2 Responses

1. Polaritytm Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   Fine mission! I enjoy custom opponents more then rehashing the old ones and this mission has plenty. The AV’s are well scripted and match the tarot equivalent. Very challenging to solo for my blaster.

   All in all a pleasure to run, but much more fun with a whole team than solo.

   Posted on May 9th, 2009 at 11:12 am

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a max-level spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on (but not AVs).

   —

   Ah, a little Shulkie-style comedy. Let’s rassle some cards!

   (Watch that accept text. First, it’s long to the point of overlapping the window. Second, as accept text it’s only visible by the team leader, as upposed to comedy in the briefing which the whole team could see.)

   Oh hey, it’s Swan, right at the start of this little Eleusis. Let’s get some help. She’s guarded by… entirely bosses. Oh dear. Seems to be dual-offense dual blades/dark melee.

   …and she won’t stick around to help, either. Hoo boy.

   …wait a second. All these AVs have an escort of Negative Thought bosses. Since I’m at x2 that means like three to five of them.

   Okay. Resetting to +0/x1 no bosses as that’s the only way I’ll probably get through this.

   So, let’s see. The Tower is strength/shields, with… rage. Aw lord, Rage. Extra 33% damage, boosted to-hit, lasts for-freakin-ever. Actually engaging during this time is not necessarily an option.

   Strength is claws/regen. With Moment of Glory and… Instant Healing, which basically nullifies my damage output. Also she revives, but I don’t have to beat her a second time.

   The Moon is grav/kin. Now this I can rassle with! Well, up until he dimension-shifts me for a little time-out.

   Death is necro-dark. Like being terrorized and unable to do anything? Tired of positive to-hit percentages? Then you’ll like Death.

   The Hermit likes to detention field me and then heal himself. Over, and over, and over.

   The Empress… stacks Deceive rapid-fire. For when Fearsome Stare wasn’t quite enough not being able to do anything, though you can heal yourself, which is a boon of dubious worth. Gonna need some double-layered Break Frees for this one. She’s also got Trick Arrow going, which is nice for a patch that slows you and kills defenses so you get even more deceived.

   The Emperor is Electric Blast/Axe, with both Aim and Buildup, and the voltaic sentinel at this enemy rank is like a Sapper you can never hit, dodge, or stop. Oh, and he uses Thunderous Blast on low health, just in case you though you were going to do something with your endurance.

   The Fool is Mind/Psy. He doesn’t seem to pull out Terrify, but Confuse is there, though not as long-lasting or spammable as Deceive.

   The Sun is a twisted firestarter. Also fire blast/fire melee with both Aim and Build Up for maximum alpha strike. Fortunately he’s just got damage on his side.

   The Devil shows up on the same little island the Moon was on, but I know I didn’t see him there then. Looks like the old overspawn problem where an outdoor spawn doesn’t trigger until another one at about the same spot dies. He’s fire control/fire armor, with a lot of autodamage but not much else.

   When he’s down, I break the altar, and summon the end boss Swan was talking about, and her escorts who have no descriptions. And her fancy hat! And her… odd similarity to my contact?

   Anyway, her escorts spawn Carrion Creepers, which are kinda bugged in that they stick around for a while and continually spawn vines even after their originals are dead, and she’s a pretty standard storm-elec, but what that means in practice is that if you resist Knockback her tornado hugs you and triple-kicks your defense into the “always hit” range, and then you get sapped, and then you die.

   Fortunately I make my own whirlwind, or she’d not only kick my ass but manage to get away on low health, which is a really nasty trick to pull when you’re running a power that kills both accuracy and attack range.

   —

   Storyline - ***. This is a showcase for a big ol’ slugfest with custom bosses. If there was something made from the end boss’s resemblance to my contact, I didn’t really notice.

   Design - ***. It’s a good choice of map for a generally free-roaming throwdown. The Emperor and Empress hung out right on top of each other, but that may just have been my bad luck - there’s generally enough space here for a good boss fight in more-or-less isolation.

   The problem is that I make a lot out of the overspawn problem for outdoor maps, but this is really the only one I can remember it happening consistently, even dramatically, on. I’m not saying it will necessarily happen, but it’s worth considering, and perhaps picking a different map.

   I wonder if it would work to replace the Negative Thoughts with, say, renamed Black Swan Shadows. They certainly fit the idea.

   The Major Arcana designs are generally pretty nice, but I’d be careful with armor powers as even at max height the particle effects can be rather obscuring. And speaking of max-height, while I don’t like to comment on the deck when there have been so many visual iterations of the design, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Sun as anything other than a baby, or at best a young child. Max-height Sun seems a little strange.

   Gameplay - *. I don’t have two to seven very best friends who are willing to hang out with me and put up with my stopping now and again to take notes. I don’t have the scratch for the really high-end inventions, to pull off soft-capped defense or permahasten. I go solo with what sets I can, and I think I may be on the high end of a generalized intended audience, and there are certain things that are just a little too much to deal with.

   Aim and Build Up can be reasonable when they’re on a single marquee “end boss”. Not necessarily on boss after boss, and generally not in the long-lasting form that is Rage. Crazy survivability boosts like Unstoppable or Instant Healing can be worth powering through on bosses, but with the enhanced regen of an EB there’s pretty much no way to make headway and no reason to do anything other than disengage and wait for it to run down. Confuse and Fear are much more rarely resisted than other sorts of status effects and much more disabling, especially when they’re spammed as frequently as Deceive is. And the severe to-hit debuffs of the entirety of Necro/Dark connecting, or the defense debuffs of oil slick or a triple-stacked Tornado are no walk in the park either. And the combination of to-hit debuff and range debuff from Hurricane with the sapper thundercloud, when you’re trying to stop a boss who’s getting away, is just kind of cruel.

   And intangibility powers against a solo hero are all the fun of Ascendant/Fake Nemesis intangibility with none of the catharsis of running around smacking other things while you wait for them to wear off. (I’m aware the Wisp bosses pull this off, but they generally only have the hit points to do it once.)

   Overall, while turning powersets up to extreme may make for a single memorable end boss, when it’s done with a high number of “boss fights” in quick succession things get tedious rather fast.

   Detail - ***. Good introduction of the idea of the Arcana and some common readings of the cards, but again, this is a big ol’ slugfest and any non-slugging is at best tangential.

   Overall - **. Not an average. This arc is set up to stand or fall on the strength of its combat, and that’s pretty lacking.

   Posted on April 5th, 2011 at 9:01 pm