Questions about the Roy Cooling arc (spoilers)

my scrapper had some insane trouble during the finale.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Balancing around IOs [which I thought was something they swore would "never happen,"] SHOULD HAPPEN IN LEVEL 45+ ARCS. It is purely stupid to "balance around IOs" in a level 20 arc. How many people are set-IO'ed out at level 20? I can tell you, I'm not.

Re that Sky-Raiders-in-the-tunnels mish, I hit Stealth, Sprint and ran through that like a maniac till I hit the end. I'm not that gullible, I know a bunch of suffering when I see it [usually] and that looked like plenty, all in one handy little package. I Just Said No.

Well as far as I'm concerned it shouldn't happen in any arc as they said they wouldn't do that.

Having played through this on a Scrapper, I can say for certain that autohit glue grenades and flashbangs that do -35% ToHit/DEF are not exactly melee friendly. If anything this would be way easier on mezzers and stealthers.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

I know this myself.
but what I was referring to was the finale with the two EBs in a row.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Oh I know; but redside you really only find them in mayhems. Mayhems which are easy to avoid, and which I don't really see people running and enjoying in that range, and which I myself stop doing mayhems to avoid. Throwing them in the new arc is about as fun as fighting Vanguard.

So, the new redside arc? I run it on every new toon I bring out of Praetoria. I had fun running it on a 6-man superteam type thing as we left. I ran it on my new DS/Pain toon and my Huntsman. I even flashed back to it with another. The blueside one? I'm sorry, but even though it has a neat story and some really interesting new maps, it's absolutely ruined by the gang they make you fight. PPD at that range, with those powers, are not fun. At all. I don't care how good the story is, I'm not going to enjoy autohit debuffs and things that floor your hit rate and defense. I ran it twice (once ghosted everything, to get badges on main badger), and never again.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

Praetoria is noticably more difficult than older lowbie content. And it is indeed new.

Resistance and PPD are far far FAR more difficult than Hellions or Skulls. Heck, even Vahz, IMO.

Honestly, I'm not noticing a difference because our player characters are also noticeably stronger (veteran rewards, inherent stamina, beginner's luck, etc. etc.)

Oddly enough I never had any trouble with Resistance or PPD (or Syndicate) Now, Ghoulsa nd Seers are really nasty...

Well, then don't do it.

Personally I really liked the arc gameplay-wise (even if the story was kind of incoherent)

This is why my villains run each Mayhem ONCE, to get the temp power and the badge, and that's it for that zone. The Mayhem in Sharkhead is particularly brutal. Once is enough for me.

.... *raises a brow* and there's that, true enough. Good point. It seems like that's going by the wayside, though.

Paragon City PD aren't a new faction though. They're just a pain in the ****. Never had much of an issue with their Praetorian counterparts.

Ghouls are a bit more binary. My Broadsword/Fire scrapper and my Ice/Thorns domi eat them alive (and hated Praetorian Clockwork). Some of my other Praetorians completely hate ghouls.

What could you possibly have put there that would complete this phrase, get censored and yet comprise of four letters? Sorry, sorry, I just have to know!

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.

I'm Irish, so there's a hint right there.

A second hint would be the third word in a phrase used by a degenerate priest in a Channel 4 sitcom based on an small, craggy island off the west coast of Clare, Ireland.

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.

Huh. I was trying to remember the ending of the redside arc and then it finally hit me -- that "fight" against a bajillion Longbow or whoever it was.

I guess maybe it was because I did it on a Mastermind with no personal attacks but that "fight" was the most plodding, tedious single mission I've ever done. Even worse since I had it set for a higher team size so I spent most of it trying to Brawl down large swarms of running mobs while waiting for my pet summons to recharge. It made my run back and forth through Independence Port seem exciting. I'd rather face an ambush of ten Titans than go through that again (at least that'll give me some action). On the other hand, the same Mastermind skipped his way through the blueside arc without much problem.

I suppose character makes all the difference for these things.

They're not fun to fight against at that level.

I have far more trouble with Praet PD and Resistance and Ghouls than I do with Clockwork or Hellions or Skulls. They are noticably more buffed up as pointed out with PPD having numerous attacks and hellions having about one.

I don't. Especially not clockwork. Damn end drain.

It seems somewhat impossible to have a harder time with enemies that have one attack and brawl yet an easier time with enemies that have numerous melee and ranged attacks and frequently ambush.

Maybe clockwork (though with stamina being inherent their problems have ceased for me) but skulls/hellions?

In my case, I did it on a Stalker, whom I effectively played like a Super-Scrapper. Masterminds have some technical problems that HUGELY disagree with Incarnate stuff in general, mostly because henchmen don't inherit Incarnate Boosts, so I can imagine a Mastermind would have been a pain in the **** to get through that mission with. That's something to address in future Incarnate content, I dare say, because otherwise Masterminds would become useless as Incarnates.

That said, the "fight" was probably my favourite mission in the game, if for no reason other than because it essentially told me "You're awesome! Go make people say how awesome you are!" I wouldn't want to play too many of those, I freely admit, but having the game admit to me that I'm awesome is still a very good thing

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.

No, it's rather easy: We're FAR more powerful today than we were (especially at lower levels) Blackwand, nemesis Staff, Ghost Slaying Axe, beginner's luck, etc. etc.

The enemies may have higher stats, but they're not *harder* (ghouls and seers excepted, and even them aren't as bad as the first time you ran into Tsoo)

Yes, they very much are much harder. You quote Nemesis Staff and Black Wand and so forth, but have you forgotten how many months you need to be subscribed to get those? Because I keep running into people who have neither. And those are precisely the people thrust into Praetoria with no choice in the matter - new players forced to make a Praetorian before they can make a hero or a villain.

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.

Regardless of how difficult they are I still find them fun to fight for the most part.

One of the issues seems to me to be that they're all scaled down level 20 enemies rather than being like Hellions or Skulls who are designed for beginners.

You run into the same issues with Rikti and Zombie events. If there aren't a good few higher levels fighting the invasion too they're horrific and best avoided by lowbies

Essentially, we haven't had actual low-level content pretty much since CoV came out. Every piece of content we've gotten for the low levels has been scaled-down high-level content, to the point where I'm starting to wonder if they may not have simply fired the only guy in the company who could actually design low-level enemies intended to be used in low-level content.

None of the enemies mentioned are all that difficult, they're just vastly disproportionate to the level range they show up it. It's like back when the Hollows was still new, every level 6 Hellion had Fire Imps and super powers. These days, you only get to see super powers only after level 10 where they show up normally in the group. Lower-level Hollows Trolls also don't have Super Strength, not for minions anyway.

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.

Recluse guarding his Destined One investments + the ability to revoke it explosively as a threat if a Destined One goes too far.