Upgrade Elite Bosses

Currently, Elite Bosses aren't much better than regular Bosses against heroes.

They have more powers and weird combinations, example of Frostfire with his two pet powers, but in general they are not much more dangerous than a regular boss when prepped for.

there are some exceptions, of course, Protean even as an Elite Boss is dangerous

and I tend to think all Elite Bosses should be around that level

a) at least half the HP of an average AV or twice that of the average Boss of that level (which ever is higher)

b) inherents, scrapperish EBs should have critical, tankish EBs should have taunt (making it hard to clear minions which might actually be doing more damage to you), controllerish EBs should have overpower (make those melees actually worry about whether they have breakfrees occasionally)

c) gimmicky, adding an inherent in some cases might be enough (Overpowering holds especially will drive some people to tears), but anything on the level of an Elite Boss should be tactically and visually unique...Heracles' aura of resistance is nice, but rather bland for an EB, Protean's thing is interesting....perhaps give a tankish EB unstoppable or something similar without a crash and recharged every 4 min (ie, 1 minute after it drops, its up again)...you could even flash big orange letters saying "Heracles appears winded!"...even better is making ways for the player to produce gimmicks that inhibit the villain...or gimmicks where they have to do something to avoid being hit by a gimmick

d) Big floating orange/red letters "Protean is about to do X" type stuff (these give kind of a comic cover feel in my mind and make the fight more memorable)...this could be an option, however, for the players that prefer not to have it

e) at a certain point, EBs should adopt Rabbit AI (hit and run...Tsoo Sorcerer/Sky Raiders/(elemental) Thorn Casters)...or after taking a certain amount of damage within a certain amount of time....Diabolique's habit of flying away makes for memorable combats

f) the HP and End bars should move, even accounting for heals...the player should feel like they're making progress but that it takes work

g) if the EB himself is not overly tough, make a fight that focuses on waves and waves of minions..require the players to have to fight to even get to the AV, much less hurt them...besides, wading through minions is fun and fitting to the genre

h) any EB fight should take around 5 minutes for a team (long enough to make unstoppable crashes a worry) and around 10 minutes for a solo player...they should not take longer than 15 minutes for a team or 45 minutes for a solo player (by comparison, an AV should take at least twice as much time)



Unfortunately, there are a wide range of power levels for players in the game so I know it will be hard or impossible to fit all of those (people able to solo AVs will likely finish EBs in less than 5 minutes, for example)

Anyway, some lists of good fights (these are mostly AVs, but follow some good patterns, some adjust the orientation from being that hard for a team to being that hard for a soloist):

Romulus Phalanx

Nictus Romulus

Diabolique

Protean

Lord Recluse (STF)

Thorn Tree

Riptide and Harbinger

Captain Castillo (Roy Cooling arch) - great example of an annoying basically cowardly/self-serving villain that is relatively easy to beat but has lots of great gimmicks to that(those) fight(s)

EB hp is already about twice that of a boss, half of an AVs would be almost 3x what it currently is

to me, ALL EBs are pathetically weak, if its only an EB i can prolly solo it on just about anything with moderate insp usage as needed

your suggestion about adding stuff like overpowered mez is already in effect in some of new DA baddies (talons of vengeance for example can get overpowered mezzes)

i also feel that your time to kill an EB/AV is highly skewed, my ill/cold for example can solo most AVs in <5 min while ive been on full teams that also kill an AV in <1 min (the best time ive recorded is killing director 11 in tin mage tf within 20 seconds)

the only AVs that take more than 5 min to kill are usually the AVs in the trials and those rarely take more than 10 min

Part of the problem is truly defining EBs.
They come in three flavors: a particularly powerful boss character, such as longbow Ballistas, Minotaurs, etc., down graded AVs, and the rarest flavor is using them to represent a normal enemy at the higher levels in a lower level setting (I.E. the finale of Roy Cooling and the Vampyre in one of the Port Oakes arcs)
Personally, I've always felt they should lean a bit more towards the formermost and spawn a little bit more frequently, and give every faction sort of their own special elite boss units.,

Like Sky Raiders have a special Mk II Sky Skiff that dose the Swarm Missile thing, or a Malta Spec Ops Commander, that sort of thing.
These guys could appear as sort of mid-bosses to various story arcs.

But in the end, there's no real wrong way for them to be used as all three flavors are perfectly acceptable, but maybe a change is needed and for downgraded AVs to get a special class of their own?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Diabolique is a horrible, annoying fight. That's not the sort of memorable encounter I want to have.

huh, I think that's one of the most comic book-ish fights I've had on here

untouchable evil villain, long drawn out scenery chewing fight....it's great

You're forgetting the part where EBs actually have stronger mez protection than AVs, which makes them more likely to steamroll ATs that depend on mez effects (trollers and doms).

Also, there's already too much NPC mez flying around, adding more is about as far from improving the game as you can get.

Ok, I guess I need a bit more information here...


Are we talking about the ease of defeating EB/AV while using incarnate abilities or are we talking about defeating them with IO sets or are we talking about defeating them using good, old fashioned SO's?

Are we talking about using Scrappers vs. Controllers, Tanks vs. Defenders?

Making things harder for a purpled out scrapper would very likely make these fights impossible for the Controller (who are not known for their strong offense in the first place) who is only using SO's.

So, what exactly are we talking about here?