Finally done Night Ward...

[Sovera]

... on a leveling character. And holy guacamole, I now get why people say it is insane.

 

My only experience is doing it on a level 50 and of course all IOed to the gills I'd burn through things while watching curiously why my level-appropriate-team would struggle and sometimes die.

 

So far I've fought the animated spells with the auto-hit-always-on slow aura, which complete with the 'orb of blizzard' conspired to leave most of my cooldowns on the double digits. Nothing to press since nothing is available. Managed to slog through it with big pauses

 

Now I'm doing a Talon mission and I'm bombarded with defense debuffs, -recovery, slows, AND, my FAVORITE, -jump and -fly whatever. So I am literally down a ledge and the mobs are at arm's length but I am unable to reach them, while they are content to plink me from afar and keep on spamming that -fly and -jump power. I had to run down a tunnel while gobbling purples hoping they would miss enough times that I could..... jump the little ledge and reach them...

 

(They did btw, no deaths so far thanks to a bucket full of insps)

 

Okay, at 30 I'll get EvM which has -fly protection and I'll spare a slot for 20% slow resistance on Fly. Wish me luck!

[Sovera]

Instead of being upset I'm actually feeling challenged. Now I want to solo it all at x8. I need to uncover all the arcs so I can find them over Ouro.

[ZemX]

It's actually really interesting.  I think the more commonly held belief that gold is harder than red is harder than blue is really just "newer content is harder".  The devs making the missions simply refined their craft as they went.  They created more interesting enemies and more difficult missions because people were all the time saying how boring easy everything was.

[Sovera]

3 minutes ago, ZemX said:

It's actually really interesting.  I think the more commonly held belief that gold is harder than red is harder than blue is really just "newer content is harder".  The devs making the missions simply refined their craft as they went.  They created more interesting enemies and more difficult missions because people were all the time saying how boring easy everything was.

 

 

Well... Obviously I'm pushing the envelope because I'm doing content meant for eight people. But being flooded with debuffs is not just 'new content is harder'. Lets not compare Clockwork, Council and Freaks to Talons and the living spells thing. Gold was definitely harder than Blue with plenty of debuffs happening that stacked fast.

 

But I'm approaching the content on a x6 or x8 setting and obviously a large team or smaller groups would make the difference. Two days ago I dropped out of a First Ward team because on a team of 8 running at +0 we just melted things before they did anything in return.

[ZemX]

7 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Well... Obviously I'm pushing the envelope because I'm doing content meant for eight people. But being flooded with debuffs is not just 'new content is harder'. Lets not compare Clockwork, Council and Freaks to Talons and the living spells thing. Gold was definitely harder than Blue with plenty of debuffs happening that stacked fast.

 

Did... you think I said Gold isn't harder than blue?   I'm not sure what to make of this.  I was just commenting on WHY some missions are harder than others.  It's because they are newer.  The devs made things progressively more difficult as they went, probably in response to hearing people complain about how easy the game was over the years.  New content is new enemies AND new missions.

[Sovera]

1 minute ago, ZemX said:

 

Did... you think I said Gold isn't harder than blue?   I'm not sure what to make of this.  I was just commenting on WHY some missions are harder than others.  It's because they are newer.  The devs made things progressively more difficult as they went, probably in response to hearing people complain about how easy the game was over the years.  New content is new enemies AND new missions.

 

No, I just misunderstood what you meant. That's on me.

[Carnifax]

We've been running Night Ward on our dedicated Gold side team on Reunion (The Yellow Brick Road. Yes we are Oz themed).

 

Night ward is ridiculous. Enemies which are impossible to see in the mass bloom which is CoH teams, because all the spells are is bloom effects.

 

Stacking slows (bloody Time Wards). Enemies which spawn masses of pets (all of which do -ToHit). 

 

And the joy which is that ludicrous "defend the mansion" mission.

 

Honestly it reminds me of old mayhem missions where people would rush it and trigger a billion longbow ambushes.

[ZemX]

57 minutes ago, Carnifax said:

Night ward is ridiculous. Enemies which are impossible to see in the mass bloom which is CoH teams, because all the spells are is bloom effects.

 

I think I hate this more than all their combined debuffs.  Hell, even solo I have trouble telling how many of them are in a spawn unless I cycle through them with the Next Target key.  I'll kill one and turn to leave only to then realize there were two of them nearly on top of one another and impossible to tell apart.

[Aeroprism]

40 minutes ago, ZemX said:

 

I think I hate this more than all their combined debuffs.  Hell, even solo I have trouble telling how many of them are in a spawn unless I cycle through them with the Next Target key.  I'll kill one and turn to leave only to then realize there were two of them nearly on top of one another and impossible to tell apart.

 

This.  x 1000. 

 

I don't care how many people tell me this is great and challenging.  To me it's just terrible design.   Make them hard, make them remorselessly unfair, give them debuffs up to the wazoo, I don't care.  But let me be able to tell where they are so I can target them.  I'm playing City of Heroes, not City of Pixel Hunts.

[Sovera]

Fortunately I just AoE everything down, but the challenge is certainly present with an at level character. As mentioned it is hilariously difficult (well, it -is- at x8).

 

Even now I'm doing the book arc with Epoch and mercenary and confronted with the praetorian clockwork, and while in the past I've mentioned how much their debuffing sucks it actually feels like a breath of fresh air as I collect XP to improve my character for the bigger threats since they are so much easier.

 

The stacking of the varied debuffs (especially slows) makes a difference as my recovery gets hit, my accuracy gets hit, my defense gets hit. With the clockwork they just debuff defense and I can counter with purples and kill fast. But killing fast when my Burn suddenly has 30 seconds to recharge is difficult.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Sovera

[BZRKR]

2 hours ago, Aeroprism said:

 

This.  x 1000. 

 

I don't care how many people tell me this is great and challenging.  To me it's just terrible design.   Make them hard, make them remorselessly unfair, give them debuffs up to the wazoo, I don't care.  But let me be able to tell where they are so I can target them.  I'm playing City of Heroes, not City of Pixel Hunts.

In my runs through the Night Ward content, I found that Tab Targeting found every enemy no matter how much it blended in. You just have to look around every dusty corner and down every hedge row maze corridor.

[ViciousCabaret]

The repeatable missions from Sir Lionel and Atherton Cromwell (both near the rail station) are also good fun if you haven't tried them, and about as difficult. They feature Night Ward enemies and some First Ward enemies scaled up to the 30-39 range. The Apparitions felt particularly nasty when elevated to those levels in my last run through the area. The repeatables are also a good place to find Spirit Stalkers en masse for getting their defeat badge, if that's of interest to you.

[Aeroprism]

This brings a very interesting question:  Suppos I would like to experience the whole story (at a reasonnable level, say, +0x2 or +0x3 TOPS), what would be a good AT or powerset combo?

 

Because, you know, I read it somewhere that this game allows you to have alts.

[ZemX]

Tanker/Brute would be a safe choice.  Usually is.   I'd take something that isn't weak to psi though.  High defense with good defense debuff resistance might be nice.  Super Reflexes?

 

You'll just be fielding a lot of attacks carrying debuffs if you up the team size.  The best debuff resistance is not being hit.  An /SR Brute would also do well at the "kill them before they kill you" race once you've built up some Fury, which won't be hard if you're always surrounded by a decent sized group of enemies.  Pick a primary with good AoE.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, ViciousCabaret said:

The repeatable missions from Sir Lionel and Atherton Cromwell (both near the rail station) are also good fun if you haven't tried them, and about as difficult. They feature Night Ward enemies and some First Ward enemies scaled up to the 30-39 range. The Apparitions felt particularly nasty when elevated to those levels in my last run through the area. The repeatables are also a good place to find Spirit Stalkers en masse for getting their defeat badge, if that's of interest to you.

 

I was doing those but stopped once realizing they were the equivalent of radio missions. I'd rather experience the story from start to end than be in an endless loop.

 

 

34 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

This brings a very interesting question:  Suppos I would like to experience the whole story (at a reasonnable level, say, +0x2 or +0x3 TOPS), what would be a good AT or powerset combo?

 

Because, you know, I read it somewhere that this game allows you to have alts.

 

I'm biased, but Fire/Ice Tanker. At that difficulty there will not be enough debuffing and the damage will quickly kill most things. As always killing faster works best. Like my Shield/EM Tanker that survived much better but killed so slowly I actually died more often than on a Fire Armor.

 

But it's my opinion. A SR Tanker would laugh at debuffs. With DM or Rad Melee for heals it should be perfectly safe since I think it could reach softcap levels by level 24 or something last I checked.

 

...unless the attacks are auto hit.

[Doomguide2005]

SR would be a good choice.  Auto hit slows meet Quickness and defdebuffs run into DDR.

[Sovera]

12 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

SR would be a good choice.  Auto hit slows meet Quickness and defdebuffs run into DDR.

 

More like, auto hit meets 95% defense slows 😄

 

I was looking at an old build i never did try to level. Kinda impressive to be softcapped (with an amplifier) at level 24. Or just 40% defenses at 24 without amplifier. Hmm... Old build though, need to work touch of Fear in.

[Aeroprism]

I have a SR/Savage tank. Maybe I should send her there.  No heals though.

 

 

"There's always the medicine pool."

 

[Sakai]

Brutes are a solid choice. I highly recommend Staff/Dark Armour.

 

The Stance in Staff that reduces End works wonders while you figure iout your end usage, which is of the utmost importance with DA.  Later you can  switch to the Dmg one and wonder why you didn't do it so much sooner. Yes it it weak against certain things, robots always come to mind with their tin heads, but the damage can definitely be improved upon substantially. Throw Musculature into the mix later for added oomph. Lots of AoEs, mainky cones. Yes Yes I know..cones...yuck...they actually get pretty easy with a bit of practice and a bunch of hopping around.  A Defence Debuff from at lvl 1. The Tier 9, Sky Splitter, does heavy Single Target damage when charged up with Staff's particular quirk, Perfection (hit 3 times in a row, get a bonus to that attack or the oh so wonderful Eye of the Storm).  

 

Plus you are spinning a staff and how cool is that?

 

Dark Armour has pretty much everything you need for success as well: Decent Resistance and easy to build Def (one of your cones will help with this), immune to Holds and such, an Aura that makes your foes tremble in Fear, another that damages while they are helpless, a rez for when things go bad, stealth and arguably one of the best heals we have. 

 

Yes it is a lot of auras to manipulate so you are not a ball of dark, multicoloured light, but there are options for minimal effects on some of the powers. Yes it is weak to Psionic but I gather everything is. 

 

Brought mine to 50 purely Praetorian...well kind of. When I hit 40 I ran Tina of course.  As well started helping out Vanguard,  I had previously established a relationship with Dark Watcher on Praetoria; went to Cimerora a couple of times as dimensional hopping was old hat by now. 

 

Or maybe that was my Psionic/Dark Scrapper. 

 

Either way.....Great combo and great stories. 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Sakai
For flow.

[Marine X]

I just recently ( past 8 Months ) ran an EM / Regen Brute from 0-50 doing mostly Praetorian Content as Resistance, with some Blueside that fit his backstory mixed in . It was tougher than Blue, but with some planning and strategy, very enjoyable. First Ward and Night Ward were some of the most challenging and rewarding parts of that journey. Considering doing another Praetorian soon, with fall coming I'll have a bit more free time. Maybe this time Loyalist to Villain.

[ZemX]

On 8/28/2021 at 4:11 AM, Marine X said:

Maybe this time Loyalist to Villain.

 

Power Loyalist is fun if you're headed to Villain and especially if you're gonna be a Rogue eventually.  It's all about self-promotion.

[TombTyrant]

I ran through these on my main Psi Melee/Rad Armor Brute. I didn't find them especially difficult. I can see how they might be because they are very different from the rest of the content.

 

I will also 10,000% agree with the bs about the fricking spells standing on top of each other (especially because I had very little AoE in my build at that time). That is frustrating. But more irritating than difficult.