Coyote

For Demons/Pain you want to get all the Resist pet IOs and stack them with the shields that Demons put out plus their base Resists plus your World of Pain, to get them as resistant to damage as possible. Getting Defense in the build for pets is also nice, but not as important. You want World of Pain permanent, and if you can get Painbringer to be permanent, you can throw it on the Demon Prince and have him lead the way into fights as he'll be very durable at that point. Generally, there are 3 popular build types for MMs: 1: Tankermind build. You get Provoke and personal attacks, and build for high personal Defenses and Resists. Your effective HPs are very high due to Bodyguard, and AoE Heals heal your team multiple times, so you funnel the damage into you, but utilize the AoE heal effects to heal the same damage 7 times. Pets should be made durable as some will fight straggles and draw aggro, but in general they're not getting attacked as much so they don't need greatest defenses. 2: Defense build. You start with a pet set that has built-in Defense, and add a secondary that has +Defense buffs. That's Thugs, Beasts, Robots, Ninjas, and you add Cold, Time, or FF. Or go debuff -ToHit, with Dark or Rad. 3: Resist build. Same plan as Defense, but pairing up Resist-based pets with a secondary that buffs Resistance like Sonic, Thermal, or Pain. In 2 or 3, you should try for some personal defenses, but they're not a major build constraint. More common is +Recharge.

That's exactly why they SHOULDN'T be higher... effects like Resistance should be higher because it only stops damage. Defense stops damage, debuffing, and mezzing from the same attack. Right now, though, the equivalent Defense bonuses are higher than the equivalent bonuses of Resistance. Same for Damage... damage buffs from sets are very low compared to other benefits. That's partly because damage is considered very important, but still, it would be interesting if Defense were lowered and Damage were raised so that instead of seeing +30% damage on a build that has a good deal of damage bonuses, we'd see 40-50%. Right now, we see higher numbers than that for Accuracy, and it's also an important offensive stat. It's strange that Recharge is so high, considering how many different things it affects. Almost every click power is boosted with more global recharge (some are so fast in Recharge that you won't really notice a change, but there are very few such powers that are really useful). I sometimes look at the numbers of the set bonuses and just shake my head in bewilderment. A GOOD design would be one where there were a reasonable conversation about building for different types of bonuses... if you could build for significant Mez Resistance, and not so easily for Defense and Recharge, but more for Damage and Controls (like a general +4% to all Mezzes), or maybe +Special. If multiple build paths were competitive with each other. That's why I've commented in this thread, not because I see the difficulty level as too low if you try to find difficulty. I do solo TFs and AVs, I run Night Ward, I can find places to die, lol. Heck, there's one mission in the Night Ward where I got rez-killed dozens of times. It's my designer experience that makes me twitch when I see these set imbalances, and how the fact that they're imbalanced makes min-maxing constraints upon builds, rather than opening up a variety of builds to be competitive.

Numberwise, or general? In general, it triggers if you hit a target with both a "negative" and a "positive" atomic attack within a few seconds of each other. It results in a small burst of extra damage, a -ToHit and a -Dam debuff on the target. I recall that the damage was noticeable but not excessive, and I never saw what the debuff was since I would have had to be running the Power Analyzer to check on the debuff values.

LOL.So sue..fire... uh, hire me. 😛 Well, my problem isn't with difficulty as much as with the imbalance between set bonuses... that people make builds for +Recharge and for +Defense, but almost never for +anything else, just what they pick up on the way (like +Accuracy). I see that as a design error, to make two kinds of bonuses that are desirable because of how high they are, and the others generally are not. But, to go onto the track of "how to make more challenging enemies", we have several design constraints: 1: as the size of a player team increases, the strength increases better than linearly, because you get more HPs and more damage, but also more buffs. So the NPCs should similarly increase with more buffs and debuffs. 2: IMO, the debuffs given to mobs are overpowered because PCs lose debuff values to level difference while mobs gain them, because mobs are almost always higher level. Especially if we're talking about challenging difficulty levels. So, I'd rather put in a good amount of buffing NPCs, or auto-hit debuffs like Quicksand... but not at the same level of Quicksand. For example, a minion throwing out Freezing Rain is fine, but not like the Cloud of Ice from the Spells, who puts it out at PC levels. So, more debuffs, with bosses getting about the same level of debuffs as PCs or maybe 3/4, but LTs at 1/2 debuff level, and minions at about 1/3 or 1/4. Same for buffs. 3: Another interesting type of power are the non-targetable pet powers. The reason is that they can't be affected... a mob throws out Tornado, you can't mez it, you can't Taunt it, though you can use movement to get away from it. Powers like that, by avoiding being shut down either through mez damage or debuff, would be interesting to see. As long as they're not too common, as we don't want to marginalize debuff/control-oriented PCs. In general, I think that almost all LTs should have some kind of Tactics or Maneuvers. I mean, that's their point of why they're a higher rank, they lead others in battle. So they help coordinate. In some cases, like Warwolves there isn't much coordination and they're more like bigger dudes, but in a lot of cases there are reasons why they would be helping to coordinate a spawn's fighting ability. Many of those who don't lead could have debuff abilities, especially if they're coupled with self-buffing of ToHit so they have a chance to hit high-Defense characters, or auto-hit. Again, like above, not at the crippling levels that PC debuffs are... nobody wants to see 2 LTs putting out Freezing Rain. Maybe Ice Cold Shower (hehe) with -10% values on debuffs.

I don't think so. Luminara wrote a lot of posts. Someone didn't understand what she meant, and asked for clarification. Instead of giving clarification or at least an exact pointer to a post saying "this says exactly what I meant", she said "go back and reread it, obviously you missed something". But since communication depends both on the person communicating and the person receiving the information, it is arrogant to assume that you clearly stated everything that you said, and that any time someone isn't sure that they understood what you meant, it is that other person's fault. It is always polite to clarify when asked, and it is usually rude to say "reread it" unless someone has reached the point where they're being a pest with not making an effort to understand before repeatedly asking for clarifications. So, sometimes short answers are fine, and sometimes they're rude. "Go back and reread the thread" is usually one of the more rude options. It certainly wasn't "here is your answer", which would be fine.. it was "you missed the answer? go back and reread it".

It's a copout to say that a statement cannot be rude if it doesn't include rude words. Or the rare rude syllables, heh. A unnecessarily curt answer to a polite question is often rude. In this case, it certainly struck me as rude when I first read it. Politeness is not merely not cursing.

You're not getting wolf clowns. Chihuahua clowns, maybe. Not wolves. Or pugs. Because all PUGs could use more pugs.

Was. Rude.

Bots really benefit from the Force of Will pool. It helps with single-target debuffing and damage to finish off the Bosses, which otherwise take a really, very, seriously long time to finish off with underpowered "pew pew" laser blasts that could safely be used in a game of Laser Tag as long as your kids wear eye protection.

Well, if that's all the mechanism that is in place, I don't much like it, for the following reason: I would like to see a way to flag some mobs of the same type as "only for difficulty level X or higher". But NOT depend on the standard Lt/Boss/Elite Boss/AV upgrade, because you have missions where you're fighting a Boss in some spawn in any case, because you have an end boss, or some objective guarded by the boss, etc. So now these missions either put in these nasty "tough love" Bosses... or are set to Lts only and have no difficulty. In addition, the point is to be able to put in "difficult LTs" and "difficult Bosses" as opposed to "standard LTs" and such, in order to upgrade some factions... but without having to block off Bosses completely from other characters. In other words, someone may not want to face the new Boss-level Sky Raider who buffs the guys around him, because it's a hard-style mob. But if you drop your difficulty, then you don't even face the more normal Assault Bot Bosses, who are a reasonable difficulty level for someone not looking for high difficulty. So, if we add in these upgrade NPCs to factions in order to boost the weak ones... there should be a way to keep them out of "easy mode" missions without having to completely block even the easy-mode Bosses from the missions. And it also limits the problem mobs to being Bosses since you'll face LTs at any level, but doing that will limit how often they appear. No, if we have to depend on creating them as Bosses in order to have difficulty control over whether they appear or not, I don't think the difficulty level will be practical for sectioning them off into the "hard style" missions.

Soul is a good choice. Soul Drain works better if you're generally playing in melee. Obliteration works both at range and in melee so it will fit into a melee-oriented playstyle. Dark Consumption is eminently skippable. 6 minute base recharge makes it really not worth slotting, but without slotting it will be up too rarely to even remember using it. Skipping cones is definitely part of playing melee-centric. In fact, /Dark is the only set mentioned that uses a cone, and skipping it is why I said that /Dark has only one AoE. Well, actually, so does /Thorns, but I didn't mention that. Although, the cone from Thorns is the best for a melee-oriented Dom, since it's short-ranged with a wide angle (30'range, 90-degree cone), so you don't have to back up far to use it. Or jump up with Combat Jumping and fling downwards (though that only works outside or in a room with a tall ceiling.).

IF it is possible to code it so that certain types of mobs spawn only at +1, or +2, or some other type of setting, it would work. I don't know if you code it, though, that Sappers are only at +1 or higher. But if it's possible, it would work... and would be an incentive to raise the difficulty, to see mobs that otherwise you wouldn't see.

Isn't this a bit self-contradictory? THOSE people who already don't have any defense to speak of... they aren't going to be affected, because they have no defenses to nerf. Now, when you give mobs a buff, THEN those people are going to be hurting. But if we say "lower the Defense set bonuses from IO sets", then those players who don't even understand the invention system and couldn't put together a IO set build if it would save their characters lives... aren't going to be affected in the slightest bit.

It should be fine. Not the best option, because if you're going PBAoE, you have better options. But it's not bad, either. /Dark has a good PBAoE that helps keep you safe, but... /Earth has 3 AoEs usable in melee range. They do a much better job in keeping you safe because they will regularly knock mobs down. I use Ele/Earth and between Fissure, Tremor, and Jolting Chain, mobs are bouncing up and down all the time. Definitely better mitigation than the -ToHit, and you can put the +Recharge IO in all three attacks, also. /Martial does about the same thing... it has a PBAoE and a melee cone, which is less than /Earth but with faster animations and better knockdown chances. Instead of Mud Pots for extra AoE damage, it has Trick Shot... Mud Pots are better up close, but Trick Shot can be used at range. /Thorns has a PBAoE and a melee cone like /Martial, and Caltrops for more AoE damage. It only gets knockdown from the melee cone, so while the damage is good the mitigation isn't as good as /Earth or /Martial /Energy has only one PBAoE like /Dark, but if you use Total Focus before it, it does almost double normal PBAoE damage, so it's really equivalent to having two PBAoEs. Mitigation is weak, though, with just a minor chance to Stun. Although, you can put two different "chance to stun" procs plus the Fiery Orb proc in the AoE Immob, so you can have a lot of different "chance to stun" effects that can add up to a lot of Stunning. And you can add another one in Jolting Chain also (as well as a Hold proc), if you want to go that way. All in all, Electric works quite well in melee range, and it provides a lot of defense between an AoE Confuse plus all the End Drain. For the secondary, I would look more at which does more damage when in melee range rather than the defensive aspects, so I would go with one of the other options unless the theme just requires /Dark.

lol, I completely missed that. Yeah, rereading it, it does make a lot more sense when it's read facetiously. A bit of those effects might be cool. As they are, you said it exactly... a Blind spell used upon the player. Heck, just shut off my monitor for me, why don't you do that? New enemy faction: the MetaMobs Minions shake your screen, introduce screen glitches, and make random sounds come out of the speaker. Also, have an annoying blast that they spam which does about 50 damage, but puts an illusion on your HP bar to make it seem like you're down to 10% Health. Lieutenants do the same illusion to your Endurance bar and your toggles, making you think they're shut off when they're still running. And they shut off your monitor for two seconds if they hit... with a PBAoE attack with a 30' radius. Bosses throw out three attacks per second, only one of which is real. And they have a single target attack which breaks your internet connection. 😛

Agreed. I mainly play Doms and Controllers, and having no idea who is Held, who is Confused, Stunned, etc, is just a nightmare. I throw out random controls in random directions and hope I'm not Holding the spell that I just Stunned, who I should have left alone because it's actually Confused and wants to heal me 😄

I do have one BIG problem with the issue of "let's buff content instead of nerfing characters". Yes, it makes players happy. No worries about "You're insulting me by trying to break my character" "Quit nerfherding and just play your character" "My character is broken, I'm quitting" etc. But you know what? When you target nerfs to top-end builds, you can make precise changes. Not with 100% accuracy, granted, since you're making assumptions about how players will respond with redesigning characters, but you do have a great degree of control. When, instead, you do what people LIKE TO SEE, which is add more mobs to weak factions... like someone with Link Minds to Carnies (and, boy, is that ever so fitting)... well, you achieve your goal in making things more challenging for top-end capped Defense builds. You also make things harder for weak builds. Granted, not by as much... mobs going from 5% to 15% chance to hit is a lot bigger change than going from 30 to 35%. But you're still affecting the low and mid-level builds also. This is really why I prefer nerfs, as a game designer... although I understand that, politically speaking, in a MMO it's always easier to stealth buff the characters by buffing the mobs, than to overtly nerf characters even if only 2% of the characters would be affected. You just have more control over who gets hit when you swing a nerf bat, than when you buff the mobs and send them out to kill people... you might have hapless noobs get curb-stomped by the Awakened. I mean, can you imagine sending a novice player without a very strong build at +1/x4 against Awakened? God help them.

Yeah, I missed clarifying that... I meant, all factions that you fight at 40+, maybe a bit in the 30s but not much (frankly, the Night Ward factions should be 40+ content as they're overboosted for the 30s). Certainly there's no need to boost up Vahzilok or Skulls, it's not like you can overtune a character at level 15.

1: people load up FLASH Arrow with procs? Sure you're not thinking Glue Arrow? That's where I'd put slots. 2: biggest bang for your buck if you want to improve Defense AND Resists is to get the Fighting Pool. Stacking Tough with Fire Shield will give you excellent Resists, Weave will probably put you to the soft-cap (depending on what you drop to get those 3 powers), and Weave can carry a LotG. Also, a general build hint: you spend one slot either way to put Reactive Defenses into a Defense power... always put those slots into earlier and cheaper powers rather than waiting for late levels and a Defense power with high End cost. Move it earlier to Combat Jumping. Same goes for all of the Defense uniques and for Gladiator's Armor. Steadfast Protection DOES give +Resist, so that one should be slotted where you actually have use for the +Resist enhancing. Same goes for the Health uniques, but Health is actually the best place for them since it's auto and you start with it.

The problem is that many new factions ARE dangerous to soft-capped characters. Fight Awakened and you can die so fast you won't even know what happened. The Resistance have missions where every single mob has Targeting Drone (+18 ToHit... and I think maybe +Perception, too). They can shred defense-based characters. But how do you balance older factions, then? Do we add Lts with Link Minds to the Carnies (probably not a bad idea)? I mean, IF the devs wanted to take this route, it would probably work as long as they are willing to go through almost all factions and balance them out. We cry about "underperforming sets", but I recall when Carnies were considered dangerous and got an XP boost to the rewards they gave out, because everyone avoided them. Now, with no +ToHit and no or almost no -Def attacks, they're considered easy meat. They, and everyone else probably starting in the 30s, would need a balance pass. And they deserve it, frankly... they're left further behind than Energy Melee.

I usually use set IOs in the pets that include End Reduction, since many tiers will drain their own Endurance. So this also helps with summons costs. And I shut off toggles like Maneuvers if I'm going to do a full summons at the start of a mission or in such situations. So I can't recall seeing any of my MMs drop their End bar like that with a full set of summons. Actually, the Demons and the Robots end up full or nearly full after doing everything. That's because Demons summons are so darn slow, and because the Robots follows up with the EA buffs that include a +Endurance at the end. But, for whatever reasons, I don't crash the bar like that on a full summons set. Also, "balanced around SO-level enhancements" DOES mean Endurance problems for almost everybody. I can tell you, my Stalker, who DOES use sets, and Panacea, and Numina, etc... had to take breaks every few fights well into the 30s. That's with using sets and special IOs. If I didn't use those, I can definitely see the problems continuing into the 40s, or else having to slot a lot of End Reduction into the attacks. "Balanced around SOs" doesn't mean "no endurance problems when fully slotted out with SOs", because characters were originally intended to HAVE endurance problems. I can recall how happy teams were to see Empathy and Kinetics sets, and it wasn't so much for the Defense or +Recharge (granted, Fulcrum Shift...). It was mostly for the "Yay, now I have no Endurance problems for a while". This WAS life on SOs for everyone, not only MMs.

I don't know if it's because of the secondaries that I've been using, but as I said, I have not noticed real problems with my MMs being worse off than other ATs. It's not because they can do the same things as other ATs... if they could, they would be broken. I mean, you can't throw out two AoE attacks at the start of every fight, then have a full attack chain. If you could, it would be too much both in damage and for the Endurance bar. The reason why they feel fine is exactly that, even if you take and use your attacks, you don't have a full attack chain to use. Necro can have a full single-target chain, but without AoEs it doesn't run through Endurance as badly as a Blaster mixing AoEs and single target. Plus, hehe, Theft of Essence solves its Endurance issues. Demons and Beasts are likely to use their attacks a lot, but have to pause in their single-target attack cycle, and have only one AoE instead of the usual 2-3 that real blast classes have. It's not that they can throw out the same powers and have the same drain from usage, it's that they don't end up throwing out as many attacks. With the busy secondaries, Kinetics solves its own problems at the end, and my NinKin is so far fine (but he mixes Provoke into the cycle, which has no End drain, and he uses melee attacks, where you usually end up with a bit of a gap as you run to the target or maneuver to set up Cross Punch). EA solves its End problems early. So that leaves us, IMO, with TA... and I haven't run one of those yet to see how its End issues are. Basically, it's the limited attack cycle that prevents MMs from really bottoming out their Endurance early, and Endurance issues can largely be solved by the 40s if not the 30s.

I run some kind of attacks on all of my MMs, with the only one that has almost no attacks being Bots/EA (because EA is so busy). But I don't have much End problems, frankly. I don't mean that I can't blow down the Endurance bar, but... if you're constantly attacking while running toggle debuffs or buffs, you probably SHOULD have End problems at level 28, for example. I think my Ele/Shield Stalker had worse problems than any of the MMs. Even Necro/Rad doesn't have a problem running the Rad toggles and spamming attacks, as long as AM is up. The thing is this: you have to use sets relatively early to get both some minor +Recovery bonuses, and some End Reduction in there, or if you just use IOs then you need to put some End Red IOs somewhere. Not necessarily every power needs End Reduction, but you do need to stick some in there. And you do need to put some slots into Stamina, and get Panacea (and probably Numina) when they become level available. This does mean needing a higher alt to toss down some millions at character start. With that, you can still run dry, and have some bad levels where you just picked up some costly power and haven't slotted it yet. But overall, you should be more okay than not, and no worse than many other ATs. Not everyone gets a Sustain power or Quick Recovery. My worst AT for End problems when soloing feels like it's Controllers, which makes sense since they do the lowest DPE. MMs may do the lowest DPE with their personal attacks, but they're free to NOT run them constantly. Throw them at the beginning of fights where you have to lower the enemy numbers fast to lower incoming damage, but let the pets finish off the stragglers so your end bar recovers for the next fight. Running a full-speed combat sprint through the entire map will drain you, but it will do that to almost any other AT if the powerset doesn't have good End management powers.

I just found out that it's possible to turn off the screen shake effect. Before that, OMG, I cried when I fought those NPC, or had Pendragon on my team. Because facing difficulty in a game because of bloody special graphic effects that are intended to be fun, is like poking yourself in the eye with a stick... for fun. I actually could see a VERY LIMITED version of them being interesting. But right now they really are so annoying. Heh, and I remember when I said that my Earth/Storm melted graphic cards. How naive was I at that time, hehe.

No worries. I thought the argument itself that I spoke against was a fallacy, but I never took it personally, and you rephrased it much better and I respect that you took the trouble to clarify it and to offer politeness. Also, I know I didn't explain my point of view well... you see, I think that Defense bonuses should be lowered... but I am not really sure if actually doing it is the right thing. You see, I've been a game designer, even a very similar situation to this one: main admin for a UO shard. And I've seen how changes that are demonstrably better and more balanced, don't necessarily make the game better, because players are frustrated when too many things are changed. So I'm arguing for what would be a better system, but not necessarily that it SHOULD be implemented if the net gain is a 10% increase in balance... and 30% increase in player frustration. And that kind of discussion can't really be made theoretically. There is a big difference between saying "defense is too high", and "change the game too much and frustrate everyone with all the changes and respecs that they have to done". One is theoretical, and one is practical, and if we were ever at a situation where this discussion was more than theoretical, I would be a lot less decisive in saying "Yeah, let's do it!". This started off as a theoretical "is defense too high" discussion, and that's how I'm treating it. It's nowhere near realistic, so I don't really have to worry too much about player opinion. Just about numbers and game balance. It's a lot simpler scenario in which to offer my opinion.