Oh man, is that how the devs resolved that one? I wasn't sure how they were going to fix that issue, since the V.O. for Tateklys had already been recorded. I like the solution.
That wasn't deliberate? Heck it was inspired either way. I got a good chuckle from that bit.
Give the person responsible a choc-chip cookie for me
___________________________________
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?
Last two times, our team was five level 40s. We had
1 Inferno AT
1 Unleashed AT
1 Specialist AT
1 FF tank w/Eruption 1 FF DPS (mainly fire)
Definitely the tank w/Eruption helped a lot, but we beat the Duraclad pair with time to spare each time.
This makes me think that a working combo would be 4 fire characters and 1 tank (that maybe could also be fire). Stacking defense debuffs and roughly 3000 DPS per character would likely do the trick.
I think electricity or squall toons could work, too, but Inferno deals a lot of AoE damage.
I dunno, I've had generally bad experiences in there on my Squall. I keep having to throttle back a lot because doing any sort of decent damage would pull everything off of the tank and onto me. The one time I managed to not have that problem I ended up getting yelled at because a full hurricane maintain would send things flying and rustle a few jimmies to the point that two players dropped from the group.
I know the costumes drop at round 10. I'm talking about if they drop at all in previous rounds considering that they stated they do. I got 3/4 of the pieces so far. (still no action figures)
I dunno, I've had generally bad experiences in there on my Squall. I keep having to throttle back a lot because doing any sort of decent damage would pull everything off of the tank and onto me. The one time I managed to not have that problem I ended up getting yelled at because a full hurricane maintain would send things flying and rustle a few jimmies to the point that two players dropped from the group.
Same thing with my Inferno. I waited until some of the melee types had engaged, then hit 'em with the rain of fire - and presto, I had all the aggro!
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
This makes me think that a working combo would be 4 fire characters and 1 tank (that maybe could also be fire). Stacking defense debuffs and roughly 3000 DPS per character would likely do the trick.
It's actually kind of cool that squishy ATs and offensive passive users finally get their chance to shine. Just about every challenge before was a survivability challenge - not necessarily tanking, just not dying. Even nicer is that it's not a single target DPS check, but an AoE one.
The only not-so-cool part is that the first ever DPS check implemented for endgame-geared players happens to be in content for level 6 characters and gives an awful reward. I mean not even Q? really? Harbinger gave us 1.2k as long as we win. Give 200Q for beating Round 5 and a further 200 for every round thereafter or something sheesh.
After repeated plays, this should be gated to lvl 35+, and the timer still needs to be extended. Also the reward is a pittance and this alert is not worth the time for it.
I have the solution for this issue. REMOVE THE TIMER ENTIRELY. Two reasons:
1) In the context of an arena, timers MAKE. NO. SENSE. Arenas generally entail fights to the death or, at the very least, until one is lying on the ground not moving and beaten... You wouldn't interrupt a possibly exciting battle because the time ran out... The crowd would lynch you! They'd want a winner, not a draw or all losers... Additionally, are we supposed to believe that an intergalactic arena would only star us and not other competitors? What happens when we lose a timed round or any round for that matter? The event ends? We can see other faction/people there so I'm assuming if they win they'd progressed to the next round like we do. And if it works like that then you would absolutely NEED a winner at the end of every round to determine who will be fighting who in the next one. So timers are just dumb in this context... The Red Winter Alert has a timer and it makes sense because you're trying to disarm a bomb, but it isn't the case here. If Tateklys really wanted to make the fights more 'interesting' as he says, then having spikes coming out of the ground at random or fire bursts coming out of the walls or stuff like that would've made more sense.
2) I can already hear some people say it would remove any form challenge from a game that's already pretty easy. Well, yes but not really, no. The idea would be to replace the timer with an actual mean of being defeated. What happens when you die during the event? You recover and go back to the fighting. Bad idea. Make it like Harmon Labs Alert. If the entire party goes down, you lose, something that would make perfect sense in the context of a tournament such as this. And much like Harmon Labs, if your party is just too low or lacking heals or aggro control it's likely you will fail, but have a decent party and you'll win. That, that's at least fair - which right now it isn't, even a decent party is almost assured failure.
I've tried the alert twice now and done terribly at it each time. I acknowledge that I'm not a super ultimate CO player. I can't solo Telios Tower on elite with only my starting powers. I can't solo Rhinoplasty on elite with no gear. But even doing my best with full gear and scaled DOWN to level 30, I can't touch ANYTHING.
Second time around, my group, which was one down to start with, got to the third wave through sheer attrition, and then we hit the arena champions. Absolutely impossible. We couldn't even touch one of them with all four of us spiking a single target. This alert feels like it was built specificly to cater to the super elite players that have been ******** that the game is too easy, despite being an EXTREME minority. And the rest of us get to suffer for it.
I did this today with my telepath build. We were getting skewered with a full team that most dropped out until only two of us were left. Funny thing was, with everyone else gone it ended up being a cake walk. All we did was while one player pulled the others away and flying up to just keep himself healthy, I was able to solo what was left widling him down while my pets took all the aggro. Rinse and repeat.
I figured out the problem was with all 3 attacking at once they do a ton of damage causing us to all die and then resetting health after we respawn. When each is alone they're not much of a threat.
I've successfully completed 43 runs, not a significant amount but definitely substantial in comparison to some.
Okay, so here is my numbers;
8 PUGS successfully run out of 14
35 Team runs successful out of 40
So what was I rewarded with each time? Nothing, just Globals, that's it. So I was wondering, am I bugged? Surely something would have dropped by this point, as previously mentioned is there a "Team Leader rewarded only" bug? Because seriously, the effort put in to winning this alert is not seemingly worth it after this experience and I certainly don't want to make my own team to potentially cheap them out of gaining rewards.
So, what is it? Am I extremely unlucky? Or is there something else going on?
I've successfully completed 43 runs, not a significant amount but definitely substantial in comparison to some.
Okay, so here is my numbers;
8 PUGS successfully run out of 14
35 Team runs successful out of 40
So what was I rewarded with each time? Nothing, just Globals, that's it. So I was wondering, am I bugged? Surely something would have dropped by this point, as previously mentioned is there a "Team Leader rewarded only" bug? Because seriously, the effort put in to winning this alert is not seemingly worth it after this experience and I certainly don't want to make my own team to potentially cheap them out of gaining rewards.
So, what is it? Am I extremely unlucky? Or is there something else going on?
If you success to defeat Firewing, you will be reward something like Costume Parts or AFs like in 20% or so.
After repeated plays, this should be gated to lvl 35+, and the timer still needs to be extended. Also the reward is a pittance and this alert is not worth the time for it.
Please fix.
Agreed.
The need for some form of lv restriction and giving crappy rewards are long standing issues with alerts.
The devs should at least pull some content from the gallery of wasted potential as custom alert rewards if they don't have the manpower to make decent rewards.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Tried this alert today. I give it a D for poor design and gameplay.
1) This is not "more challenging content". The end is a DPS race, period. It's just like Red Alert, only with more HP on the bosses. This is challenging how? By challenging ppl to max their builds? Be selective about their grouping?
2) The challenge level ramp-up is badly executed. I bet if you look at the pure numbers in terms of total mob HP and resistance, you would see a steep exponential curve. This sets up player expectations completely wrong, plus makes for a lesser gaming experience as players feel they hit a sudden "wall".
3) Trying to have content for EZ mode and then smushing it with HARD mode to placate two types of the playerbase ends up with no one being pleased. To add insult to injury, winning all 10 levels gives a satisfying rush and then... the usual CO crap-for-rewards and random roll.
Lastly, the fight time : cutscene ratio is too low. Too much time spent on cutscenes you can't avoid. Not a big part of the grading but still shows poor design thinking. I expect better (and you should too!) from a game.
...
Lastly, the fight time : cutscene ratio is too low. Too much time spent on cutscenes you can't avoid. Not a big part of the grading but still shows poor design thinking. I expect better (and you should too!) from a game.
This is the big one for me. When I was putting together a video of a completed Forum Malvanum run the original length was ~11 minutes. With the cutscenes at 6x speed it was just over 6.5 minutes.
I gave this a few goes with a premade team and I am very underwhelmed by pretty much everything.
Ironclad and Duratok are only hard because there's two targets and if you get your team to focus on one you should be fine.
Firewing, on the other hand, is a joke.
The groups of mooks to battle aren't fun at all, either.
If I'm not mistaken, the only truly new enemy is Firewing... and he looks goofy. Recycled mobs, recycled NPCs, super-recycled NPC types (two defiance guys who fight almost exactly the same way? really?) and a joke of a boss with too many cutscenes make Miko a disappointed rat.
Y'know what would have been cool? An actual storyline. Ironclad goes missing, so we gotta go find him only to find ourselves forced into fighting in the Malvan arenas to get to him so we could coordinate some awesome escape.
Y'know what would have been cool? An actual storyline. Ironclad goes missing, so we gotta go find him only to find ourselves forced into fighting in the Malvan arenas to get to him so we could coordinate some awesome escape.
but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
That would take devs that care about epic implementation. Alerts don't need to be fast. They could be mini adventures.
Someone not DPS has to find 4 Lvl 40 friendly DPS and has to be Lvl 40 him/her self for at least to defeat Firewing...
I have done that with my support toon, a sort of FF grimoire. I advertise that I am looking for a group, and that my toon can bring AoPM at level 40. It works.
If you have a lower-level, non-DPS toon, you'll have to PUG it. You probably won't get a shot at the best rewards, but you can complete the daily mission and get the SCR. Not every toon can succeed at everything. I don't have toons that can solo lairs, for instance.
Not every toon can succeed at everything. I don't have toons that can solo lairs, for instance.
But you don't need to solo a lair in order to complete it and experience the lair to its full extent.
The Forum Malvanum simply denies anyone without a specific character build to fight in the final rounds and see all the cutscenes. Not that those are wildy impressive or rewarding, but personally I want to experience every piece of playable content at least once.
I consider myself extremely lucky that I have a lvl 40 toon with good DPS, otherwise I would have simply been denied access to a new piece of content just because I'm not a min-maxer.
But to get that lair team, you need a certain level toon, you need to find a group, and you have to find a group that will take you. That doesn't always happen.
But to get that lair team, you need a certain level toon, you need to find a group, and you have to find a group that will take you. That doesn't always happen.
But at least it CAN happen.
In the case of the Forum Malvanum, you are severly restricted in the kind of characters you can play if you're playing to win. If you don't have build X you will fail. No other alert or lair in the game does this.
(I'm not saying any kind of build can solo a lair, but those weren't designed to be solo'd in the first place.)
(I'm not saying any kind of build can solo a lair, but those weren't designed to be solo'd in the first place.)
That is true of alerts, too. They weren't designed to be soloed.
By the way, I had a lower level toon in one of our successful Forum teams--level 25 Grimoire AT. The rest of the team was four DPS with self-heals and bubbles (like Nimbus).
In the case of the Forum Malvanum, you are severly restricted in the kind of characters you can play if you're playing to win. If you don't have build X you will fail. No other alert or lair in the game does this.
Except "build X" is probably half the builds in the game.
I've done this with DPS ATs and cleared it. I've done it with a level 6 on the team and cleared it.
Most of my successful clears have been on my support character (AoPM, Int/pre/end, support role, bubble spam with occasional Two-Gun Mojo or Throwing Blades).
The biggest thing is keeping Duraclad grouped up to AoE them, and not having people die.
Pretty much any of the offensive-role ATs can provide enough DPS for this, you just need to keep them alive long enough and build for some energy management. The no-DR on damage buffs that ATs get mean they can do some scary damage as long as they can keep attacking (which goes back to the "keep them alive" and "energy management" bits).
Blade, Inferno, Unleashed, Soldier, Tempest, Squall, Fist, Scourge, Devastator could all do well. My first clear of this on PTS (with the shorter timer) was with my Blade, actually. Marksman and Disciple would need some build finessing, but they could probably pull it off.
Glacier, Behemoth, Master and Invincible can all tank Duraclad without too much trouble. Savage probably could too. A Mind would probably be best to keep the squishies in one piece, as there's a lot of AoE that zaps Inventor pets, and Radiant is fiddly.
The Hybrids are the only real dead weight here. Grim being stuck in Hybrid role means the team buff from AoPM is massively nerfed. Night Avenger might be able to do well, but it's going to have energy problems. Impulse and Void are meh, Specialist doesn't have enough beefiness to tank the duo, and doesn't do enough damage.
That's the vast majority of the playable ATs that have at least something useful to contribute to this. Freeform's easier to screw up, but that's what we have a Builds and Powers forum for.
The groups don't even have to be 40. I'd say level 20-30s would do fine (that's the sweet spot between having your build filled out and still reaping massive benefit from the Alert level upscaling), but below 20 or 30-35 are going to have some problems. Sub-40 ATs are going to have a harder time, of course, due to not getting their good stuff until very late in most cases.
I agree that the timer's a little tight, and that I'd design this a bit differently if I were doing it, but it's far from impossible. And (not to you specifically), but giving up if you have someone sub-40 on your team, or an AT on your team, is probably a mistake.
Unless it's a team of 5 Impulses. Then run like hell. I'm pretty sure that one's actually impossible.
A team of 5 Impulses made to be played as a team of 5 Impulses might do ok. They could use Field Inversion to give a huge boost to their dps. Normally that's a bad idea because Containment Field protects the target from any other type of attack. I think they would have about 1600 dps each, assuming that they use PFF, and over half of it would be aoe. It's more likely that only one or two would use PFF, and those would be the ones to keep the fields up and tank, while the others spam Force Blast as if it were Ice Blast. It's not great, but that should break the dps threshold, shouldn't it?
My overriding impression on the Forum Malvanum Alert was just how cheap it looked and felt.
Enviromentally, asset-wise, simplistic amphitheatre design and textures, same-old animations on cutscenes, a star-field and nebula up in the night sky that was so half-assed and unimpressive (especially considering whats in STO) it made my heart sink on thinking: "if this is the best they can do enviromentally these days....".
Thats also without touching on the meat 'n' potatoes of the content - the mobs which are not even new assets either but just re-used content convieniently in context as the baddest mobs from around the galaxy.
2/10 - Could do an awful lot better. If only Cryptic-Studios was not so preoccupied with it's other titles.
..........................................
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
I can't help but compare the Forum Alert to the Hi Pan Dragon Alert. Not having Tumorboy shows.
And the arena looks horrible with lowered graphics. Imagine the walls entirely white and seeing every glaring error with the costumes the Malvan guards have. I'd post pictures, but they are too depressing.
I don't have to Imagine. I usually get a slide show if I use the shaders. Since the game usually uses shaders as textures, half of the things in the game look like blobs of color. I didn't even know that the walls weren't blank. :<
I can't help but compare the Forum Alert to the Hi Pan Dragon Alert. Not having Tumorboy shows.
And the arena looks horrible with lowered graphics. Imagine the walls entirely white and seeing every glaring error with the costumes the Malvan guards have. I'd post pictures, but they are too depressing.
No need to, since I sometimes play on the lower end of the graphics settings depending which computer I am playing CO on. My laptop is more up to date and can play CO on max graphics. But sadly my PC is really old and I play on minimum when on CO and when I tried FM on there on low settings, this was my reaction:
Comments
That wasn't deliberate? Heck it was inspired either way. I got a good chuckle from that bit.
Give the person responsible a choc-chip cookie for me
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?
Last two times, our team was five level 40s. We had
1 Inferno AT
1 Unleashed AT
1 Specialist AT
1 FF tank w/Eruption
1 FF DPS (mainly fire)
Definitely the tank w/Eruption helped a lot, but we beat the Duraclad pair with time to spare each time.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
This makes me think that a working combo would be 4 fire characters and 1 tank (that maybe could also be fire). Stacking defense debuffs and roughly 3000 DPS per character would likely do the trick.
I think electricity or squall toons could work, too, but Inferno deals a lot of AoE damage.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
I dunno, I've had generally bad experiences in there on my Squall. I keep having to throttle back a lot because doing any sort of decent damage would pull everything off of the tank and onto me. The one time I managed to not have that problem I ended up getting yelled at because a full hurricane maintain would send things flying and rustle a few jimmies to the point that two players dropped from the group.
I've seen 1 team mate getting the shield after the 10 rounds.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Click up there if you want to find more about the costumes behind my heroines.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
That's what I've been saying! (See option 1)
It's actually kind of cool that squishy ATs and offensive passive users finally get their chance to shine. Just about every challenge before was a survivability challenge - not necessarily tanking, just not dying. Even nicer is that it's not a single target DPS check, but an AoE one.
The only not-so-cool part is that the first ever DPS check implemented for endgame-geared players happens to be in content for level 6 characters and gives an awful reward. I mean not even Q? really? Harbinger gave us 1.2k as long as we win. Give 200Q for beating Round 5 and a further 200 for every round thereafter or something sheesh.
Please fix.
1) In the context of an arena, timers MAKE. NO. SENSE. Arenas generally entail fights to the death or, at the very least, until one is lying on the ground not moving and beaten... You wouldn't interrupt a possibly exciting battle because the time ran out... The crowd would lynch you! They'd want a winner, not a draw or all losers... Additionally, are we supposed to believe that an intergalactic arena would only star us and not other competitors? What happens when we lose a timed round or any round for that matter? The event ends? We can see other faction/people there so I'm assuming if they win they'd progressed to the next round like we do. And if it works like that then you would absolutely NEED a winner at the end of every round to determine who will be fighting who in the next one. So timers are just dumb in this context... The Red Winter Alert has a timer and it makes sense because you're trying to disarm a bomb, but it isn't the case here. If Tateklys really wanted to make the fights more 'interesting' as he says, then having spikes coming out of the ground at random or fire bursts coming out of the walls or stuff like that would've made more sense.
2) I can already hear some people say it would remove any form challenge from a game that's already pretty easy. Well, yes but not really, no. The idea would be to replace the timer with an actual mean of being defeated. What happens when you die during the event? You recover and go back to the fighting. Bad idea. Make it like Harmon Labs Alert. If the entire party goes down, you lose, something that would make perfect sense in the context of a tournament such as this. And much like Harmon Labs, if your party is just too low or lacking heals or aggro control it's likely you will fail, but have a decent party and you'll win. That, that's at least fair - which right now it isn't, even a decent party is almost assured failure.
I did this today with my telepath build. We were getting skewered with a full team that most dropped out until only two of us were left. Funny thing was, with everyone else gone it ended up being a cake walk. All we did was while one player pulled the others away and flying up to just keep himself healthy, I was able to solo what was left widling him down while my pets took all the aggro. Rinse and repeat.
I figured out the problem was with all 3 attacking at once they do a ton of damage causing us to all die and then resetting health after we respawn. When each is alone they're not much of a threat.
Grappling/Wrestling Power Set Suggestion 2012-2013
How a Wrestling Power Set Can Work
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Okay, so here is my numbers;
8 PUGS successfully run out of 14
35 Team runs successful out of 40
So what was I rewarded with each time? Nothing, just Globals, that's it. So I was wondering, am I bugged? Surely something would have dropped by this point, as previously mentioned is there a "Team Leader rewarded only" bug? Because seriously, the effort put in to winning this alert is not seemingly worth it after this experience and I certainly don't want to make my own team to potentially cheap them out of gaining rewards.
So, what is it? Am I extremely unlucky? Or is there something else going on?
If you success to defeat Firewing, you will be reward something like Costume Parts or AFs like in 20% or so.
That's not always the case. I beat him three times and got just resources.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Agreed.
The need for some form of lv restriction and giving crappy rewards are long standing issues with alerts.
The devs should at least pull some content from the gallery of wasted potential as custom alert rewards if they don't have the manpower to make decent rewards.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
20% is one out of 5.
Plus, odds don't work like that. If it's a 20% chance and you go 5 times, you could get the extra drops every time, or not at all.
@flamingbunnyman in game. Formerly @Roderick in City of Heroes.
1) This is not "more challenging content". The end is a DPS race, period. It's just like Red Alert, only with more HP on the bosses. This is challenging how? By challenging ppl to max their builds? Be selective about their grouping?
2) The challenge level ramp-up is badly executed. I bet if you look at the pure numbers in terms of total mob HP and resistance, you would see a steep exponential curve. This sets up player expectations completely wrong, plus makes for a lesser gaming experience as players feel they hit a sudden "wall".
3) Trying to have content for EZ mode and then smushing it with HARD mode to placate two types of the playerbase ends up with no one being pleased. To add insult to injury, winning all 10 levels gives a satisfying rush and then... the usual CO crap-for-rewards and random roll.
Lastly, the fight time : cutscene ratio is too low. Too much time spent on cutscenes you can't avoid. Not a big part of the grading but still shows poor design thinking. I expect better (and you should too!) from a game.
@sturmhaven
This is the big one for me. When I was putting together a video of a completed Forum Malvanum run the original length was ~11 minutes. With the cutscenes at 6x speed it was just over 6.5 minutes.
Completely absurd.
That sums up my thoughts for how this alert was implemented nicely.
Ironclad and Duratok are only hard because there's two targets and if you get your team to focus on one you should be fine.
Firewing, on the other hand, is a joke.
The groups of mooks to battle aren't fun at all, either.
If I'm not mistaken, the only truly new enemy is Firewing... and he looks goofy. Recycled mobs, recycled NPCs, super-recycled NPC types (two defiance guys who fight almost exactly the same way? really?) and a joke of a boss with too many cutscenes make Miko a disappointed rat.
Y'know what would have been cool? An actual storyline. Ironclad goes missing, so we gotta go find him only to find ourselves forced into fighting in the Malvan arenas to get to him so we could coordinate some awesome escape.
but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
That would take devs that care about epic implementation. Alerts don't need to be fast. They could be mini adventures.
I have done that with my support toon, a sort of FF grimoire. I advertise that I am looking for a group, and that my toon can bring AoPM at level 40. It works.
If you have a lower-level, non-DPS toon, you'll have to PUG it. You probably won't get a shot at the best rewards, but you can complete the daily mission and get the SCR. Not every toon can succeed at everything. I don't have toons that can solo lairs, for instance.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
But you don't need to solo a lair in order to complete it and experience the lair to its full extent.
The Forum Malvanum simply denies anyone without a specific character build to fight in the final rounds and see all the cutscenes. Not that those are wildy impressive or rewarding, but personally I want to experience every piece of playable content at least once.
I consider myself extremely lucky that I have a lvl 40 toon with good DPS, otherwise I would have simply been denied access to a new piece of content just because I'm not a min-maxer.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
But at least it CAN happen.
In the case of the Forum Malvanum, you are severly restricted in the kind of characters you can play if you're playing to win. If you don't have build X you will fail. No other alert or lair in the game does this.
(I'm not saying any kind of build can solo a lair, but those weren't designed to be solo'd in the first place.)
That is true of alerts, too. They weren't designed to be soloed.
By the way, I had a lower level toon in one of our successful Forum teams--level 25 Grimoire AT. The rest of the team was four DPS with self-heals and bubbles (like Nimbus).
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Except "build X" is probably half the builds in the game.
I've done this with DPS ATs and cleared it. I've done it with a level 6 on the team and cleared it.
Most of my successful clears have been on my support character (AoPM, Int/pre/end, support role, bubble spam with occasional Two-Gun Mojo or Throwing Blades).
The biggest thing is keeping Duraclad grouped up to AoE them, and not having people die.
Pretty much any of the offensive-role ATs can provide enough DPS for this, you just need to keep them alive long enough and build for some energy management. The no-DR on damage buffs that ATs get mean they can do some scary damage as long as they can keep attacking (which goes back to the "keep them alive" and "energy management" bits).
Blade, Inferno, Unleashed, Soldier, Tempest, Squall, Fist, Scourge, Devastator could all do well. My first clear of this on PTS (with the shorter timer) was with my Blade, actually. Marksman and Disciple would need some build finessing, but they could probably pull it off.
Glacier, Behemoth, Master and Invincible can all tank Duraclad without too much trouble. Savage probably could too. A Mind would probably be best to keep the squishies in one piece, as there's a lot of AoE that zaps Inventor pets, and Radiant is fiddly.
The Hybrids are the only real dead weight here. Grim being stuck in Hybrid role means the team buff from AoPM is massively nerfed. Night Avenger might be able to do well, but it's going to have energy problems. Impulse and Void are meh, Specialist doesn't have enough beefiness to tank the duo, and doesn't do enough damage.
That's the vast majority of the playable ATs that have at least something useful to contribute to this. Freeform's easier to screw up, but that's what we have a Builds and Powers forum for.
The groups don't even have to be 40. I'd say level 20-30s would do fine (that's the sweet spot between having your build filled out and still reaping massive benefit from the Alert level upscaling), but below 20 or 30-35 are going to have some problems. Sub-40 ATs are going to have a harder time, of course, due to not getting their good stuff until very late in most cases.
I agree that the timer's a little tight, and that I'd design this a bit differently if I were doing it, but it's far from impossible. And (not to you specifically), but giving up if you have someone sub-40 on your team, or an AT on your team, is probably a mistake.
Unless it's a team of 5 Impulses. Then run like hell. I'm pretty sure that one's actually impossible.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
_______________________________
The user formerly known as Dr. Sage.
_______________________________
Are you sure about that ?
Other people are posting success stories that contradict this statement.
'Caine, miss you bud. Fly high.
I admit I could have worded that better in order to get my point across.
Just ignore what I said, I don't feel like debating atm.
Enviromentally, asset-wise, simplistic amphitheatre design and textures, same-old animations on cutscenes, a star-field and nebula up in the night sky that was so half-assed and unimpressive (especially considering whats in STO) it made my heart sink on thinking: "if this is the best they can do enviromentally these days....".
Thats also without touching on the meat 'n' potatoes of the content - the mobs which are not even new assets either but just re-used content convieniently in context as the baddest mobs from around the galaxy.
2/10 - Could do an awful lot better. If only Cryptic-Studios was not so preoccupied with it's other titles.
Dropping my knitting to buff you whilst hitting - Proudly protecting Millennium City's little ones since 2009.
@Mothers_Love
And the arena looks horrible with lowered graphics. Imagine the walls entirely white and seeing every glaring error with the costumes the Malvan guards have. I'd post pictures, but they are too depressing.
No need to, since I sometimes play on the lower end of the graphics settings depending which computer I am playing CO on. My laptop is more up to date and can play CO on max graphics. But sadly my PC is really old and I play on minimum when on CO and when I tried FM on there on low settings, this was my reaction:
Handle: @drgmstr
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