A Tale of Two (Four?) Statues

Ok, so I'm playing my deliciously SMASH!y super strength/willpower brute, doing Operative Wellman's arc and then did my level 20 stuff for my extra costume slot and my cape. In an hour's span I'd smashed the two statues in Steel Canyon twice, with vastly different experiences.

The first time, I smashed them for Operative Wellman's arc and fought Wyvern with some random Outcasts and Tsoo for local Steel Canyon flavor. This mission could use some.. um.. tweaking, I'd say.

I cleared everything except for the statues to save the best for last and while doing so I noticed the Outcast boss (Lt with my difficulty settings) had an idle comment wondering why the "Longbow heroes" or something were all around.

After I thought everything was clear, I went and decided to go for the statue I was closest to, to the North. I don't know if I did it too hastily or what, but after taking out the Wyvern around it and the statue, I got two Wyvern ambushes with Wing Fang Agents in each at the same time that hunted me down while I was taking out mobs I'd missed. Needless to say they were no match for my SMASH and dispatched easily. Then things got.. interesting.

Two ambushes appeared nearby at the EXACT same time that made me chuckle since they both said "We're going down, Lady Puncherella!" but perhaps without the $name/$target in it. They definitely told me they were going down, to which I thought "you damn well are, hero fools!" ...Then they proceeded to absolutely destroy me. In my prone state of analyzing the workmanship of the concrete, I checked out who my attackers were. It was a Wing Raptor Agent, an Elite Boss. Well hell, an EB on an ambush?! Then I tabbed around and saw that EACH ambush had an EB in it. Wha...? I even checked Paragonwiki for more information and found out a named Lt is supposedly the only existence of Raptor Agents of any sort in the game.

So I hospital'd it out to try the other statue because I figured then at least I could clear the Wyvern around it and the statue and complete the mission quick. This time though, on the southern one, the sets of two ambushes were nice enough to wait until I'd cleared one ambush before the next started. One EB at a time was a tad easier, even though I'd focused on the SMASH and ignored my mezz protection for now and their stun was killer.

After that and the mission was complete, I had an choice.. exit the mission or actually finish it. Naturally, being a good brute, I made my way back to the two EBs who'd gotten me earlier. I managed to get their surrounding minions for possible inspiration drops and one of the EBs down to a sliver of health before they took me out again. This time, though, I didn't have an option of hospitalling it.. plus I remembered I had the power <.< and used Resuscitate and quickly took out the almost dead EB. Then I focused on the second and it suddenly switched to either a smart or "cheap" tactic at random and spammed me with Entangling Arrow instead of Stunning Shot, dropping my recharge to next to nothing. But still, I prevailed and managed to take him out.

I cleansed my palette of that by SMASHing some low level Family in Port Oakes and Longbow in the precursor mission to the cape mission (I'd forgotten just how damn funny the knockback on the contraband is. Srsly, heh.). Then it was back to those damned statues, but with Longbow to SMASH and a Hero instead of Wyvern. Needless to say, the ambushes of a general Longbow ambush, a Longbow ambush with an Officer and THEN the Hero ambush after that only AFTER destroying BOTH statues was much easier. Especially since my missions are set at even level, no bosses, so they were Lieutenants.

For the tl;dr..

• Operative Wellman's statue mission produced eight total ambushes with four comprising of two with Lieutenants (actual Lieutenants, since they were Wing Fang Agents) and then two ambushes with Wing Raptor Agent Elite Bosses for each statue.

• The Villain Cape Mission produced three ambushes total of a generic Longbow ambush, a Longbow ambush with an Officer (a boss set to a Lt), and a Longbow ambush with the Hero (a boss set to Lt), after destroying BOTH statues.

So I have to ask.. aside from the obvious "wtf, an EB in an ambush FOUR TIMES?!?!?!" question.. why does Wyvern care more about statues of our fallen heroes then we do?

Ouch... Yeah, that smells a lot like a creeping bug in the works somewhere, like how combining Hercules Titans produce a Zeus Titan BOSS even if you had bosses turned off. That killed me yesterday.

And here I thought mine was bad... The mission where I had to save Lady Grey killed me a bunch of times, but the first time was the cheapest. I save Lady Grey, then INSTANTLY three or four spawns appear out of nowhere, all within (their incredibly long) aggro range of me. And I'm on a Blaster. Not fun. I mean, I can understand ambushes, but one group spawned rubbing shoulders with me. What the hell?!? That's pretty much one step removed from dropping a bridge on me and claiming it was already there. How I got under it is conspicuously never mentioned.

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.