Infernus_Hades

Time Sink.

More levels without actually adding levels.

Any mix of an all Corruptor team.

Did an all Corr ITF and and we flew thru it.

2 x fire/kin
2 x fire/dark
2 x son/rad
2 x ice/anything

You get the AoE terror of 4 Fire corrs, the -res of sonic, the awesomeness of 2 Tarpatch Blizzards with 4 Rains of fire.

Seriously nothing can touch this team.

Edit: I would make the Ice/Traps and now it is unbeatable.

My first was a BS/SR scrapper and back on day one they were just plain AWFUL.

My second was a Fire/Fire blaster and third a Fire/Fire tank.

Either a Fire/Dark corr or a Spines/Electric Scrapper a Spines/Fire isn't bad either but is more squishie and has less endurance.

I find the issue is one of direction.

A director of action sets the table, shows what's at stake, shows what needs to be done and then lets the action take a twist that allows the players to do it.

The ITF nearly does this and that is one of the reasons its popular.

The stage is not set in most of the game and it doesn't require a cut-scene to do it. The huge robots in the ITF. I would love to see those in the streets of Cimeroria ala Babbage in the Synapse TF. You put out the call a robot is stomping thru please help.

Now it gets personal. Most of the play is remote mash buttons and roll. But now let's have to ask for help! Or better yet let us prove our team is elite and able to handle this alone. The direction is there, set the challenge let the players develop it.

I want Aliens. I want screaming hordes of creatures that take me not to put me in a cell - they take me for food or to lay eggs in me. Remember the Dr. Vahzilok mission where they gave you the disease? What about a room similar to the layer cake cave but if you fall they can whisk you away and your team now gets to try and rescue you and you try and escape.

I think that is the problem we have is the direction is lacking and the cost of success is rarely there. People like the Protean arc because we get clones and one our clones dies for US. Personally, I would love to see the clones actually battling the hordes and fall at our side.

Have the AV fire an attack designed to kill us and they dive in to take the shot for us.

Yup. My Fire/dark corr just laughed.

Controllers, Blappers and melee are the ones who can have the close attacks that get you caught. I have the master of on all of mine but it seems rather meaningless with deaths on the team - just to me anyways.

Raymond Feist wrote a groups of stories called the Riftwar.

What happens when you are happy in your life quietly rolling along and living in certainty of the Universe and a Rift opens dumping a passle of enemies in your front yard?

That is what has happened. In the Paragon universe all was well - everyone knew the bad guys were backed by Recluse and along came a new big bad and a new challenge.

Some heroes will try and drift along ignoring the changes until slapped in the face with them. It is normal human behavior. If you wish to ignore the Rift pumping Warwalkers into Kings Row? Ok!

I for one, welcome battling our new Overlords!

Here is the thing - they say Fire tanks have more damage - on a GOOD team they don't need your paultry damage. A couple of blasters, some scrappers and you get a taunt off drop a burn patch and everything is dead.

All you need is to survive the alpha.

Electric does that better.

Fire tanks on a BAD team need both alpha survival and long term survival. Electric is better at both. The damage as you said is not that far off while the survival is.

I have been leveling a Fire/Electric and quite happy. I have several nice knockdown powers to add long term and immediate survival. I also have the winter's gift slow resist and other slow resists slotted that gives me 60% resistance to slows. This mean those dreaded Council with the ice rifles of death barely scratch me.

Fire/Fire is fun but really squishie without a serious IO expense.

First its not "hard" - the LONGEST Apex I have run now was 35 mintes.
I have done it multiple times on 3 different characters.

Corruptor no deaths in 3 runs.

Scrapper 1 death from pulling BM off a squishie and getting blued, screwed and tatto'd.

Controller multiple deaths due possibly to my power colors (blue and white Ice/Storm) or the swirling swords just catching up to us.

Ok, I will buy the "it's different" attempt - then make the battle more fluid, drop suppression and rooting during this fight. Then let's go to town.

No, attack powers don't "require" rooting due to the engine. Understand ALL Armor powers used to root. The devs changed that to powers that ONLY AFFECT YOU - don't root now. I have been in the game since day one and so the powers and the affects on the players have changed many times - at some points in new content they have been bugged and NOT rooted when they should and were switched back.

I used to hate being detoggled (another old effect) on my tanks and trying to jump into the fight only to fall as I hit each toggle and was rooted.

So you want something new? Fine let's make a TF where all the rooting on BOTH sides is dropped - enemies and players are not rooted. Now it would be a swirling dervish of battle and I would flatout love it.

Statesman didn't like "jousting" even tho you can do exactly what he was talking about with a KINETIC.

The suppression doesn't take affect and ask any squishie what happens if you are in range and fire a power off? It doesn't matter how far or fast you run the reply attack hits you around corners or at any range.

It was a strawman arguement and it makes the game less dynamic.

Strangely enough - I could deal with the swords fairly easily.

They zoom around but really they aren't any different than any other foe. On my scrapper I died once while peeling BM off a squishie and a blue patch dropped.

On my Fire/Dark corr I never died and was able to keep moving around the edges and debuff BM while dropping tarpatches to slow the champions and swords.

On my ice/Storm troller - I died multiple times as the swords aren't knocked back and they just mobbed me as i sought to slow BM. The blue patches while you are running white and blue Ice storms and Ice slick............

Well I would not have an issue with it except for one thing - why am I rooted?

If I could attack, bunny hop or whatever as you can in most games and in fact rooting is added in this game and occasionally it has been dropped on some powers by accident - why am I rooted?

I can fire an attack at an enemy and even while around a corner his reply is instant. I can't strafe and be out of range. So what is the point of rooting us? I love to move and fight - you say adapt and learn - I say it's a silly mechanism.

I do play more than one game and adapting to movement is great if I can move. So drop the roots and let's bang. I guess your idea of difficult and a challenge really differs from mine.

Status effects and shortcuts are not what I call a challenge, why not? Because only part of the characters are affected. Tanks, scrappers, brutes and stalkers don't even sweat the status effects - nor do Doms that pop as it starts.

So only the squishies are affected and it is just an annoyance.

Playing the Apex TF over the last day has aquainted me to the insanity of developers dropping spots that move randomly on you while expecting you to use powers that root you.

Then you have the melee players saying well you need to pay attention - all while being stunned by some of the Champions and unable to actually move.

Is this the best we can expect? A gimmick to drop instant death is the best thing we can expect for making a challenge? How about adding enemies without status effects but yet with armor on all of them? I did this on an AE mission and everyone loved it. I had a few enemies that had specific hard hitting attacks that would hurt squishies - so the melee learned to handle those - I had some resistant to slows - some resistant to fire.

Mab Queen of Winter

Mab lives in the Winter Court and you will travel to the land of the Fey, to survive there you must bring everything you will need with you.

If however you are defeated and must be Rez'd in the zone "hospital" or if you click on a glowie you and your team now owe a favor to the Winter Court. You must now perform an act of Sabotage on the Summer Realm.

The Winter Court is highly resistant to cold powers. The Summer Court is highly resistant to Fire powers. Mab cannot be "defeated" her plans however can be interrupted. You can choose to foil her by finding out thru actually reading the clues what she requires each mission and trying to stop her plots.

I would have it a 6 mission arc similar to the Positron Part 1 and 2 with however 18 different possible missions. Each mission would have NPC's who will "help you" for a price. It may be something simple - it may be you lose the use of Temp powers and Vet awards during the TF - similar to a Master of run.

You don't actually defeat either Mab nor the Queen of Summer - however your choices give you a power such as the Winter's Gift 10% resistance to slows slottable in Brawl or Summer's gift would be a power +10% resistance to fire damage slottable in brawl.

This is a Unique drop - 1 per character.


I would make this a mix between rescuing Winter/Summer characters and defeating/assisting either side of a battle. The charcters would be in yellow similar to Praetoria until you choose to fight for one side. I would develop custom character such as Nuada Silverhand and other famous Fey like the Huntsman of the Wild Hunt. Can you imagine fighting the Wild Hunt and if defeated you join them to fight your team? Winning and losing would not fail you - just change the balance of power.

Edit for bodacious typos.

Because nothing says Hero - like being out of endurance after taking down a single boss and having all your toggles drop.

Fire - has the most overall damage due to massive AoE's and the scourge effects of Rain of Fire.

A normal corruptor attack chain:
Fireball
Fire Breath
Rain of Fire and clean up whatever still is twitching


Rad - has a powerful -def to use against hard targets but not as solo friendly as fire or energy.

Energy - is fine but more single target oriented. Few AoE attacks and Knockback which can make it tricky to use with many of the secondaries.

Secondaries:
Dark is great with Fire and Rad and if you are patient and open with torrent and THEN tarpatch your enemies will be on there backs and debuffed with Energy.

Kinetics is good with all 3 best with Fire as the AoE's are nice once Fulcrum shifted.
Cold or Thermal is good with all 3.

Storm if you use it wisely can be good with Fire and Rad but tricky with Energy.

I would get writing past Chapter 3 in my book and perhaps even finish it.

I know I will finish it one day but I have rewritten the first 3 chapters 4 times and each time it was better. The first 3 are now very good and all I have inflicted them to read for me are actually saying please finish it so I can read the whole thing.

I have to be off for knee surgery a couple of days and so I am hoping I can do a little of both

I made a fun new character Sapphire Thistle a plant/thorns dom.

I used the metallic suit and then used the Angelic pattern with the Scotland flag colors.

I also get the hit 35 and die issue. I used to get past it doing the sewer trial several times - but they "fixed" it and now its nearly impossible to get a team to even bother with it. We used to do that trial from 35-40 to get past those 5 levels of grind.

That has always been the sticking point and its a tough spot to get past. Once into your 40's it goes fast to 50.

The cure for getting stuck:

Make a flavor of the month character - one that is obscenely over-powered.

I would try a Fire/Dark corruptor or an Electric/Ninjitsu Stalker, maybe a Spine/WP scrapper- a Plant/Kin controller or a Plant/Thorns dom.

Something that just levels itself. Then just make it a point of once a week run a TF with it - you will see how freaking awesome it is and then it gets the juices flowing again.

Been here forever and have deleted oh so many 50's. Unless it has that spark the thing that makes me smile - I cash them out and re-roll sometimes with the same name.

Electric/TA is a LOT of fun.

So very much control its crazy - unlimited endurance and oh so many options.

I was teamed with a couple Fire Tanks this week during the LGTF's on my BS/WP scrapper.

The Fire tanks repeatedly died and I just kept rolling. It took only a couple of mobs and I took over as the one accepting the alphas. They just dropped too fast.

They are great for damage but honestly I am leveling a Fire/Electric tank and he is FAR more survivable than my SS/Fire Brute. Both are in their mid-30's and with only a few IO's. The Electric knockdown really helps to mitigate the alphas. I really love fire armor but is so weak as to not be in the same coversation as many of the other armors.

Unless you really work hard to close the gaping defense hole its a tough road. I tried to advocate that Temperature protection have a 5% + def to all but Psi added - but that didn't work out :P

Or go with a nice AMD Phenom Quad core. I did and it is VERY fast.

I see it both ways, I have been here since the beginning and so 81 months in doing the same TF multiple times on different alts can get boring.

Now if the team you are on has a sense of humor it goes a LOOONG way towards kill alls rather than speed runs.

I was in a group last night and we decided to save the ever yakking Glacia and Fire tank girl. Well when I accidentally fired off Gale instead of Ice slick - everyone just laughed - they also found it just as amusing as I did when I would throw a tornado into the huge spawn rooms just for the chaos it would cause. Some people would have gotten mad but we all just realized it was funny to see them flying thru the air and in the end they would come and get us anyways.

Some teams are loose and have fun - others just want to complete it. Both are good just learn to change your mindset.

I am the exact opposite - I haven't done the Apex but did do the Tin Mage.

The team I was on was a ridiculous powerhouse and we took down what was supposed to be the hardest AV - Director 11 in 22 seconds.

After that it was just a steamroller.