Sardan

My Mind/Fire Dom is pretty much tied with my SS/SD Brute as my favorite Incarnate character. Mind/Fire's mix of aggro mitigation tools, AoE and single target damage is pretty awesome. My main concern is splash damage if I'm hanging close to a character drawing a lot of aggro.

My Brute is more sturdy and can cause a lot of localized carnage but the Dom is more rewarding to play. You have to be a little more on your toes, and think a little more tactically instead of just going all "Hulk smash!"

I never desired an Ill/Kin. My favorite controller is my Fire/Kin, not because I'm a farmer, but simply because the powersets synergize so well. Imps have no ranged attacks so they are always in range of the Kin buffs and heals.

But I have to say that I've played with several friends over the years that absolutely loved their Ill/Kins. As previously mentioned they're great on teams and they can solo safely. A great goal is to work towards perma-PA. It'll require a lot of recharge but stacked Siphon Speeds help a ton, and you can also use the Alpha slot for additional recharge. It is pretty cool having a set of invulnerable pets with a taunt aura always available! Plus with high recharge you can have several Spectral Terrors out; that can be a lifesaver in a big room with multiple groups.

Kin is also considerably easier to play now that Speed Boost is an AoE. It used to be challenging to keep a large team SB'd, but it's trivial now.

Tony and Diellan, I just wanted to again thank you for the work you do on Mids. It's an invaluable tool.

Welcome to the game, Rapthorne!

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that CoH is developing a significant endgame where you work on your Incarnate powers. It's totally optional, of course. But if you do find that character that you fall in love with it's a nice option to have. You can keep working on character progression beyond level 50.

It's still kind of early days for the Incarnate system. There aren't a large number of Incarnate Trials, and 2 of them get played WAY more than the others, so it can feel very grindy since you'll end up repeating them ad nauseum. My hope is over time as they add new iTrials and tweak some of the less commonly played ones, we'll see more variety. It'll still be a big time sink but hopefully a fun one.

Take your time leveling up, though. The journey really is the reward. You will be disappointed if you rush through normal leveling assuming that the endgame is what it's all about. Not so with CoH.

The confusing enhancement names drive me nuts. I never role play origins for my characters. I make them all Mutant because of the easy to understand enhancement names.

I like this combination of ideas from this thread:

1) Drop DOs entirely.

2) Make TOs as strong as DOs, which simplifies the game for newcomers.

3) Rename all enhancements so that they include their function in the name, e.g. "Smite of Hermes (Knockback)"

Nope. They don't launch until the head start is over.

I've said this before elsewhere but I'll reiterate: I know why they had to make it so you can't use any powers while on the Rocket Board, I get it. But it'd be a million times more useful if it applied toggles were suppressed rather than turned off entirely. In its current form I'll use it if a character has up to 1 toggle, but more than that and I'll use alternatives like the Raptor Pack.

Very cool. Of course we've now come to expect excellence--and you didn't disappoint!

Public service announcement: for anyone new to the game seeing this thread and wondering what these four tracks have to do with Issue 21, the answer is: this isn't an issue 21 post. It's a necropost resurrecting a thread created last year for Going Rogue.

Carry on.

I don't believe it's customizable in any way.

At the risk of being obtuse, I've never understood the fascination with soloing AVs or GMs. I guess it's just one of those "climb the highest mountain" things? People just do it for bragging rights? It's not like they give good rewards compared to the time spent trying to take them down solo. I just happily have them downgrade to elite bosses and then kick the snot out of them.

I don't even attempt to solo AVs or GMs so I can't help you there. I can say that Bot/FF is a terrific combo. Your bubbles stack with the Prot Bots' bubbles. Very easy to solo, very survivable and once you get both upgrades you get a tremendous amount of AoE. I'm sure others will chime in who can compare AV soloing of both sets, but I mainly wanted to say if you do go Bot/FF you're definitely rolling up a strong combo.

I think a Force Field defender running Personal Force Field slotted up would be extremely survivable. You'd have to run Dispersion Bubble as well, to prevent mez. Although I'm not sure how it'd fare against extremely high accurace opponents like Ruularu eyeballs or Devouring Earth when they drop one of those crystal pseudo pets. I'd guess you'd be toast at that point. But against most content you'd be invulnerable.