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Boss Changes
In our game, mob (i.e. villain) spawns depend upon the size of a team. The following is a rough approximation of how spawns are calculated:
A minion is worth 1/3 of a hero
A Lt. is worth ¾ of a hero
A Boss is worth 1.5 heroes
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Hmm, I think this calculation is a bit off. Got the mission to find the Justifier last night.
Never having done the mission before, I had no idea about the boss fight in this mission. It was a timed mission and I'm fairly certain the mission required me to defeat said boss, although the presence of any kind of boss was not even hinted at in the description.
So I get to the boss, he has a scripted dialog or whatever and he's even level (orange). I'm a level 34 blaster. I managed to clear the entire section of the cave without getting aggro from the boss. Good so far. I use aim and build up and start my Zapp to snipe. It hits, 3 damage SO and 1 accuracy, hmm... couldn't give you exact figures, but it looked like 1/10 of his health. At this point I know I'm dead. The cavern made it pretty much impossible to stay out of melee. Oh sure I was using hover and 6 slot stealth, but it didn't matter, the second he closed to melee he gave me a 1, 2 attack spit for over 300 plus the dot effect, then claw for the kill before I could even scream.
Then I decided, well I can just go to town buy a bunch of inspirations and beat him that way. So I eventually get back to the mission, use 15 enrages, aim, build up, Thunderous Blast.... hmm 4 damage SOs and all that boosting, maybe 1/6 of his health... can you guess what happens next? Well I managed to evade instant death for a little while, got him down to 1/3 health before I died again. And I died 2 more times after that too.
1.5 heroes... yea okay... oh the decimal point was really just an ink splatter, whoops.
I do have a suggestion to fix this and I think it is a compromise that will make most players happy (hopefully).
How about if you scale the boss level with the number of players. Not in the way villains are scaled in missions now. Make bosses scale a little more dynamically. As an example, 3 or 4 heroes and you get a +2 boss, 5 or 6 is +3 boss and 7 or 8 is +4 boss. This would only affect the main boss leader(s) of the mission, all other enemies will use the old scaling method. Or maybe the boss's guards in the room with him get half the level boost or something. This way you could have the even level bosses go back to the way they were, but teams in missions, won't just breeze through the bosses. And you will have the epic final showdown before completing the mission with a team.
Not sure if the devs considered this, but I think it makes much more sense than just arbitrarilly saying solo blasters are gonna be debt magnets. Blaster debt was bad enough before issue 3.
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I have tried the eden trial several times and the moss wall allways seems the break point. Since v3 I have not been able to get past the moss wall and believe it is definitly more dificult than before. We had a full team of lv 40/41s a couple even lvled to 42 before we got to the moss wall. The new boss rules and other changes flat out made it imposible to get past. The spwans were overwhelming and we all died at least 3 times. If any one has been successful at this in v3 please let me know what you did.
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I did the Eden trial yesterday. Most everyone was 40-41, one was 42, having levelled during the trial.
We had, when we got to the MOLD wall:
L40 Tanker
L41 Tanker
L42 Tanker
L39 Scrapper
L40 Blaster
L41 Controller
L40 Controller
We had another blaster, but he was RSK'd, and lost connection before we got to that area - somewhere on the bridges where you "farm" for Ambrosia. His loss was deeply felt, as he was RSK'd to the L42 tanker. As an aside, the whole RSK for TF's thing DESPERATELY needs to be fixed. Now, not later, not with Flashback. NOW. With *ONE* exception, all the trials and TF's I've done with my main and my alt which had someone RSK'd has resulted in losing that character.
We got wiped a couple times trying to take out the lichens and lichen colonies, til we figured out what we needed to do. (take out the colonies, then the stragglers, all from range as much as possible, though the melees did a little cleanup work, too).
We tried several tactics with the wall. Tried having the tankers work on the spawns, and the damage dealers work on the wall, with controllers trying to lock down what they could. Wipe. Tried the damage dealers on the spawns, and the tankers on the wall. Wipe. Tried a combination of those two - can't remember what. Wipe. Tried *EVERYONE* on the wall, with the healing controller staying back, so if we wiped, we at least would have one still alive who could TP us back and revive us. That tactic worked. We took down the wall, the healing controller was able to keep most of us up, and we then finished off the spawns. It took a while, and it was very difficult, but we managed it. Everyone was deeply in debt by then.
But, after that, it was pretty easy. That huge room of Crystal-type DE's was a very good debt eraser. The Titan took me down once, but only because I thought I could get off one more swing before popping another Ambrosia.
Took us almost the entire 4 hours, with all the deaths. But it was fun, and I'd like to do it again, soon. I will point out that this was done solely with members of my SG and those from another SG - all of us very good players, with a great deal of experience between us, and a lot of experience playing together.
And even though we managed to get through it, I'm still happy with the upcoming boss changes. 5-6 team wipes are a bit much, though only 3 of them were due to I3 bosses.
here's a good example of boss changes in action, I started the bastion TF (I already knew there were going to be bosses)
with a lvl 31 tanker, 2 blasters (lvl 26 and 28, respectively) myself and another controller (lvl 25 and 26) and 2 scrappers (both around lvl 28) and everyone but the tank was repeatedly one shot killed by random council bosses that spawned in every group(first mission we quit TF right after this 
), the only task force that was as rediculously OVERPOWERED was the TV task force that I joined to help a friend who messed up with his free respec(the sky raiders one) we ended up quitting on the third or fourth mission due to the RETARDED amount of bosses in small groups.
I've done all of the tfs up to the TV after the I3 update and in all of them I noticed one common thread: there are at least 2 rooms in EVERY door mission where MORE bosses than minions/lt's spawn, and there is usually at LEAST one boss in every group of minions in a mission map. SOMETHING must be done about this, I have no problem with increased boss stats but in all honesty BOSSES SHOULD NOT BE MORE NUMEROUS THAN MINIONS ON ANY MISSION AT ALL thank you for your time.
So have the bosses been changed yet, cuz if they havent something went really wrong today, ok so i had the Defeat Helix Black 0-9-0 mish, ok the mish said there would be a boss, but there were 3 +1 zeuz titans and 1 even con boss, besides Helix Black, so in a solo mish set at hard boiled i fought 5 bosses when the mish only mentioned one. im not complaining about the difficulty, they were no match against my ice blaster, but i do wanna mention that i went in there unprepared because the mish only mentioned one boss.
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Where do they break down? My 37 Ice/FF Controller regularly does red and purple bosses. I can even do them without the use of a single inspiration although that makes the fight a lot longer. One example: last night I soloed a 40 Death Mage + 40 Guide. Fight was never in question. With proper slotting I can hold boss, do damage, summon pets and keep my toggles up indefinitely.
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I did open my statement with "in broad terms". But more specifically, do you have any powers besides Stamina for End reduction/recvovery? Have you slotted your powers for end reduction contrary to common practice?
This game allows for tremendous variation. Between powersets, power choices, number of slots and what you put in slots, two heros can perform radically differently. I'm not so foolish as to think my analysis covered every hero.
But in this very thread are other controllers describing running out of end before they could kill the boss. I've seen it happen to my controller buddies, too.
Maybe you've got a nicely optimized combination. And certainly Controllers are something of a weak discussion point on this, since it can be argued they aren't supposed to be able to solo at all (a concept even the devs seem to have rejected since they're looking at "petless" power sets).
But I don't think you can come along and say "ooh, ooh, I don't fit your pattern" and say that invalidates it. If a lot more controllers / blasters / defenders come in and say that they have no problem soloing bosses without the exception builds I mentioned then I'll admit my observations were in error. So far, most of this thread seems to back me up. My experience with Tankers may to be skewed - the ones I know had endurance issues soloing a boss, but posters here seem to counter that.
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The only END recovery I have is Stamina (since it is the only one there is for an Ice/FF controller). I have 1 End Reduce on Assault and 1 End Reduce on Tactics + 5 To Hit buffs. 1 END reduction on Dispersion Field (my only defensive power). No END reductions on anything else.
How do I not run out of END? It is called thinking instead of just bashing keys. Once boss is held I turn off all defensive powers, leave leadership powers up at all times, use only 2 attacks (Block of Ice and Air Superiority) and start monitoring END. If it gets below 20% or below 50% if pet summon is close to refilling, I stop using Air Superiority. By just holding mob (BoI also does some damage) and letting pets damage it I regain END at a fair pace. Once it is up high enough I start using AS again. This will work for anyone with pets.
Below 32 you can do the same thing but it definitely takes longer and you will need CoBs if boss has a high regen rate since you can't afford to ever stop attacking with everything. Even then there will always be some bosses you can't take by yourself because of the way things shake out (i.e. boss has high psionic resist and your attacks are psionic). So once in a while you have to call for help. This has never been a problem for me the times I've needed it.
If you are going to make sweeping statements that Controllers can't solo a boss then expect people to disagree with you. I can't help if others don't use the best tactics when fighting and can count on one hand the number of people I've met who have the slightest clue how to split groups of mobs up. If charging straight in doesn't work then the mobs are too hard.
If nothing else, again high regen bosses excepted, you can always run away, hit rest and go back in, plus there are always inspirations. Bosses should be hard and should push you to the limit if you are going one-on-one with them.
As I said before I don't know how you fix it for Blasters since they by definition have almost no defense and can't stand toe to toe with bosses the way other AT's are capable of - in various ways. But lowering Boss HPs doesn't seem the right answer to me because that same Boss has to fight other ATs and groups.
Also if you read the boards you will see many posts by Blasters saying that if they can't take a mob down in 2 or 3 shots they are dead. When I said being able to take a boss down in 2 shots is ridiculous I meant just that. Boss fights should be drawn out affairs. But again Blasters aren't suited for long fights.
Even though I mainly solo I have no problem with some content being group only. It is still a lot more solo content than I have seen elsewhere. When I run into an AV or particular boss I can't take I go find help. If I hear others asking for help I help them (with bosses, deactivate multiple items at same time missions or if they are having trouble finding a teammate). Seems like a good system to me. Be good to other players and they will be there for you. Sort of like...role playing.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
One thing I've noticed lately, people seem to be avoiding a lot of TFs more. It's been tough to find TFs for Sister Psyche and Bastion especially. I think the changes are not encouraging grouping too much. With the current game, duo's are the safest option for missions. If you add a third person, he/she better be a darn good tanker or people are in trouble.
just to add my $15 worthless opinion...
my lvl29 pure-healer is all SOs and dedicated to teaming, as i can't kill anything not -6lvls or more to myself with brawl and the forced secondary. that said, i can now only team with scrappers and tanks unless i want the guilt of watching my team half-wiped several times each mission. if a lvl29 blaster/controller/healer has 666hp and the lvl28 boss hits for 700hp, where do i become useful to them? they die and there is nothing i could have done better to prevent it. i feel sick cause it's my job to keep them alive, and i have now failed. if my SG wants to team 8 peeps and run missions, either we must fight -2s or not have any squshies on the team at all just to compensate for the 1-shot-kills. the alternative to the low xp and deaths is to street-sweep mobs of minions and Lts, skipping bosses almost always. which means no missions/arcs/insp-enhancements from contacts/accolades/TFs/trials. if my squishies are afraid to group with us for missions, how will they experience 4/5ths of the game? am i unplayable now? no. ...i can actually lvl faster now cause i'm worth alot (RA and heals) to invulns who use to solo 
short: roll the dmg output back on the bosses to pre-I3, please
thx
Regarding the boss changes and spawn rate...though the rollback will fix this to a degree let me tell you a little horror story.
Timed DE mission- Destroy 5 labs and stop weapon production. So I entered it on my own. Went through it on my own with my SC 35 SR scrapper on Tenacious.
Guess what I found in the final room ON MY OWN?
5 orange conning Devoured, all within aggro range of eachother. So I called in some reinforcements.
1 Boss = 1.5 heroes. In theory a boss shouldn't spawn in a solo mission.
Explain to me then....HOW THE HELL DID FIVE SPAWN?!
That should NEVER happen ever again. Ever. 1 boss became scary enough after I3 went live. 5...well that was just silly.
Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands!
i really hope you change the bosses to I2 .
last few days i ve been trying to do positron task force and many times the respect TV task force ( sky warriors) , and they are near impossible .
the number and dificulty of the bosses its just too much .
it gets boring and everybody quits .
i have 2 lev 50 no pl caracters already parked ( i dont play them no more) , and im playing a peacebringer atm .
i dont care about debt , im not rushing to lev 50 ,because since theres no pvp , theres nothing to do after lev 50 .
but dying and dying and dying its just not fun .
i rather do my story arcs solo and get 1 boss in the end then group with other people and get bosses in each spawn and keep dying .
TV respect TF its the worsth .
i have done it many times with my other caracters , but after I3 you must have a perfect group with caracters having the perfect powers ( so why respect) and even then dont belive you can do it .
maybe 1 time in 10 ...
so please roll back stupid bosses or i think ill never do a TF again .
poor me
For those who haven't read the Solo and Team play thread, boss difficulty IS being rolled back, very soon. They'll be making other changes, and at some point will look to see if some difficulty increase is needed. If they do, I trust it'll be different than the I3 increase (didn't work for soloers OR teams, IMHO).
CuppaJo, maybe this thread needs to be locked.
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The world beware! I've started a blog
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Positron and Synapse TFs shouldn't be affected either way (bosses below level 25). It's the Sky Raiders respec trial that presents a brick wall right now.
My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City
Has a ETA been given on the rollback for bosses?
'If Champions Online is what "CoH was supposed to be", I'm glad that I have what I have rather than "what it was supposed to be".' - The Alt oholic
"I solo'd Hamidon...but I also totally cheated." - Back Alley Brawler
"It is still early. Someone is going to get stabbed tonight I can feel it." - Ishmael (said in Jello Shooters chat)
The boss changes don't affect my illusion controller at all. They don't hurt my SR scrapper either, just takes him longer to kill one. Both of these characters solo well too. Does that make you feel better?
I also still solo fine using:
invul/ss tank
illusion/ff controller
warshade
energy/energy blaster
fire/rad controller
kinetics/psychic defender
yeah, it's more difficult with the defender, but not impossible. I'll occasionally get help if I want to speed things up, but so far, so good.
Not sure what all this means... maybe people aren't willing to take the time to strategically figure out what works best? I dunno.
I don't see a problem with an easier difficulty level for those who want it though...
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One thing I've noticed lately, people seem to be avoiding a lot of TFs more. It's been tough to find TFs for Sister Psyche and Bastion especially. I think the changes are not encouraging grouping too much. With the current game, duo's are the safest option for missions. If you add a third person, he/she better be a darn good tanker or people are in trouble.
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While I don't disagree with your conclusion about team size limits, I think another factor for those is that there are 2 new Task Forces in that level range - the 2 Striga ones.
Bastion: Fight council in identical underground bases, for an eternity.
Burkholder: Fight council in a SECRET VOLCANO BASE for a couple hours.
It's like someone is asking you wether you would like a delicious chocolate cake or a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
@Mindshadow
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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.
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I'm a big fan of pick ups. But at the Hollows, you are playing with a new character (even if you're an experienced player) and often dealing with players who are new to their hero concepts.
In my opinion, that makes the Hollows one of the WORST places to do pickup teams...
I wuv you
The only issue I ever had with the boss changes was the added damage. I have no problems with not being able to solo a mission that has a boss in it. However my feeling on that changes if I recieve a timed mission with alot of bosses or just one big one at the end. My playtime is usually late in the evenings when most heroes have hung up thier spandex for more comfortable pajamas. I will miss the XP and the nice influence I got from these nifty hard foes.
As a side note: I have noticed that since I3 enhancement drops have been way way rare! It takes me 4 hours of hardcore gaming and street sweeping to even get about 8 enhancements. Most of which are not even SOs. If I and my teammates take on more than 50 bosses, 100 lts, countless minions and 3 AVs then the least Id expect is to
have a decent rate of enhancement drops. I dont care about oh yea im getting soo much influence from this. I cant buy level 47 SOs from a shop. Devs please look into this matter as well.
FYI, the boss difficulty roll back has hit the test server so should be soon. (To those who saw the first post which had a completely unrelated link, sorry, thought I had copied this post from when I posted it to the Solo Play/Team Play thread.)
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
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Boss Changes
In our game, mob (i.e. villain) spawns depend upon the size of a team. The following is a rough approximation of how spawns are calculated:
A minion is worth 1/3 of a hero
A Lt. is worth ¾ of a hero
A Boss is worth 1.5 heroes
Admittedly, these are approximate. A single hero might spawn anywhere from 2 to 4 minions. Or a Lt. by himself. Or a Lt. and a minion.
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Just realized something about this.
Lieutenant = 3/4 or 9/12 of a hero
Minion = 1/3 or 4/12 of a hero.
Lieutenant + Minion = 13/12 of a hero or > 1 hero. ???
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
[quoteEven though I mainly solo I have no problem with some content being group only.
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We have that already, they're called Task Forces. 
Noooo...I want my tough bosses back.
ok. Can't have that. How about something higher than invincible on my mission slider? Currently if I want a real challenge I add a few people to the team and do my Invincible missions. Fine by me, I like teaming.
But make this game as tough as possible!
I love the challenge!
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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.
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I'm a big fan of pick ups. But at the Hollows, you are playing with a new character (even if you're an experienced player) and often dealing with players who are new to their hero concepts.
In my opinion, that makes the Hollows one of the WORST places to do pickup teams...
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Big problem in Hollows is new players who don't know how to run past mobs without getting aggro. I sat and watched 2 teammates die 3 times trying to run to mission at far side of zone. Now remember they respawn in the Atlas hospital so 3 deaths takes like 20+ minutes. I finally had to level and get group invis. Never going back without it.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
Devs I know youre planing to roll back boss changes. But can you leave the AVs like they are now? They are tough as nails and require good well organized teams. They make fights feel epic.
Boss difficulty has not been rolled back, I'm pretty sure. In the past few days, I've done the sister psyche task force (where there's one mission that have a dozen or so groups of three tank freakshows, all of them 25 and up) and the Moonfire task force (eight people on the task force, so bosses in just about every group). In the sister psyche task force, most of us were under 25, not at the uber level. Moonfire, I think we were all 25 and up, but it was still very tough.
States, thanks for rolling back the boss difficulty. You've said you'll revisit it after soloers can run without bosses and you can give back missions. I think that's a good thing, here are my thoughts, bank them away until then.
First, any buff needs to be ramped up, rather than on/off at a specific level. You gave 25 as the level where people start getting SOs. However, at 25 most players won't have enough influence in put SOs in all important slots (unless they've got a rich benefactor in their supergroup or are an alt of a character that got to high level), and there aren't that many slots to put SOs in.
In the current game, bosses fill the roll of being to lieutenants what lieutenants are to minions--a noticeable step up, but still basic thugs. From what you said in this thread, you saw it as something more. But, not only doesn't their difficulty match that, neither does the rest of the design. Why would there be two outcast bosses working together to steal a lady's purse in Steel, which is a regular spawn there. (Not that I'm complaining...I watch for them to work on my outcast badges.) How could you have three freakshow tanks in one room without a fight breaking out? Not only does it cause unholy hell on your players when you've got more bosses than non-squishies, it just doesn't fit your vision.
My recommendations...leave bosses in their current position in the feed chain, as one step above lieutenants in the organizational charts. Some could still have names, as up-and-comers in the organization.
Take a look at all villain types individually...bosses, lieutenants, and minions, and see if any need to be slightly bumped up to keep the difficulty level reasonably consistent. That may require some tweaks based on level too...a 5th column human boss was at a good level of difficulty in the teen levels, but was free xp in the 30s and should be buffed (I'm presuming archons are the same but don't have enough experience to say). OTOH, Master Illusionists are plenty tough.
Meanwhile, for bosses you want to make a cut above, those would be elite bosses. Some should be simply tougher, others should have extra powers. Being unique, the only time you'll see two elite bosses in the same mission is when there are two different gangs interacting (attacking each other or negotiating a truce or similar).
I know you won't work on making decisions until some other things are in place, and I appreciate the changes. Consider it putting my two cents on deposit.
My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
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