Remove the perma ambush aggro from Defend the Midnight Mansion

[Sakura Tenshi]

So, I'm running the finale of the Ward arcs from Night Ward where you defend the Midnight mansion. I have three friends with me and the spawn size when Ward turns against you is literally impossible because not only do you face multiple bosses, all with control powers and ward himself who is an elite boss, but the respawn location is just off to the side of the mansion itself, and if you die, you are in aggro range of the mobs and even respawn in base forces you to teleport at the mansion in the mission instead of in your base. You are stuck in a cycle of dying and returning only to be held and killed again.

 

Edit: the problem isn't the location of the hospital, it's that the ambushes are permanently aggroed onto players, meaning the second you spawn into the mission or even if you can survive getting up and fleeing, the mobs will lock on and follow you, even if they downed another teammate on the otherside of the freaking map. What moron at Paragon studios came up with this?

Edited August 1, 2020 by Sakura Tenshi

[Noyjitat]

it isn't just the respawn point but its the spawn point for the mission itself so you will spawn there regardless of where they move the hospital. What they would have to do is edit the mission and make the entry point somewhere else and then move the mission event starter point. That said when I ran this unprepared we had to grab large inspirations and just go directly to the objectives. You can get overwhelmed if you have the difficulty very high on unprepared characters.

 

Work around for now is to exit to sg base pop large inspirations and enter mission again or reset and low the difficulty.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Noyjitat

[Apparition]

This is one of the few missions that I now auto-complete every time.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Solo all those arcs on a wide range of ATs, the majority set between x4 and x6 for casual leveling fun. Methinks you may need to lower your dif, or perhaps your build has some flaw that needs to be dealt with.

 

I mean you kinda skimped on the details. What ATs were involved, which ones seemed to struggle, what was your build, etc?

 

[aethereal]

Can we have a few missions in the game that pose some additional difficulty or unique challenges?  Nobody has a gun held to their head making them do this specific mission out of hundreds available.

[Apparition]

17 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Can we have a few missions in the game that pose some additional difficulty or unique challenges?  Nobody has a gun held to their head making them do this specific mission out of hundreds available.

There is a difference between difficulty and not standing a chance.

 

My first character on Homecoming was a Thugs/Sonic Mastermind.  I tried soloing the mission at +1x3.  I couldn’t do it, because all fourteen ambush waves completely ignored my pets like they weren’t even there, and zeroed in on my character.  After several tries, I gave up for the day.

 

A couple of days later, I recruited some friends to help.  There were four of us.  I think the difficulty was set at +1x5.  We were all repeatedly killed... and then eventually spawn camped by the NPCs.  Going “to the hospital” took us to a spawn of a large group of mobs who killed us as soon as we rezzed.  All four of us got two debt badges from that mission alone.

[aethereal]

1 minute ago, Apparition said:

There is a difference between difficulty and not standing a chance.

 

My first character on Homecoming was a Thugs/Sonic Mastermind.  I tried soloing the mission at +1x3.  I couldn’t do it, because all fourteen ambush waves completely ignored my pets like they weren’t even there, and zeroed in on my character.  After several tries, I gave up for the day.

 

A couple of days later, I recruited some friends to help.  There were four of us.  I think the difficulty was set at +1x5.  We were all repeatedly killed... and then eventually spawn camped by the NPCs.  Going “to the hospital” took us to a spawn of a large group of mobs who killed us as soon as we rezzed.  All four of us got two debt badges from that mission alone.

 

Changing the hospital point seems fine to me -- I agree that that's just annoying that the enemies essentially spawn-camp you.  Move it outside the mission if necessary.  But the ambushes are an interesting part of the mission.

[Onemantankwall]

1 of the best mishs in game! Gotta have SOMETHING to have you on your toes when the rest of the game is a cakewalk that can be played half asleep. Last time i pugged it we each died like 6-7 times before regrping and clearing it, felt sooo satisfying seeing that mission complete message You can also base then reenter mish but promise it doesnt help because theyll be flinging theirselves at you soon as you touch the map

Edited August 1, 2020 by Onemantankwall

[Sakura Tenshi]

2 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Solo all those arcs on a wide range of ATs, the majority set between x4 and x6 for casual leveling fun. Methinks you may need to lower your dif, or perhaps your build has some flaw that needs to be dealt with.

 

I mean you kinda skimped on the details. What ATs were involved, which ones seemed to struggle, what was your build, etc?

 

We were at base difficulty, but as a team of 4 with two of us sidekicked up, it meant that for half the party the mission was +1. We were a controller, a stalker, a dom, and a fort. So what's the lower difficulty "break the team and run solo"?

 

@Onemantankwall
@aethereal

Ah, and here's the 'git gud, challenge should be frustrating and painful!'. We were getting locked down by timestop bosses with holds, forbidden knowledge lt.s with immobilizes, crystal balls and ice clouds with massive collective -recharge and we would be hit with this all before we even finished the respawn animation. It was not a damn challenge, it was impossible until we cheesed the system using the base macro.

Edited August 1, 2020 by Sakura Tenshi

[Vanden]

Sakura Tenshi's got it right. This mission is not a fair challenge, it's essentially killer GMing. You die before you even finish standing up from your defeat when you rez.

[MTeague]

I was able to solo that mission on my Inv/SS tank at lvl 32.   (I think at +2x3?)

It.... took a long time. 

And it' wasn't fun at the very end when I have four EB's on me at once. 

I had to do some serious hit-and-fade, but it worked. (the EB's do a charge up PBAE attack I had to keep dancing out of )

 

EDIT: a couple things to note: 

• before Ward turns he has you break four tablets in the maze.
• if you just race to those tablets and break them, you'll have a lot of aggro'd mobs who will come back to you at the courtyard ON TOP OF the new ambushes.  This can easily overwhelm you, and DID overwhelm my tank the first time I tried to solo it.  But I'd realized what went wrong.
• the following attempt, when I was told to break the four tablets in the maze, I took my sweet time and FULL CLEARED the maze. Kill all'd the spawns in there, one group at a time before moving onto the next.
• the results was on breaking the fourth tablet, I had no leftover mobs from the maze still hounding me.  This made it a lot more doable to go get Clarity, handle the Talons around him, lead him over to the pool, while handing the adds that Ward threw at me. It was still a lot of adds, I did still need to use inspirations. But it wasn't a giant flood of mobs.

 

Now to be fair, I havne't tried this with more squishy classes. 

 

A Thugs/Sonic Mastermind... that would be rough because you really don't have anything to help heal your pets beyond team inspirations, and they're going to get worn down. You could try Tankerminding and staying in Follow Me / Defend Me, but .... thats' also tough because then you can't ALSO tell them to concentrate fire on certain high value targets that need to die first.  I can't really offer any advice there. MM's may have the hardest time of it vs any other AT though.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by MTeague

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

3 hours ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

We were at base difficulty, but as a team of 4 with two of us sidekicked up, it meant that for half the party the mission was +1. We were a controller, a stalker, a dom, and a fort. So what's the lower difficulty "break the team and run solo"?

 

@Onemantankwall
@aethereal

Ah, and here's the 'git gud, challenge should be frustrating and painful!'. We were getting locked down by timestop bosses with holds, forbidden knowledge lt.s with immobilizes, crystal balls and ice clouds with massive collective -recharge and we would be hit with this all before we even finished the respawn animation. It was not a damn challenge, it was impossible until we cheesed the system using the base macro.

Well for starters you could always go to -1, which since half the team was sidekicks may have helped abit. I mean my stalker specifically a sj/ninja theme build who is actually on the squishy side and a blaster of the DP/MA variety duoed that set to x6 as an example, my stalkers typically solo set to x4 as they level in general even before getting ato and io kits.

 

So you had one kinda sorta front liner in the form of a stalker, who still excels at avoiding direct aggro, 2 CC units, that at the best of times will struggle to lock down more then a dozen or so mobs, and a fort? sorry my brain isnt clicking atm whats a fort? Do you mean tank? I mean the team sounds on the squishy side and lacking in head on dps for rapid killing so yeah -1 sounds like a good idea for a tougher mish.

 

Here are some tools to consider, stun and smoke grenades from P2W to act as additional cc, jet packs for all. I dont recall all the mobs as being flyers, so take to the sky and force them to divide. Temp summon powers for extra bodies are also an option.

 

And hey they could always just make it no rez inside, no rentry, and thus an auto fail if you die right, at least you have some small chance to recover if you are able.

 

Im just seeing this way more as a player issue than a game imbalance.

[RogueWolf]

It's not just this mission. On my first week on HC while I was still kind of re-learning the game I ran into this on either I think it was an Alignment mission or maybe in the Shauna Stockwell arc. If you drop after the ambush spawns, every other attempt to reenter has a hot door. Telling someone to tweak their build or lower the diff is not an answer. They should not have to. I love that the newer missions are designed for challenge, but this really is a broken feature.

Edited August 1, 2020 by RogueWolf

[Grouchybeast]

I actually really enjoy this mission, I think it's different and a lot of fun, EXCEPT for the spawn camping by the mobs.  Just tweak that, and everything would be awesome.  We had to reset it while duoing it because even stacking up insps and base buffs we couldn't stay alive long enough, and it soured the arc experience on those characters.

[Apparition]

Yep.  I'm fine with the difficulty (well, except for when trying to solo it on a Mastermind), but the spawn camping is why I just auto-complete the mission every time I get it now and move on.  Been there, got the debt badges.

[AerialAssault]

I also think there is an inherent issue with Ambush AI, in that they will home-in on the 'anchor' of their ambush .. to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing short of a Taunt will dissuade them, and even then I swear on my life I've had them attack me anyway. For certain characters in a group, taking all of that aggro is a guaranteed death sentence. I think we've all witnessed this behaviour before.

 

Tbh just rename the thread "Tweak Ambush AI" and I'll shower it in +1's.

[Apparition]

3 minutes ago, AerialAssault said:

I also think there is an inherent issue with Ambush AI, in that they will home-in on the 'anchor' of their ambush .. to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing short of a Taunt will dissuade them, and even then I swear on my life I've had them attack me anyway. For certain characters in a group, taking all of that aggro is a guaranteed death sentence. I think we've all witnessed this behaviour before.

 

Tbh just rename the thread "Tweak Ambush AI" and I'll shower it in +1's.

 

Yep.  As I've said in another thread, I read comments made by one of the Paragon Studios developers a few years ago.  Paragon Studios developers apparently considered the Mastermind AT the biggest mistake made in CoH and wish that it was never made.  When it came time to develop Praetoria and Incarnate content, they completely ignored the AT, and it shows.  The Ambush AI is one of the big offenders as it completely ignores the Mastermind's pets and zeroes in directly on the Mastermind.

[Doomguide2005]

@Bentley BerkeleyI'm thinking the fort is for Fortunata.

[Crater Kate]

10 hours ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Solo all those arcs on a wide range of ATs, the majority set between x4 and x6 for casual leveling fun. Methinks you may need to lower your dif, or perhaps your build has some flaw that needs to be dealt with.

 

I mean you kinda skimped on the details. What ATs were involved, which ones seemed to struggle, what was your build, etc?

 

How much are you investing in your characters in the mid-30s?

 

My builds are generally very WIP during the leveling process, but I'm still investing in a fair few IO sets along the way. On +1/x3, my Kat/WP got absolutely pasted in this mission and locked in the death loop others are describing. The only way I was able to escape was by hitting return to hospital, then immediately porting to base. Without that (pretty cheesy) escape tool, I would've been flat out stuck.

 

For a character that isn't equipped with set bonuses or has very few, I wouldn't at all be surprised if "lower the difficulty" is just not a feasible option.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

21 minutes ago, Crater Kate said:

How much are you investing in your characters in the mid-30s?

 

My builds are generally very WIP during the leveling process, but I'm still investing in a fair few IO sets along the way. On +1/x3, my Kat/WP got absolutely pasted in this mission and locked in the death loop others are describing. The only way I was able to escape was by hitting return to hospital, then immediately porting to base. Without that (pretty cheesy) escape tool, I would've been flat out stuck.

 

For a character that isn't equipped with set bonuses or has very few, I wouldn't at all be surprised if "lower the difficulty" is just not a feasible option.

My characters tend to share from a pool of assorted attuned less popular set bits I franken slot, until Im sure if Ill be keeping the build and want to invest in it. In the case of the stalker I am specifically referencing as having soloed/duoed all those arcs not all that long ago is actually a very heavy RP thematic character, and as such to fit my pov of a human centric character, does not have any set bonuses over the 2 part bonuses on some, and no power has more then 60ish % boost from enhancements in any given aspect of the power.

 

But a stalker in general in my hands tends to be an OP I win button for content, especially anything lacking an AV as for me every attack typically ends in a kill, short of EBs that tend to take around 4 unless the foe has atypically high res to the dmg type in use.

 

Look Im not saying the content in question isnt on the rougher side, most content that has to do with praetoria had mobs more fine tuned then the early ones, and so take abit more to put down. There is a reason that players RPing characters who actually went through praetorian content, tend to act in character like they have been through things other characters have not, because most of us know and agree that leveling, especially solo up through and out of praetoria isnt exactly a breeze for most.

 

And that is what this all kind of circles around, because the OP here is basically not anything new, when ti comes to that other world, we frequently see players wanting it made easier, mobs weakened, ambush waves made smaller etc. But for those of us who genuinely enjoy the content, all these wants sound more like nerf this thing that is hard for me.

 

Its not like we have to run every bit of content on every toon. I routinely avoid croatoa arcs, not because they are hard, but because I loathe the look of the mobs there, and am not a big fan of the mish structure there on many of the arcs, especially the stand around and defend the gate mish, just find that one dull as can be. But I dont go around asking for it to be made into a quick and easy boss kill or something just to appease me personally.

[Vanden]

37 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

But a stalker in general in my hands tends to be an OP I win button for content, especially anything lacking an AV as for me every attack typically ends in a kill, short of EBs that tend to take around 4 unless the foe has atypically high res to the dmg type in use.

Bentley Berkeley makes a lot of claims, but this one was so ridiculous I had to actually test it. I set up an AE mission with an even-level Superfreak, a Freakshow Elite Boss. I hit it with Kinetic Melee's Assassin's Strike from Hide, with 100.8% damage enhancement, Build Up, Boost Up, 21.50% damage bonus from set bonuses, and the Superfreak having -30% res to Energy damage from its own resistances. All of that, on a very-high end build, was able to do 1/3rd of the Superfreak's health. So sure, these claims could be true, if you never actually fight anything, and instead exclusively Assassin's Strike from Hide and run away while it and Build Up are on cooldown.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Vanden

[RogueWolf]

4 hours ago, AerialAssault said:

I also think there is an inherent issue with Ambush AI, in that they will home-in on the 'anchor' of their ambush .. to the exclusion of everything else. Nothing short of a Taunt will dissuade them, and even then I swear on my life I've had them attack me anyway. For certain characters in a group, taking all of that aggro is a guaranteed death sentence. I think we've all witnessed this behaviour before.

 

Tbh just rename the thread "Tweak Ambush AI" and I'll shower it in +1's.

In a nutshell... THIS.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

12 hours ago, Vanden said:

Bentley Berkeley makes a lot of claims, but this one was so ridiculous I had to actually test it. I set up an AE mission with an even-level Superfreak, a Freakshow Elite Boss. I hit it with Kinetic Melee's Assassin's Strike from Hide, with 100.8% damage enhancement, Build Up, Boost Up, 21.50% damage bonus from set bonuses, and the Superfreak having -30% res to Energy damage from its own resistances. All of that, on a very-high end build, was able to do 1/3rd of the Superfreak's health. So sure, these claims could be true, if you never actually fight anything, and instead exclusively Assassin's Strike from Hide and run away while it and Build Up are on cooldown.

 

Hm, could be he has atypically high health, he is a rather unique special EB your referencing, one that isnt a AV downgraded to an EB but an EB made to be a proper mini boss. It could be because I /ninja on most of my stalkers and when you can double placate and deal out several AS along side your other heavy hitters in a rapid combo under a double build up most EB tend to melt to stalkers opening assault.

 

And the difference between me and most posters on these forums is I dont theory craft. I only speak from personal in game encounters and actions. I guess you dont use every possible tool at your disposal to put an enemy at a disadvantage. I do. IME a lot of stalkers are not using their placate now because they have gotten lazy, and play like pseudo scrappers, and for some like the OP I am guessing that leads to their troubles. A stalker can go scrapper mode for sure, with investment, a tactical mind set, and making use of all the tricks we can fit on our utility belts.

 

Ill say it again P2W, smoke bomb, stun grenade. They exist, they fit even non powered batman character concepts. They will greatly reduce the threats posed by larger groups and let even flavor squishy builds function at higher dif settings if they so desire to push themselves.  These 2 simple tools can have a huge impact on game play and yet very very few people seem to know about them. I myself was an active collector and crafter of the temp power recipes on live, and certainly dont see any reason to have some taboo about them because they are at the P2W vendor now.

 

And thats not even getting into temp summons. There are loads of them out there, and I certainly see no issue nor shame in popping out a shivan shard to play meat shield if your team is lacking front liners.

[Myrmidon]

14 hours ago, Doomguide2005 said:

@Bentley BerkeleyI'm thinking the fort is for Fortunata.

Correct. That is the accepted shorthand.

[Puma]

I would agree with this post, but also throw in a few more of the newer contacts and their ambushes, including the UN contact in Steel and the art dealer, as well as several in Preatoria. It seemed to me that one of the devs who was designing toward the end really felt constant ambushes at a non-stop pace was the way to go. 
 
And honestly, on some of my high end toons, it can be really fun.  And it probably comes from the complaints of people waiting around forever for the old ambushes in respect trials, etc. (THANK YOU FOR FIXING THAT DEVS! 😄 )

But for most of my toons, it makes those contacts and missions difficult to the point of skipping or auto-completing.  

It's pretty clear some in here really like it though.  

How difficult would be it (and I already know the answer) to add another option to our difficulty settings specific to ambush difficulty?  One that affects either the speed, size, or level of ambushes?  So someone who normally can solo +2x4 but not in these ambush heavy missions could stay at +2x4 but know that just the ambushes would be toned down a little? 

Im sure that's next to impossible, but thought maybe I'd throw it out.  Otherwise, I think we need to go in and space these ambushes out a little bit more, OR make sure those ambushes that come out this fast or this difficult automatically don't include bosses, etc?