Favourite/most hated enemy group

[SeraphimKensai]

I honestly dislike many groups that are too easy. Council/5th Column for example. I'd rather face a group where I actually have to watch my computer screen instead of Netflix on the TV.

[PeregrineFalcon]

8 minutes ago, biostem said:

They're one of the cooler groups, IMHO.  With the shells/hardsuit units,psi-cops, ones merged with Kheldians, and their various robots, they offer a lot of different enemy types - it would be cool if there was a group of "Rogue PPD" units that heroes could fight - maybe just have them draw a red slash through the PPD logo/badge and employ darker colors to differentiate them...

Or... you could play a Rogue and/or Villain character.

 

Just sayin.

 

 

7 minutes ago, SeraphimKensai said:

I honestly dislike many groups that are too easy. Council/5th Column for example. I'd rather face a group where I actually have to watch my computer screen instead of Netflix on the TV.

Yeah. In fact it was how easy it was fighting Council and Family later on that made me wonder if the devs who designed Clocks and Vahz knew what the heck they were doing.

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by PeregrineFalcon
Add a new thought.

[biostem]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Or... you could play a Rogue and/or Villain character.

 

Just sayin.

I certainly could, but "dirty cops" are also a staple of the genre.

[Luminara]

38 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Hate: Clockwork and Vahzilok at low levels. I think we all know why.

 

They hump your leg.

[Sabrehawk]

Carnies are my least favorite. The temporary invulnerability isn't a mechanic I enjoy.

[TraumaTrain]

I like the Sky Raiders for their lore and variety of mobs.

 

I dislike the spectrals of the Circle of Thorns because of their -accuracy/-to hit.

 

 

[Golden Azrael]

Council.

 

Azrael.

[JasperStone]

Sappers ....

Paragon Protectors hitting Unstoppable with a smidge of health left ...

...

but

it is all a Nemesis plot!

[Coyotedancer]

*looks at her forum avatar*

 

*looks at her character list*

 

Nah. I don't have any favorites. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

One of the reasons I like Longbow when I get to high +/x numbers is that there is a large number of different types of bosses/Wardens.  When you are fighting two or more, it's fun to figure out how or if they are synergistically helping each other or not.  

 

And I don't care how annoying it is, there is something hysterical about fighting two (or more!) Singularities at once.

[TheZag]

24 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

And I don't care how annoying it is, there is something hysterical about fighting two (or more!) Singularities at once.

 

The little zone event in St. Martial where you raid the casino and then beat up longbow can put you into a multiple singularity situation.

[LiquidBandage]

On 5/20/2022 at 3:25 AM, FenrisWolf44 said:

Which enemy group (ie Hellions, COT, Malta etc) do you most enjoy having missions against, and which do you most hate having missions against?

I Hate (with a capital H) fighting against mobs that suppress Perception to the point where you can't see anything (enemies disappear). So for the most part, I hate playing against Arachnos for that reason (I really do like the design of all the other mobs in their organization though). 

 

I am not asking for help or advice about how to overcome it, I just really do not like the binary nature of Perception (you either see everything or you see nothing).

 

I like the variety of challenges provided by each group, it helps foster the sense that you cannot craft an invulnerable character. Thus you are encouraged to team up with others to spread the load and/or trade off on who is leading the charge vs supporting. I don't know if I actually have a favorite group.

[tidge]

I dislike any and all enemies that are prone to run, especially Warwolves. Igneous Minions are almost as bad, and there is a special place with Mot for the Circle of Thorn Specters who turn invisible and fly away. Far worse than Fake Nemeses.

[LiquidBandage]

7 minutes ago, tidge said:

I dislike any and all enemies that are prone to run, especially Warwolves. Igneous Minions are almost as bad, and there is a special place with Mot for the Circle of Thorn Specters who turn invisible and fly away. Far worse than Fake Nemeses.

That's partly why I built a Ice/Poison Corruptor with four single target holds and two macros for targeting problematic mobs. It is great when I can roll with a group that is just plowing through groups and no one really notices that the problematic ones were just held to death every time. 🙂

[Xeres]

I like Freakshow a lot.  I also like Malta because they feel like an anti-super SpecOps group.

 

My least favorite is probably COT - especially Ghosts with their -tohit.  Also Clockwork because it's just so redundant.

[Aracknight]

I don't think I have a favorite, although punching and kicking Council and Fifth Column nazis is fun.  Oh, the Family is fun too, with their mobster suits and dialogue.

 

I dislike the Circle of Thorns mostly because of their maps.  Whether in caves or Oranbega, they're a pain.

[High_Beam]

I hate, absolutely hate the freaking Vahzilok!  And that hate is for the same reason everyone else hates them.  I love to hear carnies scream and hate Malta Sappers.  I love punching Nazi's and related Fascists in their faces.  But for me the ones I hate the most are the ones that I love the most because I respect them and their game.

 

The Clockwork (Primal not Praetorian).  It is so enjoyable smashing those little scavenging creeps, especially when they make that wind down and clank crash noise when dead.  And because they are so prolific in King's Row and more notably in all of Positron and Synapses Task Forces, you are fighting them non stop.  I especially am fond of this one mission where those clattering creeps actually say "I hate <character name>".  You really feel that for a second you have truly put a dent in their world and you are like their life nemesis.

 

But the kings of jerks I hate so much but love so much because of the satisfaction of beating them is the Circle of Thorns.  You say Rollister and people cringe.  Some have PTSD flashbacks of the original Positron Task force.  Ruin Mages are so horrible early on because even tanks don't have their status effect shields yet so everyone is getting knocked on their buttocks.  You see Ruin Mage and you forget strategy and attack him.  Its Pavlovian.  Madness Mages.  Nuff said.  An old friend in the Babes of War named Doctor Finetush once told me the three most scary powers in game are psionics, negative energy and Circle of Thorns.  You fight them from low level, then in all of the Positron TFs, and Twilight's Son, and Sara Moore and Justin Augustine, and Ice Mistral.  They have missions into the fifties and are a group with a deep and varied power set including some real painful types.  The Envoy of Shadows is no joke.  I hate them and their Oranbegan tunnels but when you beat them down you really feel like you have done good, that you are good.
 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Narratively, Freakshow are the perfect hired thugs for so many organizations, especially clandestine ones. Freakshow are all willing to basically try anything at least once and will work for anything: money, anarchy, weapons/tech, some radical new cause. Mechanically is where they feel really repetitive and boring, especially for their slap-dash aesthetic. Freakalok remedy this a bit but it feels like the baseline Freakshow should have flamethrowers, chemical sprayers, nuclear radiation emitters, additional arms, improvised rocket launchers, the odd laser gun mounted to their cybernetics, and so on. (And Noise tanks need to be part of the regular mob or at least added back to the Yin arc) Relatedly it bugs me how all three major Freakshow leaders have basically the same power sets with only their melee different (or for being leaders they only sport a cybernetic arm).

 

For pure aesthetics, the PPD win out just for their SWAT and Hardshells alone (I wish psicops and power armored cops were part of the 40-50 ppd too).

 

and finally for favorite faction for mechanics, I’m going to say Incarnate Tsoo (normal tsoo is also pretty damn awesome. Also my favorite overall). Good mix of powers/damage types/effects, and I’m a sucker for martial arts themed enemies having started back on live with a katana scrapper. Always was fun fighting one of their Katana guys and thinking “Let’s have an honorable showdown!”

 

Edit: oh, I forgot my least favorite(s).

All together it’s KoA, Tuatha De Dannan, Red Caps, and Fir Bolg. Which sucks since the concept behind all of them is kickass, but any mission with them is painfully repetitive, they feel so freaking wasted in terms of potential, and in the case of the Tuatha, they’re badly misrepresented (I overheard one talking about serving “Dannan”, their goddess is “Danu” a single Wikipedia search would have been all you needed, Live Devs!) as I mentioned, I think part of why I hate these groups is because I know I could love them. But theyre trapped in a hell of boringness and in the KoA’s case, we’re ultimately killed off in the story as an organization.

Edited June 1, 2022 by Sakura Tenshi

[DoctorNorth]

FAVORITE: Circle of Thorns - They just became a staple villain for all my characters, so my RP stories revolve around the circle a lot. 

 

LEAST: Tsoo - I was never comfortable with the depiction and iconography of this group, I think it might be outdated. Plus all that psychic damage and sorcerers that teleport to get more help are a total butt.

 

I really dig the Snakes on the villain side, love the way they slither so fast! 

[srmalloy]

On 6/1/2022 at 11:19 AM, Sakura Tenshi said:

and in the case of the Tuatha, they’re badly misrepresented (I overheard one talking about serving “Dannan”, their goddess is “Danu” a single Wikipedia search would have been all you needed, Live Devs!)

I gave up on the live devs fixing world background issues a long time ago. The first cringe was getting to Talos Island and seeing the red-and-white-striped buoys parked next to docks (and in the entire live run of CoH, I was the only one to complain about that). And it's usually little things -- Roman name structure and conventions, for example -- and it's always things that small amount of research would have turned up correct information to use.

[Sakura Tenshi]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

I gave up on the live devs fixing world background issues a long time ago. The first cringe was getting to Talos Island and seeing the red-and-white-striped buoys parked next to docks (and in the entire live run of CoH, I was the only one to complain about that). And it's usually little things -- Roman name structure and conventions, for example -- and it's always things that small amount of research would have turned up correct information to use.

 

Hell, you want really hilariously bad, there's a thread that points out all of Requiem (you know, an ITALIAN Military Fascist who helped serve Germany in WWII) is wearing American military badges on his chest.

[momentarygrace]

On 6/2/2022 at 11:30 AM, DoctorNorth said:

FAVORITE: Circle of Thorns - They just became a staple villain for all my characters, so my RP stories revolve around the circle a lot. 

 

LEAST: Tsoo - I was never comfortable with the depiction and iconography of this group, I think it might be outdated. Plus all that psychic damage and sorcerers that teleport to get more help are a total butt.

 

I really dig the Snakes on the villain side, love the way they slither so fast! 

 

I like the Snakes too, I have one of my few Redsiders who is a cat (Binx the Cat) and they were his signature prey of choice. So disappointed to realize they don't (as far as I know?) exist outside of Mercy.

 

Hunting hooman shaped types just not as fun to him.

[DrunkFlux]

Least favorites: Nemesis and Ralaruu, for comparable reasons of what I feel is closer to fake difficulty.

 

The trouble with both is, they aren't truely challenging so much as designed to say to defense (and to-hit also case of nemesis) that it's useless.  It's bad design to outright take away options completely.  Nemesis vengeance buffing is overpowered and tedious to deal with; after cleaning up a mob of nemesis, you must wait for the buffs to clear from the next mobs, which are always certain to be buffed; the vengeance on death that the lieutenants have has a massive radious.  At least there is a counter, if annoying one that breaks gameflow.  But....

 

....Ralaruu are even cheaper; the overseers (all eyeball enemies in fact) have 200-300% to-hit rating.  There is no way to get such a high amount of defense to counter that.  Not even a tanker with all the locational defense IO's possible + elude can do that.  I wouldn't be surprised if sucha to-hit exceeds the defense hard-cap.  It's simply unfair and annoying.  It's a good thing both villain groups aren't very common.

 

Favorites: Malta Operatives, Arachnos, Banished pantheon

 

I love enemies that present a challenge that you can deal with.

 

Malta Operatives have a nice variety of tricks that you have to watch out for, mostly focused on CC and endurance drain.  They require some amount of thinking and killing them in order as well as smart power use.  I have a special love for them specifically for that reason.

 

Arachnos are similar to Malta Operatives, but take variety to an even heavier extreme, there isn't a build in the game that can perfectly counter them because they have a bit of everything.  High defense?  Some rank widows, especially tarantula queens and fortunata mistresses can debuff defense with dominate, which is a psi-only attack with no locational, making them priority targets.  If you have poor endurance resistance then the Mu become priority targets.  Bane spiders are like RE4 chainsaw maniacs, able to inflict horrifying damage such you simply MUST deal with them.  Only the brute force mechanical spiders are generic enemies.  They also have a tremendous amount of lore backing them up.

 

Not to mention another bias; My main on live was an arachnos widow, and I'm enjoying the new Arachnos widow I made a few weeks ago.

 

Banished Pantheon possess a wide array of nasty tricks from anti-melee storm summoning, psionics, I think radiation and darkness abilities.  They are in many ways brute force, but they have nasty secondary effects and are a group you simply cannot just casually yolo.  Like Arachnos you have priority targets to deal with, there isn't truely a way to make a build completely invincible against them, and they have excellent lore and even star in an incarnate trial, when the rest of them are exclusively focused on praetorians.  I also find there outfits to be especially unique; you cannot actually replicate them currently, but I'd happily make an ex pantheon or even banished pantheon themed character if it was possible.

[The Larker]

Favorite: the Carnies obviously, I love when the ladies scream! It means my pick up lines are really terrible lol.

 

Hated: other players 🤪

[Marine X]

I have to admit that I really only hate Sappers because they deserve it, especially the ones who hover out of sight when you survey a room, one trick ponies, but a hell of a trick.

I also do not miss Void Hunters and Cysts showing up when a Kheldian is on the team at all, they were sneaky little pricks, yes they were.

 

Favorites:

Freakshow and Primal Clockwork: They are great to fight for someone who primarily plays Melee Characters.

Nemesis: Large tight groups of cannon fodder just begging to be put down.

 

Least Favorites:

Cabal and Sky Raiders: the whole run at you till you target them, then move out of range so you have to reselect targets is tedious to say the least.

Praetorian Clockwork: refuse to enter Melee even when taunted, tiresome and felt like they should have been more challenging, but they weren't.