Halloween a waste for > level 15 characters

Hrm. I died a few times doing it, but my level 8-10 (he leveled twice) Dark/Dark Defender has actually gotten all the "Supernatural Event" badges (banners and giant monster), and the Zombie Invasion badges, and I'm working on the Trick-or-Treat defeat badges (I think I have a couple of them already).

Is it slow work? Yes. Is it impossible? No.

You have to have coordination with your teammates for the banners. There's no ifs, ands or buts about it. If you all try and do your own thing and don't support one another, you're going to get frustrated. If you work together, you'll do a lot better.

Just had another successful solo lowbie session. My Ice/Storm Controller just went from 6 to 10 via Trick or Treating on her own. Sure, she had a few little mishaps here and there (like when her hold would miss a Crone or Vamp Lord, but overall, it went quite well for her). One Wolf away from Shifter, but still needing quite a few witches and zombies, and decent progress toward Ostentatious.

Oh, it wasn't all Trick or Treating. She did get in her Atlas Safeguard and the Negotiator mission as well.

I am finding it annoying that the monsters can attack us even when we can't attack them right after they spawn, so that by the time you do land your first successful attack on a Werewolf, he has already hit you a good 3 or 4 times, leaving you with only a small sliver of health. Really, if they are going to make them unattackable as they spawn, then they should not be able to get in any attacks either. Treat their spawning like Intangible powers (only affecting self).

-sigh- Okay, first things first...

My original post seems to have lost the final paragraph, which was something along the lines of "Is anyone else having these kinds of problems? Is there any kind of suggestions or advice anyone can give that I might have overlooked?" Luckily, most people have given those kinds of answers anyway, but it still annoys me that I lost those bits of the original post. But, yes, there originally were questions.

Other side notes/responses:

On his temp account, my friend seems to be limited on what levels he can reach. Therefore, we spend a lot of time doing sub-15 stuff.

Yeah, okay, I earned a fail on the greater than/less than symbols. I'd blame it on late nights, but it was equally likely to have been simple inattentiveness. The same kind that prevented me from realizing my whole post didn't go through. :-p

My main gripe for the banner events especially is that unless one has a good sized or powered team, and unless one has enough active people working on the banners, it's all but impossible to accomplish anything. The requirements for this remind me of the old Hamidon run requirements in many ways. It can be done, but it requires more than a couple of friends on at the same time as you are. Also, once the banner event starts, all the stock mobs for the zone become much harder to find, meaning that even if one ignores the event, it'd be easier just to go to a different zone or a different character and do something else for 20 minutes or so. But it is kinda frustrating to only need two more Lost in Kings Row to finish the hunt mission, and then suddenly an event starts and they all disappear.

My buddy's main gripe is that, if these events are supposed to be more fun than the regular game, and they have been for me in the past, but they end up being very frustrating for a new player, then there may need to be some tinkering done so the events are more newbie-friendly and don't lose players for the game. That said, one of the things I love about the game is that it isn't static; the devs are tinkering with it and adding new content every few months to keep it interesting, and I love that. Even when they introduce something that seems to be universally hated (anyone remember when Enhancement Diversification hit?), it's not been all that bad. The good out weighs the bad for the game, for me. But it is hard to show that to someone who has popped in for the first time and happened to hit something frustrating.

On Virtue and Freedom, which are two servers I've been playing on more recently, there are frequently characters of all levels in Atlas Park, including multiple 50s. So being SSKed to a much higher level during an event isn't all that unusual there. Yes, my level 7 Peacebringer got three event badges during a banner event in AP when she was SSKed to 49. But Nova form helps a lot with that.

The powersets I have run have varied, but I have at least one blaster of each primary and most secondaries spread across the five different servers I tend to play on, as well as a variety of most other ATs as well. Except tanks. I have one tank total. I just don't fit the tank mindset well. Recently I tend to play Controllerish Blasters (Ice, Electrical, and Energy) and Warshades, Martial Arts or Dual Blades scrappers, and Illusion or Fire controllers. I have also started playing the Psi, Sonic and Radiation blasters recently. I am such an alt-o-holic that I'm not sure which one it was that I looked at the stats on, but I think it was possibly the Rad blaster.

I appreciate those who have given me their experiences and advice here. Thanks for the selling points to try to convince my friend the game isn't really impossibly hard. :-p For most of you who told of less than level 20 characters (I've given up on mathematical signs, obviously), it seems that the team is the key. Since he and I have been just trying to run solo when we're not on together, or as just the two of us when we are, I'm going to take the approach of either pulling my old Emp defenders/trollers out of storage to run, or making something else that better complements and balances what he's playing right now. Or I'll buy him a month's worth of membership for Christmas so he can see the Winter event, which is still my favorite. :-)

Thanks again to those who helped! See you all in game.

I don't think Holiday events are to be "more fun" than the regular stuff. It is just something "extra and creative" for the players to do. Sorry if i didn't rply about all the other stuff.

Personal experience -

Unless I get a string of nasty "tricks" (boss in each - which I've had happen, for instance,) ToTing with a sub-14 character isn't horrible. It's not always easy, no, and I don't think the mob damage is scaling down very well at times. (Nor is getting mezzed as a level, say, 5, particularly fun - it's pretty much a guaranteed hospital trip.)

I've run one mastermind from creation to lvl 6 or so solely on solo ToTing. My 12-ish Ice/Earth Dom... hit that streak of oranges (and had a heck of a time hitting anything.) A Dark/Dark at 12? Exceptionally survivable - self-heal, tarpatch, and debuffs mean even if she's mezzed, she'll usually have time before the enemy gets there to snap out of it if I don't have a breakfree.

As far as lowbies on teams? Depends on the AT and powerset. No, a level 8 tank isn't going to be "tanking" for a team of 36s. At the very least, though, they're another door-clicker to keep things rolling. However, a Rad emission, FF or Sonic character is going to help, regardless. A controller or dom can always help stack holds on those bosses. And that whole 10 points of damage... on an enemy that's down to a sliver and running away, may be the 10 points it has left. The big question is, "is the group having fun?" If not, why are you doing it, regardless of level?

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I don't think it's that hard. I purposely created a new scrapper just to see how difficult it was to solo. Fire/SR. I didn't use any of my vet powers and only took the first defense power so I would have a decent attack chain.

I soloed up to level 6 and the only time I had to hospital was when somebody did a knock and run leaving behind a crone and werewolf at the same time I let out a spirit and vampire. Even then I would have survived because I ran away and got out of range but I shrugged and headed back into combat.

After level six I joined up with a team and quickly made it up to 10. I'll continue with the experiment after a bit.

dunno know what could be going on, but I took my scrapper on a ToT right at lvl 5 and got all the salvage for my 5th? costume slot. Only got 2 mobs per trick, or 3 if it had a white con in the group.

Well, I went solo for a while more. The only thing that really seems to give me trouble is Crones. I have to use inspirations to even have a chance at beating them. Everything else is a piece of cake though.

The only difference I notice is that you have to treat the ToT encounters as a standard high level encounter. Normally at low levels you can just jump into the middle of overwhelming odds and watch them perform underwhelmingly. The spawns from the event are a lot tougher so they can go toe to toe longer which means they can deal more damage. So don't go toe to toe unless you have attacks recharged and are good on hp and end.

And unfortunately I like the alt I created for this experiment so that means one less slot available for GR. I suppose I can always buy extra slots or delete somebody.

While E(veryones) MMV, count me amongst the group who aren't finding this event much fun this year. I tried solo ToTing with a lvl 14 Scrapper and died five times in thirty minutes at the hands of boss spawns. Sure, no debt - but no xp or treats either. Not what I consider fun. Maybe after 60 months I'm jaded, but an event that inspires me to re-up my WoW account for a month is not one I'd class as an unqualified success.

Things that I would do if I was Posi: :P

- Doors in zones lower then Talos Island (i.e. zones where players are pre-Stamina) should be coded to not spawn bosses.
- Zombie scaling needs to be addressed.
- Give us a scrap of blessed daylight. Maybe reverse the day/night cycle. Personally, I find the weeks of perpetual darkness sort of depressing. It also makes it impossible to design costumes properly.

There needs to be some sort of happy medium here. On past events, it took a long time to get the vampires done. As it is now, zombies are the last ones I get, which were the most common previously.

For characters past a certain level this is usually not an issue. For lower levels and for squishier and many defender/controller types, there isn't the level of damage available yet, nor the HPs, to handle bosses, particularly ones that debuff and/or cannot be held/immobed.

On one of my lower level controllers I clicked one door, got two werewolves, and promptly got smacked, and hard. I fortunately had my Raptor pack already, so I could fly and keep on one enough with my vet powers to take it down. The other I had to drone before it could hit me with another boulder. If it had been the normal zombies and one werewolf I might have been okay, or at least had a chance. If it had been even one vampire (let alone Vamp Lord) or a Crone, I wouldn't have even managed what I did.

As it's getting late in the event, people are not wanting to do the banner event or the ToTing nearly as much, so teaming is much tougher.

I know why they extended the event, but the people on my normal server are pretty much done with it by now, it seems. The banner events, due to damage scaling issues, are not workable with one 50 and the rest lowbies, because the damage dealt is nearly negligible, except from Nem Staff, etc. Yesterday, all but one of these was a total failure: due to the lack of higher level people, the banners were never vulnerable.


Some thing to take into consideration for next time:

1. Damage scaling with SSK does not allow a lowbie to deal any reasonable damage on their pool powers, only on vet powers.

2. The longer an event goes on, the less people are interested in doing it later on in that event.

3. ToT door foe scaling and numbers or Lts and Bosses is too much for lower level characters, even when SSKed (see #1).

4. ToT Lts and Bosses with mezz powers or other special attacks versus a lowbie is no fight at all - it's a visit to the hospital ward they'll name after you for your frequent visits.

The first time I played this game, I did a lot of levelling from trick-or-treating with my very first character. I really don't see the issue.

Yes, it can be hard for lowbies to pull their weight with the higher levelled ones, but not really that hard. You just gotta be aggressive.