LostHalo

I hadn't been interested in responding but it should also be pointed out that the OP said something along the lines of needing to "make" the toon. Builds with 5 purple sets off the start, Hecatomb-slotted Brawl, and various other silliness don't really register to me as a valid justification of expected gameplay unless the toon is already ready for said gear.

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So what's the most disturbingly bad example of a controller that you've seen in-game?

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Mind Controller with only Levitate, Dominate, and Total Domination. Sleeps were "useless" and confuse "steals all the xp". Fear "makes everything run". Never got into the reason for not having TK. They probably couldn't figure out how to use it.

Their secondary was Storm, more specifically, just Gale, O2 Boost, and Snow Storm (of which only O2 Boost ever got used). That was it. No Freezing Rain because it was "useless" (HOW?!). No Hurricane "because of the knockback" (probably related to the high likelihood of not being able to use TK well). Ditto for Tornado. Lightning Storm? Too long a recharge.

The stupid on that LGTF team was palpable.

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Welcome to the post AE world of City of Heroes.

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Newbs aren't new. They haven't been for a long time. You might say that any endeavor in which humanity takes part, there are examples of incompetence. It's not necessarily right or wrong, it just is.

Everything is exploiting.

Hit 'escape'. It's been busted for awhile now on non-attack powers (e.g., Hasten, not Power Blast).

As far as I can tell, if you have something "untargetable" targeted, it fails to fire because it's trying to "attack" whatever it was you had targeted (regardless of it is still targeted at the time, such as, say, a Contact you've moved out of range of).

I don't care how bad you are--an arc where you have an AV class ally for EVERY mission does not warrant being called "challenging".

But yes, I already touched on your point. I and my regular band of players do not fit the "average" description in any way or form (we raided the Mothership+GM with 5 people and made plans to take down Hamidon with one team among other things...never made it to the point of trying out the latter though). It's the reason I've been tempted to make my "challenge" review but then, like you already said, it's rare to find "challenge" and "content" and "not cheese" all in one set.

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Based on casual observation, the true "challenge" arc seems to be a niche thing. There aren't a lot of them out there. There are quite a few story arcs flagged as "challenging," but as for pure "test your character" missions, I'm not seeing a lot of them.

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The problem with 'challenge' is the horrifying variation on what that term actually means to the player and the creator.

If it were functioning correctly, I'd mention my first arc (third map was stolen for "bugs"...I need to do a re-write of the content anyway) as being a "challenge" arc. Prior to i15, it was described [PCMA] (player challenge) and [TFMA] (team focus). Past i15, it still has that but is now "team" and "challenge" on the descriptors. It took one group of friends several tries to figure out how to beat it. It's not easy and skirts the line of being fair (no AV ambush-equivalent stuff though...I don't see the value in making the bags of hitpoints come and kill you without a chance) but it at least has some teeth accompanying the description.

However, another arc I've played, described with [PCMA] gives you AV class allies on EVERY MAP and the big bad of the arc, spawns as an EB on Invincible. Actually, virtually every arc I've played that has been described as "challenging" has painfully failed to illicit even the slightest risk. It's to the point I actually started writing reviews of said "challenge" arcs and I have a few *.txt files on the desktop waiting to be finalized simply because they aren't owning up to their name. If it has real content, is marked "challenge", and the content isn't cheese challenge I run it.
Myself and the people I tend to play with can't be characterized as 'average' players but I can tell when something wouldn't be challenging for a MAN build, either...

</rant>

I really don't care about the rest of the thread (OP, do we have to do this...again? Your thread is not unique, your position is not either, give it up) but I have to respond to Golbeh:

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That's funny, I'm on around 6-7 global channels, part of an active SG, and play on Virtue, yet I never get any "NORMAL" teams despite going through each and every one of my channels.

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Either your global channels or your methods are bad.

I have one channel for Virtue and that is VU's current one. Even in the biggest flame wars and/or stupid conversations (of which I take part, instigate, lurk, or ignore), there is someone putting a call out for something.

Know what? The real reason is that they aren't doing what you want to do. Want a team that'll do what you want to do? Build one.

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Once you have fulcrum, siphon power becomes fairly redundant. It still has some value for debuffing hard enemies, but it is pretty easy to be damage capped all the time with fulcrum.

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Kinetics & [u]Soloing[u] is the thread title.
He also mentions AVs.
Both are situations where SP is extremely useful.

Having it is the difference between an AV that hits you for 800 damage and one that hits you for 150.

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Damage is subpar compared to others

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it is an endurance hog

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Wrong. About every set is normalized for their damage/endurance/recharge. If you do nothing but compare those straight numbers against oh say, Fire which has a bonus of...more damage, then yes it gets to be less impressive. One of those "Yeah, you'll take down that boss in 2.8 seconds rather than 2.775 seconds" situations.

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folks on teams hate kb

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If manned by an idiot: See new Peacebringer toons that people made right after getting a toon without knockback powers to 50.

:

If there are any primaries that might be considered uncommon, it would be Psychic, AR, or Archery. But even then, "rare" is comparing 8 sets which probably have a 12.5% : 11% : 13% : 15.5% : 13% : 12% : 11.5% : 11.5% split.

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He can probably handle the DPS side of things with Rage...

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Not even close.

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I took out my +run speed, it doesnt help with granite+rooted (it does for only granite, not for rooted, the debuff is too great). Tp self is your friend.

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Uh, there's a huge difference between being -160%, -90% and -20% run speed. And if you're using Rooted and Granite on a Stone Tank, I can't really see you needing to move around a whole lot.

I don't get how "OMG they killed my minion" even registers for you.

If you're going to do something stupid like use a power that can cleave a boss or lieutenant in two, you should lose your kill to someone actually playing intelligently.

That said, your comment on Fault already reveals your response to this.

Apparently the Repairmen's repair power isn't interruptible, so if they get in range, it's guaranteed to go off. Sounds almost like a stealth change but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

How is that hard to get?

That behavior is another reason we exclude Empaths. Our Tanks don't need the stupid buff. The other Defenders? Yes, give them the buff. They need it!

20. Both sides.

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They should use that animation for whirling hands.

But that stun Reichsman does, I think it's actually autohit. I haven't gotten to do the hero TF yet, but villainside it's autohit and AoE. Luckily it's not too long; my team survived cause we had stacked def buffs and ice slick up. It looks like defense buffs are the best way to handle that particular situation.

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I don't think it's auto-hit. At least not blue-side. Besides, it seems interruptible. It's really not all that threatening, to be quite honest. Once people get to know this TF a bit better, everybody will be able to finish it easily and quickly. Can't say the same for the red-side one though.

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It isn't auto-hit or interruptible on either side. The stun itself isn't particularly long-lived either (and as far as I could tell, the damage applies before the stun, so unlike GW's hold, it won't necessarily kill you)--it is a 50' radius though, so that should be kept in mind for the rest of the team.

Somewhere around 1:04 for our first blue-side run. SG's indestructible Willpower Tank never even got hit by the stun.
We did a bit of slash&burn so it took longer than necessary but with the experience on our side, we could probably crop it down to be comparable to the ITF's run time. It's not as fun in my opinion, though. (And mobs that refuse to close to melee? Yeah, that can bite it. Never have been a big fan of the space nazis. I mean, sure, these ones are red and black rather than grey and black but they're not really anything interesting.)

Back when Vanguard and Power Boost (or Power Build Up for Defenders) enhanced knockback (thank you PvP, really, thank you, so grateful, it's lovely, thanks again...), you could get some pretty heinous flights going with powers like Force Bolt and Power Thrust.

Force Bubble is plenty nice but it's one of those powers that without sufficient player skill, it's painful to experience.

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reads topic
thinks navi
OH GOD NO!!!

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Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

....

"What?! I DON'T want to rescue her!"

The WHARGARBL that this subject repeatedly spawns from the puritans' most salubrious tears is delectable.

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This is how new TFs usually go though:
Week 1 - "This is way too hard!"
Week 2 - "We did it in ten minutes!"
Week 3 - "I soloed it!"

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Based on what I had read on the boards, the new TF was actually challenging.

Based on the responses of people on my global channels (my Guardian channels seem to be better than my Virtue ones...1-2 hour times versus 3-4 hours, lol), it's not any worse than ITF/LGTF/STF.

IBJ_B

Think of /Ice as the antithesis of /Stone. /Stone has relatively weak AoE, decent ST, and strong control. /Ice has relatively weak ST, decent control, and strong AoE.

/WM is...like /Stone but instead of having "weak, decent, strong", it has "decent, decent, decent" (and possibly strong on AoE, depending on how creative you are with cones).

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there isn't alot we can do about it

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Have a team that doesn't suck? Use T9 when the animation starts (for the damage prevention)?

That's not anything new. GW has been doing it for years. Now, if it's an AoE that's like 60 feet wide...that would be a little more annoying. The next question of course asks if it is a DoT like GW's hold (or at least has more than one tic of damage) which can circumvent one-shot.

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(Though, if OnLive has its way with us gamers, this could be the last hardcore PC I ever buy. Big "if" but still kinda amazing...)

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I figured out how OnLive works: They set up "data stargates" at different sectors of the country to instantaneously send the information without any noticeable network latency or destruction of bandwidth. The stargates themselves are simply a massive collection of Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cables set in a Möbius strip located at the source and destinations.

The only setback so far has been all the Gamma Ray Bursters they keep sending in a continuous, accelerating loop.

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The problem I have with those cables is your data travels so fast through them that the electrons approach infinite weight, creating micro black holes that cause you to lose your data.

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What you have to do then is reconfigure the layout of your cables such that they conform to the wave properties of the data medium you're using. Since you're not sending micro-packets of time itself versus the cheaper physical entity of electrons, you'll have to put the cables partially out of phase with local space. I recommend four dimensional matter-wave prisms composed of eleven-dimensional strings compressed to ten dimensions.

If that's out of your budget, just put a cardbox around the cables and put a cat into it every 50 miles. Don't open the box after that, though.

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(Though, if OnLive has its way with us gamers, this could be the last hardcore PC I ever buy. Big "if" but still kinda amazing...)

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I figured out how OnLive works: They set up "data stargates" at different sectors of the country to instantaneously send the information without any noticeable network latency or destruction of bandwidth. The stargates themselves are simply a massive collection of Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cables set in a Möbius strip located at the source and destinations.

The only setback so far has been all the Gamma Ray Bursters they keep sending in a continuous, accelerating loop.

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the one character is outright bisexual

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So? Sure hope you stay out of major cities at the wrong times of the year, your head might explode from all of the shock.

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another is a plant who is probably illegal just by himself

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I fail to see how this is more than "teen" rated. Better start calling the PC Police on middle schools then, they have all that suggestive anti-drug propaganda pasted everywhere.

<roll eyes so hard it causes friction>

That said, "Footsteps" got a 3 from me. It's okay but I wasn't terribly impressed (the seeming movement between "fourth wall" and non-"fourth wall" didn't work that well for me).