Roderick

It's been back and forth between allowing sub-25's and not allowing them a few times. I don't use the pillar often enough to know which is intended and which is the bug, or whether or not it currently works. Thanks for clearing that up.

1- We don't know any better than you do.
2- The people who do know probably aren't allowed to say.
3- The people who do know rarely answer questions in this section.
4- DXP is rarely announced very far in advance.
5- We don't know any better than you do.

Last time I tried, the Pillar refused to allow the flashback to start if any teammates were under 25, even if the leader was 25+ and all teammates were in the proper level range for the mission.

As far as merit rewards goes, take a look at the Old Positron Task Force. Before the revamp, it was worth 66 merits. After the revamp (it was unchanged, except moving it to Ouro and adjusting the merit reward to the Story Arc formula) it became worth 40. So, based on average completion time, TFs are a bit more than 50% better than Story Arcs. Of course, speed runners can make some of these far more efficient.

You're not going to get a "no arms" option. I'd place money on it. Just removing the arms would look even worse than the arms and wings combination. Moving the wings to the arms position would take a huge amount of work from the art department. And it was said by a dev a while back that they can't exclude costume parts based on powersets, or vice versa; the two systems don't talk to each other, so there would be pretty serious issues with any armless character that uses a weapon. And since that's EVERY character (thanks to numerous temporary powers), it's just not likely. Furthermore, automatically removing the arms screws over people who want it that way - see Ace Duck from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for an example.

As to additions to the pack, don't hold your breath on that either. Except for bug fixes, the devs don't typically go back and change Booster Packs after they've been released.

But don't let that discourage you! The pieces you're asking for may well already be in the works, and if not, they may make it into future development cycles. From what we've seen and heard already, the Paragon Store will have lots of things to pick and choose from, including a few things that go beyond what we're used to seeing in game. And if you maintain your subscription, you'll get free points each month to buy those pieces with.

Scrappers will do better damage than a brute in most cases, just off the fact that their Build up gives a bigger buff (100% vs. 80%), and is calculated from a higher base (1.125 vs. 0.75, IIRC). Soul Drain has the potential to give an even bigger buff, and it lasts longer, so it increases the gap.

However, this is only relevant if you are attempting to absolutely max your damage - I have several Dark Melee brutes, and their damage is nothing to laugh at. My main one is /WP, and the extra HP he gets as a brute make him far more sturdy than an equivalent scrapper would be.

If you want max damage, go scrapper. If you want high damage, pick whichever of the two suits your playstyle best.

Those equalizers are in one or two Mayhems. That's at most a 10 level range, then they're gone forever. And there are things to minimize their annoyance factor.

1- Kill the Equalizer first. If you're soloing on x1, there will never be more than one per spawn. If you're teamed, then get the team to help eliminate the hard targets first. If your difficulty in insreased and it's making too many Equalizers spawn - turn your difficulty down.

2- Mez the Equalizer. Not an option for everyone, but if he CAN'T act, he can't web you. If there's too many equalizers to mez, see point 1.

Sometimes they'll get off a grenade anyways, especially when they show up in ambushes. That's when you need to learn to deal with the debuff.

3- GTFO. The patch lasts 30 seconds, and pulses every 0.5 seconds, applying a 30 second debuff each time. They don't stack from the same patch, but they do refresh the duration. This means you can be debuffed for a full minute if you just stand there. Teleport is, of course, the best way out. Turning on Sprint, Ninja Run, Beast Run or Super Speed will give you a boost that will help get you out.

4- Get slow resistance. Many sets have it built in. for those that don't, you can get a Winter's Gift Slow Resist IO. You can also use sets that grant runspeed or recharge bonuses to offset the penalties.

If they get rid of or nerf Glue Grenades, then they need to do the same to a lot of other powers - Mask of Vitiation, Curse of Weakness, the disease that Vahzilok and Minotaurs cause, Sapper Rifles, Earthquake, the list goes on. Pick enemies with no debuffs or the debuffs that least affect you, and the game becomes "Press 1, 2, 3, 4 until they fall down". Pick other enemies, and it becomes a thinking man's game.

The same emote, with icons for ALL alignments (they're currently missing Resistance and Loyalist), each AT and each origin would be nice to have, and shouldn't require any new assets other than the new, larger icons. The remainder of the emote should be able to be cloned from the existing ones.

Nobody who can answer that question yet knows. Anyone who does know is a Paragon Studios employee who is effectively gagged by the Marketing department, or a member of Closed Beta, who are all under a Non-Disclosure Agreement. While our NDA's aren't that strict, anyone who breaks it will probably never see a beta ever again.

Furthermore, there's all sorts of things about CoH:Freedom that the devs can't or won't talk about because they're very likely to change as Closed Beta progresses.

tl;dr: Wait and see.

I do it all the time.

Based on what Agge posted, I typed

Correction: