High level enemy group revamps

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, Excraft said:

Oh man, can you imagine?  LOL!  🤣  4 Star Dr. Q will be epic.

Dr. Q without Team Transporter or Mission Teleporter 😐 

[Ruin Mage]

Don't you dare speak that evil into reality. I will find you.

[Jack Power]

14 pages of one (maybe two) topic(s) is kinda hard to overview and I understand there are different views and I do respect this.

 

Just wondering if this isn't something that the difficulty setting doesn't fix? I am by no means a high level player and haven't even tried the hardcore stuff. 

 

I did, however, try some PuGs (be proud of me Snarky) where we faced the new Council right after their bump. First contact was a painful wipe with a few comments in team chat about the new power level of the Council. Then we got our act together and had no more issues. No more than any random PuG. I have no idea what difficulty we were at but everything was purple to me.

 

On a personal note, I do find this game to be a bit to easy street sometimes, and while I find the feeling of being 'super' while wading through countless enemies, I find there's something to say about the feeling of achievement when you beat the odds and defeat some enemy you really wasn't supposed to beat.

 

//Jack

[tidge]

5 hours ago, Jack Power said:

14 pages of one (maybe two) topic(s) is kinda hard to overview and I understand there are different views and I do respect this.

 

Just wondering if this isn't something that the difficulty setting doesn't fix? I am by no means a high level player and haven't even tried the hardcore stuff.

 

The difficulty settings do address this, and it was pointed out multiple times in this thread. (*1)

 

I'll repeat something I wrote earlier: The only time (so far) nuCouncil made one of my characters feel like "wow that is really hard!" was in the following circumstance:

• I was solo on a Warshade somewhere in the "Brickstown" level range, so mid-30s, but below 40. (read as "leveling up, and not tricked out and exemplared down")
• doing the Warshade arcs (read as "rather pitiful damage, no controls")
• The "final" map EB  (spawned +1 to me) went nuclear, transformed, and I didn't have enough nearby enemies left to do my usual Warshade tricks.

I was tempted to reset the mission, but using a lot of Inspirations (a trick learned back in the very early days of Live) was enough to beat it. Obviously, I could have also asked for help.

 

Otherwise: The NuCouncil hasn't forced me to change anything about my play style or build choices, for any of my characters, except that if I think of it... and think knockback will be an issue... I will craft a SG base buff for knockback protection. NuCouncil spawns are slower to defeat, but they were ridiculously easy to defeat en masse prior to the update.

 

(*1) It isn't clear to me that this round of complaints is due to anything other than setting large spawn sizes and playing solo. My experience has been that the dominant effect of larger spawn sizes is that more enemies will eventually hit... and now that the Council has more "annoying tricks" (including soft controls like FREEM!) players you used to just shrug off the relatively few hits of S/L damage are now finding that this enemy group requires slightly more mental bandwidth. This is almost certainly why some players write that "this was a swing of the nerf bat against resistance-based characters", as they tend to take more hits than defense-based ones. Folks that aren't immediately frustrated by those effects/controls are annoyed that several nuCouncil enemies have higher resistances, which is slowing down defeat times, but my experience is that those critters aren't any worse than certain other enemy types at the same level.

 

On teams? I haven't seen any issues with clear nuCouncil times, even when it was my character being tossed around like a ragdoll.

[arcane]

7 hours ago, Jack Power said:

Just wondering if this isn't something that the difficulty setting doesn't fix?

You can’t just come in here throwing logic all over the place. There are rules.

[Eiko-chan]

9 hours ago, Jack Power said:

Just wondering if this isn't something that the difficulty setting doesn't fix?

It's a matter of comparing like to like. If there is only one enemy group that I need to turn down difficulty settings for, the problem is that the enemy group has been tuned too high. Or its high tunes come into play too soon in level spreads, which is why my proposal is that nuCouncil should be like nuTsoo and only appear in 50+ content. |

(This argument could also be made for nuCircle, and maybe nuCrey though I honestly haven't noticed nearly as much change with those groups as I have the Council.)

[skoryy]

4 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

If there is only one enemy group that I need to turn down difficulty settings for, the problem is that the enemy group has been tuned too high.

 

So you don't turn down difficulty on Arachnos?  Nemmies?

[Rudra]

7 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

It's a matter of comparing like to like. If there is only one enemy group that I need to turn down difficulty settings for, the problem is that the enemy group has been tuned too high. Or its high tunes come into play too soon in level spreads, which is why my proposal is that nuCouncil should be like nuTsoo and only appear in 50+ content. |

(This argument could also be made for nuCircle, and maybe nuCrey though I honestly haven't noticed nearly as much change with those groups as I have the Council.)

Except that already happened for other factions. Take me for example. If I'm on one of my Corruptors and I'm going into a Malta mission, I turn down the difficulty before I start. If I'm on one of my Brutes (edit: and by one of my Brutes, I mean specifically one Brute I have) and a Crey mission comes up, I turn down the difficulty before I start. If I'm going up against Knives of Artemis with one of my Scrappers? I turn down the difficulty before I start. Only one enemy group for most of my characters is a problem. So by your logic, they all need to be tuned down. Except depending on our chosen ATs, power sets for said AT, and specific powers within those sets we choose, we are going to have problems with some enemies at higher difficulties. So for those enemies, we don't play at as high a difficulty or we find a way to beat them such as with SG base buffs, inspirations, and team mates.

Edited May 24 by Rudra

[Eiko-chan]

4 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

So you don't turn down difficulty on Arachnos?  Nemmies?

No, I do not. I turn up difficulty on Nemesis at 40 because I want more Fakes to spawn since I am generally Accolade-hunting. 

[skoryy]

3 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No, I do not. I turn up difficulty on Nemesis at 40 because I want more Fakes to spawn since I am generally Accolade-hunting. 

Okay, because it hasn't been my experience that buffed Council is tougher than Arachnos and vengeance laden Nemmies.

[Eiko-chan]

2 minutes ago, skoryy said:

Okay, because it hasn't been my experience that buffed Council is tougher than Arachnos and vengeance laden Nemmies.

No group managed to immediately kill all my pets while I was in bodyguard mode as reliably as the Council did. In my recollection, they are also the only enemy group to make extensive use of long-duration Immobilises. Also, you can't Break Free from Knockdown, and the inspiration tray isn't big enough for me to reliably carry enough Break Frees for all my pets anyway. While the knockdown soft-lock on MMs and their pets is a known issue, I note that Banished Pantheon throwing down ice patches kept my pets on their backs, but did not also murder them faster than my healing and regeneration (/Pain MM) could keep at least the big ones alive.

[Rudra]

31 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No group managed to immediately kill all my pets while I was in bodyguard mode as reliably as the Council did. In my recollection, they are also the only enemy group to make extensive use of long-duration Immobilises. Also, you can't Break Free from Knockdown, and the inspiration tray isn't big enough for me to reliably carry enough Break Frees for all my pets anyway. While the knockdown soft-lock on MMs and their pets is a known issue, I note that Banished Pantheon throwing down ice patches kept my pets on their backs, but did not also murder them faster than my healing and regeneration (/Pain MM) could keep at least the big ones alive.

Team inspirations that resist mezzes including KB:

 

Protection Imbuement

Greater Protection Imbuement

Superior Protection Imbuement

 

Edit: As an MM, if you want inspirations for your pets, you should already be using team inspirations anyway. They take away the annoyance of trying to give pets inspirations and have them use them between their attacks and running around. They affect all your pets and yourself at the same time so you don't need to remember which pet you already gave an inspiration to. And you aren't stuck trying to figure out which one inspiration to fill your tray with so you can stock up on a variety of inspirations to address the situation at hand.

Edited May 24 by Rudra

[skoryy]

19 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No group managed to immediately kill all my pets while I was in bodyguard mode as reliably as the Council did. In my recollection, they are also the only enemy group to make extensive use of long-duration Immobilises. Also, you can't Break Free from Knockdown, and the inspiration tray isn't big enough for me to reliably carry enough Break Frees for all my pets anyway. While the knockdown soft-lock on MMs and their pets is a known issue, I note that Banished Pantheon throwing down ice patches kept my pets on their backs, but did not also murder them faster than my healing and regeneration (/Pain MM) could keep at least the big ones alive.

Ok, I get where you're coming from. If we're going to start nerfing mobs for specific ATs, though, my blasters are going to have a laundry list.

[PeregrineFalcon]

59 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

No group managed to immediately kill all my pets while I was in bodyguard mode as reliably as the Council did.

I've played a lot of MMs to 50 since the AT first existed.

 

One of the reasons why /FF is my favorite secondary for MMs is that it keeps my pets from being so squishy. Especially when combined with Maneuvers and IOs.

 

Also, you can have just one pet attack and the rest remain in BG mode. I often do this and the pet advances and takes the alpha strike alone, if he survives I heal him, if not then I just resummon.

 

As Rudra pointed out there are inspirations that will protect the MM and all of the pets.

 

So there are a lot of things you can do to increase your ability to survive that don't involve nerfing Council.

[Eiko-chan]

2 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I've played a lot of MMs to 50 since the AT first existed.

Neat. Me too.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Just now, Eiko-chan said:

Neat. Me too.

Yeah, I always have to preface my posts with this otherwise people will respond with some variation of "You don't know what you're talking about!!!"

[ThatGuyCDude]

I think a lot of the design decisions for these sorts of changes are aimed at making the game more challenging for teams, thereby encouraging players to seek out each other for support (a community-building measure, at least in theory).  Unfortunately, anything that makes team content more challenging also makes solo content more challenging... at a geometric rate of growth.  If we could set advance modes on all content through the notoriety system instead of strictly on a smattering of TaskForces, then players could opt into advanced enemy mechanics like they can opt in to bosses and archvillains.

The reworks thus far do seem to target particular character strengths, though: for instance, my Regen Brute handles late-game Council just fine but turns into a pile of goo against Arachnos (that's at x1, mind; I'm a filthy casual player).  Perhaps the changes are being exaggerated because they're targeting your playstyle?

[Lunar Ronin]

1 hour ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

I think a lot of the design decisions for these sorts of changes are aimed at making the game more challenging for teams, thereby encouraging players to seek out each other for support (a community-building measure, at least in theory).  Unfortunately, anything that makes team content more challenging also makes solo content more challenging... at a geometric rate of growth.  If we could set advance modes on all content through the notoriety system instead of strictly on a smattering of TaskForces, then players could opt into advanced enemy mechanics like they can opt in to bosses and archvillains.

The reworks thus far do seem to target particular character strengths, though: for instance, my Regen Brute handles late-game Council just fine but turns into a pile of goo against Arachnos (that's at x1, mind; I'm a filthy casual player).  Perhaps the changes are being exaggerated because they're targeting your playstyle?

 

It's Council vs. Masterminds.  Nu-Council are very, very nasty when soloing as a Mastermind.  That's the real issue of this thread, and it is a legitimate issue.

[ZacKing]

10 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

I think a lot of the design decisions for these sorts of changes are aimed at making the game more challenging for teams, thereby encouraging players to seek out each other for support (a community-building measure, at least in theory).  Unfortunately, anything that makes team content more challenging also makes solo content more challenging... at a geometric rate of growth.

 

Right.  Moving toward the WoW model of must have tank/heal/DPS trinity to do anything.

 

10 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

If we could set advance modes on all content through the notoriety system instead of strictly on a smattering of TaskForces, then players could opt into advanced enemy mechanics like they can opt in to bosses and archvillains.

 

This would be sweet, although I suspect its way too much work to implement.  Not saying HC couldn't do it, just that its a big project for a volunteer group.

[tidge]

10 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

It's Council vs. Masterminds.  Nu-Council are very, very nasty when soloing as a Mastermind.  That's the real issue of this thread, and it is a legitimate issue.

 

I'm not seeing this in my own play experience. I change my MM tactics for different content ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

 

Reading between the lines of the OPs posts about the MM experience, my takeaway was that difficulty (certainly spawn size, it is unclear about +level) was being turned up at somewhat low levels (earlier than 45). There simply aren't enough complicated nuCouncil appearing in a 0x1 setting to worry most MMs, at any level... unless of course there is something really poor about the henchmen slotting and/or tactics.

 

IMO, any time the team size is set above x1, we aren't talking "solo" play anymore. It is true that even a relatively modestly crafted character(*1) can often, and is expected to, in some content, solo more than one spawn at once (unintentional aggro, wanderers passing by)... and in the "good market" era of HC we can all make characters much better than "modestly crafted"... but it strikes me as a disingenuous argument to both want to turn up difficulty settings and then want to complain that the enemies are too difficult when doing exactly that.

 

(*1) As a practical matter, I'm about 50-50 on if I turn up the difficulty for my characters. Specifically on MMs, I find that it is relatively easy to turn up the spawn size after the second upgrade is available... but that doesn't mean the game is "easy mode" forever after level 26. As the enemies become more complicated after level 30, the MM has to adjust playstyles. I experience a similar sort of thing with Kheldians... the progress immediately after getting Nova form is pretty easy, because the enemies aren't able to deal with a character that has that many ranged attacks, at that level. After ~level 12, the enemies are better equipped to handle that sort of thing, and the game rebalances. It's not that enemies above level 16 are too "highly tuned" for Kheldians, it is that the game now requires a different strategy from a solo player.

[skoryy]

11 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

It's Council vs. Masterminds.  Nu-Council are very, very nasty when soloing as a Mastermind.  That's the real issue of this thread, and it is a legitimate issue.

 

Me, a blaster, with a list of the very very nasty when soloing above +0/x1:

 

 

[Laucianna]

13 hours ago, ThatGuyCDude said:

I think a lot of the design decisions for these sorts of changes are aimed at making the game more challenging for teams, thereby encouraging players to seek out each other for support (a community-building measure, at least in theory).  Unfortunately, anything that makes team content more challenging also makes solo content more challenging... at a geometric rate of growth.  If we could set advance modes on all content through the notoriety system instead of strictly on a smattering of TaskForces, then players could opt into advanced enemy mechanics like they can opt in to bosses and archvillains.

The reworks thus far do seem to target particular character strengths, though: for instance, my Regen Brute handles late-game Council just fine but turns into a pile of goo against Arachnos (that's at x1, mind; I'm a filthy casual player).  Perhaps the changes are being exaggerated because they're targeting your playstyle?

The game does already have an in game system for lowering the difficulty like you can with choosing advanced mode 🙂 You mention it yourself, it's just that for some reason people don't like to use it, instead setting it to a higher difficulty then they are comfortable with ❤️ 

[Rudra]

39 minutes ago, Laucianna said:

The game does already have an in game system for lowering the difficulty like you can with choosing advanced mode 🙂 You mention it yourself, it's just that for some reason people don't like to use it, instead setting it to a higher difficulty then they are comfortable with ❤️ 

It's seems less that they are setting a higher difficulty than they are comfortable with and more an expectation that everything should be able to solo everything at +4/x8 without any (noticeable) difficulty.

[arcane]

7 minutes ago, Rudra said:

It's seems less that they are setting a higher difficulty than they are comfortable with and more an expectation that everything should be able to solo everything at +4/x8 without any (noticeable) difficulty.

Bingo. And there’s zero reason to implement changes based on such a flawed expectation.

Edited May 25 by arcane

[tidge]

13 minutes ago, Rudra said:

It's seems less that they are setting a higher difficulty than they are comfortable with and more an expectation that everything should be able to solo everything at +4/x8 without any (noticeable) difficulty.

 

6 minutes ago, arcane said:

Bingo. And there’s zero reason to implement changes based on such a flawed expectation.

 

Don't forget: "As early a level as I want."

 

I encounter enough players in-game who quickly admit that they have bitten off more than they can chew, because they adjusted some setting upwards... could be difficulty was boosted, could be enabling AVs. I never hear such players saying the game is too hard or unfair.