Roderick

Correct. With the exception of a Hero Gear pack that I had a friend pick up for me from one of the conventions, all of my CoH purchases have been digital copies. I do have the hardcopy from that one pack though.

I'm not sure how that qualifies as "getting lucky", but that's what I did, and I had no problem.

Seriously, the majority of people with this problem seem to be ones who, when setting up their accounts, just enter whatever the hell comes to mind when setting up the account so they can play RIGHT NAO, instead of taking the ten seconds extra to provide answers to the security question that they'll actually remember, and others probably won't guess.

There was actually one post on the forums where the person claimed that they just entered "slkjdasadg" for their security question answers, because they knew nobody would hack their account, and they'd never need the security answers again. Not saying the OP did this, but for those who did... Whose fault is it when you get locked out?

Ten. Energy Drain hits 10 targets, though you'd have to really work to hold aggro with it. Plus there's AoEs from the primary.

If you wanted to make a REALLY weird tank set, you could drop Energy Aura, and give them Repulse from the Stalker version, and add a taunt component to it, so that the enemies are being repeatedly thrown away, only to run back.

A better idea would be to just add a taunt aura to an existing power, like they did with Super Reflexes. Adding Taunt to Energy Cloak would be weird, so probably one of the basic toggles, or maybe the mez protect toggle?

As usual, the wiki has what you need.

There's a few missions that use a map of that area. In most of them, when you get close to the shacks, similar numbers of Longbow pile out.

Which brings up a question that has probably been asked before:

Assuming that it was a direct port with no tweaking, what would Ice Armor look like on brutes, and how would Energy Aura look on tanks?

Yes and no. The game is not "work". However, it is, and should be, challenging to get the best, and even the better, equipment in a game. And I'm not "sliding into" that group - I've always had this opinion of games.

Have you ever played a video game where your character starts out with top-tier equipment? Usually, you end up defeated by some overpowered enemy and stripped of the equipment after a few fights. Before this happens, you run around happily one-shotting entire groups of enemies, with no risk to yourself.

Where's the fun in that?

Have you ever played any Final Fantasy game? If you were just handed Excalibur, Masamune, Murasame, Ultima Weapon, Ultima, Genji Armor, or any of the other unique, high-powered equipment, without having to solve a puzzle, work your way through a dungeon, or defeat a boss creature, would there be as much satisfaction or enjoyment?

If you want to just walk in to a room and beat up a million bad guys, go play Gauntlet. If you want to advance and improve your character, be it through levels, equipment, or improving skills/abilities, that's when you choose to play an RPG.

CoH is an RPG. I want my character development and advancement, thanks.

There's ways to get some of these, particularly side-switched characters without GR on your account, in the game already (There is/was a trial code that added GR to your account. There's also a GR Trial, that can be upgraded to a non-GR account). If you have characters with unusable things (Side switched, Praetorian, or one of the four new powersets), that character gets locked out until you add a GR code. I imagine that the same thing could be done to characters with Incarnate abilities.

Locking out a character for having a costume part would be silly, so either the affected costume should be "genericed", or it should be treated like a costume with grandfathered costume pieces (like the Malaise pants) - if you ever open that costume in the Tailor, you won't be able to keep that piece; you'll be forced to change it.

Vet rewards would be trickier. They'd need to add a system to detect Vet Rewards (not just badges, but claimed rewards) and strip them from the character, if the new account doesn't have that level of Vet Rewards yet.

The only sure way to prevent (or at least severely limit) the selling of characters would be to limit account-to-account transfers to game accounts under the same master account. Unfortunately, that would limit the number of customers that could use the feature legitamitely, meaning that it probably wouldn't be worth the development time.

Which is too bad. I had to either reroll or lose several characters when I chose to close my second account, and with the upcoming EU/NA server merge, there'll be several people with legit reasons to use a feature like this.

My point is that there always has been, and always will be, "crap rares". They will take too much work relative to their perceived value to obtain when you want one, and if you get one by accident while trying to get something else, you'll feel ripped off.

Before crap PVP IOs, there were crap Purples, like Fortunata Hypnosis.
Before crap Purples, there were crap Rares. (Remember getting Trap of the Hunter rares for TF complete rewards? I do!)
Before crap Rares, there were crap Hami-Os; the ones you couldn't GIVE away, let alone trade for the ones you want.
Even in issue 0 it existed. Back then, Training and Dual Origins went all the way to 50. The only way to get a guaranteed SO was to buy it (if you know where the stores are. They're not marked on your map), kill an AV for the guaranteed SO drop or take one as a TF completion reward. Imagine the frustration if you come away from a 5 hour TF with an Intangibility SO for your reward.

Rewards are the carrot on a stick to keep us playing. If we get all the awesome stuff right away, then a significant portion of the playerbase gets bored and leaves. That's a bad thing for a pay-to-play game.

The only way you're going to see the desirable recipes become "easier" to get is if a WoW-style drop table was implemented: Want a Ragnarok proc? Go defeat Ruladak. There'll be a 10% chance for it to drop each time you defeat him, and it will go to someone on the team - not necessarily you. And it will never drop off anything else.

I spent two to nine hours a day for just over THREE WEEKS doing nothing but running around in circles killing enemies that took over 10 minutes EACH to kill, because I wanted a certain skill recipe that came from nothing else and was Bind on Pickup, so I couldn't even buy it. Oh, and they were all deep grey, so I got NO XP.

I'll take a system that lets me play any content I want, and showers me with drops - some useful to me, some salable, and some others not worth picking up - and gives me the ability to purchase just about anything I want with relative ease, over the other option, any day.

Exactly! There should NEVER be such a glaring disparity between the rarity and the desirability of a recipe! If one recipe has a low market value, all recipes with the same merit cost should have the same market cost!

Yes there is. You just haven't unlocked it yet.

I've heard that some (all?) auras now accept taunt sets again*. If you want to respec that tank for any reason, you should definitely copy over to test and see if you can keep the proc slotted; it might work.

*I've never tested this, it was never in patch notes, and I'm repeating pure hearsay. Do not test this on Live with a grandfathered build.

You are correct.

And you never will. The ONLY way to get a purple it to get it from an enemy defeat, purchase it directly with A-Merits (at a horrible rate), or buy it off the market. Purples do not exist in ANY random roll pool.