Test Discussion Episode 35: False Idols 8-Player Raid

\m/ Greetings, y'all! \m/

Welcome to the 8 player raid - False Idols. Get ready to rumble with the gods of Olympus and the Merciless, slayer of said gods.

There are 3 modes - Event, Normal, and Elite that are ready for testing.

Please post feedback and bug reports here. Please do take note of 'Known Issues' before doing so.


\m/ Rock on. \m/

Feedback
On the Living Forge fight, flight players can just stay in the air to avoid the lava. Is that intended?

Event mode it is fine.

Steam jets will have some anti flying stuff in later and for the lava, you can avoid the lava falls by flying, though they should ground you if you enter them. If the floor becomes lava then the damage is applied no matter where you are - flying or walking, as the heat from the lava encompasses the entire chamber (or it should).

Feedback
My experience so far is that two tanks are going to be a requirement for this raid. You need two tanks to separate the Minotaur Bulkwarks and Phoenix healers in the Ares room. You probably need two tanks in the Living Forge fight to handle the ridiculous amount of Forged Weapon ads that spawn. Is there a way to prevent all those guys from spawning? In the final fight, you need one tank to hold the Merciless off to the side when all of the Hoplites spawn for the final phase. The second tank tries to "block" the Hoplites from reaching Wonder Woman.

As a Controller, I didn't feel very useful in this raid. The Hoplites in the final phase of the Merciless fight are completely immune to CC. There are too many Forged Weapons to do any CCing in the Living Forge fight.

Feedback
I tanked regular version of this raid as rage tank and most the parts had perma stunns which caused 100% rage crash. Some of these perma stunns are mechanic which is "click mouse button" type. Other ones are just straight perma stunns that you can do nothing until it ends. Living Forge and forged weapons were doing that kind of stunns when they were crowded.

This is a common issue for rage tanks. Old episodes had this problem too.

Feedback
I did like this effect:


The VFX artist did a good job with that one.

I was expecting that to be a mechanic in the final fight, but it didn't seem like the lightning was used for anything.

Need to test more for proper feedback Charon but the initial impression my group got from the Elite version of this Raid was the raid is a rehash of Gods of Monsters Elite and it kind of bummed us out. Sure there was the new fire mechanic on the second wave of bosses but in the end it just felt severely rehashed . The mechanics of separating and killing bosses in a particular order is always a bit of a challenge but it just bummed us out that it was the same mechanics with the same bosses in essentially the same area of a Raid we spent 4-6 months in 2-3 years ago.

That was my impression of the instance too. It was disappointing to see the first boss room be a sequel to God of Monsters Elite. By the time we got to the GOM map, several party members were asking, "Is anything in this raid new?"

However, the reused mechanics meant everyone knew exactly what to do. No one had to ask, "What's going on? Why is the Rhino guy healing up?" Instead, it was "Which tank is going to pull which NPC and where are we going to stand?"

The entire episode gives off that vibe so far. The first half of the 4 man operation is basically Inner Batcave with the same puzzles and boss.

I hope some additional work goes into differentiating the content from previous content releases.

Question
Charon, does a Controller healing debuff do anything to help counteract the Cerberus's healing factor in the first boss fight?

First Impressions:

This raid is a huge disappointment. Its basically the Gods and Monster raid, with 2 New NPCs. The first boss encounter includes NPCs from Gom + Cerberus. Its boring, uninspiring and its completely unoriginal. The boss fights are long, tedious and too repetitive for my taste. Big letdown.

Elite Feedback:

Regarding our testing group, our group members were at 270-271CR with approximately 300-360 Skill Points. Artifact levels were mostly at 160, however, a few group members opted to level their Artifacts to 200 to account for reduced stats. The Group consisted of two Rage tanks, a Water and Nature healer, a Gadgets Troller and a mix of Might and Prec DPS.

The first boss encounter is WAY too long. In total, there are 3 waves before the main fight with Cerberus and in Elite, sustaining a fight for that many waves, is exhausting and too repetitive. If a group loses a DPS or Healer during the 2nd or 3rd wave, it's pretty much a wipe, because the fight with Cerberus will require every role for it.

Suggestion : Please reduce the fight to just 1 wave with the lasers and then Cerberus.

Also, please look into the Gorgon's swarm attack. Part of the reason my group failed to complete this raid was because of that attack. The range on that attack is ridiculous. There is no visible tell or warning for the attack and its a one shot. Unfortunately, we couldn't get passed the first boss and while we had some really good attempts, the one shot from the Swarm attack, coupled with the LONG and BORING add waves, completely killed our vibe and we decided to disband.

Normal Feedback:

The first boss encounter isn't too bad because of the reduced stats on the NPCS. With that being said, it is still a tedious fight because of how repetitive it feels. The Gorgon's Swarm attack was not issue in Reg.

The Second boss is another long and boring repetitive fight, I almost fell asleep when I tested it yesterday. *Possible Bug - are the Forged Weapon adds immune to the tank's pull? The tank in the group had trouble pulling them.

The final boss fight is a lot more interesting. It reminds me of Corum Rath, especially during the final phase, when he becomes immune and players need to do a special something to finish him. Question : The Merciless puts on a yellow shield that explodes after receiving a prompt that warns players to break free from the merciless compulsion. Is that a damage check? If so, is it intended for the damage check to overlap with the merciless compulsion mechanic (the bowing)?

Final thoughts.

The regular version is fine in terms of difficulty and it shouldn't be a problem for casuals. The fact that you can fly and avoid pretty much all the mechanics in this raid is something that should be looked at, as no other movement provides this advantage. It still suffers from everything I said in my opening statements. In terms of Elite, I'll provide more feedback when I'm done testing.

Thank you for reading.

Pretty much second that. Different group with cr270 people.

I also have to repeat the Gorgon Snack Handler attack issue that is one-shotting. Seen once 60k absorbed by controller shield + 90k of my entire health. Basically that is 150k damage and still not the whole package. As far as being run yet there wasnt any way to avoid even when Gorgon was on the one side, it still could one shot on the complete opposite of the furthest point of the room. As someone on my stream pointed out, it seems that Gorgon Snake Handler attack is being tuned after the Survival Mode one from R5/15/25.

The fact that this elite raid and almost every other raid in the last few years was beat with last dlc's gear 1st day saddens me. You should NOT be able to beat a brand new elite raid using last dlc's gear. You should need to run other content and build up some gear first like back in the nexus/paradox days.

Then we have some feedback above saying the fights are to long....what do you expect using old gear. If you nerf the stuff now then when fully geared it will be a joke.

Content and gear from dlc to dlc needs a much bigger step up in terms of power so that way the content is a struggle until geared up and then once geared up the elite content is still very difficult. Imo elite content shouldn't become easy until its a dlc old.

Sorry to come off a bit harsh but man do I miss the old days when things used to actually be a challenge. I hope one day we can bring that back to this game cause thats what got so many of us hooked to it.

The instance shows you can walk out to wt/HoD and back in because it’s an operation, but after you walk out, you cannot re walk in from what it looks like, not sure if it’s bugged or?

Did the regular version and in some ways it was nice being back in the amazon environment but in other ways disappointing that it wasn't a new version of themyscira, just re-used content from days gone by.

First boss was ok but it is a long fight, plus if you are knocked out you have a long wait as you are also locked out for the cerberus fight. Shame there could not be a split between those fights allowing knocked out players to rejoin to battle cerberus. Like in Machine where there is a break between rounds of battling Hive Master.

We managed to do first bosses with only one tank and careful dpsing to separate and burn the Phoenix's. I can predict this will be one of those raids that takes ages to get the group together cos we need 2 tanks, that can get irritating when you just want to play.

Second boss was more challenging and first attempt we got seriously burned until we understood the mechanics for the 2nd attempt. I thought this was a more interesting fight but again a bit long winded.

I had to leave at this point so cant feedback any more than that, except on a slight divergence, I am a pretty strong nature dps and normally end of raid I am close behind the Precision damage. With the new levelling of weapon attacks I was 12m behind the precision dps with him on 24m, so I am not sure the levelling has had the desired effect or I suddenly suck as a player.

Overall I enjoyed the raid, well the first 2 segments, and think the ability level for reg version is just about at the right level.

I'm not sure if we're reading the same thread but I don't think anyone here is asking for the elite raids to be beaten on the first day, I know I'm not. But lets get straight to the point. The first boss fight is Cerberus and he ONLY appears after 3 waves of NPCS from GOM...Its basically like fighting Mordru 3 times before getting to the main boss..yeah...its boring and way too repetitive for me. Its the most pointless thing I've ever seen in a raid. Its a huge time sink fighting the same NPCS for 3 waves. I don't know about you, but I can't stand boring and repetitive mechanics that we've already seen before. As of right now, I can't comment on the overall difficulty of this elite raid because of certain bugs.


This for the Charon.

During the first boss fight, Wonder Woman can sometimes pin the NPCS against the walls and corners. Could you please look into this? A lot of crafty players will be looking to pin these NPCS to avoid tanking them directly if this issue isn't addressed.

I get what your saying but after a few days when your geared up those waves will more than likely go by pretty fast.

No amount of gear will change the repetitiveness of this boss fight. In its current state, its unbearable. No fun at all. But hey, maybe some people will be able to stomach this raid for the next 3 months.

I gonna give my personal feedback about this raid, on a tank stand point.

Feedback
I was one of the rage tanks in that Elite run. My cr was 270 sp 313.
Artifact r200: manacles, dislutel, seven.

Before First Boss
Well i dc and wiped all group, h5! But it seemed ok.

First Boss
I was tanking near Ares while the other tank, tanked near the other door. We tried a few strats and there was one that worked on us best. In regards of Stynx a.k.a Pide Piper, i can see him being a problem. His damage maybe abit to high and specialy on 3 wave, is basically impossible for both tanks to keep moving, while tanking 2 more aditional bosses. His attacks are white, wich are hard to see, specially in a daylight map. Maybe if stynx didnt stand stantionary or spawned at the same location we could somehow manage it better. A few of my teammates were also sad, cause thoose waves are hard specially from wave 2 onwards and they give no reward nor there is a checkpoint like on Machine. (We didnt reach Cerberus, we wiped all the time on 3rd wave) (Maybe remove the rally limit on the waves, would slighty fix it?)
The room itself in may opinion is rather small, specially if we tried 3 tanks(2 tanking 1 single pulling).

I think we should be given the gear from this dlc so we can test the elite raids in last dlc's gear then again in the new gear to get a good feel of the difficulty. Using last dlc's gear isn't always the best judgement cause we might think something is to strong but we don't really know cause we do not have the new gear to compare it to and say well I guess with a few pieces of new gear it's not bad.

With the new gear it would also help determine how much of a buff is needed if one is. If we could get elite to a place were we can't beat it in last dlc's gear that would be fantastic!!

Sorry gang, had to be out of office right when this dropped on Test but am back now. I'm prioritizing client fixes currently due to Switch pipelines but after that will address balance and overall feedback/suggestions.

Some notes:

• I plan to shorten the waves for the Ares fight and will balance the Gorgon Snake Handler and Satyr Flutist
• The plan was to introduce new monsters to counter roles - pet class, controller, tank, healer, etc.
  • Currently a lot of these use the same abilities as the ones in GoM and where as i don't see a need to redo things that fit the bill with the roles they are associated with, I do plan to add more stuff to them - hence the note in the Known Issues
  • Examples - the Satyr Flutist will target people with his music and snake charm the snake turrets to attack that target first
  • Minotaurs will Shatter Restraints on those CC'd around him
  • Phoenix healer will pick up and toss you (in general) but also toss you into fire pits created by the Sunblade
• Cerberus should not be healing - please provide video evidence of this
• Operation Teleporter from WT/HoD is fixed and incoming soon
• Drachma Amazons should be controllable in normal but ultimately break out quickly - the best way to manage them is to distract them with damage - in elite they are resistant to CC so a very high dominance is needed for them but they aren't immune
• I can look into lowering forged weapon numbers
• They are intended to be tankable but they are tethered close to the anvils they guard, until that anvil has been struck then they are free to fly
• Merciless bow/worship attack isn't a damage check but rather, if you break out of the worship animation fast enough and block then you will survive, at least more likely than you will when not blocking and still stuck in that worship animation
• Lava eruptions and lightning strikes will soon ground you if you are over them right before they do their thing
• Lightning strikes I cobbled together with auras, fx and some form changes so thanks for that, while they aren't a particular mechanic other than environmental awareness - there will be feats associated with them