Test Discussion Episode 36: Damage Control Alert

Welcome to the 4 player operation- Damage Control. Here you'll travel across the galaxy from Oa to Atlantis, confronting Dawnbreaker and the Drowned.

There are 2 modes - Event and Normal ready for testing and feedback.

Please post feedback and bug reports here.

@Charon:

What is the Suggested Dominance for the normal version of the instance? I'm not seeing one in the description?

11894

That'll be updated tomorrow as well. Thanks for the catch.

Feedback
Dawnbreaker's "Bat Attack" that lifts you up into the air is hard to see in Oa Science Cells. The floor emblem is about the same shade of green as the rest of the room.

I fixed an issue just now that'll go up tomorrow that let the bats lift you after the FX were gone. That'll help. I can also brighten the alpha a bit to make it stand out more.

Feedback
On the final fight, will the Drowned always do her "Big Health Percentage" attack even if you successfully do the mirror mechanic?

It seems like it might be possible to use the mirrors to avoid damage from that attack. I was standing behind a console when it happened and I was the only one not taking damage.

How are you supposed to figure out when you need oxygen? I didn't see any meters.

• It's a Line of Sight attack and you can hide behind things to avoid the damage. There may be a race condition but if you do the mirrors in time then it stops her attack and she gets stunned in bright light. The race condition could be present if you do the mirrors right when she's doing the attack as the timer wears off. I'll look into that.
  • She will still break the mirrors after the 2nd time it happens with a similar attack but that blast doesn't do damage but destroys mirrors and knocks people back. This last attack will likely change to something else that I had in mind but wasn't able to get in before this weekend.
• You always need oxygen when underwater. There will be more messaging from midscreens but you start taking drowning damage as soon as you enter the water. The tick and combat log should indicate that. She won't fight you until you engage her so you can figure out the correlation from the bubble patches, the timers, and the damage you take or don't take if you are on the air patches. Currently they also provide a bit of healing as well.

Question
Is the Drowning damage based on a percentage of your health or is it fixed damage?

Both times I've run the alert, general fight visibility goes to heck once the Drowned fight enters its final stage. There is a lot going on with NPCs, oxygen rings, the boss, player pets, translucent tornadoes, orbital strikes, and player visuals going off in a relatively confined area. Also I noticed some type of coral pattern forming on the floor at various points. Not sure what it does.

Feedback
One thing I noticed is that even if you get out of the way of the "Bat Airlift" symbol, you can still get hit by it:


I saw the emblem on the ground, lunged off of it, and still got hit. Am I supposed to block instead?

During the Bat Construct portion of the fight, those things have a bad habit of boxing you in.

Bug Report
Every time I've run the alert so far, the "Metal Construct" on the Dawnbreaker fight always does a T-pose immediately after its summoning scene.

Drowning = percentage.

• I can remove the oxygen rings on the ground, if the timer icons are enough. There was internal feedback to put it there at the last minute.
• I'm awaiting more feedback on the adds in that last fight as they are weak adds but were there to implicate a swarm of sea creatures. I can add fewer but increase them to group minions and matches instead of normal minions and matches.
• FX and players (and their orbital strikes, she doesn't have any) and henchmen, sorry not much to do about that.
• The "coral" are pools of Dead Water. Standing in them will damage you and apply Dead Water splashes which do worse and worse things to you the longer you let them accumulate.

• I fixed an issue with the levitate in general for the bat column so that may help with that. That goes out tomorrow. You can block the bats to keep from levitating you but damage is applied (lesser if blocked). It's best to roll out of it so I can shrink it a bit, it matches the damage volume so I'm not sure what that's about.

Yeah I've tried with limited success to make him have another default idle. It got weird so it got removed until I have time to tweak it more. I plan to.

Question
Is Hal Jordan's Strafing Run attack disabled for the Dawnbreaker fight? I can see that causing some confusion if it overlaps with Dawnbreaker's attack that has similar visual effects.

I'm not sure what to recommend for that last part of the fight.

I think both the meters and rings need to remain for the Oxygen. The Oxygen bubble area seems to be fairly small.

Things definitely get hectic with all of the adds in the fight. It can be tricky doing the mirror mechanic with the adds attacking you. I can appreciate a "swarm of sea beasts" is needed for the final section to demonstrate the Drowned's power. Those adds don't seem particularly dangerous, but they do cause the screen to become very busy.

The Dead Water stuff looks too much like the Metal pools from the Dawnbreaker fight. When you're in the middle of that scrum, it is hard differentiating the Dead Water damage from the normal Drowned damage. It can also be a bit hard to see.

It is now. As is T'Larto's.

Feedback
One thing I noticed while reviewing video is that the red warning arrow for the "Beast Construct" (I think that is the Sea Beast construct) in the Dawnbreaker fight isn't always being displayed. That can lead to some surprise spike damage. I know that arrow was problematic in the Corum Rath fight at times. The same thing seems to be happening again here with the arrow randomly not being displayed.

Question:
Is it intended that we're not able to attack the Drowned in the last stage of the Boss fight, while Standing in an air bubble?

Yes, the bubbles (that protect you from the DoT) and heal you also suppress you. Messaging (vo and mid screen) is incoming. You don't get to sit in a spot and avoid damage and heal and be able to fire on the enemy. Besides, you need to concentrate on catching your breath.

The Sigils in the Taurus room protect you from the Taurus constructs from detecting you and will later protect you from room wide damage bursts that have yet to be implemented.

me and my friends tested the regular version of alert now, and:

1. Adds have a lot of health
2. Mechanics in the Drowned fight felt like it was raids Mechanics
3. Feedback from a friend in the group, remove the swimming movement if possible in the Drowned fight
4. Mirrors part - We got them all to the light but still got hit, there were no instructions on screen
5. Dawnbreaker fight - Constructs hits too hard

• Adds may change to normal adds at some point over the next couple weeks, experimenting with more chumps and solo minions/matches with increased health (but they do less damage) to inspire a swarm feeling
  • If that doesn't get the job done then there will be less of them but they will be normal group rank minions and adds so will hit harder but less bodies to contend with
• Swimming isn't going anywhere.
• I'll look into the race condition for the Mirrors. Think I know a fix for it when the timing is super close for both going off around the same time. Question - did she do the stunned action and bright light hit here in the center of the room? Or did she just nuke?
• Which constructs? Surely not the wave monster ones since they are solo level adds with adjust health. Do you mean the big metal construct that splits off little living metal creatures?