Roderick

That's a result of how the drop mechanic works for shards. Every time anyone on your team defeats an enemy, everyone on the team (who has the Alpha Slot unlocked) has a chance for a drop, which is in no way affected by other teammates; they're not a shared drop like Salvage and Recipes are.

So if you were on a team, but you were the only person doing anything, you should see a shard drop rate roughly equal to what you see solo. However, when the whole team is participating, the team's kills-per-minute goes up, so there's far more checks made. And since shards aren't a shared drop, you end up with more shards-per-minute on a team than you do solo.

Also, while relative level (probably) doesn't affect drop rates, enemy rank does. While doing the various WSTs for the last couple weeks, I'd say I've had about a 25-33% drop rate off AV class enemies. ITF has 6 AVs (if you let Nictus Romulus rez the max number of times), LGTF has Hamidon (He and the mitos seem to have a higher than Boss drop rate) plus 2 AVs, LRSF and STF have over a dozen each, KahnTF has 5 (or more, are the named guys in the first mission AVs?) - you never run into AVs in that quantity outside of TFs, not even doing Maria Jenkin's arc.

You're not looking for softcapped defense then; you're looking for layered mitigation.

Super Reflexes has little to no resistance, depending on your scaling resists, and the presence of Tough. As such, 5% of attacks aimed at you hit and deal full damage. Attacks from lieutenants and bosses have a slightly higher chance to hit you, as do attacks that have accuracy bonuses. Unresistable defense debuffs are your bane (I'm looking at you, Earth Thorn Casters). And those council bosses who Eagle's Claw you? 10% chance to hit, huge damage, and a high chance to crit -- I regularly take 900 points of damage from them if I let them live more that a few seconds. Super Reflexes cannot survive while AFK, it needs active mitigation through the primary to slow down the incoming attacks, because some of them will get through, and a run of bad luck will kill you.

A character with a mix of two or more of defense, resist, +HP, heals, mez, or debuff will be exponentially stronger than a character that only has one. That's why Stone Armor is so durable - it combines high defense, good resists, +regen, and a heal/+max HP power. Likewise, Invulnerability combines good defense with high resists and a heal/+Max HP power, so it can reach levels of survivability similar to Stone.

Willpower has an unusual mix of resistance to some attacks and defense to others, plus a huge pile of regeneration. However, with the right power selections, it can become as durable as Stone and Invulnerability. And all three of them can become even stronger through the selection of the right Set bonuses.

Super Reflexes, on the other hand, remains a one-trick pony. It's really, really good at that one trick, but it's not enough to become an AFK-tank. It needs active mitigation.

Remember: "Through over-specialization we breed in weakness".

How long ago did you last try a dominator? If it was before the revamp, I strongly recommend trying them again - I couldn't stand them before they were changed, but I've recently started two. One is in the mid 30's, the other still a lowbie, but I'm enjoying them as much as my blasters.

Reply: "Bring whatever you want."

2007 called. They want their stalkers back.

Stalkers that wait for Placate or Hide are gimping themselves. With the bonus to crit for having teammates nearby, a stalker that wades in and melees can unleash as much damage as a scrapper, sometimes even more.

Sorry that it's not what you wanted to hear, but: Whoever PMs me first. If "all bases are covered", I don't care if it's a Scrapper, Stalker, Brute, Blaster, Dominator, MM, Kheld, Spider, Corruptor, Tank, Defender, or Controller. All of those ATs can provide damage, as can the ones already on the team that have covered the "buffs/debuffs/tanking". Furthermore, any that have low damage don't have to worry about that, thanks to the buffs and debuffs.

Damage is damage. Anyone can provide it. In fact, the non-damage ATs can be the most devastating teammates you'll get; check out some of the threads about all-defender teams. And before you consider me a "Support fanboi", I can't stand playing those ATs. Except one Bane, all my 50s are scrappers, brutes and blasters.

I, for one, welcome our new, captcha-impaired robotic overlords.

And I think the Seers' -regen comes from Drain Psyche. Both of those attacks are AoE, which Willpower has a harder time getting a noticeable amount of.

The Seers' attack would be psi-typed, and I think the Clockwork Plasma attacks are Energy (might be Fire. I'm really not sure on that one). Building the appropriate defense typed to block the attacks is the best way to avoid the debuffs.

Not entirely true any more. Thanks to Alignment Merits, I'd say that Kinetic Combats are for the rich, or the patient.

I'd say 5. I only 6-slot attacks when I'm chasing set bonuses. Comparing my attacks 5-slotted with level 25 or 35 sets to the same attack 6-slotted with level 50 sets, the difference is usually pretty minimal. If you're talking about generic enhancements, it might be more worthwhile.

It can't be said enough (though people have tried already): Tough and Weave are great for Willpower, and thanks to QR and inherent Stamina, really easy to run without endurance issues. Even before you add in any fancy sets, a brute with Combat Jumping (with one Def SO), Indomitable Will (with one EndRed SO), Weave and Heightened Senses (each with one EndRed SO and three Def SOs), and a Steadfast Protection Res/Def Unique (I put it in High Pain Tolerance, but in WP, you have lots of choices), you end up with 15% Smashing/Lethal defense, 18.6% Psi defense, and 26.3% def to everything else (except positional, which is at 11.1%, but doesn't really matter). When stacked with all your other sources of Resistance and Regen, that adds a fair amount of protection.

No. It wouldn't.

I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one who subbed a 3-month block when the Loyalty pack was announced, to guarantee that I got it. Since I usually sub 1 month at a time, they just lost $3. Now they "owe" me a free booster pack.

Option 1: They give me the Vanguard Pack. I'm happy because I get a stuff I couldn't have had before (Lowbie Vanguard stuff, the Vanguard Mini, and Vanguard Merits I can spend on Incarnate and other rewards, instead of wasting on costumes). NCSoft loses $5-7 (I assume this will be priced similar to the low-cost packs). The production cost is fairly low, since many of the resources already exist, so it's easy for NCSoft to eat the loss.

Option 2: They give me the Animal Booster. I'm happy because I get stuff I was going to pay for anyways for free. NCSoft loses $10. The production cost is comparatively high, because the only thing that already exists in-game is the power stats for [Beast Run], which probably would have taken 5 minutes to punch into the database anyways. Since the production cost was high, and none are sold at all, and many people switched to a lower cost subscription model, the company slips into the red this quarter.

Which one is the better business model?

TL; DR: Free stuff is free. Stop whining just because you wanted something else for free.

Cascading defense failure is a problem. But it is not a serious one, unless you're stupid enough to take a resist based set and not take any of the resist shields. Yes, the defense may quickly disappear, but you'll still take less damage than a character with the same sets and no defense. Remember, the resist-based sets were balanced to be as survivable as the defense-based ones. So even if you're stripped down to 0% defense, you'll have more defense than the person who started at 0%, you'll have taken less damage getting there, and you will survive longer.

Not sure where you get off saying that Resistance will do very little. Again, the resist sets are designed to be as survivable as the defense ones, and from the groups you listed, only Longbow has serious resist debuffs. Arachnos has a few, and has toxic and psi damage, but pure resist sets often have at least something to protect against one or both of those.

This might be a valid argument, if both the 0 defense and the softcapped characters were taking the same damage in the first place. But they're not. If 1000 points of damage comes in, half of them hit the character with 0 defense and he takes 500 damage. At 45% debuff, he takes 95% of the hits, for 950% damage.

The softcapped character takes 50 damage out of the original hit. When debuffed to 0% def, they take 500 damage (that's 10x BTW, not 20x).

Conclusion: Until you stack enough debuff to bring the attacker's chance to hit to 95%, the character with any amount of defense will take less damage than the not-softcapped one.

And if my blaster, who is softcapped to S/L can run Council (who are rife with defense debuff) at x8 and survive, a tank, brute or scrapper (the only ATs that can take both of the powersets named in the OP) that already has resists and a heal to fall back on will do better while softcapped.

If you don't believe me, go find Dech Kaison's thread titled "Dark Armor Sucks!" and watch the video there.

I disagree.

I get 5-600 merits on a good raid, 1-200 on a crappy one. I don't even alt that much, compared to some people, and I don't have the time or inclination to run 2-10 raids on every character I want the Vanguard pieces on, and an extra raid or two for those that use weapons. And I always get the salvage sack. Plus there's the Costume Change Emote and HVAS for those characters that want them. That's not really what I'd call "easy". And getting them without raiding is even less "easy".

And if my character concept calls for one of the pieces at character creation? Too bad, come back when you're 35.

And while we're on the subject, how many Merits do I have to turn in for the Vanguard Mini?

Really, what you're doing is the same as the kid who opens their Christmas present and breaks it beacuse it's not what they wanted. do you consider that acceptable behavior?

If you really don't want the Vanguard Pack, cancel your billing, and don't resub until the day after your account expires. Problem solved.