Ambushes - FFS

We've just had a horrid experience on one of Interrogator Kang's missions. We got to the last mob with 3 of us at level 11.

Mob composition was red boss, 2 or 3 lieutenants and some minions. As soon as we attacked, another group of the same composition spawned directly under us and we teamwiped. Got back from hospital, cleared the ambushing mob, soon as we attacked the last mob, same again. There was just no way our group (elec/kin troller, stone dom, brute) could deal with 2 bosses and 4-6 lieutenants particularly given they were syndicate, and we were pre DOs. We teamwiped (or 2 dead and one legged it) 3 or 4 times.

Actually I've found a stalker (KM/SR the first toon I played thru praetoria doing every single resistance mish) has it easier than most, but I suffered badly in the broken seer 001 mission.

Did some one counter "Stalkers are a joke with out hide" by saying "They rock in PvP" even though Hide is the biggest reason they're a threat in PvP?

Also, I'm getting quite sick of ambushes. I haven't had the ridiculous 30 enemy ambushes some of you have had to put up with, but it's like the "add ambush" button was on auto-fire when they were designing Praetoria.

some of them obscured by the stairs. there was a bunch of em below too.

think it was that hunt shen mission from bobcat

Yea, that was a fun mission. I soloed it on my stalker.

Sheesh, how are you guys even keeping Frosty alive? I've worked with him three or four times and can't keep him from running into melee and getting his butt kicked almost immediately. Even if I pull, he seems to see the next group and go right for them after we've defeated the pulled one.

On topic, yeah, some of the ambushes are overkill, but I see them tweaking them in the patch notes, so I assume they're working on it behind the scenes.

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

I think these massive ambushes are a bug.

I played through the Praetorian Resistance Warden arcs with a Brute earlier, and while I did see some massive ambushes, they came in waves with only 3 minions in each wave. The main difference there from standard CoH/CoV ambushes were the large number of waves (10 or more) and how close they came together, barely finishing one before the next arrived. There wasn't anything as massive as some of the screenshots I've seen in this thread.

I'm wondering if ambushes in general are bugged.

Last night I did Serge's second costume mission at level 20 with a heroic Tanker who has never been to Praetoria. The Tsoo ambush that hit me there was unusually large. I had about 12-15 attackers, I'm not certain about numbers, because there was a group I attacked just before the ambush hit me. The only adjustment I had to difficulty levels was I set it to allow bosses, I hadn't turned anything else up.

I've been doing lots of missions in Praetoria (haven't had much opportunity to play in Primal, lately ), and I can confirm that the ambushes seem off.

If memory serves, ambushes historically came in three waves, and no more. Now, they'll frequently come in waves of five or more. I've been in the Tunnels, and it seemed that they simply would not end until I left the area I was in. Exacerbating the situation was that the next ambush spawned almost immediately, allowing insufficient time to use Rest to recover health and endurance.

This last point is the part that bugs me the most. I'm not given enough time to recover. And given that we are forcibly ejected from Praetoria by the time we pick up Stamina, endurance management remains a problem.

The icing on the cake is that Rest takes so long to recover. Even if I had enough time to use it, it's frequently not recharged. And it takes too long to refill my bars.

So here are my choices. I can slot my powers for endurance reduction, which means I'll hit less frequently and waste the endurance anyway, or I can slot for accuracy and hit more often, but still run out of endurance when the unending ambushes eventually wear me down. Because eventually, my meager alotment of inspirations will run out.

This entire scenario is almost Emmert-esque.

I'd like to be the first to say:

Welcome Back Jack Emmert!!

You're One True Vision about how to run the new content has truly inspired my lowbie badgers to wrap up Exalted by level 20. I want to especially thank you for being able to go from level 7 to level 12 in 1 single mish while being debt-capped the entire way.

I am so glad that you've been rehired and hope your vision extends into revamps of al of the previous content in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

Your Biggest Fan,
Squishy "Hosp Button" Blaster III

P.S. Where can I send the fruit basket?

P.P.S. Are you allergic to Mango?

The first time I ran the Malta ambush of DOOOOMMM mission on my DM/Shields I got splattered by the third or fourth wave (on +1/x8, so the first two weren't dead yet. There were Gunslingers. Gunslingers suck when you rely on defense.) Cue Nerdrage.

Then I figured out how the ambushes work, and now it's my favorite tip to do on that character. On x8 inspirations drop like rain, and with a bunch of reds going and that many Malta fuelling AAO and Soul Drain, they die fairly fast. The only downside is all that freaking smoke from the missle swarms. Oh lord how I hate that smoke.

Still trying to beat it on my DB/SR. All that lethal resistance makes the bosses take too long to kill and they pile up after a while...if you're having accuracy problems with your Dual Pistols toon remember to hold the gun sideways, and wear an eyepatch just for good measure.

But that's a high-level mission, and being a tip it can be dismissed, so it's entirely optional and doesn't stop your story arc dead until you can autocomplete it. It isn't nearly as offensive as the fact that nearly ALL the tip missions contain double-boss spawns even on x3.

But Praetoria...those are low level missions. We have no Stamina. We have no insps. We miss all the time. We have no heals. WE SUCK. Give it (us) a rest.

I did the last mission of Dark Watcher's arc in the Rikti War Zone last night, and I was facing non-stop ambushes from the moment I attacked the first portal generator, to about five minutes after the "Mission Complete" fanfare. Since I was on a level 50 katana/elec scrapper, this wasn't very difficult to deal with, but I did find it a bit odd.

I've been there too. +0/X0 and an ambush bigger than I have ever seen triggered on an 8 man team before. Just how is a single player supposed to beat a 20+ critter ambush? You can pop all the insp. you want. Its not going to do anything helpful. And before anyone says it - getting a team together makes the ambushes worse.

There's one mish near the end of an arc where you have 5 minutes to kill 80 clockwork. Oh, that scales up if you're on a team. Who the F can take down *800* of the damn things in 5 minutes? No, that is not a typo. That's what you get on an 8 man team.

We also finally had to give up on one of the missions and drop it when the boss, a dual blade character, was able to hit me with his blades from 500 feet across the room.

I understand that they made Praetoria harder on purpose, because people whined that the early game was too simple. Too simple is one thing...but some of these missions are damned impossible; solo or teamed.

I am pretty sure most of these ambushes are custom jobs, and specific to each mission - but a few are still either broken by game design, or simply had facets that were overlook. Some are going to be corrected, to be more palatable to the masses. But I think a few are going to remain as they are - because they are supposed to break the paradigm in order to provide variety. The Defeat 100 Destroyers mission might always stay the same, but some of these other missions might very well change. I know some of the ambushes out there are just 1 mob if you are going solo, so we might see that more often. Or something along those lines. And it appears in a few of those cases, new ambushes are not triggered until that one is defeated.

Anyhow, hopefully we see more active work from the devs on making more of the ambushes more "sane" - so to speak.

I've been running a lot of tips in between running a bit of Preatoria, and I do think the devs are overusing the Ambush feature. It's one thing to have the end boss ambush you once in a while, or have a swarm of guys that can be one-shotted, or have one high-level mission with piles and piles of guys coming after you, but when it's every mission it just gets old very fast.

Although I must add that my Stalker was ambushed by Hardcase today. Mr. Big Bad Demon hunter...too bad for him I'm not a demon. I don't mind being ambushed by him at all. On my Stalker even.

I like the ambushes, it gives a sense of urgency and excitement.

Plowing through static after static mob gets old a lot faster.