Ultra_Marine

1. Switch the /newspaper emote to an Acme Death Ray Catalog
2. Must have a Roman emperor's thumb down gesture
3. A "on the cross" pose; arms held out, head bent, feet together
4. Defeated pose, drops to the knees, holds arms and head to sky to scream, then bends forward to pound the ground with fists before falling into the classic faceplant.
5. Three card monty or street craps game for influence.
6. Hold one arm out in a pointing gesture sweeping from left to right while saying, "Kill them, Kill all of them!"
7. Throw money on the street (this collects pedestrians in the area) then abuse the pedestrians in some manner, (molotov cocktail thrown at gathered pedestrians) to send send their AI's into run and panic mode. Could make this emote cost influence.
8. Hold a skull in one hand while stating, "And this was the last hero to get in my way" then crush the skull
9. /Soapbox emote. Villians need a soapbox for their lecture emotes, it's a CoH tradition.

Ultra-Marine 50 AR/Dev

Thanks for the changes Devs. I have enjoyed the boss changes and I can get the better bosses by upping the difficulty slider, which I have already done. Scaling back the bosses allows those support squishies to do something when they can't find or stay on a team.

Thank you Statesman for having the patience to read the long threads and be that critical link between the rest of the developers and the players. I really think this is a win for both sides, everyone can choose what they want to face.

Ultra-Marine 43 AR/Dev blaster

If the purpose for the boss changes is to force grouping then I, as a squishy, can say that it has failed in my case.

I have two ways of fighting bosses and continuing to solo all the way up to AV's. Forgive me if I don't say how in the forums. The dev's have me scared that my use of tactics as a means of survival doesn't fit their "vision" of a blaster being crippled by debt. I am an AR/Dev Blaster lvl 41 and I solo the 3B way. (never let them see ya coming and always shoot 'em in the back) Not heroic at all, but it is the only way I can get the job done without perma-debt.

When I group I die. Plain and simple. I wear the aggro crown, I wear the robe of debt, and wield the mighty septere of one shotted idiots. If I do my job in teams I die, always, no matter how good our healers are. My job is damage, to survive I have to not do my job. I have to sit and wait till my blast will provide a killing blow. This means I only contribute to at most a quarter of any fight with a boss in it. Which is every fight with a 4 member group. Waiting and contributing most of nada for a huge percent of each fight is not how I want to play my toon. If I use the tactics that insure my own survival I am a liability to any team, as I am not doing the damage to make up for the extra mobs my presence creates.

I group on occasion to experience new content that I am unable to get solo, accepting debt as the cost to read the storyarcs. All too often however, my pick-up teams don't give a <censored> about reading the content and I end up getting rushed thru missions with little of the story reward.

The majority of groups for me are NOT fun. I have met some awesome players, and have teamed with some really great people but almost every group that forms has one or two idiots that get everyone else killed. I include myself in the idiot column, mostly because the high aggro of my attacks insures a boss or lieut. that gets missed by the tanks provoke-hits will come charging straight at me in the rear of my team where the squishys are. I try to do flanking attacks (out of healing radius') most of the time so that I am the only one that dies, but once that extra boss peels away from the tank all the squishies go to heaven. I can live with debt from groups. I can't live with causing perma-debt for other squishies.

My point is for teams you need to either lower the boss damage or give the non-squishies better defenses and a HUGE boost to aggro, or lower the aggro caused by all one-shot-squishy activity damage/debuff/buff/simply standing around with easy meat sign on neck/holds/ect.

My point for solo is make sure everyone can solo their own missions. If no one is suposed to solo bosses then stop putting bosses in 90 percent of the missions, leave them out all together for solo heroes. I can accept the loss of challenge a boss gives me if half the other people in the game can't defeat them and complete a solo storyarc. I would simply put the difficulty slider all the way up and continue blasting.

Thank You for the game even though your making me a liabilty to others,

Ultra-Marine