JordanB

For a person who thinks this:

It boils down to this:

Either you're too incompetent to obtain the alpha shift, which means you're probably too incompetent to be effective in trials,

OR

You're too self-centered to care that obtaining the alpha shift increases the chances for success for everyone on an iTrial league, in which case you probably shouldn't be in a multiplayer environment.

Whine and moan all you want, but someone who is leading a trial can request, or even demand, what ever parameters suits his/her fancy. The most egregious whiners when it comes to the level shift issue never step up to lead their own (flat-fiftyfest) trials, and thus never have to bear the responsibility of a failed trial, even though they're probably the largest reason trials fail. These arguments all boil down to one thing: People who bawl and cry about player-created level-gating are only doing so to divert attention from the actual problem, themselves. "Look, I'm a useless tard, but if I scream enough at Major T, people won't notice!"

Keep throwing your temper tantrums people. It just makes you easier to pick out and put on /gignore. When the dust settles, we can finally leave the dead weight where it belongs.

If I had to guess, they were rushing to get the ambush farm nerf live at the expense of all else.

So let us be silly. Or even freakin silly. What business is it of yours? It's still a step up from obnoxiously childish, meddlesome, and plain old mentally retarded. I can PM that to you if it will make you feel better.

Confucious say, "Man with two heads talking too much with a**".

Keep it up Zwill. This is an intentionally public acknowledgement to you.

Horrible misuse of the word "exploit" there.

Anyway, I was just working on a mini-project to contribute to this thread.

Forcefield/energy defender + shivan (with powerboost bubbles) vs. mother mayhem.

And failed.

HOWEVER, Knowing her pattern... and getting the right inspirations to survive the shivan downtime, I'd have her beat in 2-2.5 shivans.

Shivans are just silly ridiculous, Ultimus's boasting is pretty old, but the issue is a legitimate one.

Getting the shivan was fun though, I just stalked a villain doing his/her own shivan hunting and entered the firebase with impunity using PFF.

Nerf forcefield defenders

Horrible misuse of the word "exploit" there.

Anyway, I was just working on a mini-project to contribute to this thread.

Forcefield/energy defender + shivan (with powerboost bubbles) vs. mother mayhem.

And failed.

HOWEVER, Knowing her pattern... and getting the right inspirations to survive the shivan downtime, I'd have her beat in 2-2.5 shivans.

Shivans are just silly ridiculous, Ultimus's boasting is pretty old, but the issue is a legitimate one.

There are a dozen builds more adept at soloing super regen scrappers (heroes/avs) than the fire/fire brute, especially when teamed with a shivan.

Anyway, shivans only take 5-8 minutes to get unless someone is actively trying to prevent you from doing so.

Basically any AV that present its challenge via damage delt (clockwork king, a tree thing that shoots invisible thorns, marauder, numina, etc) are NOT going to offer much of a challenge to someone who knows how to pop purple inspirations and drop a shivan.

The AVs that do debuffing, pop tier-9s, have usually unresisted controls, or summon pets (positron/anti-matter, valkyre, malaise (cov version), woodsman) are MUCH more team "friendly". as they require active teamwork (or atleast a wider variety of powers) to efficiently take down.

I feel If the devs are truely afriad of people soloing AVs (and thus most trials), outside of shaking the balance of the non-AV encounters by nerfing fire/fire brutes (ha), or purple inspirations.

They either need rebalance ALL of the taskforce encounters and grant AVs/Monsters tier-9s, fear powers to scatter pets, etc - which would probably be a nightmare

Or, make shivans/nukes team content (e.g. granting the shivan summon for defeating a shivan GM, etc), so people have to decide where they want to put their effort - teaming through a trial, or teaming through some mixed pvp content

A third, comedy option would be to sprinkle a few "click 3 glowies at the same time" objectives through the missions.

Since this thread is all over the place I guess it can't hurt to post my opinion here

I think the main problem, as mentioned before in certain places - is the rewards are too easy to get, as is.

Also, the mechanics for getting them aren't team friendly

I'm sure the initial design decision was based around "Wow, these pvp zones are going to be really busy, and it'll be tricky to complete these objectives so we better make them worthwhile"

But, pvp is mostly a wasteland... and, if it isn't a wasteland, you can wait a few hours and the zone will be empty again.

I think they should re-do the objectives for shivans and nukes and make them team content.

For bloody bay, Something along the lines of replacing the firebases with Shivan GM/Monsters (that are winter lord-ish level in difficulty), that are triggered/spawned when x amount of shivans are defeated around a meteor, shivan temp power is awarded to the team.

For Warburg, perhaps reducing the code requirement to 1, but guarding each scientist with 3-4 Arachnoid Elite Bosses, and said code is awarded to every member of the team.

[And, as a side effect - we might see more team vs. team PvP, rather than lame 1v1'ing with the few effective solo pvp builds)

Street spawns in brickstown have done this for as long as I can remember (even back in issue 5), there is almost always one dedicated "runner" in the crey and freakshow groups. who will do nothing but run or occasionally fire a ranged attack if prodded enough.

If respecs are going to be "sacred", fix the underlying problem of poor (and often misleading) in-game power and enhancement info.

or If telling that poor blaster that maneuvers is only giving him 1.8% defense (-/+) is too immersion-breaking or whatever the excuse is, respecs should be more plentiful so the player can find out what works and what doesn't more intuitively, rather than spending hours scanning the forums or the flawed prima guide, testing everything on the test server tediousily.

But you can't respec easially, or with much confidence unless you do said research, so most people don't really bother and "live with" their poor choices, in fear of making even worse ones. which is a depressing thing to see.

All together it's just a flawed system.

My abbreviated shadow cyst crystal guide:

If you have the damage output to take out a boss in 60 seconds, pop 3-4 purples and destroy the crystal with impunity.

If you do not have 3-4 purples, ask teammates for them

If you do not have the damage output to take it out in 60 seconds, give the purples to someone who does.

Of course, there's some situations where this won't work (e.g. if the cyst is in a spawn of quartz-dropping devouring earth), but basically 3-4 purples > any encounter in this game.

Good point on the nictus bosses though, I giggle a little when someone calls out "dwarf" or "nova", those bosses are so anemic they're basically free XP.

Personally all I care about is the animation, mmm swirly grasp! but alas...

Given their attitudes about changing animations/powers, and making "tech" changes (see: chain induction etc), I don't think they can keep that animation and not have the victim in perma-knockup stasis without heavy re-writing of the knockup code/character animations.

So, I'm thinking it'll be given

1. The CoT ritual animation (victim floats upright in a "bound" state)

2. The gravity-hover animation.

(speculation)

Agreed

My controllers (mind) can obliterate even-level bosses with the contained (and slotted) damage from the /controls alone/.

And to get any kind of damage out of my dominator (gravity/energy), i have to "stop dominating" and risk myself in melee and execute a full, slow attack chain to make any progress on the foe's healthbar.

Contained Lift, Mesmorize, Dominate, and an occasional terrify does more damage than power burst, total focus, bonesmasher, and power blast, particularily over time.

And, it gets even MORE absurd when my controller hits 41 and picks up "power blast", the same power my dominator gets at 10.

For my dominator? at level 42 it barely takes a 5th out of a white minion

For my controller at 42? hold > powerblast = DEAD white minion.

And, not even my level 38 power - power burst, compares to it, total focus barely comes up to par, but falls way short in endurance usage, risk, and recharge.

And what kind of patron ("epic") powers do I have available? powersink is pretty nice, but my controller got transference at 35, so ...

Let's see: the only increase to my damage potential are weak AoE attacks and very situational pets, not so great...

Domination you say? okay well... I have these things called "power boost" (200% buff on controllers vs. 100% for dominators) and this little damage buff called "fulcrum shift".

p.s. I don't have to slowly fill up a bar or wait 200 seconds for these powers to recharge.

Meh (cool rewards though)...

I was hoping for something more like villains and heroes being able to freely visit eachother's zones (for present stealing/retrieving, no direct pvp of course) ... but that'd be a bit complex I imagine.