Lusca

I've been on a few teams lately who've taken down Lusca.

It doesn't seem all that hard or that dangerous. In fact, some friends in an SG claimed to have duo'd the monster, and I'm not surprised by that.

When I look over the wiki page on Lusca, it's like its about an entirely different creature. I thought at first it was our incarnate powers doing this, but GM's scale to your level even if shifted, and many of us haven't even had incarnate powers on some of the fights.

Then is strikes me -- only one tentacle at a time ever fights us. It's just nine sequential, separate, modest difficulty GM fights, not one really hard one. Is this how Lusca is supposed to act? It feels like there's a bug in its AI.

The guide on Lusca's wiki page seems like it was written years ago. Even without Incarnate abilities much of the game's older content has been made trivialized by tweaked-out IO builds.

If you're not careful, you can draw aggro from the other tentacles (and the head itself I think), so I'm guessing you guys were probably staying focused on the single tentacle and not straying too far from it.

you are correct in the fact that lusca is not really hard, soloing it is not difficult, just very long process (ranging from half hour to 3+ hours depending on build)

the tentacles are not dangerous at all, they have only 1 melee cone attack with fairly long range and thats about it, the only dangerous part is the head which will be spamming a toxic dmg TAoE with DoT which can 3 shot most squishies

the head itself is not attackable until all the tentacles are down, so the only way to keep its aggro is to hold the aggro of the tentacle, this monster battle has been the same design as long as i can remember

pre-IOs lusca was actually a fairly difficult encounter, once we got IOs the difficulty level of GMs dropped significantly to the point nobody even fights them anymore because they are no longer challenging

There was also a point in time where the tentacles used to be more clustered together. It was almost impossible to attack one without aggroing another. At least that is how I remember it. Of course that could have been the fact that it was groups of 30 or more heroes attacking.

And yes incarnate abilities and IOs make it much much easier. Get together a group without incarnate powers. Then use your second build to slot nothing but SOs. Now try it again.

Lastly once upon a time GMs didn't scale. Those were the days when it would take 3 groups a long time and make it almost impossible for any less than 3 if they were of the appropriate level for the zone. I remember Lusca spawnings where the hospital had a revolving door installed.

And Necro. I don't think that it was the IOs that made people stop fighting them. Once upon a time GMs gave out a significant xp reward. If you were of the appropriate level for the zone they could give you one or two bars. If you were a low level in a high level group they could give you an entire level. Then the devs hit them with a double whammy, both intended to solve the powerleveling problem. They reduced the huge experience reward to almost nothing and they implemented GM scaling. Either one would have solved the problem but it is the lowered xp that stops people from taking them down.

Once the novelty of facing Lusca (or any other GM) for the first time is done there is really no point in doing it again unless you are helping out somebody else who is new to the experience. A GM now gives out experience roughly equivalent to defeating an ordinary boss of your level. It's an epic (well, was epic) battle with a snickers bar as a reward.

The head is supposed to be untouchable until 6 of the 8 tentacles are down. (As per the Giant Monster Guide), then on death it uses Tentacle Death(Linkable in game with [Tentacle Death], or CoD)taking the last 2/1 tentacles down too.

The actual power description(Linkable in game with [Octopus Head.Untouchable] or on CoD) and Paragonwiki state all the tentacles must be defeated first.

Which is correct, I don't know, but you definitely shouldn't be able to defeat the head with all the tentacles up. Unless it's bugged of course..always a possibility.

I'll go attack her and see which is correct. Should be up, as usual.

Edit: CONFIRMED. We killed Lusca while two tentacles were still up. Proof.

from what ive seen GMs only give about 25,000 inf while in sg mode at lvl 50, which is approximately 2x what a boss gives

i think GMs should give at least the same xp as an even con AV since GMs are very hard to solo without proper builds or incarnate powers

Poor old Lusca.

[old man mode]
Kids these days got it too good. Back in my day, it took three full teams to take down the squid. And you'd still end up with two and half levels of debt. Now any old team of silly names can take it down with no faceplants and without even using insps.
[/old man mode]

Wiki content generally gets written when things are new. Back then, Lusca fights were generally composed of 2-3 pick-up teams of toons who are in the level range of IP (20-30) with unplanned unoptimized builds.

If he's talking about my name, I always use my real name online for everything, so my frst character (on a trial account) was a blaster called Leandro. When the trial expired and I got this account, I couldn't use Leandro because it was taken by my trial account (grrr...) so I went with Doctor Leo because I was an Empath. By the time there was a reactivation weekend and I could go and delete Leandro the baster, Doctor Leo was already 50 and I wasn't about to reroll.

Things that can go wrong on Lusca, the Old Days version:

* Different teams attacked different tentacles, or general noncommunication between teams
* There are four tentacles that tend to hang out very close to each other, causing aggro
* Squishies got whiney after their fourth no-warning death and left halfway through

Lusca's not nine times tougher than a normal GM... but might be two or three times tougher. Heck, I remember the first time I saw Jurrasik and he was pretty scary. Of course, I didn't even know what Rad defenders DID back then.

(In that "don't bring [thing x] list, add "Don't bring Envenomed Daggers.")

We know the game better. We've got way more tools. Heck, back in the day you couldn't easily resupply on SMALL insps, never mind going to wents and picking up a bunch of LARGE ones.

well it does prove that the info in the official giant monster guide is correct, i see a lot of poeple skipping those last 2 tentacles a lot more now because of the **** inf/xp/ect they give