I can hear the howls now

You know I've had nothing but awesome experiences in Cim and RWZ with mixed teams (not too mention the V-Day pocket D missions). Since Villains are so darned self-sufficient and in many cases self-buffing, defender level buffs just push things to a whole new level. I think many heroes who aren't familiar with red side AT's are going to be wowed.

Redside I think blasters and defenders are going to be welcomed with open arms. Nothing redside nukes like a blaster. And like I said, defender level buffs are great on Villains. I predict most people will be looking for the most overpowered team combinations they can come up with.

Let's also not also forget Epic AT's and two new Praetorian AT's will be crossing over as well. This is going to be very interesting....

Brutes at their worst will probably be no more insane than Scrappers.

I don't really team much blueside, but I don't think I've teamed with many Tankers at all. There have probably been some, but my Blueside main is a... I believe the term is Blastroller. Plants/Thermal, and definitely biased towards doing damage rather than support. I can only remember one team with a pushy "you must follow me and I must keep all aggro" tanker, and it was an epic disaster. I've been on teams were I was actually the one leading the way in though - pick a critter on the far side of the group, run up and blast them with Seeds, then Roots, then pick out any troublemakers that are still moving and start crushing them with Strangler and Entangle. (And the Fire epic powers if the mission permits it.) My Thermal shields are *not* heavily slotted, and it rarely seems to matter. I don't do the epic damage of a Blaster, but I can mostly do it to targets that can't fight back. The mark of good team players in this game seems to be adaptability, rather than the rigid roles in games like WoW. It can be *useful* to have a Tanker, but they aren't really essential.

I do agree though that most of the Redside ATs seem to be designed for damage plus their gimmick, rather than the other way around though. Especially now that Dominators don't have the manic/depressive cycle for Domination tied to their damage output. Stalkers still fee a bit odd though, and I can't imagine what playing one must have been like before they had at least a small chance to get critical hits on any attack.

I was on an all melee itf once. While we had some issues with separating rom from the nictus and we had a bunch of death, which was mostly to the crazy stuff we did. We clear the map on the second mission and destroy all crystals at once and saw who could survive the longest. We also charged the platform.
It was one of the most fun things i´ve done so far in the game.

Personally, I think it's just as likely to see the Villain teams get annoyed at the slow pace of a traditional Tanker/Blaster/healer triad. "Hello, people, that tactic isn't needed in CoH. We villains have been splitting up spawns since the start, and you heroes could do it too if you just tried it..."

I build most of my heroes like that anyway, although I usually don't call attention to it if I get on one of those traditional teams, I just follow along and contribute to the chaos. (If I'm asked to be part of that triad, though, that's when I'll say, "Sorry, I'm not built for that.")

Yeah not a lot of discussion so far about MMs. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they'll annoy blueside (particularly tanks).

A lot.

Eh, we're used to it. Masterminds annoy everybody, sooner or later. Heck, Masterminds annoy themselves. "Blast it, Bot-2, get back here *NOW!* I said... you just shot that Titan, didn't you? #$^@! Bot-02, I'll get you for this!" Also, we block doors.