Luminara

Galaxy Archons have two attacks which deal ~700-750 Negative Energy damage (Gravity Well and Essence Drain). At +2 (1.2x effects) and with a 10 target Sunless Mire (+125% Damage), versus an Invuln tank with Resist Energies and Unyielding both triple-slotted with +0 Resistance SOs, the net damage would be ~1425 from Essence Drain and ~1321 from Gravity Well (not including the DoT). Incarnate AV Black Swan deals ~934 damage with Life Drain. At +3 (Incarnate AVs spawn at 54 and receive a +3 level shift (Tyrant receives +5), so 1.33x), she deals ~1242 damage. Same Invuln slotting as above would reduce that to ~855. So Galaxy Archons are conditionally stronger than AVs. The condition is Sunless Mire's buff, which requires defeated friendly targets (friendly to the enemy, so other Council), only lasts 30s, has a fixed 120s recharge time and a radius of 15', leaving several tactical methods of handling the enemy. Mez it (they have no status protection), defeat it first, fight it where there aren't any defeated Council, increase Negative Energy or Melee Defense, use Unstoppable (which would reduce its maximum damage to ~200 for those attacks), or back off until the buff expires. With that many options for handling this enemy, I'm comfortable with them as they are.

You fell in love? You fool! You missed a prime opportunity to fall in a machine that makes plasma balls, or a vat of artificial cat food crunch enhancer, or a secret nuclear facility used for grafting fused quartz into the human genome, and gain superpowers!

The original is still available for public viewing (presuming the author didn't edit or hide the post), as are any quoted copies of the original (quoted material isn't altered if the original is later edited). That's why it's not a violation of a rule, and why moderators have to make subjective determinations of whether the use of the ability to edit quoted text crosses any lines (libel, for example). In and of itself, it's just another tool for communication, and no more actionable than quoting individual words, or quoting a sentence, or only editing to add italicization/boldface/underlines/strikethroughs to draw attention to them. The intent is what is and should be examined, not the editing itself.

7/5 would play again.

Huh. Never thought I'd see an actual picture of @Snarky's house. I hope he didn't pay the carpenter, though. That roof looks leakier than Tom Holland.

Fact check: None of Ancient Vampire's melee attacks have a DoT. The only DoTs available to this enemy are Gloom and Chill of the Night. Gloom caps at ~64 damage per tic at level 54, and does not deal front-loaded damage. Chill of the Night is a PBAoE with a 15' radius and deals ~84 damage every 2s at level 38, and does not deal front-loaded damage. The only attack this EB has which is capable of reducing a level 38 defender's HP (885 base) to roughly 1/3 in a single hit is Smite, which deals ~553 at that level and has a 5' range. For reference, Hurricane has a 25' radius, 10' wider than Chill of the Night and 20' beyond Smite's range. And Ancient Vampire has no Repel or Knockback protection. Conclusion: In order for this enemy to reduce a Storm defender's HP to 1/3 and inflict numerous tics of damage from Chill of the Night while the character has Hurricane active and affecting the enemy, the player would have to use Hurricane's Repel/KB to force the enemy into a corner, close to within 5' of the enemy, and remain there.

Feet. And the AoE ranges are shorter for the same reason the target caps are lower, to provide a measure of parity with scrapper AoE capability.

No. They only have 4 points of status protection on top of the standard 6 for EBs. Four stacks of a mag 3 single-target Hold/Stun/Sleep/Confuse is enough to lock them down, just like controllers.

It wasn't created until 2022.

Would have been. Most likely. That's an ugly string of hypotheticals for an accurate, honest report of real events. Are you sure you haven't "misremembered" something? They're more effective if they're turned on. I gave you 24 hours to own up. Now we'll do it the other way. Ancient Vampire's first action after spawning is always summoning Dark Servant. Always. Not Dominate, not Mesmerize, not Siphon Life, not Life Drain, not Smite, not Shadow Punch, not Chill of the Night, not Dull Pain, not Gloom. When it's finished with the spawn animation, it immediately begins to summon Dark Servant, every time. When any Hallowe'en enemies are spawned, they have a power which imposes Only Affect Self for 3s. That's 3s during which they're incapable of acting against you. Ancient Vampire is forced to spend 3.432s summoning Dark Servant as soon as Only Affect Self ends. So that's 6.432s before the Ancient Vampire can use any other power. You had 6.5 seconds to react to the EB being spawned. In 6.5 seconds, a player character can run 184.28', with Swift unslotted and no other movement powers active, not even Sprint. Even if you had waited until the EB started summoning Dark Servant before you ran, you would've been 97.3' away before he could've activated another power. The range on Ancient Vampire's Dominate, for the record, is 80'. In that same 6.5s, you could use every inspiration in your tray, manually, not with binds or keys, clicking with the mouse. Domination's activation time is 1.32s, so you could've used that and still had 5s to spare. You could've dropped a location AoE so it would affect the EB as soon as the 3s grace period ended. You could've let your pet take the aggro. So your claim that your dominator was instantly incapacitated without any time for you to respond is just another example of you "possibly misremembering" what actually happened. Like that 15 minute long epic struggle to stay alive with your mastermind, during which the vamp never activated Chill of the Night until the end. Like your brute with all of Willpower's damage mitigation powers taken and slotted, thus having a minimum of 1599 HP and 31.95 Smashing Resistance, being two-shot by an EB that can't deal 1600 HP damage to that character at level 39 without using at least four attacks. As usual, you've "misremembered" right past what the game engine allows and into the fantasy "facts" of your imagination. You had 6.5s to move. You had Domination. It has an activation time of 1.32s and can be activated even when mezzed. Rumor is that controls, like damage mitigation toggles, work if you use them. Apparently you had the opportunity to make another "Game unfair! Nerf everything!" post. You started this thread for the same reason you've started every other thread about how unfair the game is, how unbalanced enemies are, how tragically your character was manhandled by the mean, overpowered enemies, blah blah blah. You think everything is unbalanced and find (or contrive, or just invent) reasons to post about it. What anyone else may or may not have said is irrelevant. You are the one who came to the forums and started this thread. You are the one who made the wild claims that don't hold water. You are the one holding the snake oil. I suppose I wouldn't consider it to be productive, either, if someone caught me withholding information or "misremembering" facts until pressed, or deliberately setting up situations to "prove" that the game is broken when it isn't, with the expectation that people will swallow what I'm saying without a second thought or a single question.

I referenced other threads once. In order to "keep arguing about other threads", I would have to bring them up more than once. Heightened Senses with 3x Defense SOs and Rise to the Challenge's base 3.75% -ToHit would have reduced the EB's hit chances by ~19%, even if you had no other Defense power, like Combat Jumping, Stealth or Weave, giving it a net 31% chance to hit with any of its attacks. Mind over Body would have reduced the damage you would've taken from his melee attacks by ~32% with 3x Resistance SOs. High Pain Tolerance bumped you to ~1600 HP at level 39 (presuming HPT was not slotted with a Heal SO), and Fast Healing and Rise to the Challenge slotted with 3x +0 Heal SOs, plus a single SO in Health, gave you 543% Regeneration, reducing the time between HP pulses to 2.21s, and that's assuming the vamp was the only enemy inside Rise to the Challenge's PBAoE. And all of that is assuming you skipped Strength of Will, which, if slotted with three Resistance SOs, would've made the hits into tickles. At level 39, all of those powers were available and you had the slots to enhance them. So if that EB beat you in two hits, it's because you either didn't take your damage mitigation powers, didn't slot your damage mitigation powers or weren't running your damage mitigation powers. I know that because I play Willpower on a brute, a scrapper and a sentinel. I earned all five of the EB badges on all of those Willpower characters, solo. I used the Hallowe'en EBs to level my KM/Willpower scrapper from 42 to 50 and wasn't defeated a single time. I know exactly what Willpower is capable of, and it's weaknesses. The Ancient Vampire isn't something that could instagib a Willpower character. I also play Super Strength. There's a power in Super Strength that buffs you ToHit by 20%, it's called "Rage". With Rage active, you could've backed up, Hurled at the Dark Servant, move forward and Foot Stomped, backed up and Hurled and gone to town on the EB. Once again, you defeated yourself. You built a concept character with half the best powers skipped or replaced by pool powers, underslotted what you did take and went running face-first at the EB, ignored the pet and ended up killing yourself through your own actions. The dominator or blaster or anyone playing with any sense would move away if they were on a squishy character and use their primary and secondary powers to deal with the situation. So I'm going to call that bullshit, just like your 11k damage in one hit from Hopkins claim, and your two-shotted-on-a-Willpower-brute claim. I have all of the badges on all of my dominators, my defender, my corruptor, both of my controllers, my Bots/Rad mastermind... yeah, it's not that hard to keep any of these alive by following their design. You know, stuff like staying at range, using controls, pressing keys to move around, not facetanking. And strangely, the forums aren't flooded with an awful lot of players complaining about EBs one-shotting them, or not being able to fight back, or not being able to escape. But that might be because that awful lot of players have the sense to move instead of taking an ass beating... to take their primary and secondary powers... to put slots in them... to put enhancements in those slots... to turn on their damage mitigation toggles... to use attacks that actually deal damage... to use inspirations when they're in trouble... to pay attention to what's happening and react instead of spamming Air Superiority...

So you went straight to the EB with your henches on Follow, dragging them into the PBAoEs, paid no attention to your buff bar icons, or your henches' buff bar icons, or the Dark Servant text above the inky blob, or the enemy's animations or graphics, and proceeded to spam a melee attack. For 15 minutes, according to you. That EB didn't beat you. You beat yourself. Again. Hopkins 2.0. And it's the game's fault. Again. Because why shouldn't it be? You did absolutely everything wrong that could be done wrong, the game's clearly to blame for that because it failed to adapt to you. It's had 20 years to learn how to let you win and hasn't done it yet, what else can be done other than nerfing everything? Not if all you do is stand there spamming Air Superiority. The crone's never one-shot, or three-shot, or even six-shot any of my characters. She's a one-trick pony that can only defeat you if you let her drain your endurance bar. The werewolf's no stronger than the crone, the floating framerate destroyer flies away more often than it fights and the vampire's a pushover once you drop the pet. The mummy's the only one that's dangerous, and it's only dangerous if you're trying to facetank it with an unprepared character. Its only ranged powers are debuffs. Don't stand there spamming a shitty low damage attack and letting it hit you and it can't even hurt you. I know that's your standard approach to fighting everything from level 4 minions to AVs, but not handing your ass to the enemy on a silver platter tends to be more effective. Try it.

They're not supposed to spawn as bosses if your difficulty is at default. That bug was fixed a long time ago, when Cryptic was still running the show, but the recent redesign of the Council may not have properly applied the fix. File a bug report.

He summons a Dark Servant, which activates Chill of the Night as soon as it's summoned. He also uses Chill of the Night himself. That's 60% -ToHit. Both of those are PBAoEs... and you had your ranged henches parked right on top of him. Of course they couldn't hit. And he uses Chill of the Night within a minute of spawning, if not sooner, so you spent 15 minutes completely ignoring both the Dark Servant and the EB's actions. As usual, you did it to yourself. Shocker.

What? You? No. Nooooooooooooooo. I refuse to believe it.

This is two spawns, clumped together in this intersection. Two spawns again, separated only by the pillar in the middle of the intersection. Again, two spawns. That was at an intersection like this, the T branching type. I can post plenty of screenshots, but these make the point suitably. Every Oranbega is like this, and it's not just the intersections. In the tunnels, if you see one spawn, the other is 20' away, every time, then a loooooooooooooooong stretch that's completely empty, and then two spawns packed back to back again.. In smaller rooms, there will often be two spawns so close together that they look like a single spawn, like that first screenshot. There's no spacing between spawns until you hit the larger rooms. What this means is whatever your difficulty setting, it's effectively doubled, because spawns are so close together that you're forced to fight two at once. I like fighting the CoT now that they're not the same Guides, Behemoths and Death Mages in every spawn, but they do get to be a bit overwhelming when they're doubled up, and the empty tunnels between the double spawns aren't very exciting. This isn't happening with any other enemy group, or with CoT on any other type of map that I've run, so it has to be a spawndef bug or waypoint bug with Oranbega maps. Poke them. And while I'm on the topic of CoT spawns, the "ALL GHOSTS, ALL THE TIME!" spawns defeat the purpose of the CoT redesign. They're not challenging, they're not interesting, they're not even a speedbump. There aren't even any ghost bosses, so they're just boring. If these spawns aren't a bug, it's bad design and needs to be refined. The "ALL GALAXIES, PLUS A SINGLE TOKEN REPRESENTATIVE OF THE REST OF THE COUNCIL!" Council spawns make no sense, either. That one odd man out that's always with them indicates that they're supposed to be a mixed spawn, but they're not. The random dude/wolf is always a minion, so it's not a leader or overseer keeping them in line. That spawndef should be looked into, too.

The Hallowe'en event don't offer much incentive for characters who already have the badges. They're one and done, time to move on to the next character. Thing is, some of us don't have, or want to make, an infinite string of alts, we want to play the characters we have, but it feels a bit... outgrown with Hallowe'en. There isn't even the small reward of random holiday inspirations that we can collect during other holidays, or temp powers we can buy. Some event salvage that isn't very valuable, XP that we stopped counting a long time ago, and the same drops we can get doing everything else. It stops feeling like Trick or Treating when there are no treats. I'll also posit that not rewarding players for defeating the EBs after they've earned the badges has a deleterious effect on other players. There's no incentive to stay and fight that toilet paper-wrapped asshole, or the floating framerate destroyer, or any of the EBs, if you already have the badges, so they're abandoned, usually right in someone else's path. The same thing applies to the lower ranks that spawn. When there's no reason to stay and fight... Could the badge counters be reset to 0 once the badges are granted, with a conditional IfBadge=Owned check added added to each (all of the Hallowe'en ToT badges), and grant some kind of lesser reward when the badge conditions are met again? The reward granted doesn't have to be the same thing, in this case, Aethers, but something would be nice. One Monstrous Aether, or one Reward Merit, or one Anniversary token, or a charge on a temp power. It doesn't have to be a big reward, but something would be nifty, and might help reduce the knock-and-run that leaves behind ambushes for other players.

You guys can't just throw pornography out like that without a NSFW warning.

I'd rather not be forced to turn the difficulty up to +3 or +4 to experience the updated enemy groups.

T2 inspirations are stronger because they're less common drops than T1 inspirations. T3 inspirations are stronger than T2 inspirations because they're even less likely to drop. This change would effectively equate to an increase their drop rates, which would necessitate a significant reduction in the drop rates of T1s to balance that. The end result would be T1s dropping far less frequently, T2s being moved to the current T3 drop rate, and T3s dropping about as often as converters or purples. Basically, it'd fuck over everyone who didn't buy and convert T1s in mass quantities, or buy T3s from the AH, and cram their e-mail full of inspirations. Not doing that sounds like a better idea.

I'd summon it. I'd summon it hard.

One of you abandon the mission and speak to the contact again. In all cases where missions are offered in a random order, you can synchronize with one or more other players by doing that.