Fulmens

Teal's pretty hideous on the CoH blue background as well.

To the original question: I know that if you have a Stealth IO in a teleport power, it only lasts for 120 seconds after you teleport (or in this case after you Recall a Friend.)

It _sounds_ like you were seeing that effect. I don't know what the ingame doc says on BoTZ, and I don't know if the ingame doc is correct.

To check this, you can go to the "Real Numbers" display (hit "P" to bring up Powers, and the button is in the upper left of the Powers screen) and Recall someone, and watch your KB resistance for the next two or three minutes.

My understanding is this:

Your current Defense is the sum of all the buffs and debuffs on you at any given time.

So if you had (lethal attack incoming, all numbers vs. lethal)

Invincibility providing 11% Defense
Deflection shield providing 24%
recent Parry providing 18% Defense
Someone else's maneuvers providing 5.5% Defense
Recent hits by four Warrior swords at -7.5% each

You'd have (11+24+18+5.5 - 30) which should be 28.5% Defense. If I can do math, which is not guaranteed.

That's what that little stack of buffs and debuffs under your HP/end/XP bar keeps track of: the effects on you.

I don't know when it's recalculated; I haven't seen the source code. I'd guess either "every time your effect bar changes" or "every time you get attacked" or both.

Cornering the market in this game works only because of player apathy and the vast, ludicrous supply of inf out there.

Speaking for myself, I don't really care if I have to pay 50K instead of 5K for an item because I've got 500,000K sitting around. To put it in real-world terms, if you're walking around with fifty thousand dollars in your wallet, you're not going to worry too much about a nickel vs. fifty cents.

by the way, lest I misinform, there are three charities being supported by this. Child's Play (games for sick kids stuck in the hospital), Donate Games (donate your old games, which they sell to raise money for orphan disease research), and Operation Gratitude (care packages to soldiers.)

I don't wish to promote one over the other two.

Fire/Ice if you're worried about survival. (Ice Patch is the obvious survival tool; Shiver is less obvious but very effective.)
Fire/Mental if you want huge ranged AOE death delivery with some nifty utilities.
Fire/Elec [or Fire/Energy] if you want big fast melee single target hits, plus a couple handy powers.

I know, I recommended 4 of the 6 secondaries out there. My personal feeling is that /Fire is has too much leisurely pointblank AOE (PBAOEDOT is how you spell "gets and keeps aggro") and /Dev gimps your damage too much while not providing any significant utility or mitigation. I love Fire blasters and I have Fire/Elec and Fire/En at 50, with Fire/Ice somewhere in the low 40s and another Fire/ice at 35. Probably going to do a Fire/Mental for Going Rogue. So I'm at least consistent.

My DA tank is pretty spectacular in my opinion. Having said that... Brutes need different things than Tanks and I don't think I'd try a DA brute.

Noticed this when I went to check on Child's Play.

If you feel like being a big shot, and throwing some Real Money around, here's your chance. (Mods: This may be cross-posting but, as far as I can tell, there's ONE place on the forums where this is mentioned.)

Apparently you get a shiny gold title as well.

Martial Arts used to have visibly better Single Target damage than other sets and much less AOE. We thought it was designed that way, but then they fixed the bug that was giving a couple of powers more damage than they should have had, by formula, per recharge.

Ever since then, I've been unsure that MA was "designed" for anything, really.

Techbot Alpha: That would be the 90% with no Crey Power/Elec/Cryo tanks, no Rikti of any sort, no Nemesis Flamethrowers, no Arachnos of virtually any type, no Dark Ring Mistresses, no Master illusionists... upper level longbow... heck, pretty much everything redside is designed to demolish Invulnerability.

Trust me, I played 50 levels of Invuln Brute.

If I had a problem with you, I'd just leave the team... I suppose that's not the correct tough-guy response, though.

I personally have to work it out every time by doing a /loc, traveling a small distance, and doing another /loc.

Commander:

Is there an argument that would change your mind? Because, if not, I can bow out now.

1. The faster I can get out of Atlas Park the happier I am. Maybe people finally started agreeing with me?

2. If I'm doing the timezone math right, most kids in England are still in school and most adults are still working. Try again at 9 PM and see what it looks like.

The "typical" way of finding people these days (for me anyway) is to join the popular/relevant global chat channels. If you played on Victory,for instance, "Victory Badges" and "Victory Badges 2009" are large and reasonably full of people; I don't know the Defiant/Union equivalents.

Arachnos Commander: If I'm following your Winter's Gift metaphor, you're saying that merging the markets would cause some items to cease being created at all. . . ?

I'm "done" but I'm going to throw in a bonus 100 million for Banshee.

Crude first thoughts on the build you already have- I'm cranky, apologies for being ungracious:

* Throw out those overpriced +Rech set bonuses in your AOE's and get some real recharge in there. In general you're often doing things with set bonuses that should be done in the power itself.

* I hate Rain of Fire, period, because it takes way too long to kill 'em. If you need that damage over that time, you're probably doing it wrong.

* Shiver is great. I'd probably throw an extra recharge slot in there.

*You're spending that many slots on +Regen in your single target attacks, and you're underslotting Health. Getting a Regenerative Tissue in Health is +25% right there, and depending on the Miracles you chose, you're probably under 90% slotting anyway.

* Inferno with one slot, that's just not enough. When I give up my entire endurance bar, with no mitigation, I want to hit so hard the coffin's got smoke coming out when they put it in the ground. Overkill for blasters is like crying in baseball.

My "team assist" is always gonna be a rad/sonic defender. It stacks PRETTY high before you hit the debuff cap (I think six high against +2s? Haven't done the math for a very long time.)

My current favorite for surviving incoming hordes is a Dark/Energy tank running Tough and Weave. I might sort of cheat the aggro cap (I don't know if I can aggro some nonstunned guys or not) but between the stuns (frequently stun Bosses), the defense, the resistance, the giant heal... it takes a LOT to take me down. ( Or any two different Devouring Earth doorstops...) Stone/Something tanker probably gives better absolute survivability, but I can go over a curb on MY guy.

EDIT :these are my favorites, not [as asked in the OP] necessarily the objective best. Apologies for an answer of dubious use.