Ultimo

I thought about using Dark as a secondary, but I already have two characters using it, and wanted something different. Plus, the Electric powers LOOK like stuff Baron Mordo might use.

Usually, I plan a character in Mids to L50, using only SOs. I don't want to waste what little influence I have on IOs or sets that I'm going to outlevel, so I just use SOs until I get to 50 (though, none of my characters are there yet).

You'll forgive me while I vent a little. Tonight, my Mercs/Radiation Mastermind was doing the Mr. G arc. At the end of it, you have to decide whether to betray him or not. I asked about it in chat, but people were too busy making jokes to actually answer my questions, so I chose the betrayal option. I went through to the vault and stole the money, but he was waiting to attack me when I came out. The vault area is a tiny space, so when he did his massive damage AOE attack, it oneshotted all my mercs and left me with 1 health, and left me held (as if he needed even MORE of an advantage). Of course, his next attack did that 1 damage. So I respawned back at base and returned to the mission. I went down the elevator into the vault, where he was standing RIGHT in front of the door. He knocked me to 1 health as I was entering the room, and finished me off before I'd even finished animating the entrance into the room. My mercs never even had a chance to appear. He did this over and over and over and over and over. There was literally NO way to even enter the room. I sucked down purples. I chowed down on oranges. I tried putting on choking cloud (which he ignores, being an EB). There was literally no way to get in the room, let alone FIGHT him when he's oneshotting my pets all at once. I'm sorry, but this strikes me as BAD DESIGN. It was literally impossible for me to fight back against this. The damage was WAY over the top, doing hundreds of damage in a single attack (I have 588 health on this character). In the end, someone else had to come in and do my mission for me. What fun. I mean seriously, WHAT FUN? I've commented before about the excessive damage some enemies do. I was told that it was group content, and my character wasn't supposed to be in melee, and all the usual rationalizations. This was a solo mission, and he was standing at the only entrance into the room. Bad design.

Still more of the same. I've tried everything I can think of, short of uninstalling and reinstalling it. Any chance that would work?

Ok, so it's not bugged. I thought because I was L15, the enemies would scale to my level and also be L15. I didn't think they would all be max level. Seems strange then, that people broadcast for teams and say "Suchandsuch TF, +3, yadda yadda" if you can't actually change the level.

So, I've never hosted a Strike or Task Force, so I thought I'd start the Tarikoss one tonight. Never having tried it before, I started it out on my own. My character is L15, which is the minimum for this SF. However, it was not possible to even try, not because I was outnumbered badly (which was what I expected), but because ALL the enemies were L20, +5 to my character despite my difficulty being set to -1. It seemed strange, so I thought I'd come here and see if this was normal. If it is... why would they open up the SF to L15 characters if the missions are a minimum of L20?

I have a Controller character, Gravity Control/Time Manipulation, with Sorcery. I wanted to make his "nemesis" (who I want to play as a villain, but who will also appear in AE missions). Think of Baron Mordo. My initial choice was Demon Summoning. I've got lots of Masterminds, but never used Demons, so I wanted to give them a try. I've also got lots of Dark Miasma Masterminds, and my main Mastermind uses Force Fields, so I wanted to try something else I hadn't used before, settling on Electric Affinity. So, my new Warlock is a Demon Summoning/Electric Affinity with Sorcery. Now, I love the LOOK of this. The electric effects look great in the colour scheme, and the Demons are in character... so my instinct is to like this character... but I'm struggling to enjoy him. I'm finding the demons REALLY squishy, and the Electric Affinity abilities to be REALLY weak. Has anyone any thoughts on this combo? The character IS only L15, but I don't want to waste more time on him if he's not going to get any better.

I have no idea what MTU is, or where I go to set/change it.

So I ran netgraph, but there's nothing in red, just a line of green with tiny spikes, like grass. Now and again, corresponding with the numerous freezes, there will be a tall green line, wider when the freeze is longer. Nothing in red or yellow, all green. Alas, I've no idea what any of it means.

I'll try that.

Well, the last few days, it's back to the nonsense. The game has become just unplayable. I've tried the fix mentioned above, I've tried verifying everything, I've updated all the drivers, shut down all the background stuff including antivirus... I'm getting close to uninstalling and reinstalling fresh, but I'm reluctant to do that lest I lose all my settings and stuff. I'm quite at a loss.

So, I'm creating a new character, based on Deathstroke (and a bit of Taskmaster). I've created him in two ways, but I'm having trouble deciding which to stick with. The first version is an Arsenal Control/Assault Rifle Dominator. I'm kind of liking him so far, but he IS only L8. He promises to be kind of gadgety, with the grenades and gasses and stuff. The other is an Assault Rifle/Ninja Blaster. I'm rather liking him too. He does plenty of damage, and has that katana when people get in close. He honestly "feels" more like Deathstroke than the Dominator does. So, I'm looking for opinions. As far a concept goes, which would you choose, and why? As far as performance goes? Just kind of polling the audience.

I've gone back to the Stalker, I'm finding the Scrapper just too squishy, and honestly not versatile enough.

As I say, there are a couple of changes they could make right off I'd get behind. First, add damage to knockback. More knock means more damage. Second, the first three powers should be: Punch (replaces Jab, which is nearly useless anyway), same as we have now. Haymaker, much like Cross Punch, a small cone AOE. Hurl, much as it is now, but has a small AOE for normal damage (it's a big slab, and can hit multiple targets if they're close together), and a diminishing AOE around that (flying debris). Maybe another power whose purpose is entirely to do knockback, to simulate grabbing and throwing an enemy, or swatting him away. I'd rename Rage, and call it "Gloves Off," or something like that. While it's active, knockback becomes unresistable, even by AVs and the like. Strong characters should be able to move even the heaviest, strongest characters. Beyond that... Well, I'm just kind of spitballing.

Oh, I agree. Depending on how they handle adding damage to knockback, that alone might be enough to make the anemic damage better, and reduce reliance on Rage. My main thrust is that the main thing we see strong characters doing is MOVING things (or stopping things from moving). Anyone can punch, but lifting heavy things is kind of the point of strength. It doesn't have to be a lot. One thing about fights with super strong characters is the collateral damage. Just adding some of this to the set might do wonders as well (presentation is half the battle). Add a little screen shake, some cracks in the ground and dust and debris flying around. Move Hurl down so it's available earlier, and make it a small AOE. You're right, knockback is reviled today, but that's because the cost of it (ie. spreading enemies out) is greater than the benefit of it (a brief soft control). If it did some decent damage too, that might be enough to make it useful. Notice, this would also add a bit of extra damage to powers that are designed specifically for knocks (eg. Force Bolt), which I don't think would be unwelcome. I'll also point out that there are enhancers that allow you to change knockback to knockDOWN. Maybe that would make the change palatable. I'd replace Jab, and give the set a power specifically designed to knock foes flying. Not much damage, but massive knockback, like Force Bolt. I'd make two basic punches, one single target, one AOE, like Cross Punch. Then Hurl. I'd have Rage near the end of the set, and call it something else, since not every super strong character is a rage-monster. Maybe instead of adding a ton of damage, it could boost secondary effects and reduce endurance costs. I mean, we see tanky characters in the comics getting knocked around all the time, but never in this game. If Rage made knock effects irresistable, you could find a super strong character could be knocking down otherwise unknockable characters... which would be appropriate because the character is STRONG. Anyway, it's not that it's in ineffective set for me, it's the presentation more than anything.

I've LONG suggested Super Strength could use a bit of love. I mean, it's the single most iconic power of ANY comic character. You can even go back to ancient mythology, where vast strength was a power of many great heroes (eg. Herakles). One thing I'd like to see them do is add some damage to knockback. They could then pair this up with Super Strength doing lots OF knockback. I know, people don't like it, but it's kind of the thing great strength is about... lifting and moving heavy objects. To represent this, I'd also move Hurl so it's acquired MUCH sooner. Another thing is that the set currently relies far too much on one or two powers. Without Rage running, the set is very underwhelming, and apart from KO Blow, the damage is pretty mediocre. Another thought I had is that perhaps Super Strength could be altered to be ALL AOE. That is, every attack is spread across all targets in range. If you're fighting a big group of minions, your damage would be spread to each one equally. If you're fighting ONE enemy, he'd take ALL the damage. It would also be useful for Tankers that way, as it would spread threat to all the enemies it's hitting. Whatever the case may be, I'd like to see it tweaked to be more in line with the source material.

Utility Belt pool? Ya, I'd been planning for Weapon Mastery, I was just unsure whether to go Scrapper or Stalker. The original design was the Stalker, but I noticed he has to take out every foe one at a time, and that's kind of tedious, especially on teams. So, I thought about making him a Scrapper. I thought the Scrapper would be sturdier, but I'm not experiencing that, and Mids seems to bear that out. So, I'm still torn.

So, I've been wrestling with a choice, and I wondered what people thought. I've created a character based on Batman, but I'm not certain whether to go with the Stalker or the Scrapper. In either case, he'd be Martial Arts and Ninjitsu, but each has different strengths and weaknesses. The Stalker, for example, lacks almost all AOE. What do you guys think? Which one better represents Batman? Which one performs better? Any thoughts are welcome.

I once created a character called "Musk" whose power was to emit pheromones for various effects including mind control, stunning and weakening enemies. My thinking is Radiation Emission and some sort of power set allowing mind control... perhaps Dark Blast... so a Defender/Corruptor.

Quite so! This is why I made the Angel a Tanker. Back in the day, when the X-Men fought their enemies, Angel's task was to get the attention of the enemy and avoid their attacks while the rest of the team engaged. To me, that's a Tanker. I make most of my speedsters that way too, their job is to harass and occupy the enemy while the team takes them down.

So, lately I've been tinkering with characters, making a bunch of new ones based on the X-Men. Some are pretty obvious, but some are a problem... what AT and powers should they have?! So, I thought I'd come here, and have a little fun discussing what ATs and powers we think the X-Men might have. Now, I'm not as familiar with the newer X-Men. Really, I kind of lost track around the time Longshot joined the team and they were operating out of Australia... so I'll just go as far as that. Here's my list: Professor X - Dominator (Mind Control/Psionic Assault) Cyclops - Blaster (Energy Blast/Martial Combat) (yes, I know it doesn't come from his eyes, but we live in hope of new animations) Iceman - Dominator (Ice Control/Icy Assault) Beast - Brute (Martial Arts/Willpower) Angel - Tanker (Super Reflexes/Street Justice) Marvel Girl - Controller (Mind Control/Force Fields)???? Not sure about this one. Havok - Blaster (Sonic Blast/Sonic Manipulation) (he SHOULD be energy blast, but the Sonic effects work for him) Polaris - Controller (Gravity Control/Force Fields) Nightcrawler - Stalker (Martial Arts/Super Reflexes) Wolverine - Brute (Claws/Regeneration) Banshee - Blaster (Sonic Blast/Sonic Manipulation) Storm - Corruptor (Electric Blast/Storm Summoning) Sunfire - Sentinel (Fire Blast/Fire Armour) Colossus - Tanker (Invulnerability/Super Strength) Thunderbird - Scrapper (Street Justice/Willpower) Kitty Pryde - ???? (????/????) NO idea what to do with Kitty! Rogue - ???? (????/????) Probably super strength and invulnerability for the Ms. Marvel powers... but the drain? Psylocke - Scrapper (Psionic Melee/Ninjitsu) Gambit - Blaster? (Fire Blast?/Martial Combat?) Hard to know what to do here, there's no ranged class with a staff. Longshot - Tanker? (Super Reflexes/Martial Arts) Super Reflexes to mimic his "luck" power? I could go into greater detail on my reasoning, but I'm interested to see what you guys think. How would you create the X-Men?

I agree, and I'm not saying they shouldn't be a threat. I'm saying they're overtuned. How hard should they hit? It's hard to say. I'd have to run some tests and see, but I'd start from potentially 50% at most, and work up or down from there, until it seems balanced overall. I mean, it's got to work for all the ATs. But you guys are right, I'm working from a relatively small sample, and AE isn't the same animal. I think I'll try running it again on a few other ATs and see how it feels.

This might be so... but this isn't the only time I've seen this sort of thing. I've struggled a LOT to make decent enemies for my AE missions, and this is the root problem. If I make the enemies durable enough (ie. EB/AV) to have a good fight, they do WAY too much damage to have a good fight. Granted, I haven't encountered many AVs in general, as most of my characters are still in their 20s. But, for all that, my position remains the same. Enemies shouldn't be able to do 100% (or 99.99999%) of a character's health in one attack.

I agree. I understand how it IS, I'm suggesting that it shouldn't BE this way. When I used the Enemies books in Champions, I had to reduce the damage the enemies could do because it made it impossible to fight them. That's what I'm seeing here. The players I had complained that they wanted to fight Doctor Destroyer, at one point. So, I illustrated out he'd been designed. I'll digress a moment to explain how old Champions worked. Characters rolled 6 sided dice for everything. To hit a target, you rolled 3d6 (three six sided dice). There was a bit of math, but generally the average to hit value was 11 or less on three six sided dice. When you hit a target, you rolled damage. The average attack for heroes (at least to start) was around 10-12d6. That is, roll 10 6 sided dice and add up the numbers. on average, you could expect around 35 damage from 10d6. This was STUN damage, which would knock you out. Ranged Killing Attacks worked the same way, but did BODY damage, which was lethal. The average hero would have around 40-50 stun and perhaps 20 body. Doctor Destroyer had a 7d6 RKA. This attack had no range penalties, and he could fire it off indirectly. It had a range of around 1 mile. He also had multiple combat levels to improve his chance to hit, and his Speed was so high that he would act around 3 times before any player would be able to. So, they boarded their ship, and when they were within a mile, he hit it with the equivalent of a tactical nuke. He couldn't miss because of his combat levels, and did so much damage the players couldn't possibly survive. If by some miracle one of them did, he would just target and kill them on his next action. There's no fun there. His damage and abilities were SO far beyond those of the players that it made him useless. I was forced to rebuild the character so they could actually fight him... that meant reducing his DAMAGE, more than anything else. As long as the players were still standing, they could ACT, which was WAY more fun for them. I made him so he still hit HARD, but not SO hard they players couldn't withstand getting hit a couple of times. That's what I'd like to see here. The AVs and even EBs hit too hard. There's just no way for many characters to withstand it. I mean, you're GOING to get hit sometimes. This is especially so now that there's a streakbreaker for NPC attacks. But, I don't see anyone in agreement with me, really. No matter, I don't expect they would change anything anyway.

Yes, the first hit left me with one health. It's essentially the same thing.