"The game is balanced around SOs."
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Ad Astra,
Posted on: 2011-12-26 12:40 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
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I routinely street-sweep hazard zones like Perez, Hollows, Boomtown and Dark Astoria before SOs. The game is pretty damn easy when you know what you're doing - and 'chewing insps regularly' and 'kill faster' are part of that.
| Has anyone else tried something like this? What were your results and observations? |
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Exactly. I generally only start IOing a character if they make it to level 35. Before then I'll grab a -KB if needed but otherwise, I'm rocking pretty basic SO builds. |
Originally Posted by Talen Lee
The game is pretty damn easy when you know what you're doing - and 'chewing insps regularly' and 'kill faster' are part of that.
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I solo a lot and... it's quite doable, even on Blasters, with nothing slotted. At level 20 mind you, as I don't really bother until 22 for SO's.
On teams, well, other than accuracy issues I'm never really in danger in most group settings anyways.
Maybe the ones you're hearing complain about it are the strict Min/Max types?
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Well, there's your problem.|
Originally Posted by Hopeling
Just earlier, somebody in help chat was talking about their struggling build, and concluded that his character couldn't work well on SOs. He was soloing on +1/x6 and quite disappointed with his performance.
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The game is balance around SOs at ordinary level of difficulty.
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Not entirely - at level 50 most builds should be able to solo at +3/x1 difficulty, as per the devs ("3 Red Minions" was the quote).
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Well, there's your problem.
The game is balance around SOs at ordinary level of difficulty. |
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Originally Posted by Shubbie
Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.
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I was recently chewing apart tip missions on my tw/da brute on -1X4 with with a mainly SO build...so I would have to agree that most of the game is at least decently balanced for SOs.
I think it all comes down to decent build and decent slotting of your SOs.
Add in some decent tactics and you're golden.
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Yea, I found it funny that the guy was complaining about x6 lol.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Well, there's your problem.
The game is balance around SOs at ordinary level of difficulty. |
At the old difficulty settings it was very doable for many toons to solo at Invincible.
Even at the new ones, my kat/regen started soloing at 0/x3/bosses after lvl 8 but she could be katana/whatever because she only managed that because of insps. My DB/Ela can solo at +1/x4 and probably after 35/38 she will be able to do much better (she's 30, no power sink yet, so I have to use a ton of blues so not a lot of room for other insps). A TW/ELA could easily solo more mobs because of all the AoE dmg+knockdown and the +def power compared to my DB, so it depends a lot on the toon. My IO'ed EM/Nin Stalker would probably be slower than a SO'ed TW/WP at x6 because EM+tons of mobs = watching paint dry.
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Never. A strict min/maxer is going to observe limits, gather information and determine optimum conditions within those limits. |
Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
Maybe the ones you're hearing complain about it are the strict Min/Max types?
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These people are whiny idiots, those who will turn the difficulty up to 6/+1 and imagine it's the game's fault that they have a hard time. They will never look to themselves and complain about bias and imbalance. Everything is someone else's fault, and all the credit is mine.
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I never heard "3 *red* minions." It was 3 minions or one boss, presuming equal level.|
Originally Posted by DarkSideLeague
Not entirely - at level 50 most builds should be able to solo at +3/x1 difficulty, as per the devs ("3 Red Minions" was the quote).
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And that was way before all the very weak sets were buffed enough to be actually much stronger than 3 minions.
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Yes, this is also what I remember, which is actually default difficulty anyway.
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Originally Posted by Zombie Man
It was 3 minions or one boss, presuming equal level.
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For normal content SO work fine. My question is with the incarnate stuff. Although I'm a long time player and have a level 50, I haven't played any of the incarnate trials. Do you end game content is balanced around SOs?
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End game content can be played on SOs, but mostly because with such a huge team it's barely noticeable what your contribution may be. With their greatly increased to hit and the +4 con of incarnate trials when you start you do die a good bit and without heavy IOing you'll always be at significant risk of faceplanting, but there are so many different things that'll give you problems (for example irresistable damage) that even fully tricked out characters faceplant occassionally, though less often than those with SOs. I have 4 incarnated characters on various stages of unlocked powers and not a single one of them is fully IOed with only one of them sporting any sets bonuses worth noting. One of mine is all SOs save 2 IOs (a Steadfast: +def and PShifter Proc) and they all contribute to the task. Of the 4, my mostly IOed does the best but I figure that's to be expected. I wouldn't say that Incarnate Trials are balanced around SOs but I don't feel like you're a terrible liability if you are using them. It's a bigger drawback to not have the level shifts from being full T3s than it is for not being IOed.
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Originally Posted by TheSuperFrog
For normal content SO work fine. My question is with the incarnate stuff. Although I'm a long time player and have a level 50, I haven't played any of the incarnate trials. Do you end game content is balanced around SOs?
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People are quicker to believe that the game is broke than they are to believe that they might actually suck at it.
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Aside from the occasional Performance Shifter proc in Stamina, I don't usually even start worrying about IOs until one of my characters reaches level 50 -- at that point I figure out a "real" build, burn a respec, and trot off to Wentworth's. I don't tend to have too many problems getting to 50 on just SOs.
Even at 50, IOs usually don't get added to my characters all at once -- I buy what I can afford, play for a while with the rest "filled in" with SOs, then when I get a good drop I can put on the market for a respectable sum, I do that and spend the profits on filling as many holes as I can... lather, rinse, repeat.
Currently I'm about one-third "done" IO'ing my Broadsword/Willpower scrapper, and even before I added a single invention, he never had trouble contributing in incarnate trials. As far as non-incarnate content, he routinely handles +1/x5 (or thereabouts) tip missions solo, even against tougher groups like Carnies and Malta, though I won't pretend they don't give him a pretty good run for his money -- they really make me work for it sometimes. Admittedly his incarnate powers help quite a bit, but even without them, I've been very, very impressed with his performance on mostly SOs, and it's only gotten better as I've added more and more set bonuses.
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| It was 3 minions or one boss, presuming equal level. |
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Originally Posted by JayboH
Yes, this is also what I remember, which is actually default difficulty anyway.
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Personally, I've soloed spawns in the Rikti War Zone without having any enhancements at all on my level 50 kat/regen. It was tedious.
As for incarnate content, I doubt if it's balanced around SO's, but I'm no expert there.
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At the old difficulty settings I used a respec on any character that couldn't solo on Invincible (actually Relentless, since they were almost always villains) once I got SOs since I obviously messed something up somewhere.|
Originally Posted by Kioshi
At the old difficulty settings it was very doable for many toons to solo at Invincible.
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Originally Posted by JayboH
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I will say that the default difficulty does not include bosses, though - they're downgraded to lieutenants. You'll have minions, lieutenants, and elite bosses at base difficulty, with the older elite boss missions telling you to bring friends (I think the newer ones don't bother).
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Originally Posted by Brillig
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Most of my characters are on SOs bar a few -KB IOs. The only time I consider an IO build is if they survive to being over 30 and I play them frequently. So yeah, I think the game should be mostly fine on SOs.
The only exception to this is my Kat/DA Scrapper who I have to judiciously juggle toggles with otherwise I end up with an empty blue bar most of the time. I will IO him but as he was my first toon, I'm determined to get him to 50 on SOs first. 
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The game IS balanced around SOs. |
Originally Posted by Hopeling
Just earlier, somebody in help chat was talking about their struggling build, and concluded that his character couldn't work well on SOs. He was soloing on +1/x6 and quite disappointed with his performance. I offered what help I could, but also got to wondering just how well the game really is balanced for characters on SOs, because this was not the first time I'd heard such a complaint. |
It is NOT balanced around being able to solo missions set for 6 players on SOs.
The balance point is: Any character in the game can solo normal difficulty missions on SOs. Normal difficulty is +0/x1.
The second you raise your difficulty above that, you are no longer doing something that is balanced around SOs. The increased difficulty options are intended for those players who use IOs to increase their character's performance beyond what SOs can do.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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Yes, this and all the subsequent comments along the same lines are absolutely true. I mostly fixated on +1/x6 because it's what this guy was doing, and seemed to me a reachable goal for a decent melee build, as long as the enemies aren't particularly nasty. And apparently I was correct.|
Originally Posted by Zombie Man
Well, there's your problem.
The game is balance around SOs at ordinary level of difficulty. |
Cimerorans absolutely destroyed me just now when I tried them on the same setting, which I also rather expected.
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Originally Posted by Hopeling
Yes, this and all the subsequent comments along the same lines are absolutely true. I mostly fixated on +1/x6 because it's what this guy was doing, and seemed to me a reachable goal for a decent melee build, as long as the enemies aren't particularly nasty. And apparently I was correct.
Cimerorans absolutely destroyed me just now when I tried them on the same setting, which I also rather expected. |
Certain melee builds can do it. A high level Invuln or Willpower tank for example.
It is not reasonable to expect every character to be capable of it. And player skill is a factor as well. I can do things on SOs now that I wouldn't have even attempted 4 years ago, simply because I'm much better at the game now. But that doesn't mean I think the game is balanced around me doing that.
On my melee characters I seldom increase my difficulty above +1/x3 or so until I have a significant amount of set bonuses. I have a couple that can run higher difficulty, but they are highly IOed and on the bleeding edge of performance. My soft-capped BS/DA scrapper would be a prime example of that. He can run on +4/x8 and survive it, but I rarely set it that high just because it takes so long to kill stuff at that difficulty.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Late to the thread, and it's already been covered, but I was blown away reading the original post then seeing it dive into whether or not the SO build could manage +1/x6. I think it's fair to say the game isn't "balanced" around ability to solo at much above +2/x2 or +3/x1, and +0/x1 is considered the baseline.
I used to bump my difficulty up on the old settings back when all we had were SOs. I usually bumped it to the old approximate equivalent of +1/x1 around level 25-32, and to +2/x1 around level 35-40, depending on the character. The primary factors of when I could set those transitions were
- When I got a decent attack chain slotted.
- When I could hit +1/+2 foes and, later, +2/+3 foes. (Remember, at each level you can get foes +1 to what you set. Sometimes you get more of those than ones matching the base setting.)
- When my endurance management was up to the task.
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Well, it sounds silly when you put it that way >.>|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
Late to the thread, and it's already been covered, but I was blown away reading the original post then seeing it dive into whether or not the SO build could manage +1/x6.
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If anything, though, it proves the point more strongly. Using only SOs, I was easily able to solo something more than six times as difficult as what a solo player is expected to face.
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Originally Posted by Hopeling
Well, it sounds silly when you put it that way >.>
If anything, though, it proves the point more strongly. Using only SOs, I was easily able to solo something more than six times as difficult as what a solo player is expected to face. |
It depends on how you look at it. If you are playing a class with it's own defense it is much easier, but the game balance isn't just on AT's with their own defense. The balance is also based on a emp/rad defender being able to solo as well. The bar is set low so that everyone could solo and handle basic game play, and it is why they have changed our ability to adjust difficulty for ourselves a few times now.
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There was a time when bosses were bosses, no matter what. The standard "3 minions or 1 boss" included bosses at the standard difficulty.|
Originally Posted by Siolfir
I will say that the default difficulty does not include bosses, though - they're downgraded to lieutenants. You'll have minions, lieutenants, and elite bosses at base difficulty, with the older elite boss missions telling you to bring friends (I think the newer ones don't bother).
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However, there was an expectation among the Developers that 'support ATs' would not really be soloing. Which of course, players ignored. Which led to situations such as a pre-SO Emp Defender v. a Boss... which often didn't go too well.
And so, to help support AT soloists, the standard level for a soloist was bumped down to no bosses... except for when bugged, or not flagged, or AVs that become EBs.
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We hear and say variations of that phrase a lot, right?
Just earlier, somebody in help chat was talking about their struggling build, and concluded that his character couldn't work well on SOs. He was soloing on +1/x6 and quite disappointed with his performance. I offered what help I could, but also got to wondering just how well the game really is balanced for characters on SOs, because this was not the first time I'd heard such a complaint. I was playing my TW/WP scrapper at the time, so, curious, I switched to my third build, and filled it with SOs. I un-equipped my Incarnate powers, and put no temp or vet powers on my bars. This was the build I ended up with:
Then, I set my difficulty to +1/x6, grabbed a door mission from Borea, bought a mix of insps from the RWZ combat medic, and put the build to the test.
I was in little or no danger for the entire mission - nothing a few insps couldn't handle. I certainly noticed the pressure on my blue bar in heated fights, but it wasn't unmanageable - Conserve Power and blue insps kept it under control well enough that I always ran out of enemies before endurance. The most difficult part was actually the drones, against which I had only a 40% hit chance without Build Momentum or yellows, and that was really more annoying than difficult. Overall it was quite easy, despite running at a fairly high difficulty.
Of course, I can fight even tougher things even more easily using my main build with IOs and Incarnate powers, but SOs alone were plenty to get the job done. So far, I must conclude that the game is balanced pretty well for characters on SOs.
Now, this is just one mission, against one enemy group (and not an especially difficult one), using only one character. I will try some other missions and characters tomorrow.
Has anyone else tried something like this? What were your results and observations?