Which difficulty do you play at and why

+0/x1 to +0/x8 depending on the character, their level and what I'm fighting. Bosses by level 10 or so. I like the variety of larger spawns rather than slogging through the same 3 minions, or 1 minion/1 lieutenant for entire missions.

I also like all of my characters to be capable of soloing missions at a minimum of +0/x1/bosses, even if they mostly team. If they can't then I just can't shake the feeling that I'm not pulling my weight on the team so I'll either work on them until they can do it, or drop them.

I've never ran -1 and I don't think I ever will. Just feels too much like Ultra Easy Mode to me, but I'll readily admit that this probably says more about me than it does about players who are comfortable with that setting.

Fallenz, my Kat/INV scrapper- 2/+3 or f4
Blazin Rage, my Fire/WP scrapper 3/+3
Da Unforgiven my DM/EA brute 1/+2
With the setting on Bosses but no A/V. I get good drops/inf and I feel like I earn my rewards fighting this level. My goal is to keep moving up the lvls on Fallenz. I got him up to +4 with some groups but man Reluse's troops are tough with all that toxic, psi, and fire.

It depends on the character in question, but I try to maintain a pace of one group of enemies every 20-30 seconds. For example, my scrappers tend to be single-target fighters, so they run at +2/x1 with bosses. On the other hand, my plant/storm controller has mainly AoE attacks, and effectiveness increases with the number of targets (up to the hit cap of Seeds of Confusion), so she runs at +0/x6 with no bosses.

At low levels I usually run at the base setting until I can get some enhances.

So usually around level 5 or so I go to +1 Dif, +0, Bosses, AV.

By level 15 I try to be set at +2 Dif, +0, Bosses, AV.

Once I start getting on teams that can handle it, I try to bump it up from there.

I have had some fun with a 50's duo running at -1 or +0,+7, Bosses, AV. Just a lot of guys to plow through. Gives it that Dynasty Warrior feel.
It think I even ran one that was +1 or +2, +7, bosses, AV.
Though I can't say that I have run into an AV with a duo team while set to +7 heroes.

Honestly, I haven't gotten used to this new difficulty system and it seems a bit unwieldy in the way it is presented in the interface of the contact and how it displays in the mission window.
I guess having name for your difficulty was confusing for some, but it was a good way to explain what kind of mission you were doing without having to rattle off a bunch of +1's and Boss/no boss, etc.
This has brought me to simply recruit teams by the level marked on the mission. I liked being more specific than that with the old system, but "Hey, want to join a team running (level $level +2,+1, Boss, AV) missions? Send a tell for invite!" just doesn't have the ring to it of "Hey, want to join an invincible level $level mission team? Send tell for invite!"

While I agree it's much less concise, I prefer it so much. I really hated having to have more or higher level foes to get bosses, or to have to downgrade the level of minions/LTs/bosses to avoid AVs. The flexibility if the new system is much nicer.

On my lvl 40 BS/SD I am running 0/8 +Boss -AV. Once I hit 47 and put all those shiny IO's I bought in I will up the diff a bit.

Solo, I always run at 0x1 -bosses -AVs, because I am boring and like to feel powerful, even on my crappy soloists. Very few of my chars have bumped their difficulty. Generally only MMs.

In teams, I try to keep it at +1 to +2. I start at +1 and go up if we're OK with the warmup. If I'm on a team of just friends, I skip +1 and go straight to +2. All my friends can handle it without a warmup.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

For me, it depends. On my best characters, it's not uncommon for me to run 4/8, bosses and AVs solo. But if there's a particular story-arc I really dislike (cough, patrons), I'll set it for -1/1 just to get through it quickly. But, I find that my favorite thus far solo has been 2/8, bosses, no AV. It still feels challenging, but I don't feel slow. Best of all, I really do feel super-powered because my enemy needed to dispatch quite a few people to try to deal with me.

I enjoy seeing just how tough my characters can be. I would be delighted if somehow I could set it to 4/16, just to see if I could do it. Certainly, a lot of my characters couldn't, but I can think of a handful that would love to give that a shot. I'd also love to run across a -4/24 difficulty setting just for the LOLs.

That's right, negative four, twenty-four.

Current toon I'm lvling WP/SS Tank..in the 30's evens/5man with boss, since 40 evens/8 man with bossess and now onto +1/8 man with boss, no AV and having a laugh fighting for hours(well 2 hours for 41-42) continuously cackeling away mwahahaha!!!

SS/WP Brute and my MA/WP Scrapper generally evens/8 man with bossess for general inf and my night widow is a masochist and likes doing even/8 man with boss canarie and malta for fun.

Can you tell i like melee toons the most solo

Others AT's (and non WP Tanks) I only team with really so can't comment on that, but generally when leveling, till 22 its default setting, after SO's kick in I go to +1/3man with boss then in the 40's for scrappers and Brutes i got to 5 man, just for ease more than anything else. Never bother putting AV's in, bragging rights are ok i suppose but fighting them is a real bad inveastment of my time for the return.

Before the change in the difficulty system, I would play at the default difficulty level until I was 20-22. After that I would usually play at the 3rd difficulty level, which be something like +1/x1 bosses, no AV.

I would usually get bored with a character and stop playing them in their 30's. I didn't think this was related to the difficulty level until the new difficulty settings reset everything to the default level.

I have been having a lot more fun with the higher level characters than I used to, and I realized it was because I forgot to crank the difficulty back up.

This doesn't apply to scrappers, which feel like easy mode no matter if I turn up the difficulty or not. But turning up the difficulty on tankers makes fights more tedious, not more risky. And for squishier types winning a battle with less than half my hit points means progress at a lousy pace.

So under the new system, I'm playing at +0/x1 bosses, no AV. With the exceptions of scrappers, masterminds, brutes, none of which are my favorite archetypes. And I'm enjoying the game more.

I usually run on +0, x1, Bosses, no AV's regardless of what character I'm playing, mainly out of being too lazy to figure out the right combination for each and every character I have. At first I tried starting a brand new character at that, then raising the spawn size by one every 10 levels. Under the old system, I raised my difficulty every 10 levels as well, and thought doing the same for just spawn sizes would produce roughly the same results. But I found that while some of my Lv. 50's can easily handle +0, x5, Bosses, no AV's, others got slaughtered by it.

Err, +0/x5 is significantly harder than what we could do with the old system.

The old system is roughly approximated by this progression when solo.

Heroic: +0/x1/No/No
Tenacious: +0/x2/Yes/No
Rugged: +1/x1/Yes/No
Unyielding: +1/x2/Yes/No
Invincible: +2/x1/Yes/Yes

You're running something akin to Heroic for a 5-man team.

I play a lot of AE arcs, so I have it set at -1, just in case I run into some god-like custom enemies

My brutes run at 0/+4 for smashy goodness. Most of my others run at standard difficulty because I'm too lazy to change it. My high level scrappers have some stupid high difficulty ratings just for ***** and giggles, but I tend to change it around as I go. If I know an enemy group is irritating I'll crank 'em right down and put the boots to them.

Seems everyone is enjoying this aspect of the game , good posts everyone

My Squirrel (Claws/WP ) tend to run Solo at +2/x4 (current toon I use alot)

Full teams I tend to set +2/6 or +2/8

I guess conan runs are not my play style.