Zamuel

• I don't think the Portal Corp exterior is available but two Portal Corp interiors are available. I think it's under the Unique setting for Labs but I'm not sure. You may need to purchase it with tickets.
• Technically, only the low level Praetorians are available but Seers and Praetorian Clockwork do actually go to 50.

I have a feeling that we won't get the option to pick Power Pool sets. However, I've been thinking for a while of a way to slightly work around that. Currently, we can't choose defense or support sets as our primary to avoid people making enemies with no attacks. What if one melee and one ranged attack was added to each of these ? For instance, adding the ranged and melee zombie pukes to Poison. This would increase the options and variety available. Furthermore, a small defensive or support ability could be added to most attack sets such as adding Tough to Super Strength.

Personally, I think Intangible is perfectly valid for NPCs if kept at a minimum since it does act as disruption. Limiting it would be based on enemy choice and perhaps powerset since the argument fluctuates between AoE and ST sources.

Concerning KB, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss players being affected by it due to some things like Force Bolt having high mag.

Also, you missed an effect, Teleport. Only a few armors offer protection against it and only Gravity's Wormhole is a valid source of it. While not directly a debuff in itself, it adds to the disruption factor by splitting the team.

To my understanding, AE critters use different damage and buff scalars than standard NPCs. I think it's something like Blaster damage + Defender buff/debuff + Scrapper HP.

Escort to Objective has been weird and buggy since introduced. I had done some experimentation with it a while back but my knowledge is a little rusty on workarounds for its problems. Bear with me and I'll try to mess with it some.

It's one of those oddities with trying to do content as it comes as opposed to just doing it as a flashback. There's stories that seem to be "important" to the overall storyline that you may not ever see. I remember having a fair bit of difficulty when I was specifically looking for the Banished Pantheon storyarc.

One of the problems for AE is that it gives little incentive to be involved with it and it tends to make things difficult for those who are. Something's a little off when new Issues lead you to thinking "I wonder what broke" as opposed to looking forward to what was released. My concern is simply not knowing where to go from here. I'm too stubborn to give up on my own arcs and I do have a new one planned but it sucks to feel like my arcs don't stand a chance since I joined the game with I14 as opposed to being someone who participated in the I14 beta.

Roy Cooling is interesting that it seems to do things wrong by attempting to do everything right, plus lore hurts rather than helps.

It tries to appeal to newcomers by introducing Malta yet it takes some of the weight away from meeting them later on. Likewise, it tries to be far too upfront about Malta's involvement to appeal to the vets when the vets who actually pay attention to the storyline know that Malta is being way too visible for their usual way of doing things.

Lore oddly hurts the story since the MediPorters are supposed to be pretty safe and energy efficient which dilutes the concerns of not sharing it with citizens. Something as simple a stating it isn't or perhaps adjusting things to mention that the new upgrade will protect heroes from Cole's assault but it is far less energy efficient than the old version would clear a lot of that up.

While I do enjoy the arc, it seems to have the same problem as the Reichsman TF/SF in that someone thought of an "awesome concept" without fully checking the canon. Though I have to give Horatio credit for owning up to that fact and making a few adjustments. I'd say that a few adjustments is really all that's needed but I doubt it'll happen since they would be small adjustments.

Attack speed is an interesting advantage since it allows you to be mobile. Probably nowhere near enough of an advantage, though. I'm thinking of leaning towards procs for some of the attacks. As fas as Eviserate, they should either make it more like a Stalker and give it higher crit chance or they should revert it back to a cone like other ATs. Intriguingly, the part of the set I like the most is Focus and Shockwave for the fact that the knockback is guaranteed but it's rater low mag plus they are ranged.

For both the team and the arc's enemies you have to decide if you want to aim for synergy or variety. I'll concentrate on the enemy side of things since I've got better experience there. I currently have only one "challenge" arc but trial and error caused the difficulty of the other arcs to fluctuate a fair bit.

Synergy can work since you want to focus on just one thing and push it to the limit. A lot of arcs do this accidentally simply by going for a theme. I bet you can easily do a search for "demon" or "Netherworld" and find an arc with customs with some variant on dark/dark with the resultant to hit bebuffs. There's similar things with elec/elec and stacking end drain. Dark/dark and fire/fire also have the added "benefit" of strong self heals which can slow a team down.

Personally, I prefer making varied enemies (which generally wind up having a fair amount of synergy anyways). It avoids the weakness of stacking just one effect since it's harder to defend against. Something else is that it gives more room for randomization and thus more room for unpredictability if you design a large enough enemy group. Individual spawns can be vastly different from each other despite being the same enemy group. Plus, I like for a challenge arc to actually be winnable even if it's very hard.

I think 1 and 2 of Kelenar's list are among the most important things you can do and Supermax has the right mindset of pretending they are actually players. To defeat a skilled team, you want to have a sizable amount of disruption and probably attacks and effects they aren't used to. In fact, that really hits upon the point Lakanna made--people are really undervaluing buffs and debuffs in enemy hands. Players, especially the good ones that could take on these kinds of challenges, value DPS over burst damage and buffing mobs are the very time you want burst damage.

There's also a lot of small quirks here and there:

• Enemies with cage/phase powers have the potential of being massively disruptive despite not being damaging. It's also an effective way to toy with defiance/fury generation despite not actually killing the target.
• Give an enemy Speed Boost. They will spam it if not killed which makes other enemies harder to deal with and is a lot of the reason for good burst damage. Fortitude and a few other ST ally buffs fall into this category as well but there's just something about the nuttiness of the AI when they get their coffee.
• Add enemies with higher perception. This is done with specific defense armors or Devices w/ Targeting Drone. Adding higher perception as opposed to enemies that ignore stealth requires teams to be ready sooner.
• Rise of the Phoenix and Soul Transfer are autohit. While this can be mitigated by staying out of melee range it's one way to force people to eat the damage and/or status effects if they stay close to the enemy.
• Customs aren't everything. Strategically mixing in a few key mobs can ramp the challenge up. Futhermore, some things like Leadership toggles aren't available for customs but are available on standard mobs. Actually, going back to the concept of high perception enemies, adding snipers mixes things up.
• Add a timer. It's actually very little to do with the actual time you give them (well, pending on your goals) and everything with the psychology of making people panic. Plus, it does limit the ability to win by just repeatedly running to get insps. Which leads to...
• Use maps with jail code. It throws a bit more disruption into the mix, especially since a lot of players devalue self and ally rezz powers. Sadly, you only get Arachnos and Council options since the Longbow jails were still glitched last time I checked.

Some of the arcs from Smurphy's challenge arc solicitation thread might suit people's taste if they have a strong team that they want to try some challenges. As full disclaimer, I did enter an arc to this. Also, I remember @Master Koga's "The Hidden Agenda" being rather hard.

Something else to note is that they can be placated from outside of their detection range.

May I call issue to the +4 assertion? More of just a nitpick since I thought they were mostly +2 or +3 since I did see some red and even orange con enemies. Granted, the base concept of fighting things above your level is to be acknowledged.

Well, Samuel Tow deserves credit for being a good side man since that helped smooth things out to.

Abandoned Sewer Trial is both very hard and it has a number of quirks that make things easier. Hatched Kraken wind up being glass cannons in a way. I've watched them two shot Scrappers and tag the whole team with Foot Stomp since the radius is bigger than standard. At the same time, I can permahold one of them with my Blaster alone. I'm not doing much damage during this time despite Voltaic Sentinel blasting its little heart out but it's not a team wipe. You can figure out which temp you're about to get before you grab it if you want to structure your team a certain way. It's also probably the only part of the game where AOE can be a bad thing.

This can be done with a variety of teams if people pay attention. Haven't done one in a while but I tend to run them half pug. It doesn't always succeed, I think my success rate is roughly 60/40 maybe 65/35, but it's certainly doable. Things like Base Empowerment Buffs really shine here since a little stealth or 5% psi or toxic resist add up. The interesting thing about this run is that I didn't wall of text the team like usual. After a brief primer to the team it really was on the fly and they rose to the occasion. As far as communication, only a few things are needed like calling to regroup, checking to see how the generators are doing during that phase, etc.

I think the listening part is where communication breaks down. Sometimes running sewer trials is like trying to herd cats with lasers. Adding on to that, it's one of the few parts of the game where you can outright lose as opposed to feeling overwhelmed and deciding to give up on your own. I think these two reasons are a lot of why some seem borderline scared of the trial. Good buffs/debuffs obviously help but it doesn't guarantee victory like most other parts of the game. People have to pay attention. I think it's also one of the few TFs you outright can't solo.

I think some of the newer challenges have the right ideas even if the actual execution is off. I haven't done the Incarnate Trials yet so I can't comment on those. Protean forcing you to move is fine but you sort of just hoverblast if you fight at range while you have a hard time if you're melee. I actually feel the final battle of the Barracuda Strike Force is pretty epic but there's a few issues here and there concerning the temps, part of that is actually due to the players. I like that the devs are trying to add more fire and other hazards to missions to teach positional awareness. Even if the devs don't get new challenges perfect, they should keep trying and we should give feedback. It's just an issue of constantly tweaking things. The bigger issue is that people gravitate towards easy rewards even if they would otherwise enjoy it. You can get a ton of Vanguard Merits but so can running Boreas. Sewer trial has a larger merit reward than ITF but people won't gravitate toward that.

Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate: #367872
@Zamuel