LostHalo

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2 or 3 teams? Without specialization, it only takes 2 or 3 people to take down Lusca. With specialization, it only takes 1. A single full team should utterly crush Lusca. I only wish such a GM were available red-side...my toons over there could probably wreck Lusca without a problem solo (or needing a permanent supply line of Inspirations).

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In the boldfaced part above, you flat out said you could solo Lusca... Even if Demon_Hunter didn't goof his argument, I think everyone and their ancestry 3 generations back would call shenanigans on you being able to solo a GM that's technically 8 GM's in one. You even said yourself you needed to "convince the necessary two people" (in your later post), which implies you wouldn't be soloing.

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Allow me to make my ideas better understood:

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2 or 3 teams? Without specialization, it only takes 2 or 3 people to take down Lusca. With specialization, it only takes 1. A single full team should utterly crush Lusca.
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[SEPARATE ASIDE complaining about lack of red GMs of scale/type to Lusca!]
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I only wish such a GM were available red-side...my toons over there could probably wreck Lusca without a problem solo (or needing a permanent supply line of Inspirations).

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Die quote pyramid, die die.

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No, I meant what I said actually. He claimed that 2 or 3 people alone should be able to fight Lusca and that he could solo it with his red side toon. Then he went on to say he would do it with two or three if he could convince the two people he specifically wanted, going so far as to say they were necessary. That word, necessary, was the key for me. To me that implies he wants something specific that they would bring to the table that nobody else would, therefore implying some kind of specialization. That's how I viewed it.

Perhaps I didn't state that clearly enough in my initial post. I'd also like to point out that I never said he needed his teammates to be on gimped builds or under 25 or something. I mean seriously, that's just foolish.

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Perhaps with my slight adjustment above, it'd be clearer: The people involved are there simply because:
1) I like them.
2) They aren't stupid.
3) They have the patience and ego necessary to be willing to go fight Lusca for an hour to kill it.

My current pool of people that I know fulfill all of the above requirements shrunk recently (number of burnouts and my global channels have a lot of new people I don't recognize...haven't played solidly for about a month).

I actually got said two players to come with me and go kill Lusca.
The painful thing? One of my global channels had a request going out for fighting the Croatoa monsters (They couldn't kill Eochai with a single full team of 50s, wth?). They were forming another team for the entire hour it took us to kill Lusca (with 55 gigs of HD video!).

Slightly-divergent topic:
Lusca luckily spawned in an obscure location, the bottom left corner shipyard area. We had one character come into the zone and start hitting a Tentacle: A level 50 Invuln/Mace Tank. We asked him if he could back off as I was recording this, with no response.
Our WP Tank can handle 5 Tentacles and the head (admittedly, he's tweaked; my toon is on SOs/gIOs and the other guy just has gIOs from what I know) and it is impossible for him to die in that situation. That Invuln Tank died to ONE Tentacle and the Head's aggro (we ran away to let him handle Lusca since he wouldn't respond).

I can totally see "needing three teams" if your frame of reference makes players of that abhorrent quality normal. My frame of reference treats them as fills.

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Don't team with the person who won't play past level 15, if that? Roleplayers have done it for years. You can, too.

Report them for griefing if they're harassing a CC, etc.? GMs are there. They are paid to be there. While they are there, that payment is for them to deal with problems. Those problems can include troublemakers. Let's make sure they earn their pay!

Challenge:
Make a pink bunny costume for your darkity, darker, darkin', dark, SHADOW! character. Now play a mission or two. Was it really a problem in the end?

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I am just returning to the game after being gone for quite a while. I am wondering, is Cold a rare primary choice for defenders? My main is a Sonic/Electric Def, but I've played TA, Storm, and Rad to high levels as well.

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I think Sonic/Electric would probably have the title of king for uncommon sets ("It's my favorite!" arguments already null, the OP started with it as his main), probably because Sonic/Rad and Sonic/Sonic are typically chosen by people with an eye for performance goals (e.g., -DEF and -RES or -RES and more -RES) due to the nature of Sonic/* itself.

The likely reason for Cold not being as popular for Defenders is that the ATs hero-side tend to be much more focused in their particular goals, making a specialist with a single focus quite useful. Whereas villain ATs tend to be much broader in their style.
I.e., a Blaster already brings a ton of damage to the table, so make it invincible with FF or whatever. A Brute on the other hand, while not weak, only needs some defensive support to be made invincible and once survival is shored up, the rest of the time can focus on its killing power.

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LostHalo: I doubt your statement.

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You shouldn't I watched two friends take Lusca down. Just the two of them.

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Yeah, probably both Rad/ Defenders, right? Not everyone wants to fight GMs with only their Rad/ Def or /Rad trollers.

Try taking her out with two Inv/ Tankers or two /Regen Scrappers. You'll never get anywhere.



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There's also a difference between doing something intelligently and choosing to be stupid about it.

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LostHalo: I doubt your statement.

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Assuming I can convince the necessary two people, it will be done again. Hopefully Lusca will be spawned in an ideal location, away from the gawkers.

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If you're saying you need two specific people to do it, then that kinda throws out your idea of not needing any kind of specialization, no?

I'm with Fulmens on this one....

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Specific person != Specialized toon.
There is a difference between asking for competence/intelligence from another person and designing an Ill/Rad (or other option) that is expressly targeted towards a particular goal. If you don't understand that difference, nothing I do will be 'good enough' in your eyes (especially now that there is a new "Gotta be less than 25!!!" condition thrown out...).

And before it gets more drawn out: I'm challenging the notion of needing [key word] two or three full teams when one team is more than enough to bring everything that could ever be needed.

But... It's probably meaningless at this point, since all that will be argued is semantics over the term "specialization".

"Hey, you built your 3-person team with x, y, and z, that's over-specialized! Unless you do it with 3 melee-oriented Blasters, it's not fair!11!"

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LostHalo: I doubt your statement.

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Assuming I can convince the necessary two people, it will be done again. Hopefully Lusca will be spawned in an ideal location, away from the gawkers.

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Price: $2,532.00

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Aside from the processor (the top processor my MB supports is a Q6600--although I currently use an E6600 for lack of need, haven't been doing any heavier work that warranted it--so no i7 for me), that machine is no better than my current one and it cost me $2,700 two and a half years ago. Heck, my GPU is better (although to be fair, the total price is $2,900 now since my original card fried on me after i13's initial release magically resulted in my card overheating...).

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Yeah I'd have to say Lusca as well. It's sort of like battling 9 Giant Monsters since each tentacle has the power to pound an entire team to bits and because of that 2 or 3 eight man teams are needed to succeed. At times it's tough even finding 8 people to form one GM team let alone 16 or more to take on the huge plate of unprepared Calamari.

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2 or 3 teams? Without specialization, it only takes 2 or 3 people to take down Lusca. With specialization, it only takes 1. A single full team should utterly crush Lusca. I only wish such a GM were available red-side...my toons over there could probably wreck Lusca without a problem solo (or needing a permanent supply line of Inspirations).

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I don't bother with anything but fly anymore on my characters.

It's easy. (and half the time I get stuck running the team. Ever try to do team management stuff with superjump?)

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Being unable to maintain a jump while typing is astonishingly good training, however, assuming you try to keep the quality controlled.

That said, going from my Boost Range+Range-enhanced Teleporting Blaster makes my other characters' travel times positively painful in comparison.
"Why yes, I am there. And yes, I have Recall Friend. No, I'm not porting you, ya lazy bum...at least get halfway here."

I'm going to guess they disappeared after a short while? It's a bug that's been around awhile.

You're doing it wrong if it costs you "billions". Both in building it and playing the market.

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this horse

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With all the hormones that were in its diet? Who are you kidding?

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I can't be the only one who was expecting MSPaint illustrations and insane raving based on the War Mace / Energy Aura thread over on the brute boards, right?

I'm a little disappointed.

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I concur. Any MSPaint enthusiasts out there? Put those years attempting to color in the lines to good use! I think a nuke or an upside-down mountain would do (bonus points if you cut out the picture of a real mountain and make it flow nicely).

If you're having that much of a problem, you're doing it wrong.

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The [Dart Gun] that reapers and mortificators use is oddly enough classified as ranged/lethal, even though it deals purely toxic damage.

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That's not really that hard of a concept. The actual physical entity you're "avoiding" is a syringe/dart. I think one of the origin powers works in a similar way but has a small lethal damage tick before the toxic (Science, I believe, leaves a nice little dart in the neck, too).

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(Energy Melee also has a Self Heal)

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Uh, no it doesn't.

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Sure it does. It's just that the heal is so massive that its numerical value wraps around and goes negative!

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To be more precise: it was an issue with Gauntlet in tankers (and to a lesser degree all targeted aoe attacks with very small radius.) True single target attacks never had the "impossible to hit moving targets" issue.

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Single-target attacks had a different issue. You couldn't get them to activate reliably. You could queue an attack and chase after a running opponent, and it was significantly unlikely that the attack would actually activate unless you ran past the opponent, rubbing shoulders with it the whole time.

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That was more of a PvP issue and how Auto Follow works, and Auto Follow is the best way to deal with moving foes in pvp if you are melee. Not that it made huge difference there, you still have to rub shoulders but now you don't have to do it so darn close.

In pve it was just a bonus as pve critters rarely move a much.

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...

Issue 0, release, whatever the hell you want to call it, had PvP? You still aren't getting it.

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as a tank, esp a granite tank, your expected to hang and hold them all alone. some may disagree, but myself. I enjoy the challenge.

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And I like shattering the misconception "Instant invincible Tank, just add Granite" people so love to believe ("Wanna know how I know you have never played Stone?") by letting other people's Stone Tanks try to pull off half the stuff my build allows me to do.

It was genuinely painful to give one of our pity slots to a second Stone Tank on the STF. He wanted to handle Recluse. Didn't end well. He also wanted to single pull the Patrons but then, we knew he was an idiot beforehand.

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I've seen Tanks that have trouble surviving against an AV. Regularly.

I can't imagine that this permits AV soloing to be a feat even just 5% of the total population can/does pull off.

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To be more precise: it was an issue with Gauntlet in tankers (and to a lesser degree all targeted aoe attacks with very small radius.) True single target attacks never had the "impossible to hit moving targets" issue.

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Single-target attacks had a different issue. You couldn't get them to activate reliably. You could queue an attack and chase after a running opponent, and it was significantly unlikely that the attack would actually activate unless you ran past the opponent, rubbing shoulders with it the whole time.

This problem significantly predated the problem with cones/AoEs.

My very first character in pre-release was a Katana Scrapper, and I really hated this.

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Correct! Someone finally gets it! Having my first character being a DM/Regen Scrapper with Super Speed and a dial-up connection, the moment they released the moving target fix, I discovered that with sufficient tinkering, it was quite possible to stretch Shadowmaul's effect radius. Granted, it never jumped more than a few feet ("waypoint feet", where standing on something means you're 4 feet away).

Other end of it? It's extremely dependent on server/client incongruities. Spawns, whether or not they wander, have a bad habit of both being accurately and inaccurately placed. You can get a huge pile of them one time and another? Even with "stretching", you get no more than one. With that, it's not even clear if its a 'stretched' cone or just a very liberal measure of how the spawn is actually positioned versus how it appears.

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It's not something they can necessarily keep/remove, it's a quirk of the engine

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Well they could enforce the maximum range on the cones instead of expanding them to whatever the distance is between the attacker and target. How exactly that would be implemented I'm not sure. If the cone was anchored on the player presumably it wouldn't even reach the target so that wouldn't work. If it was constrained to the target though I think it would behave more or less as expected without being extendable.

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You're missing the point. The CAUSE of this was a patch that was added because back in ye olden days, playing a melee character and trying to hit a moving target was impossible. The question I pose is, even with the extended range on attacks, would, if it were possible to remove the patch that is the CAUSE of the "problem" bring back the issue they originally wanted to fix? (The preceding sentence should bring any grammar nazi to their knees in agony!)


Remember: Knockout Blow, with its already double-sized range, suffered the exact same problem.

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anyone have any suggestions?

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Invuln is pretty idiot-proof. But then, there's always a better idiot lurking around out there.

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They're doable, yes. They're just a PITA and take AGES and they're STILL not a meaningful challenge to a Scrapper who can think on his feet. Or a Brute or a Mastermind, for that matter. They're meat on the table, same as everything else. This is why I don't like balance by obscene difficulty. It's never going to be truly challenging to the ones most in need of a challenge, but it can make life extremely unpleasant for everybody else.

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So... Because the challenging mobs aren't challenging, we may as well say nuts to those that want them as they are?

Great idea, let's send them to AE! Wait, there are people demanding AE be given kid's gloves too, using the same arguments...

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tremor takes 3 seconds to cast, and most of us dont bother to take the power at all

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I would love to see you make a poll for that. Seriously, I'd find it fascinating, regardless of how it's presented.

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I've never taken a poll, but I don't know anyone who builds for performance over concept that keeps it.

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Tremor is disliked?

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I think that they should keep it, it takes more skill than it seems and it would only work with the first attack if you are attacking constantly (movement suppression). Great post.

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It's not something they can necessarily keep/remove, it's a quirk of the engine, their patchwork fix, and latency. If they removed the patch (if it were possible), it might reinstate the horrors of melee attacks+moving targets...even Knockout Blow with its abnormal range was a pain to use...and I'd probably have to reach through the Internet and slap the OP with his keyboard for it.

That said...I'm rather surprised more than anything at these longtime players from the melee AT boards that have never seen this.