Emberly

Absolutely untrue. Freedom's been in development for a long time. The devs have plans for years of future content. Recent redname reports indicate that the game is seeing huge numbers of concurrent players, exceeding launch numbers. Dying game? Player base dropping? Ha ha ha. No.

Came here to post this.

Hell no. Are you pressing buttons and firing off actions/attacks? Then you're not leeching.
Some sets are stronger at some things than others. That has nothing to do with leeching.
Are they using those powers? If so, they are not leeching.
Your entire argument seems to be that weak sets leech off strong sets. That's ridiculous. If that was the case, then taken to its logical conclusion, everyone on the team is leeching off the strongest member. That's obviously not true, because every active team member is contributing to the team's success.

You have a really strange, skewed and wrong view of how teams work. From your own words, you sound like a terrible person to have on a team.

This is the only way I have ever run it. Longest wait has been about three minutes, shortest was instant-start.

Happily, StJ is superior to many free powersets. For instance, the animations are subjectively the best of all the melee powersets. The names of the attacks are superior to many other powersets. The combo mechanic is superior to many other gimmicks. It's better than MA for AoE. It's better than Spines for ST. It's better than Kinetic Melee for not sounding like a racecar.

All in all, for the variables I am concerned about, StJ is at least on par and often superior to many other options, including free powersets.
Ahh, now I get it. You think that it should be better than everything else, in all areas. Faster animations, more damage, lower end costs, the works. To this, I say thee, nay.

*snort*

I believe the opposite to be true. DB railroads the player into attack chains and power choices if they want to use the combo system. Compare to StJ, which allows for decision making on the fly, and permits greater player choice in building combos. I believe that the flexibility afforded by StJ's open combo system leads to more tactical options rather than fewer.

DB forces the player to take certain attacks and use them in a certain order to gain benefit from the combos. Additionally, at or near cap, the only two really worth using are AV/Sweep, and I have seen some decent arguments for not needing Sweep. Mastering DB means accepting that Empower and Weaken are not useful at the high end of play, and learning to love BF->AV. A DB player might start Sweep, have a teammate melt most of the spawn partway through the combo, and then find his Sweep now hitting only a boss. The StJ user, in the same situation, can switch out his finisher from Spinning Strike to Crushing Uppercut and finish off the boss that was left standing. The DB user has to abandon his combo and start anew, or waste endurance on an AoE attack that hits few targets or even just one.

That all said, my main and favourite melee character is dual blades and I love him for it. I would never call DB a bad set, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone.

Why, though? It's a good set. It just doesn't happen to meet your unreasonable expectations. I mean, seriously. Your argument seems to be based on "don't buy StJ because it is not as good as SS." That's... not very compelling.

I feel exactly the same way about staff fighting. Different strokes for different folks.

Sometime around 0800 Pacific IIRC.