Lycanus

Oh, I have a Thugs/Traps MM in Paragon right now. I like traps, but the set up is what makes it down from the other two.

I've had the discussion that Dark and Rad should have been the model for Defender primaries before off-boards and that Emp and FF should have been the model for Controller secondaries.

If Defenders had a lot less "can't target self" stuff, they wouldn't have as much trouble soloing or with mediocre offenses since a debuff centric set reduces the impact of that...actually just posted a suggestion that is impossible to happen regarding that....

Indeed, Rad and Dark really are the best Defender sets.

You stated that ITF required specific builds. You further implied that the required build was dark miasma, stating that you had never been successful at ITF with a dark miasma on the team.

This is based on anecdotal evidence rather than hard data.

Several people commented that their ITF experience was very different and provided examples as to how they have completed ITF without the use of Dark Miasma (I think I'm the only one that used a dark defender as one of their examples).

This response does not counter your statement that you yourself have never been successful without dark. This implies that ITF does not need specific builds, counter to your comment.

You respond asking if anybody has stories of doing ITF with MMs, saying that it seems "don't be a Mastermind" is a standard operating procedure for ITF.

Two people respond, one of whom points to a /dark mastermind and the other of whom referencing a bots/traps and a ninja/- mastermind.

You ignored the second person and instead focus on the MM who was /dark saying that this doesn't count and just proves that dark is needed. However, the second post may have been made at approximately the same time you were reading and responding, so this may have been an honest mistake.

Several people then post comments that they have never had trouble with ITF and masterminds. At least one makes a comment that the only problem they've had with ITF is when they have bad players or bad leaders on a team.

You translate this into "learn to play."

Someone, I assume Golden Girl, offers to take you on an ITF. Your response is that you don't do PuGs because it risks "meeting people like you". The implication is that Golden Girl is not someone who you want to meet, therefore the further implication is that there is something wrong with Golden Girl. This is fairly offensive considering she was offering to take extra time in order to run you through an ITF using strategies that work for her.

You also state that you can do ITF just fine as long as you have your Dark Miasma. This is counter to the complaint you started with. If you are comfortable with the fact that you need Dark Miasma to do the ITF well, that is fine, that is clearly the playstyle that favors you. However, if you were comfortable with that, then it is unlikely you would be complaining about it.

Nobody has said you can't do ITF with your Dark Miasma.

Nobody has said you aren't a good Dark Miasma.

The subject was not on the use or skill with using Dark. The subject was whether or not ITF needed dark to be completed or whether a mastermind would ruin ITF.

Your basic statements boiled down to:

"I can't do ITF without Dark."
"I can't do ITF with MMs."

The responses boiled down to:

"I can do it."

"I can do it." =/= "Learn to play."

I hear about people able to spec their scrappers up to solo AVs and GMs. I'm not sure how to do that. When I hear about someone speccing their scrapper up to such levels, it does not mean that I have to "learn to play" just because I can't do the same thing. It just means that there's another level of play that I can look to, though it probably requires more money than I have the patience to get.

In addition, you mention you don't use PuGs, that means you use a static team or at least a pool of familiar people. That means you have people that have, over a long period of time developed specific strategies and preferred playstyles.

I am in a similar situation, I play with the same four to five people every week at different times, though all of us have multiple characters. I've tanked (two characters), scrapped and fended on ITF. However, I do get used to having the same playstyles to fall back on and I don't respond well to change. Which is why I've fallen away from tank (a position I'm only better than average at) for positions I am better at: scrapper, defender, controller.

We found MoITF easy (heck, we almost got it on accident), MoKTF took us two tries, we're scouting MoLGTF right now and we've taken a frigging year, getting closer to two years, trying for MoSTF and we've done EVERY mission with no deaths probably something like 9 out 10 times...just not all in one try, something stupid seems to happen in the space of missions 3 and 5.

It would probably be easier if we could do it in the way we approach other TFs, one or two missions a session, save it for next week, but we often have to bring in other people to reach minimum numbers and one of the missions requires that we do the next immediately afterwards or else it will be impossible due to a temp power going away.

personally, I'm thinking my lack of adaptability has come from my tendency to not PuG for the last two-three years, while my other teammates do occasionally.

In any case, people have been very polite and not said anything about what you can or cannot do. The only one who has brought up what you can or cannot do is you. The rest of us have only talked about what we ourselves have witnessed.

and, again:

"I can do something you can't." does not mean "You're worthless."

You know, this amuses me greatly because I used to be able to get unwanted invites to go away by simply saying I'm a dark defender.

"Can you help us team? We need a defender."
"I'm a dark defender."
"Oh, never mind."

I wonder when dark finally got recognized

Huh, my static team has done ITF and MITF a couple of times with no real problems,

the make up of the MITF team was:

stone/ice tank (me)
fire/emp controller
kin/elec defender
spine/regen scrapper
AR/Dev blaster
Rad/Rad Defender

there may have been a warshade, but I think my younger brother was swallowed up by Pharmacy school by then

one of the other groups:

Invuln/energy Tank (me)
/Dark Armor scrapper (forget primary)
Warshade
Trick/Arch defender

may have been some fillers, forget

another group:

Dark/Invuln scrapper
Fire/Fire Blaster
Dark/Elec defender (me)

and pretty sure we had some occasional friends for that, but forget who

I've also PuGed it with a Dark/Regen

heck, recently, my brother and a friend duoed the TF with a Fire/Ice Tank and an Earth/Rad Controller They've duoed most of the TFs, I act as filler for them sometimes, usually leaving that character in reserve just in case they decide they want some help...usually a second Earth/Rad

I will admit that Dark Miasma generally reduces opponents to sick puppies, it just about the king/queen of damage prevention, one of the two best all around Defender sets you can have (Rad being the other), but the overall effectiveness it has doesn't make it a requirement.

well, the team I was part of generally has a number of pre-set plans for various situations because we've played with each other 2-3 times a week for 4 or 5 years...basically just name the routine, set up and go

fast charge, slow charge, loud pull, quiet pull, fast pull, fight from range, etc, etc

and we've got our specifics now such as ring around the rosy for ghost widow

we're a bit slower than most people, faster than my family team used to be....my family team used to spend around five-ten minutes locating spawns and planning the assault on each room, which would then take about 10 seconds for the larger rooms

just "we just charged into the room" sounds better than "we talked about it for about a minute, settled on a strategy and then just charged into the room"

Fallout I get, we tend to be of the type that if someone died then someone screwed up (often someone other than the person who died)

but Lingering Radiation is a good power...it debuffs speed, recharge and regeneration (mostly that's only for AVs and monsters, admittedly)

Though I guess your problem was more that he was asking for very specific power builds

gotten most of it, but:

1- more room on bios, possibly as a veteran award

2- ability to switch builds away from trainer, even if only once per hour

3- non-humanoid enemies like four-legged animals

4- for all the base content to get an appearance and story revamp from level 1 onward

5- for the devs to make use of some of that vast wasted space in various maps by placing more potential spawn points in each room

6- the use of more patrols and fewer stationary spawns

7- a ranged attack power pool (then again, the APPs eventually took up something like what the Power Pools should have been to start)

8- each power pool to get a fifth power

9- smarter AI

10- the board to stop complaining anytime something gets harder

The content they had was quite fun. I liked the Big Trouble Little China string of missions and the events that occurred in that part of town. Canada was fun, as was the ghost town.

However, Arcanaville is right about the gaps. The first year or so of CoH had gaps in the late teens and twenties when there were no missions or content to do for a soloer and the only way to get xp was in street sweeping, which was incredibly boring, however, the gaps in question only lasted a short time.

In CO, however, you hit mission gaps pretty much a day after getting past your last gap.

It was aggravating in the extreme. Especially since, by the time it went live, I had done most of the 1-20 missions and had no more taste for redoing them.

I was already slotting in the manner optimum to post ED when ED hit, so I never really understood what the problem was...and I've played since launch

that camp has always been in the game "We're superheroes, we shouldn't have trouble with these guys."

actually, I was a tank player for a good five years or so...recently lost my feel for the class...

my older brother is just SOOO much better than me at it...seen footage of him tanking the old infinite-spawn demon gate in the Infernal mission, along with facing Infernal for the space of a dull pain followed by unstoppable when dull pain ended and another dull pain when unstoppable ended....somewhere around 6 to 10 minutes back when people thought Invuln was weak

you know, I only show up on the boards for a week or two before fading to lurking again and forgetting its existence for the most part for the next two months or so before getting bored and coming back

it really says something that I recognize a name as a troublemaker...Johnny Butane in example

no, munchkins don't generally have an interest in other people's playing skills...they simply complain if something is hard and the reward isn't high enough

the defining characteristic of a munchkin isn't "learn to play" it's more "low risk, high reward...and whine if not true"

the guy that wants to teach people to play is generally referred to as "l33t" or "leet", burrowing from internet talk

power-gamers simply enjoy the aspect of getting the most power out of the least cost, munchkins are generally power-gamers by definition, but power-gamers are not munchkins by definition

wargamers enjoy the strategic and tactical challenges more than the building aspect, but are generally skilled at it

min-maxer is a subset of power-gamer that works best in a high-mechanic, low RP setting such as an MMO

generalists and concept characters are generally more powerful and overall effective than min-maxers in a tabletop RP setting where the controlling computer is a human brain which is capable of reasoning through scenarios that weren't pre-planned or thought (for example, in all those 5th Column missions where all we're doing is eliminating the base personnel, why not destroy those air-recyclers you run across and then cave in the entrance, that'll do it)...though playing a successful concept character requires a good understanding of the mechanics of the rules in any case or else you'll find yourself gimped regardless

I have to apologize here, I had and have a multi-arch storyline planned of which I've only gotten two archs out of...granted those are getting 4 stars, but life has interfered with getting to the third arc

the sad thing is that it's used wrong

he's calling the people that want more challenge "Munchkins" when tabletop gaming slang has always used the term to describe people that want all the power and loot they can get with minimal challenge

in fact, judging by his arguments, he's closer to a munchkin than anybody else on this thread so far

They're game design premises designed to appeal to the casual gamer who doesn't want to have to think too hard about there stats and so that you don't need to work too hard to make a design that works even if it doesn't work perfectly or even particularly well from the perspective of more "serious" players

CoH is very much a casual gamer's MMO