Austerity

One point you'll have a hard time on fighting AVs as a mastermind is if you lack +tohit or significant -def (absurdly significant to overcome the inherent debuff resistance) and you're fighting crazy defense AVs like Mynx and at times Mako.

I stood toe-to-toe with Mynx for a long time getting nowhere at all considering she was +3 to me to begin with, leaving the pajama squad at -5 and -4 to her.

Go way over near the Skyway door and you'll see them fighting back the hoards of annoying range CoT and sadly easy range hellions/outcasts while the cops sit there watching from fortified parking garages.

Hate to be nitpicky, but the Legacy Chain exists in the Hollows now.

I doubt anyone sees them ever (other than people flying around for badges or people doing the full TTF arc) but they're there with their swords and cool flashy moves.

I still posit that Gravity is just the slowest maturing set. The problem is you need wormhole slotted heavily for recharge and singy out. Once you have those two things you have much greater control capabilities.

Also, TA and Storm synergize far greater than anything else. The ability to put down damage/debuff fields and pull more enemies into them at will without doing repel-herding is amazing. It's not just about extra controls but about wormhole being more than an aoe hold and the true go-to tool in the set.

Use the casino unique maps. The map is so small unless you're stealthed everything will attack you immediately

I'm trying to balance a truly difficult end encounter with mostly custom enemies and wondering what everyone else is doing.

1. Learned the lesson of too much of one thing. Had an enemy group that was mostly Radiation. (blast and emission) Not having played many defense based melee characters lead me to forget that -100% or so def actually ruined the chances of specific characters being able to win while regen and res based characters were mostly unaffected.

2. Certain things keep failing in MA, like chained boss spawns. Sometimes boss one doesn't spawn, sometimes boss 2 doesn't spawn. Wish I knew why >.>

3. Abusing ambush-like situations. Defend Object is a great ambush-like situation without wasting one of the three ambushes you're allowed to use.

4. Finding maps that have a LOT of back spawns. The Crey Hero Lab was great for this and is sadly no more :/

The casinos are generally small enough to do this with as well, but offer limited objective placement.

I know the joke and all, and I'm sad that this is the case in the US, but the political correctness militias won quite a while ago and continue to rule the country sadly.

I can't say why of course, but the inclusion of potentially politically polarizing words (lesbian in this case) can get you squelched in almost any online game community.

The crey hero map is one of the best maps to create scripted end boss fights too. So much is able to spawn in the back that you can get stage waves going on of ambushes without having to use "ambush" at all.

I am saddened that it is gone too :/

I've noticed a map can be devoid of standard spawns if you maximize the number of Patrol objectives. Granted, it's no longer empty at that point.

That's weird. I've never had Knives as an enemy blueside in the late game. I couldn't get away from them redside, though. Every mission seemed to be knives for some reason.

Blueside it was always Carnies or Malta.

Well.. the second problem with knives is if the ceiling is too low you can't fly over the caltrops with hover like in some parts of the crey labs.

Also, I threw knives into one of the underground council maps which means knives spawn in front AND above you, leading to mid-air caltrops which is funny but also really mean.

I find Crey more difficult than Knives honestly, and Crey is the base group in one of the missions. In crey-knives objective battles crey often wins. Arachnos has wiped the floor with knives as well, but arachnos is highly dependent on which boss spawns.

All in all i still firmly believe people get pissed about knives because they're almost absent blueside and only in the late late game redside so you're just not used to caltropland.

Personally I find caltrops no problem. I also almost never play melee characters so there you go

Switched them to a custom faction which still fits the story. Could be a lot more difficult than Knives, except no caltrops

Allies with the caltops fields is problematic. The second mish involves some longbow to help out, but the caltrops drives them nuts and they run away for half the fights.

I could probably make due with custom critters, Knives would only technically need 3 since they only have one of each level. (minion, liu, boss) Custom critters take up way way too much room in general, though. My outcasts arc used to have a full crew (5 minions, 5 liuts, 3 bosses, 1 av) but I had to cut out 4 of those just to fit in actual story text >.>

Just putting the question out there:

Certain enemy groups are well maligned. Malta, Carnies, CoT (in specific level ranges) and of course Knives of Artemis.

Certain factions can be dealt with through control (malta, pre-holding the sappers and gunslingers) and certain factions can be dealt with through defensive buffing (knives/cot mez protection) but does anyone feel if these groups are off limits to build an arc around?

Knives, even if you manage to hold the boss (Hand of Artemis) is probably going to toss out the aoe 30 second stun grenade, and all of them are going to throw down caltrops screwing up your pet AI and generally making every fight that much slower.

My main story-driven arc (Guns, Girls and Gills) is not centered around the knives story-wise but it's certainly a large portion and 3 of the 5 mishes have them as the base faction.

The problem with the "spawn" stuff (ambushes, protection (defendable or destructable objects), etc) is if you make a custom group it just spawns multiples as you've seen.

The only real way to get a single unit to fight is to have a boss objective and the only way to reliably get a single unit to assist is to use rescue.

If you use the "Single" enemy spawn size type in say a rescue objective and you're too low for an AV to spawn (and it's a custom group that has only an AV) you wont get *anything* and the goal will autocomplete. If you're group+difficulty is too high you'll get several AVs.

The only reliable way (that I've found so far) is to have the heroes rescue the person prior or make it an objective that pops at a certain boss health level.

I run the bronze a lot, but at my characters level (usually either 25 or 50 range). I'll start recording the data and I can send it to you cat.

Most people who want to be PLed or farm will go where the PLing and farming occurs. The PI example proves that. (prior to MA existing)

Even on Freedom a lionshare of the farm/PL spam in broadcast was in PI.

Putting it in Boomtown only puts it in the lowest traffic area in the entire game.

It'd be like if, before AE, they moved the freak farm mission into Boomtown. That'd move the farm recruitment broadcast spam out of PI as well.

It will stop people from spamming in Atlas for the most part.

I hear no one spamming for AE *farming* teams anywhere but Atlas. If I go somewhere else (like Steel) I have a greater chance of someone wanting to run a real mission in AE instead of a comm officer farm.

Also, I don't play on Freedom so I'm not used to Atlas being the idiot spam fest that it currently is on every server now >.>

I want it put in Boomtown and nowhere else blueside.

I vote for putting the only AE building in Boomtown.

Can teleport + having claws at all result in a claw uppercut ala Fulgore from Killer Instinct?

Also, I want a flying+jumpkick real flying jumpkick.

p1. Architect is removing players from the game.

CP: It's removing players from the section of the game you're defining as "the game" that want to engage in activities you do not want to engage in, in this case easy to farm missions.

S1: Join a non-farming SG and find friends.

p2: increasing the price of salvage

CP: Point of fact, it is not.

S: It is affecting the economy, surely, but salvage is blatantly easy to get through mission architect tickets, TFs, running normal missions yourself, or (heaven forbid) placing bids at WW/BM and waiting overnight.

p3 (my point): MA is making it stupidly easy to get tons and tons of inf for virtually no effort at the market.

And contrasting this is the fact that some of the content in MA is amazingly challenging, thoughtful and fun.

If only everyone would stop playing that comm officers mission for a second to do decent content.

What you reap is what you sow. Start doing decent missions and you will start having fun again.