In praise of Nerfs!
By
Blind_Minotaur,
Posted on: 2009-01-27 23:21 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I'm going back to the original post and saying:
1. I agree with London, don't mess up peoples builds unneccessary. One reason people continue to play, is to build upon those sets, get their alt's purp'd up. Mess with that and they will indeed leave.
2. but then again, having a single brute on SOs soloing a relentless mission spawned for 4 people is just silly.
3. lately it's gotten even easier. I rarely spot any bosses anymore even on 8 man relentless teams. Now what's up with that?
4. Just get more content in. New special maps, maybe even a new villain-only zone, deffo more high level content esp villain-side and some new foes with a completely different AI if possible, a few more villain-side monsters etc.
I honestly don't think it's the "easy" part that's making ppl bored, it's the "we've figured it ALL out, except hami that's just silly" part.
Come to think of it, maybe it IS time for us to give Hami another go. 
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my Demontologist could take out quite a few elite mobs on his tod...one of them being that spider demon queen in that area filled with cobwebs and giant spiders, it's tough don't get me wrong and incredibly close but once again it all comes down to which class you pick.
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Exactly.. what class you pick.
Soloing mobs meant for teams or raids all comes down what class you pick, certain classes or speccs or poorly equipped chars would drop dead in seconds.
Like in CoX you can solo AVs but i comes down which class you pick and how good your sets are.
Doesnt that mean the set and combo has a very big impact on what you can do and what not ?
Doesnt that mean no matter hoe skilled you are certain classes or specs or combos dont perform as well as others ?
Thats what i mean when i say sets in CoX play an almost more important role when it comes to a chars performance than skill.
It's the same in EVERY MMO though.
Hunters/Warlocks: Kings of killing Elite mobs in WoW on their own through kiting.
Bright Wizards (they do have amazingly high DPS) and most of the tanking classes in WAR: Through sheer DPS or just a massive battle of attrition can take down things they're not meant to (the tanking classes can output some serious DPS for tanks).
Demontologists: More kiting.
Rad/Illusion, Rad/Sonic, DM/SR Brutes: Are a few of the examples I can give which can take on AV's/GM's and win.
It's just that we have more combinations that can take on these big guys and win, which I personally think is a good thing.
Yes powersets matter because it depends on what you want to do which picks the powerset, all trade something for something else, DM/SR brutes, great sustained DPS but incredibly awful AoE capabilities, Fire/Kin, awful single target damage but wipes out groups in seconds, Rad/sonic defender, again great sustained DPS but a total of one decent AoE cone attack.
Each of these specialists excell in their chosen field but completely fail somewhere else.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
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It's the same in EVERY MMO though.
Hunters/Warlocks: Kings of killing Elite mobs in WoW on their own through kiting.
Bright Wizards (they do have amazingly high DPS) and most of the tanking classes in WAR: Through sheer DPS or just a massive battle of attrition can take down things they're not meant to (the tanking classes can output some serious DPS for tanks).
Demontologists: More kiting.
Rad/Illusion, Rad/Sonic, DM/SR Brutes: Are a few of the examples I can give which can take on AV's/GM's and win.
It's just that we have more combinations that can take on these big guys and win, which I personally think is a good thing.
Yes powersets matter because it depends on what you want to do which picks the powerset, all trade something for something else, DM/SR brutes, great sustained DPS but incredibly awful AoE capabilities, Fire/Kin, awful single target damage but wipes out groups in seconds, Rad/sonic defender, again great sustained DPS but a total of one decent AoE cone attack.
Each of these specialists excell in their chosen field but completely fail somewhere else.
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I agree totally with you there.
But elites in other games are not the hardest mobs, there are still raid bosses that cant be killed solo, not even in teams at least not if they are +4 lvls to you, they need several teams to kill. So even the specific elite killer combos face npcs they cant kill.
In CoH the only NPC that really cant be killed solo or in a team no matter which set you have is Hami.
Maybe the mothership raid boss too, but only cause of the ads not cause hes too powerfull.
But its very unlikely at least for the EU servers you get enough ppl to try Hami, since he doesnt give a good reward most players dont bother to invest time in it.
I miss more team challenges, npcs that cant be taken down by players with certain combos, and are hard to kill even with good skilled teams.
Finally there's something I think we can all agree on...
Hami changes aren't great, Just a shame I never got to high enough level to see the old community based Hami raids.
There are a few mobs which I believe would be very difficult to solo.
Romulous + 3 Nictus AV's: One Nictus has an auto-hit Sunless mire which it spams and does serious amounts of damage, also said Nictus is immune to any and all debuffs apart from sleep which is possibly the worst crowd control type I can think of, plus the summoning nictus summons enough little Nicti that some of that damage is going to get through no matter what your defense is like.
Ghost Widow STF/RV version: She's high enough level that your defence is going to be hurting out of Elude, resists all but -res debuff effects to a high degree and has a oneshot kill ability known as Soul Storm which unless you're running say Unstoppable, it's going to kill you and if you're running Unstoppable, it means you're already in trouble.
Hamidon is our 'raid boss' City of Heroes was just not built with that kind of thing in mind, it's simply not that kind of MMO.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
I do miss actual raids and a raid system in the game.
Old hami was silly in most ways, almost boring once the community had him figured out - again and again - but it was a great community event and the rikti ship raids just isn't the same.
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Romulous + 3 Nictus AV's: One Nictus has an auto-hit Sunless mire which it spams and does serious amounts of damage, also said Nictus is immune to any and all debuffs apart from sleep which is possibly the worst crowd control type I can think of, plus the summoning nictus summons enough little Nicti that some of that damage is going to get through no matter what your defense is like.
Hamidon is our 'raid boss' City of Heroes was just not built with that kind of thing in mind, it's simply not that kind of MMO.
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Theres a thread somewhere where a mastermind proves he soloed Rom :-)
Cant remember how he did it :-)
Some tricky new AVs or GMs would be nice.
The Abyss and Monster island would be nice places to add some new content since those are absolutely pointless maps, at least imo.
Ghost widow and Rom are good examples how powerfull AvS can be with the right powers and tricks up their sleeves.
Mothership raid is fun to.
Imo players would do raids even new raid mobs and have fun doing them, if there was a nice reward at the end.
As it is now many see it as a waste of time.
Making Hami a cross faction raid map, raid mob would help i think, at least some villains would get the chance to kill him once.
I dont think there was a sucessfull Hami raid villain side on Eu servers ever, was there ?
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my Demontologist could take out quite a few elite mobs on his tod...one of them being that spider demon queen in that area filled with cobwebs and giant spiders, it's tough don't get me wrong and incredibly close but once again it all comes down to which class you pick.
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What he said. I had a bear shaman that didn't seam to have a problem either. It was no more difficult than COX and I would say, in some areas, easier.
Well, I've lead more than 20 mothership raids and have more vanguard merits than I could possibly use even after getting everything there is to get, but the vanguard heavy is kinda fun, the extra storage thingy you can get is a must-have etc.
I'd really like to see "real" raids where we don't have to create our own channels for team blue, red, yellow etc and use request for coordination. But CoP obviously prooooves it won't happen!
What pretty much killed Hami by my reckoning wasn't just the 50 cap limit on Hami raids but also the addition of SHO's from either the LRSF or the STF which are significantly easier, less time consuming and don't need half as much as the organisation as a Hami raid.
That and Invention sets kind of smacked the last nail in the coffin for Hami really.
More interesting AV's that aren't simply tank and spank I can agree with but it still becomes routine once you've figured out how to deal with said AV's (GW is simply either having enough Clear Mind/Clarity stacked on you that you resist the hold while taunting from range and Romulous is either just DPSing the hell out of him while he's heavily debuffed OR seperating him from Mr Healy the healing Nictus)
I wouldn't mind something to shake up the atypical Tank'n'spank style AV fights though.
If there was a raid style (more Mothership than Hami) thing that let me somehow unlock enemy costume parts for use on characters...I'd so be all over that like a rash and you know lots of other people would too.
Sadly I doubt it'd happen.
Edit: Especially if said raid was something all levels could contribute something too, make it scale like the Rikti Invasions...it'd be awesomesauce in my opinion.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!
my Demontologist could take out quite a few elite mobs on his tod...one of them being that spider demon queen in that area filled with cobwebs and giant spiders, it's tough don't get me wrong and incredibly close but once again it all comes down to which class you pick.
Badge Earned: Wing Clipper
A real showstopper!