Stormwalker

It depends on the attack. If the attack has a positional component, positional defenses will work. If it doesn't, they won't. I don't recall my /SR's ever having problems against Silver Mantis, but it's been quite a while since the last time I fought her on one. As for Staff, it's a fun set, and its AoE is pretty solid, but its single target damage is terrible. I enjoy my (level 46) Staff/WP quite a bit, and she's very, very hard to kill, but she'll never come close to my Claws/SR or my Energy/Energy in the damage output department.

You pretty much said it all right here. My two level 50 scrappers (Claws/SR and Energy/Energy) on HC can run +4/x8 against most villain groups if I want to. The several 50 scrappers (Claws/SR, DM/DA, Katana/Regen, DM/Regen, and I know I'm forgetting some) and the two 50 brutes (EM/Inv and SS/Inv) that I had on Live could do it also. The groups that each character has (or had, in the case of the ones on live) problems with are different, because different powersets and different builds have different weaknesses. And all of those weaknesses can be overcome if you're willing to go to enough trouble to do it. For that matter, the only 50 I have ever had that couldn't solo at +4/x8 was a blaster. And I'm sure if I'd had a better build for her, she could have done it, too, but she was a pure concept character and I generally suck at building blasters anyhow. That said, I usually don't solo at +4/x8, even though I can. Why? Because it's slow and I am just not that patient most of the time. Sometimes I will do it just for the challenge, or to savor the feeling of being able to do it, or to test some tweak to one of my builds... but doing it all the time? Ain't nobody got time for that (except obviously some people do... but those people are not me)!

And if someone wants to play that way - if someone is aware of their options, aware of the tradeoffs they are making in order to play that way, and still chooses to play that way - more power to them. I am not here to tell anyone else how to have fun. I just don't want people to be discouraged from using the AH because they think it is too much work, when the truth is that it is exactly however much work you want to put into it (and your returns are relative to how much work you choose to put into it). I want people to be informed and make informed decisions. Past that, I don't care how they have their fun, as long as their fun isn't harming other players or the game as a whole.

I mean, I don't have any interest in PVP, for exactly the reason you mentioned, but that doesn't stop me from doing basic, minimal market activity (stuff that doesn't take up a bunch of time). I think some people just assume that anything to do with the market will chew up a bunch of their time, which really isn't true. There are a lot of things you can do that are really low-effort that will still improve your returns quite a lot.

Things I am and am not willing to do in the name of making inf: I don't farm. Ever. I do run missions at high spawn sizes. I usually can't be bothered to defeat all on outdoor maps, but sometimes I do if I'm enjoying the particular mission (this often depends on the enemy type. Some enemies are lots of fun to fight, others are more of a slog). I generally do defeat most, and usually defeat all on indoor missions. I usually check the value of my uncommon/rare recipe drops on AH vs. the value of the enhancement itself, and either sell or craft and sell as appropriate. I always do this with purples, of course. If I happen to get a drop which provides a lucrative conversion opportunity of which I am already aware, I'll take it, but I generally don't seek out those opportunities. I should really probably look for a popmenu mod that shows me what the conversion options are, I know one exists I just haven't gone looking for it. I always put rare salvage on AH and I usually check if uncommon salvage is above vendor price. When I am buying enhancements, if one piece of a set is out of whack in price with the others, I will buy one of the other pieces and convert. This has at times saved me millions of inf. Example, last night I saved 2.5 million on one transaction just by buying a Steadfast Protection End/Res and converting it to the Res/3% def. I do have a tendency to pay "buy it NAO!" prices if they aren't completely ridiculous, but I refuse to reward people who are deliberately jacking up prices to absurd levels. Lately I have more and more started bidding on the enhancements I need, then logging off the character so that I won't pay the "buy it NAO!" price. This is because more of my characters (I've mentioned I have 37, right?) are getting up into the levels where I am buying them set IO's (two more of them hit level 22 last night, and I have two that are closing in on level 50) and thus I am having to be more careful with my inf expenditures. I buy converters with Reward Merits and sell them. I buy unslotters with Reward Merits when I need them. I buy boosters and catalysts on the AH because it's usually a better value than buying them with Merits. I don't convert Emps to Reward Merits, because I use my Emps for Incarnate abilities. When I get all my Incarnate abilities unlocked on my 50's, I'll save the Emps for my alts to use when they hit 50 and unlock their Incarnate slots I funnel inf from my two 50's to all my alts, because my 50's are pretty good at making inf and my alts are not so much. Essentially, I try to do the market activities which return value for the least time investment so I can get back to running missions, which is where the fun is for me.

I have the reverse of this happen sometimes with Spin on my Claws/SR scrapper. The power doesn't animate, but the FX appear and the damage is dealt. I've always assumed it was due to some kind of lag to the server and getting the response too late to play the animation.

For the record, SWTOR does something like this in some of its content, and I have very mixed feelings about it. I like being able to make decisions in single-player content. Not so much in group content that might end up with the team choosing to do something my character wouldn't willingly be a party to.

I'm starting to think that some players view "the market" as some kind of evil cult that if they get involved with it, it will corrupt their pure gaming experience. Or else some kind of arcane mystery that takes hours of investment to understand, perhaps. I mean, I totally understand reluctance to actually put work into the market - I don't put work into the market, because it takes time and I'd rather spend my time running missions. But I am at least willing to take the bare minimum steps to ensure I don't get the worst possible return for my Merits.

Here's one: I kinda miss six-slotting powers for damage.

Having soloed all six TF's for TFC this weekend, I deffinitely have to agree. Citadel is basically "Run the same mission 10 times. Except some of them you don't have to defeat all."

I still don't usually take my travel power until at least 14 on blueside because you don't really need a travel power until then (though I do sometimes take it earlier when a character's concept really demands they be able to fly right from the start). Redside is another matter, though. Mercy without a travel power sucks.

Not so much just the bio itself, but when I wrote the backstory for Red Diamond on Live/Virtue, and pretty much anytime I got into serious roleplay with her, it was hard emotionally because Red was so broken inside (though by the end of my time RP'ing her, she was finally starting to heal). Honestly, even just her bio did get to me a bit, but mostly because it included a list of the crimes this largely innocent girl stood accused of, and that was a little heartbreaking. Especially the multiple homicides, all of which were actually in self-defense except for one, and the one exception was a tragic accident that happened because she panicked and didn't have much control over her powers yet.. but the real villains of her story did their very best to make sure she'd be blamed for everything in order to cover their own trail. (If you're interested in her story, look up "Red Diamond" on VirtueVerse).

That would be... exceedingly out of character for Kitten. Even though I'm not actively roleplaying, my characters chide me if I do things as them that they wouldn't. I do have some redsiders, but most of the time I just prefer playing the hero rather than the villain. Even most (but not all) of my redsiders are Rogues. I just don't usually enjoy being evil, though sometimes I can get into it if I go Darth Vader over the top (like, the only Sith I could ever enjoy playing in SWTOR was my Marauder, because she was pretty much on a permanent rampage).

Yeah, I have Infiltration on my Claws/SR, but sadly I do not have it at Yin TF levels. Though the much bigger problem for my Claws/SR in the Yin TF is not having my AoE defense toggle yet, which means nearly every AoE hits me.

Yep. When you have a volunteer dev team, who presumably have day jobs that consume most of their time, you pretty much have to accept that they won't - and can't - be as thorough as a team that is getting paid to do it as their full-time jobs. For that matter, all of us have seen from CoH Live and other games, even the teams that are getting paid to do it don't always consider everything that they should or completely understand how everything works - even when they built it to begin with. My take is this: The devs are trying their best to do it right. If I don't trust them with at least that much, I'm wasting my time being here at all. That said, I do trust them with that. I've seen no evidence to the contrary. There's a lot of disagreement on exactly what "doing it right" is, and they can't make everyone happy. I would rather they follow their own vision than just do whatever the playerbase wants. I work in software development. One of the first things you learn in software development is that the customer is often wrong. Sometimes I will be the person they choose not to make happy. C'est la vie. If I want everything my way, I should make my own server and that is way the hell too much work, so I have to accept that everything will not be my way. That said, they have done a lot of things that do make me happy. The devs will make mistakes They are human and therefore imperfect. There are significant challenges inherent in trying to maintain and improve a game they didn't design in the first place). They need quality feedback (and not whining or tantrums) to help them get it right. This means when I think they're making (or have made) a mistake, I say so I should always seek to be dispassionate, analytical, and constructive about it rather than letting my emotions get the better of me. This isn't always easy for me, I'm a pretty passionate, emotional person. But getting all riled up over a game does nobody any good. I should be thankful for the work they're doing even when I don't necessarily agree with every decision they make. Which is to say, thank you, HC devs, for all the work that you do. And when I do get riled up about something, please understand that it's because I love the game and I want it to be as great as possible. And I know that you do, too, even if we don't always agree on how to accomplish it. In the end, I don't get everything I want, but I do get to play City of Heroes, and a better version of City of Heroes than we had on Live (which is an impressive accomplishment in and of itself).