Dev Discussion Episode 31: 'The Threat Below' Raid

So you're telling me, a mechanic that's intended to one shot people if they don't follow it, is supposed to be negated with a shield? Cause if that's what you're saying, there's really nothing to discuss further....

I view shields as something to pop if someone dies, or if multiple people go down, then yeah pop a shield SC so people can pick everyone up.

The tentacles will kill people if both are left up, fact. The smaller tentacles take away about 60% of your health while the large tentacles take away about 90%. You kill one of those, no one needs to pop any shields and the damage dealt can be healed back up. Of course as always in this game, people would rather take the easy way out and throw all the responsibility at the support roles to make sure they stay alive. DPS aren't allowed to have responsibilities.

Plus the fact of the matter is SC builds up so quickly, you don't even really need to rotate anything. We had one electric heal popping a group shield SC the whole time in one run cause they were getting their SC back up that fast. Folks complain how elite is too easy and trivial but always look for the smallest crutches to make it easier.

Its not random... first it hits only the furthest player and second Starro is using it only after the rotation phase meaning Starro rotates 3 times back and forth and after he is using that laser beam attack or a skull attack followed by the laser beam, players can pay attention to Starro movement and 100% avoid it by blocking at right time and thats how we do it, no1 has to die unless u try to do the feat by carrying the stones and u have to decide risking to die or droping the stone and block, i say keep it the way it is without the raid is a joke.

I think a fair counter to the notion that shields are not a legitimate method for the tentacles is Manta's bomb mechanic. On screen text specifically warns that shields won't work to avoid damage from it.

If shields weren't a legitimate method for the tentacles, they'd be ineffective just as they are for Manta's bombs.

The speed in which supercharges build is irrelevant because again you're acting like the move isn't there to be built up in the first place or that the move is only supposed to be built up for your designated purpose.

You're pigeon holing the move and saying "it must be used in the way I use it or say it should be used, or else it's cheese".

shields aren't just there to pop if someone dies, they're there to be used whenever it might provide an advantage to overcome content.

the mechanic is intended to one shot people when they "don't mitigate the mechanic" there are two ways to mitigate against it, either find a way to absorb or mitigate the damage or remove the source of the damage.

You're acting like shielding against the damage is the same as hiding in the window frame.

What I'm telling you is this doesn't have to be a DPS check, it can be just as much a support role co-ordination check, you've just decided one way is inferior.

Just for the avoidance of doubt here's the move



it doesn't actually say "must be used to do pick ups" etc. It's actually more generically aimed at "protect yourself and seven others from damage".

So it's working exactly as intended on the tentacles.

Exactly true, the developers have decided that on that occasion they don't want shielding because that skill check is more about ensuring the group are communicating as a whole.

That's a fair counter argument. I can agree with that.

I still stand by my original stance though, I dislike the easy method of just having the healer and troll responsible for a mechanic. Not all healers use a group sheild, they're forced to use a specific power and/or loadout with this method. This puts a hindrance on certain healer powers like celestial, since their group SC only sheilds the 7 other group members and not themselves, so we have to use regular blessing as well to make sure we're covered. That restricts our loadout and flexibility.

It's really not hard to turn attention to the nearest tentacle and kill it.

I don't think it's a good idea to limit people's options for dealing with content. Different groups can approach a mechanic in different ways. Take Solomon Grundy for example. In one group, the tank does his job but grundy still jumps towards rest of the group, requiring that they block/roll/run away! Another tank might try to physically block grundy from moving. Another tank might drop backup to help pin him. Another tank might try to attrack him to a natural outcropping to keep him stuck there. Are any or all of these cheese?

I dislike people using repair bots, etc. to escape mechanics because they're not powers or actually part of the game. I dislike people stuffing bosses in areas of scenery that are broken, or throwing barrels in gorilla form at things to move them places they shouldn't be. But people using the powers on their loadout in creative ways is actually a good thing in my personal opinion.

However, if the devs see that groups are totally bypassing an important mechanic (and just like you, it irks me that people refuse to burn down even the large tentacles) there's a simple solution: buff the damage to match. The small tentacle could stay the same as now, so shielding is fine. The medium tentacle would be strong enough to take even shielded characters to a small fraction of health (10 %?) and the large one would automatically wipe the group, shields or not. All of this for elite of course.

Another idea is to stagger the tentacles only slightly, so if left up, first medium would hit, and then a few seconds later the small one, not giving healers enough time to heal to full before the next hit.

Usually i would say whatever works for the group is ok for me but it becomes a problem when certain healer classes get prioritized such as Water cause of non SC group shields and others getting denied like Nature and i think Sorcery aswell who do not have group shields for the whole raid not even as a Supercharge just for the sake of stubbornness.... let the dps do their job or ********* disband.

I think it depends on the group dynamic, I did it with the shields and taking out the tentacles, ran it with a nature healer. a sorcery healer, water and celestial none had issues. What was and is lacking is communication on what to do when and how some people refusing to get into voice chat than they left because we wiped. Ran ttb - elite 12 times over the weekend on different toons with different groups all it took was communication.

As far as shields go that has been around for as long as I can remember being originally a Gadgets troll. I would get kicked from not having a group shield first thing I used to be asked what power set=gadgets poof kicked. This happened a lot back in HOH days even in DWF that is the community itself.

Shields are there for more than pick-ups as a troll it dumps power back to the group. I don't understand why shields need to be nerfed, tired of always hearing something needs to be nerfed because people step outside of the box and do things different from other people or use the few brain cells they have to figure things out.

Powers are and always have provided different advantages and disadvantages.

Part of this game is knowing your groups make up and powers including your own.

This is exactly the diffrrent dynamics that result in different methods with neither being more correct than the others.

If you don't have the shields then burn. If you do have shields then do one or the other.

Part of the game requires you to work as a group with the differences in power creating unique circumstances.

It is not a lazy way out to co-ordinate your shields within a group, it's just a different skill check.

No one is forcing anyone to be a certain power btw.

Absolutely, it's because people have a very narrow view of what they find to be acceptable and what they consider to be cheese.

Using the windows is obviously cheesy but in saying that too as cheesy as it is its not going out of bounds.

The Devs decided they didn't like it so they closed it off.

There is however like you say nothing cheesy about using a power you've been given to overcome a mechanic.

Shields are a legitimate strategy to prevent incoming damage.

Paradox was another example of timing shields. You would time them for when the adds appeared after sub bosses were defeated, because it protected the group.

There's nothing oh **** about that moment or needing to pick people up it was about strategically preventing death.

That's the thing about shields they're not reactionary by default like some people expect they're both preventative and reactionary.

A good player knows when to use them when most effective not just because the bars at 100%.

Gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them...

This is a perfect example of the elite mentality.

Let’s look at Pan E. In the Owlman boss fight, how many notice the damage timer on the two machine gun robots? On your elite runs, did you turn all DPS attention to burning those bots? You were being told to do it. That’s why the damage timer was there.

Now in TTBE, we have the exact same damage timer on tentacles. We’re told that indicates your only course of action is supposed to be dpsing the tentacles. That’s why the damage timer is there, right? Just like in Pan E.

The Elite mentality is based on what they can do and what they think you can’t do. Even the best DPS will have trouble burning down those bots in the Pan E Owlman fight (the health pool is too high); so just pop a shield or move and ignore that one. But burning tentacles? Those lazy shield popping noobs can’t keep up with me!

This is why the dev team should pay careful attention to this elite feedback. Notice the contradictions over time.

It certainly lends an amusing irony to the vitriol I get for wanting normal versions to be within my comfort zone.

Comparing the tentacles that have a lot LESS health then the bots, and the bots aren't as easily prone to wipe the group automatically renders your comparison useless. Kid multiverse had a much better comparison then this and one I agreed with.

Just wish people would stop trying so hard to reach for the smallest niches to make a statement...

This exactly. It's common knowledge electric healers have the best group shield SC, as well as water having the best damage absorbtion of any healer. Let's see how long it takes before people start requesting certain powers

The damage timer is there on the bots in Pan E. By what is being said, you are ignoring the mechanic. There is no picking and choosing. There is no what you like or what you think is important. The mechanic is there. You are ignoring it.

This is what we’re being told to believe.

This is exactly it.

The devs truly do need to filter through the nonsense feedback and see it for what it is.

I'm sorry Fatal but you don't get to pick and choose your content when it suits your argument.

The reality is players abilities as a group and a group determine if they pass content and sometimes there is more ways to beat content than what might be your designated preference.

Players are entitled to use powers they have at their disposal to beat content and there is nothing wrong with that.

It sounds like your problem is you've decided the tentacles are a dps check and you're unprepared to accept any potential alternative, despite the alternative being completely legitimate.

The other sort of nonsense feedback I've seen going on is people complainig about how easy content is when they spammed replays day one or had left over spores, enough at times to buy full sets of gear before they even entered content.

Unfortunately devs you created a scenario where converting marks 1:1 in itself has created an environment where difficulty perception is being skewed.

There is a big difference between running these raids at 218, 228 or 238 and all of the in between.

I have noticed a lot of the people providing feedback are doing so from a position of being 234+

Some people need to be a bit more genuine, when you're spamming a DLC to oblivion so you can gear up in the first weekend what were you expecting to happen to the difficulty?!

It was meant to provide a more progressive difficulty curve over time, but you the player decided to circumvent that when you replayed it to death day one, now that's on you guys not the devs.

What are you expecting the devs do? Cater difficulty to the few leagues and players who want to spam reset day one so your challenge remains in place?

back to meaningful adjustments, plz increase the scale number for the Tornado-model used by controlled Aquaman , whats up with the mini tornado anyway its freaking Aquaman we talking here about, LOL

I agree with u that there are multiple ways to beat content and players can use what powers they want (unless it's used in a way that it's clearly a exploit, like clownbox), shields are there to block damage and if the devs wanted the shields to not block the damage, they would make the attacks in a way that they pierce shields (like black manta bombs).

But i don't agree that the low difficulty was a result of having gear because of the marks conversion or because people reseted it. Elite content was beaten day 1 without any new gear by multiple groups, elite was supposed (at least afaik) to be beaten by the majority of the "elite" players when they are full of the new gear or almost full and beaten by the "best of the elite" when they have at least some gear equipped, but it should still be a challenge, like the last boss of TOTDe (after the long balance process) and UMe.

That's not what happened in any of the elite raids we had in the past months, a random group of players who knew the basics like block, lunge, debuff, stunn was many, many times able to beat the recent elite raids relatively easy without any new gear. The basics are supposed to be requirements of the normal raid, not the elite version. If the elite raids were hard, players would first run the normal one, get gear and then do the elite raid, this is the point where the raid should be hard, before that it should be almost unbeatable. That makes the episode last longer and the omnipotence stats worth the time spent. Atm they can just skip the first process, proceed to elite and beat it without any issues.

The vision players have of elite content in my opnion is distorted, there are many here who think a raid like TTBE should be beatable in the first 2 weeks or it's bugged/too hard, that's not true, maybe during monthly content it sometimes was, but we are over that. It doesn't matter if you are full or not, the elite raid should be hard and demand different skills from all the roles involved, not just the basic ones.

And just as a comment, not really related to the reply. In my opnion buffing a raid live isn't a good solution, you remove all the fun of doing a hard raid and the credit for beating the raid/getting the elite gear, we had a lot of feedback (mostly for SSe, but also for TTBE) and almost all of the buffs were just "slight", that's not the way you do it, dear devs.

Unlike the tentacles, the bots take a few phases to kill and aren't as prone to wipe the group if you don't kill them. It's not picking and choosing. You're straight up comparing apples to oranges and trying to pin it as hypocrisy. It's not going to work like that. Support roles do not need to spam sheilds to keep peiope alive.