f13.net

Finally got to the last mission in the zombie arc late Saturday night and ran into Dr Vhaz in the sewer.  First note, archvillians be tough.  He and I were both 18 and he was purple to me which mean he was at least +4 levels by way of comparison.  I mused aloud about attempting to solo him and luckily, Bloodfire was on and offered to join me.

BF was a lvl 20 tanker then at Vhaz was red to him which put him at about lvl 23.  So we engaged and between my hurricane and snow powers and BF's natural flame tankiness, we took him down, which took a loooong time.  We were both out of endurance for the vast majority of the time, but with our powers he couldn't really hit us so we really weren't in any danger.  So being expereinced mmorpg players, we did what comes naturally; attempted to farm him. :)

His death resulted in a nice 21 SO enhancer for me, so we reset the mission and tried it again in the hopes of getting BF a SO enh too.  Killed him 2 more times but only I got drops each time.  That may be by design, not sure as BF mentioned that made him 0 for 5 on Vhaz kills but none were his missions.

Had we the time, we could have killed his zombieness all night.  Just would have required patience.  Not sure if it's worth changing or not but I would have thought killing an archvillian would be worth a least a sovenier (and it was, but only after i intentionally finished the mission).  If they made the act of killing one a seperate noteworthy event, they could even close this small farming hole.

Couple of other random notes;
 - you dont need to kill Vahz to complete the mission.  That was just a bonus.

 - He is tough; I finally remembered you could hover over his healthbar to see the actual number.  Our good dr vhaz had 3195 hit points and 800 endurance and regenerated at a good clip.

 - for some reason SO magic enh don't seem very "magical". One looks like a typical alien face (its even called "grey") and one referenced electrical joules from the extra dimensional avatar of technology

Xilren

Whacked the good doctor out last night myself. I thought he was pretty easy for an archvillain. Myself (lvl19 fire/axe tank), a dark/dark defender (lvl20), and a AR/dev blaster (lvl20). He had plenty of friends, let me tell you. Provoke actually got a workout.

Fight was fast. AV are +5 levels. So that made Vaz lvl24. He hit about 80ish, that I recall. My shields are heavily enhanced though, and work well on undead critters. Fight lasted about 45 seconds. Between dark DoTs, getting trimmed to the toenails with heavy damage hastened axe attacks, and getting well ventilated with an AR barrage, Vaz definately had met his match. VERY fun stuff. He coughed up a lvl22 SO timer reduction enhancement (booo, hisssss...though it did find it's way into my hasten slots, still would rather have had ACC or damage, hehe).

Killed him with 2 of my friends, and called a 3rd to ask if he wanted to do it the next day (he did). I felt pretty cheesy after doing it a 2nd time. Just doesnt seem worth the effort to farm him.

Dont you take any kind of penalty for resetting the mission?

Just a karma one.

Oh I agree wholeheartedly.  Farming is not my thing at all; we were mainly trying to get a SO for Bloodfire too rather than abuse the system.  The first battle was fun; the 2nd and 3rd, not so much.

I'm not hardcore enough to repeat that for hours, but I know plenty if mmorpg players who would for the "phat lewt" SOs.  CoH doesn't suffer from the same sort of weakness as other loot centric games; even if you managed to fully kit yourself out with lvl 21 SO's at 18, you probably couldn't afford to upgrade them all by the time you hit 25 unless you engaged in other lame farming, so it;s a self correcting system from that standpoint.  Still, I think it would be worthy to close that small loophole.  Kill an archvillian, you get noted as such and rewarded once.

Xilren

I disagree. This is a perfect case of other's actions not affecting you. With instancing, I am not in loot competition with anyone. I know I will be getting SO's in 10 levels and can wait, and enjoy the ride getting there.

I have no problem with someone that wants to farm the good Dr. 100 times. They are giving themselves a ton of pain, missing a ton of other content and most likely would find some other way to catass if this method wasn't available.

Now - if you have a group of friends who all take invis, just to work down to the Dr. so you can farm him with min effort/max gain. I salute you.

But there will be direct competition when CoV comes out.  The game is going the route of direct competition.  Just because it is not there yet does not mean you should not clean house for its arrival.  This loophole could suck for villians in that level range unless they have a similar farmable superhero npc.

I suspect it will get closed up.  I also suspect it is a pretty low priority right now.  And that is fine, but it should be fixed well in advance of CoV.

Farm away in preparation of December. I'll still be laughing when I make a villian.

Looks like they had closed the loophole.  Which of course led to certain "Real Heroes of genius" rantings like

Dr. Vahzilok - No more farming SOs? (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=534624&page=4&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1) complete with frowny face.

See, I knew this dev team was on the ball.

Xilren