Coyotedancer

It's usually a spring thing, so you're a bit early... I didn't finish my catboy's last iToy until January, so it was slow-going in Coyoteville this time. Then again, I *did* level him entirely solo and "Old School" style with the mission arcs, so the relative snail's pace wasn't exactly an unexpected surprise.

You can solo with just about anything if you're patient and willing to play with difficulty settings... but my go-to ATs for that are melee types (Stalkers, Scraps or Brutes typically, though Tanks are also a pretty safe option and VEAT Widows are fun-) or Sentinels. Blasters and Corruptors are a little more fiddly than I usually want to deal with. Peacebringers likewise. After you've gotten a feel for the game again, a Mastermind might also be a fun choice, but I wouldn't do that right off the bat. They're not the easiest things to wrangle.

* goes to find the Benny Hill music again...*

I don't recall ever saying that they were... Old Age must be getting the best of me. Or a lack of coffee. 😝

'Not sure I agree with that sentiment... City is, and has always been, a very casual-friendly game on the lower end of the difficulty scale. It's attracted and kept quite a few players who just aren't All About ~THE CHALLENGE~ because of that. As hard as it may be for more challenge-focused players to understand, just wanting a low-stress button-mashing session isn't some kind of outlandish edge case. Telling those players that they're out of luck and shouldn't get to finish a character to 50 is a pretty crap take given the type of game we're playing here. This isn't City of Dark Souls.

I don't tend to keep a lot of spare INF around... I farm up as much as I think I'll need to equip each alt as I go. I usually over-estimate a build's cost, so there's usually some left over. At the moment that's a few hundred million stored in an email attachment. Chu is carrying about 300m towards her eventual build, additionally, and I've just started Palrah's stash, so he's carrying about 200. Call it something like 700m all together?

So.... you won't be happy unless you have *exactly* this one single thing that you like, and any other option is out of the question. Somehow I don't think you're going to have a lot of luck with that.

Good change over-all, I think, and I'll never say NO to cool new badge titles. (And 'Mirror Image' is definitely a cool one. 'Can't wait to do an all-Controller run to get that one for Aegis and her clone-phantoms. 😎 ) I do still give a bit of a side-eye to the whole "roles" thing, though. That still feels like trying to knock a bunch of square pegs into round holes in this game. Maybe just dropping the whole role bit entirely is the way to go... By encouraging people to run with an assortment of different ATs via the diversity badges, you'll accomplish at least a good portion of the same goal, without having to artificially pigeon-hole any of the individual archetypes into roles they don't really fit. To get to the magic number of five different ATs in any given group, you're naturally going to end up with a mix of types.

Check out Tina's arc in PI if you're running blue side. She has a few classic Old School farm maps like Wolf World that you can jump into in the 40s. AE is also always a possibility. Making a good level 40(ish) bash-fest mission... if there isn't one already, which would surprise me... wouldn't be hard if you used a faction like Axis or Battle Maiden's Warrior Earth goons, or even designed something custom with similar group powers.

I know it'll cause certain people to clutch their pearls and gasp in horror at the very idea... but I still say if you want a mindless bash-fest, that's one of the things that AE farms are really great for. There are also always the "classic" old-school bash maps from Tina and Unai's arcs. Keep a copy of the Axis Earth mission or Freak World or Harvey's Praetorian demons map on characters that like to lead smash teams and just tell people not to click the glowies (or kill the last group in the demons' case-) when you go in and clear the place. Many players did that in the days before AE was a thing. I'm a lot more concerned about the impact on solos, and on the under-50/unfinished-build/non-Incarnate types who are running regular mission arcs against these goons than I am about power-leveling lowbies. Radio smash teams are fun and popular, but they're not the only way to do that.

In all honesty? It would depend on the name... A favorite? No way in hell. They'd have to force that point with me. A member of the gang I wasn't so attached to? Maybe. I wouldn't exactly be happy about it, but if there was a compelling reason the other player needed it (It once belonged to their main and absolute favorite, for instance-), I could probably be convinced.

{HIPSTER} For the record... I had all four of my blindingly colorful, Spectrum-wearing Elemental Sentai Team characters BEFORE it was the new hotness with all these recent folks! Ha! {/HIPSTER} (My phoenix is still way too damned bight, though... I have a time limit on how long I can play her before my eyes start begging for mercy, so I get what Gunner's talking about. 🤣 )

I said Tanks and BRUTES would be fine. Stalkers and Scraps probably, too... Though they might have to be a little more cagey about it. Until you get to the point of potential double Tar Patches, the melee ATs should be able to handle these goons. On the Live side, Sents in my experience vary *a lot* depending on the secondary, the build and how they're played. Running a tricked-out Dark/WP is like driving a glacier. (That is to say, slower than Christmas, but with very little the goons can do to stop him-) My Fire/Regen? She's much faster clearing, but also has to be more careful., even with a pretty decent build and full set of iToys.. The former plays like a ranged scrap, while the later is more like a tough blaster. That difference would matter a fair bit when it comes to how they handle these particular mobs, I think. I don't have any non-50, non-IOed Sents of my own to try out with the new Circle on Test, though, so it's just a guess based on how these goons work in general. The other AT I've run with them is a Mastermind. I know exactly what those exploding magi can do to the minions... That's why I said they'll find the group painful. Without experience driving a Mastermind (Knowing how and when to use movement key binds to direct the minions, for instance-), Incarnate powers and a solid build to back their gang up, it has the potential to get messy pretty fast. Has anyone tried soloing these guys yet with a 'Troller or a Kheldian? I'd love to know what someone who can drive a Warshade (Which definitely *isn't* me. I have zero talent keeping even an MFing 'Shade build alive. 😝 ) thinks of them.

Did that one have the bosses turned on? As I mentioned up-thread, I managed them pretty well with a mostly-SOed Brute, for what it's worth... I tend to test at +1x4, too, with bosses. At anything below about x6, where the doubled-up MoDeath Mages start to show up, I suspect the tougher ATs will be fine... If they have a reasonably solid foundation with those SOs and their player has some experience dealing with tougher content, anyway. Brutes and Tanks will survive. Scraps and Stalkers will hate them a bit more... Sentinels and Masterminds, if my own "finished" MM's run was any indication, are in for some pain. I have no concept of what soloing these guys with an SOed Blaster, a control-type or a Defender will be like. Probably a mess...

'Just tossing out another reminder here, like I did in the Council thread... The majority of this change DOESN'T just affect level 50 characters or level 50 content. None of it is limited to radio missions or power-leveling teams. With the exception of the new Blizzard and Magma thorn casters, this is going to hit everyone running Circle content of *any* kind starting at 36+ and 46+. That means a lot of non-Incarnates with incomplete builds running regular content, and not just our tricked-out T4 nightmares and their smash-teams. That's one of the reasons I keep harping on the layered Tar Patches being a step too far. They're not going to slow down the high-end teams at all. They're going to eat the low-end people just running arcs for Unai or Harvey alive.

I just try not to hang onto names that, for whatever reason, I feel like I may never use. Once in awhile I'll pick up an interesting one as a "Yeah, maybe?", but if a few months go by and I haven't done anything with it, I drop it over in the 'Looking for a name'-thread on the Everlasting forum. It doesn't feel fair to keep a stray indefinitely. The one time someone has contacted me about a name that I had that they wanted, I'm afraid I didn't give it up. The player wanted Ironhorse, and that particular Brute is a favorite. So... no. I had to disappoint him. I'd find it pretty hard to give up any of my gang's names, honestly, but a favorite? Sorry, but no. 'Not going to happen, no matter how "nice" the community may expect me to be about just handing them over because someone else wants it. Call me a selfish horrible person if you like, but that's the truth. 😝

I'm still a "serial altist", who finishes one character before moving on to the next. I'm still more interested in very solid, generalist builds than in full-on Min/Maxed Nightmares. I still love Stalkers. I'm still a /Willpower fan-girl. I still solo Zen-farm for fun... My preferences and the way that I handle playing the game itself haven't really changed, in other words. It's really only the way that I interact with other players that's definitely different... Once upon a time, back in the game's retail days, I did a fair few TFs/SFs with the Ouphs and the Liberty badgers. I cat-herded iTrials, and attended a lot of Rikti ship raids and Hami jello-fests. I was a good little teamer... Even in Homecoming's first year or so, I still did some of that. 'Led PI smash-team runs, PUGed with the role-players and generally tried to be social. When that first group of players started to wander away, and I finally figured out that "serious" City role-play just isn't My Thing, I took to PUGing pretty often. I even built a small collection of Defenders designed specifically to help out with mid-level teams, where support is still actually useful and desirable. I had some good fun with that. At some point along the way, though, people began grumping very loudly about how exemped-50s running with lower-level teams was always BADWRONG and "ruining their fun". They claimed to absolutely hate the practice... So, I mostly shelved those Defenders. I was already running solo with other characters, so it's not like they were all I had to tinker with. These days I'm still almost exclusively a solo or duo player, running alone or with Mr. Coyote. The only exception is when I'm running small-team with the Wolfepack. (The family SG made up of myself, Mr. Coyote, two of our nephews and their mom-) I don't PUG. I don't do ship raids, or Hami or iTrials. As far as "public" teaming goes, I basically don't exist. I don't see that changing in the future, no matter how team-focused the Homecoming devs may want to make the game. I just don't have the patience or the desire to deal with "The Community", I guess... At least not in-game, when the Fire Blasts, Ion Judgements and Meteors start flying. 🤣

It's alternately a thing that I enjoy a lot and a thing that sometimes annoys the heck out of me... And I accept that conflicting nature.

And without paying the "slot tax" of putting in a KB-to-KD, Bonfire was pretty much trash, too...

I haven't run into two Ruins myself, but someone else in the thread mentioned it... Doubled MoDeaths have been a thing, though. I've seen that several times now. If they won't be set to limit their numbers in a spawn, their Tar Patches need to be set to be one-at-a-time the way that Earth Thorns' Quicksand and Spectral Demon Lords' auras are. Layered Tar Patches from magi in the same spawn are, to put it kindly, AWFUL. These revamped mobs are tough enough without that extra added bit of over-compensation.

Hmm.... I notice that no change was made to the Masters of Death or Ruin being able to spawn two per group, or to their ability to double up on Tar Patch or Earthquake when they do. Confirmation that you guys consider that particular bit of over-the-topness is "working as intended"? Because if it is, I'm going to get grumpy... While it may not happen all that often, it's a step too far into "F- You"-territory, especially for for melee characters, when it does.

Agreed. That three seconds should do nicely to hit a follow-up attack .

Dudette... and my middle actually IS Frances. No joke. 🤣

Eh. I can't really say that I have strong feelings about that design choice either way. while I don't think any power pick should be so watered-down that it feels pointless to have or to use it... I'm also fine with pool powers not being in the same league as our regular primary or secondary picks. There's a balance point in the middle somewhere. That probably ought to be the target.

For what it's worth, I pick x4 for testing mostly because it's the balance point between getting to see some decent spawn diversity and still keeping individual groups to a relatively manageable size. It's a practical choice as much as anything.