The brokenness of Ghost Widow and fears of the Incarnate

What situations are these? You keep saying they exist, and everyone keeps telling you they don't. Everyone keeps giving you examples of how nothing you say reflects in-game reality, yet you ignore all of that and just keep repeating the same claims. "LALALALA, I can't hear you!" is not a valid debating tactic outside of grade school.

Are you serious? What started off as a rant about 'gimmicky' TF's is now reduced to complaining about one enemy group in one story arc that is designed to be a challenge for melee AT's? Scrappers can steamroll through 99% of the game solo, and they hit one speedbump, and you're using this as an example of 'broken' gameplay?

The only thing that this thread has demonstrated as inflexible, is your thought process and playstyle.

Hate to break it to you, but that's true for almost all content in the game. That doesn't stop people from playing tankers. It doesn't stop tankers from getting invited to teams. And it doesn't stop those players from having fun either.

Ah, but they can't be Vigilante's, their a UN organisation that's at war with the Rikti Restructurists, who conveniently want to absorb/wipeout humanity.
The Rikti are using the Lost to bolster their ranks. It seems reasonable that VG use heroes and villains to suplement their own, neh?

I've given up answering the point of debate, here, because I can see it being a dead-heat.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Vanguard's "by any means" approach to fighting the Rikti does make them Vigilantes - but Lady Grey seems like a sensible person, even if her name implies less than clear morality

/this.

The problems I've run into have been problems with players ("Don't pull with Rain of Fire." "k" *pulls with rain of fire." "No, I said don't do that." "k" *pulls with rain of fire* *kicks*) not ATs. Every AT helps. No, they don't all generate giant orange numbers. So what?

/this. *having just finished Gaussian's arc quite handily with my low-damage Earth/FF 'troller yesterday.*

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My experience with gimmick fights in other games is that melee DPS classes tend to be disfavored by the gimmicks. As I noted, at least among people I play with regularly, scrappers are disfavored on the STF; buff, debuff, and ranged damage have priority. This may not be the case elsewhere. Fine.

This makes me concerned about the prospect of more such gimmicky content here, and hoping that nothing important is gated behind the gimmicks. I'm still wondering why these observations brought forth such a torrent of unpleasantness.

The Vanguard were just brought in as a further example. I suspect that the Vanguard content was simply not meant to be played by melee ATs.

I think I am coming around to support the Restructurists. That would be convenient.

City of Heroes is not other games. It is not going to become other games. You're needlessly worrying about something that hasn't happened yet and that there is no indication is likely to ever happen. Chicken Little ring a bell?

So find a new group of people to play with. If it is so unpleasant to play with them, why are you doing so? Come on over to Protector and try a few STF runs with us.

Probably because you made a bunch of unfounded claims with nothing to back them up. As far as a "torrent of unpleasantness", I've read through this whole thread since the beginning, and I don't see anything other than people spiritedly disagreeing with you. I wouldn't consider that "unpleasantness".

Because your observations are faulty and do not reflect the actual in-game experience of many other players?


I suspect you're just unwilling to change tactics. If I can solo the Vanguard content, with bosses, on a non-IOed, pre-Dwarf damage buff, Human/Dwarf biform Peacebringer, you can certainly solo it on any Tanker at the default difficulty.

Are Vanguard intended to be mean to melees? YES.
Are they "not meant to be played by melee ATs"? NO.

So because there exists content that is actually challenging (not impossible) for melee ATs, your conclusion is that it was not meant to be played by them?

If you don't like the arc, don't play it. But don't generalize everyone else who plays melee ATs into that box. Some of them, I know for a fact, were thrilled with the fact that they couldn't just steamroll through Vanguard, practically AFK the whole time, like they can with 90% of the rest of the game.

To some extent this is true for every piece of content in the game. In a team setting buffs and debuffs are horribly unbalanced compared to anything else. Similarly (but to a lesser degree) AoE damage is far superior to single target damage most of the time and ranged AoE damage is better than melee AoE damage due to higher target caps, larger covered area and less need to rely on positioning.

People like variety and the game is pretty easy so teams tend to contain a mish-mash of characters, if everyone was min-maxing we'd see nothing but Defenders, Controllers, Corruptors and Masterminds

I think my brain would bleed if someone actually did that...

You mean the dropping or the playing?

Or a rule of only 9 days.

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Nice! An English history reference! GJ, M_B!

Young, beautiful and learned Jane, intent
On knowledge, fount it peace; her vast acquirement
Of goodness was her fall; she was content
With dulcet pleasures, such as calm retirement
Yields to the wise alone; -- her only vice
Was virtue: in obedience to her sire
And lord she died, with them a sacrifice
To their ambition: her own mild desire
Was rather to be happy than be great;
For though at their request, she claimed the crown,
That they through her might rise to rule the state,
Yet the bright diadem and gorgeous throne
She viewed as cares, dimming the dignity
Of her unsullied mind and pur benignity.

by William Hone (1780 -1842)
Inscribed beneath a portrait of Lady Jane Grey

I wondered, actually, if they intentionally used both Lady Jane and Lady Grey for some reason, or if it happened to be coincidence.

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And yet somehow my Scrappers, Brutes and Tankers have run that content both solo and on teams. When it's my arc i tend to solo it, but i have also joined teams running that arc with all of the above.

This thread has given me a fair number of literal facepalms. Every time Heraclea posts about how certain content is unfair to certain AT's or just plain too hard i have to wonder how her experiences running the same content that i've done many, many times can be so different.

When i form/join teams for anything, unless it's for a "Master of" badge, i only look for willing teammates regardless of AT. Even for "Master of" attempts my personal criteria only extend to preferring to find at least one teammate with one of a handful of powersets. Not even any specific set or AT, just as long as it's one of those that helps make it easier. i'll even give it a shot without a desired set as long as the rest of the team indicates that they're okay with a high chance of not getting the badge in that run.

The fact that at least half the time i play characters with a buff/debuff set does make SF/TF recruiting easier. Ran a Numina TF once on my Earth/TA Controller where the Empathy healer quit after the third mission for no apparent* reason leaving me as the only support on a team of Blasters and Scrappers. We completed it without incident or even any teamwipes. No specific AT/powerset is required for any content as long as the players cooperate and coordinate.


*The healer did complain a couple times that they didn't have anything to do most of the time, but that's hardly a reason to quit. True, if they'd had more than one attack it probably would have been less boring, but that wasn't the team's fault.

For being named after someone who only lasted nine days her tea is pretty decent.

Lady Jane also brings to mind the Rolling Stones song of the same title. And Lady Grey also reminds me of the Grey Ladies, which are one of the commonest varieties of ghosts that inhabit a large number of haunted milieux in the British Isles, including Glamis Castle. One of the resident ghosts at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books is a Grey Lady; there are many others. White Ladies are also common, and appear in the USA as well; probably the most widespread White Lady ghost here is La Llorona.

And a totally different one of the same title by Queensryche. Popular title, it seems.

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I'm starting to think that buffs and debuffs ought to get their own equivalent of the GDN. The problem is that almost all the content seems to assume them, and everything takes five times too long in their absence, and some enemies are incredibly frustrating if not impossible. Dozens of encounters would require revision.

But this is the flip side of the same issue I was trying to raise here. I obviously did a poor job communicating.

While I have dutifully made those characters for the sake of the team, the power sets and builds don't really interest me. I played them, but they seem annoying or idle before you run into the next named boss, and it feels like they were powerlevelled regardless of how much they actually contribute in fact. They also sit at the bottom of the feed trough when set IOs are passed around.

I prefer to be a participant rather than a spectator. My purely subjective impression is that the game is developing a bias against characters with an active play style. Recluse, Ghost Widow, Romulus, Reichsman, Lord Winter .... I see a pattern here. I'm probably going to be told I'm hallucinating here again.

No, just that from what i can see here you seem to feel that non-melee AT's are somehow less active and slighted in recipe drops. i think it's a perception and playstyle issue more than a hallucination. My support characters support from the front lines and use their offense as much as their defense.

My FF/Rad doesn't just sit back handing out bubbles and scratching her butt. She teleports into the middle of the fray, fires Irradiate, hovers up a few feet and then launches Repulsion Bomb, Electron Haze and Neutron Bomb on the enemies below. Then i tend to start using single target attacks on enemies who need them most. Of course that's when i'm not using Force Bubble to shove all the enemies into nice little clump in a corner. Most of my other support alts are a bit more active than that since they tend to be debuffers.



Edit: Incidentally, even in multi-team settings like mothership or Hamidon raids non-melee characters actually tend to have an advantage in getting drops unless they're shrinking violet, cower in the corner types. Non-melee-centric AT's tend to have access to many more AoE attacks. My Crab of Doom VEAT has a full attack chain of nothing but AoE's. My PB with dmg/range HO's in the nova AoE's can blast most of a room in one volley. (Not that i always want the latter to happen.)