Ultimo

Well, I don't know how the mechanics of it are set up. I thought that, when the game spawns enemies in a mission, it checks the Notoriety of the character, and spawns appropriately. If that's the case, it should work the same way when spawning enemies from the door. They're not specific to that zone, after all. But again, I don't know how the game decides these things. Either way, something should be looked at.

I checked... you can definitely do door knocking in Steel Canyon, which is L19 and below.

Yes, but they're not regular zone spawns, standing around in the area. They're being spawned specifically for the character opening the door. My solution to them being overpowered is to make them NOT spawn unless the player has accepted that challenge by adjusting his Notoriety. The alternative is to adjust the strength of the EBs so the average solo player of ANY AT can fight them successfully. As they are now, it's just impossible for many or most characters to have any kind of a chance. It has to be one or the other, because it's completely ruining the event for me, and I'm sure others. That Dominator I mentioned opened 16 doors. 15 of them were EBs of one sort or another who instantly obliterated him. There's no way he could even run away. After that many, I just gave up. Not a ringing endorsement for the event.

I don't think it works in Atlas, perhaps Mercy?

It's fine, if you want to fight elite bosses, you should be able to. Not everyone wants to or even CAN fight them. If I've set my Notoriety so I don't get EBs in missions, I shouldn't get them from the event either. Unless I'm on a team... but even then, they're absurdly overpowered.

Double post

So... this Halloween event, which I usually enjoy, has been an impenetrable chore this year. The main reason are these absurdly overpowered Elite Bosses. I hate to sound like a broken record, but these guys are ridiculous. The first one I met was the Ancient Vampire Lord, when playing my Bots/Electric Affinity Mastermind. With judicious healing, I was able to keep the bots up before he cast some area effect thing that started melting them. They lasted about 10 seconds, and I had to run away. I had been fighting him continuously for around 15 minutes by that point, and did NO DAMAGE AT ALL. I suspect this was a bug, perhaps because my bots started attacking before he was even out the door? Yes, he's supposed to be unaffected until he's out, but perhaps that state carried over because the bots attacked him and I didn't? But, I have a shapeshifting character, he's an Illusions/Icy Assault Dominator (L35), and I wanted to get some costumes to simulate his shape changing (too bad we can't keep these more permanently). I opened a door, got an EB Vampire. He held me BEFORE he was even out the door, then oneshotted me. Yes, I know there's code to prevent oneshots, but the hold included a small DOT so I had taken perhaps 2 points of damage, so when he hit me for over 1200 damage in one attack, it was far more than my 800 or so maximum health. It's a oneshot, whatever you care to call it. I had NO chance to fight back. This happened on the next 10 doors I opened, occasionally with different EBs. A couple were Mummies, a couple were Spectral Werewolves. It didn't matter, they all cast a hold, and then oneshotted me, or were accompanied by something that cast a hold and then they oneshotted me. There's just no way to even START to fight back against them. I even tried running away (very heroic, what fun), but they inevitably cast a hold or something, and boom, I'm dead. I think these foes need a serious balance pass. Others in chat seemed to agree. Also, I think EBs should NOT appear at all if you've got your Notoriety set up for no solo EBs or AVs. If they're meant as group content, they should NOT be appearing for solo players, unless those players have specifically chosen to allow it.

Something I should ask... what other stuff is there to do in the PvP zones? Badges?

Oh, I agree, and there are some characters who don't translate all THAT well... But, I like to make the effort, and sometimes they turn out to be a blast to play.

He will be... I usually make my characters in both... the idea is to keep them as similar as possible so they're more balanced.

It's the same character. He's in Praetoria, and for some reason can't hit ANYTHING. I went through a whole mission (the one where you rescue the cops and their sergeant) and the ONLY hits I landed were all via streakbreaker. It was very odd, to say the least. Even the minions were doing huge damage. One hit from a minion did 25-30% of my health. When so many of my own attacks were missing, he was getting in 2-3 hits, taking me to nearly no health... and this happened in nearly every fight. If not for the cops I rescued and the inspirations I used, I wouldn't have defeated ANYTHING in this mission. Maybe it's something to do with Praetoria... I have other Dominators who have no troubles like that.

I actually started doing it tonight, never having done it before. It's a really good looking set of zones. However, at L4, my Dominator was sent into a mission where he's to talk to a sergeant, who then turns hostile along with the 12 other +3 lieutenant level enemies in the room, who all swarmed on top of the Dominator and obliterated him in around 2 seconds. This is considered L4 content? I asked in chat if this is what all the Praetorian content is like, and was told it pretty much is, so I doubt I'll be doing ANY of it again. Ever. Challenge is one thing. Overpowering the PC with 12-1 odds where all the enemies are 3 levels HIGHER is just not any fun.

Ok, so I'm starting up a new character, based on Annihilus. The Marvel wiki suggests he's physically strong and durable, almost completely invulnerable in fact. That suggests a Tanker. However, he DOES have to Cosmic Control Rod, and I seem to remember him using other tech. My first thought was a Dominator, Electric Control for the blasty stuff and controls, and Savage Melee for the brutal looking attacks, and a few critter summons. However, it's SO SQUISHY. I mean, I fight even ONE minion, it takes me to around 20% health. Taking on three? I HAVE to chug down inspirations. Now, I gather Praetoria is harder than other places, so maybe that's part of it... but it sure doesn't feel much like Annihilus. (there also seems not to be anything like DFB goldside) So... since I'm not all that familiar with Annihilus, how do you all suggest I proceed with the character? What AT and powers would you suggest captures the dynamic of Annihilus in the comics?

I should say, one of my ONLY enjoyable PvP moments did come by way of City of Heroes. Let me share! Back in the day, in Bloody Bay, I think it was, there was a small barge at a dock where players would gather and duel. It was always one on one, and other players would stand around watching, and waiting their turn. I never really competed, but I liked to watch. There was an unwritten rule that spectators were NOT to be attacked. However, one day, while playing my Bots/FF Mastermind, Lord Dire, a Scrapper decided to attack me. Perhaps he didn't realize my PFF was on. His attack set my bots on him, so he tried to run away, but I was game to go after him. My bots were battering him, so he thought he'd get away by flying, but I had Group Fly, and my bots and I followed him into the air. He thought he might separate me from by bots by outdistancing them (Group Fly had a range limit then), and I let him think he'd outwitted me. My bots fell, and he came after me again. However, I had anticipated this, and flew higher and higher, until finally I dropped my PFF and hit him with Air Superiority. He plummeted to the ground where my bots were waiting, and he dropped to almost no health as I swooped in for the kill. JUST as I got there, however, another player blindsided me, and basically oneshotted me before I could finish off the Scrapper. It was a fun fight because of the strategic aspect of it. He tried to escape, but I countered his plans, so he tried to trick me into making myself vulnerable, but I turned the tables and put him on the ropes. THAT was fun. The back and forth, the trying of different tactics and strategies. The guy who flew in and oneshotted me at the end... there was nothing TO that fight. It was no fun, though it was kind of thematic, a hero swooping in to save his ally at the literal last second. Actually, this is something I've tried to explain about other aspects of the game. When a fight is over in an instant, there's no GAME to play... no clever tactics, no ingenious strategies.... just instantly overwhelming force, and that's just bland and unenjoyable... at least to me.

I think you misunderstood one of my points, and that's my fault. I mean that PvP can work in THIS game, because it's just combat. There's nothing else to distract players in the PvP zone. No quests, no crafting nodes, nothing but the PvP. Games that try to impose PvP on players who aren't there for PvP, who are trying to do other things, can't work. Think of it this way: WHY do people want PvP? When I've asked this of PvPers in the past, they almost always say they want more capable enemies. They want the challenge, the competition. Unfortunately, open world games with anything other than combat in them put a host of players out there who CANNOT be a challenge, who cannot provide any competition. A wrinkle in this is that many PvPers go out of their way to AVOID challenging foes, specifically targeting players who cannot fight back. They say they want a challenge but do everything they can to avoid it. They're really little more than griefers, out to ruin someone else's fun. They may be a minority of PvPers, but they're the ones the PvE players are going to encounter, as all the people actually looking for a challenge are off fighting each other, and not attacking the defenseless people. Only the bullies and griefers do that. Again, that's not an issue here (and I apologize for drifting a bit off topic), as THIS game is all combat. As with Halo or Battlefield, or any of the other FPS games, everyone in the zone is there for just one purpose... and so it can work... conceptually at least. My experience of it here has been always that one player doesn't get to fight back, either because they're instantly obliterated by a Stalker who alpha strikes, then placates, then alpha strikes again, or permanently locked down by a Controller or Dominator.

I've always been of the opinion that PvP doesn't work in open world games, like MMOs. The reason is that there's so many things people might be doing in the game that doesn't involve PvP. Someone might be fishing, or doing a quest, or mining a crafting node, or what have you. PvP only really works in games where combat is all there is, so there's not really anything else anyone will be doing. Games like Battlefield, Halo and so on work fine, because there's nothing else in those games but combat. For example, Elder Scrolls Online has a specific PvP zone, Cyrodiil. Players who go there are all targets. The problem with that is that there's a TON of other stuff IN that zone that players might be doing that have nothing to do with combat. There are quests, badges, dungeons, skyshards, and more. People doing these things will be in NO position to fight back, and so it defeats the purpose of PvP: COMPETITION. City of Heroes is an open world game, much like other MMOs, but it's really just combat. If you go into Siren's Call, there's nothing else going on in there that you might be doing, that would prevent you being able to fight back. So, I think it's fair to say anyone in the zone is fair game. My experience of PvP in City of Heroes was almost entirely negative, however. 99% of the time, you were instantly obliterated by a Stalker without warning, or locked down and unable to fight back by a Controller or Dominator. There's just not any fun in that. It got to a point where the ONLY people in the PvP zones were Stalkers waiting around invisible for someone to victimize. It just didn't work out.

I've spent a good deal of time considering this question from the other direction, the survivability of characters and NPC damage (as some here well know). Something I've come to understand, both by way of testing and discussion here, is that there's just SO MUCH variety, and that's just in the plain vanilla builds, using SOs, which is what I usually tested with (since that's supposedly the baseline), that it's nearly impossible to make everything balanced for everyone. The fact is, there's a LOT more adding into both damage and survivabilty now, between IO sets, and Incarnates, and god knows what else, that it's almost impossible to decide on a baseline for performance. My thinking was usually to adjust the enemies, to make them more a more even match for everyone, since they don't have nearly the variety of abilities and combinations of abilities... but that doesn't work because changing the enemies to suit one class might unbalance them for another... or even for another build/power combination within the same class. For instance, if you change the way Controllers do damage, you might find one or another set or combination of sets, outperforming or underperforming. One other thing I usually preface my efforts to discuss this stuff with is the recognition that the game has existed this way for nearly 20 years... it's very unlikely there would be sweeping changes at this point. But then... they DID revamp Masterminds. Maybe something CAN happen.

Ya, my Bots/FF is an unstoppable juggernaut... and if he gets in trouble, PFF and recover, then go back and finish the enemy off.

Ok, some good feedback, I suppose I'll stick with it, and see how it goes. I do have two Masterminds using the set, too... one is Bots, the other Demons. Thanks for the input!

So, I created a character. Based somewhat on Brainiac, the idea is that he's an AI inhabiting his own body, but also the bodies of the robot pets. I originally made him with Kinetics, as I'd never really used that set before. However, I found it underwhelming, and that it didn't synergize well with the bots (Transfusion works at the location of the enemy, and bots are usually at a range, so don't get the heal). So, I switched up. The second version has Electric Affinity... but I'm finding myself very inimpressed with it. Granted, I'm only just getting to L20, but I feel like I'm wasting my time. The heal, while it's nice that I can aim it where I need it, is kind of weak costly and slow firing. The debuff powers (Shock, Discharge) do almost NOTHING to enemy damage output, and there's no enhancing them. I haven't reached the buffing powers yet, but I'm uncertain what to expect. Does this set EVER get good? It seems like the only decent power is Faraday Cage, and it's really ugly, and has to be moved around constantly. What about Sonic Resonance? It strikes me as being the Resistance version of Force Fields... but without the PFF. I did consider Force Fields, but I already have a character with that combo. He's a powerhouse, but I don't feel like making the same character twice. I'd hoped for something a bit different. I did think about Time, but it doesn't LOOK like a Brainiac powerset... if you take my meaning. Not blasty enough. Really, the only one that really looks the part is Electric Affinity. Anyway, anyone have any thoughts? Should I stick with Electric Affinity or try something else?

Ok! So, I've made some variations, and decided on a Dominator, Earth Control/Radiation Assault (with Stealth). The concept of the character goes something like this (someone more versed in quantum physics is welcome to weigh in - that's a pun, by the way). He's a quantum physicist, doing research focused on the Higgs Boson, and it's interaction with fundamental particles. When the Rikti attacked his city (Toronto), the building housing his lab was collapsed, trapping him within. He used his research and what equipment he could scrounge together to try and escape. He did this by manipulating the connection between the particles composing the debris and the Higgs field, thereby effectively reducing its mass. However, he discovered that the matter didn't simply reduce in mass, but also in dimension, becoming greatly smaller. This didn't really help him, so he tried it on himself, and found he could shrink in size, allowing him to slip through the debris to freedom. Further enhancement of the equipment allowed him to increase the interaction with the Higgs field, thereby increasing the mass and size of matter. He uses this effect to increase the size of dust in the air, even the air itself, to contain targets, and also to increase the effective mass of his punches, allowing him to strike targets with tremendous force. What do you guys think? Is the physics even a little plausible?

I'm not sure which edition that comes from, I'd have to dig out the old rulebooks. Also, there were undoubtedly some house rules in effect, and some liberties taken with designing the villains.

I thought about that... but Phantom Army is kind of the only really good power in the set, and it just doesn't quite look right either as copies of the Ghost himself, nor as generic characters. So far, the best combo still seems to be the Dark Blast/Dark Armour Sentinel. He lacks the controls, and his powers are rather more direct than I would normally want, but overall it still "feels" better.

Ya, it's a lot of points. My version of an Arch-Villain, most of the characters I made for the heroes to fight against were a bit less extreme than this. Heroes started with 250 points, and a cap of 60 active points in any given power, so he's only a bit more powerful than that, power by power, with lots of Stun and Body, and plenty of defense. The "Villain Bonus" was something I saw them use in most of the Villains books. I suppose it represents their experience, or ruthlessness, or something. Really, it's just a number to let you make the villain in any way you like.

Just for the sake of amusement, and so people could see an old OLD picture of the character, I dug up an old Champions character sheet for the character. Ah, the good old days.