Fritzy

Lvl 50+ Rogue Brute - completed both Hero and Villain without breaking a sweat @ +1/0.

Lvl 50+ MM Thugs/Storm - struggled to keep Thugs alive but motored through with Hurricane and Ice Slick easing the way @ +2/0. Hurricane and Ice Slick were especially helpful on the second mission as them and the boys kept the mobs away while MM clicked on glowies. AV in mish 3 was a bit of a prob but we got thru it - sloppy and iffy but done.

My overall impression is that the missions are a challenge with some obstacles to overcome but that only meant I had to take my time and think about them every step of the way. No reason to hurry and make errors that result in frustration. I made best use of the powers remaining after the exempt and succeeded.

Now off to see how my Lvl 26 Fire/Rad Troller can handle things. Betting this will be a problem.

If I had to choose just one AT for solo it would be a Mastermind Bots/Storm. However, as a 99.9% solo player, I've had great fun getting other AT's to 50.
Brute: Dark/WP (2nd most fun. This build handles +3x4 w/o much effort at all.)
MM: Thugs/Storm; Ninja/Storm; Mercs/FF
Scrapper: Thorns/Regen; DM/Regen

Also developing some Controllers for progression. In their mid-20's, the Fire/Kin is a very reliable but slow killer compared to the ILL/Rad and Mind/Rad, both of which can slice through groups fairly quickly.

For MM I find /Dark to be too dependent on accuracy for my liking. I want a secondary set that both keeps mobs off me & pets and is self sustaining - Storm and Traps fill that req. best. You can't beat Bots for primary - they are durable; self healing; mostly stick to their Range and Assault Bot gains a devastating AoE attack with the 2nd upgrade.

Does exercising brain count? I listen to longish Podcasts and Concerts on cordless headphones during all my gaming sessions. Long cave crawls or sewer treks dwindle to insignificance while listening to my stuff.

MasterTeam = MM + 6 pets + 1 for a complete 8 person team. (I don't need to invite others, I am my own MasterTeam.)

Bah-loney = how many players feel about soloing.

PeeNut = one who posts a lot of "BRB Potty".

Do the new look CoT still die when you shoot them? If so, I don't care if they look like sponge bob or barney - a dead mob is a dead mob.

There's music in this game??? Turned it OFF on day one 7 years ago and never listened to a note of it since then. They can change it all they want and I'll never know the difference.

So much of my disappointment with the Incarnate System are the expectations set by the devs.

Hear me out: CoH is incredibly solo friendly from levels 1 -50. just about any player and any AT can solo their way to level 50+1 without ever need ing to join a team. Over the years, the devs went to great lengths to make virtually all regular content scalable for group szes 1 thru 8. They even implemented the difficulty slider to make it even easier. Crafted IO's and IO sets give additional strength and defense to weaker AT's. Almost every big thing they've done for the past 5 years has been to make it possible for any AT to be able to solo their way to max level.

By doing this, the many players who prefer to the solo (or small team) mode of play have come to view CoH as the most solo friendly MMO currently within the top 25. An expectation was set in these players minds that not only did the devs appreciate the value of solo play to many of its customers but that it would not stop providing such content. Nothing was put in wiritng, of course, but the history of and trends in the game's development reinforced those solo players expectations.

Then comes the Incarnate System and its decidedly solo un-friendly content. Suddenly and with very little warning, the solo players found their style of play totally abandoned by the devs and in fact had it "dissed" and insulted with the ridiculous shard conversion requirements for soloing up the Incarnate ladder. With the long established expectations smashed so severely and cold-heartedly, of course, many of the soloing crowd got really upset.

"After so many years of loyalty and committment to our style of play, how could you devs abandon us so completely in the post 50 levels of the game that we were looking forward to with just as great a sense of anticipation as the teaming/raiding crowd was?"

Of course we are upset and angry. Everyone else would be too if their expectations had been crushed in the same way. Just remember, it was the long history of the game that set our expectations. We did not pull them out of thin air or make them up after the fact. Due to how the game had been trending over the past 7 years, prior to I19, we had every right to expect that development of post-50 solo content would continue right along side of the team/multi-team content. We were conditioned by the game's structure to expect to have choices that included solo play and then post-50 that choice was removed.

The devs broke with the 7 year trend and abandoned our style of play and most of us perceive no good reason why they went that way by making the decisions they did. It is frustrating because it just doesn't make any good business sense for them to do what they have done. It is sad and disappointing if they continue to ignore the solo market in the post-50 content. They worked really hard to be the most solo friendly MMO and now they seem to be working equally hard to lose that title.

I'm still holding on to hope that the staff sees the error of their ways and restore the proud solo reputatioin of this game to its rightful place at the top of the heap.

Responding to the OP.

I have not been shy about expressing my extreme dislikes of Praetoria and The Incarnate System. However negatively I feel about those aspects, this is the only MMO I play because the game is so huge with more than enough content for me to completely ignore all the parts I dislike and still have lots to do.

It's worth the 14.95 per month in entertainment value to me because it is really fun to do the easy stuff and simply chill out and relax. I set my own pace and missions by playing strictly solo. No teaming irritations. No task forces. No trials. Nothing that will cause a rise in blood pressure or stress. For a couple hours each day, I can escape to my little hero world and the real world fades away.

Yet, some of the other posters are right, I do get upset when they install new elements to the game that I cannot participate in. The only reason I strongly object to the Incarnate System is that it is a Roadblock to my characters' advancement. All the other teaming parts of the game (TF, Trials, etc) I can skip yet continue to advance my characters' levels doing stuff solo.

The Incarnate System stops my preferred mode of advancement dead in its tracks - and I don't like that and don't think it's a fair way to treat a paying customer.

Yet, taking the bitter with the sweet, the sweet parts of the game are still sweet enough to keep me hanging around and enjoying them.

That is a cool feature. Took a bit to figure out but I now have it setup on my iPod Touch 4G.

Edit: typo

So much time and cost for so little content. They keep throwing out this unnecessary Incarnate peripheral junk when they should be producing what is really needed - a viable SOLO path to all Incarnate rewards. Along with I20, I20.5 is another major disappointment. (

FioS beats anything else out there for the home - speed and reliability are unmatched. I've had it for over 3 years with nary a complaint and only 6 hours of lost service in that time and that was due to system maintenance in my area.

Hop my one and only Freedom character into a Steel Canyon radio mish and go watch TV til it's over.

A realistic solo track for Incarnates.

I could care less about anything else.