The Council change was not good

[jthequietone]

If it had just been at 50, fair enough, but when you're a level 40-something blaster and doing content that was meant for you, like a solo radio mission set to solo difficulty type settings and you randomly get a boss werewolf that is an absolute health sponge and can boulder throw murder you?

 

That's not fun. The Council change made what was extensively already a chore, solo leveling, into just a hot mess. If I wanted something harder, I had options, but now I just feel like I look at the choices of which villain group in a radio mission and go "would you like this to be obnoxious and annoying... or annoying and obnoxious" 

 

After years of playing and happily doing radio missions to my hearts content while I listened to music, chatted with people, or had a queue of story/lore videos running... It's just not fun to deal with that. 

[High_Beam]

Fascist's are supposed to be hated.  You hate them now.  Mission accomplished.

 

All joking to the side, Solo or not, level 40 to 50 is supposed to be where your mettle as a character is tested; its not about weather its a slow grind or not.  You should be comfortable enough in your powers, how they work where the shortfalls are.  You should be at least 1 respec in on the character, recalibrating when power and slots are picked; what worked and what didn't.

 

I have always enjoyed smashing them, before the change and after because I do seriously enjoy the concept of punching fascists in the face.  They are a little harder sure, but not that hard, I run the content with Blasters and trollers.  And while I see your attempt to compare revamping the group to 1-4 Star Difficulty changes as being slightly valid, its tiny little tangerines compared to giant assed naval oranges in truth.  Non-Task/Strike Force/Trial content should be able to be completed solo, but that doesn't mean it has to be easy or stay static.  The Arc where you have to fight Nosferatu is hard, and forced me to alter play style and use more temps, but that doesn't mean it should be tossed.

 

My fun may not be your fun but then again your fun may not be my fun.  Adjust accordingly, that's what I do.

[ZemX]

I don't solo a lot.  Does it really throw boss werewolves at you when they transform, even if you don't have solo bosses = true in your notoriety setting?

 

[Psyonico]

2 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I don't solo a lot.  Does it really throw boss werewolves at you when they transform, even if you don't have solo bosses = true in your notoriety setting?

 

Yeah, it can. Which I've thought is kind of broken.

[jthequietone]

3 minutes ago, ZemX said:

I don't solo a lot.  Does it really throw boss werewolves at you when they transform, even if you don't have solo bosses = true in your notoriety setting?

 

 

It does. At best you get an obnoxious sponge that moves fast and is CC resistant/immune... At worst it just splats your face with boulder. 

[ZemX]

3 minutes ago, Psyonico said:

Yeah, it can. Which I've thought is kind of broken.

 

I think I'd agree.  LTs should not upgrade to bosses they should just transform into another full health LT wolf.  It's enough to have to kill them twice, I'd say.  Bossses can turn into bosses, if that's a thing.

 

I also wouldn't be sad if the rezzers (and that includes Super Stunners over there in the Freakshow too) got hit with a "chance of" nerf bat.  Even if it's just 50% chance that would be a lot less annoying than every single one rezzing every single time.

[Without_Pause]

The Dark Werewolves are genuinely nasty to deal with even on a melee character. I don't really have experience using Dark against the old Council, but the new ones do seems fairly resistant to it. 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, jthequietone said:

If it had just been at 50, fair enough, but when you're a level 40-something blaster and doing content that was meant for you, like a solo radio mission set to solo difficulty type settings and you randomly get a boss werewolf that is an absolute health sponge and can boulder throw murder you?

Even before the Council were updated, Council would already turn into werewolves when they were near defeat. Even one of the Vampyri bosses would turn into a War Wolf when his health got low enough. And those War Wolves already threw boulders at players. So I'm not understanding the complaint about Council turning into werewolves after the group was updated.

[Rudra]

25 minutes ago, ZemX said:

LTs should not upgrade to bosses they should just transform into another full health LT wolf. 

I have yet to see a Council lieutenant turn into a boss War Wolf. I only see them turn into lieutenant tier Nightwolf Champions.

 

Edit: Now, if you are talking about Council bosses that you have downgraded to lieutenants via your difficulty settings? This has always happened. And not just with Council. A boss that is spawned after the mission is set, typically spawns as a boss regardless of difficulty settings. (And I don't mean bosses that don't appear until after a trigger condition has been met. I mean bosses that are spawned randomly after the mission has started.) This has always been so and is likely a limitation of the game code. This is not something new from that update.

 

Edit again: And if you want those Galaxies to not self-rez after you defeat them? Whittle their health down and then get outside their radius to finish them with a ranged attack. (Just like fighting a Super Stunner.) Grab the Nemesis Staff or Blackwand from START if you have a melee character and don't want to grab a ranged attack from the power pools or ancillary/patron pools.

 

Edited October 3 by Rudra

[Glacier Peak]

That's going to be a no from me. 

[Andreah]

Sometimes as a solo we have to pull out tricks (like an HVAS, Amy, or Signature Summon) to finish a mission, sure. If the OP is willing to do that I think even a surprise Boss in a mission should be manageable.

 

However, if the solo-settings the OP set included "No Bosses" and a Boss spawned as part of an enemy rez, that's, imo, a bug, and should be fixed.

[Owl Girl]

i personally really like the difficulty changes to Council and Circle of Thorns. i mostly solo as a Blaster and i feel like i actually have to use some of the tricks in my secondary and pool powers instead of just nuke+Judgment, rinse+repeat seven times then press exit mission.

[jthequietone]

9 minutes ago, Owl Girl said:

i personally really like the difficulty changes to Council and Circle of Thorns. i mostly solo as a Blaster and i feel like i actually have to use some of the tricks in my secondary and pool powers instead of just nuke+Judgment, rinse+repeat seven times then press exit mission.

 

At 50 when you have a full build, and incarnate powers, sure.

 

But to just get splattered by RNG is awful, and that's what it amounts to with those werewolves. 

[tidge]

I came to the thread, glanced at the number of reactions and fully expected a typical "but I like running +4x8 content with only carpal tunnel syndrome to challenge me!" but instead I saw:

 

2 hours ago, jthequietone said:

... like a solo radio mission set to solo difficulty type settings and you randomly get a boss werewolf that is an absolute health sponge and can boulder throw murder you?

 

So while I don't know that this wasn't at a +4x8 setting, I will offer some validation: Yes, the Dark Werewolves can be challenging for a solo play, even at +0x1.

 

Since that first, brutal encounter my low-30 Warshade had with one, I have adjusted my tactics to deal with them. I learned something!

 

Radio missions are of course entirely at the discretion of the player. It is rare that Council is the only choice of enemy.

[Luminara]

They're not supposed to spawn as bosses if your difficulty is at default.  That bug was fixed a long time ago, when Cryptic was still running the show, but the recent redesign of the Council may not have properly applied the fix.  File a bug report.

[jthequietone]

15 minutes ago, Luminara said:

They're not supposed to spawn as bosses if your difficulty is at default.  That bug was fixed a long time ago, when Cryptic was still running the show, but the recent redesign of the Council may not have properly applied the fix.  File a bug report.

 

It would still be less fun even if it were the case, but at least it wouldn't feel like boulder death incoming. 

 

The new Council are just... Less fun. It makes the game more of a chore and solo leveling was already a chore. 

 

58 minutes ago, tidge said:

I came to the thread, glanced at the number of reactions and fully expected a typical "but I like running +4x8 content with only carpal tunnel syndrome to challenge me!" but instead I saw:

 

Yes, we're not talking about +4/8 here, we're talking just... typical, normal solo radios, for relaxation and exp, and level 40ish or so at that so maaaaybe a +1 on a melee character, but very 'this is definitely meant to be solo character content' as opposed to 'why I no solo stuff meant for 8 people!?' 

[ZemX]

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

Edit again: And if you want those Galaxies to not self-rez after you defeat them? Whittle their health down and then get outside their radius to finish them with a ranged attack. (Just like fighting a Super Stunner.) Grab the Nemesis Staff or Blackwand from START if you have a melee character and don't want to grab a ranged attack from the power pools or ancillary/patron pools.

 

I know this.  Try getting a team to do it though.  On a team, effectively, every single one of them will rez.  It is the rare exception where you can knock one away and nobody runs over to feed some of their life to it.

[FupDup]

The added offense to Council is generally not very controversial, but man I really don't like how bullet-spongey they got. The issue is partly that the dev team is balancing on the assumption of a decked out full team, which means that solo play gets slowed waaaay down to mollasses, while ironically teams only got slowed down a little bit. 

[Owl Girl]

1 hour ago, jthequietone said:

 

At 50 when you have a full build, and incarnate powers, sure.

 

But to just get splattered by RNG is awful, and that's what it amounts to with those werewolves. 

sometimes people here will respond to these kinds of criticisms by downplaying the OP's experience as just being a skill issue, so i want to start by affirming that the Council flunkies are much more challenging for solo artists than they used to be especially before unlocking that Alpha slot. however i am still going to stand by my position that this is a Good Thing and i look forward to every faction eventually getting a similar treatment.

 

when doing Council or CoT radios as a solo Blaster, i now have to give them the respect i'd normally reserve for Malta or the Spider Clan: i use snipes, i consider positioning to maximize my cones, i use movement and jousting to control mob movement, and i make liberal use of available cover to force ranged attackers into clustering together for AoE. in short, the game must be played in a way that makes maximum use of your abilities while exploiting enemy vulnerabilities as much as possible when facing them which feels appropriate to me since i can always run at -1 if i want to feel like the Council are just a bunch of 4chan tryhards instead of a decades old global terrorist organization that represents a legitimate threat to democracy in Statesman's america.

[GM Crumpet]

I mostly avoid council as I hate their maps so haven't actually met any on the new difficulty

[lemming]

So ran a bunch of solo Council missions in PI at 50. Bosses off

 

Ran one at -1, then when I noted that, went to +1/x4 to get more respawns.     Lts that respawned or turned into werewolves were Lts.

----

Ran another mission at +1/x8 and finally replicated an Eclipse Warwolf spawing as a boss.   (I'm not sure what he was previous, but I think Galaxy Adjutant)

Just got a second one that turned into an  Eclipse Warwolf again.

I do think that is buggy behaviour.

 

The original complaint, I find the council chewier, but not any tougher and at base +0/x1, barely.

[Triumphant]

I find the Galaxy's moderately more challenging and the War Wolves a lot more challenging.  I much prefer this to the boring pushovers that I used to fight at +4/8, though.

[Captain Fabulous]

43 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

I mostly avoid council as I hate their maps so haven't actually met any on the new difficulty

TBH, they're really annoying now. Teleporting you around, multiple rezzing back from the dead that debuffs you. They're kinda a shitshow now.

[macskull]

The Council changes didn't really seem to do much to change the "everyone is running 54x8 Council radios in PI" problem (if you consider that a problem, anyways). Teams that were steamrolling them before are still steamrolling them now, marginal teams are probably having a bit more difficulty, and soloists without lots of CC are just finding them annoying. The CoT changes are the same way, and so were the Crey changes before these.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

The Council changes didn't really seem to do much to change the "everyone is running 54x8 Council radios in PI" problem (if you consider that a problem, anyways). Teams that were steamrolling them before are still steamrolling them now, marginal teams are probably having a bit more difficulty, and soloists without lots of CC are just finding them annoying. The CoT changes are the same way, and so were the Crey changes before these.

I used to run a lot of PI council steamrolling teams. 

 

The big reason to run council was also they don't show up in cave maps, which people don't like. 

Secondarily, they were bland and fairly "lowbie friendly" for teams heavy on lowbies. CoT were just as easy, but less lowbie-friendly.

 

Now, I mix in Council with CoT and Arachnos; based on which one I find that isn't on a cave map. They're all about the same difficulty-wise. Of the three, I'd say Arachnos are the best overall They may be slightly more difficult, but they don't rez and it's hard to keep a pick-up team focused on steamrolling when they get scrapperlocked (regardless of their AT) on fighting some lone rezzer boss who is not xp/drop-worth the time to defeat by itself.