Exxar

Nope. Scrappers get Stalker sets, so no EF.

Huh? Will there be a change to the new Vigilance with I18? Because it's already based on their secondary, doing more damage solo and up to two teammates.

This. Contrary to your brute, your scrapper had more powers, AoE, and propably better enhancements. You really can't take on more than about +0 x4 without AoEs. With that in mind, brutes come into their own as soon as you roll them, or when you get QR/Stamina if you're having end problems.

Oh don't worry about that. While farming you'll be getting insps like there's no tomorrow and will always have plenty of greens (and others) handy.

Or half that if you have Broad Sword and are using Parry to take care of melee defense.

1. There are only two "raids" in the game that require and are playable by more than 8 people (a full team): the Mothership raid in Rikti Warzone (which is a coop zone where heroes and villains can team up together) and the Hamidon raid which happens both in a hero-only and in a villain-only zone. They are not done for rewards as much as for badges and the sense of accomplishment - the Mothership raid doesn't give any better rewards than the rest of the content in the game but gives a LOT of Rikti Merits which can be traded in for bonus costume pieces and a few bonus powers. The Hamidon raid gives a special type of enhancement on completion, which can either be total crap or one of the best pieces of loot in the game.

I'd say that in CoH the equivalent of raiding in WoW is running Task/Strike Forces, which you can consider as mini-raids for a full team of 8 people (some can be done by less), and are actually a string of 4 to 10 or even more missions that often have very tough "bosses" in them, Archvillains as they are called in the game (or Heroes if you're doing a villain Strike Force), and give a certain amount of Reward Merits upon completion that can be exchanged for any type of loot in the game except the very best ones.

2. The equivalent of guilds in CoH/V are supergroups/villaingroups. They may have their bases which can contain useful stuff like racks for the storage of enhancements and inspirations, crafting tables, teleporters to various zones etc.

3. All zones in CoH/V are actually hubs for instances. Note that the common use for the word instance doesn't have the same meaning here as in WoW. An instance in this game is not specifically a very tough dungeon with elite opponents and epic loot, but any mission (quest) that is spawned on an instanced map, as 90% of missions are. The remaining 10% are talkie missions (where you just have to go to talk to someone in a certain zone for storyline purposes) and hunts (which are remnants of early game design where you need to kill x mobs of type y and are usually avoided like the plague by players because they are boring as hell and barely have any rewards).

Besides serving as hubs for instances, zones contain contacts that give out missions, stores and everything else you normally find in a MMO zone. It's just that 90% of the game happens in instanced maps and not zones.

4. No idea about specific numbers, but more than enough

5. There are several types of loot in the game. The majority of loot is comprised of enhancements, which serve as a kind of equivalent of weapons and armor. Enhancements are slotted in powers and enhance certain aspects of the power they are slotted in - damage, accuracy, resistance, defense and so forth. The basic type of enhancements, those that have been present in game since the beginning, are the so called "origin" enhancements: training enhancements (usable by toons of any origin but their enhancement values are almost negligent), dual-origin enhancements (useable by two specific origins but actually have noticeable numbers) and single-origin enhancements (useable by just one origin but have the best enhancement values). Enhancements come in levels - you cannot slot enhancements that are more than 3 levels higher than your character, and in the case of "origin" enhancements, the higher level you are compared to their level, the lesser their effect, and once they are 4 levels lower than you they stop working altogether and you have to get new ones. Trainings are usable from lvl 1, DOs (dual-origin) from lvl 12 and SOs (single-origin) from lvl 22. Each origin enhancement increases one aspect of the power it's slotted in.

The next type of enhancements that were introduced in the game are the Hamidon enhancements, often called HOs (Hamidon origin). They are usable by characters of any origin and have the enhancement values of SOs, but unlike SOs they enhance two or more aspects of the power they are slotted in. They can only be gotten in Hamidon raids and in the toughest TF on each side of the game.

The newest type of enhancements are the invention enhancements, IOs. They come in two varieties: common IOs and set IOs. Common IOs are crafted from recipes that can be bought at the crafting table, but they also drop from mobs. Set IOs are crafted by recipes that are either dropped by mobs, or gotten by cashing in reward merits and architect tickets (yet another type of reward, only earned in the Mission Architect). To craft an IO, you need the specific recipe, a certain amount of inf, and specific salvage pieces. Salvage is dropped by mobs and can be gotten by cashing in merits and tickets. Unlike non-IO enhancements, IOs do not expire - they have a constant enhancement value that is fixed and doesn't vary by your level. The specific enhancement value of IOs varies by their level - they are always better than trainings and DOs that can be gotten at that level, lvl 25 IOs are just a little bit worse than even-con SOs (SOs who's level is the same as yours), and lvl 28 IOs and upward are better than even-con SOs - the higher the better. IO recipes dropped by mobs and cashed in from merits/tickets can be of any level (although certain IOs only come in specific level ranges) while those bought at crafting tables come at multiples of level 5.

Common IOs enhance one aspect of the power, just like trainings, DOs and SOs. Set IOs, however, may be either single-aspect or multi-aspect, enhancing from two to four aspects of a power. The specific enhancement values for each aspect of multi-aspect IOs are lower than that of single-aspect IOs of the same level, but their total enhancement values are higher. So for example two acc/dam IOs give you more damage and accuracy than one acc IO and one dam IO of the same level.

Besides enhancing aspects of the power they are slotted in, set IOs also give global bonuses to the character if there are two or more IOs from the same set slotted in a single power. That makes set IOs the most coveted type of loot in the game, and it's on them that the in-game market economy is based. Some specific set IO pieces even give global bonuses by themselves.

And then there are the purple set IOs, the newest type of enhancement in the game, the rarest, the most expensive and the most powerful. They only drop as lvl 50, can only be slotted by lvl 50 characters and have the best set bonuses, but each of them is unique - you cannot have more than one of each on your character, not only in the same power as for other set IOs. Their enhancement values are also greater, so for example a dual-aspect purple enhances both aspects by a value equivalent to an even-con SO.

The other kinds of loot in the game are salvage that is used to craft recipes into IOs, inspirations (the equivalent to potions), recipes that give you access to bonus costume pieces when crafted as well as recipes that give you temporary powers when crafted.

Other, non-loot rewards are influence/infamy (one for heroes the other for villains, both shorted to inf) which is the in-game currency, merit rewards which are given upon the completion of TFs/SFs, story arcs and a few other activities, vanguard rewards which are gotten by killing Rikti and Architect tickets which are gained instead of everything else when doing Mission Architect (player-made) missions.



Damn, I can't believe I wrote all this.

I've never had much experience with Spines, but wouldn't Fireball actually be better than Ripper in a farming environment since it has a much bigger target cap? I know Ripper does huge damage but it only hits 5 targets, while the other AoEs in the sed hit 10 and Fireball hits 16. So use Spine Burst, Throw Spines and Fireball to clear out the minions and then wipe the liuts and bosses with Ripper instead of Fireball?

As a fringe benefit, Fire Blast could be useful in enhancing the poor ST dps of Spines, and Char gets you a +7.5% recharge bonus for only 4 slots.

Weave is a huge help for adding sufficient survivability to an offensively built toon. And unless you're going to farm some very specific critters, the same goes for Tough.