MoonSheep

@Ultimo i see your point of view that enemies should never have significant damage levels, especially for solo individuals, but unfortunately that just isn’t a feature of the CoH mechanics which has largely had a focus around team play hopkins for example is behind a TF “wall” where you need a certain amount of players to start the TF. it’s only accessible solo because HC removed the “wall” when the private server had a smaller population - it was designed for team play i’ve been playing since 2005 and soloing an AV has always been a mark of a truly strong alt - a feat that not every alt is able to achieve if you want to solo AVs, there’s a lot of guidance on the forums of the right builds, powersets etc that are capable, but it does require a two way mindset mate. there’s a bunch of stuff i still learn every month the game also does have a mechanic to stop us from being killed instantly, outside of DoT attacks, a single hit wont kill a full HP character an AV - and some EBs - are a significant battle, it takes preparation and coordination especially on lower level teams. when solo, it takes even more thought and tactics the right alt makes a difference. a poison defender for example can easily flatten an AV even in the mid range levels, an empath however would die rather quickly without challenge, the game becomes boring very quickly. challenge can be overcome, dullness is trickier to resolve

when you think about it, death and debt badges -are- badges for being alive. you have to be alive many times in order to earn them like what, i’m going to be impressed that you’ve only been alive once like some sort of feudal peasant? i’ve been alive hundreds of times. now that’s impressive

the big change i’d like to see is for the currently monitored attributes to stop disappearing at random every few days

the end drain of freaks when you don’t have a buffer on the team is quite noticeable i’ve found on certain team mixes they can be quite a drag with the end drain and rezzes, but rarely challenging

i for one am bored with that as the benchmark (i know you’re not promoting it and only stating it) it feels a bit self inflicting in my view. i have characters which -could- solo +4/x8 but it feels like such a grind sometimes therefore i agree with others that if you enjoy the alt and run it on medium difficulty then wahey. it might not perform as well for hard mode or speedruns, but if that’s not your cup of tea then you’re not missing out +2 enemies buffed is where it’s at for team play in my view, the perfect mix of challenge and pace

i’ve probably already replied to this thread with the same opinion, but i’m a big fan of defenders and have no use for corrupters - however my playstyle is the primary reason i use the secondary on defenders for the debuff properties only and let damage dealers kill things, this allows me to focus on making the buffs/debuffs of the two sets the best they can be and really concentrate on the support role if i had more of a hybrid playstyle i can see why corrupters would be the better choice. there’s something alluring to me of playing the ‘best’ and most powerful version of a buff/debuff set

there are no expensive IOs on HC, the most expensive IOs are less than 10% of what they costed on live. no enhancement takes any considerable amount of time to achieve

there’s been a lot of updates but the mechanics aren’t fundamentally different there’s a few new (unremarkable in my opinion) powersets and some cool TFs/arcs, lots of power adjustments etc the biggest change is likely to be the power level access changes, can’t remember when that was enacted. e.g you can now pick your lvl 32 power in your primary at 26, your lvl 38 secondary power at lvl 30. you can also keep access to those powers if you’re exemped down 5 levels, meaning you can use a lvl 30 power at lvl 25 - handy

i often run TFs with the enemies buffed setting enabled, it encourages cooperation a lot more and a ‘classic’ CoH feel IOs broke the game in my opinion, rebalancing would be challenging edit: i’m curious to whether removing IOs would even make a huge difference, if a team had a kin and cold def on board things would likely still roll nicely. the average player’s understanding of the game and its mechanics are far greater than on live

citadel is a killer for those repeat kill all small cave missions synapse is also repetitive, but at least the maps are a lot more enjoyable

i main a mind/fire which i think will play reasonably similar - pretty much everything is ranged i have perma dom and 0% def, a mezzed enemy deals no damage. i would encourage more of a dominator playstyle over a scrapper one, it gives you a lot more freedom in your build to focus on damage and fun procs when i play an AT other than doms i really notice how important survivability is when things aren’t locked down

the forums are actually just a hugely elaborate windup, there is no game. we’re just roleplaying the return of an MMORPG

when someone goes down once, my sharky veng eyes keep a close watch on them as a potential veng candidate for the future 👀

i wouldn’t overthink it, if you have a good fulcrum shift going and have launched off 2-3 sonic attacks you’ll be doing fine my def is slotted with mostly generic IOs and some SOs, the attacks mostly just have accuracy in them some builds need a min/max approach to get the most out of it, kin/sonic just needs the player to regularly cast SB and hit FS at the right time

omae wa mou shindeiru?

i was just about to post this one - nemesis is quite a tough one

what about the dummy rikti practice drone?

i agree with you completely the missions, content and enemies in CoV are fantastic. the maps and overall atmosphere lets it down though. everything is far too drab and gloomy, all the zones feel pretty much the same - dark, things run down, things destroyed CoV also lacks a ‘third place’ like atlas park has. mercy island is overly large, hard to navigate and doesn’t have a place where it feels worth hanging out - i think this has contributed to CoV being heavily underplayed as you always feel on your own

/thread

/earth, /energy and /fire are very high damage. earth definitely ‘feels’ the punchiest i’ve been maining my mind/fire for 5 years now and enjoy it, great damage output

i use the polar lights or whatever they’re called on my 5+ year kin/sonic def, they have good both ST and AoE damage when hyped up by FS

i was going to respond to this with some silly jokes, it’s a really good point that needs to be said more often i find +2 is the sweet spot pre-50 and around +3 for a kill most ITF. if i want challenge i’ll put a TF on +2 enemies buffed as peregrine says, it’s okay to lower the diff and enjoy the game rather than it feeling like a slog

soooo.. @Glacier Peak.. is this what you were hoping for when you made this thread? 😀

@Sanguinesun i agree that it can feel like there’s an “us” crowd and a separate one that gets involved in testing, however we can both opt in to be closed server beta testers if we wanted to sign up i understand the premise of having a closed beta to work through alpha stuff and maintain an element of surprise. it does feel once things hit the beta server that things are mostly set in stone my main nugget of feedback to the dev team is that a lot of the power changes feel quite bland, slow and hellbent around “balancing”. regen for example has been ignored for 5 years despite the playerbase excited to see it revamped for the modern era - instead we get another water blast set

i very much appreciate this - it’s why i love running the posi TFs, alts still need to cooperate to succeed. identifiable archetypes still exist at the lower levels more sub lvl 20 TF’s would be great, posi 1 and 2 are great examples of the difficulty being just right