Sunrunner

They aren't acknowledged as existing from an in-character perspective; same as all the other ambient hostiles that I don't care to spend that play-session dealing with.

We have the option of multiple builds on the same character available from level 10. If this is at all a concern for you, I'd suggest making use of that option to have an exemplar-friendly build.

Think of it as a greed tax; the greedier you are (the higher your minimum acceptable price is), the more you pay.

Scourge is toggled on. Turn it off.

My experience runs a bit differently. Very few people have any real idea of how their powerset works or how to use it effectively. Most people take what looks good to them -- or that they've been told is good by other people -- and run with it. (... including myself more often than I'm comfortable admitting! 😉 ) How they leveled doesn't appear to make much of a difference.

My household will be dropping Windows entirely once Windows-7 stops being sufficient for our desktop needs; taking up whichever Linux distribution impresses at the time.

Someone had an idea for a new feature. It was a good idea. Content created by the players for the players. However, you get the behavior you reward. They wanted us to touch it; they had to justify the time spent creating it to their bosses after all. Almost no one was going to touch it absent rewards; no where near the amount of people that'd satisfy their bosses anywise. So they made the feature give rewards. We touched it! ... for the rewards. Removing the rewards means we stop touching it. Do you want us to keep touching it? ( Yes | No )

You are more than welcome to walk a non-farmer into a fire farm set to +4/x8. Solo, natch. See exactly how little challenge there is, how little risk your character is experiencing and how little time it takes to complete. *shrugs* That a dedicated specialist can reliably do a thing doesn't mean that thing isn't challenging, risky or time-consuming for everyone else.

Supernormal Stimuli. It really is that simple; you've found the junkfood version of City and its ruining your dinner. 😉

Tanker is not needed; no Archetype is needed -- they never were. Everyone can be useful, no one is needed.

(1) Which AT is doing the best sustained single-target damage? Or, (2) Which AT should be doing the best sustained single-target damage? 'cause those have different answers, and different methods of determining the answer.

I suspect your perspective is out of whack. A single farmer generates roughly two-million influence per minute of farming (over a sufficient amount of time spent farming; it can be spikey). A million per rare isn't expensive. A million per rare is also the market's maximum price due to HC having seeded the market at that price quite some time ago. Maybe chill a bit? 😉

Nice humble-brag. ;)

Poe's Law would like to have a word with you.

Luck of the Gambler == https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Luck_of_the_Gambler

I'm beginning to suspect you play a different version of the game than I do because, honestly, this ...? Doesn't exist in COH. DPS isn't the appropriate tool for such a thing even if it did exist; (de)buffs are. Multiplicative is superior to Additive when you are chasing bigger numbers.

"Rule of 5" is a descriptor of how set-bonuses stack, I thought. Am I mistaken?

Play on a server that doesn't implement them, then? HC servers aren't the only servers. Maybe one of the others would suit you better?

They are contacts. They are also available as contacts for every character regardless of that character's origin. Use the Find Contacts button to scroll through your available options (and even teleport yourself directly to them if you've not already talked to them).