That's way more defense than you actually need for alerts, though I would go with Invulnerability over Defiance, pretty much nothing in alerts hits hard enough for Defiance to be the better choice.
Well, you can change your key bindings (so if it's in slot 2, bind the 2 key to the device slot it's in), but it won't actually replace the power the way the classic device does.
A healer in blue primaries and generic purple secondaries would be totally adequate for cosmics or TA. For tanking, well, having enough toughness and threat to solo main tank a cosmic is gonna be quite difficult (I've tried it; it wasn't 100% fail but definitely high risk) but as long as overeager dps remember to use…
Refresh on bleeds/etc only refreshes your duration, but because the remaining duration on the debuff only shows the longest remaining duration, it looks like it's refreshing everything.
There has never been a separate target cap for pets. It's just that auras only apply to teammates, and if you're in a teamup other people's pets are not considered teammates.
What Elusive actually does is add +20% resistance in the block layer. Thus: Unblocked without elusive: take 32.02% Unblocked with elusive: take 32.02%/1.2 = 26.69% Blocked without elusive: take 32.02%/5.1 (410% block resistance from tk shield rank 3) = 6.28% Blocked with elusive: take 32.02%/5.3 = 6.04%
In general if a power has special effects based on debuffs on the target, those special effects only apply if you own the debuff, though there are probably still a few powers that don't work that way. However, effects that debuff defense are universal (if you apply shredded, everyone's slashing attacks do more damage)…
In the end, pets are passive dps, and passive dps is never going to be high. The only way you'll see pets that put out damage on the level of direct damage from PCs is if managing them is turned into a full time job. Which isn't impossible, but would require a major rework to pet powers and AI.
There's a fair number of 'ignore defenses' NPC powers out there; Unbreakable doesn't work against them any more than any other defense does. By and large, the reason people currently use resurgence (and why they previously all used masterful dodge) is that it's the best active defense for most purposes.
Guardian tokens: available by spending 30s shooting at a passive OV. Villain tokens: available by spending 5-10 minutes running around the city. So, exchange rate of 20:1?
Depends what your goals are. Usually the go-to powers for things like speed-running Warlord are Lead Tempest, Epidemic, and Hurricane, but Force Cascade is generally preferred for clearing adds in Therakiel's Temple. For melee, less familiar, but probably Dragon Kick and Sword Cyclone. I note, however, that most stuff you…
As I recall it only works for single target melee powers (control is I think 'melee can ignore selected target'), and it's possible its range is not the same as melee powers range.
I would note that, in team content, orbital cannon is functionally useless (unless your teammates deliberately hang back, by the time it hits the target is unlikely to be there any more), and stopping your toggles to apply sonic device (after start of combat) costs you more damage than it does.
Eruption only works against damage (non-damaging debuffs are unaffected) and does not work against effects that ignore defense. I would expect it to not work against ice tombs at Kigatilik, the green bubble DoT at Teleiosaurus, geysers, yellow orb explosions, and red orb damage at Eidolon, ...
If I were interested in revamping UNITY, I'd probably focus on the UNITY special missions -- eliminate or reduce the requirement to do regular dailies (which are boring trash door missions) to unlock them, and then upgrade those missions. Likewise for UNITY 2, trim the path of the elements and focus on the final missions.
You left out Mechanon and the original Dr Destroyer, though both of them are pretty decently represented already. There's also a couple of minor factions such as reprogrammed B17 robots, though there's not much there to hang a storyline on.
I think the cats in trees spawning is dependent on line of sight at the time you cross a border -- in the middle of trees with really flaky line of sight (interacting with the cats is definitely affected by LOS).
Odds of major updates to CO at this point in its lifecycle: 0. We're not going to see new content at a higher rate than we've seen over the last few years, though it might drop off further. If Gearbox does decide they want to invest substantially in superhero stuff, it will be a new game.
Any time there's a significant change at a game studio, you can expect the new owner to re-evaluate the existing products, so it's certainly a higher risk period than average, but the most likely outcome remains 'nothing of particular note'.
The momentary popup is a bug -- there weren't actually enough people to launch the alert, but because the alert is cycling it creates the popup anyway. It should really be removed, but that won't make the alert pop, it would just mean you won't get the illusory pop.
From the press release, sounds like the fail on Magic: Legends might be important to why this happened. As for CO, the reasons it is neither under particularly active development nor dead remain valid: it's not profitable enough for major investment, but it's not terribly expensive to run. It would not surprise me to see…
Gravitar in TA does enough damage that it's actually important to know who she's shooting at. Rampage Gravitar has low enough damage that it can just be soaked up.
Charge speed reduction bonuses are mostly not cumulative, and it's hard to tell the difference between a 2s charge time and a 1.93s charge time (not sure the exact numbers for tk burst), though it's detectable on a parser.
Ape: There's not a great solution for falling rocks in the melee pit; you can move, but as you say, good chance of another one anyway. You can try rushing timing, there's only a very short time period in which you need to actually block (though an early block will still cause you to take full falling rock damage), but…