A few noob questions about endgame content

[solgrove]

Last time I played CoH the only thing to do endgame was Hamidon, and googling about incarnate trials only gets me info on how the powers work rather than the trials themselves, so I wanted to know:

 

- How large of a group do you need to take on the "top-tier" trials?  What is party composition like; are any ATs more or less welcome or scarce than others, or is it really not that important?

 

- Do people even do Hamidon anymore, or have incarnates rendered him obsolete?

 

- I don't see a SG recruitment subforum nor do I see any advertising in chat; are there any that recruit, or are the servers still a bit new for all that?

 

- Is there anything else to do endgame that I'm unaware of besides hami, incarnate, and pvp (edit: and ouro flashbacks, I know about those too)?

Edited July 29, 2020 by solgrove

[Apparition]

Welcome back to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles!

 

1. Some Incarnate trials are eight to sixteen players, others are twelve to 24.  You'll see a lot of Defenders, Blasters, Tankers, and Stalkers, but all ATs are welcome.  Although, just a forewarning... they're pretty rough on Masterminds.  You can read up about Incarnate Trials here.

 

2. Yep.  I can't speak to every server, but Excelsior and Indomitable both do nightly Hamidon raids.

 

3. There are still SGs that recruit.  Check the Homecoming Discord's server channels.

 

4. There are also Rikti mothership raids.  Zone MSRs are open to any level, instanced MSRs are level 35+ and require the Member of Vanguard badge.  I prefer the instanced, but YMMV.  There's also the Cathedral of Pain Trial, which is level 10+.

Edited July 29, 2020 by Apparition

[EmmySky]

Great info from @Apparition

 

I just wanna add that here on the forums you might find SG receuiting threads on the individual shard forums down towards the bottom of the home page.

 

Welcome back!

[Scientist]

One thing which may not be obvious with Homecoming compared to previous CoH is that now you can gain salvage (threads) needed to make Incarnate powers and get "XPs" towards unlocking Incarnate tiers from doing lower level content as well.  Thus you can take your "end game" character and exemp down to a team doing radio missions in Steel Canyon, or run level 15 arcs in Oro, and actually still improve your level 50's incarnate powers.  That makes end game the whole game. 🙂 

[Patti]

Endgame is making new characters.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Patti said:

Endgame is making new characters.

This.

 

If by "Endgame" you mean "Raiding Content", then you've got Hamidon, all Incarnate Trials, and.... that may be about it for things you need multiple groups to do.

If by "Endgame" you mean "Content Intended for Max Level", then you also have all lvl 46-50 story arcs, including new Dark Astoria, Tip Missions, Dilemma Diabolique, etc. 

 

But there's a CRAP TON of content peppered throughout the game at a wide variety of level ranges.  And the Ouroborous / Flashback system makes that a very viable and enjoyable thing for many of us do focus on for our 50's, evne if we exemplar down to lower levels to do it. 

And of course, there's Architect Entertainment.  Every player can create their own story arcs for any levell and share them wtih the entire player base. 

 

But this is not WoW.  Don't expect an endless treadmill of new content that's ONLY focused on Progression Raiding and meant to let you focus just on your "Main".

 

Edited July 30, 2020 by MTeague

[ImpousVileTerror]

Echoing what @Patti and @MTeague said:  Despite some shoehorned efforts late in the game's life, "Endgame" has never really been City's strong suit.

 

The question was posed in another thread recently, asking "how do you not get bored of this game?"

My personal answer to that question is to avoid "Endgame" content and just take my time, savour the experience, interact with other players, and roleplay, roleplay, roleplay.  If you chase "Endgame," then really . . . I think you're just going to hit a brick wall eventually.  The Legacy Devs could barely keep up the pace and they -had- to for fiscal reasons . . . I really don't think the Homecoming Team should be aiming to follow in those particular footsteps.  And even if they intend to, it's going to be a long, long time before updates on that massive scale get implemented.  

 

I strongly recommend adopting a style of play where you can find enjoyment in all the wonderful little things this game and community have to offer.  It's the more sustainable alternative, I think.

[Chris24601]

One of my favorite endgame activities; Hellion Launching. Grab your biggest knockup power, hit a level 1 Hellion with it and count how long it takes them to fall back down.

 

Hellion Golf is similar, but requires a knockback power and teleport foe to get them to a rooftop for optimal distance.

[SwitchFade]

All content is endgame content, one can exemplar to any team and run with them.

 

If you want to mission at lvl 50, there are task forces, trials, sig arcs, tip missions, story arcs, radios and ouro.

[Doomguide2005]

3 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

One of my favorite endgame activities; Hellion Launching. Grab your biggest knockup power, hit a level 1 Hellion with it and count how long it takes them to fall back down.

 

Hellion Golf is similar, but requires a knockback power and teleport foe to get them to a rooftop for optimal distance.

Or how about Self Inflicted Golf!??

 

There's a mission where you find Rikti Bombs, on a large outdoor map with lots of elevated catwalks (a fairly common map).  Anyway back on Live my Scrapper and a friend's blaster were doing it and we found one bomb up on some of the highest catwalks on the map.  He was next to the bomb and ... we both about died laughing when his blaster with zero KB protection went flying when the bomb blew.  And I mean FLEW!  He must have sailed halfway across this huge map from the bombs KB with all the altitude he had up on that catwalk.

[Heraclea]

8 hours ago, Scientist said:

One thing which may not be obvious with Homecoming compared to previous CoH is that now you can gain salvage (threads) needed to make Incarnate powers and get "XPs" towards unlocking Incarnate tiers from doing lower level content as well.  Thus you can take your "end game" character and exemp down to a team doing radio missions in Steel Canyon, or run level 15 arcs in Oro, and actually still improve your level 50's incarnate powers.  That makes end game the whole game. 🙂 

This.  I am not a huge fan of the specifically Incarnate oriented content.  It is too tied to the Praetorian storylines, and as such the monotonous reappearance of IDF and similar enemiess tends to be tiresome.  The design of incarnate content like the Apex task force and the BAF strikes me as deliberately unfair to melee, especially scrappers, brutes, and stalkers.   The design of the BAF specifically discourages tankers from doing the job the AT us designed to do.   I will run them on other ATs, but I prefer not to bring my melee mains.  The Dark Astoria material has more variety, even if too many of the mobs are debuff happy and as such team unfriendly.  Tsoo missions especially can get tedious with large teams.

 

Fortunately, on HC you don't need any of that material to progress your incarnates.  Nor is it necessary to run Mender Ramiel and face Trapdoor and Tendaji.   Just running any content that gives XP will supply you with unlocks, threads, and empyrean merits that can be used to craft incarnate geemies.  You can go back to Ouro and run content you missed.  You can unlock Katie Hannon and Hess if you haven't.  You can do your favorite task forces again.  They're much more fun on a fully slotted 50.  All of these things will progress your incarnates also.  The specifically incarnate content is more efficient but unnecessary.  

[Gulbasaur]

7 hours ago, Heraclea said:

The design of incarnate content like the Apex task force and the BAF strikes me as deliberately unfair to melee, especially scrappers, brutes, and stalkers.

I don't disagree, but I think a lot of the content mechanics are unfair to ranged players due to the fairly significant difference in DPS between melee and ranged characters and the fact that it's usually beneficial to stay in melee or mid range anyway. Lots of AoE buffs have a fairly small radius and the "ranged advantage" isn't relevant in most gameplay, so it's nice to have content that actually benefits from ranged playstyles. Blasters are the nearest to a pure DPS class and they're about fourth in terms of actual highest DPS.

 

This game can be quite repetitive in how you approach enemies and having to actually be aware of what's going on it is a welcome change from the usual AoE dogpile.

[Myrmidon]

12 hours ago, SwitchFade said:

All content is endgame content, one can exemplar to any team and run with them.

Always this.

[Dazl]

Yeah running anything with your fully build 50 is much more enjoyable.

[Riverdusk]

17 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

I don't disagree, but I think a lot of the content mechanics are unfair to ranged players due to the fairly significant difference in DPS between melee and ranged characters and the fact that it's usually beneficial to stay in melee or mid range anyway. Lots of AoE buffs have a fairly small radius and the "ranged advantage" isn't relevant in most gameplay, so it's nice to have content that actually benefits from ranged playstyles. Blasters are the nearest to a pure DPS class and they're about fourth in terms of actual highest DPS.

 

This game can be quite repetitive in how you approach enemies and having to actually be aware of what's going on it is a welcome change from the usual AoE dogpile.

Same with my MM.  BAF is about the only incarnate trial my MM enjoys doing.  All those pets are good at stopping runners and the main fight takes place in a specific spot so slow pets aren't an issue.  Lambda on the otherhand is a good example of my MM feeling worthless (needing to run fast through a bunch of enemies to target specific things and then a main baddie that jumps away by the time the slow MM pets finally reach the fight again and again...ugh).  Having different content that different AT's excel at isn't necessarily bad....as long as there are alternatives for everyone.  I too am a fan that there are now many ways to earn incarnate powers.

[Apparition]

1 hour ago, Riverdusk said:

Same with my MM.  BAF is about the only incarnate trial my MM enjoys doing.  All those pets are good at stopping runners and the main fight takes place in a specific spot so slow pets aren't an issue.  Lambda on the otherhand is a good example of my MM feeling worthless (needing to run fast through a bunch of enemies to target specific things and then a main baddie that jumps away by the time the slow MM pets finally reach the fight again and again...ugh).  Having different content that different AT's excel at isn't necessarily bad....as long as there are alternatives for everyone.  I too am a fan that there are now many ways to earn incarnate powers.

 

Yeah.  One of the Paragon Studios developers said a few years ago that they considered Masterminds to be their biggest mistake.  They wished that the AT was never added to the game, and completely ignored the AT when they designed Praetoria and Incarnate content.  It shows.

[Gulbasaur]

3 hours ago, Apparition said:

Yeah.  One of the Paragon Studios developers said a few years ago that they considered Masterminds to be their biggest mistake.  They wished that the AT was never added to the game, and completely ignored the AT when they designed Praetoria and Incarnate content.  It shows.

This actually annoys me a bit... the whole game is balanced around melee combat apart from one or two oddities (Battle Maiden in one task force, Nemesis to some extent), but yes Masterminds are the problem and not repetitive game design. Enemies don't often have auras so stacking them has no downside. Blasters are meant to be glass cannons, but armoured melee cannons do more damage. They identified a problem and rather than try to improve things they just ignored it.

 

Pre-CoV MMs were described as filling in the same role as tankers (and they can actually do it pretty well) but then they tied a taunt mechanism onto a scrapperlock mechanism and brutes emerged and MMs became this sort of niche role. They're pretty decent in a lot of content and can do very high single target damage, but of all the archetypes they have the least clear role.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Gulbasaur