Elite Bosses and Arch-Villains in Dark Astoria

Let me preface this by saying I am seriously enjoying the new stuff in Dark Astoria. It's well written, challenging, entertaining stuff that makes me feel powerful and important and respected by the contacts and NPCs. The zone is atmospheric, the maps are very good looking (and I want them in AE ), and enemies challenging. So good job there, devs.

But a little quibble, or possibly even a bug, regards the endbosses. A lot of enemies that make up the big final challenge for a level, like The Sentinel or Blue Steel, spawn as EBs, even when you're set for AVs to spawn and on a six or seven man team. Even the final confrontation is this way, spawning as an EB no matter what. So they get curbstomped.

Given how much of a buildup we're getting to these fights, I feel this has to be an oversight. We need these guys as being able to spawn as AVs in order to provide an acceptable challenge to teams... or survive long enough for us to see their attacks.

No thanks.

You can struggle along with 7 others to bring down a villain that really has no business story or lore-wise being that powerful if you want to, but I don't. You have the entirety of the remainder of the game to do that.

But DA is dedicated to making our Incarnate characters actually feel like demigods. When a team of demigods get together, it should be a curbstomp.

Working as intended.



.

Thought this was odd too. After running many DD trials, the Sentinel fight was pretty lackluster. I didn't expect an iTrial level fight, but I thought he would at least last longer than 5 seconds. Weird.

The Blue Steel fight was similar, but at least that one was comical. Didn't expect to see him and his heroic monologue at the end of that mission only to see him attempt to retreat after getting trounced.

I heard many others mention this EB issue over broadcast in DA too so it sounds like something is definitely wrong.

My scrapper is solo curbstopping them as EBs, yes.

But that Cimerora mission will be hell with my defender. . .

That is... unfortunate. With recent incarnate powers and better slotting most of my toons can solo an AV, and I think it would be really epic if, while running these arcs, they could do try to do so.

Yeah, the option to have these guys actually be AVs would be nice.

I'ld be up for having them fix [if its not WAI] the EB > AV scale in DA certainly! Though i dread to think what the Cimerora mission would be like with that setting, my stj/energy scrapper never died so much in that mission! Was an awesome challenge!

But then it feels "Why are half of us here? We just curbstomped MAJOR VILLAIN in 3 seconds."

That's not powerful. That's basically us godmodding our way through. And that's dull. Why bother running? Just push button - get XP.

These are things that should be, for teams, spawning as AVs. Like the Sentinel. It feels underwhelming.

I agree with the folks that say the EBs should scale and/or honor the mission holder's difficulty settings. In other words, they should be AVs who scale down, not EBs who can't scale up. Edit: I mostly mean the key individuals, not the EBs in the Cimeroran mission. Those are EBs elsewhere in the game, and are plenty challenging in their existing format due to numbers.

There's no more reason to force them to be ants before a team than there is to force AVs on soloists.

I know I'm not personally there to steamroll the new content so I feel powerful, despite being in there on maxed-out Incarnates with IO-heavy builds. I turn up the difficulty to where I have to work at victory and can die if I'm sloppy.

It is pretty apparent to me that the new foes we find in DA are incarnate-class. Knives of Vengeance have allied with The Furies, who I understood to have links to the eponymous Well. The LT and Boss rank Tsoo have bonded with their Ancestor spirits, which I could see as a roundabout path to tapping into the potential of past powerful beings in the way the Well allows our characters. (And if he has soldiers like this, why wouldn't Tub Chi have such bonds?) The Banished Pantheon bosses and LTs are bonded with a resurgent Mot, an Incarnate on a level our characters haven't begun to reach. The only critters regularly found in DA that don't have what I think is a tie-in to possible Incarnate power is the Circle of Thorns and the occasional Knives of Artemis.

It's still deeply unsatisfying to have the final confrontation with the forty foot monster being over in less than 5 seconds. That's a definite AV spawn there.

I like teaming. I dislike the playerswarm, where I'm a ninja in the ninja mook squad.

There's more to the game than just SOLO! and ZERGLING!

I could see some of the EBs being "AV-able" if a team was set for that. Romulus, Requiem, Scorpion, Blue... maybe Mot's big Purple People-Eater... But it really wouldn't make sense for all of them to be. Tub Ci, for instance? He's chump-material any way you look at him. Like the Mother Ceres, he's fine as an EB I'd say. Curb-stomping suits "supporting cast"-level goons like them.

The toughest one to make the AV/EB choice for, IMO, would be Marcus... The Sentinal really walks that line between being a Big Bad and a being a Speed Bump story-wise. He *looks* like he ought to be an AV, big spikey monster that he is... But is he really supposed to be as much of a potential threat as the Purple Guy? Of the two, the Purple one just seems to suit AV status a little better.

I think they're looking at it the way they looked at Tips:

ie: "people will want to solo these, best not put AVs in them"

I disagree of course, I think some people will have teams and others will want to solo those AVs, but I think that's the philosophy

There is, of course, the third option where you fight AVs solo. Yes, AVs are not mutually exclusive with soloing. So, lets recap what we could have here:

EBs for soloists.
AVs for soloists.
EBs for teams.
AVs for teams.

All under the control of the notoriety contacts. I really see no reason why we wouldn't do this.