Heraclea
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:Well, apparently I do just plain suck.Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
What the hell are you talking about? Gaussian's arc may be rough with the difficulty cranked up but it's by no means impossible to solo for anyone. Unless you just plain suck.
But my experience is that if you attempt to take point for a team on a Vanguard mission, the result is usually almost immediately dying, and without even the chance to react. And for the characters I like best, if I'm not taking point I'm just leeching. If there is a strategy that allows me to actually contribute by taking point and getting aggro, I have not found it yet.
I've decided to have one more go at soloing the arc, just to see if anything has changed. But given my current experience, I consider Gaussian's arc unplayable. Indeed, it's probably the prime example of unplayable content, and the sort of thing I would be very disappointed to see more of. It's a better example than Ghost Widow is. I just forget it since, unlike STF, I have not run it since shortly after it was introduced. I mentioned Ghost Widow mostly because of a discussion on one of my server's channels about not wanting scrappers for the STF because of GW.
(And the Gaussian arc forces you into the wrong decision anyways. Dietrich is right.) -
Quote:Hurl actually does a fair amount of damage if taken, but I've seldom taken it; most of my Super Strength tankers have Fly and Air Superiority on at least one of their builds. Fault is a no-damage attack, but it does have range, and the range can be increased; you can get it out to thirty feet or so if you want to slot that way. Which is kind of interesting.Originally Posted by Rylas
As has Super Strength as well. But those have had minimal damage attached to them, haven't they?
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Quote:Last time I tried, I found that even if the bosses spawned as lieutenants, they still had the boss powers and could still hit you with the Curse of Weariness. At that point, even if you survived the encounter, there's little to do other than leave the mission and log to a different character. I'm not going to spend merits for the temp power.Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
I dunno, you could run them on oldstyle heroic (0/1player/noboss), rather than dropping them, assuming thats what you mean by the 18 day thing.
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Quote:I would start playing Spines on a tanker at the drop of a hat if it were made available, but the issues seem to be fairly similar. On the other hand, the Kinetic attack set they're planning on introducing seems to have a number of short range attacks, and Stone Melee has always had one.Originally Posted by Rylas
If they move claws over to tanks, they'd have to tweak it a little. A cone knock-back power isn't ideal for most primaries. Not to mention it having two range powers, which may be a little outside the realm of tanker concepts (from a game point of view).
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Quote:The Gaussian arc has six missions that pit you against Vanguard, so it takes a minimum of eighteen days to get through it. Without it, you cannot proceed to Dark Watcher. I've just treated Serpent Drummer as the end of RWZ.Originally Posted by Emberly
Which content is this? I've never been roadblocked in the STF or the RWZ.
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Quote:Thank you, this is most helpful. I did take Tornado on an earlier suggestion here, and was left wondering what the situations might be where this attack would be useful on teams, since all it seemed to do was to interfere with mob concentrations and made debuffing them harder rather than easier.Originally Posted by StormyDarkness
As a note for outdoor maps (an subsequent indoor rooms that are a bit spacious), if you are fly/hovering above the enemies and using knockback powers, you'll knock them back into the ground. It'll lower airborne time (obviously) making your mitigation time worse, but it'll keep them in position of where you want them.
Another suggestion to you (since you're doing electric pool) is take the immobilize. Sure it won't deal as much damage as the melee attack, but when you are using tornado on the one remaining boss of the mob, use it. That'll give that boss -knockback and then use tornado on top of him. That'll grind him away quickly and will also debuff his defense so you'll be able to hit. With just the simple combo of a bit of accuracy in your attacks, tornado, and freezing rain, you should be able to hit MoG Paragon Protectors. If not your attacks, tornado is auto hit so he'll at least be taken down by a series of 1-5 ticks until he finally dies. For MoG'd PP, Tornado also shines that a boss flying through the air constantly can't attack to kill you. However, when I use my Storm/Dark on Manticore TFs, I laugh when a PP uses his T9. Go ahead and be resistant. I'll kill you anyhow.
As for set IOs and tornado, I'd suggest taking the Heel proc (-res) so then not only are you damaging and debuffing their defense, but you're also giving a chance to kill them faster. Great on AVs/GMs. They don't get KB'd (usually) anyhow so you're just using tornado as extra damage. -
Quote:On the other hand, being placed in a situation where you cannot use the playstyle or tactics that are the purpose of your AT is a situation that everyone ought to call "broken". It isn't much fun to be a mastermind that can't use pets, a brute that can't charge, a tanker that can't take aggro, or a controller that can't use controls. Pointing out that you can, say, just hold back and use your level 1 ranged attack or the Nemesis Staff instead of using the abilities you rolled a character to use --- this seems to me to be a situation that no AT ought to be required to settle for.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
The fact that you don't want to be placed in a situation where you might have to adjust your playstyle or tactics, is not an indicator that anything is 'broken' with the game.
Story arcs, or task force encounters where an AT can't use their core abilities, strike me as unfair. And if this sort of thing is basic and unavoidable content needed to move forward, the odds are that the character you want to play will end up being unwelcome on teams running it. I just don't want there to be roadblocks to further progress along a story line or some other content the way there is with the STF or the RWZ content. -
Quote:Glad you enjoyed yourself.Originally Posted by LSK
Not many people at TT on Victory tonight but we had fun, Grey made me miss my Fire/Fire tank so I went and tanked Hami with it after TT. I didn't even died not once.
But this was the first TT I remember failing. We had one team of eight, with widely varying levels; because of that we decided to go run some Maria Jenkins. After a false start, she served up the Mother Mayhem defeat all map.
We wiped a couple times against the psi mobs; that was not a serious issue. But we simply could not defeat Mother Mayhem until I broke down and fetched a rad/ defender. The mission took more than an hour to complete. -
Quote:I just can't agree. Having and using pets is as much the point of playing a mastermind as taking point and deflecting aggro onto yourself is the point of playing a tanker. Maybe Gaussian's unplayable arc would have been a better example than anything on the STF. It's been a long time since I've even tried to do anything from that arc, but I haven't seen anything indicating that it has been fixed.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
I just can't wrap my head around that attitude. I'll use your example of the MM on the final mission of the ITF. Even though I have never once had to dismiss pets for the final encounter, if I saw that the pets were causing the team to struggle or fail, I would happily dismiss them and assist the team to the best of my ability using the remainder of my available powers. I wouldn't get mad or sad that I had to change my tactics to help the team overcome that obstacle. On the contrary, I'd feel like I did my part.
An encounter where any character would find using their key abilities counterproductive would seem to me to go against the design philosophy that's allowed me to enjoy this game for so long, and to instead import things that I found distasteful in other games. I will admit a bias here: melee damage classes seem to always be the target for special disfavor in gimmick fights in other games, simply because forcing disengagement or conferring immunity to physical damage seem to be frequently reused gimmicks.
I want masterminds to be able to play and enjoy all the content, the same way I want tankers to be able to play and enjoy all the content. The more gimmicks are added, the likelier it becomes that your favored class will be disfavored for a mission, arc, or task force. Let's keep it simple and fun. -
Quote:On my server, people ran them fairly often during the first week or so they were available, with some catchup at the tail end of the events as well. For much of the time they were active, once the badges had been claimed, there was not much interest in them, because the number of people who could be mustered was too small to defeat them. No, thank God, they were nothing like WoW raids. But....Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano
Hmm thinking the Lord Winter and the new Halloween event this year were test beds for the upcoming Incarnate zone events.
If THAT is the kind of zone events they mean, then no, they're nothing like WoW raids and more akin to the public quests of WAR, they're short, sweet and to the point, fun for all the family as it were.
Success was also heavily contingent on the willingness of someone to relog in on a rad or some similar debuff set; that was a practical necessity. I know, because the events powerlevelled my rad/archery defender.
It should be different in Praetoria, where I presume zones will be designed specifically to accomodate these things, and they will not interfere with other content like Numinas or old contact street hunts. -
Quote:I'm supposed to have Assault and Maneuvers? Cowardly Jack ain't worth it, but I suppose I could respec him away. I thought it was supposed to get better once I had the pet, but I have to body pull him through mobs to get him to do anything. The character doesn't reliably have the endurance to run the leadership toggles, especially since Heat Loss still won't be back for another four minutes.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
Throw 8 Assaults and 8 Maneuvers on top of that just for giggles.
Never really found a controller that I liked to actually play. Retired my ill/emp a long time ago; didn't like healing. I tried fire/kin, and deleted the character even while free server transfers were available. I hated the secondary that much, and had to hide from tells to play the character on a team. This character is actually fairly popular on teams, but as far as I can tell her contributions are rather subtle.
Whether teams of eight controllers are better than one is beside the point, though. The more gimmicky encounters are put into the game, the more the player base will demand specific sets and specific builds to beat them. -
Quote:I have two high level controllers, an ill/emp and an ice/cold. The ice/cold is a lot more fun to play, but does not run missions at all; she'd take half an hour to finish a radio mission, and that's assuming that she stealthed to the end.Originally Posted by SpittingTrashcan
The funny part is that you think a team of 8 mind/emps would have a harder time than any other team you might name.
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Quote:It has ever been my understanding that it was fundamental to the design philosophy of this game that any team of the required size, featuring any ATs and any power sets, could successfully run any content that required a team. Neither tank nor healer nor buffer nor debuffer were required to do anything. A team of eight ice melee/fire armor tankers or mind/empathy controllers with only SO builds ought to be able to defeat Ghost Widow, in other words.Originally Posted by White Hot Flash
Why should the game change it's playstyle to fit your needs, and not the other way around? You say you don't like endgame content as it has been done in other games. Even if something similar creeps in to CoH, why does that matter to the rest of us? YOU don't like it, so don't do that content.
The problem with gimmicky encounters is that they threaten to break this design philosophy. The more gimmicky an encounter is, the more the player base becomes motivated to find a formulaic team that will succeed on it, and this leads to discrimination against character types that do not fit the formula.
I don't want this game to develop in a direction where everyone else wants to run frustrating content. -
This post is partially refactored from a post I made some months ago at Massively, and some posts I made in a thread in the Tanker forum about tanking the Statesman Task Force. I expect that quite a few aren't going to like what I have to say; so be it.
THE SPECIFIC BROKENNESS OF THE STATESMAN TASK FORCE
I don't want this game to start adding content for which "adequate preparation" means farming the inf to purchase large inspirations at the auction house, because that's what you need to come prepared. I've experienced this kind of raid preparation in other games. It's one of the reasons why I no longer play them.
To the extent that best practice for the tanker includes stocking up on specific large inspirations in preparation for the Lord Recluse fight, and those inspirations aren't made available on the map itself, the task force is essentially telling you that you must farm first for preparation if you expect to run it in the way that your teammates will expect you to run it.
Any game content for which Shivans or nukes are very helpful also causes problems. I haven't farmed for Shivans or nukes much since i13 made all mezzes auto-hit regardless of magnitude in PvP zones. Retoggling your several toggles with a minor offensive output like RttC or AAO is a nuisance even if you aren't simply left waiting to be killed. I don't want any situations where I'm expected to bring them.
WE DON'T WANT ANY MORE OF YOUR KIND
All gimmicky and "challenging" content disadvantages certain ATs, certain powersets, and certain combinations to some extent.
Most scrappers can't fight Ghost Widow: bringing one just means that one of your DPS characters has to be sidelined on an archvillain fight, which explains why melee characters are not in strong demand for the task force regardless of how good they are elsewhere. Most controllers aren't allowed to use their pets on Ghost Widow, or for that matter on the first three rounds with Romulus. If masterminds are allowed to run hero TFs, they won't be wanted here either. This is already broken, broken, broken, and will become more obviously so come Going Rogue.
I don't like the idea of content when some characters or ATs are forced to not use their signature powers or sit on their hands. There's too much of that already here. This is what gimmick fights inevitably turn into. People will figure out what the optimal team is to meet them, and if you don't meet the profile, you don't get to run on the character that you want to run. This is already becoming a problem with the Statesman Task Force.
THE PROBLEM WITH ENDGAME
Endgame is what drives me away from other games and keeps me in CoX.
In other games, there are no powersets or character concepts. One max level warrior or priest is potentially the same as another. If there are chosen abilities, it's usually possible to choose an entirely different set for a relatively small fee. No point in rolling a new character of a different race, and not much of a different faction. Once you're out of the starting area it's the same content everywhere. You have to be deeply disappointed with your class to reroll another; otherwise time spent on alt is time you're wasting not developing your "main".
CoX obscures the distinction between mains and alts; your main is the character that you are most interested in developing this week. It instead allows you to experience the same content in different ways. There are significant differences between power sets of a same broad character class. A Fire Armor tanker plays very different than a Stone Armor tanker. The duties of a Radiation defender and a Kinetics defender are quite different as well. And you can't turn your Fire tanker into a Stone: you have to create a new character.
The player base of CoX is sweetness and light compared to the player base of other games. The relative lack of prominence of loot is significant, I believe. For a long time, there simply was no loot: all enhancement rewards were simply bought from vendors with the game's only currency. When they added loot of a sort, they did it right. Loot was personal, private, and the actual enhancement kinds were transferrable. No one had to boast about valuable drops, if you want to keep them a secret, no one can know to envy you. And there were none of the political hassles involving random rolls, team leaders assigning prizes, or "need vs. greed" mechanics.
Loot and raiding endgames in other games are another kind of PvP. They are in fact the worst kind of PvP. This kind of PvP pits you against your teammates - against the people you are nominally teamed up with to beat the content. Judgments will be made about the value of your service to the organization, about your commitment. Disagreements fester. Office politics invades the game world.
I can categorically say that I absolutely do not want any of this kind of crap in City of Heroes. My fear is that they will somehow break the game by adding "endgame", and that the same kind of politics and drama that drove me away from other games will be imported here.
Please tell me it ain't so. -
Quote:Yes, they will. Jack Emmert to the contrary, failure and frustration are not what people are looking for when they play a superhero game. Anything that decreases the chance of success increases the chance of failure. Since Ghost Widow is a major roadblock in the STF, and a blaster helps more than any scrapper in getting past that roadblock, the scrapper will be told to bring another character.Originally Posted by Biospark
But reading this made me realize that just as in other MMOs people will devolve every challenge down into specific formulas of success (certain group mix, certain power choices, specific strategies) and anything else is deemed automatically a failure.
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Quote:No, not really, we do not. There are several reasons.Originally Posted by Panzerwaffen
No, it's really not. There should be challenges in the game that require forethought, preparation and intelligent play. There is more than enough (too much, in my opinion) content that any random team can sail through with very little effort. We need more content that is challenging, not less.
I don't want this game to start adding content for which "adequate preparation" means farming the inf to purchase large inspirations at the auction house, because that's what you need to come prepared. I've experienced this kind of raid preparation in other games. It's one of the reasons why I no longer play them.
I haven't farmed for Shivans or nukes much since i13 made all mezzes auto-hit regardless of magnitude in PvP zones. Retoggling your several toggles with a minor offensive output like RttC or AAO is a nuisance even if you aren't simply left waiting to die. I don't want any situations where I'm expected to bring them.
All such content disadvantages certain ATs, certain powersets, and certain combinations to some extent. Most scrappers can't fight Ghost Widow: bringing one just means that one of your DPS characters has to be sidelined on an archvillain fight, which explains the current situation regardless of how good they are elsewhere. Most controllers aren't allowed to use their pets on Ghost Widow, or for that matter on the first three rounds with Romulus. If masterminds are allowed to run hero TFs, they won't be wanted here either. This is already broken, broken, broken, and will become more obviously so come Going Rogue. I don't like the idea of content when some characters or ATs are forced to not use their signature powers or sit on their hands. That is not entertainment.
And, if other games' gimmick and challenge fights are any indication, the gimmicks and challenges usually make melee DPS classes the least desirable. Most of them feature tactics that require forced disengagement, or phases where only certain types of damage would work. These tactics tended to inherently prejudice melee characters and physical damage. I cannot recall a gimmick fight in another game that required melee damage. Others were essentially "progression" bottlenecks designed to test whether you had the gear you were supposed to have gotten from some previous and easier encounter. If more of that sort of thing is added to this game, expect tankers and scrappers to be further devalued.
I categorically do not want any crap like that in City of Heroes. Nothing would kill my interest in the game faster. I really hope that this Incarnate stuff is not an attempt to shoehorn this kind of grind into the game, because it really does not fit here. I have not found another game yet that I enjoy as much s this one, but if the Statesman TF is an indication of what the future holds, it may be time to move on. -
Quote:But does it come with Wave a Dead Lizard While Chanting defense?Originally Posted by Castle
Tai chi chuan (simplified Chinese: 太极拳; traditional Chinese: 太極拳; pinyin: tàijíquán; Wade-Giles: t'ai chi ch'üan)
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Quote:Cysts spawning amid the several AVs or in the passages someone is trying to stealth through are inconvenient.Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome
Why would you turn down Kelds for the STF?
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Quote:The culture on my main server (Victory) seems to be that scrappers are almost as unwelcome as Kheldians on STF runs, and are generally considered a liability. A second tanker is even worse, of course. No more than one scrapper per team will be tolerated, and that's usually considered a charity spot. Blasters are strongly preferred for DPS. This may be different on other servers.Originally Posted by Sarrate
Just because other TFs can be brain-dead easy like Citadel doesn't mean that harder ones are broken. It just means you need to plan a bit, which I don't think is a bad thing.
I think only one or two of my scrappers have the basic badges from the task force. Usually if I bring one I'll be asked to switch. My cold/ice controller and my rad/archery defender are much more popular; these characters got to 50 running task forces. I doubt that either has actually run a mission since King's Row. I'm not sure they could if they wanted to.
I have probably run LGTF 10x and ITF 50x for every STF.
There are other missions in the game that are almost as bad. The usual method for the invasion mission on Dr K is that only tankers and scrappers enter to take down the five portals. That has to be fun for folks sitting outside. -
Quote:What do they do?Originally Posted by Catwhoorg
I often bring scrappers to the STF. They aren't softcapped and contribute significantly versus GW.
(Please don't say "offtank the other AV(s) that got pulled along with GW.") -
Quote:Yes, that is fairly close to what I meant. (I doubt that a team full of controllers would "roll through" much of anything unless one was Kinetics. But they ought to be able to succeed at any task.)Originally Posted by Sarrate
Just to be clear, you think any combination of any ATs/powersets should be able to roll through any content without any preparation at all (such as buying/using inspirations)?
Am I misinterpreting what you said, or is that really what you meant?
I have always understood this to be a basic premise of this game's design philosophy and market strategy. No team should hit a brick wall because of the lack of a specific AT, much less a specific power set. Any mission where specific inspirations are part of the design of an encounter ought to be made available by the mission itself, the way the Eden trial works.
If these design decisions are in fact fundamental to the game, I think it follows that the STF is indeed broken. -
Quote:Within the context of this game I'd say that "preparation" and "team makeup" are the polar opposite to the qualities that make it unique and enjoyable among competing MMOs. All characters are supposed to be able to run all the content, and the lack of a debuffer, a buffer, a healer, a ranged or a melee attacker, or for that matter a tank aren't supposed to leave any team dead in the water.Originally Posted by Clouded
Because we came prepared and took 10 minutes to make sure we had the best combination of support, etc for our team make-up.
The STF is not like that, and as such is a problem in the context of this game. -
Quote:An encounter where any one of the ATs or powersets can't contribute anything at all, or where one of a small handful of power sets are required for success, is a broken encounter.Originally Posted by Clouded
Having a challenging encounter for the end game is considered broken?
Tanking the Recluse encounter requires both softcapped resistances and defenses above the softcap, easily achievable by only some Tanker primaries, or the prodigious consumption of top tier inspirations that must be hoarded or bought. This alone would make it a borderline broken encounter. More importantly, the Recluse fight all but requires a toggled debuff from a defender, controller, or blaster ancillary pool. Not every power set of the required ATs even gets one. This too suggests that the encounter is broken.
Only a scrapper with softcapped melee or negative defense, or a ranged attack, can contribute to the Ghost Widow fight. I'd call that an obviously broken encounter. -
Quote:This, exactly --- which more or less raises the question as to whether the STF is broken and not much fun. (Ghost Widow is probably even more broken than Recluse is, and the entire design is even more unfair to scrappers than it is to tankers.)Originally Posted by je_saist
Lord Recluse is "supposed" to be designed so that no "single" tanker can solo tank him. If my memory serves correctly, you'd need a defense percent rating of about 75% or higher to have a "soft cap" against him, and with the Red Tower active, he's supposed to hit hard enough to over-power even capped Smash / lethal defenses.
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Quote:This is pretty much my strategy. Defense is hands down the most effective form of damage mitigation in the current game, but you need to have a fallback.Originally Posted by VoodooCompany
RE: 30 - 35 % Defense......
This is the range I shoot for for most everything that has even a smidge of defense already in the build. I've seen literally no difference in the amount of incoming damage versus the 2 characters that I have with 45+% defense (both VEATS, with a separate Bane and Hunts build, all of which generally have 55+%) while fighting up to +1 level mobs, Bosses included. Once -Def attacks actually hit, things can go south of course. I don't know the drop off, but I know at +2, the 30 - 40% range starts to get hit more often, but it's not like you just lost whatever defense you had. It's plenty survivable, regardless of solo or teamed.
One of my two favorite scrappers has a couple defense bonuses, but is nowhere near the softcap. She is built to maximize a specific kind of debuff, and has four different procs for recharge slow --- one in Quills, one in Lunge, one in Caltrops, one in Rise to the Challenge. Recharge slow is the functional equivalent of defense, because it means you are hit less often.
The other is a defense based shield scrapper, but is only softcapped against melee. Then again, all she has to do is last long enough to gather up any scattered mobs so that she can use Shield Charge, and she has a recharge based build focusing on frequent Shield Charge.
Defense has other issues. It does not exemp down well. Losing key powers like Weave or specific armors and toggles means you're naked to some damage type or position. You want misery, take a level 50 reflex scrapper used to living at the softcap on a Positron. Every level you lose, every bonus you lose and every reduction in the effects of enhancements, is another hole in the wall. I'd much rather tank Posi on a fire than on a shield.