TheSwamper

This is definitely not me. When I get a character to 50, he's almost done. I am too eager to try other powers, and see other animations, to spend most of my time on a character who has already reached the level cap. Perhaps once I have 30 or so characters to level 50, then I'll pick a few to strengthen further. To answer the OP, I use whatever I find until 12, DOs from 12-21, SOs from 21 to 50. When I hit 40ish, I'll start looking at what recipes I have and gradually swap out SOs for IOs. Hope that helps.

There are two things in CoH which I've never seen in any other MMO. 1. (This is the MOST important thing to me in an MMO) I can earn all the best loot in the game by myself, I'm never forced to team up for it. I cannot stress how much I hate having to depend on others to progress my character. In fact, in CoH, one of my few laments that every TF isn't soloable by every class. Furthermore, if I do want to team, CoH handles loot correctly; there's no way to ninja drops, or point to fighting over them, because the game just gives them to people. 2. The smoothness of the animations is, IMO, unmatched in any other MMO I've seen. Wow and CO were liking playing in knee-deep mud, or at .75 speed. I will never get tired of hitting a foe and see him literally fly across the street, or down the stairs, or off the roof of a building. It never gets old for me. There are other reasons for me, but these are my top two.

Could you talk a little bit more basically about this? 1. What are Incarnates? 2. Why do I want them? 3. How do I get started earning them?

IIRC, there was nothing P2W in the original game. Now, I am not against the devs for having some P2W stuff in the game to pay for the servers. My questions rather are where is this P2W store (I haven't found it), and what can you buy there?