Johnny_Butane

Just to clarify, I don't think she's the most powerful AV in the game.

But the point still stands that she takes a leap several magnitudes of power using a perma version of Vengeance that players will never get. How can the devs say we're getting to be on par with the NPCs in light of crap like that? How can they say we've gotten "more powerful" when the enemies take larger leap, right into purple town, for dubious reasons.

I still wouldn't buy it.

No thanks. I'm sick of them glorifying their NPC signature characters. We don't need a cut scene to keep rubbing our noses in it.

The so-called "shift" where our characters "are seen as more powerful than the signature characters" hasn't happened and isn't going to happen. The only thing they may do is make Statesman and Recluse look like bigger idiots.

Battle Maiden, Neuron and Bobcat are still big bags of HP and massive damage that can stand up to eight players. Incarnates didn't change that and the devs are full of BS for claiming it will. Different day, same old crap.



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I think he's got the right mentality.



I also think he's going to love the new Winter Event mission. Because I know I loved having my entire Primary power set negated and getting to see the devs start to use GM code for 'level-less' EBs and AVs to negate Incarnate Level Shifts as part of the 'Incarnate arms race' they're starting with players (guess who's gonna win).


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Well, the fact of the matter is, I feel weaker than I did before. Before, I could almost take down Battle Maiden on my own. I could at least hold my own against her. Same with Bobcat and Neuron.

So what did the devs do? They give Bobcat uber Vengeance that can two shot my Tanker and give Battle Maiden a rapid fire unresistible nuke that will put any of the Judgment attacks to shame even when they unlock.

But I get a minor boost to recharge.
Whee.


These two TFs are intended for the Alpha slot. They should have been tailored to demonstrate how the Alpha has improved us. Instead, IMO it backslides me back to level 25. I'm fighting the same enemies as before, the same NPCs, but they're amped way up and we only get a minor improvement. How is that supposed to make you feel powerful? In fact, if you removed the artificial -8 debuff, having the Alpha would help you very little on these TFs. It surely wouldn't make the difference on its own.

And don't say "wait for the rest of the Alpha". Even level shifted, the sword bombs are still going to slaughter anyone. I highly doubt the modest resistance and defense you'd get from the Very Rares are going to do much against Bobcat.

And don't say "wait for the other Incarnate slots after the Alpha". I know what four of other slots do. So far I am not impressed. Even with the Judgment, Interface and Destiny slots, I would be hard-pressed to call any player character a peer to these NPCs as they are now.

They made us 5% better and made the enemies 300% better. There's nothing to suggest that the two curves will be any different moving forward.



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Let's talk about intelligence. An intelligent hero would find out where these sword bombs are coming from and stop them, rather than try fighting her while having to run around like an ant being chased by a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

Also, you miss the point that she's STILL a giant sack of HP that has to be DPS'ed down.

Really, for me this is what it boils down to; they say stuff like this:

Well, the fact of the matter is, I feel weaker than I did before. Before, I could almost take down Battle Maiden on my own. I could at least hold my own against her. Same with Bobcat and Neuron.

So what did the devs do? They give Bobcat uber Vengeance that can two shot my Tanker and give Battle Maiden a rapid fire unresistible nuke that will put any of the Judgment attacks to shame even when they unlock.

But I get a minor boost to recharge.
Whee.


These two TFs are intended for the Alpha slot. They should have been tailored to demonstrate how the Alpha has improved us. Instead, IMO it backslides me back to level 25. I'm fighting the same enemies as before, the same NPCs, but they're amped way up and we only get a minor improvement. How is that supposed to make you feel powerful? In fact, if you removed the artificial -8 debuff, having the Alpha would help you very little on these TFs. It surely wouldn't make the difference on its own.

And don't say "wait for the rest of the Alpha". Even level shifted, the sword bombs are still going to slaughter anyone. I highly doubt the modest resistance and defense you'd get from the Very Rares are going to do much against Bobcat.

And don't say "wait for the other Incarnate slots after the Alpha". I know what four of other slots do. So far I am not impressed. Even with the Judgment, Interface and Destiny slots, I would be hard-pressed to call any player character a peer to these NPCs as they are now.

They made us 5% better and made the enemies 300% better. There's nothing to suggest that the two curves will be any different moving forward.


Are you sure you haven't just been Disoriented by his cheating mez attack?



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BS. She moves only when she wants to move. Call it an AI bug, but I've had a good half dozen runs now where she'll sit down in 2-3 overlapped patches and laugh at Taunt. These were at times when there couldn't possibly have been immobs on her.


You are wrong. The -range component is in every melee AT's taunt power, not just Tankers. As far as this encounter is concerned, it doesn't matter which melee AT taunts.


Swords can't fly and have no ranged attacks. Cheap Jetpacks means they can't touch anyone. Anyone can "ignore" them.


At range, no she doesn't. A Scrapper with a Jetpack or Hover and Challenge will do just fine.


I'd like to but the devs decided to make me run away from death puddles instead.


Some of us don't like most of our Primary power set being rendered moot and some of us like to use the other powers in our Secondary besides Taunt to FIGHT super villains; not RUN AWAY like ants.

If I wanted to be squishy and play poke-n-run, I'd be on my Stalker.


May it suffer the same fate as the Shard TFs and other examples of "challenge" that were wastes of dev resources.


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It's a giant F.U. to melee in general and to Tankers specifically.

None of the melee ATs can stand next to her long enough to really contribute significant damage. If Scrappers and Brutes can only muster hit and run jousting, why not just replace them with a ranged AT who can be attacking at all times, not just when the death puddles decide you should. Woe to the Stalker who tries to use AS.

And Tankers, my heavens does this encounter ever show the devs contempt for them. The puddles don't really care about resistance or HP differences. "Tanking" Battle maiden? She really doesn't have much to speak of in terms of direct damage. A Scrapper with Confront and a jet pack can do the job. What advantage does a Tanker have in this over a Scrapper? None. You're just as squishy, but you get the "privilege" of dealing even less damage.

If you're a Tanker on this, you're reduced to a taunt-bot. No, worse; you're a taunt-bot that has to run around like a &!*#ing ant being chased by a magnifying glass on a sunny day.

Great way to make players feel like they have "the powers of the gods". /sarcasm



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This is just speculation mixed with spoilers, but I think that between levels 20 and 45, Vanessa, perhaps with help from Beholder (who, surprise surprise, isn't dead yet) trains the escaped Seers that the Resistance takes in to be her Carnival of Light.

There is definitely more going on in the Praetoria storyline 20-45 than we have yet seen and I'm confident it'll get revealed in time.



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I'm glad someone else saw parallels there too.

Also, Rularuu Brutes are totally Mindless Ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindless_Ones




I look forward to smashing them in the Coming Storm.


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I was only speaking of the original hero ATs there. Stalkers do indeed have overspecialization issues. Redundancy issues? Less so, IMO. Anecdote: One of the most fun teams I've ever been on was a four man Stalker squad. We'd each pick a Boss, get into position and AS them in unison. Great fun.



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Actually, this mission is just more evidence to support everything I've ever said that Tanker defenses don't really benefit the Tanker. Tanker defenses will bottom out to this debuff the same as a Scrapper. Considering how fast the debuff stacks, and to such a degree, the difference doesn't really matter. Meanwhile, a Scrapper's superior damage will likely allow him to drop Lady Winter faster, thus decreasing the time in that a chance hard hit could land before she's dead and maybe even before the debuff can stack fully. I point you to Test_Rat's anecdote.

Meanwhile, I've admitted and pointed out that other ATs have gotten/still get screwed over by the devs too, and that it's unfair no matter who it's happening too. You say Tankers 'had it easy'. I say they put up with more crap than a lot of ATs and are probably the AT besides Blasters that suffers the most from overspecialization and redundancy issues.

Then it would only be -10% res and -5% def to all. That's really minor for a gimmick. IIRC, the wording of the power's description suggested to me that it was supposed to be more hazardous the longer you spent close to her, which suggests it's supposed to stack.


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If you can deliver the burst damage you can defeat her before the debuff gets a chance to stack too much and maybe even before she can land her big hit.



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Maybe people rolled a melee AT because they like playing like that. Maybe they don't want yield like a weakling or fight like a coward (which hit and run tactics could be viewed as) or resort to cheating with temp power "toys" because a sadistic GM decided they should have to. Maybe they have an Ice Tanker and wonder why Lady Winter making them colder with [Crystallize] doesn't actually make them stronger (because you know, being cold is their thing)? Maybe people don't like their AT (or kind of AT) being singled out to get shafted in several new content encounters by a designer just because?



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In the interest of not derailing this thread further (the feedback here on Lady Winter to get seen the the devs) I propose we agree to end this branch of discussion about the game's overall difficulty at this post.

That being said, no I have not/will not start a thread about difficulty creep because I see it as mostly pointless. There's been a number of complaints by others that the devs have snubbed "casual" players with i19 and those voices get shouted down, usually getting ganged up on by the "power players" I spoke of in my previous post. The devs have chosen their course. They've never listened to my feedback, suggestions or complaints in the past, they aren't going to start now.


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Those people who complain about the game being too easy tend to be min/maxer munchkins with purple IOs and the "right" power set combos. They do everything they can to make the game easy for themselves and then they complain there's no challenge.

The tools for players to challenge themselves are in the game and have been for some time. If they find TFs and arcs too easy they can force a debuff on themselves, deactivate their enhancers and restrict themselves to just Primary and Secondary power sets. Run a STF like that and it's plenty challenging.

But those people don't take advantage of those tools and still complain the game is too easy. That's because it's not about personal challenge to them, it's about E-peen. It's about them showing off their min-maxed builds and said build's capability to do content others can't or struggle with and feeling superior. Catering to these people is always a bad idea unless the devs want to further stratify the player base.


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It's not ONE mission, it's a trend. This mission, the Apex finale, Protean, the Cimerorans depending on your power set, the Vanguard arc. I've seen this happening more and more and I don't like it at all.


Sorry, I don't accept that defense. Any time and resources put towards creating content few enjoy or want to do are resources not put to good use. Just because it's a one-off holiday mission doesn't excuse the devs from making something enjoyable for everyone.


Again no. Two wrongs don't make a right. Screwing over melee in new content doesn't balance out screwing over other ATs at other times. If the devs want to right the scales, they should be either looking at those ATs originally getting smashed or looking at the older content smashing them.

Also, look at this from my perspective as a guy who plays a lot of Tankers: I'm punished with lower damage every second I play because I get superior survivability. That's regardless of content. "Slow but safe", that's the Tanker's trade off and sacrifice. If the devs take away my survivability, or put me in a situation where it's meaningless, or even much less meaningful, what do I have left? Just crappy to mediocre damage. What does it matter if Frost 'Ho kills me in 5 seconds on a Tanker instead of 3 seconds on a Scrapper? She's a lot more dangerous to me than other EBs, but she's not a lot more fragile than them; I'm still just chip chip chipping at her like always. I'm still forced to make the trade off for superior survivability, but it doesn't do a heck of a lot.

Do you think that's fair? I don't. I also don't think it's fair that Blasters, the other end of the spectrum, are utter glass cannons and their damage doesn't always really help them that much. Remember what I said about two wrongs? Again, I don't think screwing melee ATs like Tankers because it was done to others is right or fun for anyone.



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This brings up another issue for me related to melee. For a lot of people, since IOs entered the scene, defensive T9s have been excised from their build, depending on the power set of course. We used to debate weather to have Unstoppable in builds because it was highly situational, the crash was harsh and people didn't like risk. Those debates stopped almost altogether since IO's and softcapping Def "solved" the issue and Unstoppable became even more situational and a lot stopped using /taking it.

As I said in another thread about the Apex TF, the situation is changing again. Gameplay is changing. The Apex TF finale can be really unfun for a Stoner. It's not easy to casually 'dodge' fire from the sky in Granite. It's downright cruel to ask someone to mange tanking, constantly teleporting, watching their teammates and attacking at the same time (because no one wants to spend the fight being on Taunt-bot).

IMO, the defensive T9s as a whole need to be re-examined if we're expected to depend on them again. The devs have been changing the way the game is to be played, and a lot of the T9s weren't even that optimized for the the way players were/are really playing the game.

The devs want us to start using these T9's again, I get that. But I maintain that a number of the T9s really need to be updated for today's and tomorrow's game; Granite and Unstoppable being two examples.



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That's the ticket. It stacks quickly and lingers fairly long. If you don't have Hide Auto Powers turned off the icon doesn't show up and you can't even see how much it's stacking or even where the debuff is coming from. That's pretty effing cheap, devs. And again, it's massively biased against melee ATs.


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But this is a Justice League series. All the kids are in the Justice League and are interacting with other League members and villains. The show is just not from the perspective of the Big Seven.



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I think my concern in completely justified. Just like the i19 TFs they've added another bit of content that's hard just for the sake of being hard. She drops freakin' CANDY CANES, not PvP IOs. It's supposed to be a fun part of the Winter Event. We have difficulty settings for people who want a harder fight, it shouldn't be forced on everybody, and having a disclaimer in the flavor text doesn't excuse it.

I don't like the trend I'm seeing here: missions that dump all over melee ATs, are hard for the sake of being hard (while we have difficulty settings for that) and that don't have rewards proportionate to the increased effort.


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What's her Greater Ice sword hitting you for? It was doing 940+ Lethal/Cold to an Invul Tanker. I can only imagine it to a Regen. Again, another run and she smokes me at melee range, but can only do piddly little 100 damage ranged attacks.

That's fail. And I'm not implying her ranged damage should be increased if a dev is reading this.

As an aside, I don't like how her "hidden level" bodes: IMO, the only reason for her using the GM code is to make sure Incarnate Level Shifts don't work against her. This means the devs are already starting an arms race against Incarnates that's splitting over into normal content. You know, you're not really "making players moar powerful" if you also make all the enemies "moar powerful" too and cancel out/nullify progress players make.

This is a holiday event mission for crying out loud.



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It's her, not you. I think it's a combination of her melee attacks doing heavy damage and her debuffs exacerbating them.

She'll quickly kill even Tankers if you fight her toe-to-toe, but at range, she's got nothing. Hovering I took her out with Blackwand and EMP Glove and she did negligible damage to me. I'll type that again: Blackwand and EMP Glove!

FFS, that's extremely stupid.

Either she's broken and doing way too much melee damage or this is just further evidence of the devs giving the shaft to melee classes, just like in the Apex TF in i19 and just like the Protean fights.


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Was I the only one thinking "Rikti Monkey!"

Seriously. Little psionic buggers that hop around...



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