page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] New Expanded +5 & Incarnate +6/+7 Difficulty Options

[Troo]

I'm confused. (not hard to do)

Which of the below is applicable to "New Expanded +5 & Incarnate +6/+7 Difficulty Options"?

 

15 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

All you'd need is a basic build and a team to start cashing in.  Poor folks can get richer too. 

 

On 11/13/2025 at 8:27 PM, Uncle Shags said:

People are going to get demolished.

 

I've been tinkering around with a couple different tankers on +5 radios.  It's not easy!  Taking on two groups of Arachnos, Carnies, or CoT is very risky!  They'll getcha!

 

All of a sudden 90% resists, soft capped defense, 13 points of status protection, etc might not be enough.  Immortality at +4 is a faceplant at +5 if you're not careful.  

 

[Uncle Shags]

3 hours ago, Troo said:

I'm confused. (not hard to do)

Which of the below is applicable to "New Expanded +5 & Incarnate +6/+7 Difficulty Options"?

 

I don't think those two quotes are incompatible. 

 

Are people going to get demolished? I think so.  Especially solo. Some people aren't going to make adjustments in their tactics or builds to accommodate the increased difficulty and will be surprised.  Notice I said faceplant "if you're not careful." 

 

I don't think it's only about money. For example, my SR tank build wasn't holding up vs +5/6s so I had to change it. I shifted things around and added weave for more defense. It worked. But it didn't cost me a dime.

 

I think a diverse team of decent 50/51s will be able to handle it. Some will be faster than others, and some will choose to run +4s or +3s just like now, but that's just the way it is. You won't get kicked off a team for a budget build any more than you will for running a JJ one or for smashing your face on the keyboard now. Billion dollar build won't be the price of admission. 

 

I'm betting you probably won't be able to bring a bunch of lowbies though... And maybe +1 incarnate will be more important. But that's easy to get. 

 

Who knows, maybe team leads will be demanding resumes and links to mids for team membership. But I doubt it. 

[Seed22]

8 hours ago, Uncle Shags said:

 

Have you tried it? Solo? On a team? 

Solo im not going to do because I rarely do +4 solo. I personally like rolling around +2 or 3 because it's fun enough for me. But it's just gaming common sense. It's the same mob, but with stat increase. The exact same tactic you were using before will work, because the mob just got a bump in stats. Only thing that'll change is at +5 onward you might have to drop a lowbie for a 50. 

 

But on live, once I'm 50 on this new alt I'll give it a whirl to prove my point.

 

Watch, with just using some basic insp, and hitting barrier, this will be steamrolled on a team  in a day.  Folks here are acting like the mobs are getting HM powers 🤣

 

Last Edit: I really want to stress that I am NOT saying this shouldnt occur, the diff increases, I am simply saying it wont change anywhere near as much of things that people think it will. Its the same mobs, same powers, you just might have to use insp this time and not have 3/4th of your team be varying degrees of lowbie.

Edited Sunday at 02:52 PM by Seed22

[Uncle Shags]

44 minutes ago, Seed22 said:

The exact same tactic you were using before will work, because the mob just got a bump in stats.

 

Maybe. I haven't tried it on a team yet. We'll have to see.

 

But I have tried it solo quite a bit on various toons, and I don't think "a bump in stats" fully captures it. It's not just that they have more hp and hit harder. They also have a greater chance to hit, so defenses built for +4 are going to fail. Mez lasts longer and hits more often so status protection is going to fail. Mezzes will end faster against them so bosses will be running around smacking people. Which will be exciting because +6 bosses chunked my tank like an AV rarely does.  Pulling every group in sight was a +4 tactic you could get away with pretty easily. I'm not sure that'll work as well vs +5/6s.

 

I don't know about you, but pug teams I join range in quality from steamroll to can barely take out MJ AVs. I suspect below average pugs are going to have a hard time. 

 

But hey! Maybe I'm biased because I want this to be hard. I'm really looking forward to the challenge, so maybe I'm overly optimistic. And, in principle, I like to make it a point to make room for other's opinions. But on the other hand, I'm also basing my impressions on actual experience on test.

[Shin Magmus]

     I'm excited to try it on Live by providing the specific numerical edge needed to swing things back into our favor with my Poison/Fire Defender.  Defender scalars on debuffs are going to matter a lot when they get further reduced by the increased effects of The Purple Patch.

[lemming]

I've noticed differences needed just in +2 to +4 depending on team makeup.

One group I roll with, +4 content gets smashed into bits because the players are all highly competent and have good builds.   Then in PUGs, same tactics just don't work at +4.

For the average and casual players, it will definitely be shown.

[Perfect Square]

On 11/14/2025 at 3:52 PM, Faultline said:

 

This is news to me and I have no idea why this would be happening. The Incarnate critters were expanded to level 60. Further investigation needed.

I specifically saw this in Dream Doctor's 2nd finale: "Stop Mot from Devouring the World". I'll try other Incarnate arcs soon to see if I can duplicate. I was set to +7x8 to try to get the higher level groups to spawn.

[Troo]

On 11/15/2025 at 9:47 AM, Cobalt Arachne said:

You can't buy and sell nothing, and nothing is what every single player started with.

 

So no, trading is not an intended method because it can't exist without you or other players playing the game the intended way. It's a dependency.

 

There is not ONE correct way to play. I'll double down on: There are many ways to play. Crafting, trading, resource farming, etc are ALL intended ways to play and "gear up".

 

Your opinion can be: There is an intended way to play.

That doesn't make it troo for everyone or the game as a whole.

 

I have characters who, for example, have memorized recipes and can craft enhancements with just a couple common salvage (which are seeded).

So, players can in fact create something from nothing using no more than infamy.

 

We can also buy recipes outside the black market and craft them. No other player contribution required. No dependency.

 

Loot drops are not the end-all-be-all.

 

======================

 

"New Expanded +5 & Incarnate +6/+7 Difficulty Options" may require some players to improve their builds in order to participate in the new content.

That's to be expected, purple patch and all.

Just the ~1/3 drop in base ToHit from +4 to +5 (iirc) may have folks other than min/maxers looking for ways to eek out a bit more performance and/or free up some slots.

With that in mind, scarcity and increased prices could have a net negative impact on average players.

 

[DrunkFlux]

16 hours ago, Troo said:

 

There is not ONE correct way to play. I'll double down on: There are many ways to play. Crafting, trading, resource farming, etc are ALL intended ways to play and "gear up".

 

Your opinion can be: There is an intended way to play.

That doesn't make it troo for everyone or the game as a whole.

 

I have characters who, for example, have memorized recipes and can craft enhancements with just a couple common salvage (which are seeded).

So, players can in fact create something from nothing using no more than infamy.

 

We can also buy recipes outside the black market and craft them. No other player contribution required. No dependency.

 

Loot drops are not the end-all-be-all.

 

======================

 

"New Expanded +5 & Incarnate +6/+7 Difficulty Options" may require some players to improve their builds in order to participate in the new content.

That's to be expected, purple patch and all.

Just the ~1/3 drop in base ToHit from +4 to +5 (iirc) may have folks other than min/maxers looking for ways to eek out a bit more performance and/or free up some slots.

With that in mind, scarcity and increased prices could have a net negative impact on average players.

 

Even without having played on +5 on test I can already as a min/maxer state that my builds I'm always including things like leadership: Maneuvers and tactics 'specifically' to counter-act against things like increased defenses/to hit on mobs in hard mode, even if I almost never actually play hard mode content.

If I have time I may have to port over my widow and my newest stalker to test for some 55 runs.  My widow is made with making even the crappiest teams excell on 54, and 55 content likely won't see any changes to her build due to the +18 or so tohit she gives everyone with TT: Leadership and mind link.  Likewise, my stalker has a +12 or so to-hit from tactics(+7) and targetting drone(+5).  And i'm pondering slotting changes to try and get the kismet +6.

Both builds always have a lot of accuracy from set bonuses to begin with and i'll be switchin from agility to vigor before long on the stalker.

But heres a tip for everyone:  Start stacking leadership powers more.  Seriously, especially maneuvers and tactics, there isn't really a limit on how high you can crank your to-hit and defense values, while there is a soft-cap for defense having more than the soft-cap simply means it can harder for enemies with -defense to defense cascade you successfully if you've enough over the soft-cap.

If you have even 4 people with leadership tactics I guarantee thats going to make the drop in to-hit chances feel like a drop in a bucket.

Good min/max builds CAN overcome being on a bad team but a good team composition will overcome 'any' challenge even a min/max build may struggle to solo, even if they aren't 'all' min/maxed its about bringing things to the table.  Leadership stacking actually something I frequently see LACKING in teams, often only brought by people playing support toons.  You don't HAVE to be a support toon to bring leadership powers.  And they always ALWAYS stack.  They make take some endurance but seriously thats why we load out toons with so many endurance management tools or even just throw ageless at it.  And you don't HAVE to take leadership at lower levels where your not going to be running 55 anyways, you could easly slip maneuvers/tactics or assault/tactics at levels 47 and 49 respectively in fact tactics is one of my most commonly taken powers AT 49.

[Championess]

5 hours ago, DrunkFlux said:

Even without having played on +5 on test I can already as a min/maxer state that my builds I'm always including things like leadership: Maneuvers and tactics 'specifically' to counter-act against things like increased defenses/to hit on mobs in hard mode, even if I almost never actually play hard mode content.

If I have time I may have to port over my widow and my newest stalker to test for some 55 runs.  My widow is made with making even the crappiest teams excell on 54, and 55 content likely won't see any changes to her build due to the +18 or so tohit she gives everyone with TT: Leadership and mind link.  Likewise, my stalker has a +12 or so to-hit from tactics(+7) and targetting drone(+5).  And i'm pondering slotting changes to try and get the kismet +6.

Both builds always have a lot of accuracy from set bonuses to begin with and i'll be switchin from agility to vigor before long on the stalker.

But heres a tip for everyone:  Start stacking leadership powers more.  Seriously, especially maneuvers and tactics, there isn't really a limit on how high you can crank your to-hit and defense values, while there is a soft-cap for defense having more than the soft-cap simply means it can harder for enemies with -defense to defense cascade you successfully if you've enough over the soft-cap.

If you have even 4 people with leadership tactics I guarantee thats going to make the drop in to-hit chances feel like a drop in a bucket.

Good min/max builds CAN overcome being on a bad team but a good team composition will overcome 'any' challenge even a min/max build may struggle to solo, even if they aren't 'all' min/maxed its about bringing things to the table.  Leadership stacking actually something I frequently see LACKING in teams, often only brought by people playing support toons.  You don't HAVE to be a support toon to bring leadership powers.  And they always ALWAYS stack.  They make take some endurance but seriously thats why we load out toons with so many endurance management tools or even just throw ageless at it.  And you don't HAVE to take leadership at lower levels where your not going to be running 55 anyways, you could easly slip maneuvers/tactics or assault/tactics at levels 47 and 49 respectively in fact tactics is one of my most commonly taken powers AT 49.

 

Back in the olden days of live and early CoV I happened on to a SG team of 7 corruptors doing newspapers in their 20s.  We were evaporating +5s in our low levels with little aggro control and before IOs.  Sure they were a mix of buff/debuff powersets but the one constant was we had 7 stacks of Manuevers, Assault and Tactics.  I never skipped the Leadership pool thereafter, I'd take it and hope other teammates did too.

[Andreah]

6 hours ago, DrunkFlux said:

But heres a tip for everyone:  Start stacking leadership powers more.  Seriously, especially maneuvers and tactics, there isn't really a limit on how high you can crank your to-hit and defense values, while there is a soft-cap for defense having more than the soft-cap simply means it can harder for enemies with -defense to defense cascade you successfully if you've enough over the soft-cap.

If every character on an eight-person team is running Maneuvers, that's giving enough +def to get everyone half way to the softcap alone; and if they've all reasonably slotted it, it probably does it regardless of their builds. 

 

Similar with tactics, it will give so much +to-hit  to everyone, even the relative lowbies on the team will be able to hit high level mobs.

Edited 14 hours ago by Andreah

[macskull]

On 11/11/2025 at 12:25 PM, Skygoddess said:

I can't set other difficulty settings beside "Adjust level" due to being unable to scroll down if navigation is at top right corner of screen.  

I brought this up when the change happened, was told “I guess we could move it to the left side of that window,” and then nothing ever came of it.

 

Still don’t know why someone felt the need to undo six and a half years of muscle memory and move the difficulty settings menu to a completely different part of the UI.

[macskull]

On 11/16/2025 at 7:51 AM, Uncle Shags said:

so defenses built for +4 are going to fail

This is categorically false, the amount of defense you need to minimize critter hit chance at +5 is exactly the same as the amount of defense you need to minimize critter hit chance at +4 (and +3, and +2, and +1, and +0).

 

Against most enemies a player or a team that is easily able to handle the current +4 difficulty will probably also be able to easily handle the new +5 difficulty. Players or teams that are having a marginal time getting through it are going to find it more difficult. Other testers’ experience during closed beta bore this out.

[Championess]

9 minutes ago, macskull said:

I brought this up when the change happened, was told “I guess we could move it to the left side of that window,” and then nothing ever came of it.

 

Still don’t know why someone felt the need to undo six and a half years of muscle memory and move the difficulty settings menu to a completely different part of the UI.

 

And if someone plays with the Nav bar to their very left edge of the screen?

 

The curmudgeons can move that Nav bar off the very edge or put it back in the middle where it truly belongs.  How inconveniencing it must be to have to do a few extra mouse clicks, they could always move it back to the zone contacts where it belongs...

[macskull]

On 11/18/2025 at 11:05 AM, Troo said:

I have characters who, for example, have memorized recipes and can craft enhancements with just a couple common salvage (which are seeded).

So, players can in fact create something from nothing using no more than infamy.

The seeded price of all tiers of salvage is, and always has been, well above the going rate for that salvage. If you’re buying salvage off the AH you’re almost certainly buying it from another player unless you’re bidding an exorbitant amount.

[macskull]

4 minutes ago, Championess said:

And if someone plays with the Nav bar to their very left edge of the screen?

Then they’re still able to use the menu just fine, because the menu comes out of the right side of the button and the submenus expand properly.

 

Sorry, telling people they need to redo their UI on every single character because a single dev decided to move a menu that didn’t need to be moved is a shit solution to a problem that used to simply not exist.

Edited 12 hours ago by macskull

[Championess]

Just now, macskull said:

Then they’re still able to use the menu just fine, because the menu comes out of the right side of the button no matter where you have the button.

 

Well you got me there.  Point being you're missing the true CoX experience if you're not playing it raw default.  You kids and your binds and moved Nav bars.  😜

[lemming]

I get the annoyance of menus.   I have all my popmenu stuff on a tray in the top middle because of stuff like that.

I think the difficulty button is in a better spot than the chat bubble location, but yea, training the muscle memory out of it takes work.

 

For dropdowns that do that, having your mouse go up and around tends to work, but yea, more training.

For window placements, I did make some menus for redoing the default placements depending on what screen I am playing on.  Needs work still, but does make it do my default is easy to setup now.

[golstat2003]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

I get the annoyance of menus.   I have all my popmenu stuff on a tray in the top middle because of stuff like that.

I think the difficulty button is in a better spot than the chat bubble location, but yea, training the muscle memory out of it takes work.

 

For dropdowns that do that, having your mouse go up and around tends to work, but yea, more training.

For window placements, I did make some menus for redoing the default placements depending on what screen I am playing on.  Needs work still, but does make it do my default is easy to setup now.

 

I too prefer the new spot. I always felt it felt awkward to get to it's current spot on live.

[Troo]

2 hours ago, macskull said:

The seeded price of all tiers of salvage is, and always has been, well above the going rate for that salvage. If you’re buying salvage off the AH you’re almost certainly buying it from another player unless you’re bidding an exorbitant amount.

 

irrelevant to my point 

[Uncle Shags]

3 hours ago, macskull said:

This is categorically false, the amount of defense you need to minimize critter hit chance at +5 is exactly the same as the amount of defense you need to minimize critter hit chance at +4 (and +3, and +2, and +1, and +0).

 

So a +5 boss isn't going to be hitting you more frequently than a +4 boss if you have 45% defense? 

[macskull]

28 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

So a +5 boss isn't going to be hitting you more frequently than a +4 boss if you have 45% defense? 

If you’re at the defense softcap (45% for non incarnate content) a +5 boss will have a 9.75% chance to hit you, while a +4 boss will have a 9.1% chance. That’s only about a 7% difference.

 

On the other hand, if you have, I dunno, 200% defense, those hit chances will be… exactly the same because rank and level differences are handled as accuracy bonuses which aren’t countered by defense.

 

TL;DR: Yes, you’ll be hit more often by +5 critters than by +4 critters, but not much more often. This does not require you to build for any more defense than you already do if you’re already at the softcap because of how this game’s attack mechanics work.

[Andreah]

1 hour ago, macskull said:

TL;DR: Yes, you’ll be hit more often by +5 critters than by +4 critters, but not much more often. This does not require you to build for any more defense than you already do if you’re already at the softcap because of how this game’s attack mechanics work.

I suspect the key issue for people is understanding that the mission difficulty label (+4, +5, +6, +7) is not often the level difference they will face. 

 

A level 50 with an alpha slot shift in a mission set to difficulty +5 is still going to be facing +4 enemies -- a level 55 boss being fought by a 50+1 player is only +4 to him. Looking at the table "Level-Based Accuracy and ToHit Modifiers for Critters Attacking Players" on the https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics page, we can see that the 45% defense softcap still applies right up to level differences of five. A level 50 player is still going to have a proper 45% softcap vs a a level 55 boss. It's the players who were Sidekicked to level 49 who'll see softcap trouble in the +5 content. 

If gets more interesting in incarnate content. +7 difficulty that produces level 57 and level 58 enemy mobs will still be at the same incarnate softcap (59% iirc?) to 50+3 players. The level 58 enemies are still only 5 levels higher than a combat level 53 player.  But to a level 50 player without all three combat shifts from incarnate slots, or especially to sidekicked level 49 players, those level 58's are going to hurt. As they should. ^_^ If I've done the addition right, the level 49's are going to be up against a 79% softcap -- if everyone has maneuvers running or good team buffs, it'll work out. If not, hope your character has good medical insurance.

[Riverdusk]

+6 to you is when mobs start to also get a tohit modifier (as opposed to accuracy), a +5% one to be exact, and having more defense over the softcap will matter.   Pretty sure against +6 the new softcap would simply be 50% instead of 45% to account for the +5% extra tohit, but I could be mistaken.  

 

Can see it in the next to last chart:  https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Attack_Mechanics

 

 

[Uncle Shags]

Now I don't know what to think. I thought I needed to increase my defense, I just went back and tested and it made no difference. I thought +5s were way harder, I just went back and tested and now I can't even tell anymore. AFTER taking a pretty strong stance that it was waaay harder. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills...

 

The only thing that makes me feel somewhat sane is that I fought quite a few +6 bosses in my prior tests. Tonight I only found 1. Maybe that made a difference.

 

All I can say is I hope they make it hard.  

 

Please crank the +6 boss knob up to max!

 

I'm going to bed...