Cybernaught

I was also very impressed with the quality of the DA content. My pleasure was somewhat tempered by the preposterous number of bosses (ignoring the no-bosses flag) in the Romulus mission, but otherwise I loved all the story arcs and the new graphics and mechanics that were introduced.

More sappers.

Which city zone doesn't matter to me as much as what they do with it. I lean towards blue side city zones though because of the kind of things I would like to see.

Firstly, I would love to see a zone with events constantly occurring.Armored car robberies, gang fights, prison breaks, hold ups. It would be a lot more interesting if we saw these things actually happening rather than the npc actors holding a pose until a hero comes in encounter range. Sometimes they get away, but chases would be something new at least.

Also, I think I would rather see a 24 hour traffic jam of stopped cars than the 20 or so cars/trucks that are driving around this "city" in any given zone. I am looking out my window at Philadelphia right now and I can say it doesn't look like a city without skyscrapers and cars. And sometimes you don't need the skyscrapers.

I would love to see more of the dynamic sub-zone system where the content of a part of a zone changes with a mission. Gangs move in, get pushed out, move someplace else. The fires in Steel Canyon are a great idea but I don't know why it stopped there. Cats in trees, collapsing bridges, sinking ships, trapped miners, hostage situations, bomb scares, terrorists, all kinds of dynamic things can be done. What is more important than where.

You might even have some of these things be triggered by arechtype or powers selected. Super speed characters might trigger a multiple bomb situation. Flight needs or super leap triggers a save a person from falling situation. Super strength might trigger a collapsing building, ice anything might be a fire, air powers a gas leak, I can't list all the options, and they can't all be done but some of the common powers could have special event triggers.

Can we have an indoor mall? OK, so what I really want is vehicles and a car chase through the mall, but I am sure I can't get that. Also, somewhere in Paragon city there must be an Airport. If we have a really big zone like Independence Port could we have a subway that instantly takes you to different areas in the same zone? This is separate from the monorail obviously.

Finally, whatever zone it is, if it had war walls before it shouldn't any more. War walls are obviously not needed any more to make the game work, and they don't make any damn sense since they do nothing to keep the Rikti out. (1) The Rikti teleport, 2) They also fly. Other than being ugly what is it these walls are supposed to do? They make the game look very dated when you log into a MMO as a new user and see this big obvious zone boundaries everywhere you look. They does not help the image of the game or improve first impressions at all.

Griping is fun, but I have been playing since launch because I love the game.

Basically I have a brute w/ BS/WP and no real weakness apart from you can always use more resistance and defense. I do get a lot of defense from parry. My resistance could be higher. Health regeneration is too fast for me to consider boosting it realistically, I have all my health powers triple IO slotted. I have no endurance troubles unless it is a marathon fight. Still, I was leaning to cardiac anyhow because sometimes you are in a marathon fight and you can add damage resistance at T2 that seems useful. Also it might allow me to respec and pick up some leadership pool toggles or such, for what that is worth, if I have the endurance to spare. Any other suggestions for the alpha of a BS/WP brute?

When I play with my kids, I use my HP Envy 15. There are graphics glitches when I encounter too many water or lighting effects at once and I basically loose visibility as the screen doesn't clear properly when it repaints the image on the screen. I regularly have to do something to force the screen to repaint. I used to play on my older MacBook Pro but it wasn't keeping up with the new zones. I think you really need a good laptop or to turn things pretty far down to get a good gaming experience.

When I have the chance I use my kid's XPS system. The experience there is really sweet!. 27" 1920x1280 with good sound and a sub woofer. Makes the room shake with those super strength KA-BOOMS! That is where CoH shines for me.

Yes you do, but having tried it several times none survive past a couple of the cyclopes and minotaur groups. I guess maybe if I was playing a defender I might be able to keep them alive. I have tried agro management but I really can't handle much more agro.

Normally I eat bosses for lunch but bosses in this mission come in 6-12 packs, and they all have unstoppable to boot. That is why I question "am I even supposed to be doing this?"

Sister Solaris as part of the Dark Astoria Incarnate story arcs. You have to travel to Cimerora to get it from her and it is her final mission excluding her personal story.

My difficulty is +0/x1/No Boss (no AV) when playing the DA story arcs. Normally I run somewhat higher than that but the DA arcs are tougher, which isn't a shock since it is incarnate content. I guess I could drop it to level -1 but I don't know that I believe that will make much of a difference.

I am not really looking at how do I defeat this one time and be done with it. I would like to be able to run this story arc weekly through the Ourobors to make progress on incarnate abilities. Since you can't use the "Complete this mission" option there (it counts as a task force) I mostly am looking at doing this story arc to completion, ideally I would have liked to do it on a weekly basis and the only hang up to doing that is this mission.

My regular group are my 11 and 8 year old kids. I don't take them into the hard stuff like this because they aren't up to it and it I just get more bad guys on me. I have been stuck at level 50 with my main waiting for causual/soloable end game content for more than a few years now. (Been playing since launch.) I thought this story arc was my ticket to do that. Right now the only strategy I have is to keep hitting those earlier misisons over and over again, which I suppose is doable if not extreemly boring. At least doing all the arcs would be more interesting.

This just feels like a broken mission to me. If these groups of bosses obeyed the "no bosses" flag I could probably sleep walk through this thing except for Romulus himself, and might npcs might even survive to be there to help with him.

Still people are doing it and having trouble with it. Maybe the difficulty is where it is supposed to be. Romulus is clearly set up to be a bad ***.

I guess my question is not so much, can it be done as should it be expected? I can solo all the other content in every other Dark Astoria story arc but this one. Is this expected? Am I missing some trick that would make this doable?

Is this supposed to be solo-able? I am not asking about turning down the other NPC heroes coming with you. I understand the game warns you not to do that, and I don't. But to I need a full team? The NPC heroes just don't seem to make much difference since they are all dead by the 2nd group of Cyclopes/Minotaur anyway. I have tried coming at this a couple different ways and I don't see many valid paths to finishing this without a group. I have an no-alpha Broadsword/Will brute that breezed through most of the content up to this point but soloing hoards of bosses that frequently can't be pulled apart doesn't seem practical. Then of course there is the end fight, which I is pretty mush solo suicide.

Is the general consensus that this was supposed to be a group only mission? I thought the idea was these story arcs gave you a casual friendly approach to the inbcarnate path. This one mission does not seem to me to fit that.