Eva Destruction

I would change it to be like Katie, where if you fail the mission you have to do it over. However I'd change the third mission to only require rescuing the sisters, not leading them out, and I'd have them both spawn when the mission begins. It's a long mission, and all the backtracking and leading out and listening to Infernia babble just makes it draaaaag. Penny isn't too bad because it's only one lead out and you can Assemble the Team to skip all that running, losing her, and having to go back for her.

Keeping NPCs alive is a bad "challenge" anyway. They are as dumb as a sack of bricks and tend to kamikaze, and are usually too squishy not to die from it. "Keep alive" challenges can be fun when you actually have a good chance of keeping whatever it is alive.

Some people see badging as a competition, or a race. So they have to have more than you, and they have to have them as soon as humanly possible. I don't get it either, and frankly the people I've met with this mindset are people I will never play with again. I've found that they show very little consideration for others in their quest to get all the badges before you.

Unfortunately you're a minority. Many people just assume a speed run as the default, and if you don't do it that way you're doing it wrong.

On an unrelated note, Imperious can die because what he is doing with his Hand Clap spam is the opposite of help. One day the devs will realize that NPCs are too stupid to be allowed to have knockback, and on that day NPC helpers might be welcome. Until that day, Imperious, Fusionette, Sefu, and their ilk can all go die in a fire. Last LGTF I did someone stealthed ahead to free Infernia so we wouldn't have to backtrack (we were intending to save them.) She died while she was yakking. So she got herself killed. She can die too, if she wanted to stay alive she'd shut up and follow. Her dialogue is not funny. Penny doesn't deserve to die, since she's bugged so you can skip the long trek back to the door. If they ever fix that, I'll probably be advocating letting her die, since by the time that TF was created we'd already established that nobody likes long lead-outs with stupid slow hostages that get stuck on everything.

It isn't. That's why I'm not doing it. I do each WST once or twice, and that's about my limit. Most of my Incarnates don't have their rare, none have more than one Notice. I don't feel the need to get it NAO but it really cheeses me off that I can't make any progress at all without repeatedly doing something so horrendously unfun that it's not worth doing. The one upshot is that I still need the badges for this week's TFs on my side-switchers and it'll be easier to get people to do them with me.

Oh and as for people wanting a 50 to have the star, I've always hated exemping, especially needlessly. Why should I lose a bunch of my powers and set bonuses just because you can't be bothered to select one of my missions? It's the one drawback to SSK.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend until he turns his back and I stab him in it. Then take his stuff.

I knew that. They're practically freaking bulletproof, or at least that's how it seems sometimes. Namely, the times you get hit with a stun grenade, you have only one breakfree left, and you don't want to waste it on a lieutenant with only a quarter of his HP left....you can take him down in one shot, right? RIGHT? Not if you're Assault Rifle, you can't.

Totally unfair, isn't it, to deny you poetic justice like that? I remember well my very first "hey Malta, SCREW YOUUUUUU!" moment. It was with an Elec/Elec Brute, I was in the 30s and SK'd up for a friend's Malta mission, I was tanking, nobody saw the Sapper, he hit me with that sap gun.....and nothing happened. Mwahahaha. In Soviet Russia, tank saps you. But no. Tank doesn't sap you. I thought maybe it was because they fly, so I was having trouble hitting them with power sink. It wasn't until much later I found out they're total cheating *******s.

How so? I only run four toggles, one of which (Combat Jumping) is very cheap. I have all my powers slotted with IO sets, most of which include End Red. I have both +end accolades because I am a badge-[censored]. I also picked up quite a few incidental +recovery bonuses in my quest for MOAR RECHARGE, and with the introduction of inherent fitness I stuck a Miracle +recovery in Health because it serves me better than more regen on a character who has Aid Self.

Now my other two Blasters I've been playing frequently: My Fire/Elec is soft-capped, runs a million toggles, and has the Cardiac boost to allow her to run all those toggles. She also has Power Sink. My Rad/MM who is level 33 and is barely "engineered" at all (I have the Regenerative Tissue unique, the Steadfast +def, and a few pieces of Thunderstrike, the rest is all SOs) has Drain Psyche available every other spawn. She doesn't need blues either. Going through my other Blasters....Energy/Elec, Elec/Elec: both have Power Sink. Archery/Dev: didn't run out of end. Although I still need to respec her for i19, and will probably pick up a few more toggles in an attempt to actually soft-cap her again since the BotZ nerf, so I might have to do some "engineering" to keep my end use sustainable. Ice/Ice: was a horrid end-sucking fiend before IOs, but with minimal investment in IO sets now has no problems. Sonic/Energy: See Ice/Ice above, with a side of Conserve Power. Ice/MM: see Rad/MM. DP/Energy: Well he's like level 12, so none of my powers are cool enough to use up too much end.

Besides, unless you were playing a lowbie pre-inherent fitness or running WAY too many toggles you die long before you run out of end on a Blaster. The only exceptions I can think of are +level high-resistance boss fights with a Blaster who can chain-mez them (Zeus Titans, I'm looking at you) and possibly AV fights if none of your teammates have +recovery buffs.

As for yellows, accuracy bonuses abound in IO sets. All Blasters have access to to-hit buffs in Build Up or Targeting Drone and most also have access to Aim, and frankly, not missing is too important for an AT that skirts the line between life and death so closely to trust to inspiration drops, and is far easier and cheaper to ensure than not getting hit, healing, and not getting mezzed.

I really hope that's not what they're going to pass of as "villainous" content. He'd be worse to work under than Recluse. Mostly because he'd be harder to work around.

Now it would be cool if they added a story arc where you can help Cole, but you're only doing it to undermine his efforts from the inside. Then they can use the branching options to allow you to turn on him at the last minute, or to allow Loyalist players to stay loyal. That way they'd have an arc for former Loyalists that everyone else can also do, villains and rogues get to be underhanded jerks, and heroes have to do vigilante things. Since villains have to do Rogue things in all the other co-op content, it's only fair.

It doesn't give you any Psi resist whatsoever, as BrokenPrey's screenshot shows.

Only the Lieutenants and bosses have 30 second stuns, and it's annoying. The other part is hilarious.

But yeah, lucks, breakfrees and greens if you don't have Aid Self. I try to keep one or two on me even though I do have Aid Self, because eating a green is faster. Yellows and blues are useless to me in most situations, and oranges aren't worth carrying. I don't bother keeping more than one awaken. Seriously, the things drop like rain. Use them.

Apparently I'm an aberration though, since I can afford to softcap my main but I chose not to build her for defense at all, so what do I know?

Then I have to ask why you're carrying so many inspirations that won't keep you alive that you don't have room for those that will. I don't get people who carry a full tray of awakens either, when by carrying a few purples and greens they could probably avoid needing to use that many awakens.

Well if you're playing a Blaster the opening volley is often all you've got, so yeah, that's when you'd use them. Some people don't use them even then. Or they hit both together, snipe the boss, kill nothing and use up their buff.

Kinda makes me wonder how many other people feel this way. Because if the number is significant, I'm sure it contributes quite a bit to Blaster death and frustration.

I believe people were talking about villains, not Rogues and Beavis & Butthead.

I do want to go to Praetoria and take their stuff. They have some really cool stuff. Sorry HVAS, we had some good times but I'm ready to move on. I got me a bigger robot.

I run my AR/Fire on +0/x3, with no defenses besides Maneuvers, Combat Jumping and Acrobatics, and no APP armor, although I do have Aid Self and a boatload of recharge. I have nothing from my secondary except Ring of Fire, Build Up, and Fire Sword Circle although I should probably swap it out for Burn.

Although the more I think about it, the more I realize that people can and do indeed die horribly, painfully, and repeatedly playing Blasters. I remember one friend of mine taking down a single Nemesis minion in the time it took my Elec/Elec Blaster to take down a Warhulk, with a build that was nearly identical to mine. I remember back in the day watching my husband play his perma-debt Fire/Fire Blaster on a small SG team...I remember seeing him launch a Fireball into a swarm of DE who were merrily trying and failing to kill the Spines Scrapper while a single minion in melee range killed him (that was the precise moment I told him to move over and let me drive. He's gotten much better, but he still tries to play them like Scrappers sometimes.)

People dying with full inspiration trays. People who glue themselves to the tank's butt. People who seem to not know what "line of sight" means. People who stand in one spot and refuse to move until the spawn is dead. People who don't take Aim or Build Up, or just never seem to use them. People who "look out for the rest of the team" while not looking out for themselves. Bad habits that people develop, that are especially lethal to a Blaster.

Posi came back and was all like "What the hell? I leave my post for five minutes to get a cup of coffee and this is what happens? Who's gonna clean all this up? Wait a minute....I just got an idea!"

I20 will bring us the re-revamped Positron Task Force. Your objective: clean up Blyde Square. It will of course involve many defeat alls to acquire cleaning supplies, and will culminate in a final epic mission where you go get Positron another cup of coffee.

No it didn't.

/em polishes Warrior Princess badge.

I would go one step further and actively discourage new players from making their first characters in Praetoria. The only reason you'd want to push new players in that direction is the shiny. From a storyline perspective it's backwards. Even without ambushes the enemy groups are still "hard mode." The world overall is less developed than Primal earth, and far more limited. It would be a lot like dropping Croatoa to a level 1 zone, and starting new players there; you get an in-depth view of a small part of a huge game world, rather than a broad sampling of everything, and if that small part isn't to your taste you have no incentive to explore further.

Apparently, by deliberately not using all the tools at their disposal, like you did.

One thing I'm curious about, since you mentioned needing to wait for Rest to recharge: How did you handle inspiration usage? Did you ask yourself "what would the average player do?" (die with a full tray, from my experience) or just do what made sense to you?

I ask because my first Blaster was pretty much all ranged. Granted, I had Beanbag and later Cryo Freeze Ray, but my melee attacks most certainly didn't have mezzes attached and were as likely to get me killed as not. There was no defiance and Blasters had fewer HP back then, AR had ridiculously long animations and I was suicidally addicted to the longest one of all, and I don't remember it being nearly as bad as what you describe.

Well I know *I* didn't get discouraged soloing a Blaster back in the day. I know *I* didn't think they were weak. I know *I* could run on Invincible against Malta with Assault Rifle. So why did we get all those Blaster buffs? Why were Blasters being touted as the AT that faceplants the most? Oh right. Our experiences may not be typical of the playerbase as a whole.

You're probably more typical than the "I'm already on +4/x8, CHALLENGE MEH!" crowd.

It would be interesting if the devs could datamine what difficulty the majority of players run solo missions on, and give us that information. Maybe it would bring home the point that many of us are far from typical.

So is everybody else except the people talking about math, Geko, and how placate works/is supposed to work. This thread has all along been people stating their opinions regarding difficulty. What's your point?

But they added the Nerva Spectrals to CoH! Variety!

But seriously, please do. Every Hordeling that spawns is a Spectral that doesn't. Unless you rely on S/L/Neg damage, in which case you'll get nothing but Spectrals anyway.

Not in the early game, when you are trying to hook new players, many of whom, surprise surprise, don't share your opinion that everything in life should be a challenge and drive you to excel, even your entertainment.