Balancing Custom Enemies for High Level Teams

I need some advice here. I run and write for a group that's mainly high level, so you see a lot of 50s and 50+1s and IO sets. The problem I've been having is that my enemies seem to be made of cardboard and have difficulty threatening my team, and I want these things to be taken seriously.

I was testing some new AVs for an arc I'm working on. The one that matters here is Dark Melee with everything but Midnight Grasp and Willpower with everything but the self-rez. I'd intended this guy to be an endboss and major enemy. So I take my inv/energy tank in to my testing map to test it as an AV.

And it's hardly a threat to me. I pull up the combat numbers and I see why. It's got about a 7% chance of hitting me. I'm standing there doing nothing, and it's whiffing away trying desperately to hit me without success. While on one hand I'm proud of my ability to tank there, it is frustrating as I'd intended for this guy to be a big bad in a story I'm telling.

Anyone have any suggestions for how to shore up enemies like this? My team has this nasty habit of steamrolling enemies.

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You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age

Custom mobs with Buffs/debuffs can turn whimpy NPCs into terrible behemoths. The key is in balancing it so that its fun n challenging, and not cheap.

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Okay. Fiddling with ideas. I'd taken WP on the AV because I figured the extra regen and HP would help it be sturdier, but maybe Inv would be better suited? Against a full group, would Invincibility's +toHit help?

Something I noticed while fighting the AV was that it'd often fall back into doing the animation of Heightened Senses even while fighting. Sometimes this would even be in the middle of an attack, like Shadow Maul. It'd start doing the attack, I'd hear the sounds, but the AV would start looking about all confused. Also, it didn't seem that Rise to the Challenge's -toHit debuff aura was kicking in, or at least, it wasn't affecting me. I wasn't seeing the debuff icon. Is there a limit on how many toggles an AV can have active or something?

I've changed a secondary AV meant to be relatively weak from Robotics (just Pulse Rifle Blast, Pulse Rifle Burst, and Photon Grenade)/Dark Armor (with Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud and Dark Regeneration) to Robotics/Dark Miasma. Part of this is because I noticed the laser rifle kept vanishing between attacks. The AV's hands would still be in place to hold it, but I couldn't see it. I'm keeping the laser rifle for reasons of story and concept.

The main enemies in this arc are Council and a grouping of the Nictus involved enemies (Galaxies, Void Hunters, and Nictus). Council are, well, Council. Not much I can do to help them. I'm experimenting with adding a line of customs to the Nictus group pretty much to serve as buffers/debuffers and explaining them as a new experimental line of Galaxy troopers using both Kheldian and Nictus shard implants.

At the minion level, I'm thinking either rad blast/energy manip (with Aim, Build Up, and Power Boost) or rad blast/mental manipulation (with Aim, Concentration and Drain Psyche). The AI in AE seems to use powers like Aim and Build Up without much thought, just firing them off the moment they're available, rather than, say, when there's an actual target in sight. LT level maybe dark or rad blast and empathy (with Fortitude) or pain domination (with World of Pain). Might go dark melee on them and set the AI to ranged and remove the ranged attack, since I've heard that doing that makes the AI a lot more likely to use their support powers. Since I've combined all the Galaxies, Void Hunters, and Nictus into one group it's a little boss heavy (six total, with the Nictus supplying four), I think I can afford to make the boss a bit nastier since it'll be spawning more rarely. Maybe dark blast/radiation emission or rad blast/dark miasma (and include Tar Patch and some of the other debuffs), since it's very unlikely you'll ever face more than one, while the auto-hit nature of the attacks will help.

Thinking back on the test, there is one detail I overlooked. I was running this at +0. My tank was 50+1 and IO'd to have rather respectable energy/negative energy defenses (about 36% against a single opponent in melee). A level 50 AV using dark attacks against a level 51 player would have a base toHit of 40%, and with my defense of 36%, it'd have 5%. This increases to 7.5% after you apply the 1.5 accuracy modifier all AVs get... which is exactly the number I was seeing. Maybe I should try to persuade my team to run this in +1 or +2. That should help.

The only other concern is unavoidable. Judgement powers tend to do a real number on your plans for seeding the enemy ranks with buffers and debuffers, but there's nothing I can do about that except run this at level 44, and I don't really want to do that. Might have to, given how overpowered high level, IO'd and incarnated out players can get, and not everyone on my team is as tricked out.

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You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age

i believe you can set the missions up to level 54 as well. you can do that by raising the min and max level to 54. maybe that'll help make your custom enemies more challenging. as for difficult enemies my personal favorites are dark melee/ninjitsu and super strength/kinetics both on extreme. the latter one being more interesting especially if it damage is buffed with rage and fulcrum shift at the same time. it evens out that it dont have any defenses whatsoever

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I'd suggest tossing in some rad toggles. Reason is that it's an autohit debuff that's AOE and penalizes keeping close and huddling together like most teams do. Pending on your mindset (and your arc's theme) there's actually some particularly nasty things you can do to a team, especially if they're willing to forgive you on having a few customs that don't give proper rewards.

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Yeah, my group isn't overly concerned with rewards so much as having fun. Might try some of those ideas.

Question about NPCs with support powers. I heard somewhere that if you set the AI to ranged and give them melee attacks as a primary with no ranged attack, they'll be much more likely to use their support powers. This true?

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You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age

Other question regarding the AV. The AV in question is meant to be quite the bruiser (he's meant to be a major enemy of an inv/energy tank, who happens to be a giant robot), so I want this guy to be able to take some serious hits. We're talking about teams that are usually 8 man, heavily 50+s, and include usually at least one strong debuffer with a penchant for making AVs cry, but a team makeup that overall leans towards scrappers, tankers, and blasters, and is mainly smashing, lethal, and energy damage.

Which secondary set is better for the AV? Invulnerability (with everything but Unstoppable) or Willpower (with everything but Revive)?

By the way, something I've noticed. I can't tell, but while testing the enemies, the AV set to Invulnerability never seemed to use Dull Pain. Likewise I've seen enemies with Regeneration never use their click powers, and on Willpower it'd never use Strength of Will even when damaged. It also never seemed to turn on Rise to the Challenge, as I wasn't getting hit with the debuff aura. I also noticed in fights that the enemy kept reverting, even mid-attack, to the animation for activating I think either Unyielding or Invincible (where it puts both hands towards the ground then puts them both in the air) with Invulnerable or while on Willpower kept reverting to the Heightened Senses animation. What's going on there?

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You want to know the secret of the world? It's this: Save it, and it'll repay you, every second of every day.
@Dr. Reverend - My DeviantArt Gallery
Crow Call - Gods of the Golden Age

Since Strength of Will is a tier 9, the AI won't use it until near dead. The click power oddity has been reported for a while and there's no clue what's causing that.

For the AV, I'd argue that you should only worry about making them decent while concentrating on making the spawn around it strong. Giving him his own unique spawn that's buff/debuff heavy can really shake things up.

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