Captain Fabulous

You're certainly free to do a more conventional build, but if you're not going to use the keystone powers why bother with the set at all? Just take Fire and color it dark. If you're skipping OG and CoF there's nothing in Dark you can't get elsewhere. Yes they only affect minions, but that's where the stuns in War Mace and the fears in Presence come in. Stunned critters don't fight back, and feared critters barely fight back. Between this, a moderate amount of resistances and defense, and a massive heal you don't need the Tough/Weave combo, and you'll get a completely different play experience no other set can give you.

As Luminara said, it's because it's a pseudo pet, and the game info doesn't always report the abilities of pseudo pets. Mids and CoD will give you that info.

Debuffs scale based upon critter level -- they're more effective on critters below your level and less effective on those above your level. I'm 99% sure -DEF is listed in the power description, -25%. A +1 SO would put that around 34% against critters your level, so that looks right.

In addition to what @Snarky said, War Mace has a number of stuns, which in combination with Oppressive Gloom will allow you to stun LTs and Bosses. IMO I would drop Taunt, Boxing, Tough, Weave, Electric Fences, Spirit Ward, Mystic Flight, and Rune of Protection and replace them with Provoke, Intimidate, Invoke Panic, Unrelenting, Cloak of Fear, Oppressive Gloom, and either Combat Jumping+Super Jump/Superspeed or Hover+Flight/Super Speed.

Looks like the character list isn't updating like it's supposed to.

If you mean Spring Attack, it's not flagged to crit. It also isn't flagged to crit.

There are still a few places around you can do this.

Kids today will never know the joy of Hovering across Kings Row, Perez Park, or the Hollows.

The player version of Regen. Because then all the AVs and giant monsters would drop in 2 hits.

You're splitting hairs. The OP's question was why is 45% considered the softcap and why do some people build for far higher, and I answered in the most simple way possible. They didn't ask for a dissertation on how tohit, accuracy, and defense work.

Um, that's what I said, albeit more simply for a newbie. 🤔

45% is considered a soft cap because the base chance to hit of normal critters is 50%. Since there is always a minimum of 5% chance to hit, 45% defense brings you to a point where most critters are at the 5% minimum. But there are various critters throughout the game that have higher than base 50% chance to hit. Against those critters 45% defense isn't enough (especially on higher-difficulty task forces), which is why people build for more. Building for more than 45% also helps for when you get hit with defense debuffs, which are pretty common in the game. Most defense-based armor sets get some degree of defense debuff resistance, but it's not something you can get via IO sets. Resistance caps vary by AT. Tanks and Brutes are the highest at 90%, HEATs and VEATS are 85%, and everyone else is 75%. You can build for more, but that only will come into play with resistance debuffs. Since your damage resistance values are also your damage debuff resistance values, in theory if you build to 100% or more it would effectively negate any resistance debuffs.

Light Lass from the Legion of Super-Heroes has gravity powers, the only hero I can think of off the top of my head. Gravity for a Controller or Dominator doesn't synergize better with any one set over another, so really you can pair it with anything that looks interesting to you.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/gameaccount/

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.21-windows-x64-installer

The amount of DDR and whether it's enhanceable is based upon what other kinds of damage mitigation a set gets. SR has none other than the minor amount of scaling damage resists. Energy and Ninjitsu have a heal, Ice/Invul/Stone have Hoarfrost/Dull Pain/Earth's Embrace, Shield gets moderate resistances and a damage debuff.

Between the P2W buffs and the DFB/DIB buffs I don't even bother slotting IOs till level 27 at the earliest.

The PvP zones can be a total pain in the ass, especially if you run into someone of the other faction. There are a few badges that are insanely difficult to get to.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not true. The game has ALWAYS been balanced around SOs, even today, because that's what's easily and readily available to everyone at all levels with minimal financial investment. The majority of players don't have a meta endgame build or play hardmore endgame content. Believe it or not they use SOs and/or common IOs, even at level 50. IOs and Incarnates have ALWAYS been advertised as optional features, not required.

Being able to buff yourself isn't an exploit if the power permits it, especially since none of the buffs in question can be stacked by the same caster. There are plenty of support sets that get pets to buff off of. The easy solution is to just make the buffs PbAoE instead of targeted (like all the other team buffs that also affect the caster) so solo characters without pets don't need to worry about it. The game is balanced around SOs, not IO sets + Incarnates. I think you'll find that Defenders and other support ATs are far from atrociously powerful with an SO (or even common IO) build.

/powercreep

This is correct. Most temp powers are affected by damage modifiers. The 4 vet powers are the exception.

Regen already excels in earning you all the debt badges, so it's fine just as it is. /powercreep

Yeah, my Captain Marvel-inspired character is a human-only PB. It works really well.

Technically it would be Statesman and Lord Recluse. And yes, they can fight each other, sort of.