So what if he gets as much milage out of it? It took him 4 times the resources to do it.
No it just took an extra feat. That's hardly 4 times the resources.
Shape Soulmeld (Soulborn also takes)
Expanded Soulmeld Capacity (Soulborn also takes)
Bonus Essentia (Soulborn also takes. The Soulborn has 4 essentia without this feat at level 12, but will still take this feat because he/she pretty much has to. It's like taking Power Attack. The commoner has to take this feat to have the necessary essentia, but does not have to worry about building a viable character.)
Incarnum feat (Behold, four times the resources
)
The race choice isn't an expenditure of resources, it's an investment in a good character. Azurin would be good for either of them, as would other races with bonus essentia.
Also, just so we're clear, the Incarnum feats don't all universally suck. It's very likely that the Soulborn will have one too. The Soulborn and the Commoner could very likely take the exact same four feats because the same four feats work well for both of them. The only difference is that the Soulborn will have the essentia necessary without those feats, which as I've said doesn't matter because the commoner is here to prove a point and the Soulborn has to play the game. Furthermore, just because the Soulborn doesn't need those feats to gain the necessary essentia to fill Incarnate Avatar, it doesn't mean the Soulborn doesn't need those feats anyway for other reason. You do not need Power Attack to hit things, you just need it to make it matter when you hit them. Similarly the Soulborn doesn't need those feats to keep up with a
commoner, he just needs them to keep up with
everybody else, which he still fails to do.
By level 12 an Azurin commoner will have 6 feats and can fucking buy Toughness with the last two for all I care.
Except for essentia.
Which again, doesn't matter that much. As I explained in my last post, your total essentia doesn't matter after 4 for the purposes of this discussion. You cannot put more than 4 essentia into the soulmeld at level 12 without levels in a proper meldshaping class (Soulborn does not qualify), so you could have 6,347 essentia and 565 feats and it wouldn't matter because the commoner only needs 4 feats and 4 essentia and neither the Soulborn nor the Commoner can invest more than 4 essentia. The Soulborn needs fewer feats and gets more as well, but has to use them to attempt to matter, while the commoner would never be mistaken for a serious character.
Also as I said in my last post, I'm not trying to show that a commoner is a better class than a Soulborn, I'm just pointing out that your original statement that the Soulborn can get a lot of mileage out of the Shape Soulmeld feat is just as true for a fucking commoner as it is for a Soulborn, meaning that the Shape Soulmeld feat is cool and the Soulborn still sucks. Who cares about the amount of investment? My original jist remains true: The Soulborn can't do much that EVERYONE else can't do.
On a faintly related note, I'm not sure I said this already, but I think it's indicative of the spineless nature of the MoI authors that everything with a constitution score can get more out of Incarnate Avatar than the fucking
Incarnate!