Call Me Awesome

This is absolutely correct. It's decent early and matures into a monster with utterly massive AOE and decent ST damage coupled with great durability. All the ATO sets are nice but they're a nice addition rather than the cornerstone the character's built around. Mine is capable of clearing one of the asteroid maps at x8 in around 5 minutes, it's equally good on teams running most anything. I found the character quite effective from the mid teens on through incarnate trials. Every Stalker I've played plays like a Scrapper who gets to choose the moment combat starts. Once you fire off your Alpha strike just pretend you're a Scrapper and kill them all. You're as durable as a Scrapper and you have about the same damage output.

That's partially why all my characters pick up Combat Jumping, it allows you great mobility and the ability to get out of melee for a second and hit a heal, eat an insp or whatever and then right back in to beating the bad guy's face in. Of course it also provides a place to put a Kismet +To Hit and maybe another LotG +recharge.

Frankly I've only run into this limit once since 2004 and that was back before Fitness became inherent and we had to blow 3 power choices for Hurdle/Health/Stamina on every character. It's a rare character that will find room for all 4 pools and an APP; if you're butting up against that limit you may want to rethink your build, likely there's some changes you'll want to make. At a guess I'd say this limit is likely pretty deep in the game code and probably not easy to change. I day it's not worth the trouble for such a marginal benefit.

Buy the attuned so you have the set bonuses available to you from 3 levels below the minimum of the set all the way to 50. Attuned IO's will also increase their enhancement value with your level; if you buy a level 30 it will give the exact same enhancement at 50 as it does at 30. If you buy that same IO attuned then at level 30 it's a level 30 IO with that enhancement value and when you reach level 50 that IO will work as a level 50 with that enhancement value. In my opinion if you aren't ever going to exemp then buy level 50 IO's and boost them. The set bonuses would shut off at level 46 however. Buying level 30 IO's and boosting them will give you a small advantage at level 27-35 but you'll be loosing effectiveness at level 50. Attuned will provide set bonuses down to -3 levels of the lowest level the IO exists at. Numina's for example is a level 30-50 set so if it's attuned you'll get the bonuses from level 27-50. Kinetic Combat I believe is level 20-35 so attuned it'll provide bonuses from 17-50; it's raw enhancement percentages will stop increasing at level 35 as that's the limit of that set. The level of an attuned IO is based on your current level within the limits of it's level range. A set with a range of 15-30 will always function based on that range... when you exceed it's level it stops improving it's enhancement values and continues to work at it's top level. A set with a range of 30-50 likewise always works as if it's your current level from level 30-50. Exemp below a set's minimum level and you loose the set bonuses but it will still enhance your powers... based on a rather complicated level scaling formula. My advice is to always buy attuned. While you're leveling they will level with you and when you exemp down they'll keep their set bonuses down to -3 levels below their set minimum. Yes, they'll degrade their enhancement values as you exemp below 35? I think, but they'll continue to work. The thought of buying level 30 and boosting them to +5 DOES make them stronger when you exemp below 30 but they'll be weaker at 50.

Remember there's some defense debuffs that are autohit, things like Earthquake and the Rad debuffs that those Crey minions use that can do a number on your defense no matter how high it is. Cascading debuffs is just a fact of life, I've seen Cimeroans nuke my Invuln's defenses from 45% down to -30% and that's WITH 50% DDR. Defense isn't a magical god mode, be aware of that and be ready to react to them by either kiting or popping inspirations. Or, in the case of an Invuln vs Cimeroans just ignore it and punch them in the face; all those debuffing attacks are Lethal after all and you're hard capped resistance to it.

You can buy the Attuned versions from the AH, they're the same price as the non-attuned and will always match your level, between the set's minimum and maximum. I do NOT recommend buying non-attuned as they're going to be a fixed level. As an example, Numina's comes from level 30-50. If you buy a level 31 then when you hit 50 it'll still be a level 31. If you buy it attuned then when you're 27 you can slot it as a level 30, and when you're level 40 it will be a level 40, when you're 50 it'll be a level 50. If you exemp down to level 30 for a TF then an attuned IO set will still give you the bonuses. If you bought a level 50 and exemp down below level 47 then the bonuses shut down. The nice thing about the AH is that when say a level 31 IO is listed the AH changes it into whatever level or attuned that the purchaser wants. You list a level 31 LOTG +recharge, Joe Blow then buys it as an attuned IO. The AH doesn't care what level the original IO was, it sells it as what the buyer wants. Long story short, ALWAYS buy your IO's attuned.

Never played Colonization but I spent many an hour with Civ 1-4 and even enjoyed Alpha Centauri. I bought Civ 5 and didn't like it as well. My favorite of the bunch is probably Civ 2.

Your cash problems should be well on their way to being solved. As the saying goes, Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies.

Interesting and no, I didn't know about the history. Knowing that company and that salesman I figured he was an idiot and contacted the warehouse. That was the only time I saw that meme and it was probably close to 10 years ago.

I had a 50 Mind/Kin back before shutdown. In the early going it was good with a lot of damage making it a leading set in the early game. Once you got into the 20's it started to slow down and by the time other sets matured it was at the back of the pack. Not bad, but definitely lower tier than the frontrunners, it peaked early and low. With Containment the set dropped even farther back as it had very few ways to benefit. No immobilize and poor hard control outside of Confuse left me playing a Kinetic with a few control tricks. Not useless by any means, but certainly not in the same league as Ill, Fire, Plant and the like. As we all know sleeps have very limited value, particularly in the current fast paced game. I'd suggest adding an immobilize ability to the sleeps when they're broken early, it should be short duration but it would make them useful and provide containment. I'd also echo the suggestion to have Confuse also provide containment.

Quite a few will be able to solo an AV. Illusion is the classic choice with PA to handle the tanking although many other sets will be able to handle most AV's. I've soloed a few with my Perma-PA Ill/Rad back before shutdown and I know several flavors of Fire/ have done it as well. Anything with enough DPS/sustained -regen and a way to survive the damage from the AV can do it.

You're welcome. You know you can type /ah anywhere outside of your base or a mission and open the auction house interface? I frequently head to the Steel Canyon university and go to the invention tables so I can buy, craft, convert and sell without having to move around.

The Auction House is the easiest way to make money actually. Here's a tip, any vendor will pay 5k for a level 50 yellow recipe and 10k for a level 50 orange recipe. Look over the recipes for sale and you'll find lots of them going for under 1k, just buy them from the auction house and sell them to a vendor for instant profit. Once you have some money built up that way then look for yellow recipes at level 31 and craft them. Buy uncommon yellow recipes because they do not use valuable rare salvage. Then spend some inf on Enhancement Converters (going rate is $90k each) and convert those worthless IO's to get something good. Why level 31? Because that level has the best ratio of valuable IO's to crafting costs. On average you'll have 5k in the recipe & salvage, 30-50k in crafting costs and maybe 5 converters to get you an IO that sells for over a million. If you get a winner like a Luck of the Gambler, Shield Wall, Numina's or other pricey IO's then it can sell for 4 million and up... several can bring upwards of 10 million. Doing that is the fastest way to pick up inf I know of, this afternoon I spent 15 minutes and cleared over 150 million in profit, which will fund the majority of most of my character's builds. Email the inf to your alt that needs cash and you're golden. Check out the Market forum for more ideas; making inf in the game is really trivially easy if you try. I don't bother to push for having billions of inf on hand so I work the market to pay for my builds and call it good. I do know some of the serious marketers make billions a day on the market; I'm not interested in going to that much trouble.

Your avatar reminds me of an email I got from a salesman for a rigging company. He said "I don't know what you asked for but here's a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head". Geeze, all I asked for was a harness for a scissor lift. Not the sharpest pencil in the drawer.

Dark and Rad are both top choices. While AM is a great buff for the team it's ALSO a great buff for YOU so the fact that the team also benefits is just gravy. Choosing between them is a tough decision... they both offer significant debuffs and they're both able to fill the role. If you're thinking Dark/Dark you'll be able to absolutely neuter an entire spawn's ability to hit the team, my Dark/Dark back on Live was capable of maintaining over -100% tohit on a single mob and over -50% to an entire spawn. It also offered a helping of +resist & +defense to you and the team along with -damage/resistance/regeneration. Rad/Sonic is another excellent debuffer, it won't nuke tohit like the Dark/Dark but it'll gut their resistance, drop their defense/tohit/regeneration while raising the team's damage, recharge, recovery and movement speed. I don't think you'll be disappointed with either Dark or Rad; both can get the job done. Dark may be a bit more fiddly with Tar Patch to manage but Rad has the two anchor debuffs that you'll likely only use later on against AV/s and other hard targets... teams kill off spawns fast enough that the mobs are dead by the time you get the debuffs out. I tend to toss out Enervating Field at the start and then start blasting... it's a short animation and it deals -res and -damage. Rad infection takes over 3 seconds to animate and it's a considerable -def/tohit so I use it on hard targets. There's a reason both sets are considered top tier.

At a guess you ran into a group of Vampires, they deal negative & psionic damage and you're weak to Psi. Council is mostly S/L damage outside of those mobs. Were you running missions in Strigga Island? Some of the missions will be mostly Vampires and Psi is your kryptonite. Hoarfrost is your solution to those situations; that and your inspiration tray. They don't do large amounts of damage but they DO bypass your defenses. Also, don't worry about farming; frankly it's a fairly boring activity and Tankers aren't the best suited for it. Scrappers, Stalkers and Brutes are better at it since they have considerably higher damage and adequate durability. Most farmers are built for a specific type of enemy and they're not much use outside of that particular situation.

1. Is it possible to combine a taunt/provoke ability while flying above the range of an enemy to get them to target you but be unable to damage you? Entirely possible, however in general characters with a Taunt ability don't need to avoid aggro for one and for another they're melee characters so they WANT to be able to punch the bad guy in the face. One highly effective tactic for squishy characters is to hover or fly high enough to be out of melee range while attacking. Yes, all mobs do have a ranged attack, but for many their ranged attack is their weakest attack so you'll avoid a great deal of damage if that's all they can hit you with. Exception - there's a fair number of mobs that are primarily ranged damage dealers, this doesn't help a lot against them, but it makes a huge difference against melee mobs. I do NOT recommend getting Provoke from the Presence pool, any character who can benefit from it already has a better power in their primary or secondary powers. Other AT's are better off avoiding aggro than hollering "Shoot ME! Not him, shoot at ME!!!" There's almost no situations where a character will benefit from having this power which is an inferior version of a Tanker's Taunt ability. 2. With enough ranged attack range increase... is it possible to aggro only one monster in a group, getting them to leave their group, and this pick off enemies one at a time instead of aggroing the whole group... would be useful for 1v1 dps if possible? Pulling a single mob is possible, you'll need to make sure only the one mob has line of sight of you and fire, then break line of sight. Ideally shoot him in the back from range and duck around a corner before he turns around... he'll come running to say hello and won't tell his buddies what's going on. You don't even need a great deal of range, 20' is usually enough. There ARE exceptions to this however, for example Vahz zombies are too stupid to pull, they'll loose interest after a couple of steps. The other Vahz mobs however will usually bring their zombies with them... make sure to kill them first as the zombies are too stupid to be dangerous with the other mobs dead. Additionally trying to pull a boss is more likely to result in him bringing friends than pulling a minion.

Well, I think it sums things up to say the Devs weren't any better at writing consistent backstory than they were at writing code.

A means of quickly closing to melee range of your target, something that's common in melee classes in other games. SWTOR has this with several classes doing an instant flying leap into combat from across the room. Shield Charge, Lightning Rod and similar powers also have the same effect coupled with a large AOE attack... the discussion is to have a Scrapper get the "jump into melee from a distance" effect, likely in the Confront power, without the AOE damage. Target baddie, hit Confront and teleport right into his face so you can tell him about his mother.

I saw that a bit ago, I'd forgotten about the /buildsave command. The real time saver in a respec would be the ability to import the finished build so you don't have to go through the entire power/slot/enhancement routine. An "import build" button on the respec screen.

The history is frequently nonexistent unless you refresh it repeatedly and occasionally wildly incorrect (for example I've seen Miracle +Recovery listed as last 5 selling in the 20 million range when they're actually going in the 4-6 million range) This is less of an issue when buying as you can simply increment your bid until it goes through; however when selling if you list for what the history says is the right price you may end up eating the fees when you have to relist it for the actual going price. The interface is also buggy and the sorting functions frequently don't work. Still, we're stuck with it warts and all.

You know I could see a Vet level benefit that gives you another row of inspirations... that tray already increases as you level up so it fits thematically and it wouldn't drastically overpower the characters. On the other hand I don't use my inspirations very much once my build matures so it's just expanding the "oh crap" button a bit. I'm ambivalent about another enhancement tray, ever since it expanded to the current number I've never filled it other than while crafting and marketing. On a respec it's very rare for me to be replacing more than 20 IO's in the build. I wouldn't object to this, but I'm not sure how important it may be. On the other hand IF the coding of the trays is remotely sensible (ROTFLMAO) that change may be a simple parameter edit. Much easier to give to everyone than to tie it to a vet level. One thing occurs to me, often I need to make a small modification to my IO's, currently I use unslotters for that. I wonder if getting x number of unslotters per VL, or per 5 VL would make sense? Then again the cost of unslotters generally isn't an issue for level 50 characters. Of course we've all wanted a "respec lite" to only shift around a few slots without having to do the current "start from scratch" method. I wonder if a "slot mover" is possible? Heck, if we're just brainstorming one thing that's been requested practically from the moment respec's came about is a way to import a Mid's build directly complete with IO's, and to export a current build directly to Mids. I know there's some folks working on an online character builder; it'd be fantastic if it could link to your account and import/modify/export your builds.

Look at the Shiny Shiny new thing, pay no attention to the Nerf behind the curtain.

Personally I play a Stalker like a Scrapper who can choose his moment to start the party. Close to melee, pop off my AOE opener then on to my Kill Them All rotation moving from spawn to spawn as my toys get broken. AOE's to kill off the trash, ST attacks to finish off the Bosses and then directly into the next. Whenever the Hide proc fires off use a heavy hitter ST power or AOE depending on recharge and remaining playmates in proximity. Scrapperlock. It's not an AT, it's a way of life.

Maybe every 10 VL with a maximum of 5 slots? Could be a PITA to code though. I'm tentatively going to say probably "no" to this although it would be nice if vet levels had a tangible effect beyond Emp merits.