MajorDecoy

I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about that. Smashing and Lethal typed attacks are still the most common in the game. And when building to the soft cap, even 1.25% set bonuses are useful, just look how many builds use Reactive armour.

If you have a lot of resist, but you're not at the cap, every little bit makes a huge difference. A person with 88% resistance is taking about 20% more damage than a person with 90% resistance. And Smashing/Lethal resistance is actually one of the harder bonuses to come by.

I've actually heard a lot of people complain that accuracy bonuses aren't useful because most people already slot for accuracy and once you're at 95% to-hit, it's not helping you any.

Kinetic Combat is not popular because it fills a hole in Smashing/Lethal defense. I mean, take a look at all the Invulnerability tanks that use Kinetic Combat. We don't use it because we're weak to Smashing/Lethal damage. We use it because 1) More defense doesn't hurt (unless you're already at 59% defense) and 2) it provides protection to attacks like Fire Sword (because we don't have a lot of fire resistance).

If I remember correctly, Thunderstrike was 100 points/enhancement, or 480 points for the whole set.

Yes, they are unique, but they're also purchased items (or so I believe because it looks like they have the same border as the set I purchased at Comic Con).

As purchased items, they should be nice, but they shouldn't be awesome. They shouldn't be as good as purples.

The even level part comes with all purchased enhancements. If you buy a set of Thunderstrike from the store, it'll always be even level (but you won't be able to slot it until level 27). The set is otherwise functionally identical to the invention set Thunderstrike.

I have to disagree with the analysis of the set bonuses though.

2.5 Smashing/Lethal defense is really nice to have on Brutes, especially since it's a set with a recharge bonus too. There is no other melee set that gives defense and recharge. Every one of those set bonuses is more useful than 1.77% immobilization resistance, for example.

The Tanker set, well, it's my experience that the +1.88% health bonuses are pretty easy to get, and so another set with the same bonus isn't going to be terribly helpful. Smashing/lethal resistance isn't helpful to Major Decoy, but it could be nice for my Electric Armour tanker. It wouldn't hurt to have a larger bonus though. The Psionic and Toxic resistance offered doesn't seem to be terribly helpful either. Again, every bonus is better than % status resistance.

Really, how do you decide which bonuses are useful and which aren't?

Actually, yes. I have tried playing a Warshade. Only to level 33 though. It's not a playstyle I particularly enjoy.

According to the text, the blaster proc will fire an average of four times a minute. I really don't think that compares to Fire's secondary effect.

As to the Tanker +Res, before I comment on how useful it is, I'd need to know:

1) How much +Res it offers
2) How long the +Res lasts
3) How frequently it procs

I don't think that the set bonuses should be as good as purple sets, but I do think they should be slightly better. +2.25% health instead of 1.88% perhaps. Double the resistance values in the 5th and 6th slots maybe?

I'll remind you that Kinetic Melee, Dual Pistols, and Demon Summoning were not free. You did not get access to them if you did not purchase Going Rogue.

As a VIP member, there will be some free power sets, like Time Manipulation, but there will be some power sets that you will have to buy.

What? How are we running out of power choices? With fitness inherent, we have more powers than ever before.

What we're running out of is powers to choose from. We need more power pools.

We got access to body sliders well before issue 16.

They changed the visual style of the character creation screen, but I didn't notice any functional changes to it. Same drop down menus. I didn't think to check the chest options, but I'll take a look at them today. If there's still a massive list for those instead of breaking it down into subsections, I'll assume that they haven't done anything to make it easier to navigate costume options.

As to the new tutorial, there's something entire new to it; you hit level 2 before it's over. I didn't play all the way through the tutorial (I wanted to save that for a character on my account), so it might have ended shortly after, but there were still Shivans to fight after training up to level 2.

And Street Justice!

Doesn't it just make you want to punch someone?

Edit: Why his helmet? Is that necessarily the most recognizable part of his costume? For Statesman, I'm not sure they can use anything but a cracked face mask. For positron, I'd go with a shoulder pad. Except, they might have to use the should pads for Sister Psyche...

A portion of his chest plate maybe?