Making a balanced enemy group in MA is a challenging venture... most people just hit Extreme/Extreme on everything and move on. This annoys me to no end. It's possible to make a balanced group that gives full experience without resorting to just hitting extreme on everything. Custom settings are more fun too because even with the same powersets, you can have Villains focused on different jobs. Say for example, an Energy Melee minion group, both have Energy Melee, but A has Stun, while B has Bone smasher.
Before we get started, let's talk about costumes. Identifying enemies before you jump into a group is important. It's possible to make variations, while still remaining within a theme. Try to keep this in mind when designing your costumes. This also has the benefit of being able to easily pick out an 'annoying' minion or Lieutenant within the chaos of combat.
First off, let's start with the Minions. Mooks are the most common enemy obviously, so you want to make them the most balanced and least annoying.
Avoid the following powers:
-To hit powers
-Perception
Mezzes (Except as an 'uncommon' minion.)
Most debuffs (Remember as the most common they are VERY easy to stack.)
+Defense (Nothing is more annoying than an unhittable Minion.)
Summons (Except as an 'uncommon' minion.)
-End powers
Mezz protection
Self buff +To hit and/or +Damage
This list may seem like it cuts out a lot of powersets, but remember that the Minions are supposed to be cannon fodder and weak. The best combo for minions would be Attack/Defense. Some of the best sets to use for minions are Dominator's assault sets, as they have both Melee and ranged, and Mastermind attacks, which while on a Mastermind sucks, on a Minion they're good, and people don't see them too often. Limit the minion's attacks to a maximum of 2 ranged 1 melee, or 1 ranged and 2 melee, with one possible AoE. Defense sets tend to allow minions to last a little longer, but don't go overboard. Take the S/L shield and a few of the autos.
A neat trick I discovered with minions is making some spawn less. This is extremely easy to do, simply pad your minion group with copies of your 'main' mook. For example, if you want to make a group of soldiers with a medic, make 4 Soldiers and 1 medic. Solo, the medic won't spawn all the time, and in large groups there might be 2 or 3 at max. Consider this VS 1 medic and 1 soldier, where every other enemy is a medic. Annoying AND theme breaking.
Next up is Lieutenants. Now for them you have a bit more freedom as they're less common, and also the most versatile of the classifications. You can set them up in almost any way and they won't be too awful overpowered due to having much less damage than a boss and less health.
That said, I still recommend avoiding the following:
-Perception
Self buff +To hit and/or +Damage
+Defense
Mezz protection
Too many mezzes (One is fine, Under Lieut numbers, they can't perma hold anyone.)
Fear and Confuse (Protection VS these two are uncommon for most defense sets.)
Lieutenants are fun. As I said, you can set them up in almost any way, a tank, a buffer, a ranger. Same trick for making one less common than the other applies from above, but it's less of an issue with Lieutenants and barely noticeable except in large teams.
Last is Bosses. Bosses are the hardest to balance due to their numbers with our powers. Some powers hit as hard as Freak Tanks and recharge in 4 seconds. Patience with your bosses. Fight them over and over and over again. Add one power, remove another, just be careful. A hard boss can make your arc unfun in an instant. Especially if they can appear in regular spawns.
That said, I tend to go more attacking with my bosses rather than support. Being bosses, their support numbers are fairly high, and they have a ton of health. Having a boss keeping the entire spawn alive while they and he kills you isn't fun. For bosses, I'm not really going to tell you to avoid any particular power, just use your best judgment on what you think is too annoying. You don't want to make your boss Master Illusionist annoying do you?
I'll briefly cover AVs and EBs too... with these less is more. An AV can get by with one or two attacks and still be fairly deadly. Remember with our powers, some can very easily one shot tanks if your not careful. With normal NPCs, sometimes mobs have special AI written to cause them to not use these attacks so often, but our mobs WILL use powers all the time as they come up. And for the love of Pete, don't EVER Make an Extreme/Extreme AV.
A few other miscellaneous tips:
Have a boss or minion that you feel is strong enough on it's own without a secondary? Give him Regen! Pick Fast Healing, Quick Recovery, and maybe the S/L auto. All this does pretty much very little on it's own, but gives it a tiny bit of help.
Again, putting multiple minions of the same kind in the minion group allows you to make 'uncommon' minions. Much like how Sappers where.
Try to have a theme! Another annoyance I have is people who put all sorts of powers in a group without really giving a good reason.
Avoid Mezz protection. Controllers and Dominators will thank you. Giving anything mezz protection can make your mission unsoloable by them.
Avoid too many Dark powers. Yes yes, your group is TOTALLY EVIL. But try to think of something else evil for powers besides dark. It's really annoying to have so much -to hit stacked on you.
Test test test. Make a basic, straight forward mission at first and run it with your characters. Try all sorts, not just your IO'd out main, from squishies to soloists to teamers. If you can get a group going even better. If your at +3 and having no issue, maybe you can turn up the powers just a hair. On the other hand if your at +0 and dying every other group maybe you should consider toning your group down. Identify what's causing your team to die so much and change it.
Don't make it too hard. Not everyone has the same standard as you. You can solo +4 AVs? Great. How about that Defender over there that has trouble soloing Elite Bosses? If worse comes to worse and you really want to make your group THAT challenging, make a 'lite' version of your group and upload a second version of your arc, linking it in the description if they feel it's too hard.
Consider a wide range of protections. While your Electric Aura character might not have issues with End drain, or your Dark Armor might not get feared, not everyone has those kinds of 'rare' protections.
The EXP% while creating enemies is a fairly good indicator of how tough it'll be for that level. Don't use this as an absolute though.
*Above all: Is your group 'fun' to fight?
Posted
Using "uncommon" enemies I think there's actually a fair amount more breathing room with LTs than listed. However, a key trick you didn't mention was recoloring standard mobs to fill in the gaps of your enemy group.
Making a balanced enemy group in MA is a challenging venture... most people just hit Extreme/Extreme on everything and move on. This annoys me to no end. It's possible to make a balanced group that gives full experience without resorting to just hitting extreme on everything. Custom settings are more fun too because even with the same powersets, you can have Villains focused on different jobs. Say for example, an Energy Melee minion group, both have Energy Melee, but A has Stun, while B has Bone smasher.
Before we get started, let's talk about costumes. Identifying enemies before you jump into a group is important. It's possible to make variations, while still remaining within a theme. Try to keep this in mind when designing your costumes. This also has the benefit of being able to easily pick out an 'annoying' minion or Lieutenant within the chaos of combat.
First off, let's start with the Minions. Mooks are the most common enemy obviously, so you want to make them the most balanced and least annoying.
Avoid the following powers:
This list may seem like it cuts out a lot of powersets, but remember that the Minions are supposed to be cannon fodder and weak. The best combo for minions would be Attack/Defense. Some of the best sets to use for minions are Dominator's assault sets, as they have both Melee and ranged, and Mastermind attacks, which while on a Mastermind sucks, on a Minion they're good, and people don't see them too often. Limit the minion's attacks to a maximum of 2 ranged 1 melee, or 1 ranged and 2 melee, with one possible AoE. Defense sets tend to allow minions to last a little longer, but don't go overboard. Take the S/L shield and a few of the autos.
A neat trick I discovered with minions is making some spawn less. This is extremely easy to do, simply pad your minion group with copies of your 'main' mook. For example, if you want to make a group of soldiers with a medic, make 4 Soldiers and 1 medic. Solo, the medic won't spawn all the time, and in large groups there might be 2 or 3 at max. Consider this VS 1 medic and 1 soldier, where every other enemy is a medic. Annoying AND theme breaking.
Next up is Lieutenants. Now for them you have a bit more freedom as they're less common, and also the most versatile of the classifications. You can set them up in almost any way and they won't be too awful overpowered due to having much less damage than a boss and less health.
That said, I still recommend avoiding the following:
Lieutenants are fun. As I said, you can set them up in almost any way, a tank, a buffer, a ranger. Same trick for making one less common than the other applies from above, but it's less of an issue with Lieutenants and barely noticeable except in large teams.
Last is Bosses. Bosses are the hardest to balance due to their numbers with our powers. Some powers hit as hard as Freak Tanks and recharge in 4 seconds. Patience with your bosses. Fight them over and over and over again. Add one power, remove another, just be careful. A hard boss can make your arc unfun in an instant. Especially if they can appear in regular spawns.
That said, I tend to go more attacking with my bosses rather than support. Being bosses, their support numbers are fairly high, and they have a ton of health. Having a boss keeping the entire spawn alive while they and he kills you isn't fun. For bosses, I'm not really going to tell you to avoid any particular power, just use your best judgment on what you think is too annoying. You don't want to make your boss Master Illusionist annoying do you?
I'll briefly cover AVs and EBs too... with these less is more. An AV can get by with one or two attacks and still be fairly deadly. Remember with our powers, some can very easily one shot tanks if your not careful. With normal NPCs, sometimes mobs have special AI written to cause them to not use these attacks so often, but our mobs WILL use powers all the time as they come up. And for the love of Pete, don't EVER Make an Extreme/Extreme AV.
A few other miscellaneous tips: