Ultimo

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.

tidge has hit it kind of on the head... that is, a demonic character claiming to be something PROBABLY isn't. As for the rest, I did think about the Mastermind as a class, but none of the pets struck me as being quite in character, and as you said, he's not really manipulating his pets to do things for him... Of course, a confuse power is also a bit forceful in that regard... but it works. As I already have a Dark/Dark Controller, I might switch it up and make him a Dark/Dark Dominator. Right now, he's a Dark/Dark Sentinel. Anyhoo, I'll play with it for a bit and see what comes of it. Thanks for the input, everyone.

So, I'm trying to recreate another of my old characters from my youth. The character is loosely based on the Atom or Ant-Man, with a bit of Molecule Man thrown in. In essence, he can make things shrink or grow. My first thought was to make him a Controller or Dominator, with Earth Control powers to represent him enlarging dust particles and debris around a target. However, I've not really found a secondary that I'm finding satisfying. I think I like the idea of him using controls, but I'm just having trouble fitting into the concept. Any thoughts? Should I try a different AT? What power sets? I figure he'll end up getting Stealth (representing him getting so small he can't be seen), but beyond that... I'm undecided. Any thoughts are helpful.

I understand, but sometimes there might be names that just won't fit. For example, another character was using the Traps set, and I wanted to rename the Force Field Generator to something like, Graviton Accelerator... but it wouldn't fit. Sure, I could just name it something else, but sometimes it's nice to have more flavour in the naming.

Hm. Well, I don't think I'll be using it. Got the Adaptation powers, but the effects are these glowing lines and wisps all over the character. Not at all what I wanted for his look. I could just use Invulnerability, but I already have SO many characters with it. I mean, it's effective but I was hoping to try something different.

I actually have another bots character, who is more mechanical. I named his bots numerically in binary... so for example, Unit 1000, Unit 0100, etc.

So... I've agonizing a bit over a character, and thought I'd see if anyone had any ideas that might inspire me. It's going to be tough, because the issue is largely one of concept. The character is called The Black Ghost. He's based on a character from my youth when I made comics. The idea is, he's kind of an ultimate power bad guy. Really, I shouldn't be trying to play him at all, he's not going to be nearly as powerful as he ought to be. He claims to be Satan himself, though it's never confirmed one way or the other. The idea is that he's almost omnipotent, but rarely gets directly involved in things, preferring to manipulate events and people. He presents as a vaguely humanoid column of smoke and shadow, with great long horns coming from where the head would be, and baleful glowing red eyes. He is surrounded by shadow and smoke all the time. In game, I made him using the Spectrum pieces in black, and then gave him the Smoky aura and path aura, in black. Of course, he has no glowing eyes, since the aura is used for smoke. My first thought was to make him a Sentinel, Dark Blast and Dark Armour (which DOES give him access to red eyes via Soul Noir)... but I feel like he should be less... direct? I thought about making him a Dominator or Controller, but then that takes away the Dark Armour, and makes him overly squishy. I thought about trying him as a Tanker, but he's too punchy, and too much in the middle of the action. I thought about making him as a Warshade, but that didn't quite feel right either. I'm just having trouble deciding how to make the character in a way I find satisfying. So, here I am. I know it's a hard thing to suggest something that will work for my concept of the character, when you're not as familiar with the concept, but going from what I've put down here... what do you think? Any ideas?

I have a bots MM with a similar issue. The tier 1 bots are what I called "Dire Pawns" (the character is Lord Dire). I had to put little extras in each name, so each is unique (ie. one is Dire Pawn, the next is Dire-Pawn, the last is Dire.Pawn). It's a bit annoying, but manageable. It's hard to work around insufficient letters though.

A minor issue I've been encountering is that there's not enough space for my pets to have names. For example, if I wanted to name my Commando Mjr. "Dutch" Schaefer, there's just not enough space for all the letters. I'd only get as far as Mjr. "Dutch" Sc before running out of letters. So my suggestion and request is for more letter space for pet names! I can't imagine it would be hard to do.

So... I've been working on fleshing out my Fantastic Four homage characters, and I'm a little stuck on the Thing. My original plan was to give him Stone Armour and Stone Melee, but I find I rather dislike the look of Stone Armour. Sadly, there's no way to completely hide the rock bits on him, so I started considering alternatives. I could just go with Invulnerability, but I've used that set on LOTS of characters, and wanted to try something new, but still thematic. In the comics, Thing's rocks aren't actually ROCKS. They're lumps of hardened muscle and tissue. Indeed, his original look wasn't rocky at all. This led me to consider Bio Armour, but I know very little about it. Based on Mids, it looks like a hybrid Resistance/Defense set with a bit of Regeneration thrown in. My question is, how does it perform? Is there anything I should know about the set to make it work?

Sigh, so many people putting words in my mouth. I never said I wanted to win. In fact, I specifically said I shouldn't win. No one should be defeating AVs on their own. All I said was that AVs and EBs shouldn't be defeating players before the players can do anything. If my character has 800 health and Wretch does 400 damage with Hurl, the fight is over. I can't stay to fight, because his next attack kills me, or I'm already dead, because I'm stunned and knocked down and not able to react to the next attack. To be clear, AVs and EBs should definitely be doing significant damage. It's just TOO significant at present. Well, they're supposed to be... but often aren't, because after one attack, the hero is either running away and there's no battle, or stunned and dead on the next attack. I'll point out again that my Defender defeated by Hopkins had about as much defensively going on as was possible for him. His Defense would have been at the cap, owing to Steamy Mist, Maneuvers, Combat Leaping, Hover, Weave and three purple inspirations, Hurricane would have debuffed Hopkins' Tohit, and his resistance would have been bolstered by Steamy Mist and Tough. He still didn't last 2 seconds. People keep saying there are ways to mitigate the damage, but the evidence of my own eyes says otherwise. People keep calling up old threads, even OLD old threads now, that say some similar things, but rarely the same things. The Defenders Balance thread was about Defender damage relative to other ATs, and had NOTHING to do with AVs or EBs. The State of Invulnerability thread was about Invulnerability's suceptibility to debuffs, compared to defense sets, and had NOTHING to do with AVs or EBs. The Damage Output thread was about Defender damage specifically, but was against an AE enemy, who was using powers NPC enemies don't have (which I didn't know). The Game is Tedious was about Endurance costs, and had nothing to do with AVs or EBs. The Calystix thread was about the AV pets doing excessive damage, which someone pointed out was due to them spawning as if the EB was an AV. You may notice I also did take advice on the matter and did defeat Calystix. However, it was a thread about that one particular EB, who was behaving in an abnormal way. The Lex Luthor thread had nothing at all to do with damage. I expect it's to show that I was using SOs. That's normal when I plan builds, I never plan out the IOs because I don't have any, and am unlikely to be able to get them. They're just too expensive, especially at lower level. When a character gets to L50, THEN I consider the sets. I have none at that level yet. The Mids' plans are about power selections and timing of selections. The slotting is more or less irrelevant. Again, that's not what I said at all. In fact, I said the opposite. I said I shouldn't be soloing AVs. What I did say is the AV shouldn't be taking me out before I have any chance to fight back. Refer again to the Defender that took on Hopkins. The reason I was in his face is because throughout the TF, I had been doing the tanking. Teleporting in with Hurricane running would debuff the accuracy of the enemy, making it possible for me to get their attention and not get killed. Except that Hopkins hit me once and that was all it took. I was PART of a team, but was dead before anyone could do anything. We had a healer, but that was irrelevant because I was dead before anyone could do anything. There were damage dealers, but they were ranged attackers too, and weren't able to debuff enemy accuracy to survive. So... ya. I never said I wanted to solo task forces. I never said I wanted to solo AVs. I think I should be able to solo an EB, though it should be a hard fight. I agree, going by the builds I posted, the slotting is pretty basic. In essence, while leveling, I build as defensively as possible, maxing out my defenses as well as I can with SOs before worrying about increasing damage. Even slotting expressly for durability, it's not enough. But, here I am posting again late at night, reacting to barbs and misrepresentations of things I've said. I shouldn't do it, but that's what the thread seems to be about now. People talking about ME, and not about the subject. As I said before, I'm going to remake the AE mission for testing. Many times, things I've posted about were anecdotal, occurrences in battle, which made it difficult to know just what was going on. Using the AE allows me to control the conditions. The plan now will be to test a representative character of each AT against a representative AV. Sigh, so many people putting words in my mouth. I never said I wanted to win. In fact, I specifically said I shouldn't win. No one should be defeating AVs on their own. All I said was that AVs and EBs shouldn't be defeating players before the players can do anything. If my character has 800 health and Wretch does 400 damage with Hurl, the fight is over. I can't stay to fight, because his next attack kills me, or I'm already dead, because I'm stunned and knocked down and not able to react to the next attack. To be clear, AVs and EBs should definitely be doing significant damage. It's just TOO significant at present. Well, they're supposed to be... but often aren't, because after one attack, the hero is either running away and there's no battle, or stunned and dead on the next attack. I'll point out again that my Defender defeated by Hopkins had about as much defensively going on as was possible for him. His Defense would have been at the cap, owing to Steamy Mist, Maneuvers, Combat Leaping, Hover, Weave and three purple inspirations, Hurricane would have debuffed Hopkins' Tohit, and his resistance would have been bolstered by Steamy Mist and Tough. He still didn't last 2 seconds. People keep saying there are ways to mitigate the damage, but the evidence of my own eyes says otherwise. People keep calling up old threads, even OLD old threads now, that say some similar things, but rarely the same things. The Defenders Balance thread was about Defender damage relative to other ATs, and had NOTHING to do with AVs or EBs. The State of Invulnerability thread was about Invulnerability's suceptibility to debuffs, compared to defense sets, and had NOTHING to do with AVs or EBs. The Damage Output thread was about Defender damage specifically, but was against an AE enemy, who was using powers NPC enemies don't have (which I didn't know). The Game is Tedious was about Endurance costs, and had nothing to do with AVs or EBs. The Calystix thread was about the AV pets doing excessive damage, which someone pointed out was due to them spawning as if the EB was an AV. You may notice I also did take advice on the matter and did defeat Calystix. However, it was a thread about that one particular EB, who was behaving in an abnormal way. The Lex Luthor thread had nothing at all to do with damage. I expect it's to show that I was using SOs. That's normal when I plan builds, I never plan out the IOs because I don't have any, and am unlikely to be able to get them. They're just too expensive, especially at lower level. When a character gets to L50, THEN I consider the sets. I have none at that level yet. The Mids' plans are about power selections and timing of selections. The slotting is more or less irrelevant. Again, that's not what I said at all. In fact, I said the opposite. I said I shouldn't be soloing AVs. What I did say is the AV shouldn't be taking me out before I have any chance to fight back. Refer again to the Defender that took on Hopkins. The reason I was in his face is because throughout the TF, I had been doing the tanking. Teleporting in with Hurricane running would debuff the accuracy of the enemy, making it possible for me to get their attention and not get killed. Except that Hopkins hit me once and that was all it took. I was PART of a team, but was dead before anyone could do anything. We had a healer, but that was irrelevant because I was dead before anyone could do anything. There were damage dealers, but they were ranged attackers too, and weren't able to debuff enemy accuracy to survive. So... ya. I never said I wanted to solo task forces. I never said I wanted to solo AVs. I think I should be able to solo an EB, though it should be a hard fight. I agree, going by the builds I posted, the slotting is pretty basic. In essence, while leveling, I build as defensively as possible, maxing out my defenses as well as I can with SOs before worrying about increasing damage. Even slotting expressly for durability, it's not enough. My ranged characters usually DO stay out of melee range. It makes no difference when the ranged attacks of the enemy do nearly as much damage as the melee attacks. But, I'll be evaluating that in my next series of tests. At the moment the only reference I have was my Controller being splattered by Hurl, which did almost 700 damage. But, that was an AE character and isn't a fair test. As I've mentioned above, the Defender often referred to had as much defense as possible, and it made no difference. But, here I am posting again late at night, reacting to barbs and misrepresentations of things I've said. I shouldn't do it, but that's what the thread seems to be about now. People talking about ME, and not about the subject. As I said before, I'm going to remake the AE mission for testing. Many times, things I've posted about were anecdotal, occurrences in battle, which made it difficult to know just what was going on. Using the AE allows me to control the conditions. The plan now will be to test a representative character of each AT against a representative AV.

In a manner of speaking, yes! This is true, which is the problem here. I say I think there's a problem, someone else says they think there isn't... neither is right because it's a matter of opinion (ie. subjective). Now, I'm not suggesting a massive change. Yes, scrappers and tankers and the like will last longer still, but the damage being done now is such that even scrappers and tankers (lower level tankers, anyway) aren't lasting any longer than the squishies. However, I've not done those tests yet, so I can't say for certain just how much of a difference there is. You're forgetting the character is solo, there are not allies there. As I've mentioned before, buffing resistance is of very limited value. My Defender that Hopkins took out instantly was about as well defended as he could be, and it made no difference. I've also said that the enemies need to remain a threat. That means a threat to sturdier characters as well. There's a balance point there that needs to be found. Strong enough to be a threat to the tough guys, but not so strong that they overwhelm the squishy guys. Again, no one is forcing you to read it. In the end, the character has to attack the enemy, which means the enemy is going to attack HIM. If the character cannot survive being attacked, there's no game to play. But, I've said this before. Anyway, I think I'll leave it be for now, until I've run some tests with different ATs against more normal foes at even level.

As I said, I'm not expecting anyone to solo an AV. What I'm saying is that everyone should be able to put up some kind of fight before they have to either run away or be defeated. Consider this. My Controller fights an AV. Scenario 1, the AV hits my Controller once, does 700 damage, and the Controller runs away because another hit finishes him. Scenario 2, the AV hits the Controller, but does 150 damage. The Controller has another 650 health, so he throws a couple of control powers, maybe a heal, maybe a debuff. The AV hits him a few more times, and finally the Controller runs away before he's finished. Maybe it's me, but I find scenario 2 FAR more fun to play, because I had a chance to DO something. The AV did just as much damage, just not all at once. I don't know, maybe I've not been clear enough. Does this help?