After having re-discovered the amazing CoH rebirth I'm trying to get my head around the game mechanics. When I played as a kid I just made whatever concept seemed cool to me. I know that's the best way to approach this game, but now I can't completely turn off my worries about making a strong character. I don't know anyone in game (yet), so I'll be doing a lot of soloing and am looking at making a scrapper.
I have my eye on Fiery Aura for my defensive set. Can someone with more game experience tell me how well it works in practice? Seems like you trade defense for offense a bit. Does that make you too squish squish for soloing?
For Primary sets I'm looking at Fiery Melee, Dark Melee, Katana, Staff, or Dual Blades. Do any of those stand out as being especially strong or effective, especially for soloing?
My other thought was that I could go with Fiery Melee and then Shield as a defensive set if that would be a lot stronger or more practical.
So yeah, basically I'm looking to make sure I don't sink my limited game time into a combo that turns out to be less effective than one of the others that would have worked just as well for my character concept. Help?