DSorrow

Practiced Brawler: definitely needed. This is your status effect protection so if you don't want to spend time stunned, held or knocked around, get this and slot it for recharge to have it up all the time. Acrobatics: 100% unnecessary in PvE because PB already does everything Acrobatics covers, but better. It might be worth it in some niche PvP builds to stack with PB, but I assume this isn't relevant for you. Combat Jumping: optional, but useful. While the Immob protection is useless for you, the Defense stacks nicely with Super Reflexes and it's a pretty good tool for maneuvering as a melee character. I typically take it on all melee chars just for the combat movement.

I just hit 50 on my first character last week and just by doing story arcs / TFs to level up I had about 500 merits when I dinged. Even if you wouldn't prioritize TFs and story arcs for leveling up like I did, I'd expect anyone who doesn't just join farms or paper mission teams to have at least 200 merits by 50. As an additional note, while this may be a challenge to avoid set IOs, I'd actually go for a frankenslot build at the bare minimum once you hit 50. Level 50 generic IOs cost ~500k each to craft (50-100k recipe, ~400k crafting costs) while you can get many lvl 30-40 uncommon set IOs at 100-200k per piece (10-50k recipe, ~100k crafting). Maybe slightly apples to oranges, but the way I see it, lvl 30-40 split IOs offer roughly similar enhancement values to lvl 50 generics so it's not an unfair comparison and actually more accessible to new players due to being less expensive. It'll take a slight bit of research, though, but if a player has the mental capability to learn to craft generic IOs, going for a frankenslot build where you ignore set bonuses doesn't require much on top of that.

I don't think there's anything to worry about with the way merits are set up on Homecoming. The most expensive things cost 100 (or 120 including catalysts) merits each which is something you can easily get in 2 hours of gaming without going the most optimal route. If you join a MSR, you'll get those 100 merits in 30 minutes. Because 100 merits can be earned in 30 minutes, the most expensive items should be roughly equal in value to 30 minutes of extremely efficient influence farming and this merits<=>time<=>influence relation effectively sets the cap prices, assuming the players act rationally. Having said that, I was actually pretty surprised how effective the WW was for making money considering all the changes from live, most notably the lack of influence stockpiles and ease of access through merits. In two weeks, I've moved from being a level 30 with ~5 million influence to having my first 50, a full set IO build and somewhere between 1-1.5 billion in cash/inventory/bids without farming or spending a single merit. Those merits are going to come in handy for my next 50 though, because that build is going to utilize some purples and I'm not expecting to have all of my lowball bids filled by the time I get there.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with altoholism in this game and I don't think there's a cure, but here's some "rules" I employ to avoid getting overwhelmed as I come up with new character concepts on a daily basis: [*]This may or may not be applicable to you, but I decided to only remake my favorite 3 characters from the official servers. [*]I mostly level up two characters at a time: one that I exclusively play with a friend (so that we stay at the same level) and another that I play on my own. [*]When I start leveling up another character, it should to be different in function to my previous two "characters in progress". For example, if my solo character was a Brute and the duo was a Blaster, I'd avoid melee and ranged DPS classes to keep things fresh and instead start a Controller, Defender, Mastermind or something like that. Got my first 50 last week (solo Corruptor) and my duo character (Brute) is at 45. Started a Controller for a new solo project and probably going for a Defender once we start a new duo. Then I've got a Mastermind and a Warshade waiting to start their journey... Guess my point is, don't worry too much about making new alts but try to establish some kind of framework that actually allows you to focus on a few at a time. As a final note: using the double XP boost is great. I don't really have quite as much time to play as I used to back in the day, but with the double XP boost I'm getting several levels each playing session even at 40+ (or level 22 in about two hours). Sure, you don't get any influence drops but the majority of influence comes from recipe and salvage drops anyway and if we consider that getting to 50 takes 50 hours conventionally, getting there in 25 and then doing level 50 stuff for 25 hours will net you more money for the same time investment.

Disclaimer: I absolutely hated ED when it came and continued disliking it until the introduction of IOs. Now, I'd never trade back IOs and Incarnates for the pre-ED era CoX or even go back to no ED with IOs and Incarnate powers intact. In hindsight, I think ED was a necessity for the future developments of the game, but its implementation had bad timing (two years gap to IOs) as well as bad PR. Here are the top three reasons why I think ED is a good thing for the game: [*]Like the name says, it promotes a bigger diversity of enhancing strategies. Without ED, playing as a Scrapper your standard slotting was 5-6 Damage SOs in your main attacks and maybe an Accuracy if you need it, 6 Res/Def in your main Defensive powers, 6 EndMod in Stamina, 6 Rech in Conserve Power (to avoid needing EndRed), 6 Rech in Hasten (to avoid needing Rech), and 6 ToHit in Focused Accuracy (to get by with 0-1 Acc). The issue with this was that basically all powers were either 6 or 1 slotted, and there was absolutely no variety in builds whatsoever. If you skipped Hasten, you'd need to devote 2 slots of Recharge in each power to achieve similar recharge rates (at a cost of 66% base damage). Same with Focused Accuracy or Conserve Power. After ED hit, the gap between alternative and optimal strategies wasn't quite as huge so you weren't comparatively gimped by going for 3xDmg, 2xEnd, 1xAcc as opposed to the popular 3/1/1/1 slotting, whereas before ED doing the 3/1/1/1 slotting because you didn't want to go with perma Hasten, Conserve Power and Focused Acc/Tactics, you'd be doing a whopping 33% less damage than someone with 6x Damage (not to mention, your recharge rates and endurance reduction would also be worse). [*]ED allowed the introduction of IOs which bring us a huge variety of ways to build your character. Sure, the gap between a fully optimized IO build and an SO build is vastly larger than anything possible in the pre-ED world, but this time around you'll need to spend time designing the build, optimizing it and collecting the gear. The gap in power comes through investment and commitment, as opposed to the pre-ED world when any SO build cost exactly the same. [*]We have actual character power progression now thanks to the two previous things. Before ED, the progression was incredibly simple: get the cookie cutter slotting when you hit 50 and you're done. Currently we have several levels of powerful starting from "pretty powerful" at level 50 with generic enhancements, going up to "basically a god" after having fully optimized IO sets and Incarnate abilities, and content to match this progression. With Incarnate abilities partially breaking ED as well as set bonuses, there's absolutely no reason to repeal the change. The way ED exists right now forces trade-offs and promotes unique build designs, which I think is great. I'd much rather have a variety of ways to design a powerful character rather than a 6 or 1 slot world where you fully slot 13 powers and leave the other half unenhanced.