Firstly, it adds some tension. If you screw up or the enemy gets lucky, you can be instantly down.
Secondly, for some of the tougher ATs, they take so little damage or are hit so rarely that it requires something that big to matter for them.
In an RSF last weekend I tanked Statesman, BAB, Synapse, Manticore, Citadel, and Positron at the same time while the rest of the team beat on Sister Psyche. If they weren't capable of flooring the other players on the team with one or two hits, they wouldn't have even turned my hair.
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My question is, why are characters designed to be able to do this? What's fun about being killed in one punch?
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Well, given an example of a level 10 toon running thru Peregrine Island, clearly there are times when the enemy should be able to obliterate you effortlessly. After that, it's just a matter of proportion. Some enemies should be able to do this even if they are near your level; some should not.
It's not realistic that a hero/villain can stand alone againt any enemy in existence even for a short time.
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Certain bosses have a chance to critical on some attacks.
Council Martial Artists spring to mind.
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@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
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Certain bosses have a chance to critical on some attacks.
Council Martial Artists spring to mind.
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And if i remember correctly that critical can actually 1 shot you, even if you are at full health when they use the attack. . .
That's because the crit is a separate tick of damage from the main attack, and the One-Shot code doesn't stopp you from being killed by a single attack, it stops you from being killed by a single tick of damage.
If the attack does more than one tick of damage, even if it's all at once, like a Smashing/Cold attack, then it can still one-shot you.
@Roderick
Complaints out of context are difficult to assess. We need enough data points to know what you're talking about.
Was this a custom boss in an Architect mission? Those have vastly different powers than bosses outside MA -- it's completely night and day. Not only do they have big attacks like Total Focus, and special things like Build-Up, they also can be set to higher difficulty, meaning they do way more base damage than regular bosses.
This is for the players who want special high-challenge fights. They're supposed to be that tough.
Naturally, hundreds of players designing MA missions either don't realize this, don't want their special characters to "lose," are poor judges of balance, or just get their kicks making the toughest foes possible, so MA missions are rife with these overpowered monstrosities, and it's easy to start thinking this is the "norm" when it's intended to be the most extreme case.
If it was NOT an Architect mission, please fill in more details -- your level, his level, your powersets, what sort of boss it was, whether you had your toggle defenses on -- no lie, I've seen players many times with no icons next to their name in the teamlist leap into spawns and die, then express anger, while I was trying to type out "Dude, are your shields turned on?" in chat.
I frequently see complaints that chat or teaming are broken...eventually to discover that the person is on a trial account. Or that a Tanker's mezz defense doesn't work...eventually to discover he's talking PVP and doesn't realize the rules are different there. And I see a TON of "my god this was so overpowered" comments that turn out to be about custom MA bosses, but the poster didn't tell us that at first.
And so on. Please give us enough context to assess your situation and possibly advise you, or if it's a misunderstanding, dispel the misunderstanding.
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Fights are more dramatic and entertaining when they LAST a while.
Back in the day, when I made foes for my players in Champions (pen and paper), I usually built them with attacks of around the same power as the players, but much, much more defense (usually in the form of stun, which is like health in CoH - the heroes still have to be able to HURT the villain). Neither the heroes nor the villains should be anywhere near capable of defeating a foe in one attack.
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I enjoy one-shotting enemies; it feels dramatic and powerful when you clear a screenful of enemies with a Blaster nuke or annihilate a boss with Headsplitter. I think the old trope of adding durability to enemies in order to artificially drag out a fight and make it more "epic" doesn't always work. When the enemy is predictable it just ends up making the fight tedious, yet it's popular since it takes little work and less imagination. See: Reichsman.
I also like that characters can get one-shotted by enemies, because my Fallout is 6-slotted. 
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Was this a custom boss in an Architect mission? Those have vastly different powers than bosses outside MA -- it's completely night and day. Not only do they have big attacks like Total Focus, and special things like Build-Up, they also can be set to higher difficulty, meaning they do way more base damage than regular bosses.
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Enemy difficulty doesn't affect their damage, it's purely a mechanic for selecting how many powers they get.
All MA critters do more damage than normal NPCs, as they use player scalars, AFAIK.
Edit again: Okay, now that I've done the math (properly), I was right. The OP had to have been in the low 20s (or even lower, if Willpower or Shield), and therefore fighting something in the MA, as the only NPC Boss I can think of with Total Focus are Crey Power Tanks.
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So basically, fighting bosses in the AE is like PvP.
Ouch.
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So basically, fighting bosses in the AE is like PvP.
Ouch.
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Actually, I might be off on that. More precisely, I think it's that AE critters use player base stats, since they use player powersets, which are then modified by the rank, um, modifiers.
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Not to mention they seem to have player AT inherents- so Scrapper sets crit, Brutes have Fury, Blasters have Defiance...
...I think I need to run away now.
Actually, I'm pretty sure most of those have been stripped out.
Scrapper powers that get a bonus chance to crit (mostly their Tier 9s, ouch), might still crit, I think. And Blaster sets used to have Defiance (or at least the shoot-while-mezzed part), but I'm fairly certain it was removed (though they might have missed a few sets/powers).
Custom critters definitely don't get Fury though. All of its functions are tied to the inherent, AFAIK.
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There's not a lot fun about being "one-shotted", I'm using the quotes around that because it stands for being on full health one moment and on the floor the next, regardless of the mechanics of how you get there. I really don't like it when it happens to my characters, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
That being said, I also find it an integral part of the game, because it is with these moments that my hero gets dragged down from god-hood to mortality. If I didn't have anything to lose, if the stakes weren't high, and the sense that any moment could be my toons last wasn't there then I think I would enjoy playing far less.
My 2 Inf.
K5K
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Actually, I'm pretty sure most of those have been stripped out.
Scrapper powers that get a bonus chance to crit (mostly their Tier 9s, ouch), might still crit, I think. And Blaster sets used to have Defiance (or at least the shoot-while-mezzed part), but I'm fairly certain it was removed (though they might have missed a few sets/powers).
Custom critters definitely don't get Fury though. All of its functions are tied to the inherent, AFAIK.
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Thank ye gods.
That just happened to me in a dev choice arc. I got "one shotted" and just said **** it. I think I was missing 10 or so health. 
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Yeah, annoying: definately, essential; definately.
Otherwise you might as well being playing football against manequins.
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A Spanner In The Works Part One, ArcID: 336662, A Spanner In The Works Part Two, ArcID: 336665, Enter Japes, ArcID: 96001
In The Darkness Creeping, ArcID: 347709, When Dimensions Collide, ArcID: 412416.
i agree, gettin 1 shotted, 2 or even 3 is lame on this game. how super are we that a badie can do this to us? not very super at all if u ask me, lol.
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i agree, gettin 1 shotted, 2 or even 3 is lame on this game. how super are we that a badie can do this to us? not very super at all if u ask me, lol.
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You do realize that the villains are also super? That is why they are super-villains.
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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Many people seem to want this game to be less like Superman vs Lex Luthor or Superman vs Bizarro -- an epic battle where the superhero is more or less evenly matched, whether by similar or different powers -- and more like Superman vs Scut Farkus, where the Man of Steel beats up (or "farms"?) a dozen schoolyard bullies in every episode. "Hooray."
Personally? I'm only interested in reading, watching, or playing the epic battles where even the super-est of heroes are evenly matched. If Superman isn't taking any risks, how much of a hero is he really? I'm not terribly interested in playing a "superbully" who picks on the weak and helpless.
(And no, not even on CoV. Interesting supervillains go up against superheroes.)
I team with the Repeat Offenders.
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Certain bosses have a chance to critical on some attacks.
Council Martial Artists spring to mind.
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Cimeroran Traitor bosses and KoA bosses can crit too.
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
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Many people seem to want this game to be less like Superman vs Lex Luthor or Superman vs Bizarro -- an epic battle where the superhero is more or less evenly matched, whether by similar or different powers -- and more like Superman vs Scut Farkus, where the Man of Steel beats up (or "farms"?) a dozen schoolyard bullies in every episode. "Hooray."
Personally? I'm only interested in reading, watching, or playing the epic battles where even the super-est of heroes are evenly matched. If Superman isn't taking any risks, how much of a hero is he really? I'm not terribly interested in playing a "superbully" who picks on the weak and helpless.
(And no, not even on CoV. Interesting supervillains go up against superheroes.)
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Interestingly enough this is one of the criticisms of Superman and authors being able to challenge such a character.
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Yes, to challenge Superman you have to trot out the greatest super-genius-villain ever imagined, or someone else nigh-invulnerable. To challenge Batman takes much less (to go to the other "most popular" superhero). My point is not that Superman is the right level of power for our characters, but that the issue of "how super" we are is distinct from "how challenging" the game is. We can be incredibly super, able to shatter planets at a punch, but there is still a challenge if we face someone equally powerful. And we should have the option of facing opponents that powerful (I'm all for the difficulty sliders being meaningful -- I'd like it if Heroic were more or less a guaranteed steamrolling pace of mission, and Invincible were a more or less guaranteed even match that could go either way even with the best build by the most skilled player).
I team with the Repeat Offenders.
Today, and it's not the first time, I was one-shotted by a foe. He was a BOSS (not even an Elite Boss).
Yes, I know there's code to prevent literal one-shots, but in my case, I had jumped over a railing to reach him and took a single point of damage upon landing. He immediately did Total Focus.
I have 623 health. He did 663 damage.
And this is my SCRAPPER. Squishies are even WORSE off.
My question is, why are characters designed to be able to do this? What's fun about being killed in one punch? Fights are more dramatic and entertaining when they LAST a while.
Back in the day, when I made foes for my players in Champions (pen and paper), I usually built them with attacks of around the same power as the players, but much, much more defense (usually in the form of stun, which is like health in CoH - the heroes still have to be able to HURT the villain). Neither the heroes nor the villains should be anywhere near capable of defeating a foe in one attack.
So my question is, what is the rationale behind this?