On the new CoT and council......the good and bad so far.

[DoctorDitko]

Agreed that hard stuff should be hard. Who knew?

 

(And looking forward to the days when fewer teammates raised on a steady diet of PI Council mishes are whining about fighting Malta in our PUGs.)

 

Roger on the Leadership pool. Even a couple of stacks make a noticeable difference.

 

Skip one LotG enh in favor of the +Acc unique from the Kismet set. Or is it called +To Hit? Whichever, it does the opposite of what's on the tin. There are also some uniques that reduce status effect duration.

 

And, in conclusion, if you spend too much time mezzed, blinded, or unable to hit?

Be a good kid and eat your grapes and bananas! They're good for you!

[tidge]

I feel that players can learn about the effects of debuffs, specifically -ToHit, by playing the game(*1)... although without monitoring combat values, it can be hard to make the connection. Aside from common discussion around defense debuffs and "softcap", I'm not sure that other types of player debuffs gets that much discussion. I'm unconvinced that more than 20% of players who do the Penny Yin TF actually know what Clamor's Radiation Infection does to the player and their nearby teammates. "Ok Tank, you have Clamor's aggro... could you maybe not stand toe-to-to with her?"

 

(*1) Circle of Thorns can show up quite early in player careers (red/blue). I used to run (pre-page 5) quite a few "Tough Mode" blueside TFs (Penny Yin and ealier) with the difficulty turned up... and it was usually the inability to hit enemies that got the attention.

 

Apropos of nothing: I'm leveling up a Stalker right now with the Energy Mastery epic... and I've been on the fence about Focused Accuracy. I have the build at the point where I almost have the attack chain (pre-50) where I want it... and while I don't have level 50 slotting for Accuracy and Recharge I am at a pretty good point with the slotted values... but I am absolutely seeing some enemies debuff my ToHit to the point where I feel like I should probably put Focused Accuracy into the build. For my build... I'm sacrificing a LotG mule power, which often isn't a deal breaker for me.

[Marshal_General]

I used to be big on Tactics until level 54 BP taught me that it is really only good for using your team to help proc your extra damage.

[Shred Monkey]

 Maybe this means support ATs can finally contribute more than helping to keep other support ATs alive.  (... and debuffing the AV so it dies in 8 seconds instead of 10).

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

 Maybe this means support ATs can finally contribute more than helping to keep other support ATs alive.  (... and debuffing the AV so it dies in 8 seconds instead of 10).

 

Support toons have been doing this for years. Team leaders just have to realize what they do and invite them. When I run teams and I know we are going on the MJ arc for instance, I make sure to try to find debuffer/buffers/control folks. As opposed to yet another blaster / melee team member.

 

EDIT: Also for the OP, when you form teams start at the base difficulty. If you find you put together a team that can handle tougher raise it up slightly the next mission. I always suggest to team leaders that it's actually counter productive to assume any team you form can handle the higher difficulties until they prove that. At base difficulties, the new COT and new Council can just be steam rolled like they always have been. This is fine.

Edited March 1 by golstat2003

[UltraAlt]

On 2/28/2024 at 9:09 PM, DrunkFlux said:

So I'm trying to solo them on 8x+3,

 

On 2/28/2024 at 9:09 PM, DrunkFlux said:

Melee toons struggled against CoT due to way, way to much -tohit aura spam, I ran into a situation on one of my scrappers where I had to just flat out abandon the mission, it was 100% undoable.

 

Looks like the "game isn't challenging enough" crowd have some challenges now.

 

I guess it was too much of a bother to turn it down and see how far you had to turn it down before it wasn't 100% undoable?

 

It may seem like I'm taunting you, but I'm really not.

I bet they aren't too difficult when you don't crank the notoriety to max.

 

Personally, if I want to fight 6 zillion guys - more or less - single-handedly, I will play Dynasty Warriors instead of CoH.

[WumpusRat]

On 2/29/2024 at 7:50 PM, DoctorDitko said:

(And looking forward to the days when fewer teammates raised on a steady diet of PI Council mishes are whining about fighting Malta in our PUGs.)

 

I occasionally did some PI groups that specifically went after Malta and Carnies, since people tend to avoid them like the plague.

 

And it was always a fun time introducing some people to Carnies' giant weakness to lethal damage, and watch them just tearing through missions like a chainsaw through cotton candy. 🙂

[kanga]

I feel they've been pushed just a touch too far. the unresistable knockback can make mez protection mostly useless, to say nothing of combat jumping and acrobatics. They did need something though, there was a reason people would target council. That said, it is immense fun to pulverize mobs sometimes so why not have something easier to deal with. So i guess with every build now you drop combat/acro and pick up leadership/focused acc if you intend to deal with them? no thank you.

 

definitely not balanced around standard Enhancements anymore. 😉

[DrunkFlux]

On 3/1/2024 at 4:26 AM, golstat2003 said:

 

Support toons have been doing this for years. Team leaders just have to realize what they do and invite them. When I run teams and I know we are going on the MJ arc for instance, I make sure to try to find debuffer/buffers/control folks. As opposed to yet another blaster / melee team member.

 

EDIT: Also for the OP, when you form teams start at the base difficulty. If you find you put together a team that can handle tougher raise it up slightly the next mission. I always suggest to team leaders that it's actually counter productive to assume any team you form can handle the higher difficulties until they prove that. At base difficulties, the new COT and new Council can just be steam rolled like they always have been. This is fine.

Yeah usually my intent, though I also sometimes switch toons if i'm on a lowbie and the teams leader likes taking on more than they can chew.  I rarely actually form teams, if i'm being honest.

And yeah I noticed most teams can still destroy them without much difficulty, this was more for when I needed to switch to someone cause a team was bad.  Honestly maybe i'm just being to insecure about it, after-all usually the best solution to a bad team is to leave, usually.  But sometimes I like to switch to a toon to save one.

On 3/1/2024 at 4:48 AM, UltraAlt said:

 

 

Looks like the "game isn't challenging enough" crowd have some challenges now.

 

I guess it was too much of a bother to turn it down and see how far you had to turn it down before it wasn't 100% undoable?

 

It may seem like I'm taunting you, but I'm really not.

I bet they aren't too difficult when you don't crank the notoriety to max.

 

Personally, if I want to fight 6 zillion guys - more or less - single-handedly, I will play Dynasty Warriors instead of CoH.

Its more for when i'm switching in an effort to save a team more than anything.  I found them easy on the ice blaster on +2, and also was in a team that crushed them very very quickly, so much so the archons never got to transform into warwolves.  so I'm kind of retracting on the Council a bit further, though I don't think I even stated the council as OP to begin with.  Mostly just the CoT and the overkill to-hit debuff making focused accuracy a requirement which I kind of hate if i'm being honest, as it feels like all the new pools added just as well have not been added at all to the game.  Bad design there as a few others mentioned so far in this thread.

[DrunkFlux]

3 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

I occasionally did some PI groups that specifically went after Malta and Carnies, since people tend to avoid them like the plague.

 

And it was always a fun time introducing some people to Carnies' giant weakness to lethal damage, and watch them just tearing through missions like a chainsaw through cotton candy. 🙂

I admit I find carnies and malta more fun overall and always found them fun to fight.  If anything, I think they are still more fun than the new CoT, since they are managable groups that aren't really overpowered in any particular manner.  Carnies weakness to lethal and malta are just kind of dependent on CC, the sappers are just glass cannons that stick out like a sore thumb, I felt them also a lot of fun.  I had noticed most people ignore though the more threatening enemies in both groups; sappers get focused but gunslingers not so much, in the case of carnies, dark ring mistresses are not dealt with by ranged toons as fast as they should be imo(they are effectively death mages).

 

Whats funny is I think Malta are way easier than the new CoT and honestly thinking on it, the council are capable of doing way more aoE damage, some even guaranteed, so lowbie teams are likely to get hit especially hard guaranteed, but I noticed that its not the worst, and the warwolves are just an extra health bar to drill through more than anything.  The new CoT are a bit higher than banished pantheon now(maybe we should buff banished then?  Just cause...), though my blaster never had problems with the nukes.

Like, I've usually one of two goals on toons:

Either:

A: They are strongest possible solo with maybe some leadership.  So if the team drops they can still keep going, the last alive.
B: Make the entire team virtually unstoppable.  Which is well, my support toons, they aren't made to be super solo focused.

The toons I was testing were in the former, since non-support toons.  I admit I rarely play them as I had bad experiences playing support during live, but thats a tale for another time.

 

Last team I was in:  council only, team mostly died to AoE res powers and the PBAoE life drains, except a few +1's, the non-50s 90% losses were from the eclipse, with only a few from the equinox's.  But no CoT, it was just all council.

[WumpusRat]

2 hours ago, kanga said:

I feel they've been pushed just a touch too far. the unresistable knockback can make mez protection mostly useless, to say nothing of combat jumping and acrobatics. They did need something though, there was a reason people would target council. That said, it is immense fun to pulverize mobs sometimes so why not have something easier to deal with. So i guess with every build now you drop combat/acro and pick up leadership/focused acc if you intend to deal with them? no thank you.

 

definitely not balanced around standard Enhancements anymore. 😉

 

I'm really keen to try them out now. Once I get home from work I'm going to take a few of my characters through some missions with CoT and Council and see how they do.

 

[kanga]

15 minutes ago, WumpusRat said:

 

I'm really keen to try them out now. Once I get home from work I'm going to take a few of my characters through some missions with CoT and Council and see how they do.

 

Some builds I don't think anything would effect much. my fire/time/fire controller, seems to just lock/melt/dissolve like it did before. others though... have been interesting.

[WumpusRat]

49 minutes ago, kanga said:

Some builds I don't think anything would effect much. my fire/time/fire controller, seems to just lock/melt/dissolve like it did before. others though... have been interesting.

 

Tested it on my shield/axe tanker, bots/ff mastermind, elec/elec defender, and dark/dark sentinel tonight. 

Tanker, MM and defender did just fine on +3x8, though the defender had a couple rough moments in big packs.

Sentinel got her hiney spanked a few times, since they were doing enough damage to overcome my regen/healing, especially when warwolf bosses were mixed in.

[Asacledhae]

Honestly, I'm okay with the new CoTs, but I strongly feel that the Council is now a little too overpowered. Here are a couple of things I really don't enjoy.

 

First of all, the werewolf transformation. If you ask me, it happens too often if you have a teammate. When you solo, it's somewhat tolerable, but still frustrating.

And then, there's this "FREEM!" thing. One of the thing I despise in games, is getting knocked back, so I always get knockback protection on my characters. From Acrobatics, to sets. FREEM! seems to always bypass everything, and send my character flying. Not cool.

[Crysis]

Solo’d a bunch of new Council and new COT missions on +4/x8 on my newly built Arsenal/Storm controller.  Didn’t have much problem, although the dark wolves were annoying if allowed to pop into that form.  

 

Of course, as a Controller, I spent many, many levels having difficulties soloing a bunch of stuff.  The trick with the new critters, just like hard targets before them, is holds and debuffs so they can be killed quickly before transforming into their harder forms.  If you were a melee character having difficulties with them, its because you’ve finally been presented with a critter type that will make you feel like a level 28 controller soloing.  You’ll have to dial down difficulty for theses mobs or team with others who can help.  

 

These new spawns are working as designed to add some difficulty to the game.

 

And @DrunkFlux you made a comment early on that struck me as odd.  You mention being able to “Carry a Team.”  As a farmer, I’m used to doing that.  But when I invite a bunch of lowbies into an actual mission, I’m by no means doing so to farm them but rather to give them higher rewards relative to the risk they’ll face.  You shouldn’t be trying to ‘carry’ the team or you aren’t really being a good leader.  I suspect there’s more psychology to the issues you have with the new spawn types than you are admitting.  You sound like you are accustomed to being the “center attraction” in your teams and that’s simply not going to be viable in every mission against every spawn.

Edited March 3 by Crysis

[tidge]

I'm just going to chime in that for level 50 (Blue) x8 Alignment missions, I always chose Carnies, and then Malta as a backup to Carnies. Even when some of them run away (or phase), it always felt like the time to clean up the remainders gave the runaways a chance to come back. The random chances of multiple stacking holds felt like the "right" sort of challenge to a solo player.

 

I haven't faced too many of the new high-level CoT or Council yet (been leveling up slowly), so I have no real opinion on them.... except that the random times I used to see folks spamvertising "Peregrine Island 54x8 Council Missions" always landed wrong with me.

[Sunsette]

My opinion on Council currently is that it's a mixed bag.

 

My fully-kitted-out characters don't have any more difficulty soloing them than before other than that they take longer to kill (which isn't interesting when that's not attached to real danger or tactical responses -- and with the transformations, revives, etc. they can take a long time to kill). The flipside is that while I barely noticed any changes to my survivability on a kitted-out character, it's been a bloodbath on several teams for sidekicks when the teams lacked strong controls and tanks roles. 

 

For high-level radios, this is mostly disincentive -- and while I don't love how integral farming is to the game's community, it also evolved for reasons here. The 35-49 portion of the game is the weakest portion of the game content-wise. Gold is wrapped up, there's not a lot great Blue here outside of RWZ and the New Praetorians. I hope this is followed with stuff to make the 35-49 range much more interesting than it currently is, as I think that's a huge chunk of why people rush to Council Radio at this range. Leveling is slow and the content is unexciting, Council Radio cuts out half of that problem.

 

However, I think these changes are excellent improvements for high-level Council task forces. There's a lot more incentive to get single-target debuff, area controls, and strong single-target killers versus just AoE damage + Tank for such task forces now, and the packs will have much more texture. 

Edited March 3 by Sunsette

[Ael]

Lump me in with the others who now find Council too overpowered. Characters who nearly never wiped at settings like +3 X8 are now getting thrown around and demolished by these things at lower settings. Not all, but some. About the only one that didn't have trouble was my Bio/DM/Mu tanker. She used to speed through Council, and now a radio takes about half an hour because the bosses have become difficult, and I do mean difficult, to put down. And then they rez. Fun. Not really. I understand wanting a challenge, but I could have played against any other type of enemy and gotten that, on most characters. What's the go-to now if you still want big mobs yet something quick to steamroll? I play to relax not to be frustrated.

Edit: I ran a few more toons just now, as a test. These toons are built and are T3 incarnate. Staff/WP/Energy scrapper mowed down everything at +2 X8. Wolf transformation is very annoying. I have yet to stop a single baddie from transforming. Even once dead, oh, it's a wolf now. A triple fire blaster who used to decimate things on max settings, couldn't survive the opening volley of the first mob. I think I was dead in 5 seconds. Even lowered to +2 X8, I was having massive problems. I shouldn't be. I definitely wasn't before the patch. Savage/Rad/Energy Brute - T4 incarnate and kitted out. The bosses were extremely irritating. They took forever to put down at +2 and then pulled their "I'm gonna rez now!" thing.

 

Council are much worse for lower-level characters. Repeatedly wiped yesterday on my fire controller. It was like nothing could properly lock them down at all. It became a chain of Flashfire - fire cages - bonfire, and then cinders a few seconds later when everything wore off. They don't even bounce on Bonfire anymore, not much, anyway. One, maybe two bounces and they're off and running right for me. If they didn't do that, some boss would TP me straight into the middle of the mob and put me down in one to two hits. This was a lvl 43 fire controller on IO's at X4 +0. Bringing a teammate along only slightly helped yet made things more challenging. It still took forever and a day to get through a single radio. KB protection might as well be a joke now to these things, too.

Edited March 3 by Ael
Additional info

[Luminara]

I've been trying my favorite characters on the adjusted groups.  I target */x5 for my play experience (+1/x5 for my 50+ characters, +0/x5 for my sub-50 characters).

 

CoT are a little more interesting, but not threatening unless I get two spawns at once (which is unfortunately common in a lot of Oranbegan maps).  Actually had to use the heals on my Ill/Savage dominator and Storm/Storm corruptor (loving the new Ice Mastery options) for a change.  Beat my Dark/Martial dominator's ass a couple of times because of spawns being too close together, had to start paying more attention to spawn proximities.  I expected more of a struggle on my Fire/Rad sentinel, which I discovered after the fact was short 5% Melee Defense (one enhancement missing in one power, don't know if it was lost in the big bug last month, or if i just never slotted it)... but I never even noticed a difference.  Last one I tried was a level 42 Psi/Ninjitsu scrapper, and even the all ghost spawns weren't a problem, just a bit slower to clear.

 

If it weren't for the +Res bubbles on some of the Galaxies, I wouldn't even know that the Council were different, but I tended to avoid Council before because I don't like the damn Warwolves (when they flee, they run at top speed and go a lot farther than other things, which means they take a lot longer to come back at the default casual stroll).  They didn't feel any different on any of the characters I used,  I should probably test some more against them, but even one Warwolf exceeds my daily bullshit quota and I'm not going to play against them with any regularity anyway, so fuck 'em.  You guys can deal with them, they're not my problem.

 

The real surprise has been the Rikti.  Nothing was mentioned in the patch notes, but in the Stop Rikti Raid tip mission, bosses are in almost every spawn now, whereas they previously only spawned on the office workers and Stalwart (hostages).  Nice bit of extra potential for drops, but since this mission did have bosses already, albeit in specific spawns, not really an increase in risk.

 

Confused one of the new CoT bosses and got a World of Pain buff, so I'm actually looking forward to tormenting them some more.  I love Confusing enemies and getting free buffs.  Extra bosses in the Rikti spawns are just more chances for better drops, that's another win.  Don't care about the Council, so I'm three for three.

[Cheli]

On 3/1/2024 at 9:48 AM, UltraAlt said:

 

 

Looks like the "game isn't challenging enough" crowd have some challenges now.

 

 

I don't know about OP but I never complained about the game not being challenging enough. I don't think all that many people did, and most who did are probably satisfied with hardmode TFs and stuff like that. Is there anyone on here with a history of complaining about the game not being challenging enough, now complaining about it being too challenging?

 

On 3/1/2024 at 9:48 AM, UltraAlt said:

Personally, if I want to fight 6 zillion guys - more or less - single-handedly, I will play Dynasty Warriors instead of CoH.

 

Okay but this game has been one where you can fight 6 zillion guys one-on-one for the better part of two decades. Why exactly does that need to change now? Because you want it to?

 

I'm not even against buffing some of the weaker enemy groups (I've soloed +4/x8 nu-Council on a /nin stalker, I don't honestly think they're that much tougher with the right build), but it's always the same weak, lame arguments trotted out to be nasty to people making fairly innocent comments about changes.

 

Edit: now that I think about it, honestly the change feels a bit counterintuitive if the objective was to give people who complain about the game not being "challenging enough" a challenge, since those people are probably not feeling that big a difference (I'm a fairly average builder at best and can deal with nu-Council on several melee characters fairly decently), but casual players and people with no build experience or who just want to run no-incarnate SOs at 50 and probably already weren't eating Council maps for breakfast are definitely going to feel it. I don't feel strongly either way about it, but that's certainly something worth noting.

Edited March 4 by Cheli

[KaizenSoze]

A note about accuracy that I didn't really grasp until recently. The more accurate you are, the more likely the streak breaker is likely to fire, which is a good thing. What the hell is the Streak Breaker you ask?

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#The_Streak_Breaker

 

Accuracy begets more hits, then if you miss, because of the streak breaker.

[KaizenSoze]

I am enjoying the new mob difficultly, even if that means some of my built out toons cannot solo 4x8 now.

 

After running a few radio teams post release, it's nice to actually fire more than 2-3 attacks per spawn, because the mobs actually live long enough!

 

 

[Marshal_General]

6 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I'm pretty sure that's the exact plan there.  Much like Freakshow who rez and then have to be fought again, it just slows down the steamroller a bit, mostly.  Like with the Freakshow rezzing-buff, this is all pretty much OK by me.

Am I the only one who looks at the Freak show tank I just downed and yells, "Get your ass up, I need the badge!"?

[KaizenSoze]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

Am I the only one who looks at the Freak show tank I just downed and yells, "Get your ass up, I need the badge!"?

One of my best early memories of CoH was fighting Freakshow on a team. The spawn was down when suddenly half of them rez'ed up. I got chills and said "That is so cool!" out loud.

Edited March 4 by KaizenSoze

[Sunsette]

8 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I'm pretty sure that's the exact plan there.  Much like Freakshow who rez and then have to be fought again, it just slows down the steamroller a bit, mostly.  Like with the Freakshow rezzing-buff, this is all pretty much OK by me.

 

It seems pretty obvious that was the goal, yes

 

But I already find the Freakshow to be extremely boring (slow to kill, non threatening) to fight. 

 

When I look at the missions that HC added to Cimerora, too, I feel like they're leaning too much on making way too frequent random HP sponges that lack tactical counterplay to slow things down. I don't love warwalker enemies but at least the pop up messages and big targeting graphic give me some spice to make me keep moving. New council teleport you against your will I guess, but that was also used by the HC incarnate versions of Minotaurs and Cyclops.

 

I appreciate that they are trying to solve a difficult problem wrt grouping incentives for several ATs and I don't have a better suggestion at the moment, but I'm starting to get a little bit worried at the commonality of this design. I like some of these mechanics in general but I don't enjoy how they feel with the rhythm of trash encounters currently for most casually built teams.

 

Again, all of this is fine to me (good, in fact) so far in Task Force content, where there's more active team building than "Yeah, sure, whatever can come"

 

Also, tangentially: the people who are hoping that this will lead to players who know how to play better, it won't. Maybe a tiny bit but it won't be significant. The barriers to good play in this game rest primarily upon how much information (much of it obscured) must be processed. Any impedence to leveling rate will add slightly more time to process that information before 50, but not more incentive or facility to do so.

 

I've seen very good new players who got farmed to 50 because they like ingesting that stuff about whatever game they play. Also seen players who turn off general immediately, don't know what a farm or ouro are, level to 50 multiple times and are pretty clueless.

Edited March 4 by Sunsette