Ultimate challenge mission

I updated my Architect challenge mission for newly extra-powerful incarnate characters. Since the only people likely ever to play it are here on the boards, here it is:

Aeon's Army Extra Hard

I ran out of time on my tank with 4 guys left at X8 difficulty, no temps or inspirations. Beat it with my scrapper in 35 minutes on X1. I don't know how big a multiplier I can go on the scrapper, but probably not too much harder. I don't think any amount of inspirations or temp powers could let a scrapper beat it on X8.

So if you want to give a go to the hardest mission in all AE, barring archvillains, check out Aeon's Army Extra Hard. Enemies are always 54, so setting enemy level does nothing. There will be one archvillain at the end if you have them turned on or if you're in a group, and he's a squishball for an AV, but he does deal damage.

Yay! I'll have to give it a try. Loved your original. Curious to see the differences. I'm... not sure I'm up for getting repeatedly slaughtered tonight, though. Some other time.

May have try this on my bot/traps MM, earth/rad troller, or my kat/regen. i push all those builds to the max as much as possible, just for kicks

yeah I'm not so much of an expert on most AT's, but if someone can beat it by swarming it with pets, by confusing everything to death aggro free, or some other method, I'm all for hearing about that too. I only posted in the tanker and scrapper forums because I didn't want to spam, but I really wanted to put it in the controller forum too.

This wasn't much of a challenge. Instead, it was a "lets see how many overpowered debuffs and endurance drains you can survive" mission. The amount of to-hit necessary to overcome the debuffs they throw on you is not possible to obtain on a solo player. Only Electric Armor has capped endurance drain resistance, and even then, they will likely still run out of endurance with the insane amount of draining critters you put in there.

It was basically an exercise in popping all the inspirations in your tray, fighting until you can't hit anything, dying, and repeating. Someone with pets or confusion would have a much easier time watching the AI fight itself. To my knowledge, no solo player without pets has all the tools needed to beat this challenge without dying.

^ oO

I had no problem hitting anything there on my DB/inv, save for the nemesis lieuts at ent after they stacked a few vengeances, without popping yellow insps, on x8. Didn't see end draining at all either, although the vanguard debuff that lowers your end by 50 gave me lots of trouble as my build is tight on end.

I did use tons of defensive insps (lucks, sturdies, respites) and despite that, die a lot - but the OP didn't mention "no deaths" as a rule, just completion ; if you think scrappers should be able to tank groups of level 54 hard bosses and never fall down, I think you have high expectations. :P

The sheer strength of the mobs forced me to think more than usual, I finally settled with aggroing as many KoAs as possible so I wouldn't get too many vanguards aggroing on me. For me even insp spam wasn't enough, so in that sense it's a good challenge - better than the rest of the game, as it doesn't require artificial, "tie-one-hand-behind-your-back" kind of rules.

Found it somewhat disheartening than even against foes that most would consider "defense busting", stacking defense was still the most efficient strategy due to how low the scrapper res cap is. I bet using similar powersets on a brute, I would have performed way better.

I gave up after 1 hour and 20 minutes, right after making Aeon (the final AV, I think... I hope!) come out, not because I couldn't finish, but because by that time I was bored. Might give it another go.

Edit : just completed it with 15 minutes left on x8. Of course, I completely forgot about the completely stupid default settings for screenshots in CoH, and took a picture with the UI off, so you'll have to take my word for it. And if you don't, I don't care, I got a bagel.

My general strategy was to lure the vanguard ambushes into the top left room, away from everything else ; I also took out lieuts first, bosses next and the named guy triggering the ambushes last, so I could control the pace. For Aeon I just hit him as hard as I could, then lured the arachnos patrons way far, and took the glowie while they were busy running towards me (still had aggro from them so only two or three rikti suits tried to hit me while I was clicking, and thankfully failed).

It must have been the Vanguard -50 max end debuff that was causing me to run out of end so fast. I still say it is an overpowered debuff because the only counter to it is very limited, considering you can only use it 5 times before needing a trip to RWZ to get a new one. The Vanguard do have some electric auras that drain endurance on top of that. The Rikti elite bosses drain endurance, along with the Arachnos.

Heh.

Took sixteen hours for a scrapper to beat it?

That's freakin' crazy. I never got past the first spawn on the first one.

I'm impressed you beat it with a scrapper on X8 but I guess enough purple insps overcomes everything heh. Super, super impressed let me restate! And with AVs turned on? What powersets did you use?

I was actually playing no insps no temps, but on my scrapper on X1 it was often like this:

Crap, rularuu spawned in choke point. Buildup ->Raaarrrguhhhhhhhh. Hospital, buildup, Raaaarrrguhhhh. Hospital, buildup, Raaarrrrrrugheughehe... and stay down! And yeah I spent lives just pulling vanguard ambushes and such out of the way. Pulling a bunch of ambushers to a corner and dying is an excellent use of a life heh.

Someday I want to get a team together and slug it out with all that stuff.

AVs were turned off. Even without ambushes I doubt I have the DPS to defeat a +4 AV in any reasonable amount of time.

Edit: or maybe I could, seeing as he has no resistances and I used insps. Either way, I would have needed to be faster during the rest of the mission as I was pretty close to run out of time already.

I used DB/inv, which isn't anywhere near what I'd consider optimal for that kind of stuff, but it's my favorite character. I think if I could pick any scrapper powerset combo to do it, I'd go with a DM/SR with extreme recharge - fighting with Elude up and being able to only carry sturdies and respites.