rpbryant_

Hello everyone! I'm a bit of a veteran, playing from issue 2 until issue 11/12 or so, and I'm glad to have come back after nearly 6 years to see the community still active and seemingly thriving

Though I do have a a few questions about the "New," state of the game, as a lot has changed! It seems that since I had a previous account, I have a "Premium," account with limited access to archetypes and such, which is simple enough. I upgrade, get almost all of the features I used to have back (including access to all the same archetypes I used to be able to create), but do all of my previous characters become unlocked? It seems like it, but I'm not sure.

So anyway, what are any tips from players who were around back when i still played but still active today? What big things have changed in the subtleties in the game that can't merely be summed up in the patch notes? This game was one that constantly had some things changing, and I know just scanning through some wiki or patch note pages won't capture some big ways the "Meta" of the game has changed.

I mained a Katana/Regeneration scrapper. Regen used to be the end all, be all of scrapper secondaries, but after a few (justified) nerfs, it was bumped down a bit, but was still pretty darn effective. Is that still true, especially matched up to other secondaries that have since become available? Katana was not the best Primary for a scrapper, though it wasn't really weak either. Has it gotten an increase in power since then? Any nerfs? Has it stayed mediocre? What is the current power structure of modern scrappers?

Another big question is builds, how useful are they for someone like a scrapper, where I basically never considered changing my power choices unless some of them were changed, or when new powers were released. What is the relevance of them to a pretty straightforward DPS?

One last overarching question has to do with the option to be any archetype as either a hero, or a villain. I saw this coming a while back, and am glad to have seen it implemented, though I also saw potential problems then and those concerns still exist. Are Tankers outclassed by brutes in tanking in any way, or are they still king? Scrappers and Brutes seem even more alike than the Tanker and Brute, are they essentially interchangeable for most purposes aside from the very highest level content? Brutes and Scrappers power levels seem very close. I also preferred hero side, would it be wiser to re roll a character to take the place of my main as a fun vet still pretty effective Tanky-DPS instead of my current Katan/Regen Scrapper?

I know that I could probably get some of this information elsewhere, but I'm also looking for some contact from the best online community I was ever in, the CoX's reputation of being a pretty friendly and productive community seems to have stuck around even after all these years. CoH was my first MMO, and I was spoiled by the intelligent and responsible community that formed the game's population, and I've never found an online community that was as good as the one that existed here a few years ago.

Thanks for the help everyone

EDIT: oh, and when I started falling out of the game (Around issue 11), Invul was a pretty terrible on paper, especially compared to willpower when it first came out, IIRC, has invul gotten any buffs since then? Was I just misinformed in my assumptions that it was a bad tanking/scrapper secondary set?

I also didn't play long enough after invention enhancements were released to really get into them, how important are they late game? Most of my history had to do with either hamidon enhancements or just plain ones.