Far too many spawns with bosses

Huh... Here's something odd - do EBs scale down lower than their own class? I didn't see an option for that, but I remember hearing EBs scaling down into elite bosses. Here's why I'm asking:

I just faced Hro'Dtohz (I HATE that name!), who is normally an AV, and something was... Off. Now, I've always made sure my AVs scaled down into elite bosses, and I've fought Hro as an elite boss several times. He is TOUGH, and it's a nail-bitingly hard battle (that always ends with me cheating via Unstoppable and such). This time it wasn't. I'm running at -1x3, so Hro is yellow to me (-1 to me, conning two levels above it, so yellow) and listed as an elite boss. I checked. Except, he was squishy. Hro is a power-armour Rikti, so he is highly resistant to Lethal damage, which is all I do, so he should have been a slow, grinding fight. But he wasn't. I took him down in around 5-10 hits. I got a couple of lucky criticals, sure, but that can't have been enough to pwn an elite boss.

Now, I checked, and he was listed as having 5000 hit points or thereabout. OK, so it may have been a bit more than 10 hits, but nothing even remotely like what an actual elite boss should take to defeat. He was a very easy kill, kind of like had scaled down into a regular boss. I thought he might have, which is why I checked, but his rank said elite boss and his health seemed to be about right for one. But he didn't hit like an elite boss and he certainly didn't take hit like one. And, worse of all, that Rikti Assault Suit that ambushes you didn't show up at all. I went looking for it, but I don't think the thing spawned to begin with. All I got was a couple of scaled-down Homeland Commandos that I cut into ribbons with a sideways glance.

So what gives? Did my EB covertly scale down into a boss? Why would he? He wasn't an EB to begin with, he was a scaled-down AV. And why would he scale into a boss, anyway? I didn't see an option for EBs to scale down. I gotta' say, I wanted the game easier, but having the "big fight" at the end of a long arc, supposedly against a super soldier, being a pushover goes a little farther than I'd intended to. I'd like to keep my EBs into EBs if I can.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Personally, I'd like options to have AVs and EBs scale down to bosses.

But I'm greedy that way.

Ive had toons set to 0x0 & 1x1 & 0x1.

Gotten large amounts of bosses, ok fine, but when you get a team of 8 rolling, 4-5 Wardens showing up in a packed grouped...tends to be rather rough...very very rough.


JJ

I am seeing the same issue on my 41 Fire tank.

My difficulty settings are:

-- Capable of fighting enemies at your current security level.
-- Combat equivalent of 3 standard heroes.
-- Does prefer fighting bosses when alone.
-- Does not prefer to fight Arch-Villains.

I am currently doing a Crey arc, and I get a Paragon Protector in most of the spawns. This gets really old, waiting around after beating them down and dealing with everyone else for the PP's MOG or Elude to wear off so I can finish them off. Makes for VERY long missions! I tried turning off bosses, but the PP's still spawned, just as Lt's.

Noticed the same problem with Halloween mobs. Doors spawn LOTS of bosses solo, where you didn't get them at all before. Status mobs are flat out death to low level players ToTing solo.

On the plus side getting Spirit etc badges is much easier as all minion spawns are crazy rare. Halloween mobs aren't supposed to be effected by difficulty settings at all so that should prove that the base settings have changed significantly.

I've been avoiding Carnies lately for this reason. Even with No Bosses when Solo set I've been getting a Dark Ringmistress AND a Master Illusionist in virtually every spawn. Downgraded to Lts, granted, but that still makes for a much tougher encounter than normal and the mission more tedious. Carnies never USED to spawn that many Bosses, why are they spawning that many DOWNGRADED Bosses?

I'm glad you found a setting that works for you. I knew that you would, if you experimented a bit.

I wonder if this is an artifact of the random number generator.

As in, when a mission goes to assign spawn-points, it now knows it can spawn "a boss with a minion" in addition to "a swarm of underlings", "lots of minions and a lieutenant", and "a bunch of lieutenants and some minions".

We all know how streaky CoH's RNG can be at times; or how, when you're fighting a pack of Rikti monkeys, the NEXT spawn (or two, or three, or five) also tends to be Monkeys as well.

It seems entirely possible that, when they added bosses to the 'mission spawn generator', they did so with absolutely no limitations as to how many or how often bosses could spawn. It would seem to me that adding some sort of artificial limiter to the boss spawn code could resolve this; either by 'capping' the number of bosses that can spawn in any mission (based on map size, 3-4 for small, 6-7 for medium, 8-12 for large); or by forcing the RNG to 'skip' a boss spawn (and spawn minions instead) if it's assigned a spawn as a 'boss' spawn within its last three picks or so.

More Bosses means more badges!

Doom/Batman in 2012

The Resistance has boobs too, and better hair!

I just want Tenacious back, none of the new settings come even close to that now. Either the spawns are too big or too small, too many bosses or none at all.