FreshFish

this is why i dont play kins. SB doesnt last long enough, and i end up just being a buffbot. If i wanted to be a buffbot, I'll just go play a FF mastermind and keep trying to bubble EVERYONE, including my many pets. People get way too ansy when a speedboost has run out, and ive heard of some people actually crying when the warning flashes start to go off. Especially on a troller, my only job isnt to be someone's lackey. I have control, damage, safety, FS, heals, SB, and whatever else to worry about at once. If i forget to SB someone, my bad. But again, thats why i dont play kins, SB is just too short for my tastes, and I dont like having to deal with the whole perspective people can have on it.

bots/traps has been known to solo quite a few. I hear provoke, a taunt from the presence pool, is quite useful in this, because it keeps all the damage on u, which is then evenly mitigated to your bots, so that they are much less likely to get one shotted.

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There's so many demons in this game what wield different elements!

Hordelings and Spectral Demons have ice, Behemoths have fire, I think Succubi have Psi...

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Succubi have Pwnage. lol

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QFT

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It's likely that chicken tug will come back

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I think we'll get the egg emote first

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Or maybe the genetically alter emote that turns into a squat emote....which turns into an egg emote....which turns into the chicken tug.

If im soloing i like to read at least the story descriptions, the dialog of the enemies, and maybe any boss tags. Sometimes i read individual enemy tags. On a team though, people tend to just want exp, and so often don't do new arcs at all. Actually, ive been going back to doing radio mishs now, because my character is past lv. 32 (mastermind), so its quite safe and fast, and ive made enough money already to have basic ios in like everything. Not enough good arcs out there, or at least worth trying to sort thru to find, for me to attempt playing the MA arcs. People need to playtest their arcs a lot with different AT's if the arc is gonna be uber, because a lot of people put in mezzers and think nothing about simple things like squishy AT's having to face them. (i.e.- mind control minions)

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Use Custom mob with Gang War and it will fill up

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Although they wouldnt give exp, that would be funny. As far as i know, minions can get gang war as well (will probably be nerfed in the future), so a full team of 8 people would make the place look worse than a super troll rave.

And actually, solo i tend to get very little tickets for this mish. Considering one of the ambushes is tied to after getting the safe that beats the mish (usually average like 200 a mish, though the map is really small). I dont use custom mobs either, its security guards and fifth column. But it is good for exp, i wont complain there. My freak mish i would say gives more tickets per time, and thats a bit more laid back in pace.

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I've got 4 damage procs in mine, including one of the purple damage procs.

It has one-shotted even con minions.

Fear the proc-trops.

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lol. I think its hysterical when enemies get in a fight with my acid mortar. Im pretty sure he could take down minions, and he was putting a dent in the leui that was facing him one time. I should make a vid just for humor's sake.

zomg! Mastermind transfer fest to heroside!! Prepare to be invaded!

But, um..... since when will necromancy ever be good?

Depends on how many slots u got to spare. U could just leave it in its base slot if ur using a ranged primary like bots or mercs, because u dont really need it anywhere but around your feet. But if u want to use it as a damage tool, u could throw up to something like 5-6 damage procs in it if u wanted, and then pick up an aoe immobilize from the patron powers and keep people trapped in it. Or u could just throw the targeted aoe purple set knockdown proc in it for a bit extra damage mitigation. It can be good for getting set bonuses if u need to, and range is often a good thing to slot in it, because it always seems to be a bit shorter than, at least i, want. But since my build is too tight to put damage procs in it, ill be leaving mine with an end/rech/slow common IO set IO, and if im lucky get my hands on the -resist PvsP IO from the pbaoe sets, and then just leave it at that. I put 4 procs in acid mortar because it fires twice as much as caltrops checks for, and its really fun to see what it can do.

So i found one of the biggest maps fitting enemies in wise that i could for a standard LSSL type of bank mish, and it said it could hold two spots for defendable objects, one in front and one in back. Come to find out, maybe because I picked the briefcase as my artifact, that it can actually put both the briefcases in one spot. What this leads to:

Team walks in bank- both defendable objects in first room almost near entrance. Defendable objects have ambush naturally attached, and i attached a second ambush to each object. 4 ambushes total. On top of this, there are like 4 other spawns in the room, and a patrol that happens to show up typically as the fight is getting near over.

Let me tell ya, thats a buttload of guys. lol. I was soloing it and had like at least 10-12 guys on me, and that was without the patrol, and some of the guys in the corner i dont even think got aggroed. The most ive done the mish with is 4 guys, but it wasnt "front-loaded" with both defendable objects. I think it would be hysterical to try the mish getting it front loaded with 8 guys. Zomg, whole room filled. (defendable objects on the mish spawn at the two different spots randomly, either one at each, or both at one specific one)

If u guys are bored and want to check it out, if I remember correctly, i called it 'Save the LSSL'. My global is @BreatheOut -It only goes from 1-40 though; I use it for a substitute radio/paper mission when i dont want to face something like CoT or carnies. I love it.

While they probably will make it so comm officers cant be set in standard groups, that's really gonna suck for me. I have a mish where Comm officers can spawn, but they are also surrounded by the many other enemies with them, including nemesis, mastermind summoners, and rularuu. I'd rather see the devs just make a crap copy file of the current Comm officers, rename it, and then make it so they can and all will summon their portals at first notice of an enemy- and then stick that in for people to use in MA. Not that this is the habit of what devs have been doing so far. It doesn't seem like it would have been hard to do with immune engineers, just giving them a couple attacks.

And seriously, people already can make horribly weak baddies customly to farm. While some standard enemies may be better for exp, custom enemies are always an option. But as for farms, i say simply putting a ticket cap per person per mish would be a better idea. Then it wouldnt matter how big of a farm a person made, because they would still be stuck only getting so many tickets.

Ive also noticed that people are able to do things like put the farm on the second mission of an arc, make the first mission seem impossible to beat (All AVs, but one clickable named "Defeat Gorge"), and then no one ever gets to the second mission to see the farm because no one wants to mess around with the first one. People will find as many sneaky ways to take advantage of gains as they can, but if there is a hard cap, it will make it less worthwhile.

And personally, im tired of all the crap missions that exist in MA in the first place. One would expect it with it being new and only certain people being hard-working enough and/or gifted enough to make decent content, but when I want to try something new, and only get junk over and over again, its really disheartening to even want to think about the MA. Which is another reason farms would be a bit enticing to people, because they are probably faceplanting in the "Im gunna make dah must uber mish eva" mishs. Getting almost as much debt as exp doesnt really make sense.

Dont know about Nin, but i have a mercs/thermal Boss ally that a couple days ago at least had me shielded and CM'ed, and may have had forge on me as well. I know he liked to buff my phantasm too, though i did notice the last run i was getting crappy buff amounts, if at all, so maybe that is the change that came into place. Ill have to look into that (it also could be that he was simly buffing his own mercs more that mish).

what others have said, and the same goes for having to find clues. If its a huge map, the probability of missing one enemy or one clue can force the team or soloer to have to look for 15 min to find it, and nobody will be playing your arc again if they have to do that usually. On short maps it isnt too much of an issue, but this is player created content to begin with- we are already expecting lower standards- So we will "FAIL" an arc that much faster.

I had to change my croatoa map i was using for my mish to a non croatoa outdoor map because the computer was spawning my bosses in near impossible places to find. The pain to find them just wasnt worth the nice map. It turned out I liked my burning forest map better during playtime on the mish anyway, so I'm glad I changed it.

i believe u have to add an enemy possibly from the standard groups that only shows up at lv. 54 (aka 54-54). U might have to make him a boss that is a "defeat boss" objective, but i dont think it would have to be mandatory.

Is this intended? Because very few minions in the rest of the game have natural protection, and it seems like somehow the blaster mez protection, being able to use the first couple moves, is somehow being transferred over to the custom mobs, most notably the minions, even if they have no mez protection moves, like standard Regen for defense. I know it isnt fully intended for all mobs, because standard mobs like council and freaks dont get this benefit, only custom mobs do.

I bugged it, because it isnt really fair to controllers that their holds do squat. Scrappers get their damage for a reason, and controllers get their controls for a reason. One of the things that has really helped to save my bacon is fear, because that seems to still have its full effect.

In reply to Gaspard: Things probably are spawning on the croatoa maps, but there are whole sections that are very hard to find in some of the maps, especially the ones where u start by the river area, and the map that is the one used for the winter event (but is green). Ive was working with those maps trying to get an EB placement right, and sometimes i would have to search for like ten minutes, and eventually i might find the crack that he was hiding in.

Yea, having a separation for what kind of thing your building, like "challenge arcs", "exp focused arcs", "story arcs", would be a nice setup to have to keep things categorized.

As for powers, i went into one mission, and i believe the author wanted to have one boss at the end that was an extreme gravity control/extreme ice armor boss, but the problem was, he didnt realize that in boss form, the boss would be spawning in every spawn on larger team sizes. This led to, of course, a large team getting usually at least one every spawn, and when they have singularity out and then go into hibernation, much less that they have hibernation in the first place.....annoying. And short of making the boss still a boss but in a different custom enemy group, one has to make the boss an EB or AV for that not to happen (as far as i know).

Also, control sets in general are a pain in the butt if every minion has them, as are minions and leuis with good heals. If we want more difficulty, we can always up our diff to invincible as audiences of the arc.

Extreme mind control, and extreme dark miasma should also be used sparingly imo, because very little players have fear protection, and fears are quite overpowered when used on players.

Also, giving a thugs summoner gang war should be used sparingly as well. Gang war doesnt die when the caster does, so they will keep on attacking, it also can start to cause a lot of lag if the leui's have it and there is more than one, and minions can also get this move. I learned this from trying to make an ultimate pet mission. Even though it can be interesting, it wont get many ratings because its too much of a niche, and can easily cause people to start to die due to the fact that they cant target the enemies causing them high amounts of damage because they have to hit tab so much.

What i would like to see is us being able to have a mouse pointer that goes over the map, and we can click a spot on the map and the boss spawns in the closest possible spawn to that, same with the other objectives like getting allies and stuff. It would be a lot less of a pain in the butt, and i know the devs can put their choices pretty much where they want, so it would be nice.

So i settled so far for using a map for my mission in MA that is less than ideal. I really like the look of the map, but sometimes the boss and the other objective spawn in really hard to find places. I looked for a way to get the arrows on them so that people could tell how far away those people were and where at, but i did not see this option for bosses or rescues. Im not sure if its in the MA at all, but it would be a really nice addition, especially for maps with hidden crevices for spawn points.

I would maybe think of the most annoying av powersets that are out already and ask why they suck so bad. I know master illusionists suck pretty bad, so maybe an uber illusion/dark av or something. Having pets that strong on an av, along with strong psy damage and a self heal would probably make for a tough fight.

Oh, and if u want to make him really freakin hard, put a vanguard heavy as a boss in his spawn group, or a zeus class titan, or one of those kheldian ppd giant robot bosses there. They suck big time. I put a vanguard eb robot next to infernal in one of my mishs, and had like a 7 man team facing him. The vanguard bot alone killed like 5 out of 7 of us in one shot. It was hysterical.

have u checked to see if u accidently bumped his "surrounding enemy" spawn level. If it now says "single", he will spawn by himself freed. If it says easy, medium, or hard, it might be a bug. Unless u have ally patrol somewhere around there.

On a side note, there was a bug where enemies were being defeated in the normal CoX game, which i noticed doing the ouro intro arc, so it may be universal and some weird inherent bug at worst.

I'd been having trouble with the spawn points as well, but i was using a croatoa map. I hadnt been thinking about the map already having set area locations. I would have thought the devs would make it so that if the map become full in one area, the MA would make it so it was either known to the player, or become an invalid option choice. But i maybe in future issues. Back and front are also wonky to me, as a person can sometimes enter the mish near the back or the front, and so realizing that the "back" is the back of the map, instead of the back compared to where i entered the mish makes it awkward.

I figure there is going to be a best, but i havent figured out which one it is. Right now i have been doing silver class 30-34, because it should allow me to get eradication and basilisk gaze (i need the latter for myself), as well as decimation and luck of the gamblers, which i have already got a few of. But it seems a bit general. I think im gonna stick with it for now because i need decimations and basilisk to fill out my troller's build, but overall, where is the best returns so far?

Exactly what dr said. Usually ambushes are combined with other mission objectives, like bosses or something. Ull probably have to cut one thing to add the ambush.

If u want less leaching, make less robots, make some custom characters that are super short and look toy-ee, and then give them ice melee/trick arrow as their powersets. Since trick arrow is a weapon set, if u put it on extreme, they tend to keep their bows out all the time, or at least the majority ,and basically do no damage. As the ice melee, just set it to standard, and then they have only two attacks that suck to begin with. Put that as ranged oriented and they should stay shooting their bows almost all the time.

But yea, i would go with rescue ally sources for friends, patrols are kinda weaksauce. though adding a battle in the middle between the two sides would spice things up a lil.