Patron vs. Epic pool choice

So, because my main was missing a lot of badges, I took him from the safe blue to the ugly red, with all the spiders and snakes that are just pretty creepy looking.

I decided that I like the idea of getting Scorpion Shield. Frozen Armor and Hoarfrost are great, but the flash freeze was so situational, I very rarely used it, although it was a good set mule.

I like the Scorpion shield because it gives protection for three types that are fairly common, and the other shields don't seem to provide as much. (I could have missed something, I suppose.)

Well, I'm bothered by this desire to have scorpion shield on other toons - because 1) I like to get my alignment merits. 2) I have my sg set up the way I like it, where I can drop salvage off quickly, grab insps, use empowerment stations and be off about my business.

I could blow a bunch on redside and make the same set-up - but it seems like a waste since I would only be there long enough to run 10 tips and a morality and to do the patron arc. And then I'd do some more tips until I got my hero alignment back.

I do realize that I could blow a bunch of points and switch to villain, and run the patron arc, and then blow some more points and switch back.

However, I suspect that I would still have to "re-enforce" my morality to get hero merits for running SSAs with those characters.

Hero to vig --- 10 tips + Morality
Vig to villain --- 10 Tips + Morality
Patron Arc -- a bunch of missions.
Villain to rogue -- 10 tips + Morality
Rogue to Hero --- 10 tips + Morality
Hero to hero ---10 tips + morality. (to reenforce for hero tips for SSAs)

Now, I understand that noone's putting a gun to my head. I guess what I'm wondering is -- blue side doesnt' have to jump through these silly hoops to get their epics. Why does red side?

Are the patron powers that much better? I've got the mace mastery on my blaster, and I do like the extra energy defense. But...55 missions, plus an arc? That just seems like a lot of fuss for something that should be readily available to anyone.

Am I off base? Is this just the way things are, and will never change because the players like having to do a patron arc instead of just choosing one the way blue side lets us?

Am I lazy? I guess I am - but tips are just really dull to me. It's like none of the bosses are different. They all seem so similar in style to me. But, I guess that's me digressing.

Think we could get them to change this? Or would I have better luck suggesting they not force my poor blasters into taking something lame like flash freeze just to get hoarfrost or Frozen Armor? The dropped the pre-reqs for power pools....

I know, next thing, I'll be asking to pick powers from more than one epic pool. Shame on me for thinking of such madness.

Still, though - how many of you do these 55 missions for all of your toons?

I wouldn't say that blueside doesn't have to jump through hoops for it's pools. I mean, that's one way to look at it, but redside has access to them all too. At 35 anyone will have access to the 4-5 APP pools for their AT. But redside can access extra pools if they go to the trouble of it.

And.. I've yet to switch sides to do it. If the character is a villain they'll do the arcs. If they're a hero.. they deal with having just the APPs.

Some of them could stand to be better though, especially for certain ATs.

The coffee talk today though hinted that there might be something coming in I24 for pools, both the basic power pools and epic pools.

To be honest, it's not entirely an unreasonable complaint. The problem is just that the Devs basically shot themselves in the foot, or Jack Emmert deliberately shot them in the foot, by tying Patron Pools heavily to an RP story concept, even though Jack was surprised to learn people role played in the game to begin with.

This means that while it might be a good idea to automatically open up patrons pools for heroes and villains alike, it's not an easily accepted idea by even the present Devs.

Patron pools also are not exactly more powerful, but they do function on a radically different design set than APPs do, which tend to be much more specifically geared to the AT it's going to, even when APPs were proliferated, adjustments were STILL made. (and in my opinion, it resulted in doms getting infinitely better APPs than controllers)
Meanwhile, from what I've seen, the Patron pools were straight ports with no variation, ultimately ignoring how well or poorly it might fit the designated heroside AT equivalent.

In summary, I agree with you, but I don't think anyone else will, most of all, not the people who it would matter to, and even I might like some explanation to this. But maybe that's why there's so many hints at Scirocco potentially going rogue in the future.

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.

There was a time when a villain would pick a patron, and that would be his epic set, end of story. Eventually they earned the ability to respec into any of the four, and now they even get other non-patron sets just for being a high enough level.

At present, the patron sets are simply unlockable powers. The fact that you have to be a villain to unlock them is legacy, but I don't see any problem with it. That some people insist on getting them AND having their characters be full Hero, well, that's their choice. Under no circumstances would I consider it appropriate to call it an inconvenience.

Be sure to attend my next seminar for the full rant!

Reasons to play redside:

• Easy access to Invader, sidestepping Task Force Commander entirely.
• Mortimer Kal, which grants you a voucher for a Notice of the Well once you hit 50.
• Much smaller volumes of zone traveling, street sweeping and defeat-alls.
• Legacy story content is (subjectively speaking) much more captivating and satisfying to play.
• The Patron sets are accessible without changing Alignment.

• The Atlas Medallion is accessible without changing Alignment.

Patron Pools were just a bad idea that were rikti monkied into the game. I think their thinking was that the Epic pools had been TOO good, so they wanted to NOT overpower Villains as they had done for Heroes, and then tying the unlock into getting handcuffed to serving a Patron since you were using their 'Signature' abilities. Even with the betrayal and surpassing your Patron in each arc it still just further threw your villain's essential lack of self-determination and power compared to the developer's Characters in your face, which everybody complained level 1-40 was too full of...rrr.

Honestly I doubt they considered the possibility of future a Going Rogue side-swapping system making that into the game so they probably never considered unlocking the pools via a story arc completion Badge to be an issue, to be fair.

And that Grandville update took forever to get published, too, I think it was almost a year after City of Villains launched just to put in the level 40+ content--compared to when City of Heroes launched and they patching in levels 40-50 consisting of Peregrine Island and later the immense (if unused) beautfil Shadow Shard relatively quickly.

I think Jack was just trying to preemptively kill CoX off so he wouldn't have to compete for subscriptions while Cryptic was developing the next superhero-themed MMORPG.

Scirroco isn't really a rogue type. He was all for conducting a magic ritual to forcibly alter the nature of man. It's still pretty much evil to use magic to make everybody 'become good', since he's robbing everyone of free will in the process.

You have to level up to 35 to get Task Force Commander, and you have to level up to get your Mayhem Missions. While the Mayhems can be easy to miss in the lower levels due to rapid leveling, they're certainly easy to access for those characters interested in Invader. Just be sure to take a brief detour to run some newspapers and you'll have it.

Plus, if friends' characters have some Mayhems as well, you can get the badges without ever talking them out of your broker. To me, that's worth a lot more than suffering another Synapse ever again.

I've been playing since just after cov launched and I've done the patron arcs and even been back and forth with a couple of heroes. I'm ok with the devs relaxing the requirements, the game has moved on.

The easiest fix, and the one I'd prefer most, would be to add another epic pool for squishie archetypes that had something equivalent to Scorpion Shield in it, ie a defence shield with non-intrusive graphics.

This would have the added bonus of not displaying an embarassing Arachnos style logo when you activate the shield, and having some other powers that weren't concept breaking in the pool.

Scorpion shields great, but the Arachnos mace and spiders aren't always suitable.

If you wanted a quick Demonic Aura you'd still have to switch sides, but pretty much every case I've heard of people doing this involves the Scorpion Shield, and often for mainly cosmetic reasons.

Trust me - I'd heard that accolades were easier to get - but this toon that's making the trip now already has atlas, freedom phalanx, Geas and TFC.

Once it goes villain, I'll have the character do the necessary mission through ouros to get demonic, as 100 hellfrosts is a lot faster than 200 of this, and 200 of that.

I'd thought about getting the villain side equivalent of other accolades - but 1000? as opposed to 333? And all those ghastly mayhem missions? That's sheer torture. I finally got all the explorations and defeats on my badge toon - I promise you - I'll likely NEVER do those again. That's like fingernails on a chalkboard.

The actual mission component is fine - but I just don't get the whole "let's smash inanimate objects" mentality. Maybe the parking meters and payphones, at least there's some small change in that.
Fire Hydrants? Bus Stops? What on earth for?

As for me - I don't really enjoy the casual team - task forces to me are the best way to level up, get merits and finance a build. Synapse is an hour,(with vet players and mission tp, team tp, etc) and not the most fun, but it's the best way I know to get a few levels at that level range.

Still - good tips on things to handle while the toon is redside.

Well it is a 'mayhem' mission, and the badge is 'force of nature', implying lots of widescale destruction.

And a good spot to farm the Cold demons is along the southern coast of sharkhead. That's a circuit you can run along the coast and over to the small island in the south east and you can pick up several demons in each 'lap'.

Paragonwiki says you must have *affirmed* hero/villain status (as in, done a hero/villain morality while already a hero/villain) to claim that SSA reward. I can't confirm that personally, though, because I don't think I've actually had any characters switch sides since SSAs first appeared.

I will make the switch for brutes, tanks because I absolutely love Leviathan Mastery's "breath" powers.

I prefer APPs for my Corruptor and stalker.

The suggestion I've been pushing for a while is to add a contact blue-side (Manticore's second in command of Wyvern, perhaps) who offers an arc equivalent to a Patron arc. Four missions where you go confiscate various toys from groups led by Wretch, Ice Mistral, Silver Mantis, and Barracuda. Then a final mission where Arbiter Sands shows up with some major fire power to take it all back. End result, you have the storyline elements required to access Patron Pools, but without having the extra 55 missions and ten days of filler to get it.

I think a lot of this sort of thing could be avoided if they just had Heroic and Neutral "Training Pools"

If they put the PPP unlock in the market people will buy it.