Enemies suddenly placating me

[RikOz]

This is a bit of a puzzle. I've asked, in-game, when certain Bane Spiders gained the ability to Placate my characters, and some players are telling me they've always done that.

 

Except, I've been playing on Homecoming for two years now, and this literally never happened to me until about a month ago, shortly after the i27 patch dropped.

 

Granted, this is only happening to my level 50 characters, and I only got my 5th and 6th alts to 50 about a month ago. But since I play solo exclusively, I run a whole lot of alignment/morality missions to earn merits, so I've run the level 40-50 tip missions many, many, many times on level 50 characters. These include several missions against Arachnos, so I've run into those high-level Bane Spiders plenty of times, and as I said, my first Placate only happened about a month ago. The first time was on one of my fresh 50s, who hadn't unlocked her Alpha yet, but the most recent was on my main, a T3 incarnate running missions at +3.

Edited May 6, 2021 by RikOz

[Greycat]

*shrug* It happens? You may not have noticed if you were using placed AOEs or had other targets to attack, as well - not sure what makes them choose to placate.

[MTeague]

Leadership / Assault makes you resistant to placate. Do you normally take that on your characters who face off against Bane Spiders?

[RikOz]

28 minutes ago, MTeague said:

Leadership / Assault makes you resistant to placate. Do you normally take that on your characters who face off against Bane Spiders?

I've recently started taking it on newer characters, but my main (fire/fire blaster) has never had it. In any case, I only took the power for the +ToHit. I've typically disregarded any Confuse or Placate resistance as inconsequential; having never actually seen an NPC use either of those on me, I assumed they were pretty much limited to PvP or team content.

 

Granted, it's understandable that my main, being a blaster, didn't get Placated for a very long time. Even running +3, she can usually take out enemies before they get anywhere near her. But it's still not completely unheard of for an enemy to get all up in her face - sometimes it's because of attacks missing, allowing an enemy to get close, and sometimes she Hovers right past an enemy and doesn't see him until he hits her from behind. My other 50s are all melee, though (2 scrappers, 3 brutes). Two of the brutes have Assault, and they are the only two among my six 50s with any Placate resistance at all. And one of them was my first toon to get placated.

 

Looking at all that, plus mob behavior, it appears that mobs with the Placate ability are set to use it when they're down to a certain % of health, so it's entirely possible that I've simply consistently been able to damage them enough to defeat them before they reach that preset plateau, and it's pure RNG that has resulted in a cluster of Placates where I'd never seen them before. I can see where it would happen - I damage an enemy exactly enough to take them down to that preset health, and then my next attack misses and that gives them the chance to use Placate. I would also explain why a couple of my brutes have been placated while neither of my scrappers have been - my scrappers have much faster attacks (Dual Blades, Martial Arts) than my brutes (SS, Energy Melee, Dark Melee), so an enemy is more easily able to slip a placate between my brutes' attacks than my scrappers'.

[cranebump]

Just accept their offerings of spam & sardine sandwiches and move on. Tributes such as those are rare...oh, wait, not THAT kind of placate...(slowly edges out of view).

[Luminara]

The Force can have a strong influence on a weak mind.

[Coyotedancer]

We're not going to talk about how the CoT succubi manage it... 'Pretty sure the Force isn't involved there. 😆

[Ironblade]

18 hours ago, RikOz said:

This is a bit of a puzzle. I've asked, in-game, when certain Bane Spiders gained the ability to Placate my characters, and some players are telling me they've always done that.

I have to agree.  They've always done it.  They're stalkers.

[UberGuy]

They've done that since Grandville was added, at least. So yeah, it's absolutely not new.

[CaptainLupis]

I'm afraid the "they've always done that" answer you were given was right. You may not have noticed it, but they were using it.

[Shred Monkey]

I wonder if your defense is affecting your perception. 

 

Defense has the opposite affect that you might think.  If you have low defense, you might get placated a lot, but since you get hit again right way you don't even notice you were placated.  

 

If you have a lot of defense, you don't get placated much... but when you DO get placated, you stay placated for a while.  They can't knock you out of placate because they keep missing you.  

 

 

[Hew]

They have always placated, and if you pay attention, they will even crit you. 

 

You can also get taunted. That irritates me, because I have no way to kill the guy that taunted me which is usually a high value target, 😕

[MTeague]

16 minutes ago, Hew said:

You can also get taunted. That irritates me, because I have no way to kill the guy that taunted me which is usually a high value target, 😕

 

On my stalker if I'm placated, I just tab target and keep doing the stabstabstabStabStabStabSTABSTABSTAB routine.

It's only really an issue if the Placater is the Last Man Standing, and for this reason, I do prioritize Bane Spiders to put the pain on them first whenever possible. 

 

Note that the Placater can still be hit by any AoE attacks. Target the guy right next to him and Throw Spines, Fireball, Total Domination, whatever you got. Another reason to hurt them early if you can. When placated, maybe you can melt them down with AE, and briefly look down at their corpse and say "HA!!" before pressing on. 

 

Enemies Taunting me is a pain.  It's rare in most content. I've definitely had it happen in First Ward / Night Ward, and some of the newer high lvl arcs.  It does make me long for https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Leadership#Assault, to make it wear off faster.  But maybe only 1/5 of my characters run Assault. Maybe less. Taunts are especially irriating becuase you can't just tab target someone else. You have to attack THAT GUY, or not attack at all, until the taunt wears off.  And when you're stuck in 2 tar pits and moving at a crawl, and then taunter is 30 yards away and not coming closer?  /fume.  Super annoying when mobs protect their major debuffers or healers / rezzers that way.

 

I mean, it is entirely logical and good tactics for the AI. On that level, I strongly approve.  But it comes with a heaping scoop of "Do you MIND?! I'm TRYING to stab your friend over here!!!  Jeez, what do I have to do for permission to murdalize freely in these parts??"

[RikOz]

11 hours ago, MTeague said:

Note that the Placater can still be hit by any AoE attacks. Target the guy right next to him and Throw Spines, Fireball, Total Domination, whatever you got. Another reason to hurt them early if you can. When placated, maybe you can melt them down with AE, and briefly look down at their corpse and say "HA!!" before pressing on

LOL, yeah. The last time my fire/fire blaster was placated, the enemy was already pretty low on health. Since he had to run right up to me to placate me, he was standing in both of my AoE damage auras. So he placated me, then fell down dead. I was like, "Yeah! Take that, smart guy!"

[KC4800]

Is there a badge for being placated?

 

Look That-a-Way Badge or Don't See Me! Badge

[Shred Monkey]

5 hours ago, KC4800 said:

Is there a badge for being placated?

 

Look That-a-Way Badge or Don't See Me! Badge

These are not the droids...