Steel_Shaman

I see your point. I admit now that I have Ninja Run I'm more willing to delay travel powers into the 20's for my own builds. Freeing up those 2 power picks below 20 can make quite the difference for some builds. That's really the reason I'm happy about this change. It will allow me to take powers I really want when I really want them, instead of feeling like I "have to" take Fitness by 20 instead.

Sorry about that.

That's why I said what I did about Praetoria. The mobs there are tougher than many of the mobs in the original content. That makes me wonder if maybe they haven't already done what you suggest?

So adjust your difficulty slider a few levels earlier than you normally do. Where's the problem?

So you don't want your super heroes to be able to fly, run faster than a speeding bullet, leap tall buildings in a single bound, or vanish in a burst of light? Funny, that's the kind of stuff that helps me feel "super" in this game.

Honestly I think that is precisely what they DON'T need to do.
Just give us all 4 abilities at level 1. It will finally shut up the complaints about the low levels of CoH "sucking".

Edit: you know, since GR launch there have been people complaining that Praetoria is unbalanced on the low end (myself included). What if the Praetorian mobs were made just that little bit stronger precisely because the Devs knew they had this coming? Hmmm.

Haha that's great.

Very true about the endurance usage. My Ice/Ice has an end redux slotted in every attack, a Miracle +Recovery in Health, and a Performance Shifter +Endurance in Stamina. He still runs low on end at times with Arctic Air going.

That being said I do find /Ice to be a fun set. But then, my first 50 hero was an Ice/Ice Tanker. I love all the ice sets in general.

Was that really necessary?

On topic: I don't think the devs are balancing around IO's. They've promised they wouldn't do this and I trust them not to go back on it, especially not without giving fair warning to the playerbase.

A Shivan would be complete overkill imho. In the amount of time it takes to get the Shivan you could pop some purples, finish the mission, and move on to the next.

Mind/Fire is an awesome PvE combo.
Mine can go almost an entire mission solo without taking a single point of damage.

Regarding Serge's mission: I had the exact same thing happen to me. The ambush was 5 minions. I was running on the base difficulty at the time since that was my Praetorian and I'd never even been able to touch his difficulty. Five minions isn't the end of the world, but you have to agree that isn't normal for his mission.

Absolutely ridiculous. Someone's personal RP should not get in the way of another's enjoyment of the game, or the performance of the team. Here's to hoping the number of blue side players like that is limited.

I distinctly recall reading something from the Devs in which they stated that new players who buy the Going Rogue complete collection (the one that includes the original game as well) are required to start their first character in Praetoria. They actually CANNOT choose Paragon or the Isles first. If I'm not mistaken trial accounts also go there with no option for anywhere else. Really, really bad idea in my opinion.

I hear you my friend. I just got done with this evening's play session, trying once again to level an Electric Dom in Praetoria. I called it a night a good hour earlier than I normally do, because quite honestly the thought of yet another mission of painful struggling didn't thrill me. After a long day at work I'm just too tired for it.

For much of the evening I was on a three person team:
electric/electric Dom
electric/ff Controller
Fire/Dark Corruptor

There was one mission against Resistance in which at least one of us died every spawn for several spawns in a row. Why? Our powers kept missing. Holds, heals, attacks, you name it. At one point I had every single one of my powers miss in a row. That's two controls and 4 attacks, all double-slotted with Accuracy (TO's, best I can get at level 11.) I thought that was supposed to be impossible due to the streak breaker, but I guess I don't understand how the damn thing works. And we somehow kept getting more than one group even though we were trying very hard to pull and "step up our game" as so many people keep telling me to do. We were even in our SG's Vent coordinating via voice chat. It didn't matter one whit.

So far the only character I've actually enjoyed playing in Praetoria is a Demon/Pain Mastermind. All the others have just been terrible experiences. I really like this Dom, and don't want to start him over. But once he and the MM are out of Praetoria, I won't be back. It's just not fun. If it weren't for the side switching system I would feel like I completely wasted my money on this expansion.

Thank you!!!!
I think that is one thing we veterans keep overlooking and you summed it up nicely. We are all so caught up in "this is our expansion" that we keep glossing over the fact that this is also the revamped new player experience. There's only so far the Dev's can go with it in terms of challenge, because part of its function is to draw in and keep new players.

I agree 100%. I've been debating in this and other threads that the difficulty slider would fix the problem for me. Instead they've gone the route of directly nerfing mobs, which I honestly find quite surprising. It looks to me like just enabling the difficulty system in Praetoria would be less work for them than adjusting all those mobs.

In the post I responded to, you said that it looked like people who have an issue with the mob difficulty think it's the game's problem if we get defeated. I took that to mean "you never want to die." If that isn't what you intended, my apologies.

I personally have found the level of care required for some of the Praetorian mobs (most notably the Destroyers) to be very annoying. That is why I view it as bad. It's highly subjective I know, but that's how I feel. Variety and challenge in and of themselves I view as a good thing. I just think the challenge level of the mobs in Praetoria at base is tuned just a little too high.


It's difficult for me to state what the average player should be experiencing. All I can really say is what I personally find fun or not fun. For me, one or two deaths a mission is actually tolerable. If it goes beyond that I start to get annoyed. I also start to get annoyed if it becomes obvious the deck is stacked against me in a manner that I regard as unfair, as is the case with some of the ambushes. Seer 0001 was an excellent example of what I mean by that and the Devs fixed her encounter.

As an aside, I played a Dom through a few missions in Nova Praetoria last night to test these changes. I found the Syndicate to be noticeably easier, but to still require some thought to take out. I couldn't just let them get in melee on me or they would cause some serious damage given my low health pool. That made them feel just about right. They were still obviously dangerous, but I didn't feel like I was going to need to run from 3 minions either unless I did something stupid.

The funny thing is I haven't been arguing for the Devs to nerf the mobs directly. All I've asked for in the other threads where I've discussed this is to give us the difficulty slider in Praetoria. Apparently their data mining showed that more than just that was needed.

Dying sometimes is not the issue. Why must folks with your argument take everything to extremes? People say "we think some of the mobs are too strong" and you immediately jump to "you want to never die." The two statements are not even close to the same thing.

I like a good challenge. But some of the enemies in Praetoria are not just a "good challenge," they're downright brutal. What I personally do not find fun is having to approach every single spawn like it's the end boss of the mission. That gets tedious after a while. I want my characters to occasionally feel moderately strong, y'know?

Again, you are confusing people getting frustrated with people wanting easy mode. I doubt anyone posting in this thread wants the game to be a snooze fest. You speak of strategy, but for some AT's certain GR enemies are basically a case of "kill as much as you can, die, come back, repeat". I'm sorry, but that kind of strategy isn't fun.

You are right in that variety is a good thing. So why then, does Praetoria not have a difficulty slider like the entire rest of the game? That way people could experience the new content in the manner that suited them.

As it currently stands I have SG mates that have already sworn off Praetoria and refuse to play there ever again.