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Yep spawns in zones check to see what size a nearby group is. When your team is running through an area, youre actually creating spawns as you go.
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Don't we know it - its one of big reasons to avoid the Rikti crash site - its enough to drive you up the wall, the constant BZZZZZT of Rikti beaming in.
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As for why we put Bosses in missions at all in other words, why isnt everything solo-able the answer is simple.
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Delaying the player as much as possible so you can make more money of them.
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We want gameplay that encourages the best part of the game: teaming up. Soloing is fine,
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But screw the customers who want something else.
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but a MMP really shines when you meet other people and play alongside them. Ive made many good virtual friends through other MMPs that I simply would not have done if I could solo everything all the time.
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Good for you. If we want that we'll find a dating page. Other people are an nuisance and usually a hindrance to progress.
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I admit it: Im anti-social. Its hard to get me to group up with strangers. But after I do it, I always wonder why dont I do this more often
I might still be anti-social in real life, but in MMPs Im a social butterfly (I have no doubt that this will appear in sigs for years to come
)
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So because you can't get friends in real life you have to force people to group - interesting design philosophy. If you want to save the world perhaps you should become a politician or join the Red Cross.
.
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"I think every Archetype should be able to solo. The reason doesn't matter - just 'cause you're soloing doesn't mean that you should be prevented from enjoying the game."-Statesman-
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Street sweeping is not fun for most soloists for any appreciable length of time. It's repetitive, without story content, and therefore not enjoyable as the main solo available activity.
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And how does that contradict anything I have posted? Saying people can solo is not at all inconsistent with his quote on who can/should be able to solo what. Its only your insistence on what you think you should be able to solo that is in contradiction.
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It contradicts it in an extremely straightforward way:
Statesman says that soloing should not prevent you from enjoying the game.
Street-sweeping is not enjoyable to most soloers.
Therefore, being reduced to street-sweeping prevents soloers from enjoying the game.
It's as damn near a syllogism as you'll ever encounter in an informal discussion.
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The new bosses are still soloable by almost every power set of every AT with the correct power selection and tactics. The only real concern is the lucky one hit that can put many ATs in the hospital and statsman has already indicated he is working on that.
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This is not an argument:
Someone asserts X
You assert not-X.
Some sort of data to support not-X is needed.
On the one hand, assuming you have not played every Primary/Secondary combination for every AT to at least level 20 or so, you really have no hard data to back up this claim. Since people who actually play particular powersets are asserting that the new bosses are not soloable, and in large numbers, I would be inclined to believe them. Actual data tends to be more credible than bold assertions based upon whims and fancy.
On the other hand, anything is soloable providing it doesn't kill you. That's pretty much a truism and I'm not sure you've really stated anything stronger than that. Unfortunately, it's also a pretty vacuous claim of little to no consolation to anyone.
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Herding goes way beyond what I am talking about. Even on impossible the typical spawn for a 6 player mission is trivial for a large number of builds.
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Heh. Not mine. 
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Herding goes way beyond what I am talking about. Even on impossible the typical spawn for a 6 player mission is trivial for a large number of builds. The people herding pre issue 3 (and possibly post issue 3) were fighting 10+ spawns simultaneously. I.E. it was supposed to take a team of 6 people to fight one of these spawns and they were fighting/killing 10 of them at time, often solo.
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can you enlighten me which mission you're talking about? and what AT can solo a mission meant to be for a 6+ mission and what lvl? and just how do you know the "optimal" # of people these missions were designed for?
My earliest experiences with Power levelling were sitting in an alternate dimension bored out of my mind with 4-6 other people while a Spines Scrapper and Emp Defender killed the entire map (save enough to keep the mission from ending) and then repeated.
If a 6 person mission doesn't challenge 2 people then teaming is broken.
That's not teaming, it's (abusive) herding. Huge difference, IMO.
And I'm pretty sure it's not part of the Vision either, given how examples (portal farming, wolf herding, etc) keep getting nerfed.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Is it that any two people can take on that 6+ mission or that those two specific archetype/powersets can take it on? Or some two specific AT powerset combos but not others? Because if it's the latter two then making a change that affects the whole of the game and all archetypes indiscriminently is not the best solution. A little like taking a hammer to stick in a pin.
Maybe the best solution would be to take a look at how missions are scaled and not have it hinge on just the number of players but take into account the AT combinations entering, along with numbers, and adjust accordingly.
Granted, not as easy as a simple upgrade across the board to bosses. But probably more appropriate and less risky in the long run in terms of player base reaction. Methinks the boss buff was too coarse a tool for the actual remedy desired. And not just for the consequences to the soloists. There have been team complaints here as well, ie: some of the trials and TF's, especially the first respec and some of the DE stuff.
And how about being able to abandon a mission after you take it? If we're going to be limited to this arbitrary 3 missions at a time cap while we are straddled with what some consider "unsoloable bosses" and "unbeatable AVs," then at least let us start the mission, decide it's too tough, cancel it, and go pick something else. This way, nobody is stuck with 3 AV missions when they're trying to play the game solo.
All those boss missions will be a lot easier after we cross the contact level line (you know, that space of time when your old contacts are giving your 40th and 41st level character 39th level missions?). These numbers are just a recently (over a month ago) observed example, but this is how I beat the Envoy storyline solo. Perhaps that was a bug? If it was, I sure appreciated it.
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My earliest experiences with Power levelling were sitting in an alternate dimension bored out of my mind with 4-6 other people while a Spines Scrapper and Emp Defender killed the entire map (save enough to keep the mission from ending) and then repeated.
If a 6 person mission doesn't challenge 2 people then teaming is broken.
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It's a pretty simple prinicple. You take someone who can do damage. You add someone who can mitigate/prevent damage. You keep the mitigator in the background and send the buffed dealer in.
Now, because the damage dealer has mitigation/avoidance, he/she/it can, by definition survive more damage applied (or more attempts to apply it). More foes = more damage received. More avoidance/mitigation = less damage received. When more damage - less damage = damage the damage dealer could survive to begin with, you have achieved optimum effect.
If you can improve on this by increasing the damage the damage dealer can do, even better.
No matter what the devs do, this situation will always exist. They can change the form, they can change the numbers involved. So long as there is any wiggle room, people will optimize in this way.
Frankly, I don't understand why it's an issue. Playing this way is a choice. If you don't find it fun, don't play this way. Why, you could even play solo and avoid people who do this!
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
As you're looking at changing things, do look at the all-or nothing basis of it. First, there are bosses that needed some buffing, some that didn't (Masters of Illusion, which my 50th level scrapper never managed to solo in his career). Second, the huge step that currently exists between 24th and 25th level bosses.
I'm about to hit 23rd level. When I hit 24th, and there's a chance I'll encounter a boss, it'll either be orange (24th level, old difficulty) or red (25th level). 25th level bosses get the increase, designed to be an effective +1 level increase in difficulty but most people are reporting it's more like a +2 level or more increase. So, the bosses will be effectively bosses of my level, or bosses of my level +3. This could be delayed if there was an option in the difficulty slider that made all villains spawn at my level as was implied we'd have, but that's another issue.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout
I soloed ulor as a fire blaster.
Here's a hint. Lucks stack. bring lucks and disciplines. stack those lucks, stay out of melee range and eat two disciplines before engaging. He can be taken down.
The problem is two fold as I see it. First the boss ramp up happens too soon.
I did the respec trial two days after the patch.
2 blasters
2 tanks. one fire/one invul
1 scrapper KAT/REGEN
and me a RAD/RAD defender. It was all I could do to keep those blasters alive. The damage on the jump bots was ridiculous. basically I they got aggro and a debuff wasn't on the bots a blaster died. My fields kept the hardier guys and me alive
but those blasters were dropping like flies. We barely managed to pull off the respec. I had to stand right next to the invul tanker spamming heals twice because even the fire tank and scrapper got wiped. then I got wiped. If it wasn't for that invul tanks tankiness we would have lost. no contest.
Next. Ramped up damage. If you want the bosses to hang around a bit longer that's cool.... donsen't mean you have to ramp damage up so much. My smash lethal as a scrapper is capped. If a +1 boss can hit me for 500+ damage... what chance does a squishy have? My rad defender took 400+ damage from an even level tank smasher through envenerating field. For someone without EF and blaster level hitpoints.... that would have been death. keep the hitpoints high. just bring the damage back in line to release 2.
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My main issue right now is the one shot defeats. Blasters, Controllers or Defenders who round a corner a little too quickly can find themselves facing instant debt. They have no opportunity to prepare for the boss because they didnt see him.
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Earlier today, my Blaster on Triumph, Bree the Mystic, tried to solo the second Door mission from Flux (in the Hollows). There was a named boss in there.
The first time I tried to snipe the bosses companion. Pulled the boss too, of course, and he killed Bree but good. Second time, I went after the minion and quickly eliminated him, leaving me with just the boss to contend with. When I tried to take on the boss though, even with Inspirations active, he laughed off my attacks and devastated me. I gave up and waited until I had a companion.
The Hollows needs a lot of attention, IMO. Great zone. But it doesn't balance well and it becomes a stopping point for many players, I think...
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The Hollows needs a lot of attention, IMO. Great zone. But it doesn't balance well and it becomes a stopping point for many players, I think...
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My experience is that a lot of Hollows missions really need a team (although many new players make the mistake of thinking "if a small team is good, a large team must be better"). Most lowbies do not have the survivability and bag of tricks necessary to surviving these missions otherwise. There are exceptions, clearly -- a lot of tankers, for instance. But most other ATs will need help with a significant number of the missions. Getting into a team in the Hollows is easy, though -- chances are you'll get plenty of blind invites, and if you're LFT, you can expect a team in short order.
The Hollows is, I think, billed as team content by the contact who sends you there -- I believe it explicitly tells you that if you have trouble, bring some friends. If you want to skip the Hollows missions, you can do that -- currently the contact does tell you that you don't have to do them, you can do other missions instead. There's plenty of other content that you can do instead. (I elected to skip the Hollows almost entirely for one of my toons recently, and easily outleveled the rest of the content available to me nonetheless.)
I believe the door-spawning problem -- putting doors in death-trap places for lowbies -- is getting addressed, which will fix the worst thing about the Hollows.
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Teaming wasn't broken before, and this is not a fix to it.
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People routinely solo missions spawned for 6+ players. How can that not be broken? If one person can do is alone what challange does it offer a team of 6?
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It's been fixed, without changing bosses. Take that same solo player, set mission to highest setting, see if he can complete it set for six people. Won't happen. Take a well balanced team, set mission to highest, they get a challenge, everybody wins. The mission slider ALONE made missions fun again. I had stopped doing them on my main, since they were boring, and gave low xp compared to street sweeping. Now they are all I do, with slider set to max. And I routinely enter missions with 4 to 5 +2 bosses. My main can still kill them, with little fear, so it only enhanced my solo play.
But I still hate the boss changes, because there are only so many AT builds out there that can do this, and I would hate to not be able to play all the AT's.
I don't group up very often with people I don't already know. For reasons why, examine the pompous attitude of many of the posters on this thread. To assume that since they like to group, everyone should like to group is ridiculous. Soloers take nothing away from group players.
The mission difficulty should be set by slider, and group size. Problem solved, everyone is happy. If you get the mission solo, you should be able to complete the mission solo. Period. If the mission requires a group, the group should have to be assembled before you can take it. So a solo player never has dead missions on the list. If you like the boss changes, slide the mission up. Boss gets tougher. If you don't like them, keep it at hard boiled, bosses are pre I3. Works for me, everybody is happy.
Hi all just want to put my 2 influence in on this.
My friends and I went in to do the respec mission in TV. We had learned some things when we took advantage of the free respec and needed to retool our Toons. Everyone was lvl 35 and there were four of us, blaster, controler, and 2 scrappers. This is what we learned fighting freakshow bosses.
1. a regen scrapper has trouble holding her own against a boss but 2 puts her in debt in just a few swings. Damage seems high on the bosses
2. The controller was forever getting one shotted. For some reason the boss thought that the controller was a larger threat than the scrapper that had beat him down to half his HP. This was a consistant problem though out the trial
3. The blaster did alright as long as he stayed out of the way and took shots from the outside. He didn't seem to last very long aganst the bosses even at range.
4. Bosses took a long time to take down and well over half of them would stand up again fully healed. I think that this ability should be taken from the freakshow bosses. Pounding on the same guy for long time can be fun but to have him get back up and do it all over again is frustrating.
5. With only 4 TF members the lowest boss spawn rate was 2. 3 Bosses was the norm. This was way to many. Both scrappers were occupied and the 3rd boss was chasing the blaster or controller, who would die shortly thereafter. And then 3 Bosses vs 2 scrappers we didn't fair much better.
While i agree with the boss changes for the most part, I have to say that the AMOUNT of them in the Terra Volta mission should be looked at more closely.
It's hard to keep a team on the mission if they have died 5 times and you haven't even made it to the core yet. The mission quickly turned from fun into frustration.
Perhaps scaling down the damage caused by the bosses would be a better approch. Boss fights should be tough but not a slaughter of the heros. We are the good guys we are suppose to win.
Maybe a Formula based on the Arch Types in a group? 4 defenders will many ways to deal with groups of bad guys but they don't cause much damage. 4 Blasters on the other hand would cause massive amounts of damage but could not take it very well. 4 tanks could take insane amounts of damage but not dish it out very well. If these factors were taken into account for the spawn, a group of 4 blasters could encouter a boss with lots of hp but not get hit for tons of damage. This blaster boss could take 3-4 hits to put one of the blasters in debt. The type of damage the boss generated for the group of 4 tankers would be able to dish out massive amounts of damage but not have as many HP as the Blaster boss. For mixed groups you could do an average.
I know what i'm suggesting wouldn't be easy to implament but I think it could be an effective way of dealing with some AT not being able to handle the bosses in missions
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The fact is: The game (and Bosses) get very easy for most AT's post 30. Once Conbtrollers have their pets, they do just fine. Sorry, but I don't think you can state that only the casual players are left. hell, every night, 4 of the 11 servers are in the yellow Post I3, when previously they were all in the green. Don't know about you, but with 1.5 weeks having passed, and the server load increasing, I would say most players are enjoying the changes, and have RETURNED to playing the game again.
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Armsman, firstly, there are a multitude of reasons why the servers have gone yellow again for the time being:
To check out I3, the new content, tanker changes, etc.
To check out/use the free respec (a biggie) and then take the retooled character out for as spin.
To see if the Winter Event is in play yet.
Hunt for the Ghost Ship, Octopus, Clockwork paladins that came with I3 to see what they are about.
To see how that mission slider works.
It's a HUGE assumption on your part to say that people are back because they like the boss buff changes.
Second, with the addition of the slider, all of those who prefer grouping and felt the higher level game was becoming too easy, the missions too easy, you all had a tool, a choice, to adjust the game for your preference, to make things tough enough to satisfy you.
What is being complained about is that for the rest of us, there is no choice offered. It's just tougher, like it or not, ready or not, and if you aren't a scrapper, a tanker, or a fairly narrow specialized other AT build that can deal with it, your soloing days are over. We are just saying the choice shouldn't have been taken away. Why are you having such a problem with players with a different preference having a choice? You want tougher bosses, tougher missions, use the new slider. We, and it's a fairly numerically significant 'we', can't. The slider doesn't go in the opposite direction.
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I don't think it's that huge of an assumption when a good majority of my SG left becaiuse the post 30 game became boring for them; and now a good majority of them have returned and are ENJOYING the fact that they need to pay attention in missions, and use insps instead of deleting them play games to try and get 4 of each in a row, etc.
A LOT of people in the 30+ game were getting BORED. The mission difficulty slider AND the Boss/AV and Monster changes have reveresed that trend for a number of people.
If your sitting 'on the fence' as it were, it doesn't take more than one or two nights to log in, Respec, and see how the game plays. The fact that the sever load has remained increased for over a week is a GOOD indication that some people who left have returned and LIKE the changes. In my SG chat, peopel across all level ranges find the game more interesting and more challenging. I don't think we're a unique case. That fact is that if people are satisfied they are LESS likely to post; so looking a at 'The Boss Changes are BAD!' thread and sighting 1500+ post as 'proof', just doesn't cut it (imo). Hell, I had a surprise Adamaster portal mission, (the timed 90 minute one). With 38 minutes left, only Adamaster remained, and I couldn't sol;o him (I did give it a shot). Instead of bemoaning the game and the Devs, I went out to PI - made of request post detailing the situation (and this was at 11:00 PM or so on Guardian when the total serveer population is around 1000 or so); and withing two minutes I was joined by a Level 48 Blaster, and a Level 35 Defender - which we SKed to the 48; and we poped back in and took Adamaster down in less than 3 minutes (Adamaster was Level 44).
Earlier in the evening an SG group consisting of myself, a Level 43 Invun/BS Scrapper (who hasn't respeced yet); and a Level 41 Defender came across the Pretorian AV Tyrant (Level 45) quite unexpectedly. We tried him, got close, but failed. the Person whose mission it was popped out; set a tell, and got a Level 50 Scrapper willing to help in less then 5 minutes. We engaged again, had one death (the Level 43 Scrapper was one-shotted by Tyrant (1800 points); and the level 50 was surprised by the level of regen power he had; but in the end, again we prevailed.
Both encounter were fun and challenging. Halfway through my Adamaster mission, I had recouped all the exp debt had gotten earlier this evening.
Getting help has yet to be an issue; and this isn't the first time we've had to do it, and in all cases a response has been pretty quick. I find a lot of 40+ folks (myself included) love to help take done a Monster/AV/Named Boss; so getting 2 or more folks to assist usually isn't hard, and you end up meeting other players.
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and you end up meeting other players.
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But not everyone wants to do that.. I have an SG, it's three other people. That's our group, that's our 'team'... And sometimes it's still not good enough for some of the upgraded mission AV's. We don't exactly plan on taking Hamidon..
We don't want to go and get another person to help us and even less do we want to have to go ask a level 50 to bail us out.
We want to jump in as an estabilished, tight team and take out every AV we encounter. Sure we might need some tactics or suck a few deaths (now we can easily be one-shotted), but no single persons's mission AV should be spawning above the owners level and neither should they be unbeatable by anything over three people.
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Hell, I had a surprise Adamaster portal mission, (the timed 90 minute one). With 38 minutes left, only Adamaster remained, and I couldn't sol;o him (I did give it a shot). Instead of bemoaning the game and the Devs, I went out to PI - made of request post detailing the situation (and this was at 11:00 PM or so on Guardian when the total serveer population is around 1000 or so); and withing two minutes I was joined by a Level 48 Blaster, and a Level 35 Defender - which we SKed to the 48; and we poped back in and took Adamaster down in less than 3 minutes (Adamaster was Level 44).
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I had the surprise Adamastor mission myself. I recruited a controller and a scrapper from the search feature to help take him down. The scrapper got in and soloed him before the controller arrived, and the controller proceeded to chew me out for calling her in unnecessarily.
I felt like [censored] after that. That's damn near enough to make me want to quit the game.
Maybe you have fun like that, but I don't.
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A LOT of people in the 30+ game were getting BORED. The mission difficulty slider AND the Boss/AV and Monster changes have reveresed that trend for a number of people.
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I must be missing something in your examples, since I fail to see how getting a +4 blaster (and a defender SKed up to +3) or a +5 scrapper to come in and do your mission for you is fun or not boring.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
My 2$ about the change.
Bosses are now somthing to be feared, but assuming it's your mission, and you get the drop on them, still doable.
And thats key, "get the drop on them", which isn't a problem for the "named" bosses, as they normally shout out a line of blurb when you are close.
One easy change, would be to make all bosses "shout out" when you get close, that way you would know they are there.
Second, I havn't done a respec trial post #3 but I can imagine how brutal it will be, in particular the freak one, I died enough times as a one hit squishy before, now it must be a total nightmare. That needs looking at.
(I suggest upping the number of minions/LTs and dropping the boss count)
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A LOT of people in the 30+ game were getting BORED. The mission difficulty slider AND the Boss/AV and Monster changes have reveresed that trend for a number of people.
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Dude, don't speak for me. If I wanted to get 2-hit by bosses, I would have set my difficulty slider higher. 
I decided to play a squishly because it was fun and was viable and while I didn't always not die to a boss, at least I had a chance. I'm sick of the grind tho and I'm NOT going to shelve the toon I WORKED up to 31 for months (hey I don't PL) just because the devs broke the game for that AT.
Instead I plan to see what Statesman's "idea" is and if it is unsatisfactory, I'll let em know how I feel about it with my wallet rather than switch to an un-broken AT.
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3. The missions are _single player content_ not group. The second you do them as a group you end up re-doing the same missions for different people which really hurts the "suspension of disbelief". If you like the story then it runs better when you ignore the rest of the players.
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This is completely mistaken. Missions are all the standard content and storyline for both teams and solo players. Other activities like task forces and trials or the extra-difficult content to give well coordinated groups and a planned activity that offers a very high level of challenge. As such they make up perhaps 1% of the team content and a fraction of a percent of all the content in the game.
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You missed my point entirely, there are two things here and you're mixing them up
1. Game mechanic
Missions should and do work wether you are in a team or not. I'm not talking about that
2. Story
The missions are fun for me because all that mindless bashing actually has some point to it. My hero is stopping a 5thC raid on the Crey or rescuing people from the DE. This facet of the gameplay only works _once_ in the life of the Hero, hence it is single player content as, if my Hero defeats Frostfire he sure as hell doesn't expect to have to do it again tomorrow and again the next day as his friends haven't done it yet. Even if Frostfire is escaping from jail my hero world expect some recognition for having beaten the living daylights out of him sometimes only a few hours before
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With this in mind it should immediately become apparent that being able to solo everything in the missions your contacts give you is horribly horribly broken for a team oriented environment like an MMO.
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This is different to my original point but I totally disagree with you, why can't your contact give single player mission to soloers and team missions to teams? what specifically is wrong with that?
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under no circumstances should you be able to solo everything your contacts give you.
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A bold statement, but with no foundation other than your own opinion
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A +60% boss means that I CAN NOT even think to use the difficulty slider at all. Which is odd, because I think the bosses are too insane and make the fights *boring* while the minions are a waste of time.
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That's what I'm finding. At first, I was "neutral" on the boss changes. "Ok, so one thing is more difficult. Just a nuisence. No big deal, it's still fun.".
Now I'm finding that it really tosses balance out the window. If I can manage the boss - all the surrounding mobs are trivial. If I find the surrounding mobs a challenge, then the boss will clean my clock easily.
Outdoor missions - two blue bosses together are doable, but I burn most of my inspirations. Not very heroic. End result is that there is less viable hunting areas, and I feel the game world has gotten smaller.
I'm a scrapper - I can just imagine what this change means for controllers and defenders.....
In all honesty - I play solo about 50 percent of the time with my main. The boss change has a negative impact to both soloing and teaming - if I'm on a team of more than 2, we need a healer or bubbler now.
I'm not flaming on this - this is a calculated observation after several days with the new changes. It limits the amount of enjoyment I can get out of the game - either I have to set the slider down, making all other non-boss mobs trivial, or keep the slider high enough to make everything challenging and select non-boss mission only, or make sure there is a healer on the team.
So I can work around the changes to have fun - but a change that you have to work around to continue to have fun is probably not a good change.
A suggestion - reduce bosses back to where they were, and introduce a new class of mob as powerful as the buffed bosses (ie, call it "Hunter" or "Assassin"). Make it optional for players to have these on their missions somehow, either via mission description or checkbox at the guy that sets mission difficulties. Maybe even a new AI, so it roams throughout the waypoint seeking the heros..... . Now, that would be amazing !
In broad terms, only Scrappers and Blasters have the damage outlay per unit endurance and unit time to defeat the current bosses.
For a same-level boss, these are my observations:
Defenders, as a rule, run out of endurance trying to damage the boss while maintaing self-buffs and foe debuffs, even if they have max-slotted attacks for damage. Defenders not heavily slotted for damage and with a means of heavily buffing themselves, badly debuffing the boss or mezzing the boss simply cannot win alone.
Controllers will run out of endurance holding the boss unless they are pet-enabled and can heavily enhance their pet damage output (/Rad and conditional use of /Kinetcs).
Tankers will run out of endurance trying to damage the boss. Barring this, the fight will be very long and boring.
Blasters have a real crapshoot, depending on how "controlly" their primary and secondary are, and how impressive the boss's ranged attacks are. Taking on a boss with ranged mez with no a) anti-mez inspirations or b) the ability to mez the boss are a guaranteed trip to the hospital. (Note that bosses, by design, open up with their mez attack first if they have one.) Blaster primaries that can do well - Electric Blast (bosses with no End are less scary), Energy Blast (bosses on their butt can't kill you), Energy Manipulation Secondary (Total Focus puts a heavy stun even on bosses). In short, if your alpha strike cannot incapacitate the boss you are probaby dead.
Note that certain APPs invalidate these conclusions once the hero hits level 41. My Dark/Dark Defender is able to defeat bosses by virtue of heavy damage slotting, holds, pets with holds and Conserve Power + 6-slotted stamina. (Without CP she ran out of end.) My Ice Blaster got a second hold power from Fire Mastery, so if he can survive the boss's response to the 1st hold he can immediately hold the boss (assuming he doesn't miss with one of the two holds - 2:20 chance).
Please show me where these analyses break down. Until then the statement that any AT can defeat an I3 boss comes across as nothing but hyperbole. Some builds in all ATs can solo bosses. But even then, in my experience, it's not more fun. It's just longer.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA