Lord Mayhem

Definitely a Brute. I've taken most of the CoV archetypes to high levels (most to 50, though my Dom is only at 44 and my Stalker at 45, and I haven't played Widow yet) and the Brutes had the least problems soloing - they solo very fast and very safely, generally, and aren't that tough to play either. My Fire/Fire Brute mowed down spawns faster than my EM/Elec, but the latter had far less deaths at high level (mainly due to having Power Surge as a panic button, but also end-drain and slow resists and no psi-hole), and my SS/Dark and Axe/WP seem very survivable too but aren't 50 yet.

If you go Brute you could make it even easier on yourself by taking a brute secondary that has no "holes" in it to certain damage types - Dark, Electric & Willpower have decent protection to most damage types, no psi damage hole (a weakness for many sets in CoV, as psi damage is much more common) and some exotic status protection/resists that other sets lack but which come in handy at higher levels (e.g. end-drain, slow, fear and/or confuse).

Then just add any primary you fancy - most of them are decent because of Fury - just bear in mind that Energy Melee and Dark Melee are more focused on single-target damage, so if you have a secondary that's very comfortable in big spawns (like Willpower, or Dark, or Invul for that matter) you may want a primary with better area damage than they provide (War Mace, Battle Axe, Dual Blades and Electric Melee each have several cones/PBAEs) or go for the middle ground with sets which are great at both area or single target damage (Fiery Melee, Stone Melee or Super Strength).

My Mastermind had occasional EBs that were really tough, or even whole factions (Nemesis, due to the fear resist, as my /Dark MM relied heavily on Fearsome Stare), but generally it felt like easy-mode 99% of the time (compared to my Doms, Stalker and Corruptors anyway) - but the set-up at the start of every mission did annoy me, as you say - so much so that my second MM stalled at L16 and I haven't been tempted to play another since. All MMs get that set-up time, but it will be worse for you with /FF secondary because of the mini-bubble buffs - I haven't played an /FF MM since beta, but it was the re-buffing that put me off playing it live (and makes me avoid not only /FF, but also /Cold, /Sonic and /Therm on other archetypes) - you might want to try an MM with a different secondary to see if you have better tolerance for the archetype without having to refresh those buffs every 4mins on every pet.

My Dominator soloed much slower than my Brutes/MM until higher level (but he's Mind/Psi so that may be down to powersets more than archetype - my Earth/Fire seems faster at low level). My Stalker soloes faster when there are lots of bosses around, but slower as spawns get bigger with minions/lieuts as he's purely single-target (he sometimes struggles when two large spawns overlap in a mission) - sometimes I hunt outdoors purely for more bosses to face. But I do enjoy both Dom & Stalker because they have to approach spawns tactically instead of just wading in with the usual attack chain like my Brutes/MM can. Personally I get more satisfaction out of that, but then I also find it fun sometimes to play my brutes and wade into every spawn laying waste to whatever is in front of me - depends on my mood.

Some Corruptors can solo very safely/quickly (Fire/Dark I've heard is very good - having played both sets separately to 50 I can well believe it), but others tend to need teams to progress safely/quickly, depending on powersets - for solo you'll be wanting some control powers in there plus great damage. Both of my corruptors (Fire/Rad and Ice/Storm) look fairly similar on paper, being built mainly around debuffing then delivering huge damage, but play very differently solo and in teams. They are probably my least survivable archetypes for solo (I mainly play them in teams/duos), but supposedly have some of the best primaries/secondaries for soloing, so I'm not sure I could make a blanket recommendation of the Corruptor archetype for that playstyle.

[ QUOTE ]
And Col, yes it is silly. That's why I'm a firm believer in the redesign of contacts heroside to prevent the repeated missions, the duplicate arcs over contacts and so forth, and prevent getting hitched with old story arcs that you have no way of dropping.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is pretty much my biggest wish for blueside now - the old origin-based contact system in the CoH city zones needs a total revamp to bring the missions/arcs, and more importantly the way they're delivered, up to CoV/Striga/Croatoa/Faultline/RWZ standards.

[ QUOTE ]
I used Valkrysts suggestion but concentrated on taking out his demons first and then concentrated on infernal.
[...]
Thank you everyone who took the time to reply to this post and help me out of a frustrating moment!

[/ QUOTE ]
No probs - I'm glad you got to feel the satisfaction of finally taking the big guy down.

[ QUOTE ]
P.S - Valkryst - Lilitu was easy

[/ QUOTE ]
Good I only ever had a problem with her that first time with my MM, because I ran into her unprepared and got AE held. She's been pretty easy every other time I've faced her - even my Mind/Psi Dominator didn't struggle with her and he's probably had more "difficult EBs" than most of my Brutes, Corruptors, Stalker, and Mastermind.

But one thing I love about this game is that your powersets and tactics dictate so much which factions and which of their EBs/AVs are going to give you problems - just because an EB/AV was easy for one of your characters doesn't mean it will be a complete walkover for another. I like that, because it keeps the game a fresh challenge for future alt characters you make.

[ QUOTE ]
No I don't, and no, I wouldn't.

[/ QUOTE ]
^ This.

I play in a regular duo during the week and only PuG at weekends (usually for TFs) and there are enough active players here for my needs. Moving to the US servers would simply bring me more lag, more inf beggars, more people pestering us to join our duo, more competition for outdoor spawns when I get a hunt mission (think finding 50 Carnies in PI takes a while now?), lose me both of my SGs and their bases, probably lose most of my character names, make it harder to find new character names that haven't been taken, probably leave behind most of my global friends too, and give me an official forum that churns so quickly that it would be impossible to keep up with reading it unless I did nothing all day but that.

Why would I want all that simply so I could PuG more easily at times when I don't want to or I'm asleep (remember, east coast US peak times begin at midnight at the earliest for the most westerly EU timezone) and team with more people who don't get British/European culture references?

[ QUOTE ]
Even if you don't play much you get enough XP fast enough to keep "interest" up, unless you've already got a bunch of 50s...

..then you wonder where the (cencored) (cencored) (cencored) high lvl content is!

[/ QUOTE ]
<points down at sig>

Actually all I want is more TF/SFs that scale to 50 (tbh I wish all of them could scale to 50 so I didn't have to lose powers/bonuses to do most of them). I've experienced the endgames in other MMOs and tbh most of them get dull really fast to me, but I never get bored of exploring new powersets and how they evolve and synergise with other powersets to create new tactics.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
because they make your arguments look ridiculous

[/ QUOTE ]

His arguments look ridiculous all on their own. They really don't need any help

[/ QUOTE ]
True, but now you've probably scared him off and I was really looking forward to what he was going to say next The rationale running through those posts was harder to predict than Lost so I was waiting for a big twist ending with even more melodrama

Yeah definitely /signed for this. Now that they've fixed it so you get the star on the flashback screen showing that you've done an arc, even if it was through flashback, I think they definitely should give you the contact as well.

[ QUOTE ]
Well .. I must admit I hardly ever play villains so I will take you word on those GM's

Apologies for not considering our evil brethren

[/ QUOTE ]
Well villains can't get to most of your AVs either except Bat'Zul (which heroes can't get to!). And Kronos is the only GM on your list that villains can get, and then only from the LRSF - whereas heroes can only get Kronos triggered by missions. Cabal and Red Caps aren't normally available CoV-side either (except during some of the old holiday events).

You'll either need separate requirements for hero and villain SGs, or restrict yourself to AVs/GMs in co-op zones (which basically means U'kon Gr'ai, possibly Kronos, any AV on LGTF/ITF, etc) or possibly use AVs common to both sides (such as all six Council ones, Countess Crey, Baphomet or Nemesis) and mobs from factions that both sides can access with about equal difficulty.

[ QUOTE ]
The whole time, your contact is telling you he has not been seen in ages and the city needs him. And all this time he's standing on a ship in Indy Port handing out his TF. It's the only arc I know of in the game with this kind of huge incongruity. It would be really nice if they could rewrite the arc a bit so it actually fits in with current history.

What would be really cool was if he was made a client-side object and he actually vanished off his ship at the start of the arc, with Maria (the contact) telling you he has vanished. That would require minimal arc rewriting, but may involve some technology updates. Otherwise, States needs to be written out of the arc.

[/ QUOTE ]
CoH-side, in Faultline, Jim Temblor (Faultline, both by name and location) and Penelope Yin both show up in RWZ missions (on arcs/LGTF) - so it's not just Doc Delilah. And CoV-side the Arachnos patrons show up in the patron arcs, yet don't vanish from Grandville - just as well really, as that would really hack off other players who need the patrons for their next mission

The only way to prevent stuff like this would be to stop contacts/trainers from EVER appearing in missions or vice-versa, but that would be rather dull as often they're some of the key/signature characters in the game's lore/storyline.

I'm fine with it personally - it doesn't bend my in-game immersion any more than most contacts not having moved an inch in 4 years - don't they ever need the toilet?

Though, like Hero2, I long for the day when we can have truly dynamic MMO worlds, with missions that you either generate yourself (in-game aims) or get inflicted upon you by passing NPCs, and NPCs who follow their own imitation of daily lives instead of standing on street corners waiting for us to click them.

EQ2 is probably the closest any MMO I've played has come to having some decent NPC movement in its cities - sometimes you'd even have to go looking around for a quest/contact NPC because they'd moved - although of course some players moaned about that on the forums as they couldn't find the NPC they wanted, despite the "ask a Guard" feature (where any city guard would point out an NPC's location if they were close enough to that guard) - but EQ2 still had too many static NPCs for my liking.

/signed for everything in this thread so far - they're all things I want - though a lot of them have been suggested before.

So basically you want a zone revamp of every existing city/hazard/trial zone in the game? Me too, but not all at once. Honestly if the Devs started now they might be finished revamping all of them by this time next year, but only if they stop giving us any other content in the meantime and we wouldn't want that.

[ QUOTE ]
I dunno, it seems that these days people are just suggesting anything that comes into thier heads, regardless of wether it is really wanted/needed.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, but JDBarker is new around here so we should probably cut him a little slack - it's not like he's one of the usual suspects who scattergun this forum with poorly thought out ideas that have either been suggested a thousand times before, or would never work.

[ QUOTE ]
What I would like to see:

More high quality suggestions, thoroughly researched, using the search function, completly developed, all implications weighed up, amount of workload estimated, and trade off value calculated (i.e. what would you be prepared to not have while the developers are working on your suggestion).


[/ QUOTE ]
I agree with you 100% here though. Tbh this forum category is getting so hard to keep up with that I can barely be bothered anymore - I'm on the verge of excising it from the handful of categories I bother to read and post in anymore.

[ QUOTE ]
Once the avalanche has started, it is to late for the pebbles to vote.

[/ QUOTE ]
Best Babylon 5 quote ever. /hugs Kosh. Vorlons ftw!

[ QUOTE ]
Seems more in-keeping for Malta to swing in in a black helicopter and drop an assault team to hit a specific hero or party of heroes.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, which was why I specified them assaulting only when a large enough group of players gathered.

Malta's mandate is to deal with super-powered threats - if enough heroes/villains gathered in the same place I don't think it beyond the bounds of possibility that a paranoid Malta might think that the players were forming an army (as far as they're concerned all heroes/villains are dangerous enemies of mankind, to be controlled or wiped out), nor put it past them to grab the opportunity to wipe out as many supers as they can with a single decisive assault.

[ QUOTE ]
Praf, what do you think would have happened if there was a game based around rhe Star wars universe but not exactly the same? Star battles? And it had a similar theme to star wars. And players played it because it was the nearest thing to Star wars they could get? And it had a sub of about 130,000.

And then someone announced they were bringing out a game of the actual Star Wars license?
And you could fight along side Luke and Hans and face the Darths etc...
And, as a kicker, the game turned out to be good....?

What was the first game called again?

[/ QUOTE ]
So, contrary to history, you think SWG killed Anarchy Online? (Those games couldn't even kill themselves - and the Dev teams of both tried really hard ).

And you think Bioware's Star Wars Old Republic MMO (or Cryptic's Star Trek Online, for that matter) will probably kill EVE Online?

I can probably agree that the Bioware MMO will hurt SWG very badly, maybe even kill it, but that would be as close as I'd come to predicting a probable "kill" because they share the same licence (albeit at different points in the timeline) - but then EQ2 didn't kill EQ (and that was only 500 years ahead in the timeline with very similar game mechanics). You have to realise every game has its fans, even SWG, regardless of overriding public opinion or how strong licences are - all that matters is if enough subscribers are left for the MMO to turn a profit and continue development.

Come on, you know you want to reply - stop dodging my rebuttals just because they make your arguments look ridiculous

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand... you get xp for not playing?

Just how long have I been asleep?

[/ QUOTE ]
I've played EQ2 and WoW and they both have "rested time" and it works a similar way in both, so I'm sure this will be the same too.

While you're not playing a character (either not logged in at all, or playing a different character) rested time will slowly build up - it shows as a different colour bar on your xp meter, building up ahead of your current xp/level point, like debt does here. In fact think of it like reverse-debt that, instead of happening when you get defeated, just builds up over time while a character is offline.

When you play a character that has rested time you'll earn bonus xp while that rested time lasts - in WoW you level twice as quickly (i.e. every kill gets you double xp). But as you earn xp it reduces your rested time in your xp bar, just like earned xp pays off your debt bar gradually in CoH.

In EQ2 iirc the rested time capped at two weeks offline per character, while in WoW I think it was always capped at 1.5 levels ahead of your present level/xp. It did lead to some players with lots of alts only playing their characters until rested time ended, then switching to another alt that still had some rested time to "use up". If you were an altaholic and did this then basically all of your characters would level twice as fast all the time (unless you played so much that you managed to use up all the rested time on all of your characters - not easy to do).

It was intended to help casual players keep up with more hardcore friends that played more often than them - theoretically the hardcore player would play so much with a single character that they spent more time without the rested bonus, while the casual player would be in rested state most of the time, helping them to catch up. But it always struck me as rather odd to have an incentive that built up while you weren't playing the game.

[ QUOTE ]
But that would mean joining Facebook, and I won't do that even if you threaten to shoot a helpless kitten.

[/ QUOTE ]
^ This.

I've had friends trying to get me to join Facebook, or Bebo, or MySpace, or whatever. It's just another Internet black hole designed to suck away your time - I lose enough time per day checking email, webcomics, news sites and CoH forums without adding social networking sites as well, and then have total strangers bugging me too

I'm quite interested in the kitten shooting though... if that's going to happen... I assume it's like clay pigeon shooting but with more mess?

[ QUOTE ]
They are not potential threats. They are going to happen.

[/ QUOTE ]
You can’t possibly know that. MMOs get cancelled all the time pre-launch, even within weeks of launch.

[ QUOTE ]
Its like playing a football game with made up teams and then suddenly a bright shiny new ganme comes out where you can play in the prem. along side Ronaldo. (or whoever your fav is.)

If its even half decent it will hit like a tornado.

[/ QUOTE ]
And there’s the real point. We don’t even know if DCUO or CO will be any good. They might not be as much fun to play as CoH.

To take your football game analogy to its logical conclusion, sure EA’s FIFA games outsell most of their rivals because they have the FIFA licence and all the proper team/player names and that matters to a lot of the mainstream (or to the parents buying games for their kids...). But that doesn’t stop Konami’s Pro Evo series being widely acknowledged as a better football game (by magazine/website reviewers and by players on online forums), nor does it stop Pro Evo from selling enough copies to be considered a very popular game and having half a dozen sequels (in the US I understand it’s up to a dozen sequels numerically as “Winning Eleven”).

I certainly prefer Pro Evo as a game and buy that in preference to FIFA because I don’t really care about the licence - I care about how well the game plays. It will be the same for me with DCUO and CoH - I’ll play whichever one I have the most fun with, regardless of the fact I’m a fanatical Batman/Nightwing fan. I doubt I’m the only one with that viewpoint either.

[ QUOTE ]
And worse, DC can advertise it, to the perfect audience in their own comics plus they probably have the financial muscle to advertise on TV too. Have I scared you enough?

[/ QUOTE ]
Not really. WoW advertises on TV too. I think you over-estimate how much SOE will advertise DCUO (for it is mainly their product), or how much importance Time-Warner (DC’s owner) will place upon it. I doubt Time-Warner’s cut of the DCUO pie will be big enough to justify a big (or even any) advertising outlay - even advertising in their own comics/movies costs them space that they could be selling to other advertisers. I bet SOE had to pay DC/T-W for the DC licence and they'll be assuming the risk - DC/T-W will be skimming profits (if any) as licensee and co-investor. DCUO isn't an in-house product for DC/T-W, like CoH is for NC, EQ/EQ2 for SOE, or WoW for ActivisionBlizzard.

[ QUOTE ]
CoH do not have a chance in a one on one battle with DC.
Waiting to react to DC will be the last thing this game ever does.

[/ QUOTE ]
I’ve heard all the same things before. The Star Wars licence is stronger than the DC one in both the mainstream and, dare I say it, among MMO fans - SOE did the MMO for that too - there’s your precedent. Btw SWG didn’t kill any MMOs when it launched, not even the sole commercial sci-fi MMO at the time - Anarchy Online - despite that game having a terrible launch and much lower population / market share than CoH.

[ QUOTE ]
Am I exegarrating the threat?

[/ QUOTE ]
No. You’re horribly over-exaggerating it.

[ QUOTE ]
This is a totally different ballgame. And im not saying that DC will kill this game. I'm saying that if CoH doesnt get its act together (GR seems confident it will) THEN DC WILL kill this game.

[/ QUOTE ]
Where are you getting that from? In MMO history there's no evidence at all that any big commercial MMOs have ever been killed by other big commercial MMO launches. Like Quin said, it takes a lot to kill an MMO.

I've played tons of different MMOs over the last ten years. Whenever a new overhyped MMO is launched/announced people always proclaim on official forums that their current MMO is doomed. It's happened in EQ, AC, DAoC, FFIX, SWG, EQ2, and even WoW - and I daresay it will happen in AoC and eventually WAR and DCUO too. So forgive me for being rather sceptical of doomsayers because they never have precedence or even trends to back up their claims.

WoW and EQ2 (and CoH for that matter) all came out around a time when the prevailing opinion was that the majority of MMO fans were looking for a new game, but no existing commercial MMOs in the fantasy field (UO, EQ, AC, DAoC, FFIX, L2, etc.) were "killed" or even seemed to suffer that badly in the year following those new launches (some of them even showed increases in subs, as the new MMOs broadened the marketplace and brought in new players who branched out into other MMOs). The main thing WoW really achieved in its first year was causing loads of in-development MMOs to cancel/delay.

Honestly if a 600lb gorilla like WoW failed to kill any of its rivals I find it hard to believe that DCUO will manage to kill anything, even though CoH is the only MMO out now in the same sub-genre.

[ QUOTE ]
I'm getting nervous because, at this moment DC and CO are firing warning shots across the bows and we dont seem to be reacting. And we're making mistakes. (the trial thread.)

[/ QUOTE ]
Warning shots? (a tad melodramatic I feel) You mean the same “potential feature” hype that happens before every MMO launch ever in the history of MMOs? You know, most of those potential features pushed out by the marketing department that Dev teams usually fail to deliver by launch?

[ QUOTE ]
So I'm fronting the battle cry on behalf of this game.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't see why we need anyone to front a battle cry. NCSoft would be rather daft to let player opinions change their PR agenda anyway - it's not like we're qualified or even in full possession of the facts.

Your doomsaying, even done with good intentions, is likely to have more negative effects on the subscriber population than positive effects on the game.

[ QUOTE ]
A while ago, I read the book The world's worst warships. A common, almost routine pattern was that poor warships are made when a nation hurriedly tried to meet the rumoured threat of another nation's new super ship -- which in all cases turns out to be not nearly as super as the initial, fearmongering reports assumed it would turn out to be. The first nation thus ends up with a lumbering hulk that's overengineered, overpriced and only fit to meet a rumoured threat that never actually materialised.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah the same thing happened in the Cold War between the US and the USSR, especially with aircraft.

The US built prototypes of the beautiful B70 Valkyrie mach 3 bomber (which never went into service), so the USSR poured tons of cash into quickly building a mach 3 interceptor, the MiG25, to counter it. The costly (both to build and operate) MiG25 went into service even though the USAF cancelled their orders for any B70s. But the US were so spooked by spy-sat pics of the MiG25, thinking it to be a new air superiority fighter (and not an interceptor), that they hurriedly built the F15 at huge expense. Neither of those aircraft ever took on the role they were designed for in the Cold War (MiG25 got used more for patrolling and recon, F15 more as a strike fighter) - though the aircraft did clash in anger in the Middle East a few times (Israeli/US F15s usually got the better of Syrian/Iraqi MiG25s).

You have to wonder how much of all that came down to misunderstandings, and how much to intentional leaks. Spooking the other side into expensive decisions - economic warfare - was supposedly the main thing that eventually pushed the USSR into ending the Cold War and pulling down the wall. Though admittedly I think it was mostly the cost of keeping its nukes serviced that the USSR couldn't bear.

[ QUOTE ]
It isn't early days anymore though, Steele. DC andCO have both thrown down the first baton. That's why I feel CoH should respond pretty darn quick. I dont think they have to give us specifics. If for example they tell us arch enemies are coming (this i'll bet any money on)they dont have to actually give details about the way theyll impact gameplay.
So they arent really helping the competition by throwing at a few hints.
Dont forget CO comes out in April. DC- who knows? But the betas are way before that.

And I think we out to be way in front for when that happens.

[/ QUOTE ]
You do have to bear in mind one thing though - the pressure is as much on DCUO and CO as it is on CoH. DCUO and CO have to throw out all these "promises" and feature announcements to try and attract a potential playerbase (and if past MMOs and Dev teams are anything to go by they won't be able to keep a lot of their "promises" anyway) - NCNC don't have to give away quite so many secrets to simply maintain their playerbase.

CoH has already had a successful launch and had a fairly loyal playerbase for 4 years (i.e. better retention than a lot of MMOs have had). It's not even guaranteed that DCUO and CO will launch, or launch successfully and manage to survive their first year - sure, SOE are established publishers, and Cryptic are fairly established developers (I guess having created and launched one fairly successful MMO they're about as experienced as any other MMO dev team out there, but they don't have multi-MMO operator expertise anymore, like when they were with NC on CoH) - but more MMOs get cancelled or have terrible launches than ones that go on to CoH-level success or beyond.

I know that personally I don't subscribe to games based on future promises anymore - I've been burned by that before - I subscribe if I'm enjoying a game and unsubscribe if I'm not - I can always re-subscribe later if a game improves significantly. I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment.

[ QUOTE ]
Sometimes TFs fail. It's not as nice as when they don't, maybe, but when I did my very first TF we failed, and it was still a great adventure. I was on countless failed first Respec Trials before completing one successfuly, and the consequent thrill is something I haven't had from this game for a very, very long time.

I agree that it can be tiresome when you fail a Statesman TF as a 50 and you have the top build you can have and you've done every AV in seconds and your pride just won't let you believe your glorious and mighty hero(ine) couldn't possibly be anything other than irresistable - not to mention that it's taken weeks of scheduling to co-ordinate an SG team into a two-hour window on a Tuesday night because Norm has to work night shift and Cliff has an early start so you have to be done before 11... But going into it after you've done the planning and the numbers and the prep and scheduling, knowing you won't fail I find to be more tiresome still. It saddens me, not having that thrill of succeeding in beating something that's supposed to be really hard to beat. Hard enough, in fact, that you're likely to fail.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'm fine with failing as long as it happens because of a mistake or poor coordination. What I hate is when things are impossible without a certain team line-up.

Back before inventions in I7 I must have done the LRSF about 25-30 times with my brutes/MM before my first success. At first I relished the challenge, but it really started to become a soul-destroying chore after so many failures (but I am rather stubborn ) - especially when Granite brute + multiple corruptor teams were just rolling over the final AVs in under 5 minutes.

Something I should have added to my last post is that I'd like to see AV/GM fights get more complex/interesting, but only as long as every archetype/powerset can contribute in some way. E.g. I wouldn't like to see an AV/GM introduced that was completely immune to one damage type, or a boss fight that could only be done with ranged attacks (as I believe some in WoW are, and even the GW fight here). Some people having to stand by and not be able to contribute to the final fight of a mission/TF really sucks (not that I've ever experienced that here, thankfully).

I also hate to see any archetype/class in an MMO become essential for a fight, whether it's tanks (at least we have several ATs/sets here that can tank), healers (thankfully not a necessity here), debuffers (I still say -regen is a ton more important for AVs/GMs than any other type), or whatever.

[ QUOTE ]
Ah, Honoree is an exception to my comment above, just because of his high resistance to the most common damage meaning you dont have to be so unlucky not to get enough damage with a random team.

Because blasters are played more than anything else (or were last time they did a post about AT popularity) it should be relatively simple to have a high damage team, and quite likely if you picked at random too.

[/ QUOTE ]
We had a lot of lethal damage powersets and several blasters - I ticked the box for both of those categories (Archery blaster) - hence our problems.

[ QUOTE ]
The devs know what's coming competition wise, and from what I've read they're not in the least bit worried about it because of the plans they have of their own.

[/ QUOTE ]
Admittedly anyone working for NC will have to say that anyway for PR reasons, otherwise cries of doom will ripple through the playerbase, some subscribers could become discouraged and potentially taint the perception of others against the game (both subscribers and outsiders), making an exodus more likely. (It's bad enough with all the people running around on EU global channels now trying to convince everyone to move to the "alleged paradise" of US servers ).

Even so I'm not overly concerned. Like the rest of you I think the Devs know I13 has to be good/big, and I think (ok, hope) it will be. I have faith it will be worth waiting for.

[ QUOTE ]
So, issue 13 is secret because Cryptic are a bunch of rip of merchants...

[/ QUOTE ]
Most MMO developers copy the best features from other MMOs, though - they'd have to be pretty daft not to. You can be sure SOE and Cryptic will be nicking all the bits they like about CoH/V (and WoW and every other MMO) and I'd hope NCNC will be able to steal some of the best bits from their efforts too. This is pretty much how the MMO genre evolves.

[ QUOTE ]
People still form PUGs and do AV arcs, and those PUGS don't always have the powersets that some people might insist are essential. At least once I've waited in a team while the leader hunts for a specific defender or controller before picking the AV mission. And yet there's been nothing wrong with the team up to that point. It would, I guess, be "really bad luck" to be unable to take out those AVs, but not uncommon for it to take a long slog.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yet I've been on a few TFs with intelligent/experienced players where the team make-up just wasn't capable of downing the AV, usually from lack of damage (and/or buffs/debuffs that increase damage, specifically -res and -regen). Sure, AV regen isn't as bad as it was, but some AVs can still regen pretty fast, especially the ones who have godmodes on a short recharge (Honoree, States, etc) and can out-regen the reduced damage the team does while they're in that state.

In fact I've had a couple of LGTFs that progressed with absolutely no trouble at all, and no deaths, all the way to Honoree and then still couldn't down him after multiple attempts, even with an overload of red insps. So these days when I join/start a TF/SF I always make sure there's a -regen debuffer, if not a -res debuffer too, because it's not fun spending a couple of hours on a TF/SF and failing at the final mob. And if we can't recruit one I'll switch to one of my own debuffers.

Same with GMs tbh - I've been on several GM teams with my brutes that just couldn't dent Deathsurge/Scrapyard, but then I've switched to my /Dark MM or /Rad Corr (with the rest of the team unchanged), started -regen debuffing, and then the GM has gone down in under a minute. One of my brutes still doesn't have the Surging badge despite having joined half a dozen Deathsurge teams, because I had to switch to my MM/corr.

I agree that Romulus is a great AV fight because there are multiple tactics/ways you can take him down once you know how Rom and his Nictus operate - I'd like to see more AVs/GMs like that, so that teams have multiple options for taking down a target if one tactic is closed off to them from lacking a certain debuff/archetype. Fights that require knowledge are good, because passing on such knowledge is a community-building effort. Even better if fights permit multiple tactics because that promotes community discussion, rather than "this is the only way to do this".

I'd also like to see some random events occurring during GM/AV fights - some of them do summon ambushes/pets, but how about if AVs/GMs used insps occasionally during fights? Or have some that go into a different mode/stance that requires the team's tactics to change. I don't want some of WoW's intricate but linear boss fights that you can learn by rote and then do flawlessly as long as your team is disciplined/prepared, but nor do I just want a bag of HPs - some random/dynamic occurrences and multiple tactics available for every AV/GM would spice things up nicely.