Elite Bosses and Arch-Villains in Dark Astoria

Honest question - are these the normal AVs scaled down, or are these versions specifically built as EBs? Not any new NPCs, but old ones like Reichsman and Requiem. I'm wondering about the trickiness with purple triangles for downgraded AVs. In my fight against those two on my Ice/Time troller - who barely had Alpha slotted, let alone anything else - I was able to lock Reichsman down. I was pretty thankful for this, especially after I'd run out of purples.

(ah, I see now that J_B has mentioned Reichsman, too)

I went from "omg it's Blue Steel" to "what" when he fell in five seconds to a team of ice/energy and fire/energy blasters and an ice/empath controller.

Seriously, make enemy signature Heroes and Archvillains their status again instead of permanent Elite Bosses in Dark Astoria. The difficulty setting is there for people who don't want to fight Heroes and AVs anyway.

Regarding allied Heroes and Archvillains having Boss-class HP, however, is nothing new - it's been done a lot of times for balance, which is very reasonable. Black Scorpion in Mender Silo's Strike Force, however, needs to be bumped up from having Pet-class HP to Boss-class HP. :3

While I do not agree with Johnny's stance on this one, I can certainly understand why he feels the way he does.

When the Incarnate content first started up, many of us asked for a solo/small team option. The amount of venom and ridicule that was then heaped upon us for daring to do so was some of the worst behavior I have ever seen on these boards. Now that the Devs have actually given us what we asked for, people are fussing about it being too easy for large teams.

It's pretty easy to see why Johnny feels the way he does. I can't really blame him. Do I agree with it? No, not really. Let the big teams have AV's if they want 'em, I don't really care. But I'd hardly call Johnny's reaction illogical or crazy. Kick a puppy enough and eventually he's going to bite you.

Fair point, however I think an SO only build(though I doubt there are many of those still around) would have a much harder time and DA has to be built with those in mind.

And Yes I know SO builds can solo EBs, I'm just trying to find a mechanical reason why DA uses EBs instead of Scaled AVs.

I also just remembered an old bug from some of the RWZ arcs where Sefu would spawn as a full AV instead of scaling down. Whiel that bug was fixed maybe the Devs wanted to avoid the potential for such a thing to occur again in the DA content.

Thanks for the well-thought out response! I'll just respond to yours since you address most of the things others have pointed out as well.

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Originally Posted by TrueMetal I agree. The thing is that the masses of 'them' aren't a challenge, can't stand against me as it is. They just melt away.

That, for me, is depending on which character I'm playing at the time, and difficulty settings. I have a few 'tricked out' 50's that don't do so well against the Talons and all their debuffs. Only one I didn't have any trouble with them on was my MM.

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I did that arc (all of them actually) on a brute/corruptor duo. We were +3 so we made them +3. We were already at x8 cause that's standard for us. We skipped the whole Malta part and knocked out the Praetorian because we didn't want the help (that was actually in character for my partners character too, since he was running the arc). Despite all the in story warnings over how hard it would be, it wasn't. Fun? yes. There were a lot of people to smack around and it was new, so it was fun. But challenging? No, not at all. I didn't even notice the EB at the end was an EB untill I encountered another one in a later mission. Anticlimactic? Yes. Very.

Well I soloed the arc with my namesake (level 50+3 Scrapper) at +4 X1 w/bosses (I just wanted to have some challenge but not too much because I was more into the story) and did the same thing, so it's very do-able. That Cimeroran missions was a PITA though.

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And that's the point I'm trying to make. I just want to have the option to make it more challenging. It doesn't take anything away from the current situation. You can still put your difficulty at -1 and carve a path through greys while cackling maniacally if you like. No I wouldn't. I couldn't care less what they're called or what rank they have. That's not the point at all. I just want something to fight that doesn't melt when I look at it funny. It's anticlimactic and boring. Having a lot of them at once just makes it less boring. They still die at about the same speed. Have a mob of AV's try to overcome me! Now you're thinking!

Well they came close with those mobs of bosses (all with Unstoppable) in the Cimmeroran mission. Now those were some fights LOL.

That might be part of the disconnect for me. I fight with bosses on. If they were all lt's instead, I could see it being a lot more anticlimactic. I also admit they might could pad out the EB's with a little more HP to draw the fight out a bit, but otherwise, I find them appropriate adversaries.

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CoH has always been about a large groups of enemies. And standing as a few against many. That's nothing new. The game if full of those events. The final fight in the first and third mission, lag hill, the final mission, all of it actually, the end battle of the LGTF, Assault on the Malta base in LRSF, Eden Trial. All great events were a small group of us fights a massive horde of enemies AND some big baddies to anchor the whole thing on so the battle isn't over in seconds (/petpeeve maybe if people did less pulling and more mindless charging they'd experience it as such /petpeeve).

True, but with these missions there's more bosses and lt's regularly appearing in the groups. At my previously mentioned setting in the Cimeroran mission, the first mobs had like, 2 bosses, 3-4 lt's and 5-6 minions... at X1 w/bosses. I'm looking forward to seeing how big they get with my SG together running it.

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Great! Why are we even arguing?

We're not as far as I'm concerned. I'm really not that passionate about it to argue. Good conversation though.

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Oh right. Again, this is so nonsensical. I think there are very few people who want 'team specific' content just for the sake of it being team specific, or to spite the soloers or whatever. The thing about the iTrials and that sort of gameplay is that it uses mechanics and sets challenges that simply cannot be done by a single (or very small group of) players. They REQUIRE the cooperation between a group of players. That is why people want and play those things. Because it's a different type of gameplay. If you made them into a single player version, hey whatever, but then they aren't trials anymore but simple missions (or arcs) just like the DA stuff. You'd have to take out the mechanics and tone down the challenges because they're physically impossible for a single player to complete.

The desire is not nonsensical. I understand that some of the group mechanics reqire more than one memeber to do, but I bet I could do a BAF with my SG (6-7 players) if it were scaled to fit those reqirements (and I'd be able to convince them to do it every once in a while- a lot of the SG is kind of insular hate 'PuGging' on the scale required of trials). I also think I should be able to try solo if I wanted, knowing I'd probably fail in the 'keep prisoners from escaping' phase. Of course, I understand the high likelyhood of failure for solo attempts but it might be possible for 2 players to do it, and for the same folk that want the challenge to fight AV's solo, why are players barred from even attempting a Manticore solo, for example? That's the only point I was making. One of the coolest things they did when they retired the old Positron TF was make it possible to run in Oroborous.

On the other hand, if they did it and it was easy to fail solo folks would complain about that too. Can't win for losing, I suppose.

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While all the devs have to do to turn a 'solo mission' into 'group content' is, well, nothing at all! The game makes everything standard accessible for groups up to 8 people and scales stuff accordingly. Except in Dark Astoria were for some reason EBs don't scale up to AVs.

The same could be said for... just about everything BUT the trials. Why are the TF/SF's required to have 4 or more? All it would take for solo attemps would, at the very most, allow for those AV's to be EB's (unless the player wanted AV's) and normal mission scaling would take care of everything else. Exact same argument (trials aside).

From that perspective, it isn't as silly as folks are making it out to be. Nor do I think that would end teaming, or the desire to do them in big teams, as some people fear. If it did, that should be a red flag for a whole different reason though... But as easy as general team forming and communications are, I don't think lack of teaming has ever been an issue in this game unless folks work funky hours or are on low pop servers (and for them, this would be a big boon).

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I just got off my 7th night shift in a row a couple of hours ago and haven't gone to bed yet. So if my post seems incoherent, I'm going to blame it on that.

Been there, done that (for about 2 months straight once... never again) and you came off quite coherent.

This seems like a no-brainer to me. Let the player (or team) choose whether to fight EBs or AVs. If the choice is in the players' hands they can make it as curbstompy or challenging as they want . . . well, except for Johnny because his tank will never be Superman.

Do those EBs have the purple triangles of doom? If they don't, then please don't do anything to give them the PToD as EBs. That's my only concern on the topic.

They did not as far as I could tell. But a few come with level shifts towards the end.

One fight has the boss gain levels during it

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My favourite part is when people started arguing with Johnny Butane like he had a say in the final decision.

Also his delicious whining.