Dechs Kaison

I'm well aware of all that, but keep in mind, those attacks only come from bosses. When bosses spawn, you should have a team with you and someone should be able to lock them down. Even if you solo them, you don't have to dodge 19 or 20 of them because all in all, bosses don't last that long.

Ghost Widow, on the other hand, is a level 54 AV. She cannot be locked down except outside of purple triangles and she is going to last a long time. In this length of a fight, it's no longer luck. The odds are now far in her favor to hit you with the hold at least once, even at capped defense. Once is all she needs, because your toggles will suppress. Being a +4 AV, unless you have two sonic resonance characters on your team shielding you and you stand within both bubbles, you don't have enough resistance to survive it. This is all on a TF where, to succeed at the Master challenge, no one can die.

The new Master of challenges are appropriate. It takes a skilled team to do them, not a gimmicked one.

Well, just to spite you, I'm going to just to spite you infiltrate the offices of Paragon Stuidios just to spite you over the holidays and make changes so that your tank can't use rage just to spite you.

I guess I am Dark Armor biased, so I don't really see much End Drain ever... Regardless, sappers can be dealt with through various means, outside of End Drain Resistance. Everybody has access to some form of single target, ranged hold (I'm sorry if you chose to take Physical Perfection ) that they could lead off with. Alternatively, everyone can combine super speed with stealth or a +stealth IO to do a preemptive strike, because almost everyone has some form of control power or just a really heavy hitting attack to drop the sapper at the beginning of the fight.

The Carnival end drain is harder to avoid for melee characters than it is for ranged, but I've found knockback really helps here.

I laughed right there.

If you really can't think of a power you want more, or you do a lot of Shadow Shard TFs with teammates who can't afford jetpacks, or you need yet another place you could put Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection or Winter's Gift slow resistance, then go ahead and get it.

Sapper End Drain and Carnival Masks are no more cheaty than the Longbow and Arachnos you just defended as not cheating. There are many forms of protection against end drain and proper tactics make it a non-issue anyway. The Carnival Masks are strong debuffs to be sure, but they're not one shot make you die powers.

Reichsman's 100 magnitude Huge PBAoE stun (TM), and Ghost Widow's 100 magnitude hold that shuts down your resistance and inflicts Huge DoT, however, are pretty much one shot make you die powers. Aside from stacking stupid amounts of clear mind/clarity/thaw/increase density, there is nothing the players can do to avoid this. That is what makes it a cheat.

Ok, there is something the players can do to avoid it. But it requires us to cheat. Reichsman and Ghost Widow, when immobilized and taunted from outside range of said attacks, will never use them. It turns each fight into an even further ridiculous and not fun encounter.

Your tears are delicious.

Now that is an interesting idea. Rather than applying a damage penalty, it should be more like the [walk] power that sets a cap for an attribute.

I would suggest that the crash cap your damage bonus at 0%. Note that this won't make you do 0 damage, but it will effectively make your powers ignore damage buffs and enhancements. You'll only be doing your base damage, which would still feel weak for the crash, but not the 1s and 2s we see now.

I like it. I was actually going to suggest the same thing, without changing the offensive crash. 1% of defense is roughly equivalent to 2% of resistance, so it's roughly the same effect and now it hurts everyone about equally. Just make sure the debuff is flagged non-resistible.

I mean, I guess, rather than -9990% damage bonus, we could cut that in half. Maybe even down to a quarter. Sound fair?

It makes me feel tired, like I have no strength left.

And yet, I'm somehow just as sturdy as I was before the crash...

Something doesn't make sense.

Indeed it does. Don't worry, I've got a claws/DA brute in the works.

Just have to find time to level him.

As you have clearly seen, not everyone thinks it's a good idea. And this is just a sampling of the people who play SS. Even considering its popularity, only about 50% of the population would likely care about any changes, 25% may even like your proposed changes.

Since it's not clear that everyone wants it, it would be a waste.

Because we don't want developer time wasted on it.

Especially since it is not clearly beneficial to everyone.

How about frequently respawning turrets that target the nearest player character?

Terrain that causes debuffs or DoT only to players, or buffs the enemies while they stand on it?

What about having enemies with short range PBAoE buffs to each other to make the standard clumping tactic a very bad one?

I have to admit, it is a lot of fun. It just becomes annoying on Master attempts when you know that there's nothing you can conceivably do to prevent deaths. It's one of my pet peeves with Mo*TFs. If the requirement is 'no deaths,' then don't give the enemy "you die I win" buttons. I think that's more my problem than anything. I like the direction the new Master rules have taken, though.

Well, having an obnoxious level of ranged defense introduces the problem that defenders/corruptors/controllers don't really have melee attacks to be able to hit them with at all.

This I would like to see. Perhaps an entire faction that resisted taunt.

Black Scorpion and Mako already resist taunt, I believe. It makes them hard to hold on to, especially Mako since he dodges a lot, but judicious use of taunt keeps them held.

I want different challenges, that's all. Maybe we need groups that summon lots of underlings. Perhaps enemies that stay at range to resist clumping up for easy pickings.

Very good point. My only counter point is that, a lot of times, we just ignore the trouble mobs. Surgeons and Sorcerers, if left unchecked, are at best a nuisance that make it take longer to kill other stuff. Only the sappers can genuinely cause teamwipes, but certainly not if the aggro guy has end drain protection.

You've hit the nail on the head here. And outside of ungodly sized ambushes, there is no aggro in the game I can't control. Presenting me with more enemies than an aggro cap can hold is on par with the mag 100 DoT cheat, as well.

Just brainstorming at this point:

A faction of enemies that debuff range and have many melee PBAoE powers. Perhaps make the range debuff be an aura power so it doesn't matter who they are aggro'd on.

Enemies that debuff a tank/scrapper/brute's ability to taunt. In fact, how about some enemies that debuff our buffs and heals similar to poison and cold domination?

What else can we think of?

Meh, Air Superiority makes them do a backflip. Knockout Blow puts them in the air for a substantial amount of time. To get that kind of airtime on a foe, you usually have to hit them with a sword or an axe or a mace.

Do yours have DOs in them? Can you quickly switch to a second/third build that doesn't have enhancements and see what happens when you slot DOs?

I'd do it myself, but I'm still at work for another few hours. You seem to be able to check now.