Wow, I have been playing CoH since 2 days after its release and was in CoV Beta and have been playing this whole time.
Last night in RV was the most fun I have ever had in a video game period. I never post, but read almost all the posting (bashing) all day long at work.
Playing my Necro/Poison MM on a full villain team going for about 2 hours we definitely held our own against EVERTHING the heroes threw at us. While of course we didn't win the zone due to the Heroes outnumbering the Villains, what we did do demonstrates to me that villains will have no problems once the numbers and lvls even out somewhat. What we did, which may come as a shock, is we moved together as a unit. The 2 MMs on the team, my necro crew and a Bot MM, stayed together, the corrupters and doms stayed near us, while the brutes went out and lured heroes into our death trap. Any tank, scrap with ELUDE, MoGers etc. who came near us went down. Anyway, my point is that bodyguard works great in PvP (I wanted to get hit with that nasty broadsword) and I can perhaps see why the Patron Powers may be somewhat different for the villains then the hero ancillaries.
Most villains and all who choose to will have access to a pet (for a limited time) in RV. This will only add to the moving plague like setup that I think a good villain team should use in RV. Any pillbox we wanted was ours...
A couple of other cool things I noticed. I also have 2 doms at 40, but have not done much testing yet in RV, but the Doms on our team were easily generating Domination, regardless, they would easily hold the multitude of "heavies" sent our way. Once held, was a matter of 15-30 seconds to beat the thing into submission. One fight we had 2 heavies focused on us, don't know how many scraps and tanks, seemed to be a bunch of icers, and Manticore, I think Stateman but he was not in my field of view. But this still was not enough to take our team down. The bodyguard change should really help to "even" things out. And the patron powers do not have to be UBER to help. Hmm wondering about adding the tornado thingy to one of my Doms at 41, that may be a perfect addition to the roving plague of death.
One piece of advice, all you PvPers neglecting your AoEs, time to dust them off... Especially controllers with AoE holds and those fire tanks with burn. My zombies did not like that one bit. Blaster 32 nukes will be key also to MM battling... Would not kill the MM but would crush my minions and leave me with about 1/3 health, thankfully the summons go directly into bodyguard mode.
Oh well, just wanted to post that I had a ton of fun in RV and the what I see so far in testing is in my opinion so far so good and the Devs are on the right track.
p.s. never had this much fun in WoWs battlegrounds...
Maggot Love
40 Necro/Poison MM
Tons of other heroes and villains.
