How many times must I die to ambushes before I can re-complain?

While I don't want to put words in her mouth (lest she start getting mean and snarky at me again), I think Arcana has articulated in the past that, as tempting as it is to build threats specifically designed to counter-act the prevalence of soft-capping in the post-IO world, as long as they continue to have powersets whose sole or primary protection is based off defence, doing so enters the incredibly dangerous territory of unduly punishing those sets simply because IOs exist.

This gets into territory that I've seen be touchy on the forums in the past. If you crank up your encounters enough, and you are operating on the envelope of what can defeat you, CoH does have an element of skill that can determine success or failure. It's not as complex as an FPS, but it's actually surprisingly similar. I honestly believe that a nascent sense that this part of game was out there was one of the things that kept me interested in it - CoH was my first MMO - before it I only played FPSes.

Let me give an example. I play Regen characters a fair bit, having four in total. Regen is very click-happy. In the heat of a fight that's tough enough to kill you, you might die for not having reacted quickly enough. Regen is sort of the poster child example of a handful of powersets that really brings to the forefront how a combat is a race to see who runs out of HP first. When I jump in a pile of stuff on a Regen, I'm calculating where I will target to try and AoE the most foes. As each target gets low on health, I start thinking about which other target I can see might be a better target for my next big attack. I have to pay attention to what the spawn is composed of, because certain debuffs can speed my defeat, and must be eliminated early. I am constantly moving, prioritizing targets, switching powers, watching my health, etc. I only have to play with that intensity because I play on elevated difficulties, but because I play on such settings, I do demand that I play using rapid, tactically wise "in the moment" choices. If I aim a cone in the wrong direction, use a heal too early, or leave the wrong target for last, I can end up dead. (I can also end up dead if the RNG blesses me with too many misses, which usually leaves me grumpy.)

Not everyone enjoys playing like this. In fact, the near requirement that Regen be played this way to survive under stress is something that keeps some players away from it. Other players enjoy that aspect of the powerset, and enjoyment of that aspect is why I have four Regens.

Just my opinion, but I do think there is value in adding content that makes it worthwhile to play the way I do, and based on something hopefully much more solid than my opinion, apparently the devs do too, or we wouldn't be getting the kind of end-game we are. I don't think that the early game is the right place to make that playstyle the default.

While Praetoria is harder, I'm thinking a lot of the difficulty is overstated. Even before the inherent fitness change, it wasn't really a problem to go from 1-20 with very few snags. With the fitness change, it's even easier. In a lot of ways, it makes the early game less of a mindless push and is more involving.

I'm going to have to side with EG on this one.

I remember way back in Issue 1 or so, my regular COH friend was MA/SR scrapper and I was an Inv/SS tank. He HATED Nemesis and DE and I thought they were pushovers. But if we went into a Malta or Carnie mission it was my turn to be afraid. He would just wade in and not get hit at all, while my Invulnerable seemed terribly vulnerable to psy damage and endurance drain.

I think that it's OK to have an NPC or even an NPC group that is strong against your character. That gives you a reason to seek out another player that covers your weakness, And, in spite of all the soloers that like to play this game, I believe it's good for MMOs to encourage teaming in this way.

All this talk of 24 and 48 player Leagues, 65% to hit in Tip Missions and 75% to hit for pets has me wondering exactly where this game is going, and if I'm going to stay with it much longer.

Don't get me wrong, I love the City of X franchise. Out of the 16 MMOs I have played, this is the only one I not only have a capped character on, but multiple capped characters. I love the idea of being a superhero or supervillian. I love righting wrongs and balancing the injustice put on the citizens of our fair city. Or in the case of CoV, causing the wrongs and injustice.

What I don't get is penalizing characters who specialize in one thing and do it well, such as /SR.

I have two capped /SR characters at the moment. Both are softcapped, one is Claws, the other is DM. I like both of these characters, and I nutured and played them from 1 to 50, through all the tribulations and triumphs, and my dm/sr has one of my greatest moments in gaming history. So why should they, or anyone other character with a specialized skill, such as being softcapped, be punished?

To be honest, this game is starting to remind me less and less of a superhero MMO and more of the DM I had once in a pickup group tabletop AD&D session who demanded that all Rogues (Thief at that time,) with a Dexterity score of over 20 use a d100 (back when lower was better) for Dex checks, when people with any other score over 20 were allowed to use the d20.

Which basically meant, anyone with an ability score of 1-20+ that wasn't Dexterity needed a roll of (Ability x5%) or less, while those of us with a Dexterity higher than 20 needed a roll of percentage (Ability x1%) or less, even though that was the one thing most Rogues had in common, and the one thing they specialized in.

To stay on topic, on my Brutes, Scrappers and Tankers, I love the ambushes. I'm Brock Sampson fighting ninjas forever when it comes to those. On every other AT, they are annoying and badly designed game mechanics.

Might as roll under a 21 on percentile dice if you're not a melee AT.