Powers to avoid on Critters?

hi all,

in your experience, are there any powers that one should avoid putting on their custom critters? limit the question to minions, lts and bosses.

any feedback is appreciated.

thanks!

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=205061

A good discussion from a while back. A few things have changed since that time such as lowering the strength of Aim/Buildup. In the end, repeatedly test with different ATs and try to test both on a team and solo.

thanks!

Chilling Embrace on Minions is pretty dangerous to folks that have no resistance to slows.

My main arc HAD this power as the main defense for a custom minion, then I ran the mission with a few of my toons and even with only three minions surrounding you the sight of all your powers as little tiny dots was pretty common. Made the mistake of running this at +1/x3 the first time with my Emp/Elec.

In fact, just about any constant aura power can bring some serious hurt when you stack them on minions and higher settings. Damage auras from a /x8 spawn of minions, Slow Auras, debuff Auras, Status Auras (OG, CoF) etc...

The safest thing is to stick with basic attacks and basic defenses.
Ex: I gave footstomp to a custom Boss, then set my mission slider to 1-54. He was spawning as a Lt (that bug really bothers me), and was destroying my characters with footstomp. Had to remove footstomp in order to give anyone lower than level 20 a chance to beat him.

Giving AoE powers, Status Protection and Higher Tier Attacks is a sure way to make your custom critter very hard to deal with.

Also, dont remove ranged attacks from your custom mobs. The XP formulas seem to be set-up to favor giving everything at least ONE ranged attack. So when making a melee oriented character, don't turn off their sole ranged attack.

Minions' power comes from numbers. Don't give them a head start in the power department, or else they'll be stacking buffs/debuffs, heals, mezzes, or other kinds of nastiness. Save the juicy stuff for bosses or (if it's not too juicy) LTs, to reduce stacking.

Another option for reducing stacking of buff/debuff/heals/mezzes is to set the mezzing custom minion to not autospawn, then load it as a Boss detail. There'll be just one per spawn. See mission #2 of the arc in my sig for an example of no-autospawn custom buff/debuff LTs loaded as Boss details. Imagine how annoying the mission would be if multiples of those LTs were showing up in every spawn! Keep in mind the Boss detail only accepts minions and LTs if they are custom critters.

Go light on defensive/heal/support powers, including defense and damage resistance. The custom power calculations give very little extra reward for those powers, but they'll slow players down significantly if they're high. Especially watch out for Unstoppable type powers, which will stack with all other defenses, and some critter types have a 100% resistance cap. Regeneration on a high ranked critter is pretty much the same. If you're going to do an "unkillable critter" gimmick, set that critter as an optional objective, make it clear it's optional and not intended to be killable, and give players a chance to avoid it.

I'd avoid using any powers from Critters 3 or 4.

For lower tiers, stacking debuffs are awful. Dark in particular seems to be a culprit in most of the arcs I get by choosing "One Random", as is fits the theme that some of the authors want to go with and I end up with my ToHit down into the teens and below. It's Un-Fun to the point where I boycotted arcs with custom mobs for quite some time.

For minions, a simple mix of straight attacks seems best, with LT's a special trick or two.

I also stay away from Dark powers like life drain; had it on some of my toons and it was tough to beat them. Also any stun (e.g. beanbag, etc) so that the mission is safe for defenders/trollers/doms/corrs, etc to play (too bad they can't still have offense when stunned like blasters).

I also don't use too many holds for the same reason ... oh, Total Focus in the EM powerset or energy transfer (i think thats the name); was wiping out my allies. I do use footstomp but thats only because my allies are extreme bosses as well and can take it.

I think the other issue with critter design is that groups need to be more creative than Knives of Artemis, Crazed, and a host of other groups where everything in the enemy group plays exactly the same. Varying enemy composition not only gives you the breathing room to have the occasional powerful enemy, it also makes enemy encounters fresher and more dynamic. Spawn A has a specific LT that's problematic so a Stalker/Controller/Defender will work better while Spawn B has weak enemies that force multiply so it would be better to just toss a nuke or wade in with melee.

Careful, at the opposite end of that, is stuff like Rularuu, where the fact that you have to overcome a variety of different offenses and defenses in every spawn adds significantly to difficulty. Casual soloers would have to steer clear.

After checking the numbers to make sure they haven't been patched, it's with some sadness that I add the following powers to the list:

Impale: 2.46 damage + 0.75 DoT, immob, -fly, -movespd, -recharge, 8s recharge
Shuriken: 1.98 damage + 0.75 DoT, 8s recharge
Hurl/Hurl Boulder: 2.46 damage, 50% knockback, -fly, 8s recharge
Focus: 2.085 damage, 100% knockdown, 6.4s recharge

Some blasts in melee sets are direct ports of ranged blasts, but these five are stronger than tier 3 blasts and have faster recharge timers. Impale outdamages a sniper blast, even, and Shuriken comes within 2% of a sniper blast. You can use these sparingly, since their Alpha values are a little higher than average, but playtest the critter carefully for difficulty.

For comparison:
Sniper blast: 2.76 damage, 3s interrupt, 12s recharge
Tier 3 blast: 1.96 damage, 10s recharge
Tier 2 blast: 1.64 damage, 8s recharge

To avoid these powers without invoking the 40% XP cap, pair the melee set with a second melee set without these powers, or a blast, control, summon, assault, or manipulation set, and grab a ranged attack from that other set.

For example, you can take a Martial Arts custom critter and avoid the Shuriken-o-doom by pairing it with the Broad Sword set and only Throwing Knives from that set. The critter won't draw a sword to use Throwing Knives, and will do only a bit more damage than a Tier 2 blast every 8 seconds, instead of a bit more damage than a sniper every 8 seconds.

Longbow is intriguing in that their variance is top heavy. They have a lot of cool bosses but as mentioned there's just one LT and the minions mostly blend together. Tsoo may be the only other group with as much boss variance but they do much better with LTs.