Rodion

Question: do you really need Body Armor? You've only got it one-slotted which gives you 11% smash/lethal resistance, but you don't seem to care much about resistance because you've one-slotted both Tough and Body Armor.

If you're always at range the resistance wouldn't come into play very often, so dedicating a second power choice to minimum dmg res to it doesn't seem necessary.

One solution would be a fixed number of base merits and then award additional merits along the same lines as tickets in AE -- the more mobs, the more merits.

If take more time because you're just slow, you don't get anything more. But if you take more time because you don't know all the tricks and aren't stealthing most of the missions, you would get a reasonable return for your time investment that people are not getting now.

This would obviously lead to farming of TFs for merits. A high but reasonable limit to merits per minute -- perhaps based on a diminishing returns model -- would resolve this issue.

I don't PvP, but I agree that the game needs to have a decent PvP option for the long-term. I think that players should have the option to get experience and drops for PvP play. The rewards should be equivalent to PvE play, yet exploits have to be prevented.

The problem with PvP for most PvE players is that the powers are set up for players to be able to destroy most PvE enemies in mere seconds. The original PvP experience was getting ganked in seconds by a gang of thugs in Sirens Call, or endlessly circling the zone trying to engage enemies who fled immediately because they weren't able to overwhelm an individual and gank them, or getting one-shotted by a stalker who TPed them into caltrops. This was very boring.

Now the devs have made some radical changes to the PvP mechanics in an attempt to correct those problems and level the playing field. But the PvPers apparently hate the changes and want the old PvP rules back. Everyone hates travel suppression and the healing changes, etc. The solutions so far are not appealing to a very large segment of the player base. Nobody seems happy.

This is the inherent tension with PvP: you don't want to get ganked in two seconds flat, but if you make it more survivable players just run away when the going gets tough. And if you make it hard to escape, then players don't really like diving into death traps from which there is no escape. So lots of players don't even try PvP.

The trick is to make the rewards for success greater than the perceived penalty for failure. The tack the devs have taken is to essentially prohibit the normal (PvE) use of the powers. They have inhibited or marginalized the powers that cause the "problems" with PvP: healing doesn't work as it does in PvE, holds don't work the same way, travel doesn't work the same way, etc.

Perhaps a new approach is needed. Instead of coercing specific behavior by modifying powers, it might be more better to reward desired behavior and punish undesired behavior.

For example, if the devs want players to stand and fight, rather than preventing players from fleeing with travel suppression, perhaps fleeing should incur some kind of penalty while standing and taking it incurs a reward.

The trick, of course, is to prevent exploitative behavior that gives excessive rewards to players who are taking no risks or gaming the system.

Having some goal other than just ganking other players would help draw in PvE players. The minigame in RV is interesting and comes close to what I'm thinking of, but the problem is that nothing controls the balance of forces -- it's an open zone and whoever brings more firepower wins.

What I'm thinking of is a central PvP server that hosts instanced missions with a concrete goal. Teams from any of the live servers could register to start one of these missions. The central PvP server would match that team up against another team of the same size and similar level and start the mission. Using a centralized PvP server would be key, just like the single market server -- that way small population servers could get PvP missions just like large pop servers. A team from Triumph might be playing a team from Freedom. (Obviously a lot of technical issues would have to be ironed out.)

The kinds of missions would be similar to what's in the arena (have some number of wins), or they could be like regular missions with a goal like defeat PvE bosses and whoever gets the most bosses wins. Or they could be like RV, or any number of other "capture the flag" scenarios.

You would get real experience and influence for these missions. The winners would get more rewards than the losers.

Combining aspects of PvE and PvP play would interest a lot of PvE players. And having a central PvP server would really help the currently small population of PvPers.

This is an interesting project. I hadn't realized how big the -regen debuff was for Howling Twilight; I regularly use it as an attack for the stun -- it stacks well with stuns from other characters (Oppressive Gloom, for example).

From the slotting it seems that you're really emphasizing Regeneration, but you're still only winding up with 200% or so. I haven't soloed AVs, but it seems that when you do get hit, it's gonna really hurt, and you'll have to heal up immediately (with Twilight Grasp), so moderate regen may not buy you much. Twilight Grasp does have a -50% regen, so it's not a total loss when you have to use it.

You might concentrate on ranged defense instead as Nate suggests; there are lots of sets that give good bonuses for that.

If you do concentrate on ranged defense, you might also consider the Leadership pool for Maneuvers (and maybe Assault for extra damage). That you way you don't have to "waste" two power choices on Boxing and Tough. It will mean an even bigger drain on endurance, so additional bonuses for recovery and endurance would be good. Be sure to get the accolades for those (Atlas Medallion, Task Force Commander, etc.) if you don't already have them.

Furthermore, if you're concentrating on ranged defense, powers that require close contact with the enemy are probably not as useful. That would mean eliminating one or more of Dark Consumption, Soul Drain and Air Superiority if you're concentrating on AVs only.

I'm not sure you can count on minions staying alive for Dark Consumption and Soul Drain. Keeping them away from the AV will be hard, since you need them to be debuffed by Darkest Night and the pet. And if they're by the AV the Tentacles will eventually kill them.

Finally, do you have a special tactic that you use Teleport Foe for?