Monkey_King

This isn't much help, but if you're feeling masochistic and don't have any Rikti missions on hand, occasionally some Rikti Monkeys will appear in the Rikti spawns at Agincourt. Have to get to them fast before the Nullifiers and base guns get them, though.

Two comments. First, Alkaloid really demands a couple endurance reduction enhancements. It is a very greedy heal, and you're going to run dry in a big hurry if you're having to prop up your minions/teammates. I don't think even Stamina will do much to compensate. As good as they are, all the Poison powers really need some endurance reduction.

Also, Neurotoxic Breath's slow effect is extremely handy against those AVs that love to run around a lot. Movement speed debuffs are normally of questionable value, but against immob-resistant foes and riding along with a substantial slow effect, it's a very useful component. I'd personally suggest grabbing it much sooner.

Other than that, pretty much spot on. Highly underrated set in my opinion. It's absolutely brutal to be able to debuff literally every aspect of a foe's arsenal.

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Hmm...

Does Defiance get copied onto the pet? Not that I'd ever consider Defiance-bombing with Time Bomb...

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The thought makes me tremble. A defiance-fueled nuke? Talk about the mother of all desperation attacks!

Eww. I bet there's going to be some nerfs riding along with some of these changes to compensate for how much more powerful poewrs like Rain of Fire is going to be. Add about 400% damage to Blizzard between Build-Up, Aim, inspirations, and Defiance, and we're looking at some sick, sick damage.

Hmm, buffing Burn damage. If they nose the power back up on the blaster versions, they just might fix it.

Since it's not that hard to buddy up with lower level characters and run missions with them to earn missed badges, I could even live without Flashback. The only thing I'd want it for is to go back and run all the missions with neato temp powers that I missed. I'm still cranky that I picked the wrong villain contact to empty out, and missed getting the Nullifier Gun.

*drinks more coffee so he can spit it out*

I can Build-up/Aim Blizzard now? Seriously?? This is going to be the Best. Nuke. Ever, now.

AVs are soloable now, defense is getting equalized, rain powers are getting buffed. I7 is really shaping up to be the "fix everything that's still broken" issue. Throw in some fixes to Fire Manipulation and Devices, and I may never have anything to complain about ever again.

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While you're poking around, can you rename them "Epic Heroes"
There are too many other "heroes" in CoV. We need something to identify the "you need 4 players" class that you're talking about.

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Totally off the subject, but I concur. You can't really abbreviate 'Heroes', but an Epic Hero handily becomes an EH, and you know how us MMO players thrive on acronyms.

As for the stealth thing, trying to argue that no exploit even exists is a failing strategy. There's not a lot of glowie rich missions in either game, but you don't need a lot - just one per level. Glowie farming was the main exploit, with the higher-than-intended XP rate of stealthy people a fringe issue.

You might not like stealth suppression, but the exploit is there, and it needs to be dealt with somehow. If not suppression, what else? Throw out a superior solution if you don't like it. I'm not wild about stealth suppression either (especially the way spawns in Arachnos bases keep appearing too close together), but I don't have any better ideas.

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Great another bonus for large Super/Villian Groups only

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That's called the 'carrot' approach, as opposed to the 'stick' approach (nerfs, leaving AVs as they are). The bonus will probably be increased XP and inf. rewards. That way you CAN solo AVs if you really can't find a team (which happens often), but the reward for a full power AV is such that you'll WANT to gather a team.

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AND now...we're changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV's into missions a while back...so we've come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV. Note this works in BOTH City of Heroes and Villains.

In order to incentivize larger teams, Positron is going to add a bonus to AV rewards!

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*drinks some coffee so he can spit it*

You're actually taking that suggestion?! I honestly never thought you'd change this. We really needed this, as often as AVs are popping up in CoV, but wow. This seemed like one of those things you were adamant about. Maybe now my 20-35 characters will quit getting pleas every hour to come help defeat Barracuda.

Though, before everyone gets too happy, Statesman probably realizes that many elite bosses are hard enough to practically require a team anyway. -_o Try soloing the Superfreak, for example. Or imagine trying to solo elite boss Infernal. But, at least this opens the possibility for doping yourself up on inspirations and trashing Barracuda solo for those occasions when you're playing at 4 in the morning and nobody's around to help.

Will the AVs who award badges still give them to you when downgraded to elite boss status? Please say yes. It would be a good 'carrot' to get people to team up for full-fledged AVs, but until simultaneous mission completion makes it into CoH, it'll make the Praetorians just as much of a pain as before.

A lot of the victims the CoT takes I assume are used in their demon summoning rites. Some of those people become CoT mages, but a lot I think are just used for human sacrifice. One soul for one Spectral Demon Lord or Behemoth Master, for example.

So, my theory is the women are just used for human sacrifice, and some of the men they take become mages, because the CoT is sexist like that.

Or maybe all the female mages are elsewhere. The Rogue Isles branch of the Circle has some enemies that don't appear in Paragon City. Maybe for reasons unknown the female CoT hang out elsewhere.

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Although as addicts they have an illness, it is hard to feel sympathetic to a rampaging, green-skinned, muscle-bound junkie.

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Addiction is not an illness, it's a choice.

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They probably mean mental illness, although it's easily argued that only the FIRST hit is a choice. It's an illness in the sense that drug junkies don't have a lot of choice in suffering withdrawl symptoms - their body now behaves in an unnatural way.

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1) Longbow have an XP Bonus
2) Flamethrower: The Multiple Burn Patches is a bug. I've put it on my list of things to fix.
3) Spec Ops are limited to 1 per spawn point for generic spawns. There may be specific encounter groups designed with more than one, however.
4) The Sonic Concussion power blows through anyones Hold protection, but it only lasts 1/4 of a second. It is working as designed, however, I'll pass this to geko to see if it is too strong of an effect.
5) Arachnos is fairly tough, too -- especially if there are Fortunata's around.

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If Spec Ops are supposed to be one per spawn, then there's a bug in the code. On difficulty 4, I've had multiple Spec Ops appear in a five minion cluster, and had three minion clusters that were ALL Spec Ops. These were the randomly generated spawns, not specifically placed groups.

Now, I'm cool with Longbow being extra scary, now that you award extra XP for the especially hard enemies (although I fail to see what makes Rikti worth so much, sissy aliens). Us villains should have a reason to fear the good guys. But an auto toggle drop seems like a bit much. Wouldn't it be more reasonable - and in theme - to give the Nullifiers a power than renders all toggles non-functional for a short time? Still scary, but you don't get killed trying to retoggle six things at once.

I've been explicitly telling my SG not to pay rent until we have some functional base equipment, because we were told that the worst thing that happens is they turn off all the power, so to speak. At no point did anyone say that you would get locked out of the base.

Once again, this is not really fair to smaller SGs. We're essentially paying monthly rent on a bunch of decorative rooms now. Upkeep for teleporters and hospital bays, sure. Upkeep for what amounts to a bunch of overpriced decorative rooms, that's not so user friendly.

Overwhelmingly, people seem to be getting "YOU'VE BEEN NAUGHTY!", which spawns a ton of evil snowmen. Killing 100 snowmen gets you the Cold Warrior badge like from last year.

A "Nice" present gets you a number of rewards. You usually get a present, an inspiration that does something really good but is a surprise until you use it. Gift of Life is a humungous AoE heal, Gift of Power is Radiant Aura, and Gift of Experience is protection from debt for an hour.

Rarely, you might also get a temp power, Summon Snow Beast. It's a one use pet summon, that brings in one of the snowman bosses for 5 minutes. Given that the snowmen scale from 1-50, this is potentially a useful power to hang onto. Purportedly, you can also get snowballs that will last for 12 days.

Collecting a ton of presents also nets you the Toy Collector badge. Not sure how many, exactly, or if it matters whether you're naughty or nice.

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I play Rob/FF MM or Energy/Thermal Corruptor when I play CoV.

My CoH characters are a Rad/Rad Defender (of course) and an Energy/Dev Blaster.

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Woo! Robot pride represent!

Hey, one of the devs plays a Devices blaster. There's hope for you guys yet!

I don't mind the idea of needing a badge to unlock a contact, just as long as it's a badge that isn't ridiculous to get.

Only the most hardcore, devoted players are able to get Veluta What's-her-name in the correct level range, since the spectral ghosts all are too strong for 5-10 (not to mention how quickly you blow by those levels anyway). Unless you spend all day malefactored down, you're past level 30 by the time you can get Bling. And Gangbuster, while earnable at 30-35, sounds absurdly tedious to get.

Archmage Tarixus, Crimson Revenant, and Johnny Sonata are good examples of what the badge contacts should be like - their badges require effort to earn, but they're badges you can pick up well in advance of meeting the contact, and it doesn't require hours and hours of grinding if you have to backtrack and pick them up. Scrapyard is tough to beat, but it's not like he isn't marching around Sharkhead all the time.

I think us smaller groups would be happy just if the prices for small rooms and basic equipment was knocked down just a little bit. Even if it's the just the initial crappy stuff, let us have some functional base equipment, and then as a long-term goal shoot for earning enough prestige to buy the doodads that make the base hospitals recover 100%.

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I did locate a small bug, which is now fixed internally. Essentially the streak breaker would not become active until you landed your first hit (so you have to do it yourself, no freebies). Pretty minor in the grand scheme of all things accuracy-related, but it's fixed now regardless. Note that this bug affected players and non-players alike.

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So if your first shot whiffs, the streakbreaker will not save you? Okay, that sounds about right. That orange lieutenant I was griping about was indeed untouched when my whole power tray whiffed. That shuts me up!

Thanks for the clarification, Wierdbeard. This is pretty useful to know.

Also, I'd like to inform you that your streakbreaker code is broken. I had at least a 5-or-6-miss string today against an orange Wyvern lieutenant. I went in order down my tray, Mental Blast, Levitate, Mind Probe, TK Thrust, Dominate, Mesmerize. Miss, miss, miss, miss, miss. Nothing would hit him; I think I got up to Mesmerize before anything landed. I am quite certain my accuracy against +1 lieutenants, even with mere training enhancements, is not 30-40%.

I've had other occasions with low level characters where'd I get a similarly continuous string of misses, when your chart says I should at least stop at 3 or 4, depending on enemy class. If I get another 5+ miss string (as I am not in the habit of fighting anything strong enough to drop my base accuracy to 40%), shall I log it as a bug?

Funny how easy it is to tell the difference between 91% and 95%, isn't it?

Accuracy against higher level enemies is less than 75%. With just one single-origin accuracy enhancement, you start to come back down to 95% pretty fast, and thus you are guaranteed less than perfect accuracy against +1 bosses and even lieutenants. +2 minions, you most definitely have less than 95% accuracy. This isn't even the purple patch kicking in, it's the fact that a single SO doesn't put you very far past the tohit ceiling with even mobs.

I suspect it's a combination of everyone still getting their slotting under control (thus having suboptimal accuracy), the cone attack bug, and mass hysteria.

I heard an amusing line while badge hunting in Nerva.

Longbow Nullifier: "I tell you, Lord Recluse's men are crazy. C-r-a-z-y."

Boy was it fun to immediately bury him in an avalanche of robots.

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There still is another 'bug' associated with hostages imho (I bugged it in
a mission from Marshall Brass last night)

The base scenario:

It was the mission to rescue some workers... (None of these help with
the fights).

When I found the first one, and rescued him, he couldn't see me in
hide... This is the 'normal' behaviour...

Then, I unhid, and led him back to the mission point... He said
his "Thanks"

Then, I went back into Hide to look for the others... NOW, he could
follow me, and proceeded to do so for the remainder of the mission...

The second hostage did the same...

The third completed the mission.

However, since there were still mobs left for me to subdue, I found that
all 3 were tagging along wherever I went in a nice little hostage herd

Realistically, they should probably go static/passive once they reach the
rescue point (if they're not going to zone out when they do)


Regards,
4

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That's a mission-specific bug. Happens to anybody running that mission. I suppose the hostages don't get the "stand here and quit following the player" command like they normally do, so they follow you around tirelessly.

The Skulls spray painting walls are hilarious to listen too, as well.

"Wasn't this here before?"

"Yes, you're brilliant. You're a genius. Can we hurry this up?"

"Hey, can your brilliant self give me a hand here? We got incoming?"

Hellions playing dice: "You realize this is no fun for me if you keep winning, right?"

Skulls breaking into a house: "I don't suppose anybody cares that I have a key to this place?"

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Villain Gladiator unlocked: Ember Legacy of Flame

Kill 100 Legacy minions, most likely Pledged of Steel and Light.

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I got mine after gunning down an Ember of Flame, so it seems any old Legacy Chainite will do.

I lance through minions a lot easier, but I'm not head and shoulders stronger than I was before. There's less of a difference since I'm still using DOs, but I doubt I'll be overwhelmingly powerful.

Against groups like Arachnos who primarily dish out Lethal damage - which my bots resist - it's a piece of cake. Against enemies who do lots of damage my bots don't resist - Shivans and Clockwork, for example - they totally trash my robots. Running on difficulty 2, five even con Shivans were tearing my poor bots to pieces. And the boss...!

So, it is heavily dependant on who I go up against. Enhanced damage isn't any good if my robots are dead, so "Achilles Heel" enemies still give me a run for my money. I'll see if that changes once I have a full stock of SOs, but knowing how much harder enemies get at 20+, I'm sure Masterminds won't dominate things. They are definitely the 'quick and easy' path to power.

My Protector Bots' force shields say that defence is in no way inferior to resistance. Those little bubbles held off a +2 Freak Tank. Not for very long, but against something like that even one miss is crucial.

Surprisingly, player skill does still factor into Masterminds. I managed to best that +2 Freak Tank, despite him constantly trashing my bots. The Force Shields DID keep them alive for a little bit, but I still have to do a lot of stalling, kiting, emergency healing and resummoning, and exploiting the three or four times the Freak Tank ran away. No, it was not easy, but it's possible.

That said, not everybody is as good as us forumites. The upper levels are increasingly more difficult for Masterminds, on account of our henchmen losing levels. I'll happily report if I think my bots are too strong, but as fragile as they are to begin with, I don't think that will be the case.