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[Noray]

Wolverine is completely boring, he has like 3 attack animations between all his moves. I'm exaggerating, but dang. He has 3 AoE's that all look the same. I hate playing him more than any other, managing Fury/Spirit is the worst.

Deadpool is melee/ranged, hybrid. He's fast and kinda fun. Hulk smash. Hulk smash good, but has kind of boring attacks.

Also I tried that Scarlet Witch build with Bewildering Hex and Chaotic Hex. It works alright, but it kills stuff a LOT slower. Also I get spirit issues even with an Advanced Kadavus. I think I'll tinker around a bit more with her build.

 

[Rhaknar]

Deadpool is melee/ranged, hybrid. He's fast and kinda fun. Hulk smash. Hulk smash good, but has kind of boring attacks.

nothing boring about those leaps!

EDIT: 52 on Hawkeye, can finally use those 2 hawkeye tokens I had in the bank for the ultimate

edit2: LOL at Tier 3 Tasky just melting away in 3 seconds from the ultimate

 

[Moondrop]

Nightcrawler is truly a study in fandom/fun vs. efficiency. One the one hand, teleporting into a pack of goons and blink striking them all down is worth the price of admission alone. His teleporting and squishiness create a very different style of gameplay than the other heroes on my roster, which I appreciate.

But holy hell is he lacking compared to the rest of the cast in TTL and TTK. His squishiness is of epic proportions. And given how often you have to stealth/teleport away from damage, he's effectively doing half the dps of everyone else.

Nightcrawler is a lot of fun, but it's difficult to pick him as my main when my non-Phoenix Jean is better at AoE mob clearing, bosses, and survival.

 

[KePoW]

who to use hulk, wolverine deadpool or storm.

havent got a melee char yet but im interested in using storm too.

out of those 3 melee though who would be best (looking for some aoe too)

Hulk or Deadpool

 

[KePoW]

Nightcrawler is truly a study in fandom/fun vs. efficiency. One the one hand, teleporting into a pack of goons and blink striking them all down is worth the price of admission alone. His teleporting and squishiness create a very different style of gameplay than the other heroes on my roster, which I appreciate.

But holy hell is he lacking compared to the rest of the cast in TTL and TTK. His squishiness is of epic proportions. And given how often you have to stealth/teleport away from damage, he's effectively doing half the dps of everyone else.

Nightcrawler is a lot of fun, but it's difficult to pick him as my main when my non-Phoenix Jean is better at AoE mob clearing, bosses, and survival.

IMO, this particular game is more about the feeling of fun and fanservice. Not min-max'ing

There are other games that are more geared toward min-max gameplay, PoE for example.

But I have a lot more fun with the MH characters and settings.

 

[Rhaknar]

IMO, this particular game is more about the feeling of fun and fanservice. Not min-max'ing

There are other games that are more geared toward min-max gameplay, PoE for example.

But I have a lot more fun with the MH characters and settings.

pretty much my feelings

 

[BattleMonkey]

IMO, this particular game is more about the feeling of fun and fanservice. Not min-max'ing

There are other games that are more geared toward min-max gameplay, PoE for example.

But I have a lot more fun with the MH characters and settings.

Yup I rather there be more character and uniqueness to each character and rather they didn't keep trying to bring all the characters in line with each other in damage, survivability, etc.

 

[inky]

IMO, this particular game is more about the feeling of fun and fanservice. Not min-max'ing

Just wait until someone inspects your gear and kicks you out of a raid party

But I agree so much. Min maxing has its place, but I'll never drop things like Unibeam or stop putting points in dash moves just because someone crunched some numbers and insists it's the right thing to do. I love going through every hero's powers and looking at the animation, and having fun making it work. That's why I have a charge and 2 jumps with Captain America, even if it is a waste of a couple of points. Or sometimes pick a cosmic item with a neat effect instead of the one that gives me a bigger + to a specific power, etc.

That's what I love about this game and why I don't mind taking the time and going through the story with my new characters instead of power-leveling to 60. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not how I like to play this game, and it lets me do just that).

 

[Moondrop]

I agree with y'all in principle, but there are practical limits well before min/maxing comes into play. When you're at the point of handicapping your team in high-level group encounters (and the evidence suggests we are), then perhaps the character design should be reconsidered.

 

[Gothos]

Yup I rather there be more character and uniqueness to each character and rather they didn't keep trying to bring all the characters in line with each other in damage, survivability, etc.

For the last two months they've been trying to do exactly that with shitty result that made quite a few heroes and skills less fun. Their mathematical obsession with comparable TTL/TTK is retarded, tbh. They are forgetting that every hero plays differently and the we fight against real mobs and not a fucking dummy in training room...

As for NC goes, I didn't buy him because melee heroes based on dodge are completely fucked right now. I'm saving my splinters for Dr. Strange.

 

[KePoW]

But I agree so much. Min maxing has its place, but I'll never drop things like Unibeam or stop putting points in dash moves just because someone crunched some numbers and insists it's the right thing to do. I love going through every hero's powers and looking at the animation, and having fun making it work. That's why I have a charge and 2 jumps with Captain America, even if it is a waste of a couple of points. Or sometimes pick a cosmic item with a neat effect instead of the one that gives me a bigger + to a specific power, etc.

That's what I love about this game and why I don't mind taking the time and going through the story with my new characters instead of power-leveling to 60. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not how I like to play this game, and it lets me do just that).

Their mathematical obsession with comparable TTL/TTK is retarded, tbh. They are forgetting that every hero plays differently and the we fight against real mobs and not a fucking dummy in training room...

Totally agree 100% with inky and Gothos. I always try every single power on every hero for myself. I have never looked up any pre-made builds by other people.

And yes, TTL/TTK is stupid and I never pay attention to that. That sounds like the very opposite of fun.

 

[Wallach]

For the last two months they've been trying to do exactly that with shitty result that made quite a few heroes and skills less fun. Their mathematical obsession with comparable TTL/TTK is retarded, tbh. They are forgetting that every hero plays differently and the we fight against real mobs and not a fucking dummy in training room...

I'm not really sure how it is retarded when the game balance was absolute shit in the first three or four months. The difference between top and bottom DPS was more than five factors apart even in the month just before the Dec DPS review, and the survivability spread was even worse.

Most of the current issues have nothing to do with their aggregate TTK/TTL stuff and are almost entirely hero-specific issues. Heroes like Gambit aren't fun because their power design isn't fun; there's no amount of numerical buffing that would magically make his gameplay less shitty.

 

[krameriffic]

IMO, this particular game is more about the feeling of fun and fanservice. Not min-max'ing

There are other games that are more geared toward min-max gameplay, PoE for example.

But I have a lot more fun with the MH characters and settings.

It's not even a matter of min-maxing. It's a matter of heroes like NC feeling ineffective, squishy and tedious to play because of his relative weakness. That's why it boggles my mind so much that people can enjoy him because of his "mobility" or because blink strike. They see what they want to see, not what is. I felt like he was good for the first 20 minutes playing him on the TC. Then I realized the reality: that he's a poorly designed mess with a lot of cheap software developer tricks to fool people into thinking he does something special.

I'm not really sure how it is retarded when the game balance was absolute shit in the first three or four months. The difference between top and bottom DPS was more than five factors apart even in the month just before the Dec DPS review, and the survivability spread was even worse.

Most of the current issues have nothing to do with their aggregate TTK/TTL stuff and are almost entirely hero-specific issues. Heroes like Gambit aren't fun because their power design isn't fun; there's no amount of numerical buffing that would magically make his gameplay less shitty.

I think this is a fine point of view. But, their approach to balance is the most boring one possible. They decided to go in and take out a lot interesting mechanics that essentially resulted in nerfs because they want this automated configuration management system in the background to be responsible for "balance". They don't buff and nerf skills anymore, they adjust tuning flags and fix bugs in order to optimize what some formula says should be optimized.

I understand that as the cast of heroes in the game grows, a system is needed for balancing this kind of stuff rather than just ballparking it. But, it doesn't make it any less bland. Most heroes have the same kind of passives, the same kind of basic attacks, the same kind of AoEs and the same kind of survival and utility skills. The real quest of the game is finding abilities that actually feel unique. Seen one chaining skill or PB AoE, seen 'em all. Thor's ground slam feels no different from Thing's or Hulk's or Colossus'. There's no sense of "well, Thor's ground slam doesn't do as much damage, but his ST melee attacks feel much better!"

 

[KePoW]

I'm not really sure how it is retarded when the game balance was absolute shit in the first three or four months. The difference between top and bottom DPS was more than five factors apart even in the month just before the Dec DPS review, and the survivability spread was even worse.

I don't want to speak for Gothos, but I believe he's referring to how they tied a lot of powers between heroes to be totally identical behind-the-scenes (other than the powers' aesthetics).

That results in easier work for the devs, but less uniqueness in feel between heroes. That's how I see it.

They could have kept the mechanics for powers to be different for each hero, and just changed the numbers. Yes that's a lot more work, but so be it. The balance doesn't have to be completely equal.

 

[KePoW]

It's not even a matter of min-maxing. It's a matter of heroes like NC feeling ineffective, squishy and tedious to play because of his relative weakness. That's why it boggles my mind so much that people can enjoy him because of his "mobility" or because blink strike. They see what they want to see, not what is. I felt like he was good for the first 20 minutes playing him on the TC. Then I realized the reality: that he's a poorly designed mess with a lot of cheap software developer tricks to fool people into thinking he does something special.

It's because people have different ideas of fun. You should be open-minded about it.

Lots of people (I would say majority) are casual players and don't care much about numbers.

 

[Wallach]

I don't want to speak for Gothos, but I believe he's referring to how they tied a lot of powers between heroes to be totally identical behind-the-scenes (other than the powers' aesthetics).

That results in easier work for the devs, but less uniqueness in feel between heroes. That's how I see it.

They could have kept the mechanics for powers to be different for each hero, and just changed the numbers. Yes that's a lot more work, but so be it. The balance doesn't have to be completely equal.

Most heroes don't share powers that have the same set of tuning tags anyway. The main thing they are trying to accomplish with tuning tags is creating a control system for how a property of a power should affect its damage. You can't just work in chaos when trying to design something that complex, you need a tool set that gives you a defined space to work in. Nobody's intuition is good enough to handle that much work.

I think this is a fine point of view. But, their approach to balance is the most boring one possible. They decided to go in and take out a lot interesting mechanics that essentially resulted in nerfs because they want this automated configuration management system in the background to be responsible for "balance". They don't buff and nerf skills anymore, they adjust tuning flags and fix bugs in order to optimize what some formula says should be optimized.

I understand that as the cast of heroes in the game grows, a system is needed for balancing this kind of stuff rather than just ballparking it. But, it doesn't make it any less bland. Most heroes have the same kind of passives, the same kind of basic attacks, the same kind of AoEs and the same kind of survival and utility skills. The real quest of the game is finding abilities that actually feel unique. Seen one chaining skill or PB AoE, seen 'em all. Thor's ground slam feels no different from Thing's or Hulk's or Colossus'. There's no sense of "well, Thor's ground slam doesn't do as much damage, but his ST melee attacks feel much better!"

Can you give me an example of what got removed? Heroes have always pretty much had similar core design when they are within the same archetype; Thing and Hulk are actually a lot more different than they were three months ago, when Hulk was basically just Thing except worse. They've always had the exact same ground slam move.

The numbers aren't even the issue there, it's the fact that they even have the exact same move in the first place. That's something that comes back to the core problems being hero-specific. These kinds of cases need to be fixed by straight up changing powers; most of the old guard heroes suffer from this more because their power set designs were always too similar. If you look at the newer heroes, they don't really have these issues nearly to the same degree because they simply have more thoughtful design. Even Gambit doesn't actually play like most other heroes, he just isn't good.

 

[Moondrop]

It's not even a matter of min-maxing. It's a matter of heroes like NC feeling ineffective, squishy and tedious to play because of his relative weakness. That's why it boggles my mind so much that people can enjoy him because of his "mobility" or because blink strike. They see what they want to see, not what is. I felt like he was good for the first 20 minutes playing him on the TC. Then I realized the reality: that he's a poorly designed mess with a lot of cheap software developer tricks to fool people into thinking he does something special.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. His squishiness and mobility do create a playstyle distinct from facetanking or ranged nuking. A hit and run style can be legitimately fun; I find it fun to read boss' attacks and teleport behind them to counter. But Nightcrawler has virtually no ability to punish, and the margin of error for survivability is so small that a counter-attacking style isn't feasible.

The ultimate question has nothing to do with min-maxing; it's just how bad he'll be in level 60 content. If he's lagging everyone else a bit, who cares; if he takes an hour to clear the cosmic Shocker terminal, then that's just not fun.

 

[krameriffic]

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. His squishiness and mobility do create a playstyle distinct from facetanking or ranged nuking. A hit and run style can be legitimately fun; I find it fun to read boss' attacks and teleport behind them to counter. But Nightcrawler has virtually no ability to punish, and the margin of error for survivability is so small that a counter-attacking style isn't feasible.

The ultimate question has nothing to do with min-maxing; it's just how bad he'll be in level 60 content. If he's lagging everyone else a bit, who cares; if he takes an hour to clear the cosmic Shocker terminal, then that's just not fun.

Teleporting does not make him special. My Hulk can teleport dodge boss attacks. My Loki can teleport dodge boss attacks and become invisible without equipping a Ziggurat. Blink strike is a cheap trick to fool people into thinking their not just using Captain America's shield throw. So many heroes can do what he does and better. It's more fun to play them too because you aren't having to employ tedious tactics and strategies or dying all the time.

 

[krameriffic]

Can you give me an example of what got removed? Heroes have always pretty much had similar core design when they are within the same archetype; Thing and Hulk are actually a lot more different than they were three months ago, when Hulk was basically just Thing except worse. They've always had the exact same ground slam move.

The numbers aren't even the issue there, it's the fact that they even have the exact same move in the first place. That's something that comes back to the core problems being hero-specific. These kinds of cases need to be fixed by straight up changing powers; most of the old guard heroes suffer from this more because their power set designs were always too similar. If you look at the newer heroes, they don't really have these issues nearly to the same degree because they simply have more thoughtful design. Even Gambit doesn't actually play like most other heroes, he just isn't good.

Things like Loki being able to accumulate a colossal amount of illusions if you build towards it. God Blast's synergy with Odinforce allowing it to just wipe the screen clear with a bunch of huge crits. Iron Man's ARE providing such a huge incentive to gear for a lot of spirit, where now it's basically just a passive damage rating buff. The team synergy and value provided by a Cable or a Cyclops thanks to their huge % damage increase debuffs. Dodge heroes felt different when dodge wasn't a completely useless waste of stat allocation. Defensive heroes could feel really tanky before the global defense nerfs, where now everyone is armored in tissue paper when it comes to cosmic terminals and melee classes are completely fucked.

There are still cool things in the game, but they often get hidden behind 30 second cooldowns because signature powers. I want more usage out of stuff like The One-Off, Anti-Force and Amazing Smash. I realize that coming up with mechanics in an aRPG is time consuming and difficult to implement and balance, but I think they shoot themselves in the foot by hiding stuff behind signature and ultimate skill cooldowns. It makes me forget about them more than it makes them really cool to use.

 

[Wallach]

Things like Loki being able to accumulate a colossal amount of illusions if you build towards it. God Blast's synergy with Odinforce allowing it to just wipe the screen clear with a bunch of huge crits. Iron Man's ARE providing such a huge incentive to gear for a lot of spirit, where now it's basically just a passive damage rating buff. The team synergy and value provided by a Cable or a Cyclops thanks to their huge % damage increase debuffs. Dodge heroes felt different when dodge wasn't a completely useless waste of stat allocation. Defensive heroes could feel really tanky before the global defense nerfs, where now everyone is armored in tissue paper when it comes to cosmic terminals and melee classes are completely fucked.

A lot of this had nothing to do with their attempt to balance TTK/TTL, though. It was just corner cases of things they felt were bad design. For example Odinforce got removed because there wasn't anything to do with it besides spend it on God Blast and Frenzy; you couldn't even use the resource until you were level 30.

As far as defensive stuff goes, the truth is I think cosmic terminals are meant for people that actually want that level of difficulty and are prepared to min/max for it. Melee is definitely at a disadvantage because of the overtuned Power Cosmic affix (which is shitty because the "theme" of the terminal guarantees you get it every time) but other than Power Cosmic I don't think cosmic terminals are really problematic for melee. You don't have the luxury of gearing heavy offense and getting away with it like ranged often can, but that is not a new dynamic for ARPGs in the slightest.

 

[Noray]

In my experience, cosmic terminals are definitely more problematic for melee than ranged, because defense rating and dodge scale poorly. A life leech core makes all the difference, and allows you to actually gear for offense to bolster your defense. Phasing them out was a big mistake, I'm glad I still have some, even if it means my IM is slightly gimped because he's still got a level 35 core. Spamming medkit whenever it's on cooldown isn't fun. They really need to rethink the game's defensive mechanics in particular.

When it comes to powers and functionality, I'm of two minds. Yes, Blink Strike is essentially bouncing beam/shield/whatever, but it feels different. And it's functionally different because Cap continues to move and do other stuff while his shield is bouncing around, same with Cyclops. I think they can get a lot of mileage out of visuals. I'm aware it's all very similar, but I can't really blame them. With so many heroes on the roster, not every power can be a beautiful, unique snowflake.

Don't agree on signatures by default. I like them. I wouldn't want to use a weaker One-Off every 5 seconds, I'd rather see big numbers, and 20 seconds really isn't a long cooldown. Some signatures are weak or unimpressive, like Cap's, but those are individual cases.

Power cosmic is just poor design. It's very punishing to melee, who have no way to effectively mitigate the damage, resulting in having to kite a fuckload. That isn't fun. A guy like Colossus should be able to pop a medkit and stand in it for at least a few seconds. Goes back to bad defensive mechanics.

For all the shit it got wrong, Diablo 3 (eventually) got the balance of defense and offense right. I could take a hit on my Barb and heal back by attacking. Life on hit is a poor substitute for LS for slow-hitting bruisers. But Diablo 3 also got really good modular difficulty settings with Monster Power. It's not an easy problem to solve for MH, but they can start by bringing back LS cores.

AND there are still haves and have-nots. Ms Marvel has so much regen that she's basically fine if she isn't one or two shot. And she's a hybrid to boot so she doesn't even need to be close.

 

[Wallach]

While I think that both defense and dodge need a slight DR adjustment as well as a reassessment in budget allocation, I think the value of them is really underestimated by a lot of players. There aren't many melee heroes that should be running Lemuria over Subterranea for example, but looking at the player base you can see it isn't understood well at all. Same for blessings; Fandral absolutely fucking crushes the value of everything else for melee heroes yet not even until like this week have I seen people asking or using much of anything except Hela. Melee also have a pretty significant advantage in that there are a couple artifacts (White Suit Jacket, ACCoC) that are basically offensive BIS items that also have huge defensive bonuses, and the melee BIS medallions (Kingpin/Tombstone) also have both offense and defense on them. They also have the advantage in Legendary via Excalibur which competes with Gungnir in total offensive benefit yet also has 1k defense and 50 LoH, though the offensive benefit is cut down for some heroes like Captain America and Ghost Rider who are ranged/melee split (though both of them also get excessive mitigation from their power sets anyway).

What I'd like to see happen is base health go up substantially, have the health affixes cut down, have the allocations of defense roughly multiplied by 2.5 for ring/insignia/artifacts/1-5 slot item (the affixes themselves, not base defense), then slightly loosen both defense and dodge curves by about 10%. The real outlier right now is health bonuses versus base health creating a fairly substantial gap between heroes that have better health rolls via uniques (since most players will gravitate towards those over cosmics).

 

[Ploid 3.0]

I love cosmic terminals. I decided to just clear mobs instead of running past them (scarlet witch teleporting) because things would gang up on me pretty good at my destinations and get lucky. I got a great unique at the start and at the end I got 3 chests full of nice loot. I thought they only gave one chest.

I'm still trying for that modoc mental artifact and cosmic wizard medallion.

 

[Gothos]

Bring back Dodge to 100% dmg. avoidance and reintroduce LL cores but limit their effect to melee powers. There, I fixed your game Gaz.

 

[inky]

I love cosmic terminals. I decided to just clear mobs instead of running past them (scarlet witch teleporting) because things would gang up on me pretty good at my destinations and get lucky. I got a great unique at the start and at the end I got 3 chests full of nice loot. I thought they only gave one chest.

I'm still trying for that modoc mental artifact and cosmic wizard medallion.

Some terminals have the opportunity to get 2 chests if you kill 250 enemies. On top of that if the Boss has the Marvelous affix, it means it will drop a chest when you defeat them, thus, 3 chests!

Mandarin runs with 3 chests are insane.

 

[Noray]

@ Wallach: I think you're overstating the value of defense. Even if you gear full defense, you're still not going to stand in power cosmics. An additional damage reduction of 5-10% is not enough, and itemizing for Dodge on a non-dodge hero is costly, and without 4 Fandrals you'll be lucky to break 15% dodge, which again, is not enough. The problem is that T4 Red is pretty much faceroll, and cosmics are pretty much OH GOD THE PAIN. There's no middle ground. The devs said the intention was 'smaller packets of incoming damage you can react to' and that is blatantly false for Cosmic terminals, where incoming damage, regardless of spec, is HUGE. Cosmic Mandarin was melee-hitting my Cap for 7-10k! Per hit! And he's pretty defensively geared, too. I tried swapping out Death Seed for Uru-forged Shield too, which is one of the tankiest items in the game, and it's a drop in the ocean. Better off killing him faster. And remember, this is melee hits. I can't avoid these because I have to stand there and hit him in his face to do damage. It's just poorly designed.

In Diablo 3, Melee heroes have an innate 30% DR over the others. That would be a start. Or double the armor values on all melee heroes' items or something. But then, melees would only get tickled outside of cosmics. The gap is too large and they've kind of put themselves in a corner again.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Some terminals have the opportunity to get 2 chests if you kill 250 enemies. On top of that if the Boss has the Marvelous affix, it means it will drop a chest when you defeat them, thus, 3 chests!

Mandarin runs with 3 chests are insane.

I just got 4 chests. One from boss then 3 around portal. (modoc's AIM weapon facility)

 

[inky]

I haven't done that instance. There are so many enemies there, maybe there is a third chest reward for clearing.

 

[Wallach]

Lunar Year Mandarin hits like a truck, his 3-hit combo is pretty nuts. But the holiday bonus makes him worse than any of the other cosmic terminal bosses, which I'm sure is intentional.

I'm not overstating the value of defense, though. The Captain America, Thing and Colossus I run with generally facetank Power Cosmic right now in cosmic terminals and don't need to move around typically unless both Power Cosmics happen to overlap. I think only the Cap'n has LL but they all have 25% HP on medkit, because the 25% HP medkit cores are just more powerful with how high health scales. I can't really do it on Wolverine, but he's like 6th lowest overall mitigation in the game too, and I still solo clear cosmics pretty handily.

Getting 10% more raw mitigation is a big deal. If you're at 40% mitigation and you go to 50% mitigation, you are taking almost 17% less damage. This multiplies the effect of both your dodge and your health (the latter being the big part due to current itemization). Dodge rating is definitely harder to gear for, which is part of why Fandral is so far ahead of everything else. It's even better for Dodge heroes, though, since you get around the dodge DR completely.

Power Cosmic does suck, for the record, and I expect it will get tuned down very soon because not only is it a lot of damage it is way too relevant for melee compared to ranged heroes. There is also still a lot of survivability discrepancy between melee heroes; Ms. Marvel is absolute faceroll even in cosmics whereas you have to work a lot harder on Wolverine or Nightcrawler, and both ends need to get reigned in a little. It doesn't change that gearing defensively makes a huge difference for melee in cosmics, and honestly I don't think it's a coincidence that most of the people saying otherwise are the same ones getting their shit pushed in so hard. Dodge heroes like Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Black Panther I would try for 10k defense, 35% dodge and 20k-ish health before being able to solo comfortably.

Cosmic terminals are basically the limit of how far they are willing to scale content up in base difficulty; this is MP10 for Marvel Heroes. Even raids aren't planned to be as much of a gear check. It seems pretty normal to me that melee are more pressured to gear for more survivability in the highest tier of content, as I haven't really ever played an ARPG that has worked differently. Both reds and greens need to be adjusted upward some, mainly reds. There definitely is too much of a gap between the two, as I think a lot of players assume if they can handle reds then they should just move on to cosmics, when the requirements are not a small jump at all.

 

[hitmon]

Just terrible...got another Thing in a random box, forcing me to play him to at least 30. What do you guys usually trade Cube Shards in for? The costumes available at the vendor seem to require some other type of item I have yet to come across.

 

[KePoW]

I tend to mostly agree with Wallach.

Reds should be harder, and Cosmics should be kept hard. Cosmic terminals are not meant for every player out there. You shouldn't expect to stand in one spot and kill everything with no risk.

Gameplay in a ARPG should involve moving around a bit for the hardest content.

 

[krameriffic]

A lot of this had nothing to do with their attempt to balance TTK/TTL, though. It was just corner cases of things they felt were bad design. For example Odinforce got removed because there wasn't anything to do with it besides spend it on God Blast and Frenzy; you couldn't even use the resource until you were level 30.

As far as defensive stuff goes, the truth is I think cosmic terminals are meant for people that actually want that level of difficulty and are prepared to min/max for it. Melee is definitely at a disadvantage because of the overtuned Power Cosmic affix (which is shitty because the "theme" of the terminal guarantees you get it every time) but other than Power Cosmic I don't think cosmic terminals are really problematic for melee. You don't have the luxury of gearing heavy offense and getting away with it like ranged often can, but that is not a new dynamic for ARPGs in the slightest.

True min-maxing of the cosmic terminals dictates one simple, stupid conclusion: killing the bosses is fastest accomplished by suicide bumrushing them over and over again. Dodging and weaving out of all the deadzones just wastes more time. You can't survive a single mistake or bit of bad luck, so the fastest way is to just do as much damage as you can and die.

The biggest mistake they've made on the defensive tuning front is removing LL cores (and LL in general). It's just another bit of flavor and variety they remove from the game because they can't figure out how to balance it apparently. And it makes the game feel less interesting because LL is a cool mechanic that always feels good on every hero.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Or in scarlet witch's case mind control as much as you can and stun lock the bosses. Especially enemies that ignore her usual CC like the binds and Reality Implosion.

I'm going all out, I'm going to get this thing... right? Drop it Modok!

Edit: These AIM assist affix elites are very annoying in cosmic. The rocket rexes can charge for almost one shot kill.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Let us know how it goes, Ploid! By the way, I think you can get Doomsday Chair in any of the Modok terminals so maybe farming the green or red term would be more efficient if you're really just targeting the Doomsday Chair.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

http://imgur.com/gallery/yCyMr

30 cool facts about Marvel, with pics

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Let us know how it goes, Ploid! By the way, I think you can get Doomsday Chair in any of the Modok terminals so maybe farming the green or red term would be more efficient if you're really just targeting the Doomsday Chair.

I'm going for

And it does drop from red terminal but I'm also hoping good stuff drop from the trash mobs too since higher difficulty = better drops. So far I got some good uniques (3 total) some good artifacts that I needed, but nothing from modoc, not even the chair. I actually forgot all about the chair.

My biggest problem with this area are the AIM support champions. They may as well be bosses. They are too annoying, they cast the pets too fast and they hit way too hard with that charge. It's like Rocket Raccoon having the ability to instant summon a group of charging hard hitting groots. Sometimes I can't see the master on the screen so I end up having to kill a steady supply of those pets. Other than those things AIM is easy to do for me.

Interesting Marvel information. $220 for Venom hah.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Ploid, remember artifact drops use SIF!

 

[Ploid 3.0]

Ploid, remember artifact drops use SIF!

What dang. Ok, time to stack Sif. Finally putting these rush bars and drinks to use. I had so many of them. I used the holiday rare 200% boost that last for a lot of hours. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Frostinferno]

Artifacts are most definitely RIF.

 

[Frostinferno]

It's not even a matter of min-maxing. It's a matter of heroes like NC feeling ineffective, squishy and tedious to play because of his relative weakness. That's why it boggles my mind so much that people can enjoy him because of his "mobility" or because blink strike. They see what they want to see, not what is. I felt like he was good for the first 20 minutes playing him on the TC. Then I realized the reality: that he's a poorly designed mess with a lot of cheap software developer tricks to fool people into thinking he does something special.

Wanted to respond to this. Yes, he is squishy, but also has to tools to deal with most situations. Those tools also happen to be part of his character, but here you're deeming them "cheap tricks". I feel like some people may be praising the character too much, but there others that are going too far in the opposite direction also.

Since Cosmic Terminals were brought up, I figured I'd do a run with him to show how he fares (you'll have to forgive the mistakes, it's late here). Keep in mind though that this is with unoptimized gear I just threw on him and without any legendary, insignia, relics, artifact blessings, costume affixes/core, or uru items (or medkits used).

Cosmic Hood

And on the opposite side of things -

T4 Red Hood

With these, would you still say he's in a poor state? Is this defensive play what you consider "tedious tactics"? If so, what would you expect the character be able to do? I mean one step down in T4 Reds I'm face-tanking Hood's bullets. If it's his gear dependency that's an issue for you, that's a whole different topic, but I'd say his design is more than serviceable (mainly talking about his teleporter tree).

 

[Gothos]

So, I decided to dust off my Cable a bit and HOLY. FUCK but Psion builds simply MELTS stuff on 51lvl. Freaking amazing.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Artifacts are most definitely RIF.

Wow, I thought they were SIF all this time. Sorry ploid! lol

 

[inky]

SIF is for splinters, relics and stuff like Fortune Cards. RIF is for the rest.

 

[Rhaknar]

if its gear, its RIF, easy to remember like that

 

[GManDH]

truthfully i would max out RIF get the unique and then focus on SIF.

 

[inky]

Which one of these would you guys use on Iron Man?

I have an 11% chance to deal 352% damage with my current Brutal Strike ratings. (BSR = 518, BDR = 697). Movement speed is sort of irrelevant

 

[Noray]

The top one, easily. But they're both kinda crappy.

 

[Rhaknar]

SH Doom, Kurse and Malekith have made me hate Hawkeye, im glad im almost 60

Ive died SO MUCH this level from those 3, its ridiculous. Most times I dont even know what killed me, the mobs werent even near me. fuck squishy characters

edit: level 60 yay >_> thats 6, Im coming for you KePow! And speaking of squishy characters, time to level Spider-Man o/

Everyone plays him ranged but Im thinking of doing melee, im assbackwards like that

edit 2: I forgot, before I move on from Hawkeye, this happened

second time I get 10

 

[inky]

The top one, easily. But they're both kinda crappy.

I almost never pick up insignias. Most of the time I just go by color and skip them, so I don't have that many to choose from.

What would you suggest I be looking for then?

 

[Noray]

I almost never pick up insignias. Most of the time I just go by color and skip them, so I don't have that many to choose from.

What would you suggest I be looking for then?

O'Grady's are generally very good. Valkyries (health) if you're into that. But go with what you've got.