The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-12-21 17:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Oh, I wasn't talking about you being elitist |
Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
Well hey now, I wasn't being elitist or putting you down in that conversation. Yeesh.
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What I meant in the last post was "that's the conversation I was referring to." The elitism context is actually something I've gotten from the boards at large, not from you.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I just lie there awaiting the inevitable mapserver message.
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Originally Posted by Heraclea
When I try to bring a character without mez protection on a ship raid, all I do is run back and forth from the hospital.
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The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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That's the very attitude I've been railing against in these recent threads. The worse problem is that these guys don't even understand that they *have* that attitude.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Once upon a time, we acted like it was everyone's god-given right to have fun in the game in his own way. And now we take pleasure in telling people they're not good enough and that they don't "deserve" to participate? This concerns me greatly, because it stands to corrupt probably the single greatest advantage this community had over those of all other MMOs.
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The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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totally agree with this. Scaleable solo-friendly TFs would allow people likeme to enjoy the narrative at our own pace. |
Originally Posted by Heraclea
Twitch reflexes are a problem, but the larger problem is attention span.
Gimmick fights tend to turn out to be fights, like the Battle Maiden fight, that require you to keep track of time and all sorts of features. I know this veers into dangerous territory, but this is where my attention starts waning. I am a light roleplayer and character concept builder. This is one reason why this game has always been home to me. It encourages alts, trying on concepts, and building a variety of characters that have more personality than a chess piece does. The typical gimmick fight, in my experience, is built out of giving the player things to monitor other than his own health and attacks, and requiring the player to act in response to those things. You must see the sign, break from what you are doing, and go stand elsewhere or do something else. The higher you "progress" the more of these gimmicks are added, and the worse the consequences become for failing to respond. (This is also why gimmick fights seem almost inevitably to disfavor melee characters, and especially melee DPS. You can't contribute if you are constantly being forced to break off and stand somewhere not next to the boss. Battle Maiden is not fun for tankers, but far worse for brutes.) More importantly: my experience is that players do not play through these gimmicks by actually paying attention to the encounters themselves. Not as they are presented by the naked game software, at any rate. They delegate, and resort to technology. Add-ons, scripts, and timers are all used to automate the process of responding to the gimmicks and coordinating the correct action. Ventrilo and other voice chat programs are used to coordinate groups. One player with an otherwise undemanding role is assigned the task of monitoring a given gimmick and sounding alarms. The gimmicks themselves may well be founded in interesting lore and beautifully animated. All of this is wasted effort in my eyes. The player base's response to the gimmicks will spoil any pleasure that might be taken from it. For me, this breaks immersion, and turns the game into a series of dull rehearsals. You are no longer reacting to the hostile character with your own character's imagined voice. You aren't reading the NPC chatter for what it says. You're monitoring team chat for scripted instruction on what to use next. You're talking with other players in your telephone voice. And you can't see the content that lies beyond unless you endure these mechanics. At this stage, my interest in the game will inevitably start to wane. I do not want that to happen here. Please keep that kind of gimmick encounter out of this game. City of Heroes absolutely does not need progression raiding. |
Eco.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
[The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."
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To be fair, it obviously started a few years ago, so after all this time they don't realize it anymore. After all, the sort of content that tends to cause this sort of attitude started with the Lord Recluse Strike Force.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
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Although i do think that you're probably inferring attitudes that aren't there in many cases. Unless your railing (gun) is just hitting the wrong targets occasionally. i'm having a hard time finding many posts that actually do say that some people "don't 'deserve' to participate" which is "the very attitude I've been railing against in these recent threads."
Mostly they're just saying that they welcome content that is designed to be challenging without handicapping and deliberately weakening yourself. Like the LRSF, STF, ITF, LGTF and Mothership raids, the Incarnate content is designed to be harder than ordinary content. Initially the LRSF was seen as requiring min/maxed high end teams with certain powersets and ATs required to succeed, but players became familiar with the challenges and developed effective strategies. Now almost any somewhat balanced team can beat the LRSF as long as a few of the members have some idea what they're doing. The ITF was the same way initially as well. People "knew" that you needed certain debuffing and buffing sets to succeed with very carefully coordinated strategies. Now... not so much. Instead of having two taunters to separate Rommy and the Nictus and all sorts of other requirements most teams now just rush him, and it's not because Rommy has gotten weaker.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
Man, granted i am not a super powergamer, but i have put alot of inf into my toons and i have become really really great with PVE content! but i am really happy with these new TFs becasue its ...well ...different. its not even that challenging once you get the strategies... besides that...i play a Hero!! i keep fighting and fighting until i win!! no matter how hard or steep the challenge!! my villains have the same mentality...keep fighting the insolent heroes until they beg for my mercy and then kick them in the balls... i remember my first time through Apex.. it was bloody hard!... the only guy who had done it before was the leader...we were all slotted ...he quit during the warwalkers... so it was 7 of us doing it for the fist tiem with no direction... but we kept at it death after death after death!! finally we got to BM and died even more times!! we were starting to get the strategy down and the only guy i knew on the team , my friend on vent with me Dc'd so to the others it look like he quit! but we kept going and befor emy friend got back another quit...lol we kept going when we only had 4 people left on the team and finally gave up !! but those of us that stayed werent mad! we just wrote it off as a loss and decided to meet up the next day ! well my friend wasnt able to log in the next day but me and one of the other "non quitters" teamed up and grabbed some more people and wooped up on BM! and it was such a good feeling to have beat her up ! we then proceeded to run an ITF and decimate it so quick it was nuts... man ya know the deal is that its not that this is hard or that its elitism or that its power gamers its that it is new and different. some people cant handle change. i garuntee that 6 months from now when the majority of 50s have the alpha slot unlocked and slotted, tinmage and apex will be just like ITFs or at least STF... difficult but the strategy so widely known and practiced that power gamers and elitists will be calling this too easy and beg for harder stuff! the cycle will begin again and these same "whiners" will have figured out that it isnt hard its actually not that bad at all!! but they sure as heck will whine about the next "harder" TF
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What follows contains no commentary about what happens for you in those situations. It's only information, an example for you from someone with a different perspective. Do with it what you will.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I've actually had a similar conversation with people in the past. The way the game has been set up so far, at least the way I play it, there really doesn't have to be all that much information overload. I know what all of my powers do, I know who all of my enemies are and where they are, so I know what to do. This... Doesn't work in a mosh pit, not for me. When we're eight heroes fighting what feels like 30 enemies, I begin to have no clue what the hell is going on anywhere, and I can't even see my mouse cursor. In these situations, I resolve to just pushing buttons, hoping that auto-targeting will pick something I can hit, because I honestly can't make sense of the kaleidoscope of power effects and swarming NPCs.
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Since this game's inception, I've sought out big fights. For whatever reason, I find them a joy. Piling 30 or 130 foes on the team? For me, that's where it's at. Seriously, I've been doing that (and playing with people who do to) since like the first month after pre-release of CoH, back long before there were aggro caps. Most of the people I play with love the ITF, exactly because it's big fights. (We all hate the lag, but that's a related but separate problem, and it plagues ship raids, too.) That's a common refrain, from what I've seen, about why people like the ITF - the big epic battles. If I remember correctly, the devs took lessons from what people said they liked in the ITF and LGTF and others and used it to create the I19 TFs, and so they too include these large-scale, manic battles. (The BM-fight honestly isn't that large-scale, comparatively, but it can be manic.)
Big fights work for me. I take a very big picture, try-to-find-the-zen approach to these large-scale movements of team and massed foes. When my regular TF teammates and I fight Romulus at the end of the ITF, we usually pull the courtyard spawns onto Romulus, making the fight more large-scale and epic than it would be otherwise. I'm used to huge piles of seeming chaos.
Because of these preferences, past practice, perhaps because of learned or inherent ability to process or distill large amounts of combat information into more manageable chunks, something like Battle Maiden or the fights with the War Works in Portal Court are no great shakes to someone like me. They're new foes (or new gimmicks, in the case of the nanite patches), and they're level 54, but other than that, they're just more of the same kind of combat info processing requirement.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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This is actually a pretty good way of putting it. For people who have more of an RTS mindset, these kinds of battles are probably great. The problem with me is I really, really, REALLY don't. The one thing I've never, ever been good at and I don't think I'll ever be good at is RTS style games. I just don't have the mental capacity for it. The reason, as best as I can tell, is that I make decisions slowly, especially when I'm not prepared for it. If I can't keep a good overall view of a situation and its details, then every time I try to make a decision, I draw a blank. I don't know what I'm doing and, worse still, I don't know what I WANT to do.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Big fights work for me. I take a very big picture, try-to-find-the-zen approach to these large-scale movements of team and massed foes. When my regular TF teammates and I fight Romulus at the end of the ITF, we usually pull the courtyard spawns onto Romulus, making the fight more large-scale and epic than it would be otherwise. I'm used to huge piles of seeming chaos.
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That's not to say that City of Heroes is turning into an RTS. Far from it, in fact. But a large battle with many team-mates, many enemies and many abilities and interactions thereof requires kind of this kind of thinking - the ability to filter large masses of input and make fast decisions based on that. And this is a skill I simply do not have. It's actually a problem I experience in squad-based single-player games like Baldur's Gate, Dungeon Siege and even the old X-Com games, when I'll often resort to just letting squad members do something simple, like just cycle the same power simply because I don't know what it is I want them to do right at that very moment. It's also why I tend to command my Masterminds' henchmen as a whole, rather than subdividing them into groups, and will otherwise let them focus on a hard target and FORGET THEM while I focus on either support or otherwise singling out one specific henchman that needs unique orders.
TFs, especially large-scale ones, simply present me with information overload, reducing me to doing "whatever," which usually results in me auto-targeting the nearest enemy and just keying whatever attack I see is up at the time, usually dying from something I can't identify because I didn't realise my health was low or that half my team was dead or in another room. It's doable, yes, and I don't tend to complain, but it's not the part of the game I sit down looking forward to.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I'll have to try to take on Trapdoor again, I guess, so far faced him twice
once, my character Blood Rose solo, killed him after about five minutes, if that, Dark/Regen
once, also with Blood Rose but teamed, started to hunt clones while team fought him and he was dead before I could find the second one
in both cases we charged right into the room
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
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This is pretty much my experience as well. I've managed to take my main character and tune her into attack patterns that work more or less equally well at any number of teammates or enemies, so I can rote-fight in big teams and just... trust my slotting and teammates to keep me from falling..|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
TFs, especially large-scale ones, simply present me with information overload, reducing me to doing "whatever," which usually results in me auto-targeting the nearest enemy and just keying whatever attack I see is up at the time, usually dying from something I can't identify because I didn't realise my health was low or that half my team was dead or in another room. It's doable, yes, and I don't tend to complain, but it's not the part of the game I sit down looking forward to.
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... but despite my apparent effectiveness, I really have no idea what's going on, and it often gets to the point where I can't even see any characters anymore. I'm so overloaded, I can't perceive enemies, teammates, or even my own character anymore. I'm not playing the game at that point, I'm staring at a glowing wall and not able to make any sense out of it.
The actual story that apparently occurs in TFs is generally completely lost on me as a consequence.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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I see you've mastered the complex art of the Scrapper |
Originally Posted by Lycanus
in both cases we charged right into the room
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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well, the team I was part of generally has a number of pre-set plans for various situations because we've played with each other 2-3 times a week for 4 or 5 years...basically just name the routine, set up and go|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
I see you've mastered the complex art of the Scrapper
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fast charge, slow charge, loud pull, quiet pull, fast pull, fight from range, etc, etc
and we've got our specifics now such as ring around the rosy for ghost widow
we're a bit slower than most people, faster than my family team used to be....my family team used to spend around five-ten minutes locating spawns and planning the assault on each room, which would then take about 10 seconds for the larger rooms
just "we just charged into the room" sounds better than "we talked about it for about a minute, settled on a strategy and then just charged into the room"
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
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This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.|
Originally Posted by Schismatrix
Now almost any somewhat balanced team can beat the LRSF as long as a few of the members have some idea what they're doing. The ITF was the same way initially as well. People "knew" that you needed certain debuffing and buffing sets to succeed with very carefully coordinated strategies. Now... not so much.
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I'll add the caveat that I have never possessed nor used (and probably never will possess or use) Warbug Nukes, Shivan summons, or Vanguard Heavies. Such powers aren't really in my characters' themes, and what is required to get them is not really fun for me, so I don't see the point.
That said, I have never completed an ITF unless I was playing one of my characters with Dark Miasma. Having me running Dark on the team made Rommie trivial - my other runs, with my WP Tanker and my Traps Mastermind, were complete failures, with multiple party wipes. The Mastermind was the worse - her mere presence on the team seemed to have doomed the attempt from the start, as the summoning Nictus counts Mastermind pets as full players and summons extra blooms accordingly. Without Dark to lock down the to-hit of those blooms (and bolster the negative resistance of the party, I'm guessing), it was game over almost before it started. "Don't bring your Mastermind" isn't a 'trick' I'm willing to learn to succeed.
The LRSF isn't quite as bad - one failed attempt out of three runs, that caused largely by us being underlevelled an unable to cope with level 54 AVs while we were all pegged at level 48 (the rest of the TF scaled down, but the Phalanx did not.) The other two runs, however, hinged upon brining a specific build, however (a Mind Dominator); the first was only successful because of that Mind Dominator. The second was successful because I brought one of my Dark Miasma characters (along with other debuffers on the team, including the Mind Dom we brought for the original failed plan who nonetheless managed to keep a few of the Phalanx pinned down, if not all of them, while we took the rest).
My Dark Miasma characters are not even my top builds, those I've invested the most time, influence, and care into building. The fact that, from my experience, Dark Miasma seems to be a requirement for the so-called "end game" content (STF, LGTF, ITF, LRSF, KTF and BSF being what we had before i19) does not jive with the pleasure and flexibility that has been a hallmark of the rest of the game that is purported to be built on (and in practice generally lives up to) the idea that any character contributes enough to get through any challenge. This seems to be slowly becoming less and less the case, and it is troubling.
It's not there yet, but if fights like Battle Maiden and Director 11 become the norm, it will get there - and unfortunately, there is a ravine between here and there, and we're fresh out of bridges.
See, i play this game FOR the information overload. I have a pretty heavy case of ADD (some would even say ADHD, but i'm not overly hyper, and thats the biggest difference) and the information overload i get from huge spawns of mobs lets me focus on whats in front of me, and actually allows me to pay attention.
Its kinda weird that i have to overload my senses in order to focus on them, but i guess its the way i work. I thrive on pulling large groups, on playing my mastermind and having to keep an eye not just on my hitpoints/end, but my bots as well, while trying to one up the /dark or /rad on the team who things their debuffs are better then mine. (mathematically speaking /traps has the better -regen, and with enough recharge, higher -res and -def values as well)
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I haven't tried an All Scrapper LRSF, but I know it can definitely be done on the ITF. Which is a far cry from specific groupings and copious use of debuffs. Sure, some builds can equip a proc that gives -Resist or we can take that (awful) Melt Armor power from Blaze Mastery, but that too is a far cry from what a single Defender/Controller/Corruptor could provide. I can't even remember the last time I've been on a failed ITF on optimized and unoptimized teams, let alone one that had multiple party wipes.
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Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.
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Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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I don't use the summon powers, myself. I have occasionally deployed the Backup Radio because seeing a PPD hardsuit on my side is HILARIOUS, but otherwise, nope..|
Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.
I'll add the caveat that I have never possessed nor used (and probably never will possess or use) Warbug Nukes, Shivan summons, or Vanguard Heavies. Such powers aren't really in my characters' themes, and what is required to get them is not really fun for me, so I don't see the point. That said, I have never completed an ITF unless I was playing one of my characters with Dark Miasma. Having me running Dark on the team made Rommie trivial - my other runs, with my WP Tanker and my Traps Mastermind, were complete failures, with multiple party wipes. The Mastermind was the worse - her mere presence on the team seemed to have doomed the attempt from the start, as the summoning Nictus counts Mastermind pets as full players and summons extra blooms accordingly. Without Dark to lock down the to-hit of those blooms (and bolster the negative resistance of the party, I'm guessing), it was game over almost before it started. "Don't bring your Mastermind" isn't a 'trick' I'm willing to learn to succeed. |
And yet, despite the troubles I often have with the huge battles, things like the final battle with nictus-Rommie are within my perception. I've succeeded in the ITF with all kinds of different team builds, and the only consistently necessary facet is that you have to have people good at aggro management. Every other approach you might make beyond that is flexible, as long as you can keep Romulus where you need him, and if necessary for your strategy at the time, manipulate the fuzzies.
As long as everyone knows the plan, and you've selected a plan your team can actually carry out, it always goes smoothly for me, and I've even done ITFs completely lacking anyone with defender sets. No defenders, controllers, corruptors, or masterminds.
Conversely, I've also taken masterminds on the ITF on a couple of occasions, to no ill effect.
Being coordinated counts for a lot.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Softcapping an Invuln is fantastic. Softcapping a Willpower is amazing. Softcapping SR is kissing your sister.
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While the folks I play with try frequently to bring a good mix of buffs, debuffs and damage to our ITFs and LGTFs, we basically do that so we can bum rush most of the content. If we bring less effective combinations, we can still succeed, but sometimes have to be more cautious. And by cautious, I mean we don't pull all the AVs into a pile and AoE them to death. On occasion, we've had a long fight with Romulus, but sometimes at least one of us are bringing characters that can put out the DPS to solo an AV on their own. Even without strong debuffs, a team with a couple of characters like that can usually whittle down Rom even with the healing Nictus in play. Throw in a Kin or even just four or five copies of Assault and we're usually good to go.|
Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.
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I will say though that, in those two TFs, one thing that can trip us up is The Honoree. It's possible to get into a situation where you cannot defeat him if you bring too much of the types of damage he can get 100% resistance to with his Unstoppable. Even with people who regularly steamroll, well, everything else, we sometimes find we can't beat the Honoree down, and we end up having to summon Shivans or HVAS in order to defeat him.
I have a fairly intense dislike of the fact that this outcome is possible, not because I take offense at the notion we can't just roll over him, but because if it can happen to us, it is probably happening to a lot of other people who may well be less well-equipped to deal with it. There is nothing in the TF itself that warns you this is possible, and you could run it multiple times without realizing it if you have enough Psi, Dark or other damage types he doesn't get immunity to. I also don't like the idea that you can bring a character who can end up able to contribute nothing to defeating him because you deal damage to which he can be completely immune.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Huh, my static team has done ITF and MITF a couple of times with no real problems,|
Originally Posted by Eiko-chan
This is so far away from my personal experience that I really have to wonder if we're even playing the same game. I find neither the ITF nor the LRSF to be easily achieved by just knowing the right strategy. I find both to require combinations of luck and copious use of debuffs to be successful. And, at least in my experience, they require very specific groupings to succeed.
I'll add the caveat that I have never possessed nor used (and probably never will possess or use) Warbug Nukes, Shivan summons, or Vanguard Heavies. Such powers aren't really in my characters' themes, and what is required to get them is not really fun for me, so I don't see the point. That said, I have never completed an ITF unless I was playing one of my characters with Dark Miasma. Having me running Dark on the team made Rommie trivial - my other runs, with my WP Tanker and my Traps Mastermind, were complete failures, with multiple party wipes. The Mastermind was the worse - her mere presence on the team seemed to have doomed the attempt from the start, as the summoning Nictus counts Mastermind pets as full players and summons extra blooms accordingly. Without Dark to lock down the to-hit of those blooms (and bolster the negative resistance of the party, I'm guessing), it was game over almost before it started. "Don't bring your Mastermind" isn't a 'trick' I'm willing to learn to succeed. The LRSF isn't quite as bad - one failed attempt out of three runs, that caused largely by us being underlevelled an unable to cope with level 54 AVs while we were all pegged at level 48 (the rest of the TF scaled down, but the Phalanx did not.) The other two runs, however, hinged upon brining a specific build, however (a Mind Dominator); the first was only successful because of that Mind Dominator. The second was successful because I brought one of my Dark Miasma characters (along with other debuffers on the team, including the Mind Dom we brought for the original failed plan who nonetheless managed to keep a few of the Phalanx pinned down, if not all of them, while we took the rest). My Dark Miasma characters are not even my top builds, those I've invested the most time, influence, and care into building. The fact that, from my experience, Dark Miasma seems to be a requirement for the so-called "end game" content (STF, LGTF, ITF, LRSF, KTF and BSF being what we had before i19) does not jive with the pleasure and flexibility that has been a hallmark of the rest of the game that is purported to be built on (and in practice generally lives up to) the idea that any character contributes enough to get through any challenge. This seems to be slowly becoming less and less the case, and it is troubling. It's not there yet, but if fights like Battle Maiden and Director 11 become the norm, it will get there - and unfortunately, there is a ravine between here and there, and we're fresh out of bridges. |
the make up of the MITF team was:
stone/ice tank (me)
fire/emp controller
kin/elec defender
spine/regen scrapper
AR/Dev blaster
Rad/Rad Defender
there may have been a warshade, but I think my younger brother was swallowed up by Pharmacy school by then
one of the other groups:
Invuln/energy Tank (me)
/Dark Armor scrapper (forget primary)
Warshade
Trick/Arch defender
may have been some fillers, forget
another group:
Dark/Invuln scrapper
Fire/Fire Blaster
Dark/Elec defender (me)
and pretty sure we had some occasional friends for that, but forget who
I've also PuGed it with a Dark/Regen
heck, recently, my brother and a friend duoed the TF with a Fire/Ice Tank and an Earth/Rad Controller They've duoed most of the TFs, I act as filler for them sometimes, usually leaving that character in reserve just in case they decide they want some help...usually a second Earth/Rad
I will admit that Dark Miasma generally reduces opponents to sick puppies, it just about the king/queen of damage prevention, one of the two best all around Defender sets you can have (Rad being the other), but the overall effectiveness it has doesn't make it a requirement.
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
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I remember this happening to me. I brought an Axe/Shield Brute to the ITF, and at one point I realised I wasn't doing any damage to the Honoree. "Wait, are we even damaging him?" I asked in team chat, and was told that he was immune to physical attacks, to quote a Diablo 2 term. "Oh, OK." I said, and then just backed out of the melee and took my hands off the keyboard, because... Really, I might as well have, at that point.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
I have a fairly intense dislike of the fact that this outcome is possible, not because I take offense at the notion we can't just roll over him, but because if it can happen to us, it is probably happening to a lot of other people who may well be less well-equipped to deal with it. There is nothing in the TF itself that warns you this is possible, and you could run it multiple times without realizing it if you have enough Psi, Dark or other damage types he doesn't get immunity to. I also don't like the idea that you can bring a character who can end up able to contribute nothing to defeating him because you deal damage to which he can be completely immune.
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The reason I've always had a problem with "challenge" as it used to be presented in older content is that it just constituted a different kind of math that required different kinds of numbers. It wasn't actually challenging in that it tested player skill, but was rather more of a mathematical optimization problem, requiring players to deduce a solution and then enact it. It turned the game into a numbers puzzle.
Now, I have nothing against action game. Hell, I prefer them. In fact, when it comes to "challenge," I much prefer fights like what we've been getting lately. I keep mentioning Protean, because his gimmick is pretty much as simple as they come, yet it makes the fight both interesting and exciting at the same time. It's not something which requires a specific build or enough DPS or pulling the right things to the right place or what have you. All it requires is that you see what he's doing and react to it, and I think the time to react has been increased, of late. I remember him taking around four seconds to drain, which sucked when some attacks have animations longer than that. But he seems to charge up closer to eight seconds these days, which is enough time to finish animation and duck around a corner.
This is the kind of challenge I prefer when challenge is the name of the game.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Uhm. HUH?!?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I remember this happening to me. I brought an Axe/Shield Brute to the ITF, and at one point I realised I wasn't doing any damage to the Honoree.
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There's absolutely no way to damage the Honoree in the ITF. Mostly because he's not in the ITF at all.
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Is it seriously possible for the Honoree in LGTF to have 100% Damage Resistance? |
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Uhm. HUH?!?
There's absolutely no way to damage the Honoree in the ITF. Mostly because he's not in the ITF at all. |
Maybe I just never noticed it.
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I meant the Lady Grey TF. I didn't catch that typo.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Uhm. HUH?!?
There's absolutely no way to damage the Honoree in the ITF. Mostly because he's not in the ITF at all. |
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Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
Is it seriously possible for the Honoree in LGTF to have 100% Damage Resistance?
Maybe I just never noticed it. |
I don't know why that was ever considered a good idea, personally, but this came at around the time when the new Hamidon was still relatively fresh and the idea of required ATs was still popular, so the idea of knowing ahead of time to bring non-physical damage must have sounded much better than it does today.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Wow. I must be blind. Or just a weirdo. I can pick out an Immunes Surgeon in the middle of an army but I never once noticed the Physical Damage immunity from the Honoree's Unstoppable.
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Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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In your defence, I didn't exactly "spot" that until I'd been impotently wailing on the guy for what felt like 10 minutes before it registered, and even then only because his health wasn't moving and I wondered why. AND EVEN THEN I didn't know what was going on until I asked and someone on the team explained it to me |
Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
Wow. I must be blind. Or just a weirdo. I can pick out an Immunes Surgeon in the middle of an army but I never once noticed the Physical Damage immunity from the Honoree's Unstoppable.
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Chances are if you've never been on a team where you just plain can't budge his hit points, it could have simply never occurred to you that there was anything to notice. Kind of like you don't notice you forgot your house keys at work right up until you need to unlock your front door
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Well hey now, I wasn't being elitist or putting you down in that conversation. Yeesh.
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it