Can anything solo LRSF/Miss Liberty TF?

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

See? No reason at all not to add a temp power that defeats all enemies on a map. It's just a matter of time management.

Why stop there? If “don’t like it don’t do it” is as meaningful an argument as some here claim, why can’t I have a slash command that awards my character 2 billion influence and all accolades? Oh yeah some transcendant merits too pls.

 

Devs can we get on this?

[Sovera]

16 minutes ago, arcane said:

Finding all the references to how much work it is to chain insps pretty funny.

 

Just because the GameShark required some extra steps didn’t mean they weren’t cheat codes 😉

 

Who are you trying to convince anyway?

 

I'll preface by saying I don't mail insps.

 

Considering it is not a gain to mail insps what, exactly, is being cheated off? It takes extra time, extra effort, and extra game cash, to perform the most difficult content that requires mailed inspirations. What a group will do in an hour may take three for the hardcore soloer. There is no gain for them. They did not get more rewards, or did the content faster. On the contrary it took longer and cost them.

 

The OP showed that naive gentle nature of someone who thought they could just solo the TF to gain the new shinies without considering the massive effort involved and how much simpler and brain dead easy it would be to lock themselves in farm map and be able to earn one of those per hour.

 

Seriously, it gets tiring to see the sneering posts.

[arcane]

49 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

I'll preface by saying I don't mail insps.

 

Considering it is not a gain to mail insps what, exactly, is being cheated off? It takes extra time, extra effort, and extra game cash, to perform the most difficult content that requires mailed inspirations. What a group will do in an hour may take three for the hardcore soloer. There is no gain for them. They did not get more rewards, or did the content faster. On the contrary it took longer and cost them.

 

The OP showed that naive gentle nature of someone who thought they could just solo the TF to gain the new shinies without considering the massive effort involved and how much simpler and brain dead easy it would be to lock themselves in farm map and be able to earn one of those per hour.

 

Seriously, it gets tiring to see the sneering posts.

Using exploits doesn’t need to have a victim or a cash reward to constitute using exploits. In this case, it’s clear the reward is something more like bragging rights.

 

Which is fine. Why you would brag about how much skill it takes to use exploits is beyond me, though, and that’s all I said in the post you quoted.

 

Is my actually-killable character really supposed to be impressed at your invincible mode character’s email button clicking? You want acknowledgment for additional menu management even though said additional task mitigates all other risk in the game? Lol no. Do it all you want until the unlikely-to-ever-happen fix comes in, but bragging about it? Yes, I stand by my statement that that’s hilarious to me.

Edited January 7, 2022 by arcane

[Fira]

Edit: Post "deleted". I jumped the gun accidentally, but this thread really is not about insps and this whole discussion doesn't belong here

Edited January 7, 2022 by Fira

[Mezmera]

8 hours ago, Redletter said:

Relentless is, and will be according to the devs, an optional setting. Using it as any measure of agreement is irresponsibly presumptuous - doubly so when it seems to be made more as a response for people wanting to make difficulty more customizable for themselves, as opposed to any sort of measure to curtail, police, or even discourage what you describe as cheap tactics.

 

The most identifiable player handicap feature of Relentless is the removal of inspiration use other than rez ones.  Surely the devs identified a big over performer.  Relentless comes with this standard handicap which you get much higher increased rewards from doing a Relentless settings run.  You can force handicap yourself in other legacy SF's by selecting no inspiration use but you don't see any increased reward from doing that.  There's been a congruent return to desire support in teams with this setting which seems to address one issue of support becoming meaningless.  Sure looks to me like they are trying to give higher options with great rewards for attempting this type of play which would be steering.  

 

I could care less what someone does with their time or that they feel they achieved something special through abusing the email system to get damage equal to having two kins on their team along with two cold shield buffers and two sonic shield buffers.  Having an unending supply of damage, defense and resistance does come off as a tad cheap.  Again don't nerf it, let people do with their time what they wish, but for future content don't be upset Relentless style is the way forward.  

 

I agree though with @Bill Z Bubba's sarcasm, with your thinking there's absolutely no reason not to have an instantaneous nuke all in map power.  

Edited January 7, 2022 by Mezmera

[Sovera]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Using exploits doesn’t need to have a victim or a cash reward to constitute using exploits. In this case, it’s clear the reward is something more like bragging rights.

 

Which is fine. Why you would brag about how much skill it takes to use exploits is beyond me, though, and that’s all I said in the post you quoted.

 

Is my actually-killable character really supposed to be impressed at your invincible mode character’s email button clicking? You want acknowledgment for additional menu management even though said additional task mitigates all other risk in the game? Lol no. Do it all you want until the unlikely-to-ever-happen fix comes in, but bragging about it? Yes, I stand by my statement that that’s hilarious to me.

 

First of all, -you- have decided it is an exploit. It is cringy to have people deciding something as a 'moral' self imposed restriction and then wanting others to follow their own rules. This 'exploit' has been in the game since the beginning and has been around for longer than some people playing this game have been alive.

 

But can you actually do it though? I'll await your explanation on how doing the hardest feat in the game sinking time and effort and game money does not interest you so you could do it if you wanted to but don't. Because you are minimizing the effort involved while doing a mental movie of clicking on an endless flood of of inspirations and effortlessly succeeding.

[arcane]

31 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

First of all, -you- have decided it is an exploit. It is cringy to have people deciding something as a 'moral' self imposed restriction and then wanting others to follow their own rules. This 'exploit' has been in the game since the beginning and has been around for longer than some people playing this game have been alive.

 

But can you actually do it though? I'll await your explanation on how doing the hardest feat in the game sinking time and effort and game money does not interest you so you could do it if you wanted to but don't. Because you are minimizing the effort involved while doing a mental movie of clicking on an endless flood of of inspirations and effortlessly succeeding.

Of course it’s an exploit and of course anyone can do it. You’re still trying to garner credit and acknowledgment and bragging rights for playing a game with invincible god mode on, and no amount of email button clicking will make THAT not cringy.

 

To be extremely clear, it is NOT effortless to do this. But you could certainty argue it’s *relatively* effortless when juxtaposed with, oh I don’t know, actually playing the game without having exploit-induced capped stats 24/7. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by arcane

[PeregrineFalcon]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

Using exploits doesn’t need to have a victim or a cash reward to constitute using exploits.

I've been very consistent. A crime should have a victim in order to be a crime. And an exploit should have a victim, or cause an issue with the game, in order to be an exploit.

 

Anything else is just Karens crying because "Those kids opened a lemonade stand without a business license! Get 'em, officer!"

 

So what if he is just trying to establish "bragging rights"? So what? Have you soloed an LRSF? I haven't! He did. Good for him. He accomplished something I haven't and probably couldn't. Frankly he deserves some bragging rights, even if he did decide to go and thumbs down half the thread.  🤪

[A Cat]

1 hour ago, arcane said:

Of course it’s an exploit and of course anyone can do it. You’re still trying to garner credit and acknowledgment and bragging rights for playing a game with invincible god mode on, and no amount of email button clicking will make THAT not cringy.

 

To be extremely clear, it is NOT effortless to do this. But you could certainty argue it’s *relatively* effortless when juxtaposed with, oh I don’t know, actually playing the game without having exploit-induced capped stats 24/7. 

It probably takes less effort, just more time. It's like spending millions on an F1 car, having the prep time, warm up, etc to go around a track really really fast vs climbing into a Camry and doing the same track with little effort or preparation. If you count prep time, it is probably actually slower than just doing it solo more normally since you wouldn't have to email a bunch of shit to yourself/buy the supers. Personally I think the email interface sucks to deal with too. 

 

Also other speed runs in other games involves actual bugs and stuff, like getting out of the map geometry to skip large portions of levels. Somehow using two mechanics that are well functioning in an unusual combination just seems like little baby stuff. I am not an inspiration emailer or hard core player in any way but I still don't see how it harms anyone. It in fact takes effort to fix, rather than leave in, which is what you and Bill's responses miss. 

 

 

[The_Warpact]

30 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

 he did decide to go and thumbs down half the thread.  

Lmfao, yeah was wondering about this.

 

 

 

 

 

Did anyone actually suggest an AT or build that could though? Looks to me it went pretty far off track.

[Erratic1]

27 minutes ago, The_Warpact said:

Lmfao, yeah was wondering about this.

 

You want head scratching, probably wanders into Sanity Check territory with a guaranteed loss even if you make the roll?

 

Try to figure out a reason behind what has been given a thumbs down.

 

I'm guessing random yes/no operator personally.

[Elmyder]

1 hour ago, A Cat said:

It probably takes less effort, just more time. It's like spending millions on an F1 car, having the prep time, warm up, etc to go around a track really really fast vs climbing into a Camry and doing the same track with little effort or preparation. If you count prep time, it is probably actually slower than just doing it solo more normally since you wouldn't have to email a bunch of shit to yourself/buy the supers. Personally I think the email interface sucks to deal with too.

 

To be completely honest, it is easier/less effort to run around on a normal endgame build with strong def/res/other mitigations and simply carry in insps for select encounters. It's easy to say something is easy when you are committed to never trying it yourself :P (not looking at you lol)

 

1 hour ago, The_Warpact said:

Did anyone actually suggest an AT or build that could though? Looks to me it went pretty far off track.

 

Fire/fire blaster is fastest but a terrible idea unless tryhard speedrunning. Veracor demonstrated that a tanker can do it safely, but I know he used ultimates and reds. Quite a few people have done it on scrappers, including no insp challenges. There is the classic /bio scrappers that shine, like tw/bio or em/bio. I have personally managed a pretty safe run of solo mltf with an ill/rad but recluse will be tricky until yellow tower falls, and due to the unique ill/rad playstyle, you may or may not enjoy. 

 

I think for most general solo builds, the only big threats will be patrons and recluse. Mostly scirocco due to extreme -def debuffs (like over 100% at times), and recluse due to yellow tower raising soft cap to 75% and him dealing big end drain on hit. You can mitigate these circumstamtially with accolades (demonic and geas) if you can kill fast enough, or if allowing insps, bring def/res/blue and monitor your def values during combat. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Elmyder

[Veracor]

2 hours ago, The_Warpact said:

Did anyone actually suggest an AT or build that could though?

 

Fire/Fire Blaster is the default speedrun setup and is the build Elmyder did the MLTF solo run on.  Fire Blast offers the best AoE (Fireball and Inferno) paired with Blaze and Blazing Bolt, which are among the best single target DPA attacks in the game.  Fire Manipulation offers Burn which is one of (if not the) strongest powers in the game due to doubling up on proc damage, as well as two damage auras to add additional damage while using your main attack chain.  Fire Sword or procmonstered Char are usually used as the filler in the attack chain.  It just so happens that Fire damage is one of the least resisted damage types in the game for task forces and itrials, aside from the Goldbrickers in Dr Aeon Strike Force (Because Cobalt Arachne was aware of this when making it).  It should be noted that Fire/Fire Blasters are glass cannons and rely heavily on chaining inspirations to stay alive, and so might not be the best choice for a solo MLTF run.  In regular content, they typically kill mobs so fast that they can survive on inspiration drops alone.

 

Scrapper is another choice for speedruns.  The buffed Energy Melee offers the best single target damage, while the nerfed Titan Weapons still offers reasonably close single target damage while also having great options for AoE.  For secondaries, Fiery Aura has the best damage aura alongside Burn, while Bio Armor offers less damage but does so passively for the builds that don't want Burn as part of an attack chain.  Scrappers have higher single target damage than Blasters but don't clear groups as quickly, and don't need to rely on inspirations quite so hard.  A TW/Bio Scrapper is probably the "safest" speedrun build to play if the playstyle interests a potential new runner (TW in particular because AoE knockdown is good damage mitigation).

 

There are others that can solo MLTF.  I did so on my Bio/TW Tanker by pulling Patron/LR aggro away from my Lore/temp summons and letting them kill the towers with team inspirations.  Elmyder has also soloed MLTF with an Ill/Rad controller as a funsies project, but it took him hours.  I have heard about Mind Dominators soloing LRSF by perma-sleeping the Freedom Phalanx while one is confused to kill the others, but haven't heard about it ever being done quickly, and I'm not certain if/how the meta speedrun builds have tried solo LRSF.

 

For other task forces, procmonstered Ice/Fire Blasters are sometimes considered due to relative single target DPS to Fire/Fire.  In organized teams on AV-heavy content, sometimes /Cold Corruptors are used for their -res debuffs; /Cold Masterminds are also a possibility by offering the same debuffs but lots of single target DPS, but not one that speedrunners currently care to deal with due to heavy reliance on Incandescence chains.  On inspiration-less team runs, a /Kin Corruptor is often seen to maintain damage caps for everyone and /Cold Corruptors are more likely to be seen for the extra defense, but otherwise not much changes other than a slower time.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Veracor

[The_Warpact]

Damn @Veracor thanks for the detailed post.

[arcane]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I've been very consistent. A crime should have a victim in order to be a crime. And an exploit should have a victim, or cause an issue with the game, in order to be an exploit.

 

Anything else is just Karens crying because "Those kids opened a lemonade stand without a business license! Get 'em, officer!"

 

So what if he is just trying to establish "bragging rights"? So what? Have you soloed an LRSF? I haven't! He did. Good for him. He accomplished something I haven't and probably couldn't. Frankly he deserves some bragging rights, even if he did decide to go and thumbs down half the thread.  🤪

The “don’t brag about achieving something with cheat codes” argument and whatever devs decide to do or not do with this issue are completely separate issues in my mind, so no point trying to connect the two when they are irrelevant to each other to the guy you’re forum pvp’ing. Completely off-topic, just something I found funny when I found all the insp-chainers massaging their egos this morning for their adept execution of a cheap trick.

 

As for “no victim, no problem”, again, that’s fine that that’s your stance, but it’s obvious to me that it isn’t shared by the devs because of the abundance of historical nerfs of victimless but overpowering exploits we already know about. To me, it seems self-evident that there’s actually more precedent throughout this game’s history for balancing things because they are overpowered than because they negatively impact others. That’s just based on my perhaps-shoddy memory of some historical facts, but oh well.

 

Who was the victim of wolves? The dreck map? Every iteration of Burn ever? The snake egg farm? With some research time I could add a hundred more question marks, I’m sure.

Do you see what I’m saying? Is it understandable yet that someone could look at how MMO’s are historically designed and think “oh, nerfs happen when things are overpowered” and do so logically instead of with karenesque malice? I know you disagree with that stance, but do you understand how it might be reasonable to some of your fellow humans without any ill intent whatsoever?

Edited January 7, 2022 by arcane

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, Veracor said:

I have heard about Mind Dominators soloing LRSF by perma-sleeping the Freedom Phalanx while one is confused to kill the others, but haven't heard about it ever being done quickly, and I'm not certain if/how the meta speedrun builds have tried solo LRSF.

 

Yes Mind doms are the safest to solo LRSF due to the aoe sleep and ST confuse.  Get yourself some good stealth and you can just sit there and spam confuse until it's 1v1 but yup it can be tediously long.  You can also do this on a Dark dom since they have the ST confuse as well and can attain the same stealth, they just don't have the sleep in their back pocket if something goes wrong but they'll bring better damage than Mind control will to the 1v1 fight.  

 

Doms are well suited for this because of the additional mag you get from perma for the confuse that you can keep stacking.  I can't see doms doing anything like this on that last mission of MLTF though, I can sleep the patrons easy but the towers will be a slog.  

[PeregrineFalcon]

23 minutes ago, arcane said:

I know you disagree with that stance, but do you understand how it might be reasonable to some of your fellow humans without any ill intent whatsoever?

Sure. I actually understand your point, and I never intended to imply that you had some sort of malice or ill intent. I said in my initial reaction "Not picking on you specifically Arcane...", and I even acknowledged that I overreacted a bit.

 

But, you claim to have no ill intent, then you wrote this:

 

26 minutes ago, arcane said:

Completely off-topic, just something I found funny when I found all the insp-chainers massaging their egos this morning for their adept execution of a cheap trick.

That certainly sounds to me like you're upset about this thread. Can you understand how it might be reasonable for some of your fellow humans to think that you might have some ill intent based off of posts like this?

 

28 minutes ago, arcane said:

As for “no victim, no problem”, again, that’s fine that that’s your stance, but it’s obvious to me that it isn’t shared by the devs because of the abundance of historical nerfs of victimless but overpowering exploits we already know about.

My actual stance isn't as far removed from the devs' as you might think. I would argue that if one power set is way overpowered compared to others then there is a victim, in a sense. Yeah, it's a video game so there are no real victims here, but you know what I mean, and I can't think of a better word to use.

 

Anyway, I'd argue that the 'victim' of the 'crime' of an overpowered set are those people who'd like to play something other than Titan Weapons (before its well deserved nerf). They'd like to try Ice or Street Justice but they don't want to play a character whose TTK is significantly longer than TW. So, since they don't want to under-perform, they only create/play TW characters. That's certainly a problem for the players.

 

Using inspirations from your in game email though is something that anyone can do with any character. Now I agree that it does kinda feel like cheating and if the devs decided to change it so that people can't access their email during combat, or in an instance at all, I would feel like it was something that I couldn't complain about.

 

However, none of this changes my stance that some things are so minor, and/or don't affect others, that they fall into the "Why are you complaining about this, Karen?" category. I don't intend any insult to you Arcane. I just feel that this applies here and I just can't think of a more clear way to explain it than to invoke the legendary Karen.

[arcane]

Hey, all I said is that I have no ill intent towards my fellow city players. I never claimed that I don’t live behind a 30 foot wall of biting sarcasm and more frustrations with the world than you can shake a stick at.

[macskull]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Who was the victim of wolves? The dreck map? Every iteration of Burn ever? The snake egg farm? With some research time I could add a hundred more question marks, I’m sure.

While the snake egg farm could probably be classified as an exploit, none of the other ones on your list are. I'd maaaaaaaaybe give you wolves but giving a mob zero ranged attacks in a game where players can fly is more an oversight than anything. Additionally, each thing you've listed here ended up getting nerfed because they seriously had seriously skewed risk vs. reward or reward vs. time and I don't think either of those applies to the "email yourself stuff" discussion.

[arcane]

14 hours ago, macskull said:

While the snake egg farm could probably be classified as an exploit, none of the other ones on your list are. I'd maaaaaaaaybe give you wolves but giving a mob zero ranged attacks in a game where players can fly is more an oversight than anything. Additionally, each thing you've listed here ended up getting nerfed because they seriously had seriously skewed risk vs. reward or reward vs. time and I don't think either of those applies to the "email yourself stuff" discussion.

I wasn’t asking about exploits with those questions. I was trying to demonstrate that there is precedent for things being nerfed just because they are overpowered - not because they harm other players - and you clearly agree with me, so good to know.

 

I know this point is obvious but our friend was saying nerfs should never be for victimless crimes. My point was that that has never been the case in the history of CoH.

Edited January 8, 2022 by arcane

[arcane]

16 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Anyway, I'd argue that the 'victim' of the 'crime' of an overpowered set are those people who'd like to play something other than Titan Weapons (before its well deserved nerf). They'd like to try Ice or Street Justice but they don't want to play a character whose TTK is significantly longer than TW. So, since they don't want to under-perform, they only create/play TW characters. That's certainly a problem for the players.

Although this is absolutely the case for a few powergamers, it makes me want to bang my head against a wall. 
 

There are 9 powersets in this game I do not have maxed out at level 50. 4 MM primaries and 5 Dom secondaries. The only reason I don’t have those is because I decided to stop at 100 50’s for now (100 reflects badly enough on the state of my RL, IMO, don’t you think?).

 

There are a couple of duds out. But there’s just nothing wrong with the vast majority of those powersets unless you are positively obsessive-compulsive about timing every mission you do. Well, or PvP. That’s an exception.

 

IMO anyone that limits themselves to a few powersets is limited far more by their own thinking than by slight inequalities in the game.

Edited January 8, 2022 by arcane
Forgot Mercs even exist and miscounted

[macskull]

7 hours ago, arcane said:

I wasn’t asking about exploits with those questions. I was trying to demonstrate that there is precedent for things being nerfed just because they are overpowered - not because they harm other players - and you clearly agree with me, so good to know.

Uhh, these things were nerfed because the risk to reward ratios were so skewed players gravitated toward them at the expense of other content, therefore making it harder to do anything except those things, so by definition they were nerfed because they harmed other players. You could argue their existence harmed the game as a whole rather than other players specifically, but at the end of the day that's the same thing. Claiming email attachments in combat doesn't really meet any of those metrics.

Edited January 8, 2022 by macskull

[Ukase]

On 1/2/2022 at 2:57 PM, DarknessEternal said:

Those HamiOs are kind of expensive.  Anything capable of soloing the content to get them?

The easiest path to specific HOs are the AH. Run whatever content you want to run - use the merits wisely, profit and just buy the HO you want. The random nature of these rewards is my biggest reason for taking the merits anyway. HOs are hit and miss. Only a few are worth the effort. But - that's just my opinion. 

[Ukase]

On 1/3/2022 at 3:40 PM, Shred Monkey said:

 

Using a work around to get virtually unlimited access to something that is not intended to be an unlimited resource is literally meeting the definition of game breaking.  

 

Do I care?  Not in the slightest. 

 

But IMHO, anyone who objects to GM's fixing an obvious exploit deserves to be disappointed.

 

 

I'm of a mixed mind on this. 
I don't see these as "virtually unlimited", nor do I see them as an exploit. Clearly, these inspirations are bought - but then, there's a p2w vendor for all characters starting out. 

On the other hand, it's really just silly. Gobble all the inspirations necessary to make success all but guaranteed. But, as we read about the adventures for Elmyder, clearly it wasn't all but guaranteed. Sounds like it was a challenge, even with all that stuff grabbed out of the email. 

 

[A Cat]

7 minutes ago, Ukase said:

The random nature of these rewards is my biggest reason for taking the merits anyway. HOs are hit and miss. Only a few are worth the effort. But - that's just my opinion. 

That's the best part. It gives me the dopamine rush to fuel my gambling addiction without the crippling real world financial impacts. Choosing the HO after a Hami is truly the razor thin margin keeping me off the streets.