Hey, I'm new to CoH and am not a huge fan of MMOs in general, but I'm having a surprising amount of fun with this one.
So I'm trying this out right now and while it's a big pain to solo level, it's a lot of fun in groups. Something I noticed that I'm not sure has been posted about it is that while yeah, it absolutely helps to have the knockdown IO on bonfire, you can achieve the same effect (I think) if you use fire cages on the group you're going after. It's more endurance cost and only lasts as long as you keep the cages up, but you can still pump out a sizable amount of damage for a few seconds when mixed with everything else.
