Heraclea

I don't understand why people can't add story to their ticket farms. I will make no secret about it. I've always tried to edit my arcs to the extent possible, to make sure that players were gaining the maximum number of XP, tickets, inf, and every other game reward they could expect to get from easy-normal play. I've mixed and matched easy standard mobs, renamed and recolored, with easy custom mobs to comply with the three tier rule.

The only time I deviated from this design philosophy was when I left my Lesbian Hellion II mission up, despite its liberal use of forbidden friendly NPCs. I'd fought too hard for the Lesbian Hellions to take that down. I suspect that today I could put up the original Lesbian Hellion mission and nobody would notice it.

Even some missions considered exploits could be, and were, presented with a hint of story: "Disrupt Rikti Communications....." Make it fun! I also remember seeing some good, funny writing for Lord Recluse when he was being farmed in AE.

From my perspective, the encounter is far more unfavorable to scrappers, and is worst of all for DPS brutes. (And I wouldn't want to run it with a tanking brute as the tank, either.) A tanker still has a clearly defined job to do on the TF, and once the tanker has learned the task it calls for it's not that hard. And a tanker is slightly less likely to be instantly killed, and likelier to be able to recover from being in the Wrong Place briefly. Like I said before, one of our main purposes is repositioning mobs for the benefit of the team.

As I said before, melee DPS is usually at a disadvantage in gimmick fights. This is no exception. A scrapper will be idle or distracted for stretches at a time here. A brute will have an even harder time maintaining adequate damage on the primary target.

Twitch reflexes are a problem, but the larger problem is attention span.

Gimmick fights tend to turn out to be fights, like the Battle Maiden fight, that require you to keep track of time and all sorts of features.

I know this veers into dangerous territory, but this is where my attention starts waning. I am a light roleplayer and character concept builder. This is one reason why this game has always been home to me. It encourages alts, trying on concepts, and building a variety of characters that have more personality than a chess piece does.

The typical gimmick fight, in my experience, is built out of giving the player things to monitor other than his own health and attacks, and requiring the player to act in response to those things. You must see the sign, break from what you are doing, and go stand elsewhere or do something else. The higher you "progress" the more of these gimmicks are added, and the worse the consequences become for failing to respond.

(This is also why gimmick fights seem almost inevitably to disfavor melee characters, and especially melee DPS. You can't contribute if you are constantly being forced to break off and stand somewhere not next to the boss. Battle Maiden is not fun for tankers, but far worse for brutes.)

More importantly: my experience is that players do not play through these gimmicks by actually paying attention to the encounters themselves. Not as they are presented by the naked game software, at any rate. They delegate, and resort to technology. Add-ons, scripts, and timers are all used to automate the process of responding to the gimmicks and coordinating the correct action. Ventrilo and other voice chat programs are used to coordinate groups. One player with an otherwise undemanding role is assigned the task of monitoring a given gimmick and sounding alarms.

The gimmicks themselves may well be founded in interesting lore and beautifully animated. All of this is wasted effort in my eyes. The player base's response to the gimmicks will spoil any pleasure that might be taken from it.

For me, this breaks immersion, and turns the game into a series of dull rehearsals. You are no longer reacting to the hostile character with your own character's imagined voice. You aren't reading the NPC chatter for what it says. You're monitoring team chat for scripted instruction on what to use next. You're talking with other players in your telephone voice. And you can't see the content that lies beyond unless you endure these mechanics.

At this stage, my interest in the game will inevitably start to wane. I do not want that to happen here. Please keep that kind of gimmick encounter out of this game. City of Heroes absolutely does not need progression raiding.

Given that melee ATs have advantages in most other game content, which throws around stuns and holds far too liberally, I'm not terribly concerned that some encounters are harder for them.

On the other hand, just like every encounter meant to be soloed at all ought to be soloable within a reasonable time on a Defender of appropriate level not built for damage, every encounter ought to be soloable on a Tanker not built for damage, too. I'm not sure Trapdoor is, at present. But this has always been my understanding of the basic design philosophy of this game.

I would have changed Trapdoor by giving him a leash that prevented him from being pulled back into the hall, but limiting the range of the buff he gets from his clones, so he could still be moved out of range of some of them. This way there's no disadvantage to being on a low/medium AT whose forte is repositioning mobs.

As far as I can tell, the clones now have infinite range. And he spawns them much too often, giving attackers who must defeat him by killing each as they spawn too little time to actually beat on the boss.

But I fear the LOL L2P U SUK crowd. They're a lot scarier than Battle Maiden, and I don't want them here.

And it begins.

On the other hand, you can own several alpha slot powers simultaneously, and swap them in and out with few restrictions.

Also note that it's possible to make multiple objects use the same text. If you wanted to group together a boss fight with hostage rescues (one hostage is in fact an enemy) using "hostages to rescue" as the plural text and "Rescue the last hostage" as the singular text for each event will count it down normally (3 hostages to rescue) regardless of whether the hostile hostage is encountered first, second, or last.

Just make sure you three slot for running speed. That'll learn 'em.

The one I got dropped on a Kahn task force. It had that description as well. I suspect this might be unintended.

FWIW, the same issue that prevents you from dropping the mission also prevents you from accessing the option to abandon the arc entirely while that mission is active. I was unable to test the hypothesis that Trapdoor becomes unkillable if you had the mission open during the patch.

I was, however, able to finish it on the affected character by tagging along with someone else running it. That character's mission was not affected by the bug I encountered, and I am now pretty much convinced that it was a bug. Trapdoor was downed, my -regen powers worked as advertised on him, and all was well.

I am more convinced than ever that Trapdoor was bugged somehow in my mission, even if I now lack the ability to duplicate the circumstance. An NPC that depends on regeneration is something that a rad, even a rad defender, should be able to defeat.

Adding defense to a resistance based set will noticeably improve performance even if you fall well short of the soft cap. I have a fire tanker with just under 30% defense that does quite well. Resistance based sets are built around the notion that you should still live even if you get hit with everything, so not getting hit by some attacks helps a lot even if you get hit with some.

I don't own that particular keyboard but I have a programmable keyboard from Logitech. Mine, at least, will load custom profiles based on the game that you are playing. If you tried setting up binds out of game and then load the game, it may be overwriting your binds with a default. You might try seeing if there's a CoH profile and editing that, or editing the binds with the game loaded.

I doubt that's enough after the recent patch. My rad defender has at least that kind of -regen natively, and it did not faze him in the least. It seems he is getting the regen buff whether his clones are out or in LOS or not.

Single mission arcs are a personal interest of mine. I try to pack as much of a story as I am able into a single mission; "Death by Snoo-Snoo" and "Who is Kidnapping the World's Great Philosophers" are the ones I'm proudest of. They are difficult, high level arcs, and you will probably want a tank. I tend to be reluctant to start anything longer than three missions, myself, and that's about my personal limit.

Invulnerability is probably the best all around performer for what you are doing. You can get solid defense, good physical resistance, and run every TF in the game, including the ones that exemp you down. (If you want to know pain, tank Numina on a shield or ice tanker.)

For your goals, I'd suggest a specific build: Inv/Dark Melee. Dark Melee makes any tanker primary tougher. It builds on your defense, it gives you health back, and if you are out of end it might help there too.

He seems to be getting the regen buff whether his clones are there or not. Again, the defender I was trying to do this on was a rad defender, with a decent secondary (archery). -Regen is more or less the point of the character, but I could not touch him.