Maelwys

I tend to list Purple and PvP recipes and Rare salvage on the AH (for 1 inf) and there are a few other recipes that qualify such as LoTGs and Uniques/Procs - everything else gets NPC vendored. Very occasionally I'll bother to craft a recipe before listing it. However whilst I'm definitely SELLING low, I also BUY low - when I'm purpling and +5ing out an endgame build, I'll hardly ever go with "buy it now!" prices unless that build is very nearly already at my goal. As for financing? Sure, some of it comes in the form of raw inf via defeats... but with the sheer number of drops you get from farming, even selling stuff to the lowest bidder on the AH can generate a decent steady income stream. Occasionally I'll visit Luna to turn spare Incarnate salvage into in-demand inspirations and sell those for peanuts too. Given the above it's probably obvious that I don't consider myself a "marketeer" on HC. I used to actually play the market on live for influence, before discovering AFK PVP insp farming and making more billions than I knew what to do with. These days on HC as long as my liquid assets can always fund at least two new fully-twinked-out level 50s I tend not to worry - and before each new toon gets its incarnates fully T4ed they'll almost always have re-earned any influence spent on them back again.

I'm headcanoning that he Leeroyed into the middle of the last group of Orcs and faceplanted right as he tried to queue up an Inferno. Then Aragorn (who obviously goaded him into it and planned all this) takes the opportunity to cast Power Boost + Vengeance on his corpse - pictured above - right before the silly ol' Coffin DodgerTodger remembers to pop Rise of the Phoenix... Give it a few mins and there'll be another "PUG horror story" thread on the forums about it. (we love ya Snarks!) 😉

There are any amount of threads along the lines of "how do you slot up a character?" and/or "how do you slot power xyz?". Buying specific attuned "IOs with special effects" off the Auction House is comparatively inexpensive and ramps up the playability of a toon drastically. Personally I'll always slot attuned versions of the important procs/globals ASAP; particularly Panacea/Miracle/Celerity, plus a KB Protection for non-melee toons. As to how to afford them... Have you perchance gotten any 'Prismatic Aether Salvage' and/or 'Reward Merits' across your many sub-level-50 characters? The former are a random drop after any door mission; and can be sold directly on the AH for millions apiece. The latter are a guaranteed reward after completing story arcs (and collecting exploration badges, killing GMs, etc, etc.) and can be converted at the Merit ATMs into Enhancement Boosters or Enhancement Convertors, and THEN sold on the AH for very good money. Either are a good source of income for anyone below level 50. Running through the Freaklympics story arc in Ouroboros at minimal difficulty settings takes less than 30mins (only one of its eight missions is a "defeat all") and gives 57 Merits; so you should always be able to get a minimum of ~10million inf per hour as long as you're circa level 30ish; without any need to "farm AE missions" or "play the market".

OK. Why do you think your Defender didn't "last two seconds" fighting Hopkins? Hurricane is a -ToHit debuff. It inflicts 37.5% Base ToHit as a Defender. Hopkins as an AV will have 85% resistance to ToHit Debuffs; before the Purple Patch scaling further reduces it. If Hopkins was +4 to you, Hurricane would have only been inflicting 37.5%*0.48*0.15 = 2.7% -ToHit to him (base, before enhancements) So tagging them with Hurricane is effectively pointless. Steamy Mist + Manuevers + Combat Jumping + Hover + Weave combined on a defender grant roughly 5+3.5+2.5+2.5+5 = 18.5% Defense (base, before enhancements) Three small purple inspirations will be granting an additional 12.5*3=37.5% Defense 18.5+37.5 = 56%, well beyond the Defense softcap even without slotting. So your high Defense will be giving you good mitigation, but leaves you open to a string of "unlucky" hits. Steamy Mist + Tough grants 20% to Fire/Cold/Energy resistance, and 15% to Smashing/Lethal resistance on a Defender (base, before enhancements) Three-slotted with +Resist SOs that'll rise to around 1.6*20=32% Fire/Cold/Energy and 16.*15=24% to Smashing/Lethal. So your Damage Resistance will be at best reducing Hopkins's major source form of damage output (energy damage) by ~32%. - - - - - - - - - - - "Bonesmasher" on an even-level Lv50 Hopkins AV inflicts 1434 points of energy damage (>2064 points if he's +4 to you) So assuming a Level 50 Defender got hit with it (a very low chance if you're at the defence softcap as detailed above) then it should be doing a minimum of 1434*.68=975 HP of damage to them (even-level at level 50). Base Defender MaxHP at level 50 is 1017.4HP... so yes. It'd be quite possible to get two-shot by this plus any other attack that happens to land on you. However if the same Defender was at the RESISTANCE hardcap (by popping +Res Inspirations or activating powers like Rune of Protection) then it'd only deal 1434*.25=358.5 HP of damage to them and be far more survivable... even without stuff like additional +MaxHP (Accolades and Set Bonuses and Unbreakable Guard unique IO) and +Absorb (Preventive Medicine unique IO) factoring in. ...and of course, had the same Defender simply stayed out of melee range of the AV (easy enough with Hover running on an outdoor map, or with sufficient levels of unsuppressed runspeed/jumpspeed/flyspeed and/or intelligent use of geometry for cover on an indoor map) then being hit by Bonesmasher would not even be a possibility in the first place. In short - people aren't being snarky at you because you're trying to survive an AV's attacks for a while on a Defender. People are getting snarky at you because you're trying to survive an AV's attacks for a while on a Defender whilst remaining within melee range (where most damaging attacks can hit you) and without using all the tools at your disposal (additional survivability buffs and +Resistance and +Breakfree Insps, temporary powers, summonable pets, etc) and without outside assistance (as AVs are not fundamentally designed to be something that you can withstand, let alone beat, when soloing on a "squishy" AT). None of the above should be new information to you, as many folks have offered their assistance previously... but it at least directly highlights the shortcomings with this particular approach to "facetanking hopkins" - even if you're at the defence cap, without putting more effort into mitigation then if AV Hopkins gets lucky you can and will get two-shot.

INV has a good chunk of Typed Defense (Smashing/Lethal/Fire/Cold/etc. rather than Positional Defenses like Melee/Ranged/AoE) which can be brought up to Softcap territory and beyond via IOs. It also has some Defence Debuff Resistance (DDR) - meaning that getting hit by attacks that contain Defence Debuffs is less likely to cause a cascade effect of more and more attacks hitting you - and when surrounded by enemies you also get more raw +defense via Invincibility... so it's very unlikely for an INV to begin melting more quickly than you'd expect when it comes under heavy fire. The Damage Resistance it grants is skewed heavily towards Smashing/Lethal; but that's not a bad thing as a lot of attacks in the game have a substantial Smashing or Lethal component - and you can easily hit the resistance hardcap by IO set bonuses and/or taking "Tough" On top of that, an endgame INV can sit at the Maximum HP Cap permanently due to Dull Pain's duration lasting for longer than its recharge time (with decent slotting, after Hasten and/or plenty of +Global Recharge bonuses) - the big spike heal can also be handy to keep in reserve for after a big "alpha strike". Any additional self-healing (via Primaries such as Dark Melee and the likes of the Panacea Proc) or Regeneration (via Slotting and IOs) are gravy. Willpower gets Typed Defence; but very little to Smashing/Lethal. Its got a little DDR but not a wonderful amount. It has similar levels of Damage Resistance to INV weighted a bit in favour of Psychic (which is occasionally handy) but still needs assistance from IOs and/or Tough to hit the hardcap. It has a lot of Regeneration that scales up when surrounded by enemies, but it's much more common for a WP to experience cascading defense failure and melt when surrounded by tough foes than an INV. And WHEN it starts struggling... it's got no emergency button to help save it - no Dull Pain - so no big Spike Heal; and lower maximum HP compared to an INV. Both are good versus most content, but INV's performance ceiling versus very tough foes is MUCH higher than WP's. The benefit of WP is... it works without heavy investment. Running without IOs and/or at low levels its +Regen and +Recovery will keep you ticking over and at "maximum" unless you're fighting lots of tough foes.

A) It takes roughly 5 minutes to set up; assuming you're copying/pasting an already-defined set of keybind files and slightly tweaking them. B) 99% of the time I don't bother with fine-grained control; beyond using the numpad keys for "targeting" individual henchmen quickly in order to heal/buff them. I've covered this before, but my typical keys to hammer during missions are simply: B "petcom_all defensive follow" [Bodyguard mode] G "petcom_all aggressive" [aGgressive] H "petcom_all passive follow" [Heel] and usually also a Variable key which sets most pets to Bodyguard mode and leaves one alone (to instantly give me some survivability but let one pet continue to attack etc) e.g. V "petcom_pow 'Battle Drones'follow defensive$$petcom_pow 'Protector Bots' follow defensive" PowerTray #1 is set to "Attack this target" ("petcom_all attack" mostly, sometimes altered so just one pet attacks) and PowerTray #2 is set to "Go here" ("petcom_all goto"). On most maps I can enter a mission, press G then V and then amble around instructing my little engines of destruction to "go here" quite a lot. Don't switch modes too often unless you need to - shifting from Passive into Defensive or Aggressive will reduce your kill speed as pets take about 5-10 seconds to reacquire targets before they'll start shooting again. An important thing to have though is a method of quickly resetting your pet AI whenever they're misbehaving - especially on teams. Setting pets to PASSIVE FOLLOW then immediately to DEFENSIVE FOLLOW (tapping H then B in my above examples) will clear their aggro list and force them to instantly start running back towards you... however if you just spam DEFENSIVE FOLLOW or DEFENSIVE GOTO then they will very likely just keep trying to chase whatever is currently shooting at them.

IMO it's really the same deal as most MMs: Alpha = Musculature Core. The ED-ignoring Damage Boost is always worth it. Destiny = Barrier (you shouldn't need Clarion - you already have Mez Protection and none of your your Defence buffs are powerboostable). Ageless Radial can sometimes be useful to weather Defence debuffs and grant a little more Endurance/Recharge; but the latter shouldn't really be needed with a properly tricked out build. Hybrid = Support Core or Assault Radial (Support is guaranteed to affect your pets without any activation time juggling; and is probably more useful against anything other than a pylon) Lore = either Talons or Arachnos Radial Superior Ally (Talons are consistently good throughout their duration; Arachnos gives a major survivability spike for 90s once per summoning via "Mind Link" Judgement = not particularly vital, but personally I like Void Radial's damage debuff. Interface = either Reactive Radial Flawless or Degenerative Radial Flawless.

I prefer to be an ass. (There's a campaign speech in there somewhere; surely...)

Darkness! (It might be "Controller only", but it's consistently touted as one of the best all-round defensive sets... think Dark Miasma but with the cracks filled in) Other than that, my vote would be to go Marine. A Marine/Dark Defender would be better only if you REALLY care about pushing you teammate's effective Defense as high as possible... and other than that go for a Corruptor (any primary works really; but Ice, Fire and Elec are the typical gotos) for maximum damage. The reasoning here is that IIRC the Absorb and Recharge buffs are the same values on a Corruptor and a Defender; so the main draw from going Defender are the slightly higher Defense and Damage buffs. Electrical Affinity is OK... but I find it underwhelming and annoyingly slow if you've played the likes of Thermal (for example) before.

1. It used to be that Medicine pool was essentially required... but between the revamped "Serum" from Mercs (which can resistance cap your pets) and /FF's ability to get everything comfortably past the Incarnate Defence Softcap; you're not going to need that much healing. Realistically Mercs' medic should suffice - you could choose to grab the Sorcery Pool for "Spirit Ward" to help keep them alive if you find you need it. 2. It's very useful for certain primaries - my Bots MMs in particular feel gimped without it. Mercs have a good lot of Ranged attacks as well and so should also benefit; but it's not outright required. In my experience Robotic pets are equally likely to get caught on indoor geometry with or without Group Fly toggled on... often repeatedly toggling it off and on will "free them up" but occasionally they'll need dismissed and resummoned (or manually teleported back to you). 3. Maneuvers is probably skippable in a /FF build, but it's still a great spot for a LOTG +7.5% Recharge. Assault is very worthwhile, as is Tactics (for the ToHit debuff protection as well as directly counteracting the T1 and T2 pet Purple Patch level scaling issue!) 4. Besides Damage? Typically (assuming that your keybinds are already good!) the main goal is Pet Survivability. Getting the pets to the "regular content" Defence Softcap is important, then get their Resistance as high as possible. Both are easy with Mercs/FF as long as you have Serum on a low enough recharge - you may not even need Power Boost. Then have a source of "spike survivability" available (like Barrier Destiny, Support Hybrid, Arachnos Radial Lore pets, etc.) for whenever you encounter heavy debuffs or particularly troublesome enemies, and always keep your Inspiration tray loaded up with Team Defence + Healing + Break Frees) Incarnates for MMs is also something worth considering carefully - Barrier Core Epiphany essentially grants another +5% constantly (spiking much higher on first activation) but Radial Clarion is souped-up power boost every 120s. Support Core Embodiment grants another 12% whilst it's up (your pets *can* technically gain the benefits of Assault Hybrid, but it takes a lot of fiddling with the order in which you activate it and summon your pets - I typically don't bother!). You can also pick something like Arachnos Lore for spike survivability (via Mind Link for 90 seconds once per summoning) or Talons Lore for sustained survivability (via Soothing Song) if needed. - - - - - - - - - - Last time I rejiggled my Mercs/FF builds (March '24) I came up with these, in case it's any help: zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Hasten).mbd zMastermind - Mercs - FF (Spirit Ward).mbd Rough Pet Defense Numbers: 11.87% from Dispersion Bubble +10% from the two +5% Pet Aura IOs +17.61% from Deflection/Insulation Shield = 39.48% Defence to all With Power Boost (+24.99% from Deflection/Insulation Shield) = 46.86% Defence to all With Power Boost and Radial Clarion (+33.99% from Deflection/Insulation Shield) = 55.86% Defence to all (having Radial Clarion available can be useful for getting non-henchmen teammates to the softcap; since the Pet Aura IOs won't apply to them!) 🙂 Serum is hardcapping most Pet Resistances for its duration (better uptime with the Hasten build, obviously!) Spirit Ward is granting a ~43 HP buffer to one pet (typically Medic) every 2 seconds which stacks up to ten times.

😉

Looks like Fortification is also rather woefully underslotted; especially since you're taking Tough/Weave? You're currently sitting on ~26%; but it's rather straightforward to push >65% resistance to S/L on a Crabbermind without overly impacting your recharge/damage buffs. Hitpoints look rather low too, but I suspect you've not got the accolades toggled. You should be well north of 2k MaxHP, not hovering in/around 1.8k... RE Knockback protection, a single Steadfast IO in the Lv1 Armor Passive (-4 KB) and/or 3 pieces of Gladiator's Armor in Fortitude (-3 KB) will suffice; but both are better. I'll also echo what 2$Bill said about overreliance on ranged defence - personally I tend towards a Melee/Ranged Spread (as my Crabber mostly acts as the "tank" to let their summons survive for longer) but Ranged/AoE is fine if you're always staying back. I've found the sweet spot is *either* ~45% Melee/Ranged (if taking Mace Epic for Shatter Armor) or ~39% Melee/Ranged (if taking Soul Mastery and spamming Dark Obliteration)... and going for Soul has the additional benefit of further reducing the chance of enemies hitting your poor pets. The Widow from Soul Mastery is Melee focused, but can also hit softcap to all positionals with your double-maneuvers plus the two +Def pet aura IOs. All other pets will cap out in/around the 31% defence mark before -ToHit debuffs and Incarnates. Using an Overwhelming Force: Chance for KD in Spiderlings can help keep your followers alive for a little bit longer - and once you get access to Incarnates you can increase their survivability a lot further via Barrier Destiny, Support Hybrid and either Lore Talons or Arachnos Radial Superior Ally (Talons are consistently good throughout their duration; Arachnos gives a major survivability spike for 90s once per summoning via "Mind Link"). zArachnos Crab Spider (Aim + Assault + Weave).mbd zArachnos Crab Spider (Assault + Tactics + Weave).mbd Arachnos Crab Spider (Soul).mbd

(Flashbacks to live before the "EB downgrade" option was available and my Sonic/Elec Defender's answer to coming across a surprise AV was just to summon a Shivan Decimator and slap them with a set of Warburg Nukes...)

CotM's aura buffs pet AOE defence, which is useful... but it's quite possible to hit the softcap to all positions (eg Melee, Ranged and AOE) without using it. Plus, since enhancement slots in pet powers are limited often it can come down to a choice between using it or a "better" option (damage procs etc). Personally, I dislike it but it still has a place in many people's builds. The real aura IO to avoid like the plague is Commanding Presence: Taunt/Placate Resist. Regarding other ATOs? Sentinel and Brute have a few real Stinkers; but the rest range from "worthwhile" (Controller) to "utterly game changing" (Stalker)

Clue: it's (thankfully) got absolutely nothing to do with a certain ex-president. In short, it's a deck of playing cards with various statistics listed upon each card. They get dealt out, and players takes it in turns to choose a stat on their current card and declare it. A larger stat on your card beats a smaller stat on your opponent's card. Wikipedia has a decent entry on the phenomenon. Personally I became aware of them circa 35 years ago with these:

Perhaps the stated topic is a ruse and this is really a test of the Forum's anti-one-shot code/streak breaker...?

That extra Ice Mistral is a Lv50+5 Acc/Dam/End and is pushing the power's accuracy up considerably. Remember damage procs require a ToHit check in any autohit powers/pseudopets and due to rather convoluted coding, Sleep Grenade's lingering Slow and Sleep effects don't inherit Accuracy Set Bonuses or refreshing buffs like Tactics, so you need to ensure that it can hit reliably with just the inherent slotting. Personally I ended up swapping out the ATO for a Javelin Volley proc; but with 5 regular damage procs it's rare that at least two of them don't fire off. And I've seen all five trigger on activation lots of times (with a few more triggers occurring after 10 and 20 secs whenever the slow set procs get additional activation chances!). Like most AoEs though you really want to be using it against the maximum number of targets for full effectiveness...

> It was more or less impossible to do a TF without a tank and healer. > Auras are often not sufficient to hold aggro. i.e. the main power of the tank is the taunt.

"French Fries" = "Skinny Chips" These are the pathetic strawlike strangled slivers of potato that you get shovelled towards you by Fast-Food drive-through attendants. (usually crying out for some proper condiments) REAL "chips" are thick cut, golden, and delicious. These range from the upmarket "triple cooked" sort that you get in restaurants (a bit like really good 'duck fat' roast potatoes: dry and lightly crunchy on the outside; yieldingly soft and fluffy on the inside) to more traditional fare (Deep Fried, just once, see below for examples!) The latter can be DIVINE if they've been cooked with sufficient levels of skill and they're reasonably fresh rather than reheated. Any UK resident worth their Salt (and Vinegar) has a favourite "chippy" (Traditional Chip Shop) - but in general the closer you get to a seaside fishing village the better they are. There are a few in particular here in Northern Ireland that I will happily drive many, many miles out of my way to visit; such as "Mortons" in Ballycastle.

My three year old calls those "Triangle Crackers" (I call them "Dammit looks like we're out of proper crisps again")

Aside from all the fun globals/procs, I tend to use Eradication (Lv30 cap PBAoE Damage) quite a bit for +Energy Defence and +MaxHP... ..and sometimes Cloud Senses (Lv30 cap Accurate ToHit Debuff) for +Energy Resistance and +Global Recharge.... and Reactive Armor (Lv40 cap Damage Resistance) for +Smashing/Lethal Resistance and +Energy Defence... and Touch of Death (Lv40 cap Melee Damage) for +Smashing/Lethal Resistance and +Melee Defence... and Kinetic Combat (Lv35 cap Melee Damage) for S/L Defence... and Shield Breaker (Lv30 Accurate Defence Debuff) for +Smashing/Lethal Resistance and +AoE Defence... Yeah, there're actually quite a few low-level-capping enhancement sets that provide very useful set bonuses. I very rarely 6-slot an enhancement set into a power; it's all about the build goals and set bonuses so Frankenslotting some lower-capped enhancement sets are fair game.

Agreed. The -MaxHP component of Brine could really do with being flagged as Unresistible (and possibly Unaffected by level differences) in order to be worthwhile against exactly the sort of tough single targets that you'd want to use it on.

This has been dropped from the patch note description since Build 2. Honestly? that's a real shame IMO. The Labyrinth genuinely looks like a very fun addition to the game and a viable alternative to AE mission spam - and I really would prefer if the majority of the CoH playerbase did not end up avoiding it like the plague just because "yeah that place is effectively an instant death zone unless you can get >X people together". (Again, basing this on experiences on a Server with a lower active playerbase than usual at odd hours of the day. Perhaps on the higher population servers at primetime it'll be viable as-is; but even on live it was unusual for our Coalition on the EU servers to get a dedicated team of more than 8 people together at a time...)

Bit of a strawman there. This game has always involved the player being a cliché powerful hero (typically a "super" one, although building a "normal skilled human" is quite possible via natural origins and weapon based powersets etc). And core progression sees the player climbing up from level one (catching purse snatchers) to level 50 (saving the world and parallel Earths). That's the setting, that's the story. Then ON TOP OF that you get the opportunity to boost your inherent abilities further via enhancements and inspirations. Later Issues have seen power levels creep higher via leveraging Inventions; then boosting them; and finally gathering additional legendary levels of power from outside sources (Incarnate abilities). Mission Arcs and TFs see your character being the big damn hero multiple times; and whilst powerful nemesis exist in the game (one who is even appropriately named!) they're always survivable and beatable; because ultimately that's what heroes do - the story of how they win just needs to be entertaining. IMO (and I know I'm not alone here) the main draw of CoH is that playing it makes you feel like a hero. You can easily survive fighting huge hordes of foes; you can take on Archvillians; you can save the world. Or you can become a Villian yourself, or some mixture of both. Unlike most MMORPGs; CoH favours creating lots of alts, and its lower-than-level-cap TFs and Story Arcs have a lot of replay value because simply playing the game as it is is fun and engaging. Hardly any of the people I've encountered since 2004 have cared about "loot" or "difficult challenges" - instead they're in it for things like making new fun costumes, trying out different powersets, and enjoying the bedlam that comes from a bunch of friends steamrolling their way through a fun storyline where they don't have to overly worry about being punished for misclicking or going AFK for a few minutes. Personally, one of my very favourite things to do after a hard day of work is to run "The 5th Column Overthrow" mission from Mender Lazarus, because I find mowing my way through endless hordes of Undead Nazis to be fun and incredibly cathartic. There are always a few outliers, but I firmly believe that it's the storyline and experiencing all the different playstyle combos that is mainly what keeps people coming back (rather than constantly just farming for money, loot and shiny things). And yes, the friends and community - because even decades later whenever we've lost a lot of the old hands, the community here still isn't quite as much of a Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy as other MMORPGs. In other words, this game is primarily about being a FUN PLAYGROUND rather than a DIFFICULT GRIND. My mild rants here are not just a wordy way of saying "I hate challenges". Challenges are fine. Heroes thrive on challenges. Superman has his Kryptonite just like (most) INV Tankers have holes against Psychic damage. The trick is getting the level of Challenge right so that it's "tricky but achievable" rather than "I keep getting kerbstomped" - because the latter is simply not fun. And it's extra tricky because of the wide variation in build effectiveness and skill levels across CoH's playerbase. Higher difficulty levels have been baked into the game from very early in Live... however enabling those higher levels of difficulty has always been optional. Later on during Live we got "Master of" badges (and I was one of the first to get a good few of those in the EU) - good for bragging rights... but once again, optional. On HC we've now got "HardMode" TFs and Incarnate Trials. Great! Yet again, optional. They've even given us "Ultimate Boss Fights" like the one in the HM4 LGTF. Still optional. Outside of Hamidon Raids the rewards from completing these optional difficulty challenges have always been limited - a bit more EXP and some minor currency bonuses, badges, vanity items, accolades that do not contribute to making your character "mechanically better" such as Excalibonk. Realistically the only "loot" in CoH are enhancements that anyone can save up and purchase with merits or buy from the Auction House; and it is so easy to gain large levels of currency that a lot of long-term players have resorted to inventive methods of getting around the 2 billion-per-character influence limit (like placing large bids on non-existent inspirations; or sending it via email to your global chat handle and never "claiming" it again). This means that the "casual armchair" crowd do not notably end up left mechanically miles behind the "elite hardcore" crowd; which is something that I greatly appreciate - I'll always be very thankful that the devs in CoH have never "gated" loot. - - - - - - My big problem at present with the Labyrinth is that whilst going there is optional, it's accessible from the Midnighter Mansion rather than one of the very high level hazard zones, and you initially get thrown in at insane practically unbeatable levels of difficulty right off the bat if you venture in there solo or with only 1-2 friends. And unbeatable challenges is not, IMO, what CoH is about. By all means ramp the Labyrinths' difficulty up drastically if someone chooses to enter it with a big team; or if the zone is highly populated by a large number of unaligned players/teams (RWZ is a good example here)... but if the zone lets you enter solo, and describes how a determined solo player can handle it, then at the very least a munchkin fully purpled T4 Incarnate build attempting to enter it solo should not get instantly one-shot without being able to do anything about it. There are other ways to implement variation in difficulty here- you could let the level shifts linger for longer (something I'm in favour of) or you could grant everyone that enters a passive "temporary power" that gives them additional level buffs whenever there are <X people in the zone; or provide an optional setting that if someone is unteamed can make the Minotaur much less damaging towards them (or outright fail to lock onto them and/or become untouchable to them). It is quite possible to provide a "challenge" here without letting soloers and smaller teams on low-population servers get kerbstomped into oblivion. Ultimately the Labyrinth looks like a very fun addition to the game and a viable alternative to AE mission spam - so I really would prefer if the majority of the CoH playerbase did not end up avoiding it like the plague just because "it's effectively an instant death zone unless you can get >X people together".