Forcing my characters to lose a power is a pretty major change. And why would I care about the opportunity to slot a power that I don't actually care about having in the first place. I could just throw away slots in brawl and prestige sprints if I somehow mysteriously wanted to waste them.

People start avoiding you like the drunk on the bus.

Special content intended to keep the players entertained with it's novelty.

Exactly. The only forced solo content in the game is in Praetoria. And while I understand why they did it, I would gladly advocate raising it to something sensible if they could find a way without pissing people off.

Similarly, plenty of people were pissed at the min 4/max 4 Halloween event - and most of us disliked the max 4 just as much as the min 4.

Yea, but so is getting a catheter removed.

Yes. Assuming by "team" you mean one guy who we all abandoned quickly.