High level enemy group revamps

[Rudra]

11 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

Point 1: Among the Archvillains. Galaxies are not actual Nictus. There is a redside mission in Cap that makes this explicit - Galaxies are imbedded with Nictus fragments, not full Nictii (you serve as host to one for a brief period, gaining a Galaxy's powers, before having it extracted.) 

While yes, the Nictus in the Galaxies are fragments, there is only one mission in Cap that I can think of that has a Nictus fragment extracted, and that is from Dr. Shelly Percey. And the only reason why you have the Nictus extracted from you is because it is in you for so little time, while it is going to be extracted from the Galaxy you take it from is because the Galaxy is only a temporary host for the fragment, not the final host. And the fragment holder states as much. So does Dr. Percey who states you only have 90 minutes to retrieve the fragment before it permanently bonds with its host. Normally, Nictus fragments embedded in Galaxies are not removed from their host.

 

Edit: There is also a debate in the lore which to the best of my knowledge never got answered, about whether or not a Nictus fragment can grow into a full Nictus. There was apparently evidence both for and against that bit of lore, but I can't remember where it is right now.

Edited May 23 by Rudra

[Eiko-chan]

10 minutes ago, Rudra said:

 Dr. Percey who states you only have 90 minutes to retrieve the fragment before it permanently bonds with its host.

And yet if you wait out the timer, your character does not get deleted because they are now a member of the Council, controlled by the Nictus inside them. Nor do you become a Warshade. Galaxies are not Warshades (who are just Nictus that know what consent is).

[Rudra]

21 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

And yet if you wait out the timer, your character does not get deleted because they are now a member of the Council, controlled by the Nictus inside them. Nor do you become a Warshade. Galaxies are not Warshades (who are just Nictus that know what consent is).

Of course not. Do you realize how many players would be reaching for pitchforks and torches if that happened? So of course the PC won't be subjected to a mandatory transition to a Warshade character or be deleted from the player's account for suddenly becoming a Council Galaxy or suddenly be nerfed into a Council Galaxy. Game mechanic limitations and allowances for players does not change the game lore.

 

Edit: However, if you wait out the timer without retrieving the fragment, the mission is failed because the fragment bonded with its host or is transferred to its permanent host. Either of which deprives you and Dr. Percey of the window to retrieve a fragment for her to study.

Edited May 23 by Rudra

[tidge]

The nuCouncil is effectively demonstrating that they can now leverage certain "player tricks", at an appropriate mission level... whereas before, pretty much the only "player annoying" tricks were Warwolves running away, and Ascendants being untouchable. The Council was grossly under-powered considering the level range of content they appear in.

 

I continue to suspect that it is only because the Council had been seen as punching bags that they are specifically being singled out. The CoT has been briefly mentioned, but somehow their updates, like Crey before them, are not drawing attention.

[Eiko-chan]

@RudraIt's been a while since I failed that mission to see what happens, and the Wiki doesn't have the info, but I believe I remember that the Nictus dies if not extracted in time, not that it takes over.

 

1 minute ago, tidge said:

I continue to suspect that it is only because the Council had been seen as punching bags that they are specifically being singled out. The CoT has been briefly mentioned, but somehow their updates, like Crey before them, are not drawing attention.

Or, perhaps, the Circle and Crey were not tuned as highly as the Council were. 

But yes, I do maintain that the punchable fascists who are explicitly called out in game as being eminently punchable (see Marchand's New Praetorian arc) should remain eminently punchable because punching fascists is fun for the whole family. And villains too. 😁

[tidge]

They remain punchable.

 

[Rudra]

16 minutes ago, Eiko-chan said:

@RudraIt's been a while since I failed that mission to see what happens, and the Wiki doesn't have the info, but I believe I remember that the Nictus dies if not extracted in time, not that it takes over.

If you are talking about what happens to the fragment after your character gets it from the temporary host? That would be to explain why the fragment doesn't take over your character. If you don't even retrieve the fragment in the first place before the timer runs out? It bonds with its permanent host, which may or may not be the temporary host depending on whether or not the chosen host arrived in time to take the fragment in a more permanent manner saving the temporary host. (The temporary host is acting like an impromptu Shadow Cyst.)

 

Regardless, Council Galaxies have Nictus fragments in them that grant them some Warshade powers. And those fragments are permanent additions to them. Galaxies getting more powers so they stop being such a joke at higher levels is a good thing in my book. Buffing the Council so they aren't a joke is a good thing in my book. (I'm not a fan of Freem!, but I'm not troubled by the rest.) The Council is still very much punchable, but now they are a threat that explains why it takes player characters to beat them. I often wondered why Council (and 5th Column) super soldiers were called such when they were as dangerous as your average Hellion or Skull until you get to the wolves and vampires. The addition of the Ascendants was a step in the right direction giving the Council something that couldn't (always) be laughed off. Now high level Council are (almost) a threat. The calls for super heroes to fight them because they are too much for conventional units to deal with is finally making sense.

[Akisan]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I continue to suspect that it is only because the Council had been seen as punching bags that they are specifically being singled out. The CoT has been briefly mentioned, but somehow their updates, like Crey before them, are not drawing attention.

 

Very possible - The Council have traditionally been the go-to group for mindless mayhem.  I could see some people preferring the original Council (with nerfed XP/drops) over the revamped group.

 

And while I missed the beta when they redid Crey (RL stuff), definitely not a fan of those changes - they went from an "Avoid/Drop to +1x3" to a very explicit "Do Not Engage" for me.  It's crazy that a group that used to just have obnoxious resistances got a bunch of buffs/debuffs/control added... with no change (straight proliferation) to those resistances. (Yeah, I'm gonna keep bringing it up. They're awful and need rebalancing.)

[Ruin Mage]

So I had to go to work and missed a few pages. I'll keep this reply short for the sake of not going in too many circles.

Circle of Thorns does not equate a WoW model. The reintroduction of Ruin, Madness, and Agony Mages (among other enemy types) is not an enforcement or evidence of this. Now if it was skewed towards spawning a lot more Ruin Mages (the deadliest of the mage bunch) than any other? I'd be more inclined to agree that the Circle changes missed. However, I'm also going to be the sort to point out Difficulty Settings are yours to tweak. You choose what you want to face.

NuCouncil should have been 45-50 only. I don't disagree there.

Excraft: I do believe that the other TFs will get their HM versions in due time. It's just not going to be every page. Right now the ones not done are LRSF, MLTF, Kahn/Baracudda (god help us all for HM Reichsman!), 3 of the Shadow Shard TFs (Dr Q is below the 50 mark, so I don't count it), and ApeMage. I'm not sure I could confidently guess at a Hard Mode ApeMage.

[Excraft]

26 minutes ago, Ruin Mage said:

god help us all for HM Reichsman!

 

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

[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.