Well got a pretty good check out in over the weekend. Tried a couple classes, and had the most fun with a blaster who I got to level 10. Man leveling is fast
A couple observations. The high level stuff looks really sweet and fun, but the lower level is about what I expected. I feels more like “the Warriors” with all the wierd little gangs I’m facing, rather than comic book so far. Not a bad thing really, but I figured it would be more squaring off with real villians, than purse thieves whose momma dresses em funny.
The neighboodhood set up is kind of wierd in a few places. Within 400 yards on a straight line it goes from newbie zone, to one-shot killers back to newbie. I got caught a couple times.
I also have a compulsion that is very bad for my health. When ever I see a baddie, no matter how purple, that is standing on the edge of a building on cliff, I must try to sneak behind them and use a blowback power to push them off. Unfortunatly with the purples, I of course miss most of the time and get pounded, oh well.
All in all a solid B from my solo experience. I will play the rest of my trial, and I’m about 50/50 if I’ll buy a real subscriprion. Havn’t tried team at all yet though, which will be the decider.
If you pull a Zone map, you will notice how each neighborhood in a zone is shaded with different colors. I find that very useful with running around with a lowbie.
Yeah - I got nothin’ here. It’s just a good thing you don’t have to run back to your corpse.
I have the same impulse. Knockback may annoy people who like to use area of effect (AoE) powers, but there’s no denying that it’s fun. Fortunately, until you hit level 10, there’s no penalty at all for dying, so you can be as reckless as you like.
The Hellions and Skulls are the equivalent of giant rats in the fantasy-type games. They exist mostly to give you some fighting practice. Remember, though, that Batman and Spider-Man beat up purse snatchers and muggers quite a bit.
The other groups are more supervillain-ish, if you think about them. The Clocks are the mechanical minions of a mysterious mastermind. The Vahz are the thoroughly evil followers of a mad-scientist supervillain. The Circle of Thorns is a secret society that steals souls and practices human sacrifice. The Council doesn’t really fit the pattern of modern comics, but they would fit in pretty well with old-school Captain America villains, I think.
Of course, even with those groups, you’re still fighting flunkies, for the most part. You can take on Frostfire, the Outcast leader, pretty early, but you don’t face Dr. Vahzilok and the Clockwork King themselves until the late teens. That’s when it really feels like you’re taking on supervillains.
To tide you over, you can start doing radio missions in King’s Row at level 5. Those build up to a Safeguard mission, in which you get to stop a supervillain (a real named, distinctively costumed supervillain) from robbing the bank. Completing the Safeguard also nets you a temporary travel power; the King’s Row Safeguard gets you the Raptor Pack, so you can fly. It’s not as fast as the real travel powers that you can unlock at level 14, but it’s faster than running, and flying is fun.
I find City of Heroes to be better than most MMOs at making you feel like you’re really getting into the game early. The Hellions and Skulls may be the giant rats of CoH, but at least they make strong thematic sense, whereas going out into the newbie field in a fantasy game to blast rats and snakes with spells doesn’t feel like anything more than grinding in order to get to the ‘real’ game. Tabula Rasa does it better, as you start out fighting the enemy army immediately, but City of Heroes does its best to keep things interesting at all levels.
As for leveling up quickly, 1-10 is lightning quick; you can do it in a night, solo, if you push. 10-20 takes a little longer, but you can still earn a level every two hours or so. It gets progressively longer from there. I’ve heard it said that the ‘halfway point’ in leveling isn’t 25, but 35; that is, 35-50 takes as long as 1-35. I don’t think that’s far off.
First thing I did when I picked up a sniper blast was to go to a rooftop in The Hollows and pick mobs off the roofs of neighboring buildings.
Stay with the game long enough and you can pick up a permanent Nemesis Staff. Range + knockback! Great for knocking mobs off the castle ramparts in Cimerora.
Thanks man, I had totally neglected the radio mission. It was kind of fun putting the smackdown on the folks out to get me. The Bank was cool too, but I have a question, if you happen to remember. I got the Zero-G pack from the mission. But what does a temporary power do. Once I hit it up does it start thec ounter then all go away? or go I get that much total flight time, however I choose to use it.
The temporary flight power from the jetpack is a toggle; the time used stops when you turn it off. It’s useful to conserve the flight time so that you have some in reserve even after you get your major travel power; Ouroboros missions under level 14 for example- it may be your only flight method.
iI also discovered something that make leveling much easier. I had been afraid of “boss” level mobs, assuming they were like other mmorpgs ‘elites’ and could never be soloed. But the I got trapped against one and figured I wouldn’t go down without a fight. I figured out they are not that hard to kill really, and give as much exp as a whole mission, in one 20th the time. So now I’m a boss huntin’ machine(better salvage too). I should be able to get super speed tonight, hehe lets see if my video card can handle it.
There’s counts seven variants of enemy: Pet, Minion, Lieutenant, Boss, Elite Boss, Archvillain, and Giant Monster.
Minions are your basics, you should be well acquainted with them by now. Most players should have no trouble taking on 3-5 minions at once, and some characters are able to handle more. You’ll have encountered Lieutenants too; they’re considered to be worth ~3 minions. Bosses are considered to be worth ~3 Lieutenants or 10 minions, but they’re actually easier since you’re only dealing with one vector of attack instead of 10. They’re definitely soloable by most builds, although the more you’re built for support the harder it will be. Elite Bosses are even tougher, and while they can be soloed by damage-oriented ATs, they get pretty rough. Two people can take them down without a sweat, though.
Archvillains are the worst of the lot, and usually need a team to take down. Some characters can solo AVs, but the player needs to be very experienced and the build needs to be pretty tricked out. They’re not meant to be soloed at all. These are the types of bosses you’re probably more familiar with from other games.
Pets are a step lower than minions and are pretty fragile. Enough of them can be an issue, but generally speaking they’re purely annoyances. Giant Monsters tend to be zone events, which you may see players talking about on Broadcast every so often (“Paladin up in Kings Row” “Hunting Hydra” etc.). They’re very large, very tough, and usually can’t be reliably killed except by 10+ people, though I’ve seen it done with less. Giant Monsters use a unique damage system to allow people of all levels to engage the same one (if you’re level 15, it takes and receives damage from you like it’s a level 15 monster, but if your teammate is level 50, it takes and receives damage from him like it’s level 50).
Definitely don’t be afraid of bosses, although you may want to approach them carefully in a mission so you’re not fighting two lieutenants and four minions alongside the boss. As you level, your powers will enhance your survivability, and bosses will become much easier to handle.
One last note: You’ve probably seen the Hero Corps Analysts and maybe fiddled with difficulty settings for missions by now. Heroic will only ever spawn minions and lieutenants if you’re solo; if you want bosses in your missions, you’ll need to go to the next difficulty, Tenacious.
I didnt really read any guides(probably why I have so many questions :smack:), and kind of stumbled through the build process experimentally. I ended up with a Blaster who uses sonic and energy. It seems a pretty effective build, but I have nothing to compare it to obviously. It’s a good mix of heavy range and heavy melee damage(I’m such a geek I actually talk to myself in the Grover voice, "near"punch…run back… "Far"zap). With just enough short stuns and knockbacks to keep me dictating the fight. But with weak HP, when adds are there and I lose the upper hand quickly. My build just seems much better at one-on-one, that I have about as much trouble with three minions, as I do with one boss, so it works much faster for me to seek them out.
I’ve been running on the default “wus” level and having no problems with level-appropriate missions with any of my heroes. For experimentation I turned up the level one notch for my 22 ice blaster, and while I completed the mission, it seemed considerably more difficult (more Rests between battles, more use of Inspirations, much more frequent near-death-experiences, etc).
Is this expected/normal just going up one notch? Or do I suck as a blaster?
I think it does take some adjusting, but can be overcome. One suggestion would be to try out the third level of difficulty. The second level calculates the number of enemies as if you had an extra person on your team, but the levels of the enemies are +0 to +1 above yours. The third difficulty doesn’t assume there’s an extra person on the team, but the enemies are +1 to +2 levels above yours. Depending on your character, it may be that more enemies are actually more difficult than fewer but stronger enemies. Worth a try, anyway.
The powers you have really make a difference in survivability, too. My Blaster has Stealth and Hover, and can basically destroy enemies with impunity, whereas someone on the ground is going to get trashed pretty quickly once the enemies get to melee range. CoX is an interesting game in that the high-level powers aren’t necessarily stronger than the low-level powers, but the different things they do give you more options and enhance your survivability.
All that said, there’s nothing wrong with Heroic, the lowest setting. For my first character, I was on Heroic for something like 40 levels. If you’re soloing, it’s perfectly acceptable.
(Now, if you’d said you had trouble fighting on Heroic, then you’d suck as a blaster. Just about any character in the game should be able to solo Heroic.)
Level 1 - 3 to 4 Even con minions or equivalent per spawn.
Level 2 - 5 to 6 Even con minions or equivalent per spawn.
Level 3 - 3 to 4 +1 con minions or equivalent per spawn.
Level 4 - 5 to 6 +1 con minions or equivalent per spawn.
Level 5 - 3 to 4 +2 con minions or equivalent per spawn.
As an Ice Blaster, you should have fantastic single-target damage, so you should opt for fewer, more powerful enemies.
My bow blaster does well with more, less powerful enemies, so I usually run on Level 2 or 4.
If no one has pointed it out yet, 22 is a significant breakthrough level in your character’s power. You can now slot level 25 Single Origin enhancements, which are roughly twice as effective as most of the enhancements you’ve been using up to now. (IOs are very slightly less effective at L25, but of course, they don’t degrade as you level.) The difference is quite dramatic once you’re slotted out with them, but even the first few will provide a noticeable improvement. If you’re on Virtue, you might check the enhancement bins in the CECIL base (the tables with all the bottles on them); there may be some L25 generic IOs left in there from our crafting. If not, I can make some for you. (I’m chasing the crafting badges.)
I generally recommend waiting until you’re slotting SOs before increasing the difficulty setting, and in the case of a strong single-target character, it’s often better to bump it up two notches, rather than one.
And you tend to really start to bloom at about 30. You have most of your basic attacks, you have your travel powers (and the Fitness pool if you want it), and you have everything slotted up except the newest power pick. From there, it is getting everything just right and adding in the last few non-pool powers you have left.
It’s a good combo; I have one myself. Pick up Siren’s Song at 18, and you can Sleep every enemy in a spawn except a Boss, and take them one at a time as long as you use single target attacks. And Sonic/Energy has nasty single target attacks.
Which brings up mezz; sleep, stuns and so forth. Every enemy has a magnitude of mezz resistance against various effects; in your case, the Sleeps and Stuns ( the latter also called "Disorients ) you dish out. Lieutenants resist more than Minions, Bosses more than Lieutenants, and so one. So, for example, Siren’s Song will sleep anything lower than a Boss, because Boss’s have a higher magnitude resistance to Sleep than the Sleep Siren’s Song puts out. However; many of your Energy Manipulation attacks have a chance for stun in them ( the descriptions give details ), and you have a ranged Stun in Sonic Blast as well. This lets you stack Stuns on a Boss until the combined magnitude is great enough to overcome his resistance and he’s disabled.
This is true of other mezz effects as well; a controller typically * can’t hold a Boss with a single Hold power, but either has to hit them twice, or stack it with a second Hold, from another power or another player.
Controller have a chance to “Critical Mezz”, to hit with a stronger mezz than normal that can disable a Boss with one hit; that’s what the “OVERPOWER” you may occasionally see over a target being attacked by a controller is.
Unfortunatly with the purples, I of course miss most of the time and get pounded, oh well.
Just about any character in the game should be able to solo Heroic.)