Cavatina

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

Vigilance is no good when my end is already low, nearly empty. You seem to constantly miss the fact that i do occasionally attack to make use of my def debuff. I have a kin defender, a dark defenender and a rad rad defender, so i know with apropreate slotting their damage isn't always neglageble, but the synergy between their primary and secondarys help in that reguard and my dark/dark defender can effectively solo on invincible without much problem at all, slowly as you say, but she can do it. but my power choices are not purely based on making a great build, they are also chosen thematically to fit the toon.

I have toons of most of the AT's, (no veats yet as i have yet to get a 50 red side) but seem to have ended up playing blasters as that is what my 2 50's and soon to be 50 all are. MediBOT is my more sedate toon where i don't have to worry about dealing as much damage as quickly as posible. the concept and bio state he was created to heal, so that is the focus, his rad attack come from discharging from his neuclear power core. I don't concentrate on uber slotting my attacks because that would detract from my main focus, thematically, with this toon. I'm also not fussed about soloing with this toon either, i have plenty of other toons that can solo much better.

That i choose to build a character in any way i feel best suits the concpet of a character gives you no right to declare it as in invalid build becasue you cant see the worth in it. and declairing how i play, and even, in that first post, my attitude to why i built the character in such a fasion and how i talk cannot be further from the truth. I am not some 12 yo child that is trying to impress thier mates. I am a mature player that feels there is more to this game than building every toon with some uber build that they can brag about, and i would thank you for not doing it again in future.

you have a right to not like the build, or even the character if you have had the oportunity to play with it, but to declair it as invalid because of your personal tastes is completely out of order. As is attacking me because what you wrongly percieve to be my play sytle!

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

Clawsandeffect, yes, i accept what you are saying, and that you weren't attacking my play style per say, where as Cavatina clearly has twice now, that is what has got me so PO'ed.

Teleport and SS for me are taken purely as filler powers as with 4 pools used already i see no other powers to take to fill what i see as my primary role with this toon.

When i first created it i tried to balence the primary and secondary powers more, and to be honest, could not do it.. the attacks did so little damage that there was no point fireing them off most of the time and my heals and buffs suffered because of it. so i simply decided to stick to my primary role as i saw it with this toon, and that was healing and buffing and to be as good at it as i could be.

And yet again Cavatina is making assumptions based on 0 facts. I never once have said i am too busy spamming heals like mad to make up for a "useless" team. I am buffing, attacking with me def debuff powers occasionally and keeping my end at a respectable level so i have enough if any player gets into a spot of hot water. but no, Cavatina would prefer to pack my build out with much weaker versions of a blasters attacks, drain my end so that when someone accidently pulls another mob ot 2 that start ripping into the team i don't have enough end to cast my significantly weaker and slower to cast heals in order to keep them alive.

But then, Cavatina must be able to solo invincible mishes without taking a single point of damage because they are that much of a better player than i am.

I am sorry... being told my play style with one of my 30 or so toons is invalid without the player ever having seen me play really makes my blood boil!

Originally Posted by _23X_

the way I read it is you still get a roll every 5 minutes, but now it is every five minutes even if you defeat someone every 30 seconds.

Originally Posted by Xalaqia

Most of the Developer-created content is designed to be do-able for the solo player. A team composed of similar level (through sidekicking and exemplaring) competent people can overcome most challenges. High-Level Task Forces and Strike Forces have significant challenges, but there are usually several ways to overcome them.

Tank+Healer can be a good tactic, but overall:

1) Deal enough damage to defeat enemy
2) Survive enemy damage
3) Have enough endurance to finish the fight

There are multiple ways this can be accomplished, other than having a damage sponge, and someone to patch them up. An all blaster team could be very effective, as they would concentrate on #1), dishing out massive alpha-strikes to eliminate the most dangerous opponents quickly, or just AoE-ing everything in sight.

Tactically speaking, if you can adjust your tactics and playstyle based on your team's abilities and strengths, and the strengths/weakenesses of your enemies, you'll usually do well.

However, AE missions are created by players, who have no such mandate to be solo-able, or reasonable for groups of competent players.

Some players create missions that tell a story, create a challenge, or just farm rewards.

Therefore, they can range from the stupidly easy, to the ridiculously hard.

Some AE missions are designed by their players to be very easy, or very hard, for their specific powersets and preferred team compositions.

If you have a regular account, not a trial account, you can create your own AE missions, and allow others to play them.

XP gained is based on the level of the character, the level of the defeated enemy or completed mission, and if the character has XP debt, patrol XP, and size of group.

As previously mentioned, check www.paragonwiki.com for more info.

Generally, the greater the challenge, the more xp gained. In a group, xp is split, but there is a bonus for teaming, and good teams can do very well.

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect

Eh, I enjoy soloing, so it's not that big of a deal for me. I just recently started playing villainside more, so there's a lot of stuff there that I've never seen. I'm the kind of player who will stop and read every clue in a mission if I've never run it before. Teams get irritated with that because it tends to slow them down, so I prefer to solo or duo with my wife through content I haven't seen yet.

Unfortunately, AE probably IS the beginning of the end for CoH. Veteran players are starting to leave for other options and the turnover rate with AE is pretty fast. New players get 9 or 10 level 50 characters and quit out of boredom before they ever explore the rest of the game. It won't happen overnight, but eventually the game will start losing more players than it's gaining, leading to a slow, painful death and the final dimming of the servers.

I'll probably still be here, but I don't personally know too many people that would say the same.

Originally Posted by Barata

If the only reason you run a task force, or any content for that matter, is the reward attached to the end, then you can narrow all of the TFs down to the one single one that gives you the highest merit-to-time ratio. Only one task force will have the highest ratio, and any other one will be "not worth it" because that one single task force gives you the highest reward.

But I'll ask you this..... what good are the rewards? Every reward in this game serves a single purpose... to improve your character or gaming experience. The reward, by itself, has no value. It's when that reward is applied to a character making it stronger or faster or better, and you apply that character to content within the game, that the reward has value.

In other words, don't forget that simply playing the game has an intrinsic value of being fun. If you overlook the fun of actually doing a mission or arc or task force, and facing different enemies, and being challenged but still overcoming the odds to emerge victorious, and instead just focus on the merits or rolls at the end, then you're going to be dissatisfied like you are now. You'll be in an endless loop where you purposely don't have fun so you can get a reward, only to repeat it again and still not have fun because all you want is another reward.

Your experience with the KHTF was unusual in that it was abnormally long. Even when I don't need merits, I'll engage in a KHTF simply because it's fun. It's a few relatively short missions that are unique with their own unique challenges, so I'll engage in them anyway. Just like I'll engage in a PUG when someone's going up against an AV and needs help. I don't get merits then, but it's still fun. Your first goal should be to do the things that you think are fun. You'll get drops and recipes and experience and influence, and they can all be applied to your character so that you can keep improving him/her and have more fun.

Like others have said, you just had an unusual experience on that particular night. Either the combination of characters on the TF were bad or they were inexperienced... it was unusual. Normally, you'd breeze through the TF in about a half an hour.

Originally Posted by Rajani_Isa

Cavatina was just saying the big issue with the S/D on purples is because people keep doing AE and AE does not drop purples unless you do Developer's Choice with normal (non-ticket) rewards.

Originally Posted by Lucky666

Sure its only worth minimal merits but for the first time you run it on a character you get the sweet temp power Amy to summon. If you ask that's good enough reason to run it right there.

Edit: oh ya you get some costume pieces for running it as well even better

Originally Posted by St_Angelius

I really don't see the problem here... I have a emp/rad "Pure empath" defender i rolled many months (16-18) ago who i have been lvling slowly, mainly due to people favouring kins over empaths nowdays, He only has, at lvl36 or 37, can't quite remember, neutrino bolt for an attack, has taken all the heals and buffs, most of which are now 6 slotted, first pool was teleport, for recall friend, second is speed, for hasten, 3rd is leadership, for more buffs and finally the fly pool for thematic reasons... that is 4 pools gone, as a team support toon the only other primary power i'm due to take is cozmic burst for it's -37.5% defence debuff (all) and epic pool psy mastery, for mass hypnosis and woc... so that limits me for any other powers.

As team support that is what i concentrrate on, so calling me a bad player because you view my choice of travel powers (teleport, super speed and fly) as stupid i resent heavily.

I will admit that on a couple of my toons i have been AE PL'ed to some degree, mainly on my Fire/Mind blaster where i used a farm to get from mid 20's to 32 for psychic shockwave, the power that was central to my build and which i was under perfoming without in that range, I also used an SG's PI arc team to get my L4 archery blaster up to 15 so i could start the faultline arcs, but all other lvls on them, and all other toons were worked for, either solo or in proper teams. My first 50 took me 1 day shy of my 12 month vet badge, mainly due to my altism, but now, aproaching my 21 month vet i still only have 2 50's and a 47 and i worked hard on each of them.

I have met players at 40+ or with mulitple 50's that ask very basic questions or make very silly mistakes that anyone that had played the game content outside of an AE PL/farm would know/not make, i don't complain about them, i try to help them. I can see the allure of getting some high lvl characters quickly, to join in with the big contant with other players at higher lvls, if that's what they wantto do, that's fine, but when they do decide to venture out of AE and experience the rest of the game do you REALLY expect them to stick arround, or at the very least leave the safe haven of an AE building if all they get from the vets is abuse reguarding to how they got to where they are? I don't think so.

Originally Posted by Rodion

If you have a tanker, a couple of controllers, a couple of defenders and the rest scrappers and blasters you can finish it in 30-45 minutes. You have to know exactly how it works to do it this way.

Doing it fast involves skipping over most of the second and fourth missions. Most teams get someone with invisibility and Recall Friend to make the second mission easy. The fourth mission can be accomplished by a few characters with Flight, as I recall.

Check out the Paragon Wiki entry for this TF at

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Katie_...Force#Strategy

I think the merit reward system is broken. You should get a base number of merits for doing a TF, and then extra merits for the number of mobs you plow through (up to some maximum). That way people who just play it for fun aren't penalized by the playstyle of the people have optimized it to death.

Originally Posted by magnus1

so standing up to a flamer is flaming. interesting mindset. by no means accurate but interesting.

Originally Posted by Dreaming_Shadow

Yeah the market is now pretty much all demand and no supply. I'm not screaming for a fix because the only characters that I ever planned on giving purple sets too are done. Everything else from there is just IOs.
I just think perhaps in the near future they should consider a way to fix the Market. I have suggestions but this is not the board to do it in.

...that and pretty much any suggestion about AE gets attacked by a pack of rabid players who are pissed about the game.

Originally Posted by magnus1

i guess what im trying to say is that a tf that isnt worth a reward recipe roll isnt really a tf!

Originally Posted by magnus1

sry but didnt get any good drops either. sry i take that back i got a positronic matrix as a drop. recipes were normal hold, stun, defense buff.

Originally Posted by Cherokee

I know what it does. Dont get ignorant I been here long enough to know what goes on. Messed with the market enough to know also. It isnt just 2x XP weekend. Stuff has gone WAY up since AE. I know better..

K??? Thx.

Originally Posted by SunGryphon

I think it's nutty and try to stay away from the market game myself. I use it to quickly get rid of salvage and recipes, and that's about it. If there's something I must have, I bid low and wait. Eventually I will get what I want.

Originally Posted by Cherokee

Sucks dont it? The only thing that will so called fix it is if people ran normal content more than AE stuff. But as long as they can get their easy levels with hardly any risk, it wont happen. People have proved in this game they like the easy way out. I wouldnt doubt some of the people that PL like mad in AE also buy inf from RMTers..If I was wrong then the RMTers would be out of business now wouldnt they....

Only other thing they could do is increase drop rates because of so many not doing normal mission arcs. Lack of supply and increse in inf does the market bad.

Originally Posted by Dreaming_Shadow

So...Just doing a random survey.
The prices in WW are through the roof and before it was actually possible to complete a build with lots of purple set pieces but not things like Armageddon cost 180Mil a piece, and that's just for the recipe.

Thoughts? Feelings?

I have subscribed to this thread

Originally Posted by Warbaby

I do hope you are taking into account the recipe drops that you get as well? I did Katie a couple of weeks ago and picked up a respec recipe as a drop - worth 78mill at WW. Fortunately I was able to sell it as I get 3 respecs with each toon as vet rewards which I rarely use.

Originally Posted by SunGryphon

I'm sure they assumed that you'd be doing them on different days to get the maximum benefit, otherwise it DOES become "NOT worth it."

Originally Posted by magnus1

did you forget diminishing returns for doing a tf in the same day? 9 1st, 4or5 2nd, 2 or 3 3rd time then 1's fron there on.

Originally Posted by magnus1

did the Katie Hannon tf last night. a pug team, we had 4 team wipes, several other deaths, then finally on completion we recieved 9 merits. not enough for a merit reward roll.by my calcuations you would have to do this tf 8 times to get a reward roll. the risks were way more than the rewards here. i know some people say they could do it in less than an hour, but with all our deaths we took over 2 hours to complete. wont be doing this one anytime soon!