Overboard

[ QUOTE ]
Good luck with your corrupter, I mean villain team.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know. I was hoping for better representation of ATs, but we just couldnt make it work out.

The multiplictive nature of buff/debuffs make those sets the cornerstone of a solid team. Without a primary buff/debuff AT, a strong villain team has to load up extra corrs or MMs. We considered a tanking MM, but unfortunately pet spawning/buffing just takes too long. So, yeh ... there's nothing particularly innovative about the team makeup.

Relentless Session 1
We ran two missions, then moved over to Port Oakes to open up the Atlas mayhem. Fought mainly Family, Council, and Skulls at +0 to +3. Apart from a particularly aggressive Bone Daddy we had only two defeats in regular combat. The Bone Daddy was really just an accidental aggro while waiting for the other half of the team to enter the mission. Finished at L8.

Relentless Session 2
Got a late start and one member couldn't make it. We ran a couple paper missions and put off the mayhem until all eight were available. Finished at L10.

The Villains
We threw around some ideas and, unintentionally, modeled it after the heroes team. Two brutes for melee, one built for defense and the other for offense. Five corruptors with different secondaries. Primaries were personal choice with at least one Fire and one Dark for its disorient. The dominators sets were chosen for its disorient and power boost. With the corruptor buffs all coming on the same level up schedule, there wasn't much opportunity to plan out power selection as was the case on heros with defenders and controllers. Unfortunately, we couldnt rationalize a stalker or mastermind on the team given the speed with which we turned over missions on heroes. Our controllers rarely used their pets.

Dark/Stone Brute - played by the kin defender
SS/Elec Brute - played by the empath
Dark/Thermal Corruptor - played by the ice controller
Sonic/Kin Corruptor - played by the earth controller
Ice/Dark Corruptor - played by the scrapper
Dark/Cold Corruptor - played by the ice blaster
Fire/Rad Corruptor - played by the tank
Fire/Ice Dominator - played by the fire blaster

While efficiency concerns might've had us each resume our previous roles, we pretty much all shifted just to keep it interesting. We all had multiple L50's on various hero ATs. But going into villains, only three of us have L50's and two of us have no higher than L15.

So, once more unto the breach, dear friends ...

[ QUOTE ]
There is speculation that a villain group will exist post-I9 who must be killed with inventions. Mobs such as this, who require special effort and knowledge to be able to defeat, would at least challenge most vets for awhile. Perhaps if all of their creatures had full powersets as players do, they would provide a decent difficulty?

[/ QUOTE ]

Anything along these lines would be a welcome addition. I think you hit a key aspect in expanding the critter powersets. Even if the AI is no smarter, the sheer randomness of power selection might require you to keep on your toes.

Screenshots
For the totally bored and/or curious...

Team Invince - Pwnt by timer
Team Invince - Sewer Trial victory
Team Invince - Cathedral of Pain victory
Team Invince - Finale 1
Team Invince - Finale 2

CoP pics include another eight members of the SG that formed the second team. Finale pics aren't all that interesting since we punched out of the Tyrant map before I could snap any good ones. Plus, they're in the dark and we weren't going to wait for daylight. Note, the 12 fps. I normally run at 40-50 fps, but since Issue8 it drops to 12 after running a mission or two.

[ QUOTE ]
I think you're all a bunch of n00bs.

[/ QUOTE ]

Lol, Brain. Three hours, and that was the best you came up with? :P

Name: Team Invince

Shard: CoH

Overall Theme: Design a team of eight to run missions from L1 to 50 against the highest possible foes.

Group Makeup: Really, there's any number of solutions, but here's what we used...
Invuln/SS Tanker
Dark/Dark Scrapper
Emp/Dark Defender
Kin/Rad Defender
Ice/Rad Controller
Earth/Son Controller
Fire/Eng Blaster
Ice/Ice Blaster

Combat Strategy and Power Combinations:
Invuln and DA defense sets complement each other. Sonic buffs their resist to near cap levels. Controllers focus heavily on secondary sets until aoe control available. Rad blasts slotted to add damage and some debuff. Dark blasts slotted for control and heavy debuff. Top off with single target and aoe-focused blasters.

Alternative Suggestions: Same premise can be used villain-side.


We started this team about seven months ago. Playing just two to three times per week, we finished at L50 last night. The whole time, I was unaware of this thread. Thanks to Arcas for bringing it to my attention. Its cool to see other people coming up with creative ways to enjoy the game. If so inclined, check out the url for our full story.

[ QUOTE ]
Playing effectively, crushing invincible missions. Everyone does that, and the team make-up is nearly irrelevant when you have a group of skilled players.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeh, post mid-game (roughly 30ish) rolling invincible missions is no big deal. The two things that surprised us: 1) Needing greater than invincible for challenge in the pre SO levels, and 2) Running smack into the purple patch in the 30's. In other words, for a while there was a zone between invincible missions (+2's) and the purple patch (+6's) where we could get some good fights. But as we filled out powers and enhancements the range narrowed drastically, to the point of just +5's being 'interesting'. By the late 30's, there's fewer opportunities (TFs) to generate +5's. The resulting frustration is what prompted us to start this thread. But in hearing comments such as yours, I have to say I have a new found appreciation for the dedication these guys on the team have had.

Session 64
Last night, the eight members of Team Invince all dinged L50 within an hour of each other. The first two were during the Infernal/Diabolique mission. The next two occured in the Dominatrix/Marauder mission. Three more came in the beginning of the Tyrant mission. Finally, by pure luck, the last ding was on the defeat of Tyrant. All the AV's were +2 to the team. At least three of us, had nearly all red enhancers for the Tyrant fight after making L50. Didn't have any impact.


Summary
So, it was quite a run. L1-50 on the highest possible foes we could find in missions. We completed every Task Force, except two Shard TF's, The Legend of Ruladak and The Saga of Faathim. We completed all the trials including Cathedral of Pain, but skipped Cavern of Transcendence. Outside the team some of us PvP'd, and others badged. Over seven months, we had two roster changes but ended with seven of the original eight. The final eight toons had an average login time of 180 hours. Actual playtime as a team was about 130-160 hours. Roughly 2.0-2.5 hours in each of 64 sessions.

I don't have the exact stats yet, but it looks like most of us received the second and third debt badges, Unyielding and Unbroken. Damage badges came in around the third, Adament. The Defenders earned Doctor, the third tier heal. Most of the team did not receive the first mezzed badge, though the Empath did. The highest prestige earner was in SG mode for all levels, and totalled 565k prestige. The other seven earned anywhere from 350k to 500k. Obviously, the influence badges were inconsequential.

Lastly, the fun was immeasurable. To run the game at extreme perfection was enjoyable. Though, I still maintain that the game needs to provide a broader range of challenge. Anything less than +4 was effortless, which effectively rendered much of the games content unappealing. I'll even wager that we could have handled the +2's of typical missions with no enhancements whatsoever. Hopefully, the limitations of the villain ATs will allow +2's to present a challenge to tonight's inaugural run of Team Relentless. Looking forward to the comparison.

Session 63
All eight of us ran 10 of the Hero's Hero arc missions. Lag was pretty bad for all of us, and we had a few crashes. Mission spawns were strange, too. They would range anywhere from L49 to L52 in the same mission. All eight were L49 and I think all were set for Invincible. The AV's were all L51. At least half of us are running no, red, or yellow enhancers and we're breezing through +2's and the few +3's we saw. Might have been able to get slightly higher out of one of the Shard TF's, but they're just too repetitive. The Hero's Hero arc was a nice change of pace and the frequency of the AV's and their rewards is far more interesting.

Three missions to go and we're L49.5 to L49.9

Session 62
Seven of us for a little over an hour. We did the first three missions of the Hero's Hero arc. I believe all but two of us are L49. Half of my hancers went red, but I'll leave them that way. Been running exclusively in SG mode for prestige, and too lazy to transfer influence. I've got about 20 L53 hancers in storage from all the AV's, plus another 10 or so by the time the arcs over. I'll do all of L49 with just half empty and half yellow slots, then I'll slot those 53's at 50. Team buffs are plenty for fighting +2's.

Thanks guys, glad its been entertaining. It's been fun to do, too. I'm sure thats the opinion of the team as well.

Judging by the comments as a whole, it seems the most noteworthy aspect of this project is that we've had 8 guys/gals commit to the entire run from 1-50. I'll be honest, when I started this thread I hadn't expected that would be the focus. My motivation had been to demonstrate the games inability to consistently generate a challenge for a team of veterans. Since that hasn't really been mentioned, I can only surmise that what we've put together is statistically irrelevant among the playerbase -or- engaging +3 to +5's is common but players aren't concerned about generating them in regular missions. Whatever the reason, it doesnt seem to be an issue for people.

Session 61
Got the full team of eight together to finish the Portal Corp AVs for the Ice blaster. Mostly L48's against L50 AVs, and only a few, very few, L51 mobs. Eight AVs, in under 2 hours for 1.1M xp/hr without rushing. Effortless.

We needed a bub or two to get someone to L49, so we cleared and completed the Dreck map. That nudged the rate to 1.25M xp/hr according to Herostats. Finished the night with 4 L49's, 3 L48.8's, and L48.2 and we have the Hero's Hero arc queued up and ready to go.

I'm gonna ding 50 with a killshot on Tyrant.

[ QUOTE ]
I've found your experiment to be interesting, if a bit unrealistic when applied to the regular workaday game. Managing to get a solid team to work together for so long is exceedingly rare, and most impressive.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think its just a result of the 'birds of a feather' thing. We're just a bunch of people that have been in the same SG since year one. The SG tends to attract people of similar interests, goals, skill, and play schedule. This is actually the second team we've done. The first we called 'Fresh Start', I think only four from the current team participated in that. It was just a 'roll whatever' for Issue3 and we'll run missions upto L50.

[ QUOTE ]
I think one thing that would help in such situations is to put in the equivalent of Voids for each origin or AT. Just one or two per mission set at whatever is the next bump up from Invincible (I've always advocated "Insane") would really level the playing field and increase the degree of difficulty.


[/ QUOTE ]

I would really like to see the some kind of option for increased difficulty. Obviously, based on the reaction of the community to AV/GM increases, or the boss increases in the past ... any kind of across the board increase in difficulty either by nerfing the players or buffing all mobs is very unpopular. But at the same time, there are veteran players who are largely unchallenged.

Seems to me that an easy solution would be allow more options and push that difficulty slider upto +5 cons in missions. There's a lot of entertaining content in the story arcs, but its simply not difficult enough for some teams. Thats a cheap fix. Something like you've suggested would be more appealing. (I'm still kicking myself for not having a Kheldian on the team.) Introduce an elite class of foes that are optional. But they need to be creative, along the lines of the Voids or the debuffs of Lanaru ... not just more hp and damage. Imagine if a post L30 boss had more than a dozen powers to chose from ...

Session 60
So, Lanaru the Mad ... must've particularly angry last night.

Everyone on the team has done this TF multiple times. Personally, this was my fourth or fifth. (I'm not proud, or tired.) I've never seen Lanaru put up such a fight, though I'm not sure how he conned in those attempts. Probably only even-con. For this TF, the team was 2 48's, 5 47's, 1 46 against a L50 Lanaru.

"Only L50? Weak." Perhaps that angered him.

So, we zerged him. Pwnt. Well, not exactly. We did put up a reasonable fight. Both rezzers went down underneath him, so I took a moment to pull them out so they could pop wakens. Til they got back in the fight, two more went down. We slugged it out a little longer, but without support the tank eventually went down and the rest of us pulled out.

"Humbling", said the Earth/Sonic.

For the next shot, we decided to save the combat rezzes for the tank. The rest of us would recall to the base if necessary. Without his normal spawn surrounding him, it started out pretty good. I went into blapper mode, but once he lit up Freezing Rain I had to back out. We put a good dent in his health, taking it down to maybe 20%. Lightning Storm was wreaking havoc on those of us without kb protection, and by the time he summoned a bunch of bosses we were a bit scattered. We made an uncoordinated effort to take down the bosses, which succeeded but was ultimately a mistake. By the time we finished, the AV was back to about 50% and the tank had taken a pounding since support had been directed at those of us on the bosses. We should've pulled them over to the tank instead. Attrition got the upper hand and in the course of regrouping, Lanaru de-aggrod. That round sent me on my first trip through the base, so I picked up some greens and BFs.

Third round we used a couple Amy's. I was using TP to stay out of the Freezing Rain. We had good sustained damage down to 50%, but lost the tank somehow or another. In the process, some bosses spawned and we had to back off and lose aggro. Using Boost Range, I attempted to pull a boss. Told the team to let me die if it failed. Oddly, the only thing that came was Lanaru. He moves so slow, lol. I did laps around one of the pillars keeping out of sight and the two of us went round and round about 8 times while the team engaged the bosses. I could've done it indefinitely, but messed up trying to toss Rain of Fire and he took me out.

In the meantime, the tank's PC blue screened. While waiting for him to reboot and verify, two of us made a run to the Arena run for Luck insps. Pocket D TP, Base porters, Boost Range ftw, lol. We were back before the tank. The Lucks trivialized the fight, even despite any -def that FR might applied. The final run was no defeats, and about a 3 minute takedown. It was a little anti-climactic, but overall it was indeed a legitimate challenge.

Task Force complete.

Session 59
We worked on the TF some more. Initially, missing the Kin/Rad fender and Ice/Rad troller ... fighting mostly L50 mobs. Highlight of the evening was stumbling into a L50 Mother Mayhem accidentally. Five L47s and one L45 took her down without any -regen powers.

[ QUOTE ]
Like others, I suspect they picked the specific items for a reason. They've probably got a handful of ideas cooking and want some input on which one they emphasize, and an answer of "PvE combat" or "Levelling", while accurate, wouldn't actually tell them anything they want to know.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's my take on it, too. Hence, my disappointment. Question is ... which way will they go with it? Direct effort to the 'popular' things, or try to fix the 'broken' things?

[ QUOTE ]
Your favorite overall game aspect may not be listed, but please, choose your favorite from the list

[/ QUOTE ]

The list is incomplete. I really can't vote for any of those.

Powers, Powersets, Builds, Leveling ... advancement, progress, unlocking new capabilites ... whatever you want to call it. To some people, like me ... that is the -content-. Its what we play for.

I'm disappointed it was overlooked.

[ QUOTE ]
I am still loving this :¬)

[/ QUOTE ]

Good to know at least someone is reading. Here's a little preview ... We're planning to finish Faathim's TF, then Crimson's arc, and (hopefully) finish with a Hero's Hero. We've begun planning Team Relentless for after Team Invince makes L50. While the AT's are nailed down, we haven't finalized powersets. Additionally, other members of the SG are forming up a second villains team.

Session 58
Scheduling's been complicating getting the whole team together... and its a bit hard to get excited about yet another Shard TF. However, we did get all 8 on to start The Saga of Lanaru TF, but the kin and one troller had to bow out early. We did the first couple missions against just +3 Rularuu with very few bosses... L49 to our L46. Not sure why this TF didnt spawn at its max level range + difficulty. Being short two people, we had a few tricky fights when we unexpectedly bumped into boss groups, or aggro'd a second group.

Last week, we didnt have the opportunity to get the entire group together. Although a few of us did run missions to open up another round of Portal AVs for the Ice blaster who'd missed out.

Team is now 45-47.

Session 57
Two hour session with a L42 Scrapper from the SG subbing for the Ice Blaster. We blitzed Maria's AVs. The Ice/Rad Controller had worked his contacts upto Maria and so dinged L46 in the first or second mission, which was fantastic since it bumped the AV's up a level for the rest of the team at L45.

I'll say it again, Invincible is not difficult enough. We continue to find it necessary to use 'gimmicks' to increase difficulty that could be addressed by the mission difficulty slider.

So, that was nine +3 AV's to most of the team. We took down Battle Maiden, Chimera, Diabolique, Infernal, Marauder, Mother Mayhem, Nightstar, Shawdowhunter, and Siege. Other than Mother Mayhem, we had no defeats in AV fights.

The Mother Mayhem mission gave us a couple defeats. It took us about 3-4 mobs to adjust our rhythm and adapt to letting the DA Scrapper soak some Psy damage for the Inv tank. Accidental aggro from the close spawns on that map required attention, too. That was the case at the AV, somehow the Emp defender took initial aggro and went down. I'm not sure if anyone else went down, but a well place nuke and some troller holds brought everything under control.

The L42 Scrapper had no trouble contributing damage against +6 AVs. He only suffered one defeat the whole night, and that was in the first couple mobs of the Mother Mayhem mission. The L42 scrapper ran unsidekicked the entire time and made 10 bubs, and my L45 made 7 bubs. Most, if not all of the L45's dinged.

Session 56
Partial team runs of contact missions at +2 trying to get Maria Jenkins AV arc opened up. We were just quick completing missions, trying to get to the good stuff (AVs) as fast as possible. I think the team is spread from low 44 to 45.5 now.

Session 54-55
Did Fake Nems in Shard for accolade and to get one bub for the guy at L43.9

Ran the respec trial. Initial door missions gave L45-L48 to our L44 while the reactor room spawned L44-46 and was typically dull. The meleers ran without bubbles, some of us went afk or watched TV at times, and we discussed the merits of using fruit in various beverages.

Spent about 15 minutes killing a L49 DE Monster in PI. Tank had dinged L45 in the respec, but the rest of us were L44. Reward was an unsurprising, but slightly disappointing 20k xp and 640 prestige. Lag was a factor, presumably from the Halloween Event or concurrent Hammy raid, but even without it I'd still guess 10-15 minutes.

Finished the night by upgrading my mostly yellow enhancers.

Session 53
We wanted to see how fast we could run down Eochai in Boomtown where its been sparsely populated. Instead we went to Brickstown due to the L20+ thing, but there were multiple teams on every Eochai. It took the remainder of the night until a Jack popped up. So, we didn't really accomplish much.

[ QUOTE ]
Now you drinking or PB putting drops in her eyes are equally plausible so not sure which it is, heh.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sayin'. *hic*