Darkonne

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Clearing up some incorrect info about GW's absurdly overpowered hold:

Soul Storm
Accuracy: 1.0
AttackTypes: AOE_Attack, Negative_Energy_Attack
Area Affected: Targeted AoE
Range: 80 feet
Radius: 10 feet
Recharge: 45 seconds
Hold Magnitude: 100
Hold Duration: 22 seconds (vs. level 50 hero) (ignores resistance)
Damage: 10 ticks of 410 (vs. level 50 hero) Negative Energy per tick over 10 seconds

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Just think how much stronger it will be when she gets around to slotting it with inventions.

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Oooh! She can have +3% Psi Resistance!

-D

It generally takes my groups about 4 hours to get to the final mission and fail. So I'd say ~4 hours for a successful team is doable. 2 hours would be extremely efficient.

-D

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I think the most important thing, the thing you must have is a full team. The STF is challenging for 8, difficult for 7 and nigh impossible for 6 or fewer.


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That's great, South, but everyone has a full team when they start. I'd much prefer to be on a team that doesn't attrit during the TF, but there's not much I can do about it when it happens.

Besides, the one time I made it to the final mission with a full team, we couldn't kill Mako anyway. :-(

-D

Tried this again tonight: Ice Tanker, two DM/Regen scrappers, Ice/Fire Blaster, Illusion/Rad controller, Rad, FF and Dark (me) Defenders. As always, never even made it to Recluse. This time I suspect the team could have won, but our Tank dropped after he kept disconnecting in the Thorn mission. Our controller also disconnected a lot once we made it to the last map, and we had trouble pulling only a single patron. In the end we just lured all of them back to the boat and started pounding. We took down Black Scorpion, then (after some effort) Scirroco. The Controller logged here, and shortly after one of our scrappers called it a night too. The five of us pounded Mako for a while (Ghost Widow had correctly deduced we were no threat and left), but we couldbn't beat his god-mode, even with Vengeance.

Having tried to kill Mako a few times now, it seems as though his Elude ability recharges extremely rapidly. No matter how long it takes us to get him low enough on health to trigger it, it's ALWAYS ready to go. It sure seems as though you must kill Mako through his god-mode or you'll never be able to kill him. I think that is a terrible design, since it a) is a blantant cheat by the normal rules of the game and b) completely screws teams that just can't bring that kind of To Hit buffing to the table.

I still say Mako needs his Defense toned down. I know he's supposed to be tough, but there's nothing interesting about this implementation, and it just makes no sense to me that only Mako and Ghost Widow can really put up a fight. Scirroco takes a minimal effort to defeat and Black Scorpion is just a speed bumb; why would Recluse treat them as anything more than canon fodder?

Anyway, I'm now 0-3-1 on this TF. After something like 18 hours of my life wasted trying to complete it, I'm getting rather discouraged. As much as the fluff of the mission is great, there's really nothing enjoyable about spending hours on a bunch of easy missions only to bounce off the patrons every time. Very disappointing.

-D

Well, I tried this again last night, and this time made it to Ghost Widow before failing. The team consisted of a Fire Blaster, a MA Scrapper, two tanks (Fire and Invuln), two controllers (Fire and Ice), myself (Dark/Rad), and an Empath Defender.

The early misions were easy enough, and even the Thorn Tree proved more annoying than actually difficult. We had some trouble with Aeon before we got the timing of the temp power down, but we managed to beat him after a wipe. We then moved on to the the last mission and cleared a path to the Patrons. We started with Mako and pulled him successfully, though Ghost Widow showed up after a minute or so. She killed several of us, but then lost interest and we pulled Mako almost back to the boat. With some close coordination and a few +To Hit powers we were able to drive Mako low on health, then several yellows let us finish him through his Elude. Since my last STF failed when we couldn't keep up with his Elude regen, I was happy to see him go. I still say he should have his total defense toned down a bit, but I was glad we were able to beat him without my having to respec into Tactics.

Next we went after Black Scorpion. Frankly, he was a bit of a pushover. He's tough and all, but really not much different than any of the minor AVs we had alreaady defeated. Next up was Scirocco. His AoE attacks caused some trouble, but after a few minutes we positioned ourselves a bit better and brought him down too.

That left Ghost Widow and her uber-heal. We started by trying to keep one tank close to him while the other tank and scrapper jousted at him, and the rest of us used range attacks. That worked poorly. We could hurt her, but too often she would either get lucky timing her heals, or overwhelm the tank's status defense, hold/kill him, and then move in on the rest of us. Any progress we had made was then lost. We tried this for some time without success, before we tried summoning pets and rushing her. That proved entirely innefective. Having spent something like 15-20 minutes clubbing her, we fell back.

As it was now around 3:30 in the morning, the Empath said he would need to log soon, but agreed to make one last try. Before we began, though, the Ice Controller left; I'm not sure if she was tired or was disconnected, but it left us short handed. Still, we went ahead and tried our new plan: we sent the Invuln tank in alone, focused all our buffs on him, let the Fire tank joust, and the rest of us clustered together (out of melee) to use ranged attacks on her. This time, we slowly began to grind down her health. But after about 10 mintues of this (with GW at about 20% health) the Empath left (again, not sure if it was voluntary). Without his buffs, the tank kept getting held and we could no longer get her health down. We gave up around 4:00am.

I'm sure if we had adopted this strategy sooner we could have prevailed, but with only 6 people there was nothing we could do. So I'd say Ghost Widow definately can be beaten. Still, I think she should be toned down a little. Her heal is so powerful it really cripples the ability of melee archetypes to fight her.

I think she could be made a little more melee friendly without making her easy, and without losing her unique feel. My suggestion would be to give her a lower than normal base regen rate for a level 54 AV, and let her therefore NEED to rely on her heal to make up the difference. That still leaves her as melee unfriendly, but it makes the hurdle they need to overcome a bit lower. It also makes some sense to me: she's a ghost, so she should be slower to recover and need her dark magic to keep her going. It's possible this will make it too easy to kill her with a ranged-hreavy party, but I think her extreme mezz powers will keep her difficult enough; she'd certainly still put up more of a fight than Black Scorpion.

Anyway, that's my suggestion. If and when I actually get to the Flier and Recluse I'll comment on them.

-D

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Y'know, this is random, but ... it occurred to me last night why I think I like the STF so much. Last Issue when we were discussing Safeguards, I wanted them to be more than just the inverse of Mayhems. I wanted to invade villain strongholds and destroy their stuff, fight giant machines that drop mob spawns, and other super-hero-movie-type things.

The STF has all that. It's like they were taking notes on the kinds of things we wanted to see. Yeah, Hess has the MegaMech, but it's just a cool thing in the background. In the first and last missions especially, the STF has smashing villain stuff, the flier dropping spawns, LR's towers, and in-between it's an AV-stomping good time (especially Aeon, probably the most entertaining AV fight of all).


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I agree wholeheartedly; the STF is a lot of what Safeguards should have been. To my mind, the only think missing is a mission in Port Oakes or Mercy Island where you need to save some of the downtrodden citizens from some new Arachnos-backed villainy. The storyline is quite nice, and gets bonus points for not being another "might will be" future that can never arrive.

But that's why I'm less likely to forgive things like Mako:Impossible; if I didn't care about running the TF more than once, I'd eventually finish it and never look back (Oh! Positron, I didn't notice you back there!). But I'd like to do this more than just once. That would be more feasible and more enjoyable if it didn't require careful appraisal of my would-be teamates for To Hit bonuses beforehand.

Granted, I'm probably even more nervous about this since Darkonne brings (almost) no such bonuses to the table. But I'd match rather have an easy time putting together a team and then figuring what tactics will work best than be stuck looking for particular teammates and never getting started.

-D

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Mako's high defense is a well-known challenge of the STF for which a team needs to be prepared. I'd agree that it's not ideal, but neither is it really unusual. Tactics, Fortitude, Focused Accuracy, Targeting Drone, Radiation Blast, Radiation Debuffs, Yellows, Shivans, whatever you have available. I know some teams will be stopped cold by Mako (I was on one of them), and I'm slightly uncomfortable with that, but the STF is about as difficult a challenge as we can get on the hero side. I think it's reasonable in this case.


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Radiation Blast is irrelevant, AFAICT. The debuff is so negligible once it filters through to a +4 AV like Mako as to make no difference. Certainly, neither my blasts, nor those of our Shivans helped us any.

According to the City of Data numbers, my Cosmic Burst would have a -37.5% Defense debuff for 12 seconds if it hits. That winds up being about a -6% debuff when applied to someone like Mako in I9 (assuming he has no powers that offer extra resists against Defense debuffs), and I believe the effect only lasts for something like 3-4 seconds. That's just not going to help much, even if I could auto-hit with it. Granted, I'm fairly uninformed about the inner workings of Co*, so maybe someone can tell me if I went wrong.

But beyond that, I don't think this IS a good way to make the TF difficult. It just excludes groups without To Hit bonuses; they can nerf every other aspect of Mako into the ground, and otherwise buff themselves to the gills, but they won't be able to kill Mako. They can club him in something very near total safety for days but still can't actually win. To me that isn't difficulty, that's bad design they can get away with because most popular builds include copious To Hit bonuses.

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If the data they collect over time shows that an inordinate number of STF teams are failing and that the #1 reason is Mako, then he'll probably be adjusted in some way.


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That might be great relief sometime in 2008. :-(

-D

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Teams are managing with three Tactics running, it sounds like. One slotted Tactics is about equal to one medium yellow. A level 45 (minimum to get in) character has 20 Insp slots, IIRC. So with a little over half of those (12 slots), you can get four minutes of hitting Mako with the equivalent of triple Tactics. If the characters who aren't doing the damage carry a few spares and pass them to the blasters/scrappers, you can go up from there. Plus you can stretch this for another minute by getting Geas of the Kind ones Accolade (+100% Tohit, 60 seconds). And collecting medium insps should be pretty easy either in normal play at that level or by Kora fruit farming if you feel a need to do nothing but this TF.

It will require some coordination to make sure everyone uses the insps at the same time, but nothing like what the LRSF does or the new Hami raid. If people use them one at a time, and not all at the same time, the team will never accumulate enough damage to drop him.


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Why not just adjust him so that you could get by using things other than To Hit buffs? Why are we so willing to accept that a mandatory 3x Tactics, or ~50 level 2 yellows, is good TF design? I'd find it a lot more interesting to be able to beat him with skillful use of the powers the group has, but that doesn't seem to be a viable option when Mako operates so far on the extreme of the curve.

-D

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The only thing that is required is communication, tactics, and good teamwork.

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No, it also takes something akin to Tactics, which is my big complaint. Without serious To Hit buffs (more than you can get by just popping a few yellows, you can't do enough damage to bring Mako down. That's the real problem with the current setup. (If and when I get to Recluse I'll see if I have anything else to add.)

-D

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Now Tactics is routinely picked up by teaming players, especially defenders (we get the best bonus for it). It's purposely designed for teams, not solo play. It occurs to me that Mako is the way he is to encourage less self centered builds. Solo artists do not have a role on the STF, nor should they.


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And yet I avoided Tactics because I thought it was overused and boring. How foolish of me.

Look, there are plenty of perfectly good powers that happen to be of benefit while solo OR while teamed. Tactics is one of them, if you like to fight +level mobs. This design isn't a brilliant way to punish soloers (though why you'd want to do that is beyond me); it's just way to reward people for favoring certain play styles over others.

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Two of the STF's that I've been on that failed, failed due to an inability to follow directions and to cooperate with other players. Having a self-sufficient build is part of that.


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Why the solo hate? People who don't know each other working poorly together doesn't mean that all those people must be selfish hermits. It certainly doesn't seem like a good reason to design the STF to punish people who happen to dislike +To Hit powers.

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I'm not the world's best player, and I'm not the world's brightest player, but I do know that for a task force to have repeatability, it has to be difficult. It has to demand more out of a player than they normally do. If it were just a series of scanner missions, then there really wouldn't be a point to it. As it is, when you win, you get a feeling of accomplishment. Which is exactly the way it should be.


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I'm no better a player than you are, but I think you are entirely wrong. Difficulty has nothing to do with repeatability. People will enjoy the challenge the first time, but to keep doing it there needs to be a reward. People don't ignore Lusca because it's too easy to defeat, they ignore it becuase there's nothing to be gained by the effort.


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There needs to be villains that challenge. There needs to be missions that require forethought and planning. Zerg rushing every mission ought to be rewarded with failure.


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But all this seems to do is encourgage zerg rushing with Tactics and Vengeance. How is that an improvement?

-D

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[*]Mako's Super Elude. This is just nuts. He can use it as often as he wants and never suffers a penalty for it. Mako is just frustration incarnate, causing STF runs to be given up on due to just him. Again, do away with it, or at the very least drastically increase the recharge time on it. And he's a Stalker? More like a SR Brute if you ask me.


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It's not just Elude. He seems to have some other +Def powers running all the time, given how often I was missing him even when he wasn't in complete dodge mode.

I think it's just too much. Being a +4 AV already puts him on the far end of the spectrum. With his extra powers on top of that, I think it makes To Hit buffs near mandatory. Not good design.

-D

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Overall, I'd say that it's a fairly well-designed TF. The major problem we had were tech-related, and I know I was worried during Aeon's cutscene in the second mission when the "camera" cuts away to the various other AVs, and my computer started making "okay, this might be a challenge to render" sounds.

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Actually, that reminds me: I think Aeon's "cuts" to the various AVs in the future should be removed. Aeon's speech is long enough already; it's a great scene, but less is more and I think the pauses hurt the flow of the speech. It's not like we NEED to get a look at them. On top of that, it would probably help those with with low end computers too.

-D

I finally made it to the final mission tonight, but we basically bounced off Mako. As I recall, we had a Stone tank, a Scrapper, two Defenders (Emp and Dark), two Controllers (Cold/Storm and Fire/?), and two Blasters.

We managed to pull Mako just fine, but after clubbing him for some time (with a pair of Shivans), he hit Elude and by the time we could hurt him again he was back to about 80% health. The Fire Controller dropped (he had had a poor connection, so we don't know if it was voluntary), and we sent four people to Bloody Bay for reinforcements. They eventually returned (the Tank and Defenders stayed to keep Mako's attention) and we began again. But even with the Shivans, this time we couldn't even get him down to low enough health for him to need Elude. We weren't really in great danger, but we called it a night once our Shivans died.

I have to say, it was a very disappointing end to the night. The TF had been fun up until that, and while difficult, Dr. Aeon (et al) made for a satisfying encounter that we could plan against. But Mako was basically unbeatable. I'm not sure what we were doing wrong. It's just so hard to hit him (even innately, he's a+4 AV with some defensive powers), and if we do mange to wear him down he just Eludes and we're back to square one. I guess we jsut needed more buffs/debuffs and Shivans.

As I said, disappointing. There's no need for this to be so stacked against us; fighting +4 AVs is already a stupid idea based on the way the rest of the game works, but his innate defense makes Mako an extremely tough nut to crack.

I hope this will be tweaked a bit before it goes live. I'd like to run this TF, but now I'm worried I'll need a near perfect team to succeed.

-D

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Yep. And why didn't people believe the Devs when they said that ED would diversify things?

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Not to start that war all over again, but I'd say its a combination of the facts that a) there was an 18 month lag time between adding ED and adding the enhancements that benefited from ED, b) even now, not all powers benefit (Stamina is still 3 and done), c) ED is still misn-named: the 'diversity' here is only due to the Unique IOs offering the ability to slot Health with something other than Heal Enhancers. The fact that people can't put more than 3 SOs of Heal effect into Health is only necessary as a means of curbing the total powerlevel.

But I don't want to exhume old horses now. This is a very nice analysis, Scrapulous. On a minor formatting note, it would be nice if you could summarize the total +Regen and +Recovery of each setup after listing the individual effects. I know you go into that in the text followup, but it makes it a bit harder to compare the slottings at a glance.

Still, that's just a nitpick. Good job!

-D

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Third, the argument that they are only interested in implementing that which is easy and cheap is disproven by the inventions system in I9, which would be neither easy nor cheap to develop.


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I'm not sure I can agree. They added a large system to the game, but most of it is cobbled together on top of existing systems. It uses almost all the normal enhancement rules, it reuses salvage, and it even models all the set bonuses in much the same way as existing powers.

Really, when I look at it, the whole invention system was adopted BECAUSE it required a minimal amount of new tech. The size of the system is large, and they certainly spent a lot of time on it, but in the end, I think the system is more about what was feasible than what would actually make a functional system.

That's not really a criticism of the devs, either. You work with what you have; no sense designing a pie-in-the-sky system when you'll never be able to implement it. So all in all, I think they did a good job adding a big feature without breaking the bank (though as always, I think they have a poor grasp on how their game actually works). But looking at I9 does nothing to dissuade me of the notion that Co* is starved for resources.

-D

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Buffs win over Debuffs

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This I emphatically agree with. I'm seeing quite a few people say things like 'bring lots of rad' and I don't agree. Certianly rad will make it easier, but I've done it successfully with no debuffs except a kin (so -regen/-dmg/-spd). Major debuffing sets are not necessary, and that's a good thing. Serious buffage helps much more in surviving the last mish.


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While I'm glad that the tyranny of Radiation Emission might be drawing to a close, I wonder if this fix will really help matters. Given that buffs are now clearly more effective than debuffs in this sort of situation, what exactly does a debuff heavy set like Dark Miasma bring to the table?

Against major enemies that we can't simply steamroller, Darkonne has a suite of powers that function at much reduced effectiveness than buffs, draw agro, and stand a good chance of not affecting all the enemies anyway. Why would someone want me instead of a buffer, or perhaps a more evenly balanced buff+debuff set?

It's possible I'm just being paranoid; I have not made it to the final STF mission yet (curse you, DBServer!), so I don't know what I can do there. But I just hear people claiming how much better buffs are, or see the result of massed buffs on the new Hami raid, and I worry.

-D

Found one last night:

Titanium Coating: Endurance/Recharge, Uncommon, Pool A.

-D

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Bluntly, Hamidon is not particularly "open raid" friendly anymore. He's more a task for prepared and very coordinated crews. The method we used to take him on Test effectively dealt with the inherent "Pug" nature of the raid crew by dumping the majority of the responsibility on the heads of a small percentage, and then using twists on more familiar methods to pull the rest down. In short, it was a very rough application of the strategy.

An SG/Coalition/Group of friends that took this on, using the same method, and say, voice chat or the like, could pound through it very rapidly. In fact, with the exception of perhaps Hami himself, I am pretty certain that the encounter could be done with 8 players, each with three alts. And it wouldn't take any longer, if they already had EoE. Beating Hami's regen would be an issue though.


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Why is that remotely a good thing? What's the point in making Hamidon harder for casual players who don't have voice chats, dozens of Co* obsessed friends and a fine sense of coordination?

I'm with Kali. It sure sounds like the encounter has not been improved at all, save that it is probably easier on my graphics card. I'll be happy to send Darkonne along for some hero side testing when I have a chance, but I'm not feeling very enthused at the moment.

-D

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The thought was that timing needed to be so perfect, that the full version of this strategy involved at least three strike teams. Three attack positions (A, B, and C) are selected. Strike team one attacks from position A, strike team two waits outside the goo near position B and specifically doesn't attack (this prevents them from drawing respawned mitos), strike team three waits near position C. When attack team one reduces hami to half health and causes him to respawn, they ditch and strike team two immediately moves to position B and continues the attack, out of range of the respawned mitos, giving hami no chance to recover. Strike team one then regroups, joins strike team two, and continues the fight. When that group causes a respawn on position B, strike team three moves in at position C and continues the fight, while strike teams one and two regroup and join them, to finish the fight.

Imagine coordinating that on your server.

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Not to mention that a good number of the people in the various teams might have to act without actually being able to see Hamidon itself. The insane graphics 'lag' that the Hami encounter can generate is a serious monkeywrench for even experienced teams.

-D

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We love our dev interaction.


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Yes, we do. Oh, step over that pile of bones there.

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Crave might be nearer the mark. Love sounds so ... forgiving. :-)

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It would be better IMO if they made it every 20 hours rather than 24 hours or perhaps if they made it one HO per day.

Hear me out before crying doom...

You go to the raid sometime after 7pm. You get done 30 minutes later and have your HO in hand.

You show up the following night around 7pm but get done 25 minutes. Due to the timer, you can't get another HO because it hasn't been 24 hours.

So why not tie HO & recipe rewards to 12am Central? From 0000 to 2359, you can only get one reward of an HO and a recipe. That would mean you could complete a HO raid at 2355 and then start up another HO raid at 0001. But once you completed that, you can't get any more HOs as a reward until you enter the next calendar day.

In other words, base the reward timers on DAYS not hours. It would make it a lot easier to manage from the player perspective and STILL stays true to the reward limits the Devs have set.

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I agree entirely, but I rather doubt the Devs would ever do anything to make these rewards easier to schedule.

Still, feel free to surprise me, Devs! :-)

-D

The article is very a very interesting view into the mindset behind the changes. It was much more insightful than most of the recent press releases, and that's a welcome change. Also, hello, Mr. Brawler! Nice to see you here at last.

That said, I'm rather underwelmed by the changes mentioned so far: from my point of view, it seems like they will do almost nothing to actually improve the experience.

Limiting the zone to only 50 people feels pointless. I suspect 50 players is still more than enough to cause problems for low end machines, and since the raid structure seems largely similar (with Hami and his Mitos), I doubt this will do enough to prevent Hami from disappearing. Beyond lag, though, that's still a lot of people to assemble and organize, and there's plenty of room in that for griefers who still cannot be removed. But it also means that if there are 60 people on the server who feel like fighting Hamidon at any given time, 10 of them will now be out of luck, since I cannot believe Hamidon will be defeatable with much below the maximum possible number. I'd rather have people leaching and able to participate than have them left completely out in the cold.

Without knowing the details, I can't say for certain whether the redesign will actually make raids more interesting and pan-AT friendly. But from the article, I suspect it will not. Given the wide disparity in what the various archetypes can do, the notion that a difficult trial will be equally accessible to everyone while *requiring* none in particular feels pretty far fetched. The very fact that some of the Mitos are flying seems to imply that issues will remain.

More importantly, the devs seem to persist in the notion that 50 random players should be able to coordinate a complicated battle plan when it's fairly clear that players will ALWAYS develop stratagies that are as simple and foolproof as possible. Organizing players is like herding cats. If you need to get 50 of them on the same page in order to succeed, that page had better be in big print with lots of pictures. Whatever notion the devs intend will almost certainly be bypassed in favor of an unexpected strategy that is easier to explain and execute, with the side effect of being less interesting. In the long run, we're in this for the prize; tedium plus shiny trumps exciting failure once you've fought Hami a few times.

-D

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Or maybe just issue stealthed characters a leash - and let NPCs follow them whether stealthed or not.

Perosnally I've always gottena little tired of having to turn my hide off in order to drag kidnap victims around, when I personally always envisioned myself as being skillful enough to lurk in the shadows and occasionally whisper "Psst - go to the end of the hall and get in the elevators or you die." Without breaking stealth.

I guess I'm just less super than I thought.

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That would be my first choice too; I just don't see a problem with letting stealthy people sneak through missions. Besides, it's not like you can't add stealth ignoring ambushes if you're determined to screw Stalkers at high difficulty anyway.

-D

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EDIT: You know why I'm so frustrated? Because the devs are going to force us to abuse their system because they never just believe us when we tell them something won't work.

For the short time I played FFXI, I was able to make money basically standing in one place playing with their auction market. That's not the intention, but the robber barons are going to come out.

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EvilGeko has the right of it. At least, he will once there are enough Inventions in the game to have multiple of a given type up for sale at once.

The system is designed to penalize people asking for a large selling price. Why would I, as a seller, want to use a system designed to get me less for an item than I want? How long do you think it will take before the player base realizes this and adopts out-of-game workarounds?

Seriously, can anyone think of a real world system that works this way? The shady car dealership analogy someone mentioned seems to be about right. Why can't our devs just leave well enough alone?

-D

I have to agree with the complaints about this event. I did enjoy it a little bit (and I'm glad I got Darkonne the Heart of Light badge at last), so I don't want to sound all negative. But in the end, the logistics involved in it were, at least for me, way too much for me to fully enjoy.

First off, the fact that you NEED a hero/villain to open up the content at all is just terrible design. It instantly means you'll be spending as much time sitting around TRYING to do the holiday event as you will actually running the event. I like being able to team up with the other side, but REQUIRING a specific team up is a lot less fun. Moreover, you not only need your opposite for the first mission in the chain, it's also a 1 time per character thing. That was just asking for supply shortages, and that seems to be what happened. Not fun.

Second, the missions are just too damn tedious when you want to run them for more than 1 character. This was a problem with the Winter Event too, but it was greatly magnified here. This event not only required a new hero/villain team up for every character, but also added 4 extra missions to the list, and required you to fight Snaptooth 3 times in a row. Now, it's possible to team up with someone with the Snaptooth mission directly (if you don't mind skipping the Handsome Badge and Nectar), but that still leaves you looking for a specific group to join. So whereas I was simply happy to be done with my alts during the winter event, I was downright sick of this one. I never did get the Nectar with some of them.

Finally, this event is too close on the heels of the Halloween and Winter events. They all involve lots of mind-numbing repetitiveness, and this was just one too many. And I was someone who missed last years Jubilee, so it was all new to me.

So, my suggestions for the future:
1) If you simply must have *mandatory* hero/villain team ups, make sure that mission is at the END of the event chain, not the beginning. Also, make sure a given character can spawn the mission as often as needed, not just once.
2) Make most of the rewards either available on log in, or apply to all the characters on an account. Running the same event missions with various alts once would be fine, but 5 times each is way too much.
3) Space your events out better. Halloween is a natural fit for the game. If you're going to have a Winter Event too, that means you should probably retire (or greatly downscale) the Valentines Event and work on something else. The summer solstice, for example, would be a fine time for a big event.

That's my advice. Hope it helps.

-D