Stormfront_NA

Hi:

This is mostly a quality of life suggestion, than anything else.

I would like to see the destination of base and Oro portals be more practical, in some zones where they place you, really makes no sense, its the middle of no-where and there is no reason why one would want to go to that area of the zone.

For instance lets take Steel Canyon, the base and oro portals place you in the far corner, somewhat near the train station which connects the high end zones. Now the real zones of interest in SC is Positron, the University/Market, and perhaps ICONS. Also the miriad of missions at SC tends to be towards the mid area of SC as well. So why not have the destination portals be by Positron, in fact place it next to the portal entry, which is by Positron.

Lets look at Independence Port, why not place the destination portal near TV, somewhere in the middle of the map?

As a rule, it would make more sense to me, if the portals were to deliver you at the middle of the maps, and not at the most useless extreme.

So why not move the destination portals to more practical locations?

Hugs

Stormy

Let me clarify....

When I said, my Storm/Dark Defender did poorly, I was making that point from the vantage of damage dealt and how long it takes me to kill a boss. Mostly a commentary on how weak Dark is from dealing damage pespective, I also believe the amount of ACC debuff for the power set is also too low. I often experience fights with Bosses, and despite I had hit them with my dark bolts, etc. and eventually kill them from sheer mini-damage, and them not missing me once. (I tested this while hovering, with my hurricane off)

While my Storm set does a reasonably good job at keeping me safe in close quarters, my abilities to consistently damage resistance debuff and keep mobs debuffed is very limited, all too often when fighting EBs and AVs the slow component of my Icestorm is essentially ignored, thus the debuff ceases to affect them the moment they step out, hence rendering the power ineffective or impractical.

I believe the real issue, with regards to balance, is that the damage mitigation standards is simply wrong and needs to be revised. Let me explain:

Lets use the Tanker versus Blaster model as a reference.

Tanker: Virtually immune to status effects, very high resistance to damage, and high levels of defense, medium damage.

Blaster: Extremely high damage, no status effect resistances, no comprehensive damage mitigation, no comprehensive defense.

Now if the game was to be effectively balanced, and thus fair...

It makes sense that the Tanker should do 65% of the damage capability of a Blaster, for they are so well protected against damage.

Conversely, would it not make sense that Blasters should have 65% of the protections of a tanker, since they have such good damage? But they don't.

When you look at the other Hero ATs, Controllers and Defenders; they are actually hybrids of tankers and blasters, let me further explain:

Controller: Has the Blaster characteristics of no status effect resistances, no comprehensive resistance to damage, and no comprehensive defense. So one would expect the Controller to do damage in the Blaster class at first glance. But what we do see, is that the Controllers primary allows them to hold, immobilize, confuse, etc. their targets. Thus achieving a hybrid form of protections as the tankers receive. But there is a great difference between these two forms of protections. The Controller depends on a to-hit and a to-affect situation. For intance no controller can 1 round hold a boss, and even hope to hold an EB in less that 5 rounds, and AVs alone, just simply can't be held; while a Tanker's protections are unconditionally there all the time. So what we can deduce is that the Controlelr does not quite have the protections a tanker does have, and thus should not be Blaster class. I would think that when one revdiews how effective a Controller's holds are as a whole, that perhaps their damage should be 75% of a blaster.

Defender: Has the Blaster signature lack of protections, so one could expect their damage to be in the Blaster Class. But Defender primaries debuff the ability of their targets to do damage or resist it. The issue is to determine, well how good these debuffs are when compared to the always there tanks protections, and even referenced to the effectiveness of the Controller's holds. Truthfully, as a whole, these defenses are inferior to both Tankers and Controllers for they lack the permanency of tankers and the total immediate hold effect of the Controller; the Defenders is a slow and tedius debuff process which never achieves the complete shut down as the Controllers gets. So Defenders are obviously weaker in the defensive side when compared to tankers and controllers, but obviously have more defenses than Blasters. I would suggest Defender's damage should be placed at 85% of what blasters damage could be.

Scrapers are an odd duck of sorts, they are forced in general to melee with mobs, just as a Tanker has, so in many respecs their defenses should match those of a tanker. But they do more damage than a Tanker, so what is the correct mix of weaker protections and greater damage. I would suggest to set Scrapers at 85% damage of a Blaster, but have their status effects the same as a tanker, their resistances to damage to be 75% of a tankers, and their defense to be 125% of the tanker.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

By now there is hardly a TF in Hero side, that I have not completed at least a dozen times, mainly because I want the merits so I can buy the recipes that I really want at the level I really want.

Note: I am talking about TFs, not SFs. While SFs may have their problems, I don't do them enough to be able to give justice to comment on their strength or weaknesses. It is likely that a number of suggestions to alleviate issues with TFs may apply to SFs as well, but please don't use SFs as a comparison to improve or not TFs.

After a few runs, the first thing that strikes me is the maddening repetitiveness with the task force. All to often, we fight the exact mob type, in the exact map, but in a different zone. At times, some TFs seems to just maliciously send you in a touring spree, having you go from out of the way zones to other out of the way zones and to points at the farthest point you would enter that zone in.

So I am establishing this thread, for a means for players to suggest to developers ways to re-look at TFs, and make them more fun, not more tedius.

To start the thread I have a few suggestions:

1. I love story lines. I really like to from mission to mission acquiring clues and eventually getting to the big bad meanie. But you developers have to make the missions and its content make sense. For example, go Investigate Council in IP. Cool, I get to infiltrate a council base and get my first clue towards the evil master mind. What is the mission in reality, defeat every council in the cave. That does not hit me as elegant, its brutal and simply does not make sense. What are you trying to convey to me, that the information I need is in one of the guys inside the cave, and I have the most perfect bad luck, for the guy with the information will always be the last guy? Don't get me wrong, kill all missions can make sense, such as defeat all virus infected mobs to prevent the disease from spreading, gee I would feel heroic after that.

2. Make objectives reasonable, such as defeat Boss and guards. This can be actually a very elegant type of mission, surgical strike like feel. Normally, when you take out an organization's head, the organization normally falls apart and ceases to operate. Thus it makes sense, to have "surgical" like missions. But what happens when we get mission? We get to kill the boss, and the spawn that was with the boss, but then we have to defeat all the other spawns in the room; but wait the room is enourmous with multiple floors, closets, hallways, service rooms; at the end you feel like you killed the majority of the mobs in the scenario; so much for the surgical, special forces like feel. I recommend that defeat boss and guards, be limited to the boss and two or three mobs that spawns with the boss.

3. Tedius versus fun, if you are going to have us look for computers to get data, large maps make sense. Also I recommend to truly be random on the location of the glowies, not the rule of always in last room, many of us simply skip all the maps, run thru elevators till last floor; thus giving up a lot of excitement. If you give us a kill all, give us small maps, and clean maps which minimizes the mob stuck in a crack, inside a box, stuck in duct work, and what not. Lets not turn "kill alls" in to agonizingly boring cave crawls; and then when we think you are done, you can't finish because some hidden and not moving mob is somewhere in the huge map; the feeling when this occurs is very bad to say the least.

4. Hunts, do we really needs this activities? I know, Numina is one great hunt...But for level 50s who alll they want is merits, do we really need the tourist class tour of the game?

Well those are my 4 suggestions, I am sure you all may have otehr suggestions to help TFs be less tedius, and really more fun.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I was playing my Emp/Psi Defender and of course I have "Clear Mind" in my "bag o tricks", as is, I depend on players telling me they have been affected by a status effect (sleep, hold, etc). I try to keep up with the player's status bars, but with all the powers, buffs, and what not they have, it is very difficult if not impossible for me to tell they have been incapacitated in some manner.

So it occurs to me, why not recolor the box around the player's name in the team box when incapacitated by a status effect. This way I can quickly notice that my team mate needs assistance, and take care of him. Perhaps a purple hue would be nice.

Hugs

Stormy

ha ha ha, these are funny...

Milk and Cookies badge comes to mind

Often I fail to heal my team mates cause I am ZZZZZZZZZ by mobs

Stormy

Hi:

I read somewhere else a post on how to make the game more challenging, and after a few posts and a Margarita, I came up with the concept of making it actually more fun as opposed to tedius.

I will shamefully admit, I got the idea from a promo video to the Mechwarrior game, where I saw a Warhammer Mech (Yes, I play mechwarrior too), dodging attacks from an Atlas by stepping out into the street and then quickly ducking behind a building. The video is very cool, incidentally.

And I wondered, would it not be nice, if we could dodge attacks by using cover? As it is, the code is set to check line of sight before you activate a power, and then when the power goes off, you get hit by the mob despite of range and line of sight. The only exception to this process are snipe attacks, in which the check for line of sight is done after power activation.

I would suggest to change all combat powers to be "wired" as snipe attacks are. This way we can use terrain tactics, and play a bit more intelligently and be rewarded for being tactically sound.

That is if a mob spot you and shoots you, but you are using Super Speed and he briefly saw you as you ran past his corridor, you no longer are forced to endure and see the remote guided, patriot missile quality vomit turning around corridors and eventually catching up with you and you getting barfed on; because the check to see if he is in range and line of sight would have been done after his power activation time.

Hugs

Stomy

If you have any otehr ideas on how to make the game mechanically more fun and interactive with terrain or what not, post it here! maybe be i17 we get something cool to make our playtime even more fun.

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Why should these classes have inferior damage to the Tanker?

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Because, as previously stated, Tankers do not get damage buff powers such as Enervating Field or Siphon Power.

This is the way it currently is. Base damage modifiers are as follows: (for simplicity, I am posting the higher of melee or ranged damage)

Blasters 1.125
Scrappers 1.125
Dominators 1.05
Stalkers 1.00
Tankers 0.80
Brutes 0.75
Corruptors 0.75
Defenders 0.65
Controllers 0.55
Masterminds 0.55

Note that ALL ATs with Buff/Debuff sets are at the bottom of this list, and have a damage mod less than 0.76. All of the ATs at the top of this list do not have access to Buff/Debuff sets, and most have a damage scale of at least 1.0. (Only Brutes and Tankers are lower) This was not always true, Stalkers and Doms used to have a damage scale of 0.9 and 0.75 respectively, but the recent changes have brought them more in line with the other damage dealing ATs.

The fact is, Defenders and Corruptors do NOT have less damage than a Tanker. With a mere 20% boost to damage, a Defender would have the equivalent of 0.78 damage, and a Corruptor (adjusted for the Corr's lower buffing strength) would have 0.86. Most Rads and Kins are able to produce much more of a buff than 20%, and that's probably about what a Dark or TA would produce. So Defenders on average have a little less damage than a Tanker (in the area of around 2% less) while Corruptors do more than a Tanker, but less than a Dominator.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mmm that is why my Storm/Dark Defender does so poorly, her dark powers are an ACC debuff, which is ineffectual against anything higher than a LT. The Hurricane from the storm side, is what really keeps me alive, but again it does little to increase my damage or reduce their resistance or damage. On the other hand my icestorm does reduce resistance but not significantly and the creatueds tipically ignores the slow and moves out pretty quickly to render the debuff to a marginal useful level.

But I can see how the damage on a Kin be increased, or the resistance of a target against a rad have the damage improvement effect mentioned above. Sadly not all Defender build choices have the unusual combat benefits as Kin and Rads get. Perhaps the Developers should look at the damage nurf penalty for Defenders in a case by case basis, such as Energy and Dark Defenders should get a base damage increase since they really do not have leveraging debuffs to be used as part of the attack. Also a flag system could be implemented where the damage nurf is varied by primaries, that is a 10% damage nurf for Stormies, Force Fields, while perhaps a 35% damage debuf for Kins and Rads. Sonics for instance could have a damage nurf of 20% since they tend to fall in between the no debuff and the total debuff classes. Only a suggestion to make this part not so much "on or off" and allow for the natural game variety with out over due punishment.

Hugs

Stormy

Giggles

It was only wishful thinking, I have an Emp Defender, which I doubt very much could defeat EB after EB alone, so I wondered, what if I auto completed the entire Maria Jenkins and Tina McEntire threads, would she get the Multidimensional Warder Badge?

As it turned out, a group called for support to do the Maria Jenkins thread and was able to get the 13 Praetorians and the badge.

Hugs

Stormy

But all of my Tanks and Scrapers soloed the threads with out difficulty. Next test is to see how well I do with my blasters and controllers. To my surprise, my Storm/Dark Defender was able to solo the threads with out incident, it did take a while since her damage was so pathetic...

Question:

Say I am doing the Maria Jenkins thread, and as we know each mission you get to fight an AV. If you auto-complete the mission with the contact, do you get credit for defeating the AV in that particular mission towards the defeat 13 Praetorians to gt the badge?

Hugs

Stormy

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I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role.

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I don't think you understand what you're saying. First off Corruptors aren't anywhere close to being like blasters, nor should they be. Secondly, you're completely ignoring the scourge inherent and the damage buffs and -res debuffs in support sets.

An appropriate buff to defender damage would be to raise it from 0.65 to 0.70. Pushing the envelope would be raising corruptor from 0.75 to 0.80 and defender from 0.65 to 0.75. Raising defender damage to 1.0 and corruptor to 1.125 is utter madness.

[/ QUOTE ]

Why should these classes have inferior damage to the Tanker?

Stormy

Wow!

I seen some great how to help the Defender replies, once more wow!

I love the idea of changing their inherent, where more players in the group the primary is boosted, less players their secondary is boosted.

I like the idea of having the damage output of the defender upped to the same level of corruptors. Frankly, for all the frailties imposed on the defender, should they not do more damage than the Tanker?

Another interesting concept is to allow Defenders to affect themselves, this would be good when soloing, but perhaps a bit not-so-good when in groups cause the defender may be too much offender minded instead of being a support class. On the other hand, I see no sense in forcing players to play in a certain manner.


As Gecko mentioned in his post, he showed the various classes damage modifiers, and showed tankers with an 80%, while defenders were at a lower percentage. I believe Defenders should be at 1, Corruptors need to be the same as Blasters, since in the dark side they fit a simialr role. Also I have a very hard time buying the concept of a villain that prefers to make others look better then her, by boosting them and not herself, that sounds actually heroic to me.

I would weaken Mastermind's own attacks to be tanker base, they have their pets for the real damage.

The other classes are fine, I would bump up the damage of Scrapers and Stalkers a bit too.

Hugs

Stormy

[ QUOTE ]
Hi:

My post was limited from a perspective of a Defender, because of the nature of the thread. I am very aware of the woes of other support classes, and I am very much in favor in closing the helplessness gap when soloing between the ranged class (often regarded as support) and the melee class.

As always each AT support/ranged class has its exceptions, where the power set happens to mitigate some of these weaknesses such as in the case of Defenders: force fields and sonic with regards to resisting Status effects, and others such as Kin and Rad being able to truly integrate with the secondary powers. But one must beware, that an exception, is just that, and not the norm.

When I suggested the increase of damage on the defender by a lot, its all relative what a lot is. Someone put words in my mouth, took it out of context and then said that was really stupid. Post as such, really are not needed. Perhaps a suggestion for clarification would have been the polite thing to do, instead to make things up and flame.

With regards to damage incease, to me a 10% increase of damage is a lot. I am not advocating the damage to be greater or equal to Blasters, but why should it be lower than tankers? Once again, I am sure there are some tanker configurations whose damage maybe really bad, while others may be much better than others. I have both a mace and axe
tanker, and have used the Mission Architect to create benchmark scenarios, and then took the alts for a test run. I counted the number of attacks my tanker took to kill a minion, LT and boss. I counted the number of attacks it took for my blaster to kill a minion, LT and Boss; same process was done for my Storm/Dark Defender, and also did so for my BS/WP Scraper; all of them level 50, fighting level 50 mobs.

I found theat my Scraper did short work of the boss within 3-4 hits, if a crit happend it could be resolved in the average between 1 o 2 hits.

To my surprise, my energy blaster faired better with the minions than the Scraper and her performance against bosses was competitive with the Scraper without the crit ability; but the ability for AOEs of the blaster makes them a better group damage AT in my opinion, despite that it nearly doubles the number of hits required to lay down a boss with AOEs.

I sadly do not have a Fire/Kin Controller, but I do have a Fire/Rad controller. It took her about 6-8 strikes to kill the boss (once the debuffs were applied), but she also killed everything around it at the same time, slightly better DPS than the Blaster and their AOEs.

Finally I got to my Defender, Storm/Dark. The storm side help debuff ACC mainly and Resistances, but the resistant drop is not very much. Perhaps dark is a very weak power set as damage goes, but has some ACC debuff. But my storm/dark was built around ACC debuff mainly, so not really a good Defender candidate to test for firepower at range. At range a boss took me about 12-16 hits to take down, while at close range, it took me about 6-8 hits to defeat the boss, given my Lightning Storm is up, which actually is well slotted as well and has a very hard punch. Unfotunately lightning storm does not follow me, being a stationary pet, and its value in a solo situation is checkered. I must admit, I cheated here, by using a close quarter map set, in which ranged attacks by opposition was minimized, thus allowing my hurricane to do the bulk of the ACC debuff and making the effort quite safe. I found the ACC debuff of dark a bit wanting as well.

The scenarios were set at difficulty 1, and soloed.

Once more to me, an improvement on my dark attack to a 6-8 hits from 12-16 is a great improvement; once more its relative.

I also realize that the number above represents a limited statistical sample, I did about 20 groups of mobs and recorded the results. Also I understand that different mobs have different resistance to attack types, thus results could also be skewed when some powers attacked mobs with strong or weak armor agaisnt those forms of attacks. Yet despite of this, the limited statistical run can be utilized to determine a trend.

Hugs

Stormy

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Giggles, I forgot to post my Tanker's performance...

My Mace Tanker was laying low Bosses between 5 to 7 hits, My axe Tanker was between 6 to 8 hits, both were enhancement wise configured the same. I am not sure how much stronger or weaker a fire, super strength tanker would be.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

My post was limited from a perspective of a Defender, because of the nature of the thread. I am very aware of the woes of other support classes, and I am very much in favor in closing the helplessness gap when soloing between the ranged class (often regarded as support) and the melee class.

As always each AT support/ranged class has its exceptions, where the power set happens to mitigate some of these weaknesses such as in the case of Defenders: force fields and sonic with regards to resisting Status effects, and others such as Kin and Rad being able to truly integrate with the secondary powers. But one must beware, that an exception, is just that, and not the norm.

When I suggested the increase of damage on the defender by a lot, its all relative what a lot is. Someone put words in my mouth, took it out of context and then said that was really stupid. Post as such, really are not needed. Perhaps a suggestion for clarification would have been the polite thing to do, instead to make things up and flame.

With regards to damage incease, to me a 10% increase of damage is a lot. I am not advocating the damage to be greater or equal to Blasters, but why should it be lower than tankers? Once again, I am sure there are some tanker configurations whose damage maybe really bad, while others may be much better than others. I have both a mace and axe
tanker, and have used the Mission Architect to create benchmark scenarios, and then took the alts for a test run. I counted the number of attacks my tanker took to kill a minion, LT and boss. I counted the number of attacks it took for my blaster to kill a minion, LT and Boss; same process was done for my Storm/Dark Defender, and also did so for my BS/WP Scraper; all of them level 50, fighting level 50 mobs.

I found theat my Scraper did short work of the boss within 3-4 hits, if a crit happend it could be resolved in the average between 1 o 2 hits.

To my surprise, my energy blaster faired better with the minions than the Scraper and her performance against bosses was competitive with the Scraper without the crit ability; but the ability for AOEs of the blaster makes them a better group damage AT in my opinion, despite that it nearly doubles the number of hits required to lay down a boss with AOEs.

I sadly do not have a Fire/Kin Controller, but I do have a Fire/Rad controller. It took her about 6-8 strikes to kill the boss (once the debuffs were applied), but she also killed everything around it at the same time, slightly better DPS than the Blaster and their AOEs.

Finally I got to my Defender, Storm/Dark. The storm side help debuff ACC mainly and Resistances, but the resistant drop is not very much. Perhaps dark is a very weak power set as damage goes, but has some ACC debuff. But my storm/dark was built around ACC debuff mainly, so not really a good Defender candidate to test for firepower at range. At range a boss took me about 12-16 hits to take down, while at close range, it took me about 6-8 hits to defeat the boss, given my Lightning Storm is up, which actually is well slotted as well and has a very hard punch. Unfotunately lightning storm does not follow me, being a stationary pet, and its value in a solo situation is checkered. I must admit, I cheated here, by using a close quarter map set, in which ranged attacks by opposition was minimized, thus allowing my hurricane to do the bulk of the ACC debuff and making the effort quite safe. I found the ACC debuff of dark a bit wanting as well.

The scenarios were set at difficulty 1, and soloed.

Once more to me, an improvement on my dark attack to a 6-8 hits from 12-16 is a great improvement; once more its relative.

I also realize that the number above represents a limited statistical sample, I did about 20 groups of mobs and recorded the results. Also I understand that different mobs have different resistance to attack types, thus results could also be skewed when some powers attacked mobs with strong or weak armor agaisnt those forms of attacks. Yet despite of this, the limited statistical run can be utilized to determine a trend.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi

The Defenders main problem is one of mind set by both the player community and the developers themselves.

Somewhere along the line, the Defedner which was originally supposed to be a compromise between the tank and the blaster was de-evolved into a pure support class instead of a good all around class. If you read the description of a Defender from the original CoH disks as it loads the game into the computer, it testifies to the old "abandoned" role of the Defender, which I usually regard as the "Defended" now, after all the price forced on them to become a support class, not even a great one, was solo mediocrity. At one time, you could have said Defenders had Kinetics, and Radiation which were incredibly good support powers, but now the Controller has those too; thus making the Defender a bit redundant.

The poster is correct about the Defender being laughable weak as whole; there are some exceptions where their primary does get to augment their weak secondaries, such as Kinetics, Radiation and Sonics; but the other primaries are questionable in this respect and their secondaries power damage is frankly a joke. Add to this the MAG 0 resistance to the game standard of spam status effects, and you truly have a very weak class, forced into a life of slavery err servitude to other classes as a support class.

What I would like done to the Defended class to become a good overall flexible class than can group support (never as good as controllers) and can Solo reasonably well:

1. Give all primary powers of Defenders an ability to convey Status Effect Resistanes to otehrs and to themselves, it does not need to be exhorbitant, perhaps a MAG 6, which is half way between the 0 they have and the 12 of the Tanker; Scrapers have MAG 9. Perhaps making powers such O2 an area effect around the Defended could accomplish this, thus Clear Mind and other similar powers could be implemented in the same way. Note that since the Defender can protect themselves from the AOE status effects to an extent, they can move nearer to the Tank to share and give the Tank more Status Effect resistance. One should question, how dependent is a Tank on a Defender in game play; but I bet the tanker is not nearly as dependent on the Defender as the Defender is forced to be on the Tanker.

Second change I would request is for the Defender to have an increase in their damage, it should be much higher than it is at the moment.

Third I would like to see debuffs to have a MAG intensity, this way the MAG intensity of a Defender's debuff could be set greater than those of a Controller. Sine debuffs now have a MAG value and can be resisted, improve the Defender's status effect protection powers (O2, Clear Mind, etc) to also provide a similar level of debuff protection. I hear Tankers complain of the lack of challenge, it would be fun if the mobs were re-programmed were half of the ones today doing spam status effects, would do spam debuffs instead; that may give our melee friends a bit of a challenge and a taste of what Defenders have to endure all the time.

You may want to look from a primary class to another, which ones need more status effect and debuff resistances than others. For instance a Storm Defender may not seem to require a lot of help if they can keep their targets at closs range and debuffed; but they are extremely vulnerable to any ranged attack, thus beause of the nature of their attacks they would be much likely to become an aggroe magnet like the tanker is; while compare to a lauid back Empath who is not likely to gain much aggroe while using their powers.

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

I don't believe that all of the "old" powersets, you know the original sets, are inferior to the new generation of power sets, but a few of those old ones could really use a face lift.

For instance, Martial arts is not a bad set, but its not very flashy or exciting as some of the new attack power sets, dual blade, broadsword, etc.

I was thinking, why not revamp MA to have comboes as Dual Blades have. In fact I would suggest that more attack powers should be set with combo abilities to make the game more fun.

From the defensive side, the old power sets for scrapers tend to require larger numbers of diffeent powers to achieve the same defensive abilities as the newer sets, and to boot they don't get the self rez ability either. It would be nice for Super Reflexes to have some defenses combined, so the Scraper would be better defended at lower levels, and have the choice given for self rez for instance.

I am sure other "Old School" powers could use a little cosmetic surgery to bring them more in line to the new school powers.

Perhaps this thread could be used for the community to identify what power sets could use a boost in what manner, why and how.

For instance: Fire Shield for fire tankers, why not have it with immobilize protection instead of having that with burn? It would seem burn is something a tanker would not want, since it scatters the mobs and endangers her team.

Hugs Stormy

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After suffering Reichman which is supposed to be an AV, an as the usual AV defeat I am rewarded with maybe an enhancement single of the wrong type, perhaps we can re-look at the whole AV structure.

[/ QUOTE ]That's what the Task/Strike Force reward is for.

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The point of the Elite AV is that there is a noticeable difference between the abilities of AVs, and thus the reward from taking them on, should be different. Reichman is by far much more tougher than say Chimera, one of the Praetorian AVs, yet they both have the same nature of drops.

You make a point, poorly, that the defeat of Reichman yields the 20 laughable merits. I will point out defeating the AV in the last mission of say Citadel is by far much weaker than Reichman, and Citadel rewards players with nearly twice the merits.

So much for your point....

Stormy

Hi!

After suffering Reichman which is supposed to be an AV, an as the usual AV defeat I am rewarded with maybe an enhancement single of the wrong type, perhaps we can re-look at the whole AV structure.

Lets start with Reichman, Statesman, Recluse, etc. These boys are far more powerful than the average AV, yet they have the sane disappointing exp reward and nearly un-existent drops.

I propose a new clase of AVs be formed the "Elite AV", this new class is composed from the over-powered AVs already in existence in the game such as Reichmen. The other not so tough AVs remain as AVs such as Countess Crey, etc.

With regards to rewards, this definetely needs to get fixed, a group of 8 gangs on an elite boss and we get all kind of chances to get good drops. We fight an AV, and we are told AVs as a whole don't drop squat, save for lame Singles or Inspirations. Now that is quite foul in my opinion, AVs are tougher fights than EBs and thus should have a greater chance to drop nice drops instead of none all togther. I hear the very lame excuse, but players would farm AV missions, and that because of the 10% of the players that would, we make sure that the other 90% gets nothing for their work. On the other hand, lets visit the 10% that would so call farm the AVs, so what? Are we going to eventually say, wait their are doing the mission to ge the EB, so now we going to have to make EBs have no rewards, and currently in MA lots of missions have lots of bosses to make the mission more worth while in tickets and influence, so our attitude should be to make the bosses do not drop tickets? The whole process of punishing players for streamlining their influence gathering process is simply obscene!

As I have posted before, don't treat the farming, its a sympton of a greater problem that encourages players to farm. Treat the disease, not the sympton!

Anyway, lets have an Elite Arch Villain class and please give much higher chances to get good drops from defeating them, as opposed to the standard nothing.

Hugs

Stormy

Giggles

My previous post was mere sarcasm, but I do have the feel that to devs time sink is the same as challenge to them; perhaps because it does not take a lot of imagination or that aweful 4 letter word "work".

But if I was to add challenge, I would like to see challenge be more AT specific. In the past, increase of challenge has consited in having more SPAM status effects which frankly has a much greater impact on support classes than melee. I would like to see challenge increases which impacts the melee classes more, with out socking it to the support classes. This way the melee can expeience the added challenge with out having the challenge be several times greater on the Support. How this can be accomplished I am not sure.

Perhaps and really would be nice if Debuffs have MAG effect and Ats would have Debuff Mag Resistances to them. But instead of handing over the MAG invulnerability to the melees in a silver plater; reverse the situation. Give the support classes near invulnerability to debuff effects and give none to the melee classes, A reflection of what is done with the status effects today. With this addition, then go over the mobs and half of the mobs who have status effects, have these replaced with debuffs instead. Thus the Status effect and Debuff situation is evenly spread from group to group, and thus evenly challenge different ATs. I still think Status Effects are much more deadly in ultimate effect than debuffs, but at least you are giving melee ATs a semblance of the challenge non melees are already experiencing.

Hugs

Stormy

Mmm, more challenging by whose terms?

Frankly from a devs perspective...

During TFs, incapacitate all forms of cheat travels such as Ouroborus portals, base portals, mission portals, and what not.

Carefully plan each zone engagement to maximize zone travel through operations, thus make sure players have to run the entire length of Steel Canyon or Skyline or Independance Port. Also make sure mission door is as far as possible from zone entrance.

Also make sure that each mission forces players to go to the most remote zones, such as far end boom town, perez park, Dark Astoria, Crey and Eden. Never have the mission at easy to get to zones.

Thus send the turkeys, err players, to start at Galaxy, from there send them to Dark Astoria. This way they have to run to get on train to SC, then run entire SC to get to high level zone train. Then, muahahahaha, they have to go to Talos, then travel thru the width of talos to DA entrance, and finally go the very far corner in DA to enter mission muahahahaha. When they finish, they need to go to Peres Park, muahahahahahaha, after that they need to go to Crey's Folley, oh my this is rich, muahahahahah; now return them to Perez Park, in preparation for their trip to Eden, muahahahah.

Oh wait, the devs are allready doing this, well they need to be more consistent.

Next challenge increase, bosses are at farthest end in annoying rooms such as cake, and pool rooms. Muahahaha

Oh wait, they are already doing this, well they need to be more consistent.

So after having spurious maximized brainless travel, and annoying end rooms, now work on the bosses:

Nosferatu types are great, they heal themselves at the player expense, thus take much longer to kill; of course the ultimate boss is Reichman, whose true power is to bore players into giving up! Now that is the ultimate challenge! So add to all missions the defeit Reichman boss, you can change his name, the players are too dumb to notice anyway "muahahahah", nor does it matter if they notice, muahahahahahah.

How is that for dev perspective challenge?

Muhahahahaha

Take away the ability to call contacts, this way more travel can be assigned to teams. Also move contacts to farthest locations of maps from zone entry points. Take Gordon at Bricks, good example of this practice! Muahahaha, this is just evil, muahahahah

Oh wait, devs are allready doing this, well they need to be more consistent!


Stormy

Warning" Beware of what you may be asking for

Mmmm

Fire/Kins are the best farmers bar none, still under AE conditions. But in order for them to be truly efficient, the environment has to be just right.

To begin with, they are controllers. As such, they have extremely good chances to lock down in one cast any Minions and most LTs. But Bosses will require 2 to 3 mez hits to lock them down, this is really bad, for bosses have their own status effects and hit really hard; two things that can bring down a controller really, really fast. If you have one boss in a large group, the controller has a reasonable chance on locking them all down and surviving the bosses one or two attacks. If the boss opens with a mez, the controller is generally owned, unless using a break free; but depending on break frees can become very costly.

When one thinks of AE farms, we think level 54 all boss mobs; well this is way too difficult for any controller to handle alone. Thus the more common team approach of aggroe holding tank, emp to keep the tank alive and blasters to clear the mobs quickly comes much more into mind as the right set up.

But if you keep devs happy, and fight mostly Lts and Minions, then the Controller gets to shine. I figure if one was to do a ticket/hour or inf/hour study; I bet the controllers superior clear the map efficiency would produce better results despite of them fighting level 52 Lts and Minions as opposed to the full group defeating 54 Bosses.

I do know that bosses have a superior chance to drop something than a LT; what I do not know if the level difference does. Thus for tickets, it may not be a good idea to fight anything beyond 50 from a drop wise perspective, exp or influence that is enterly a different matter.

Hugs

Stormy

Might be simpler if....

The majority of the missions are not at the far extremes of maps.

Would be much more useful if Base transporters would portal you to the center of the map, as opposed to the least used corner.

Would be much more useful if oroborous had porals to all zones, and also place you in the middle of the zone as well.

Hugs

Stormy

Ps: This will not happen, because developers truly believe that traveling from extreme points at each zone to be the greatest amount of fun, and suspence a player could experience. So we can expect our developers to respect us and love us by having missions at the far end of DA to be followed at missions at far end of Perez Park, and then for the ultimate thril send you to the far end of Faultline, yeah the developers really respect our intelligence!

I a not sure my observations are that flawed, as I traveled across the zones, I remember, in the old days, lots of players running around doing their mission arcs, broadcasting looking for group and what not. The silence and lack of players was kinda eerie, but true in the high end leveled maps, they simply moved to RWZ and Cimerora and thus it could explain the nearly deserted PI.

Guess I will go visit Cimerora and be around were the people are...

Hugs

Stormy

Hi:

Yesterday, I decided to do something different from MA and TFs, I actually took my level 50 and decided to go thru a Peregrine Island Thread.

The Thread (Crimson) was aweful with regards to travel, hardly anything happened in PI, ha ha ha. But as I did the thread, I noticed soemthing really, really, really, wrong. The zones were deserted. I went to PI and specifically visited the Portal Corporation area, I remember when this area was full of players, now its a ghost town. I took the time to roam other zones, and they were essentially empty of players.

It seems to me MA have pretty much replaced, just about, all the content on the game. Even if you try to get a team to threads, its very very hard, after all MA is so much practical, and it has no idiotic crozz zone travel, with mission doors placed as far away as possible from the zone entry points.

So frankly, doing missions and TFs are filled with lots of annoyance, but TFs gives you something worth while: Merits. Threads gives you insultingly low merits for the horrid annoyanaces that goes with the thread. So there is no wonder, why folks much rather do MAs than threads.

So in order to make the rest of the game appealing to the players, why not fix the threads and reduce the travel annoyances, but if any, really enhance the rewards such as double the chances of getting drops, give merits as each thread arc mission is completed and then double the overall merit value of the thread, and then just maybe the rest of CoX will get used beyond MA.

Hugs

Stormy