Sardan

That said, today's i19 announcement showcases the beginning of the Incarnate system, the long-awaited endgame for CoH. They're going to roll it out slowly but its intent is to allow a path to players that want to continue to advance characters in power even after they hit level 50.

I don't anticipate CoH ever turning into a WoW-style "rush to level cap to start raiding" type of game but over the next year the game will be adding a lot more content for level-capped characters.

Exactly. That's why they're going to have a very protracted test period for i20.

That said, I didn't expect so many goodies in i19. I love the QoL touches liked the merged tram lines. And I'm totally looking forward to the new TFs--with the new tech that was developed for GR, I'm expecting great things.

Fire/Dark corrs are incredibly fun and effective both on teams and solo, but I wouldn't say they are in the top tier of farmers.

Back to the OP's request: now that it's so easy to switch sides, I'd say pick your favorite character and then if necessary switch sides. For example, a Shields brute would be horrible on the typical red-side Nemesis farm but would do fine on any of the typical blue-side farms.

Necessary, no, but useful? Oh yeah. If this is a character you see yourself sticking with for a while, I'd invest in it. Your controls will be much more effective and you won't be getting mezzed left and right. You can also slot a bit less for End reduction since you'll be filling your blue bar more often. You can also be more effective in a team by locking down high threat bosses quicker.

I'm missing something. It looks like you're asking "How could you equate ISC with PSW"--then you quote the numbers and they're extremely close. Or are you saying the longer cast time and lesser -Rech of ISC makes it not comparable?

SR ends up super strong but it's a bit on the squishy side early on. It's much cheaper to soft cap than Shields and has better defense debuff resistance too.

All that says to me is you're tired of the game and will probably leave anyway. The idea that a purely optional pack of extras being made available would actively encourage you to leave just proves you're not rational.

NCsoft is a business, they want to make money. They'll see people voting with their wallets and change their behavior to maximize revenue. This is an experiment. If this sells poorly they won't do another pure emote pack, or they'll make sure the emotes are way more compelling for a larger group of people. If it sells well, they'll do more.

Either way, nothing to get worked up over.

Oh, and as for me, I'll be passing on this. It was hard for me to imagine a pack that would appeal to me even less than the Wedding Pack, but this is it. I've bought all the others though, and I have faith more cool stuff is in the works.

I would basically amend that to say that the player is always more important than the character being played.

I do agree that tanking is about aggro control throughout the entire fight, not just the alpha strike. I used to play a lot of blasters and was painfully aware of that difference! True happiness is playing a Fire blaster with a tank that constantly peels aggro off to keep you from faceplanting.

But I've seen quite a few brutes who took taunt and did a terrific job of aggro management. I've also been on a large number of teams that had a few Doms or Controllers that shut down aggro completely.

It sounds trite, but honestly just play whatever gives you the most joy. Personally I like the higher damage of brutes and scrappers and which one I pick depends on powerset availability, i.e. good luck with that Super Strength scrapper . I have played some tanks to 50 in the past but generally nowadays if I want to manage aggro I prefer doing it on a Dom or Controller.

This made me happy.

Can someone explain what the hell that even means? The game's stats show stances? What, like it's got a built in RottenTomatoes metacritic engine? And "going good" has been overwhelmingly more popular than the reverse, which is.... "good going?"

I know I'm pulling one small statement out of a long rant, er, I mean post. But I wanted to comment on it.

Calling Permadom "icing on the cake" does it a disservice. As Mac said, "permadom means an end refill every 70-90 seconds, complete mez, kb, and repel protection, and extra mag and duration for all your mezzes." It turns you from sporadically awesome to continuously awesome. I'll grant you that Doms can be fun and effective to play outside of domination, but for me, being able to fight against Malta, Rikti, and Carnies and not having to worry about being frequently stunned/held is, as the Visa commercials put it, priceless.

He mentioned his brother plays a Fire/Kin corruptor. Perhaps he just meant tanking for his brother? If so then /Fire is plenty tough since he'll be backed up by the brother's Speed Boost and powerful heal. Basically as long as the brute holds aggro they'll be an unstoppable buzz saw of destruction.

In addition to the new Consume, there's also the i19 Incarnate Alpha slot. One of the ways to slot it was with End reduction, and of course it's global.

Strange. I submitted a typo as a bug and got the badge. Go figure.

I'm guessing that power tray floating in the upper right in the screen shot is the Razer Naga tray?