To be fair, a high-level incarnate investing in the spittle gets the damage to repeat in a round, and a low-level incarnate can use it for a 3d6/round ranged touch attack from level 1, so I don't know if it compares entirely unfavorably to a ranged Warlock (granted, that's still not great).
And an incarnate that dedicates half its soulmelds to combat doesn't have much trouble hitting the same sorts of combat numbers as a core fighter (for instance, a Law Incarnate's Incarnum Radiance + fully--invested Incarnate Avatar make up for the attack roll advantage the fighter has from BA and greater weapon focus, bluesteel bracers more than match the fighter's greater weapon specialization and it only takes 2 essentia for a vitality belt to catch up to the Fighter's HP). That would leave a level 20 Incarnate 6 Soulmelds and 10 essentia to compete with the core fighter's 7 remaining bonus feats
So it's understandable why the designers might have considered the Incarnate adequate - especially if the core fighter is supposed to be taken as a good example of fighting skills (I honestly don't know if that's an assumption we can adopt for the designers that late in 3e's design, but it's not unthinkable) or the Warlock's un-essenced blasting was supposed to be a plausible baseline.
But there are some hiccups in execution, and this does really seem like another case of the designers overvaluing at-will abilities and handfuls of damage dice.
And an incarnate that dedicates half its soulmelds to combat doesn't have much trouble hitting the same sorts of combat numbers as a core fighter (for instance, a Law Incarnate's Incarnum Radiance + fully--invested Incarnate Avatar make up for the attack roll advantage the fighter has from BA and greater weapon focus, bluesteel bracers more than match the fighter's greater weapon specialization and it only takes 2 essentia for a vitality belt to catch up to the Fighter's HP). That would leave a level 20 Incarnate 6 Soulmelds and 10 essentia to compete with the core fighter's 7 remaining bonus feats
So it's understandable why the designers might have considered the Incarnate adequate - especially if the core fighter is supposed to be taken as a good example of fighting skills (I honestly don't know if that's an assumption we can adopt for the designers that late in 3e's design, but it's not unthinkable) or the Warlock's un-essenced blasting was supposed to be a plausible baseline.
But there are some hiccups in execution, and this does really seem like another case of the designers overvaluing at-will abilities and handfuls of damage dice.
