Question: Are NPCs with God Mode Fun Killers?

We've all seen it before. You're on a team and run across several Paragon Protectors or an EB/AV. You don't have sufficient control or can't kill 'em fast enough and they hit Unstoppable, Elude, MoG, etc. Now you're forced to spend extra time and Endurance swinging/blasting away until it drops.

There's nothing inherently wrong with giving NPCs these kinds of powers; they need something to give 'em an edge because, by design, their weaker than player characters. Problem is the NPC versions or Tier 9s aren't the same as the ones we get. They're crashless and have much lower Recharge times. That means Statesman can resist almost all of a team's damage just about all the time. Silent Blade can hit Kuji-in Retsu and simply outlast whatever's thrown against her. This isn't unfair but it can certainly be annoying. Especially since, depending on rank, such NPCs have greatly increased Regneration, self-heals or both. So not only are they nigh unkillable for most of a fight after a certain point, they can also effectively recover their Hit Points and make a team repeat the process of whittling them down all over again.

So I want other players' opinions on giving NPCs these drastically modified God Mode powers. Do you find it a nice change of pace; a rare and entertaining challenge? Or does it make you wanna bang your head against the keyboard and auto complete the mission? Should such powers be left as they are or should they be modified to come with a crash or longer Recharge timers?

There are points where it would be fine - it's something to pay attention to. It's also a bit of a kludge to get around stupid AI.

But some really need to be looked at. (Such as Valkyrie's freaking-forever invincible, rez, invincible. All you do is run around and dodge her for a few minutes, then try to knock down her HP before she fires it off again. (Normally do. Then she rezzes and hits it again, which is irritating.)

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Well, one thing I do like about the use of unstoppable throughout the game is it's about the only time psi damage really feels super useful to me, haha.

Overall though I think the way the illusionists work is better; some kind of pulsing resist that lasts a short time per pulse. It forces you to time your attacks and pay attention rather than just pressing numbers constantly.

It's worth pointing out that not all mobs get crashless "god modes" these days. A lot of more recent mobs get Unstoppable with a crash that stuns them (a throwback to a really old, old version that players got). This is a guaranteed death sentence.

There are only a few godmodes I really, really dislike on mobs.

One is the aforementioned Moment of Glory, which has full defense to all damage types (even Psi!) and lasts a really, really long time. (I'm not sure if it's the full 180 seconds of the version players used to get, but it sure feels like it.) You pretty much can't hit them with anything, which is usually just a waste of everyone's time waiting for it to expire.

Another one is the modes given to AV/EB signature characters in missions. I'm sort of OK with these in TF's (but I'll get back to that), but in story arcs, these characters get crashless godmodes that operate off really high AT modifiers and have absolutely preposterous recharge times. If an EB Wretch wants to pop Unstoppable and become damn near invulnerable to my damage for three minutes, OK, fine, I wouldn't like it, but I could stand it. But he gets to do it again like 30 seconds after it wears off (with no crash). That is frustrating.

Finally, I really, deeply and truly despise the few godmodes that combine with other powers give 100% DR to any given damage type. The Honoree in the LGTF still gets 100% lethal/smash resistance when he pops Unstoppable. I hate knowing that if I bring a character who deals L/S damage that I will stop contributing DPS at all once he pops that.

Yes, God modes on NPCs are the reason why I rarely give my custom mobs in AE God modes.

What i'd like to see is most of them reduced a bit. Maybe about half of what the players have. 50% Resistance to all execpt psi when at low health is a lot better than 95% res to all that a lot of the mobs with unstoppable have.

Elude mobs are a bit trickier... Everyone usually has diffrent opinons on how much accuracy you need. But there's a few elude mobs out there that you can't hit even if you chomp 10 yellows. I'd like to see their powers get reduced a bit so you still have somewhat of a chance to hit them.

They also need to give the mobs the new MoG instead of the old one...

I'd like for, as suggested, these godmodes to have maybe "half" the current effectiveness they have now (which would make these actually much weaker than half when dealing with, say, resistances) ; but at the same time, have the power give some kind of offensive boost to the enemy, be it tohit, damage, recharge, or all three. So instead of being super slow to kill (which ends up just being tedious), they'd be a bit harder to kill and more threatening.

I see this as no different than adding levels or numbers to make something harder. I can fight +4 enemies or the exact same enemy at +1 or +0. I miss more, hit for less, and he hits more and harder. Assuming my defenses can take the shift, the only actual change in difficulty is time required to defeat him. This turns it grindy.

On the other hand, compare fighting rularuu or malta to family or axis america. THAT is how difficulty should scale up. There are tough groups and weak groups. and I like the tough ones at +0 or +1. If I can win, I don't want to spend forever doing it. Making my numbers smaller and their numbers bigger is just frustrating compared to giving them more interesting and dangerous powers.

God modes are nothing more than this exact same thought process on steriods. Lets give them really really REALLY high numbers for a "short" period of time. Pffft. no thank you!

To answer Timeshadows question in a word: Yes

I think it's very much a game killer when you run up against any npc that simply does not adhere to the "natural laws" of the game universe (eg, the laws we follow, non-interruptible snipers, for example), a lot of which seem to be hold-overs from the "Statesman" era.

I think if I had to pick one thing that annoys me the most about CoH is the sheer amount of "cheater" NPCs.

It's 106 miles to Grandville, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing faceless helmets

... Hit it ...

Shorter weaker god modes that buff offence would be a good idea I think.

And put them on real timers, I hate nothing more than waiting for someone like statesman to drop hs god mode only for him to go right back into it!

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Nope. Not a fun killer for me.

That said, Illusionists who can still attack while phased seems unfair.

the only god mode type power that i hate on mobs is MoG, i can fully understand the crashless stuff, but even with unstop we can still at least hit, debuff, and dmg them during their god mode

elude isnt too bad if you get tons of def debuffs on them, but almost every enemy i seen with elude its never a really strong version, but the only god mode power i absolutely hate is MoG because you cant even hit the baddies to do much of anything

also, since PPs and valkyrie use the old version of MoG, they inflict a large amount of self dmg, thus reducing rewards for the kill after they hit their god mode

IMO, i think MoG is the only "god mode" type power which needs to be looked at because it overpoweres the baddy using it by allowing them to hardly get hit and take almost 0 dmg for the duration (PPs usually are a little weaker in terms of the numbers for MoG and thus can usually be killed before it wears out, but valkyries usually lasts the entire 180 sec because she has higher numbers on the MoG and a TON more hp)

also as mentioned the baddies that use unstop usually do have a -end and stun crash (ive spent plenty of time watching the longbow wardens with it)

I enjoy the godmodes on PPs. Gives Benumb's -special some nice uses in PvE, makes ST controls more useful, all-around make debuffs more useful, and lets bosses last more than 2 seconds on steamrolling teams. It can get a little tedious if you're on a mission with dozens of them and nobody on the team has the right tools to keep them from going invincible, but that's rare, in my experience.

Favorite team members: rads.