Weakness

[Glacier Peak]

What are my enemies weaknesses!

 

I am learning something new every day about this game that's been around for decades. What a great thing - to be ignorant, but curious! I'm sure many of you have looked for ways to get the most out of your characters. Or maybe you have wanted to know how certain things work behind the curtain. Well I am curious about something I've never taken in to account when I play this game - that is my enemies weaknesses. I've known about enemy resistance, or how much an enemy is able to mitigate incoming damage - but enemy weaknesses is not well known to me. Many years ago, @Galaxy Brain put in a ton of work and built a spreadsheet with data describing enemy resistance. 

 

Spoiler

 

Has any well-to-do member of the community put in the time to find the weaknesses of the enemy groups of the game? I've been told on Discord that some enemy groups (and specific entities) are weak (which I assume means -dmg resistance?) to Psychic damage, such as the Minotaurs and Cyclops, Brickernauts, and Paragon Protectors. 

Or is there a resource out there that describes it? I've looked through CoD, but there are thousands of entities in the database!

 

Edited April 14 by Glacier Peak

[Techwright]

I hear there's a Family consigliere that likes to hang out near the Terra Volta entrance who has a weakness for Baskin-Robbins Baseball Nut ice cream, but I'm not sure how I can exploit that.

 

Otherwise, I've only heard the Primal Clockwork are weak against psionics, which the Wiki confirms, along with sleep and knockback.

[Glacier Peak]

2 minutes ago, Techwright said:

I hear there's a Family consigliere that likes to hang out near the Terra Volta entrance who has a weakness for Baskin-Robbins Baseball Nut ice cream, but I'm not sure how I can exploit that.

 

Otherwise, I've only heard the Primal Clockwork are weak against psionics, which the Wiki confirms, along with sleep and knockback.

Tech, this made me laugh out loud! You are a treasure in this community!

[Techwright]

6 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Tech, this made me laugh out loud! You are a treasure in this community!

My blushes! 😊

[Ukase]

51 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

well-to-do member of the community

How would this be defined? 
In any event, just today, leveling up a kin/dark scrapper for the first time, because..well, they suggested kin needed some help. Well, I suppose it could..a little. But in any event, one group I'm always concerned about is malta. No endurance, can't do anything. So, I tend to avoid them. But, in order to progress in this certain arc, I had a malta defeat all. 

Well, I know sappers will drain end. And I know one of them drops that super-annoying auto-turret. I never paid attention to which one, because, well...the times I actually fight malta are very few. So, I went to HC Wiki.

This is what I found: 

 

Note at the bottom, Kevlar. So, I can see what kind of armor they have and the damage they're vulnerable to. As far as I could tell, this data is available for every type of Malta, and I would assume every type of NPC we had in the game before shutdown. 

Now, it's not original work by me - someone else risked their endurance bar to get this data - not me. But, while I don't do this for every faction, I will do it if I'm on a character that I still have a lot to learn about and I'm tackling mobs I'm not real comfortable with. 

 

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

How would this be defined? 
In any event, just today, leveling up a kin/dark scrapper for the first time, because..well, they suggested kin needed some help. Well, I suppose it could..a little. But in any event, one group I'm always concerned about is malta. No endurance, can't do anything. So, I tend to avoid them. But, in order to progress in this certain arc, I had a malta defeat all. 

Well, I know sappers will drain end. And I know one of them drops that super-annoying auto-turret. I never paid attention to which one, because, well...the times I actually fight malta are very few. So, I went to HC Wiki.

This is what I found: 

 

Note at the bottom, Kevlar. So, I can see what kind of armor they have and the damage they're vulnerable to. As far as I could tell, this data is available for every type of Malta, and I would assume every type of NPC we had in the game before shutdown. 

Now, it's not original work by me - someone else risked their endurance bar to get this data - not me. But, while I don't do this for every faction, I will do it if I'm on a character that I still have a lot to learn about and I'm tackling mobs I'm not real comfortable with. 

Well to do, meaning they've got the time or expertise to accommodate my inquiry. 

 

And it looks like you're describing enemy resistance, not enemy weakness. So in your example, the enemy Tactical Operative has 20% resistance to Smashing Damage and 25% resistance to Lethal Damage. Which means if a player attacked that enemy with that type of damage, the enemy resistance would decrease the player damage by a % of the typed damage. 

 

I'm looking for enemy damage weakness. So, continuing with your example, if the Tactical Operative had a -20% resistance to Smashing Damage - that would be a weakness, as far as I can tell. 

Edited April 14 by Glacier Peak

[Yomo Kimyata]

3 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

I'm looking for enemy damage weakness. So, continuing with your example, if the Tactical Operative had a -20% resistance to Smashing Damage - that would be a weakness, as far as I can tell. 

 

A lot of this is relative though, like when you realize that smashing is a lot more effective against Zeus titans than lethal.

 

As Ukase says, the wiki is a great short cut, although I'm inclined to check City of Data (all hail Uberguy) for the final word.

 

In terms of specific weakness rather than relative weakness, Carnies consistently have a -20% resistance to lethal damage.

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

A lot of this is relative though, like when you realize that smashing is a lot more effective against Zeus titans than lethal.

 

As Ukase says, the wiki is a great short cut, although I'm inclined to check City of Data (all hail Uberguy) for the final word.

 

In terms of specific weakness rather than relative weakness, Carnies consistently have a -20% resistance to lethal damage.

That's my hope - using either of those resources to find out weaknesses. There's a lot of enemies though, so I was hoping someone had already put in the leg work 😅

[WumpusRat]

My personal favorite is introducing people who avoid Carnie missions (since few groups seem to actively pick missions with them) to just how fragile Carnies are to lethal damage.

 

[ZorkNemesis]

One thing I discovered while playing around with multiple Dual Pistol users that I found interesting: while they're not taking extra damage from it, Malta Operatives are technically weak to Toxic damage,  I kept checking Power Analyzer on most of their goons, they all have standard SL resistance and Gunslingers and Titans are resistant to most everything but every enemy had a flat 0 for Toxic resistance, even the Titans (though the Gun Drones dropped by Op Engies resist everything).  Pretty helpful discovery really, especially since my main Blaster has /Plant for a secondary and gets bonus Toxic damage in place of Build Up.

[Uun]

The spreadsheet linked in Galaxy Brain's post is probably the best source. The original spreadsheet was made by Culex back in 2008.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20070309030440/http://www.culex.us/ig/CHres.xls

 

(If the link tries to open in Google Docs and gives you a bunch of html, click the Open Original button. Save the file and open in Excel, or upload to Google Drive and open with Google Sheets.)

[Herotu]

On 4/14/2024 at 7:40 PM, Techwright said:

I hear there's a Family consigliere that likes to hang out near the Terra Volta entrance who has a weakness for Baskin-Robbins Baseball Nut ice cream, but I'm not sure how I can exploit that.

Hang on, did I detect some product placement in this post? I see what you done there - That's how you exploited that. 

[Greycat]

AOEs tend to be effective (as in an actual weakness) ... I don't recall if it was vs. Nemesis or Rikti Drones. One of the two annoying groups.

 

That and using Sleeps to shut down defenses and armors in general. Seem to recall controlling the Patrons/Heroes in MLTFs/LRSFs with sleeps so we could just handle them one at a time... without any special slotting, perma-ing, etc. They're really underrated because people only seem to see "they get broken with any damage." yep. But they wake up without that armor/bubble/tohit debuff patch available.

[Techwright]

59 minutes ago, Herotu said:

Hang on, did I detect some product placement in this post? I see what you done there - That's how you exploited that. 

I assure you, I did not product place.  I'd never endorse the services of The Family.

[Uun]

5 minutes ago, Greycat said:

AOEs tend to be effective (as in an actual weakness) ... I don't recall if it was vs. Nemesis or Rikti Drones. One of the two annoying groups.

It's both. Rikti Drones and Nemesis buffed with Vengeance have ranged and melee defense, but no AoE defense. Any attack flagged as Area (which includes some but not all melee cones) should get through.

[Knock!]

The Prima strategy guides for CoH and CoV listed weaknesses and resistances for various minions, LTs, bosses, and AVs of most (all?) of the villain groups that were in the game when they came out. No real numbers in those guides, but at least they tell you the damage types.

 

I had the CoH guide from launch (and that was based on the beta test), but I know they published one for CoH up through issue 6 and another for early CoV. You can find them both at the Internet Archive.

[Glacier Peak]

33 minutes ago, Knock! said:

The Prima strategy guides for CoH and CoV listed weaknesses and resistances for various minions, LTs, bosses, and AVs of most (all?) of the villain groups that were in the game when they came out. No real numbers in those guides, but at least they tell you the damage types.

 

I had the CoH guide from launch (and that was based on the beta test), but I know they published one for CoH up through issue 6 and another for early CoV. You can find them both at the Internet Archive.

That's right, I used to read that book all the time for build crafting. 

[InvaderStych]

7 hours ago, Uun said:

The spreadsheet linked in Galaxy Brain's post is probably the best source.

 

This. But the info is out there. BP Zombies are mildly weak to Lethal, Fire, and Energy, for example.

 

Of course they're also minions, which means they're just weak, full stop. 🤣

 

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, InvaderStych said:

 

This. But the info is out there. BP Zombies are mildly weak to Lethal, Fire, and Energy, for example.

 

Of course they're also minions, which means they're just weak, full stop. 🤣

 

Ah! That's what @Ukase linked earlier - so the minus in the resistance category is exactly what I was looking for. 

[Videra]

On 4/14/2024 at 2:20 PM, Glacier Peak said:

Has any well-to-do member of the community put in the time to find the weaknesses of the enemy groups of the game? I've been told on Discord that some enemy groups (and specific entities) are weak (which I assume means -dmg resistance?) to Psychic damage, such as the Minotaurs and Cyclops, Brickernauts, and Paragon Protectors.

 

 

This has nothing to do with an inherent weakness. Enemies that use Unstoppable become borderline unkillable by everything except Psi, essentially.

 

Naturally, when an enemy with unstoppable - like an EB - hits it, you kind of have to slog out killing them unless you have a psi party member.

[ScarySai]

Freak tanks are vulnerable to energy, psi will break through most forms of unstoppable, clockwork are also highly vulnerable to psi (and knock), off the top of my head.

 

DE are vulnerable to negative.

Edited April 16 by ScarySai

[Glacier Peak]

8 minutes ago, Videra said:

Snip

That's something I hadn't taken in to account either, thanks for pointing that out. 

[twozerofoxtrot]

On 4/15/2024 at 3:20 AM, Glacier Peak said:

I've been told on Discord that some enemy groups (and specific entities) are weak (which I assume means -dmg resistance?) to Psychic damage, such as the Minotaurs and Cyclops, Brickernauts, and Paragon Protectors. 

You can add to that list, CoT Ghosts.

But not Croatoan Ghosts (which are weak to Negative Energy) or Arachnos Wolf Spider Ghosts and Spectral Pirates (which are weak to Energy), and certainly not Tsoo Ancestors (which have a minor weakness to Cold).

Obviously.

 

6 hours ago, Videra said:

 

This has nothing to do with an inherent weakness. Enemies that use Unstoppable become borderline unkillable by everything except Psi, essentially.

 

Naturally, when an enemy with unstoppable - like an EB - hits it, you kind of have to slog out killing them unless you have a psi party member.

Technically correct (the best kind of correct!), however when we look at Cyclopes' and Minotaurs' normal resists, we see that the only thing they don't have resists to is Psi Damage.

[twozerofoxtrot]

I took a look at Paragon Protectors, since I play a few Psi characters and have always had mixed results. Now I understand why.

The bosses come in three flavors of "F-you" clicks.

One is Unstoppable, which like the Cimeroran version is quite stoppable with some applied psi.

The other two just stymie any attack by way of massive defense.

[Hyperstrike]

3 hours ago, twozerofoxtrot said:

I took a look at Paragon Protectors, since I play a few Psi characters and have always had mixed results. Now I understand why.

The bosses come in three flavors of "F-you" clicks.

One is Unstoppable, which like the Cimeroran version is quite stoppable with some applied psi.

The other two just stymie any attack by way of massive defense.

Have said this for years.

Unstop is not an "FU Click"

It's a suicide button with a short delay.