Eiko-chan

You might note that I did not rebut anyone that said "I've succeeded at the ITF with blah blah blah" (except the first guy that mentioned Masterminds, specifically because said MM was /Dark). I rebutted the guy that said "The only time I've seen failure was because of bad teams/bad players". The term "bad player" states, outright, that the player in question does not play well, and thus should learn to play to stop being a bad player. And I only rebutted him to point out that his excuse for failure was "learn to play".

Therefore, I must assume that either I am being flagged as the bad player (something I doubt, as I not only solo AVs, but have, with various characters, completed every high-level TF in the game except for Statesman and Khan, largely due to the fact that I have only one level 50 Hero and four level 50 villains) or the people I team with are being flagged as bad players (half true, perhaps; several of them are pretty much pure RPers and don't really focus on mechanics).

There are no other options here. It's one or the other.

Forums don't convey emotion, so you'd rather assume offence rather than that I might just be a ***** that likes to argue and clamps onto issues without letting go because I actually find the act of tenacity enjoyable and stimulating.

Commendable, perhaps, that you'd rather assume "mere" offence, but it's not the truth.

I never said I was offended. What I am going out of my way to do, however, is to point out how common claims of "Learn to Play" are around here, even if not always directed to specific posters.

Actually, I'm assuming you're telling my VG-mates to L2P, since I've already stated my own ability to complete the ITF. Regardless of what you think you were saying, the message you did convey was "if you fail the ITF, it's because you (or the people you are with) are bad at this game", which is, in essence, "you (they) need to learn to play".

Ah, L2P. Such a simple and easy thing to fall back on, isn't it?

A) I don't PuG. I play with my VG.
B) I play villains. You don't like villains.
C) I don't need hand-holding. I can massacre the ITF as well as anyone else. I just have to bring my Dark Miasma characters.

The devs stated intent is to release "Trials". What Trials already in the game are solo?

One of my MMs is a Dark Miasma too, and I had said when I bring my Darks, I win - so I'm not entirely convinced that another Dark Mastermind proves the point, as it might still be as much an issue of "Dark makes it work" as anything else.

There is likewise zero reason to believe that things along those lines are coming. I can spout useless platitudes too, you see.

This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.

I'll add the caveat that I have never possessed nor used (and probably never will possess or use) Warbug Nukes, Shivan summons, or Vanguard Heavies. Such powers aren't really in my characters' themes, and what is required to get them is not really fun for me, so I don't see the point.

That said, I have never completed an ITF unless I was playing one of my characters with Dark Miasma. Having me running Dark on the team made Rommie trivial - my other runs, with my WP Tanker and my Traps Mastermind, were complete failures, with multiple party wipes. The Mastermind was the worse - her mere presence on the team seemed to have doomed the attempt from the start, as the summoning Nictus counts Mastermind pets as full players and summons extra blooms accordingly. Without Dark to lock down the to-hit of those blooms (and bolster the negative resistance of the party, I'm guessing), it was game over almost before it started. "Don't bring your Mastermind" isn't a 'trick' I'm willing to learn to succeed.

The LRSF isn't quite as bad - one failed attempt out of three runs, that caused largely by us being underlevelled an unable to cope with level 54 AVs while we were all pegged at level 48 (the rest of the TF scaled down, but the Phalanx did not.) The other two runs, however, hinged upon brining a specific build, however (a Mind Dominator); the first was only successful because of that Mind Dominator. The second was successful because I brought one of my Dark Miasma characters (along with other debuffers on the team, including the Mind Dom we brought for the original failed plan who nonetheless managed to keep a few of the Phalanx pinned down, if not all of them, while we took the rest).

My Dark Miasma characters are not even my top builds, those I've invested the most time, influence, and care into building. The fact that, from my experience, Dark Miasma seems to be a requirement for the so-called "end game" content (STF, LGTF, ITF, LRSF, KTF and BSF being what we had before i19) does not jive with the pleasure and flexibility that has been a hallmark of the rest of the game that is purported to be built on (and in practice generally lives up to) the idea that any character contributes enough to get through any challenge. This seems to be slowly becoming less and less the case, and it is troubling.

It's not there yet, but if fights like Battle Maiden and Director 11 become the norm, it will get there - and unfortunately, there is a ravine between here and there, and we're fresh out of bridges.

Eiko - at least the Mastermind version of her - is a Primal and not subject to Cole's laws. Nor much interested in them at all, for that matter. What happens to Praetorians is no concern of hers. One of the benefits of villainy - we don't have to give a damn.

Uh, that's very much not true. My level 50 Mastermind hit debt cap trying to pierce the sonic barrier for the Denial of Service badge.

I love my Traps Defender so much. I can give 25% defence to everyone on my team just by standing around looking pretty.

Statesman's "Risk vs. Rewards" talk was probably before there were drops (other than enhancements and inspirations), and thus probably completely irrelevant to the modern game anyway.

Oh, incidentally: Poison sucks. Poison is a horrible set, and there's no excuse for its existence. None whatsoever.

Look at Poison. Look closely at its powers. Poison is Radiation Emission changed to single target. It has slightly higher numbers in some places and a few unique effects to "compensate", but Masterminds would be much better off just having Radiation Emission to start with than being saddled with the poor cousin substitute that is Poison.

They also should have a proper heal radius on Twilight's Grasp, but i19 is really starting to show me that the Devs really don't care one whit about making Masterminds an actual viable AT for team or high-level play. They just don't care enough to bother.

Sets added to Masterminds after their initial launch have been added more-or-less intact straight as other ATs get them. There was a fear in their initial design that Masterminds would be too powerful, thus the reduced effects built in with the Poisons powerset and in Dark Miasma (Masterminds are also the only Dark Miasma set that don't get a permanent Fluffy.) I don't think these fears came to be justified, however, but we're still stuck with the gimped versions of powers we got out of the box, likely largely due to the short-sighted "Cottage Rule" that seems to be Bible around here.

I think the number of MM players who would really mind that their Poison powerset was changed to Radiation Emission would be countable on one hand.

My 50 MMs are Thugs and Bots. My Demon MM is only level 26, having just gotten her Demon Prince. It's a pretty tough set, but the Demonlings die almost as much as the Thugs' Arsonist (who honestly would die a lot less if I could just put a damn leash on him).

I probably should have been a little more clear; I was pointing out two healers as opposed to none, not one.

I would say Thugs, then Robots, then Demons, actually. Thugs is definitely the top, and not only because they can slot RIP. Bots is clearly second, though, because even without RIP they can have a native 20+% defence, 25% if you include the pet-set aura - and unlike Thugs, they have two healers. Demons doesn't come close to that. Demons are still high-performing, but unlike Thugs and Robots, they don't have any inherent defence, and their resistance isn't large enough to compensate (they do have a single healer, which helps make up the difference, but not enough to put them in the top two.)

Unehanced, this is true. Mastermind Tactics is +7.5% to hit. But as it is enhanceable, this can hit nearly 12% enhanced. So you are both right and wrong, as Supremacy cannot be enhanced.