The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...87941000579334

This was back in beta of the ITF, back when people were screaming it was overpowered, and needed to be nerfed. A Gravity/energy dom, and a bot/traps MM Duo'ed it, before PvP IOs, before alpha sloted, and during the actual BETA TESTING.

While Masterminds do add more pets, and pets do add to the healing, if i remember correctly, you can pretty much nuke rommy down to nothing (via debuffs, or just pure +dmg) and once you take him out enough, he'll actually kill the puff balls himself, and make life a lot easier.

you're really going out of your way to take offense.

I never said I was offended. What I am going out of my way to do, however, is to point out how common claims of "Learn to Play" are around here, even if not always directed to specific posters.

You are indeed going out of the way just to take offense and actually ignore the point. I'm wasn't even being derogatory when I gave the counterpoint.

Believe it or not, sometimes people do need to "learn to play" and learn to take criticism in stride when Plan A obviously isn't working. I've tried to salvage TFs in the past that were failing and could of been saved, but sometimes people don't listen and keep doing the same thing that's causing what we're doing to fail in the first place.

Access the situation and fix it. Just because you've been here x-amount of time, it doesn't exclude you from learning new things. People who can't understand that need to get over themselves

I rarely run a single ITF on Virtue that isn't a PuG of at least some fashion - at most, I might know 2-3 other people on the team well - and a fair number of them have masterminds. I also haven't failed an ITF in at least a year. I really don't know what to tell you.

She does, yes, to at least Lethal. Not sure about Smashing, I haven't fought her with any characters that use Smashing damage yet. I usually just open the combat log when I fight either of them and when I start seeing zeroes, switch to cycling nemesis staff/blackwand until they decide to stop cheating.

with all your carrying on an explicit statement wasn't needed.

Forums don't convey emotion, so you'd rather assume offence rather than that I might just be a ***** that likes to argue and clamps onto issues without letting go because I actually find the act of tenacity enjoyable and stimulating.

Commendable, perhaps, that you'd rather assume "mere" offence, but it's not the truth.

That's what emoticons are for

Ah, Dark Miasma. Such a simple and easy thing to fall back on, isn't it?

And for the record, I have failed one ITF that I can recall. We were down to five people, all squishies, and after we wiped on Rommy the first time they were more interested in giving up than rethinking their tactics....which mainly consisted of standing there and dropping dead one by one. I still think we could have done it if people had actually loaded up on insps like the team leader and I did (incidentally, we were the last to die) and tried to muster some semblance of cohesion. Oh, and stay the **** out of melee range of a broadsword AV when you're squishy. I have run them with and without Dark Miasma users, with and without Masterminds, with PuGs and SG and coalition mates, with people IOd to the gills and with people who noticed their SOs had gone red halfway through....and we have always found a way.

*golf clap*

I love this post.

You know, this amuses me greatly because I used to be able to get unwanted invites to go away by simply saying I'm a dark defender.

"Can you help us team? We need a defender."
"I'm a dark defender."
"Oh, never mind."

I wonder when dark finally got recognized

Once people realized the power of debuffs.

You stated that ITF required specific builds. You further implied that the required build was dark miasma, stating that you had never been successful at ITF with a dark miasma on the team.

This is based on anecdotal evidence rather than hard data.

Several people commented that their ITF experience was very different and provided examples as to how they have completed ITF without the use of Dark Miasma (I think I'm the only one that used a dark defender as one of their examples).

This response does not counter your statement that you yourself have never been successful without dark. This implies that ITF does not need specific builds, counter to your comment.

You respond asking if anybody has stories of doing ITF with MMs, saying that it seems "don't be a Mastermind" is a standard operating procedure for ITF.

Two people respond, one of whom points to a /dark mastermind and the other of whom referencing a bots/traps and a ninja/- mastermind.

You ignored the second person and instead focus on the MM who was /dark saying that this doesn't count and just proves that dark is needed. However, the second post may have been made at approximately the same time you were reading and responding, so this may have been an honest mistake.

Several people then post comments that they have never had trouble with ITF and masterminds. At least one makes a comment that the only problem they've had with ITF is when they have bad players or bad leaders on a team.

You translate this into "learn to play."

Someone, I assume Golden Girl, offers to take you on an ITF. Your response is that you don't do PuGs because it risks "meeting people like you". The implication is that Golden Girl is not someone who you want to meet, therefore the further implication is that there is something wrong with Golden Girl. This is fairly offensive considering she was offering to take extra time in order to run you through an ITF using strategies that work for her.

You also state that you can do ITF just fine as long as you have your Dark Miasma. This is counter to the complaint you started with. If you are comfortable with the fact that you need Dark Miasma to do the ITF well, that is fine, that is clearly the playstyle that favors you. However, if you were comfortable with that, then it is unlikely you would be complaining about it.

Nobody has said you can't do ITF with your Dark Miasma.

Nobody has said you aren't a good Dark Miasma.

The subject was not on the use or skill with using Dark. The subject was whether or not ITF needed dark to be completed or whether a mastermind would ruin ITF.

Your basic statements boiled down to:

"I can't do ITF without Dark."
"I can't do ITF with MMs."

The responses boiled down to:

"I can do it."

"I can do it." =/= "Learn to play."

I hear about people able to spec their scrappers up to solo AVs and GMs. I'm not sure how to do that. When I hear about someone speccing their scrapper up to such levels, it does not mean that I have to "learn to play" just because I can't do the same thing. It just means that there's another level of play that I can look to, though it probably requires more money than I have the patience to get.

In addition, you mention you don't use PuGs, that means you use a static team or at least a pool of familiar people. That means you have people that have, over a long period of time developed specific strategies and preferred playstyles.

I am in a similar situation, I play with the same four to five people every week at different times, though all of us have multiple characters. I've tanked (two characters), scrapped and fended on ITF. However, I do get used to having the same playstyles to fall back on and I don't respond well to change. Which is why I've fallen away from tank (a position I'm only better than average at) for positions I am better at: scrapper, defender, controller.

We found MoITF easy (heck, we almost got it on accident), MoKTF took us two tries, we're scouting MoLGTF right now and we've taken a frigging year, getting closer to two years, trying for MoSTF and we've done EVERY mission with no deaths probably something like 9 out 10 times...just not all in one try, something stupid seems to happen in the space of missions 3 and 5.

It would probably be easier if we could do it in the way we approach other TFs, one or two missions a session, save it for next week, but we often have to bring in other people to reach minimum numbers and one of the missions requires that we do the next immediately afterwards or else it will be impossible due to a temp power going away.

personally, I'm thinking my lack of adaptability has come from my tendency to not PuG for the last two-three years, while my other teammates do occasionally.

In any case, people have been very polite and not said anything about what you can or cannot do. The only one who has brought up what you can or cannot do is you. The rest of us have only talked about what we ourselves have witnessed.

and, again:

"I can do something you can't." does not mean "You're worthless."

For the longest time people didn't know Dark had any -Regen at all. (Edit: once it was added. It used to not have any. Most powersets did not.) Hell, a lot of Dark Miasma players didn't realize it. But for some reason tons more people knew a Rad did. If, for some reason, you needed to spam as much -regen as meta-humanly possible, Rad was the better choice, because the base recharge time on LR is a lot lower than that on HT, but even in the old days I never saw people need much more than one, maybe two applications of either power to take down an AV. By the time we got harder AVs, Dark's capabilities were better recognized.

Also, Rad was always a good powerset, and Dark was not always a good powerset. I think it was saddled with the stigma of being a not good powerset long after that changed. It's happened to a lot of other "problem" powersets over the years.

Your comments below make me wonder the same thing. They are so far outside the reality of my own experience it makes me scratch my head in wonder.

Out of well over a hundred ITF runs, I think I've seen 2 or possibly 3 failed attempts. Every one of which was directly attributable to poor leadership and/or poor player ability.

Outside of themed ITF's like all-defender or all-controller, I've never seen one where a "specific grouping" was requested, desired, or required. Here's how we form an ITF on Protector: "ITF forming, level 35+, 7 spots open." That's it. First 7 players that respond get in. Anyone trying to require certain builds or something else ridiculous like that would be openly jeered on global chat.

I won't say I've never used nukes or Shivans, but I do find them much more trouble to get than they are worth. Outside of one CoP run, I've never seen a TF/SF run that relied on players having these either.

As I mentioned above, I've run ITF's with a bots/traps MM with no particular issues, and I've put together ITF's that consist of nothing BUT masterminds with all pets deployed for the Rom encounter. A good team can easily overcome any additional challenge added by the presence of the pets.

The ONLY thing "required" for any of the end-game content you mentioned above is a group of competent players that have fun. That's it... I'm sorry that seems to be "so far away from [your] personal experience", but it's the truth.

And stagnant, boring, repetitive content is a good plan?

If 99 out of 100 players can succeed at a specific piece of content, and one struggles or fails repeatedly at that same task, what conclusion is there to be drawn other than 'operator error'?

Indeed, Rad and Dark really are the best Defender sets.

I want to try a bloody all-Blaster ITF just to see how far we can push the 'player defeats' meter..

*in a loud voice that is quickly ignored*

"And traps!!!"


Thing is, /traps can, in theory put out more -resisance, more -def, and much more -regen then rad and dark. It can also put out even amounts of -tohit (if you cound the +def as a -tohit value as they affect the same equation in the same way)

Yeah, the set up time is a bummer, and theres a ramp up time (takes about a minute for 2 acid mortars, which will match what a /rad or /dark can do with 1 or two powers, but after 2 minutes, assuming you have the recharge, 3 acid mortars are more powerful then the /rad or /dark debuffs that do the same thing) but the -regen is enough to make things just stop regenerating at all, even with the AVs resistance AND the purple patch (-1000% regen is awesome like that, especially when it stacks with other poison traps)

I've seen an all blaster ITF that went really well, granted, it was an all Archery/EM blaster ITF, and that many Aim->BU->Rain of Arrows is enough to make just about anything melt.

Oh, I have a Thugs/Traps MM in Paragon right now. I like traps, but the set up is what makes it down from the other two.

I've had the discussion that Dark and Rad should have been the model for Defender primaries before off-boards and that Emp and FF should have been the model for Controller secondaries.

If Defenders had a lot less "can't target self" stuff, they wouldn't have as much trouble soloing or with mediocre offenses since a debuff centric set reduces the impact of that...actually just posted a suggestion that is impossible to happen regarding that....

Rad and Dark can start toggle-tanking for 8 man teams at level 4. At what level does /traps get the abilty to start managing the alpha, aggro and the damage mitigation for a team of 8 all by itself?

On a defender:

/rad gets all its available debuffs/buffs by level 12 (26 if you count fallout, which noone seems to do..)

/dark gets all its available debuffs/buffs by level 8 (32 if you count dark servant, which as he has some pretty decent debuffs himself, you might wanna count)

/traps get all its available debuffs by level 18, as the other powers are offensive (trip mines, and time bomb)


So.. to answer your question, level 18? but they don't have to rely on other powers to do the things for them, like /rad and fallout, or /dark and fearsome stare, petrifying gaze, or dark servant. Throw seeker drones into a group, and you've not just taken out the alpha, but then debuffed the damage, and tohit values (and maybe even stunned) a good portion of said group. While they are focusing on the seeker drones (AI is so dumb sometimes) you can drop a acid mortar, or poison trap.

Poison trap could hold mobs around it, giving you even more time to drop an acid mortar, all the while protected from FFG (which gives mez protection, so that /rad, or /dark can actually USE thier debuffs without being mez'ed) and throwing out a triage beacon to cover people up. Its not quite as good as green numbers (like /rad or /dark can do with their heals) but if used correctly it can keep people from dieing.