101,888 EXP in a single kill -- Can you top it?
By
Alannon,
Posted on: 2007-01-27 16:36 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Right, I know that certain builds can solo them, and than insps allow others to, and temp powers allow others, etc. I also know that we always vastly outperform their voiced expectations.
The reason I brought "the devs don't want us soloing AVs" up is that this is one of the reasons people suggest PvP temp powers stay in PvP only. They've said they don't want people soloing AVs, Ultimus posts threads about soloing *every AV in the game*, and people fear one of the following:
<ul type="square">[*]Their characters getting reduced in power because the Devs make adjustments to them instead of the temp powers[*]the PvP temp powers getting adjusted down to the point that they are worthless. (Yes, I know you think that making them PvP-only does just that, but I know PvPers who want them to be PvP-only, because they think they *are* good in PvP right now, and don't think Shivans will be worth a crap as LTs in it)[*]AVs being dramatically increased in power to the point that it makes them annoying to impossible even in large, good teams (see the original AV regen changes)[*]Kali's Law[/list]
People then make suggestions in hopes that the Devs will try them instead: one suggestion being to make them PvP only.
Again, ALL of this may be (and is for the near future, given Castle's recent statement) paranoia, but that's the reasoning behind the suggestion.
I am not saying that AVs are not soloable, nor am I saying they will ever be guaranteed to be unsolable. I'm saying that the devs have been vocal about wanting them to be unsoloable (but not that they will go to the ends of the Earth to do so), combined with adjustments to them *and* us in an attempt to make them so, and this creates fear in the mind of some readers of threads like this.
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Oh, and hey, thanks for the apology. I appreciate it, and it's rare on the forums. I also understand the rant. I do those myself rather often. 
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The most interesting thing is this...Arcanaville, you think that Nukes should not be balanced around use against a player...but Posi has gone ON RECORD that Nukes were DESIGNED from the start for Base Raids...PvP. And given that a buffcapped Shivan hitting a debuffed AV does almost 4x damage as an equally capped SS Brute hitting the same AV...I'm guessing they're balanced around the same ideal.
The main issues with Shivans in zone PvP would be limited mobility and poor AI...in a Base Raid or Arena match, that limited mobility will be likely to not matter, since EVERYONE gets much more limited mobility, and the AI issues would likely also evaporate, since EVERYTHING they can hit has value as a target. As I've stated before...have somebody Phase Shift/Invis/Hide their way to a generator room, and drop a Shivan; throw a rack of Nukes right after, and watch the lights go OUT. Yeah, you've just shot your bolt for the raid...and you've also taken all defenses offline, killed the rezrings, killed the porters, and possibly cost the opposing team a hefty chunk of Prestige and Salvage to boot. Two gennies? Two sneakers. They ARE balanced around PvP, to be able to take a player out FAST, or for antimateriel purposes. And since they're balanced to take harder-than-AV targets...anything lesser is a snack.
Tiredinnuendo: You are interpreting. This is a mistake. The bald, flat statement is this and ONLY this: "AVs are teamed content." Anything you choose to interpret, read into, surmise, or postulate due to the state of the game is mere speculation; the one single thing that DOES matter is this:
"AVs are teamed content." That, sir, is an explicit statement of policy. Is the policy followed properly? Not really. This does not end it being an explicit statement of policy, any more than a Bush signing statement means that the law he's trying to bork will be unenforced; it merely means that for whatever reason, the policy is not currently strictly enforced. The possible reasons for this are myriad - lack of dev time for such a "simple" codefix...and remember, _Castle_'s fix to Power Push took 3 patchcycles to make it live, even though it was literally a single conditional in standard use in other powers... or the given "you have insisted you want to be able to TRY, so we'll let you TRY" - and if this is the case, then a dose of paranoia WRT nerfs descending on AV-solo-capable combos would be indeed justified...let those who can break the game do so...then fix the break; in essentia, let min-maxers braid the rope, pick the tree, tie the knots, stick their head in the noose and grin big...the devs can do the little else that remains.
Or you could be correct, and the policy has been modified to "Avs are teamed content UNLESS you are a PvPer"...in which case it is an utterly bizzare line of distinction to draw, and patently unbalanced. Also consider: It is in fact POSSIBLE for a player to solo a Giant Monster with the proper sets and setup; it's not EASY, and requires a Radiation Emission powerset in the mix to counter the regen, and requires a way to get the GM to follow you along a drone-free path close enough to a contact for you to be able to purchase Inspirations from them, and likely a Shivan or four for damage output and nukes to buff damage so as to provide a chance of victory before the intended despawns...but it IS TECHNICALLY doable; the Kronos can be soloed if you can drag him up by Indigo and have some way to cut off his regen consistently - Rad - and can output enough damage to take him out before he despawns on his own - Shivanukes. Same with Deathsurge, same with Caleb, same with Jack and Eochai, same with the Paladin. If you're over level 30ish, same with Scrappy(only due to the minion horde).
So, Giant Monsters are expressly MULTI-team content...and can be soloed if you work hard enough to break the game. AVs are teamed content...and can be soloed if you work hard enough to break the game. To me, that speaks more of balance issues preventing the devs from being ABLE to enforce their vision on AVs and GMs, rather than their creating an arbitrary distinction that being a member of the PvP subcommunity is sufficient to allow you to do things directly counter to EXPRESS and EXPLICIT Dev intentions.
Of course, given the reactions I tend to recieve when I lay things out totally objectively and logically, I don't doubt the thread will soon die in flames.
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Debuffs are one thing, but where did the sheer damage required come from on a Troller?
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You halt an Arch Villain's Regeneration and you can take as long as you like to kill them.
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How would a controller other than /rad halt an AV's regen?
And not that I've actually tried with an AV, but if 4 purples makes it almost impossible for an EB to hit me, I think they'd work well for an AV. Of course, you'd need lots of purples which means lots of inspiration space which means higher levels...
...this is why I stick to soloing EBs. A tray full of 20 purples and that's all I need.
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a /kin spamming transfusion can do it as well, i've seen some fire/kin's solo AV's from time to time, not exactly the fastest thing or most exciting thing in the world to watch but it can be done.
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What temporary powers did you use? When I took down Ghost Widow it was under 2 minutes.
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Um, I'm talking hero side here. I didn't have the benefit of an 850% brute damage cap.
Well when my Invuln/SS Tanker fought Battle Maiden I only used a Shivan. I posted the end of that fight on YouTube here .
When my Fire/Axe Tanker fought Bobcat it was pretty much a Shivan and Amy the whole time. I started the fight with a nuke from Warburg, but due to the length of the fight and Bobcat's Unstoppable period, it was pretty immaterial. I posted the video for that fight here . I apologize for the video quality; I'm new at the whole video capture/compressing thing, and YouTube has a 10 minute/100 meg limitation.
And note, I didn't post those videos to try to prove how uber I am; I just wanted to try to rise to the challenge set forth by Ultimus, and see if my suboptimal tankers could meet the challenge.
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What temporary powers did you use? When I took down Ghost Widow it was under 2 minutes.
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Um, I'm talking hero side here. I didn't have the benefit of an 850% brute damage cap.
Well when my Invuln/SS Tanker fought Battle Maiden I only used a Shivan. I posted the end of that fight on YouTube here .
When my Fire/Axe Tanker fought Bobcat it was pretty much a Shivan and Amy the whole time. I started the fight with a nuke from Warburg, but due to the length of the fight and Bobcat's Unstoppable period, it was pretty immaterial. I posted the video for that fight here . I apologize for the video quality; I'm new at the whole video capture/compressing thing, and YouTube has a 10 minute/100 meg limitation.
And note, I didn't post those videos to try to prove how uber I am; I just wanted to try to rise to the challenge set forth by Ultimus, and see if my suboptimal tankers could meet the challenge.
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Well I was no where near my damage cap. When I am damage capped I can beat a Giant Monster.
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Well I was no where near my damage cap. When I am damage capped I can beat a Giant Monster.
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How about ... Enough already.
We all know you're a god ... No need to go on and on and on about how UBER you are.
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Well I was no where near my damage cap. When I am damage capped I can beat a Giant Monster.
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How about ... Enough already.
We all know you're a god ... No need to go on and on and on about how UBER you are.
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Yes, go on about how uber I am. I have won many costume contests with different characters on different servers. Kneel before me! 
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
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What temporary powers did you use? When I took down Ghost Widow it was under 2 minutes.
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Um, I'm talking hero side here. I didn't have the benefit of an 850% brute damage cap.
Well when my Invuln/SS Tanker fought Battle Maiden I only used a Shivan. I posted the end of that fight on YouTube here .
When my Fire/Axe Tanker fought Bobcat it was pretty much a Shivan and Amy the whole time. I started the fight with a nuke from Warburg, but due to the length of the fight and Bobcat's Unstoppable period, it was pretty immaterial. I posted the video for that fight here . I apologize for the video quality; I'm new at the whole video capture/compressing thing, and YouTube has a 10 minute/100 meg limitation.
And note, I didn't post those videos to try to prove how uber I am; I just wanted to try to rise to the challenge set forth by Ultimus, and see if my suboptimal tankers could meet the challenge.
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Well I was no where near my damage cap. When I am damage capped I can beat a Giant Monster.
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Call me a skeptic, but I'll believe that when I see it.
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What temporary powers did you use? When I took down Ghost Widow it was under 2 minutes.
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Um, I'm talking hero side here. I didn't have the benefit of an 850% brute damage cap.
Well when my Invuln/SS Tanker fought Battle Maiden I only used a Shivan. I posted the end of that fight on YouTube here .
When my Fire/Axe Tanker fought Bobcat it was pretty much a Shivan and Amy the whole time. I started the fight with a nuke from Warburg, but due to the length of the fight and Bobcat's Unstoppable period, it was pretty immaterial. I posted the video for that fight here . I apologize for the video quality; I'm new at the whole video capture/compressing thing, and YouTube has a 10 minute/100 meg limitation.
And note, I didn't post those videos to try to prove how uber I am; I just wanted to try to rise to the challenge set forth by Ultimus, and see if my suboptimal tankers could meet the challenge.
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Well I was no where near my damage cap. When I am damage capped I can beat a Giant Monster.
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Call me a skeptic, but I'll believe that when I see it.
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Just ask a few posters in the Brute forum. I had some people come and observe me beat the Winterlord solo. I never bothered with screenshots because it just involved pulling him next to a contact and staying damage capped.
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Actually, it's because one of the dev rules is that soloing an AV is supposed to be IMPOSSIBLE - PERIOD. Not with temps and insps, not without, just flat IMPOSSIBLE. It's one of the surest ways to call the nerfbat down... especially if someone brags about it.
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What if the AV is only orange to you, or yellow? Post-ED, I have solod yellow and orange AVs.
I did a purple one the other day, but had assistance from a "pet" who was part of the mission. I had a bunch of purples and since they were only +4 to me I could hit decently, and the "pet" did good damage too (the one who's a dominator with 2 Arachnos Rikti knockoff floaty droids, pet's pets, so to speak.)
But later, (mid-early 20's missions) I had that chick tanker in the Indiana Jones hat as a "pet", and was totally wiped twice on the AV. In this case, though, the stupid tank runs into the final room whenever I start to pull away the monsters to strip the AV to themselves, dies, and now I'm screwed because I'm truly solo against the AV again.
Will try again in another level. Plus I'm quite far from being "filled out" with SO's.
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Just ask a few posters in the Brute forum. I had some people come and observe me beat the Winterlord solo. I never bothered with screenshots because it just involved pulling him next to a contact and staying damage capped.
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So you're saying that anyone can do it ... See ??? I knew you weren't all that special.
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Just ask a few posters in the Brute forum. I had some people come and observe me beat the Winterlord solo. I never bothered with screenshots because it just involved pulling him next to a contact and staying damage capped.
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So you're saying that anyone can do it ... See ??? I knew you weren't all that special.
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Any Brute could and maybe some select other AT's/Combo's (See Radiation). It really involved no strategy just button mashing hence the reason I never bothered to post it.
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The point I was making about inconvenience was that if the devs really really really really didn't want people soloing AVs, they wouldn't have them spawn when you were solo. Period. If they changed it so that an AV spawned if you were duoing on invincible, that would still meet the aforementioned requirement of having the option to take an EB or gather a team for an AV, but they didn't do it that way. To repeat: They have built the game so that someone playing on "Hard" mode will encounter AV's solo.
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As I said the first time: that doesn't logically follow. Just because they spawn for solo players doesn't mean they want solo players to be able to defeat them. The alternative possibility is that they want players to be confronted with something that requires them to gather a team.
Let me put it this way: if *I* wanted AVs to be unsoloable, I could make them unsoloable by any means, by making them mathematically unsoloable. *I* would still personally allow for them to spawn in [u]solo[u] missions specifically to require players to gather a team to defeat him. So the logical inference you are drawing would definitely be false if I was in charge of AV design for Cryptic. One doesn't automatically follow the other.
They spawn solo to "force" you to get a team to defeat them. The only do so at invincible, so that players aren't *literally* forced to team if they don't want to. That "force" only happens for people who want to play on invincible.
If they wanted to make sure no solo players *ever* had *any* chance of defeating an AV, they could do as you describe, but that would not be enough. Players that wanted to attempt to solo an AV would just park a second account in the mission to allow the duo to spawn the AV. I would. Knowing that, the devs have no incentive to create the barrier you describe.
If I want to attempt to solo it, and its mathematically possible to solo it, there is very little the devs can do to prevent me from doing so. I've soloed three task forces, including two with AVs, and there are significant barriers to attempting that also. They could add more: if I wanted to stop me, I could. But what would be the point? Its a lot of wasted effort to get into an arms race with me just to prevent me from playing the game in an unconventional way that does not actually *create* any imbalances in the game (it does not allow me to level any faster, or acquire anything much beyond what anyone else is capable of).
To emphasize: your assertion is: "If they changed it so that an AV spawned if you were duoing on invincible, that would still meet the aforementioned requirement of having the option to take an EB or gather a team for an AV, but they didn't do it that way."
That would *not* meet the requirement of having to gather a team for the AV, because if you're solo, you don't spawn the AV in the first place. The AV spawns at invincible to force [u]solo players[u] to gather a team. It does so *only* on invincible to give solo players a way to avoid being forced to gather a team if that is genuinely contrary to their playstsyle. The AV [u]MUST[u] spawn for solo players if the intent is to throw a team-required challenge at players who *happen* to be solo at that moment in time.
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I think my Mastermind got nearly 1mill XP in one kill on the Nemesis Mole Machines during the Double XP weekend.
1 kill
I really really wanna know how long this "hundreds of thousands of xp" for GMs and AVs has been in the game, because I don't recall getting more than 60 or 70k on -any- of my characters, ever... not even at lvl 49 on a mish set to invincible. Is this only villainside that this happens? I see by all the screenshots that it does happen, but I've never had it happen to me. What's the freaking deal?
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Can you top this single bonus in double exp weekend? I soloed Ghost Widow and nearly got 1.5 bubbles in a single kill.
Check out the combat log
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wish I took a screenshot of my victory over a AV Lord Recluse, my lv46 Mastermind on a team received 346k XP
And the Dev's anounced there will be a nerf today! but only of that man!
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to quote the best reply ive seen today...*rabble rabble rabble*
Good for you.
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I was playing my Fire/fire brute today and couldn't help but think of the threads Ultimus starts about his. I always get a kick out of them, because it seems that the guy is really proud of his character and how it can perform, and not his own gaming skills. This makes the posts trying to sandbag Ultimus's good time all the more enjoyable to read. They're completely missing the point!
Any global xp changes, good or bad, are not the fault of Ultimus soloing Ghost Widow, or soloing anything.
Good job, Ultimus. Keep it up!
[/ QUOTE ]They get the friggin point dude. Just that when devs see that, they won't see the exp amount, they might or might nor see the inspirs or shivans, and nukes, but they sure as heck will see him as a fire/fire brute. That is what nerfs narrow down to.
Soloing or not, buffs or not, it's almost always the braggarts who cause others to fail, even if what they're bragging about is entirely separate.
So when fire/fire brutes are nerfed because Devs ended up doing narrow-minded datamining, I'll know who will be blamed even if it's just because their posts don't brag over and over about soloing impossible crap.
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Wow, this thread apparently rose from the grave on it's own, a first! 
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OK.....
Yeah.... I really went off on a tangent there, didn't I? Sorry about that. Didn't mean to jump on ya. I agree completely with your statement about the PvE "minigames" in PvP zones making PvP more interesting.
One thing though...
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The devs specifically said they don't want anyone soloing AVs, multiple times. AVs on Invincible, if I remember correctly, were added because people complained about not being able to even try. That the *attempt* was important to them.
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Yeah.... Want to buy some swampland in Florida? It's cheap!
Whenever the devs comment on what they expect a hero/villain to be able to handle, it's always been dramatically under par. Always. They do this because their numbers cater to a sub-par player.
If they said, "The average hero or villain should be able to handle a spawn of six to eight +3 minions," there'd be riots as people complained about how underpowered they were. It doesn't matter that I can handle a spawn of that size with all my characters. I've been playing video games and using computers *way* longer than could ever be considered healthy. Most people haven't, and as a result they have to set the numbers with the mainstream.
But they know damn well that people way better than me play this game, and the sad truth is that they cannot make AVs possible for newer blood without making them soloable for the total min-maxer. Can't be done. So yeah, AVs are soloable, but the devs would never say so.
- J