My powerset is supposed to be a very strong solo powerset, secondary only to Rad. What are the limits of my defender, that will cause it to be brought down without fail?
I remember the recent spate of CoT behemoth portal missions I did. These, by the way, spawn endless behemoths until destroyed. Being on tenacious, the portals were red to me, and spawned orange-cons, mostly minions and some lieuts.
Let's see...If I approach the portal right, I can survive about 15-20 +2 minions. Very iffy though, very dangerous. If anything went wrong at all, i.e. if anything bunched up wrongly, or strayed out of the debuff zone, I died faster than I could say "geronimo". So that is about the edge of what is doable. So completely comparable to scrapper stats. at 20+ minions to reliably bring me down.
What about +2 Lieuts? I've fought two +2 lieuts (red con) simultaneously before...wasn't too dangerous but took forever. This is just enough for my holds to cycle. Three +2 lieuts would be a bit too much, but I guess doable. Four would bring me down, but with lots of inspiration popping I could manage it. So I think five +2 lieuts would bring me down without fail.
With inspiration popping, I can do a +2 boss. Two +2 bosses...ummm...I did take on once a +1 Creytank/gunslinger boss pair... It took half an inspiration try and lots of heart pounding action. Two +2 bosses is called suicide.
So we have CoT-styled mobs : 20+/5/2
This basically confirms my suspicion. Near-con minions are aptly named minions. Minions may be eaten by the dozens -- that is the beauty of CoH -- you feel like a superhero. Minion numbers lose at 20+, because nobody except tanks will ready go around tanking or herding that many -- and hold aggro attention.
The boss numbers are also pretty accurate. Bosses are bosses. They are hard, a challenge. One purple-con boss is just about as much as anyone can handle. Invul survives 4 +2 bosses, but that is its tanker set roots showing... needing that many bosses to bring it down does not mean it "thrives".
Now the scary part:
Level 40 tests
Invul +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 17-20 / 0)
Regen +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14 / 0)
SR +2 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 15 / 2)
And the test SR isn't even perma-eluded.
What is even more scary:
Invul +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 14-17 / 0)
Regen +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (14 / 4 / 0)
SR +4 hero level Carnival Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses (20+ / 6 / 0)
What this means is, these scrappers can fight a roomful of purple cons solo. As one said, solo an invincible spawn for four people. Something that makes me eek and back away quickly.
I don't really have to point out what is wrong. But I have to point out that some other ATs and powersets can do it. I would propose just fixing it so all ATs can reach this level of competence, and then adjusting the con system. People always like to be improved. A universal con adjustment does not target anyone, just reflects reality.
Dark armor is terribly weak compared to the other sets, but it actually looks reasonable. Except that the endurance issues are annoying for a damage AT. An acquaintance logged his /DA for me. With all his armors turned on he barely broke even on the endurance. Of course no one would turn all their armors on, but a damage class does require endurance for constant damage output (their purpose). But I don't think a /DA is "horribly nerfed/gimp/weak". It's normal, but a normality imposed by endurance issues.
I'm strangely, enjoying the post 40s game.
I really hope the devs change all the villain classes to be like the Malta and the Crey. Or the Devouring Earth.
First of all, it would solve herding issues. People herd wolves and freakshow. Why? Because these are stupid I-damage-you style mobs.
People don't herd Devouring earth. The lieuts drop quartz eminators which buff their acc, they drop cairn eminators which buff their damage resistance, and they summon swarms that are autohit and slow recharge. In a normal battle, it is survivable. When you herd...things start getting bad...all those buffs and debuffs pile up...
Crey radiologists throw up RI. Herd them...get twenty RIs thrown on, not feeling too tanky now hmm? Watch the Paragon Protectors go Moment of Glory, zoom around in and out airborne.
Herd Malta? Hey, Z(s)appppppp. Oh noes, toggle drop! Whadya know, you're just a blaster with more hitpoints.
Nemesis have such charming AoEs too. Three regen scrappers barging into a roomful of Nemesis grenadiers faceplant so fast as thirty AoEs hit them, it was B-movie hilarious (except it wasn't polite for me to laugh), and it just proves scrappers are - not - tanks.
In a way, dev test numbers mean nothing. By pure game mechanics, having offense/defense means the sheer ability to survive damage while dealing it. Behemoths aren't very intelligent -- all they stand is stand around and beat at you. Rikti just aren't very scary for mezproof ATs. Carnies are trickier -- see how the numbers change, but I haven't fought too many of them yet to judge.
It's not suprising people just go the herding / farming way.
Any random idiot can charge into a group of mobs and kill things if all they did was throw back damage largely mitigated by shields.
Grouped up with a scrapper to take on some Malta. Originally she got picked up because I asked some people for help with Countess Crey, and then helped one of them with the Madame of Mystery, but three people weren't enough so we picked up more people.
She had the psychic clockwork king mission. We did it twice actually, one for another group member. I'm not sure why people scream so much about him. He seemed pretty much a psychic clockwork pushover. Or maybe...because...people who scream about him are people who are used to charging brainlessly into a mob and whacking at it until it dies, because nothing could ever hurt them...until OH NOES PSI DAMAGE?
And then we agreed to do one of unnamed scrapper's missions. A random little rescue n blahs from boo villain group. Ah, invincible mission setting. Great xp, good challenge for the solo scrapper...except...Malta mission. Oh boo hoo, her style of fighting is charging into everything and whacking away until they die. Got to 42 on it eh?
Even normal people learn that, when you see a guy with a bright blue glowing gun, or any bright blue beams flashing around, in a Malta mission, you make for that guy with the name "sapper". It was pretty amazing that the controller and I would be turning purple trying to hold down the sappers (Oh, but it's set at invincible of someone +2 from me or +1 from the controller.) ... and I can repeatedly teamtalk 'kill sapper', while our scrapper is just scrapper-locked on whatever nearest mob she thinks she is killing. It's ok -- the sapper gets loose, wipes the floors with the squishies, and then it comes for her. (I.e. we die but you die too!) And what do you know, without those shield toggles she's just a bigger squishy, a blaster with more hitpoints. Oh -- no endurance, can't even travel-power out! Or maybe she just died as fast a blaster once her toggles dropped.
I actually find it fun to fight challenging enemies. Challenging -- not hardcore. Tenacious is about as high as I ever want to go. I'd rather see the devs put in more challenging enemies, that require some strategy, situational awareness, and forethought to fight, than just turn up the slider so the balance of "I damage you you damage me" shifts through the con-system.
For a scrapper, it could be something as simple as -- "Can I drop that sapper / keep it knocked down before its drain drops me?". Or "Quartz eminators and guardians must go first, ouch!".
I suspect that is why so many people just end up farming and herding. Rather than having be forced to think, they just want their xp and levels.
It's so very sad when nobody wants to finish the sewers trial, but just want to farm it.
I'm pretty interested in that sewers trial. It took us long enough to coordinate enough to bring down the head, but we didn't clear the room before the timer went up again. I really should respec some time to bring in some useful crowd control powers for these different new enemies, but it'd force me to give up some other very good powers. This is what the game should be about though -- making choices about good powers, challenging enemies, fun trials.
Not...cookie cutter uberpower heroes running around farming and powerlevelling.
4 comments:
You know, one thing I'm puzzled on those scrapper numbers, if you interpret them the way you did. 0 bosses? It takes 0 bosses to wipe the floor with a regen or invul? Seems highly unlikely. I bet they could at least take one down. If not, the proper number should be minimum 1 boss to take them down, right?
I have the feeling that it counts them all as a group together. That the test was done by simply charging the character into a random spawn of mobs containing (15 minions/4 lts/2 bosses) and seeing which crowd dropped the character. Or something like that.
I have no clue how these tests work anyhow.
Though after those kinds of numbers, and being bored on Raggy trying to clear grey-con missions, I took a bunch of current contact missions on unyielding and tried to herd.
It's amazing the number of orange-con Nemesis I can tank, although they are kinda annoying to bunch up because one of them will always take it into their head to run a distance and fire before coming back. I guess they are right, the 30-40s are the realm of the godly tanker.
According to a PM from Stateman (if you read the entire thread), it is an or thing. 0 means they just couldn't solo the boss....which makes sense for certain types of bosses. (As someone put it, some Carnie bosses are so scary scrapper drop dead even thinking about them -- hence 0 needed.)
Heh, no, I didn't read the whole thread. Too long to digest. In which case, I might be glad of my tanks in the long run then. If they are the only sorts who can withstand the bosses (and just take them down real real real real sloooooowy).
It looks like tanks touch off a certain personality trigger in me. The sort which makes me like the HWguy and the engineer over the soldier in TFC. Strong defense first, presentable offense later.
Another part of me still likes nukes though (muhaha, blaster glass cannons) and there's the werewolf part that just wants to howl mindlessly and claw at things (you-know-which-AT). Yey, go me, forever schizophrenic.
So if I like controllers, it makes me a sadomasochist? :P
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