JadKni

Just finished Portal Bandits. Enjoyable custom faction, like a Longbow that doesn't make me want to pull my hair out.

Okay! Finished the arc through sheer force of will. Let me preface this by saying I like the arc and I love the faction, they were a real challenge and with one exception I'd say don't touch them. Now, that out of the way, no sane person can ever finish this arc in its' current state.

Short Checklist of Things That Would Make Me Five-Star This:
[*] Typo - Catalyst Healers "plany powers"
[*] Typo - Line break "<br>" in mission 4 clue interaction bar
[*] Mission 1 and 4 need a total overhaul, no sane player will EVER finish these. I don't mean this offensively, it's just that noone likes huge outdoor maps hunting for over 7 bosses. This alone took way too long. Suggest reducing the number of defender groups in 1 and 3 to 7/5 respectively and
condensing all of the Legions into one group (more challenging and less mind-bendingly tedious). Same goes for the final mission.
[*] Director Prime's status as 'Longbow' in mission two was out of place, and his boss group is currently bugged to be comprised of 5th Columnists, but that's a quick fix. Maybe recolor him not to look like Longbow if you wanted him to seem as though he were an enemy commander of some sort, and possibly give him dialog suggesting this.
[*] Catalyst seemed quiet at the finale for the Big Bad. Was this intentional or did his text bug out?



Long Feedback of Why I'll Withhold My Rating For Now:

This was actually in and of itself fairly fun. The problem, is that it's simply too tedious. Outdoor maps can be frustrating, and this is made up of four. Furthermore, they all require hunting all over the place looking for the bosses who largely don't stand out much. If you reduced the number of bosses you had to hunt down and beat up, it'd make this a lot more enjoyable.

This brings me to the second thing that really killed the arc for me. Legion is essentially just a different looking Catalyst Archer as far as I could tell, impeding you only through the time you waste hunting through the entire map for all of the Legions. My suggestion here would be to make a separate "Catalyst Hounds" faction containing only Legion so that you can simply have the player(s) fight a single group of Legions. If you were to do this, you might want to take her Dark Miasma away so that she doesn't stack a zillion tar patches and annihilate the player. I'd actually recommend this regardless, to make her something more than a renamed Catalyst Archer. Sonic Resonance or something would be teeth-gritting difficult without driving people (well, me at least) insane.

Another thing that I found strange was the Amazons. I won't say remove them outright, because there's already enough hard LTs, but they seem to disproportionately weak compared to the other members of the faction that if you needed to cut one for filespace to make any of the above changes to Legion, you could definitely axe them. They seem sort of out of place, if you ask me.

Catalyst himself seemed "easy" (and I only say this compared to the rest of this extremely difficult arc) compared to the rest. I don't usually reccomend using ambushes with bosses, but here, it only makes sense (given that we've already killed something like eight-gazillion of his toadies PRIOR to his full-scale invasion) and would make the fight more interesting. Maybe even have Legionsquad ambush here instead of just being in the mission?

Speaking of craaazy difficulty, I'm fine with an all-LT faction with tons of debuffers, sappers, and extreme-level empaths, but you really need to make it clear that this arc is extremely hard in the arc summary.


All that said, I'll gladly replay it and see what changes you make to it in the future. The arc has potential, it's just a little on the masochistic side right now. With all that out of the way, here's my own overly-difficult pet project.

Arc ID: #251938
Author: @JadKni
Name: Pest Control


I've played through your psychotic arc, now play through mine!

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I take this thread as yet more evidence that the rating system was a big mistake.

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Because a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system just wasn't good enough.

Am I remembering incorrectly, or didn't rains also do additional scourge damage or something of the sort?

You know the worst thing about this thread is all the

... running one AE mission multiple times in a row is exploiting now?

Given that there was variation and in absolutely no wild scenario is a faction composed entirely out of legitimate LTs going to be easier than a group with minions... I'm going to say no.

Is it [censored] [censored] [censored] or is the [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] [censored] of [censored]?

City of Runescape, folks.

Crabs are going to outdo either of them in AoE, but between the two... I'm guessing that banes have better burst, and huntsmen do more over time.

Early-level Thorns/Thorns speaking.

/Thorns seems to have awesome AoE. Not having played /Fire to a sufficient level, I won't say it has better. But I have great AoE, and no endurance problems, so I'd say it made off fine.

Man, I'm glad a three-year greenhorn like me hasn't reached the point where PVP and farming is all there is to do. Now that would be intolerable.

Some "Lusca emote" where Lusca is throwing barrels and lifting ships until attacked would be interesting. Doubt that they'll create an emote like that just for atmosphere though...

Well, yes, and you're confusing DPS with DPA as far as I can see.

It's possible to use a chain of attacks that average a DPA greater than 300, that doesn't mean using multiple attacks in one second that do more than 300 however. That's just a lot of high, high DPA attacks.

I did look at it in Mids though, and I have to say... I know what my next toon is now.

It's weird, because last I checked, they're required from the assault sets at LT level or something. AE mobs seem to abuse them, so I'd actually like the ability to take them away.

I think you're misunderstanding how DPS is used, actually. He's talking about a 300 DPS chain. While this is pretty hard to imagine, it doesn't mean that he has a power with a DPA of over 300. Though he'd have to average that, so I'm not sure how you'd achieve that.

That's quite a refutation, but it's probably wasted. Alt tends to ignore anyone who doesn't fervently agree with his bat-[censored] insane views on farming.

Not even I would buy the pack if this change was made, and I bought the last two without a second thought.

That seems more like a defense IO. So many times I wish I had that on my SR scrapper.

Your notion offends me rant rant flame.

Sidewinder, I think.

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Masterminds dispose of their minions without a second thought. They are seen as completely expendable and this is properly reflected in the Villain Masterminds. A Hero Mastermind presents a bit of a difficulty because they work just the opposite way: they don't treat their men like expendables, they treat them with care and dignity. They care about their troops' fate.

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I know it's a little late to talk about a hero mastermind-equivalent AT, but it got me thinking about a MM-esque setup with less expendable minions. Like replacing bodyguard with an inverse-bodyguard that makes the MM more powerful based on how many of his allies are around, and with stronger basic attacks.

Come to think of it, it'd be a pretty easy way to variate the sideswapped ATs to just switch their inherents out. Two inherents for each AT, one hero and one villain. [/rambling]

EDIT: Or, what Rigel said and I failed to read.

This would be great for a purple Resistance set if you ask me. A purple defense global strikes me more as being a scaling resist global or something, for some reason.

Would be neat to have a "Danger Room" for SG bases that basically functions like a MA terminal and contact.

The little buggers are also pretty resistant to everything but Fire and Cold, in one mob or another.

Got that right. That's why I get depressed when I see MArcs rated down solely for being "too difficult". Don't discourage groups that take actual thought to put down, damnit, this is the only place in the game where I need to be awake while playing!