So those obsolete ATs

Yeah, I hate how they end up wiping the floor with anything the team comes across before I get a chance to get within melee range. Makes you feel kinda useless, doesn't it? (Fortunately the last time I was in that position I was running a ranged AT though.)

Anyways - yeah guys, no AT is obsolete. Those who shout it to the rafters forget that only a small portion of the players read these boards and know the "common knowledge". They will continue on making their terrible choices anyways, like rolling a stalker, playing a */Fiery Aura scrapper and so on - and they will continue to enjoy them as well.

Heh, makes me wonder if the scrapper in question has played redside at all. If you're used to the treespec then you know that the tree can kill you rather quickly and should be approached with a few specific tactics.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

+30% tohit. The problem is the red tower which is giving him a +105% damage buff. At that level of damage buff even the ~10% of attacks that land while floored with defense will deal more damage than even most tanks can absorb solo without healing assistance. If that tower is gone you have a fighting chance of solo tanking his damage if you are soft capped and also have significant resistance and/or healing.

Also: his Arm Lash has a -10% defense debuff and he sometimes spams it. Its stackable and lasts 10 seconds per application. Although at +4 that would be -14.4% debuff. Without defense debuff resistance the first hit from that would reduce 80% defense to 65.6% defense and Lord Recluse would start hitting at a net 30% chance (1.4 * 1.5 * (80-65.6) = 30.24). It probably gets quickly worse from there.

In an all blaster STF I wouldn't try to tank him with a blaster, I would shoot at him and get him to run around following me all over his tethered area, and load up on healing insps and break frees just in case. His maximum range is 110 feet, and its possible to snipe-aggro him and then stay out of his range almost permanently with careful pulling. And like all critters, he's pretty brain dead if you see him often enough to figure out what confuses him (deciding on leaping directions is one thing I recall, although that was a while ago).

If there are blasters actually tanking LR in the STF without massive ally buffs, more power to them but my guess is that would have to be a highly optimized build for that purpose.

I believe there is a risk that another Blaster whilst attacking the towers would register as a greater threat. Then LR would leave the Blaster whose attacks are of 110ft+ in range and go for everybody else after the one with great threat on a tower.

Kheldians with their ample base range in Novas with just slightly more range can probably collectively just shoot down each tower from 125ft iirc before even looking at and shooting LR dead. The map doesn't lend itself to easy kiting. A group of Novas would need to know where not to float and shoot from as LR can SJ to higher points.

That 110ft can be -ranged, meaning any Tank with nicely slotted taunt can comfortably do the kiting without losing aggro. Confront on Scrapper will do but it is due to lack of total threat possibly more likely to lose aggro to other characters taking down a tower. Done well the need for controllers or defenders in team for the LR fight is pretty nigh non existent.

Players behind scrappers are often wreckless. The AT itself could tank that tree all day long with the right player.

I believe it. Not surprisingly each player experience with various ATs varies wildly.

Which is why I just can't buy it when some folks say "so and so is obsolete".

Its been a while since I tried this, but way back when I was able to draw LR to leap up pretty high up the buildings and then confuse him into leaping back and forth between perches, all while so far away from the action (vertically) that he didn't seem to want to aggro on the action below. This required constantly shooting at him though, and not just the occasional snipe: I had boost range which meant I could hit him pretty much constantly while staying just out of his range. The trick is you have to be far enough away that he can't quite shoot, but close enough that he thinks he can. Also: if you stay out of range permanently the AI will eventually register you as an impossible to hit target and can decide to either run away from you or run after someone else. The trick there is to re-enter his range when he cannot shoot at you, and that's possible if you do that as he is playing an uninterruptible jump animation. I call it "tease-kiting" and it takes practice, and dying a lot to figure out how to make it work.

I've actually practiced that on the actual STF map on the couple of occasions I was on STF runs that failed for some reason, but you can also get a lot of practice on the AVs in RV. Hard to simulate other aggro coming from other sources, but at least you can practice trying to kite an AV in a restricted area by pulling them near to a building and setting arbitrary boundaries for yourself. Yeah, I've done that, and yeah, that's probably a bit mental.

I'm not saying its necessarily the best way to go: I'm just saying if I tried to tank LR with any of my blasters I'd be dead in fifteen seconds. But pulling is something I'm extremely good at, so I was playing to my strengths there.

If I recall correctly, the last time I ran an STF there was also this little corner down below the platform off to the right just inside his teleport tether that he could sometimes get stuck in (or rather decide not to leave under certain conditions). Sometimes the AI makes bad decisions when it comes to movement. It used to also sometimes make bad decisions when it came to shooting: you could game LR to actually not fire for extended periods of time, or fire infrequently, with the right hokey-pokey movement (I mean that literally: by moving into and out of the range of his attacks, particularly around 60-80 feet). You shouldn't be able to do that anymore, because the firing brain of most critters should now be much harder to confuse in that way (actually it should be practically impossible because they don't "think" as much about which attack to use).

Have we been playing the same game? In my experience more often than not scrappers need to be babysat the most. More so than blasters even. Blasters understand that if something looks at them pain will ensue. Scrappers in general have suicidal tendencies and whether they die or not relies on how good their support is. I know many great scrappers who can hold their own in a fight but generally I see them as suicidal monkeys.

As for a scrapper tanking, I don't believe. Some scrappers can take alphas and maybe keep one enemy occupied but not a group. My fire blaster steals aggro off of scrappers like nobody's business.

Once again I bow to the master.

right but in the context of that conversation I believe they were talking about tanking ONE SPECIFIC AV class entity, and not a full group.

Meh, my Fire/SD can keep aggro fine and can steal aggro from Tanks.

I'm not going to bother trying to prove anything because the ones I'm suppose to prove it to will always divert the discussion in some way to force me to prove something I didn't even say in a ploy to disprove my opinion.

There's got to be a word or phrase for something like that...I really can't find one but I'm sure it exists. It's not 'strawman', I don't think...but I'm really not knowledgeable enough to figure out if it is or not...

By your response, I can tell no matter how many dozens of posts/threads I find would not quell your distaste for my opinions. Hell, that I even have to prove that there is short-sighted elitism in an MMO is proof enough that you'll never be satisfied.

No. While my time may not be that precious, it is finite and I have better things to do than to bother with any of the back-and-forth BS.

But just a simple point: Arcana said she stands up to rectify such misinformed/ill-opinionated players whenever she can, right? Hmm, so if such opinions on the worth of an AT or powerset or what-have-you "doesn't exist" (your words, by the way), then apparently Arcana is lying. She can't fix a problem that doesn't exist...

I'll state it again: People will find metrics to measure the viability of an AT/powerset/power/whatever, this is human nature. In a game, not excluding CoH, people will take those metrics and put a rating of 'worth' on these things, this is also natural. For some (often many), this rating of 'worth' will extend even further on the level of min/maxing or even putting labels on other things such as 'worth less' or 'worthless' and unless these things can surpass some sort of self-determined metric put about by the players, that's where they'll remain.

That the particular point of soloing AVs is so vehemently guarded in a way supports my point. That some ATs/combos can solo AVs while others cannot isn't what I'm talking about. It's that someone bringing up that as a point is shot down because "soloing AVs isn't what the game is balanced around", then requests a means to do the same and has balance as the argument to deny that.

If balance was of such importance, you all should be offering up your AV soloing toons as proof of *imbalance*.

We clearly have because I said often the players behind Scrappers can be wreckless and you say Scrappers in general are suicidal.

I could and have done, got a team of Scrappers, done the STF and barely had anyone die at all so a bunch of Scrappers can Mo it without the support of any other AT quite easily. Sometimes you can have a unexpected moment so sometimes the unlucky defeat can happen.

Yep I'll tank 95% - 99% of AVs whatever, with a team of whatever with a Scrapper. I am on Defiant and the Scrapper is called Katalina which is a Claws/SR.

I know its a method, saving the world should be done by any means but I won't do map traps, I sometimes use the map to my advantage though. What info you got on this part of the AI? I know the AI responds to other peoples threat levels and if you are out of range it will look to position somewhere so that you are.

To my knowledge these, the following AT's can solo AV's:

Defenders
Corruptors
Controllers
Blasters
Dominators
Masterminds
Scrappers
Brutes
Tanks

Haven't specifically heard if stalkers or H/Veats but I wouldnt be suprised, and I'm sure someone will come and say they have. The question is what you have to sacrifice in your build in order to do so. Again, that is not what the game is balanced around, and thank heavens, all that single target damage appeals to me not.

My FF/Archery defender laughs politely behind her hands and refrains from pointing.
My Kin/Rad defender just looks at you with that "Have you lost your MIND?!?!?" look in her eye.
My Stone/Fire tank just laughs in your face and isn't even polite about it. Whew! Brimstone breath!
My Stone/Dark tank just gives you a look that sets this little chill running down your spine.
You then realize that this was all a Nemesis-worthy plot to distract your from my Inv/SS tanker who has snuck up behind you and etched "I'm the obsolete one! Kick me" into the back of your pants with his Laser Beam Eyes.

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Its a problem, but not a widespread one. And *most* of the scrappers I know that are regulars in the "high performance" discussions would never say that the value of Scrappers or any other archetype was based primarily or solely on being able to solo AVs.

If nothing else, soloing AVs is something that the scrapper forums haven't considered the benchmark for performance in years. First it was my Rularuu challenge, then the Rikti Crash Site challenge, then the Storm Palace challenge, then the RWZ challenge, and now odd corner case weirdness like my AE mission and (for offense) the pylon standard. Beyond being silly, the soloing AV thing is also so 2006.

To the extent this is a problem, its a problem that affects all archetypes to some degree and AV-soloing is not the biggest offender. There are still people who judge Defenders by their ability to heal or their ability to match the offense of offensively focused archetypes. There are people who judge controllers purely by their ability to farm. Some people judge tanks on the assumption that aggro control is redundant or valueless. Some think Stalkers should be the equal of Scrappers in scrapping and have placate and assassination strikes just for fun.

All stupid, all fortunately uncommon, but all annoying nonetheless. The question is should you honor such nonsense just because it happens occasionally. I don't think so.

It wasn't a map trap. It was a weird spot LR just strangely would stand in and not leave unless we specifically led him out of it.

As to the AI, all I know about the "movement brain" is what I've tested: I've done a lot of testing of critters moving, running, being led from anchors and running from threats. Its been a hobby of mine, so I've done a lot of extensive testing there. The "shooting brain" is something I know a little more about: it used to be exploitable but I pointed out in what ways back in I14 beta and eventually those exploits were closed by the devs by simplifying the AI so the critters stop trying to figure out what the best possible attack to use is now and just shoot you in the face with whatever's handy. It prevents them from getting stuck not shooting because before you could induce a critter to "pick" an attack by doing something, and then exiting the range of that attack and forcing the critter to try to move towards you to use it, and after a while it would give up and switch to another attack and then you could do something else that would convince the critter not to use *that* attack. Its hard to describe without pictures.

Castle once hinted on the open forums that he also knew something about how this worked when he said he could do weird things in testing to make AVs less of a threat to him because he knew how the powers were designed and how the critters would use them, or not use them. It was a long time dirty secret about the critters that they were dumb as tacks when it came to using their attacks, and also a big hassle for the powers team when they would give a critter a bunch of attacks and discover the moron would often only use two of them and stand around picking its nose the rest of the time. If you recall a patch note ever saying something like this: "critter X now uses power Y. It always had it, but just never used it before" if Y was an attack that's usually the problem I'm talking about. That doesn't happen anymore, or only happens much less often.

What I know about aggro AI is fuzzier. I know critters keep an aggro list. They actively seek out the thing at the top of the list that has the most aggro (or "hate" as the case may be). But it has triggers to prevent it from doing futile things. If a critter tries to attack you for some (I think adjustable) period of time and it fails to be *able* to get a shot off, at some point a trigger in the AI goes off and flags you as essentially worthless and the critter goes off to attack something else. I think its even flagged to be "afraid" of you if you can attack it and it can't attack back after a certain period of time, because if the critter is not aggroed to anything else it literally tries to run away from you rather than chase you. But this timer can be reset by giving it the opportunity to shoot at you at least once and can sometimes be reset by giving it the opportunity to shoot at you at a time when it can *queue* an attack to be used but can't actually *trigger* that attack because its doing something else at that moment in time.

Technically, I suppose that's an exploit, but its so difficult of an exploit to leverage its usually not worth it. You're certainly not going to be able to leverage it for any substantial reward that couldn't be gotten by someone else just obliterating the thing you're playing around with.

In my experience, it's always a squishy.

Well, except that one time it was me on my Scrapper. I swear it was (client) lag, because from my perspective, I got the whole initial damage + DoT in one instant, leaving me no time to react.

Typical MO tactics for teams I run with are to clear the surrounding CoT while staying out of LoS, then have the "hard" ATs clear the front vines while at the defense softcap by whatever means they have at hand. If have good +def/DR buffs and we're feeling cavalier about it (sometimes we just figure "hell, if we fail we'll try it again later") we don't even clear the CoT. Usually, the only time that doesn't work is when someone hanging back doesn't watch their LoS to the tree and it jacks them when they aren't expecting it.

* Raises hand.

I only have one VEAT, and it's a melee spec Night Widow. The biggest challenges were managing endurance burn and hit streaks, since a VEAT has comparatively low HP.

I didn't solo everything. Part of that was I just did it a few times to see if I could, and then kind of lost interest. Some if that was that there were AVs that were just stupidly hard for me (Back Alley Brawler sucks the cold vacuum of space), and I gave up on ones that felt like I was "praying to the RNG", to borrow a phrase.

I saw lots of screenshots from someone who did it with a Fortunata spec, but I don't remember who it was. I seem to recall thinking that I didn't recognize them from the forums at the time.

My Huntsman who is sitting on Chrome can too.

Penny, what have I told you about stirring hornet's nests? Sheesh!

I need to save this and break it out in the threads that sprout up out ad nauseum. Exactly what I think... and it's to the point where I'm getting bored and depressed with any such thread. That one on the Blaster forums (being in part continued here) is one of them.