Ironblade

Cool. For me, leveling is almost never the goal, but I always want to have *A* goal. It might be a badge. It might getting a particular incarnate salvage. I have characters built for helping on incarnate trials - they're already fully finished and tier 4, but they still have a goal. And, to be fair, sometimes I do have a goal of leveling - like if I want to be high enough for a certain task force that will be featured the next week. I find it fun to have a variety of goals.

Right off, the first sentence confuses me. I almost never "level" characters; I "play" them. The leveling happens on its own. If you're playing with the specific goal of reaching certain levels, then you're doing it wrong - as demonstrated by the fact that you say you're experiencing burnout. The solution here is extremely simple and practically impossible - change your mindset so you're thinking differently about the game. As for not having the time or money for other games - 1) If you play CoH less, that frees up time. 2) Plenty of good games are 'free to play'. Also, some REALLY good games are super cheap. I've got like 1400 hours in Valheim and it's only $10.

Don't get me started on that one. "Wait, the head of the City Council is named Robert ALDERMAN? ALDERMAN?!?"

Right. I just wait until I'm done playing for the day and the team has disbanded, then I go train.

Make them look like a shiny, sparkly vampire.

How I read this: "Since I don't play a toon much past 50 (if I even get there at all), I CHOOSE not to use invention origin enhancements - since reaching 50 has NOTHING to do with using IO's." I buy all my characters IO's when they're approaching level 30 and start slotting them around level 35. Why would anyone think they have to wait until level 50? Everything EXCEPT purple sets can be used long before level 50. (shrug) Your choice. I'm over 60 and have been retired for 10 years. I use IO's.

Because comparing this game to WoW or other mega MMOs makes TOTAL sense. BTW, this game is absolutely active ENOUGH. I never have any trouble forming teams.

Toggle Man laughs at your puny number of toggles. Toggle Man runs 16 toggles in combat and LIKES IT! (Toggle Man is a spines/dark armor scrapper and really does run 16 toggles in combat. And yes, he took Cardiac.)

To be clear, those badges are all mutually exclusive. You can have ONE of them.

It's not an actual badge. It doesn't show up in your badge listing if anyone else looks at it and it doesn't count toward your total badge count.

The T1, 2, 3, 4 refers to the level of individual powers. There are six incarnate slots and, in each one, there are a number of options to choose from. The Lore slot, for example, is a pet summon and there are something like 25 to choose from. The Destiny slot is support powers and you can pick from a heal/regen, END/recovery, shield (DEF and resist), group teleport to your location, group status protection. Each has four 'tiers' of powers with tier 1 being the weakest and tier 4 being the most powerful. Realistically, you don't need to go past tier 3 unless you feel like it. If you're going to do any incarnate content, you probably want to get to tier 3 in the Alpha, Lore and Destiny slots because each gives you a 'level shift'. Basically, it's +1 level that only applies under certain conditions. So, when you're in Ouroboros and people are gathering for iTrials, if you look at their level, most of them will probably display as 50+3. The Alpha slot has much broader application and will allow you to be 50+1 in much of the high-level content. And all of this is not something you really need to farm or grind for. If you enjoy incarnate content, you'll get there inevitably.

Firstly, I think you're suffering from 'Good Old Days' syndrome, where everything was great and wonderful 'back in the day' but it's terrible now. I've been here since the start and people used to offer spots on farms then and they were still doing it this past week. As for the rest, certainly opinions can differ but my impression is that: The community has not 'turned' any way. There has been no increase in actual toxicity - maybe you or your friends have become more sensitive on the subject. There has been no "sudden change in the community".

This makes it sound like multiple people had unpleasant encounters and individually concluded the community was toxic. I've been here since about a month after Homecoming launched and, in my experience, that seems EXTREMELY unlikely. What seems far more likely is one of the following: 1) As a group, they encountered one toxic individual and that made a negative impression on all of them. Every community has jerks and you will run into them eventually. If they had the bad luck to run into one when just starting out, that's unfortunate. 2) ONE of them had a bad experience and conveyed it to the others and now their opinion has been affected by the one person. Having said that, I'm not sure what you're asking with your post. I mean, I understand the words but, just as different people can be more or less 'toxic' at various times, every persons IMPRESSION of toxicity is different. Does the community feel toxic TO YOU? That's what matters. Also, I think it's kind of self-evident that, as a community, we don't think it's toxic or we wouldn't be here.

Exactly. You almost always want most or all of a set in a power. Sometimes the last bonus is something you don't want so you might use only five, or put a common IO in the final slot. Frankenslotting is almost never the best way to go unless you want one effect to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. Oh, but the other benefit of frankenslotting is that it's generally REALLY CHEAP. I got that 360% regen tank for about 40 million inf back on the live servers. Sometimes. The REALLY good sets like ATO's, PvP sets and purples can only be used ONCE each. Also, you might not have enough powers that take the same type of set. I will often have three of the same set in the armor powers on a tank. I don't think I've ever used more than three of the same set in a build.

It is DRAMATICALLY noticeable when you focus on just one or two effects. Let me tell you about my invuln tank where I did a discount build, using cheap IO's and getting +regeneration bonuses - which is always the first bonus (just needing two pieces). I 'frankenslotted' the character - using multiple different sets in each power - and ended up with about 360% regen bonus. That's about what a regen scrapper has with Integration running. Picture that amount of regen on a tank's hit points, especially with Dull Pain running. Well, the math is simple. That Crushing Impact piece is giving you a total of 53% buff without boosting it, so you should compare to level 50 common IO's. (Sure, the commons can be boosted, but so can the set IO's, so non-boosted is an apples-to-apples comparison). Set IO's that buff THREE aspects will apply less to each but the total buff will be even higher. Slot a power with a full set and it will dramatically exceed what can be achieved with common IO's. This is before we take into account the set bonuses. The INHERENT enhancement is better than common IO's.