Test Discussion Episode 40: Flashtastic Voyage (Raid)

Discussion in 'Testing Feedback' started by Mepps, Apr 2, 2021.

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  1. JackFrost Developer

    Thanks for sharing all of your feedback! I'm back from my unexpected time away from office and am catching up on the threads related to this Raid.
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  2. zNot Loyal Player

    Hello jackfrost Has the raid itself apart from bugs and minor changes from what ive seen on the patchnotes not seen a major elite balancing? For example Gorilla grodds HP is really not optimal for a Elite raid it is too low alongside some other things. Will there be more changes next week to fix these kind of things because you are holding off on the changes so more people can Test it? Or is He intented to have such low HP and to be Solo tanked with previous Episode stats?

    I couldnt Test the second and the Last bossfight but i would suggest to look at those HP and damage output done from normal weapon attacks aswell as the overall Tanking difficulty because something that is mediocore difficulty on Test server will be a easy thing on Live servers and for Elite this shouldnt be the case.

    Is there nobody that can give feedback about this Elite raid second and last boss or is it all done secretly by sending private DM so the raid gets adjusted on their favor? I would suggest again to check on grodds HP and hes damage output of weapon attacks to the Tank.

    the dev Quixotic that works on the ep.40 Elite alert currently so far has done the biggest and best improvments imo if possible can he help with the elite raid aswell?
  3. JackFrost Developer

    Hey! I had a family emergency and therefore was unable to make any adjustments last week. I've been working through the feedback and bug reports, and have been making changes. One change I made last evening was increasing Grodd's health in Elite mode, though I may have forgotten to write a patch note about that change. I'll be continuing to adjust things as quickly as I can, but want to make sure I don't introduce any new bugs at the same time. Thanks again for the feedback, to you and the others who have posted. I apologize the changes/updates haven't been quicker to roll out.
    • Like x 5
  4. zNot Loyal Player

    Hey

    Im Sorry to hear that i hope that it will get better for your family i wish the people involved quick recovery and best wishes!

    And Thanks for telling us!
    • Like x 1
  5. JackFrost Developer

    This should be fixed now. Thanks for reporting!
  6. JackFrost Developer

    I'm excited to see any further feedback, particularly for the elite mode, if folks are able to play over this coming weekend. I recall reading that there was someone who felt that the size of the deadly fields in the Grodd room may be a bit too big in Elite mode. I'm curious, with the changes that have gone in to delay damage-dealing of those fields for a bit, whether it's still too challenging. Additionally, it may not have been obvious that players are able to make those fields go away. Regardless, thanks again for playtesting, and further refinements should be making it out to the test server soon (I suspect tomorrow, for the weekend, but am not 100% sure).
    • Like x 1
  7. JackFrost Developer

    This discussion about survivability of non-tanks and tanks is interesting, and the issue is a tough nut to crack. On the one hand, we don't want a stray standard or weapon attack to one-shot random DPS players, for example if the only tank in a group is turned into a gorilla. On the other hand, we do want a challenge for tanks. And that challenge may vary from fight to fight. Certainly I don't think every fight being a kite-fest is great, but your mileage may vary. I'm happy to hear suggestions (via PMs or on this thread) about trying to thread that needle of making a good challenge for tanks, without making it a crummy experience for one reason or another. Cheers!
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  8. Scytthe Well-Known Player

    Hello, I think the dlc looks really great, I just hope the raids are hard and that they require some sort of communication between players.
    Because raids like the one we have in the current dlc is nothing else than a dps check and an artefact check.

    I miss raids like nexus of reality and paradox wave (speed feat) where you had to communicate with you group and have some team play between the players.
    Or a raid like prime battleground was the perfect example of a raid where a competent group could do it while a less good group had to adapt and get better as better.

    This game needs some much harder content for the players and the leagues that like some challenge.


    The hardest content in the game shouldn’t be doable the first day. It releases, and sadly this is what will inevitably happen again because of how op artefacts are and how op gadgets dps etc can be.

    I’d like this game to have much harder content because the raid we have in this dlc in doable by anyone with high artfacts, that’s all it requires, mechanics are bad, they also have many graphical issues like the laser beam on the second boss.

    One thing I’d like to had (I’m a tank) full gear and completed many times the elite current raid, and the camera and the place where we have to tank the first boss is absolutely terrible, it is aswell hard to see what the boss is doing when we have that many adds on us. Tanking there is only difficult for 2 reasons, the reasons are you can’t juggle the adds, and the visibility is very very bad.
    I hope we have a much better camera and more space to tank in the flashpoint raids.
    • Like x 1
  9. Proxystar #Perception

    I absolutely agree that there should be no cheap one shots in this game, I'd be quite happy with the odd two or three shot punish happening periodically if the tank doesn't pay attention, but not a cheap one shot. This then requires the tank to pay attention to what's going on and not stack mistakes and also provides a check on the healer to monitor the tank, but never a one shot.

    I'm happy to hear you equally think not every fight should be a kite-fest and I appreciate the fact no two fights are ever going to be consistent, I think that's what's most important that there's a healthy level of variation.
    • Like x 2
  10. AV Loyal Player

    A way to address both tank vs non-tank survivability and protect against server issues could be to adjust where the weight of the damage lies in boss' combos, having the initial build up hits be a bit toned down and the "you done messed up letting me get this far into the combo" hits be more dangerous. This would also reinforce the importance of mastering the counter system.

    SM R30 Zeus is a good example of how this philosophy could be effectively applied to regular/elite content (and also of why it's important). His initial lunge damage is survivable but letting him land a 2nd hit if the 1st wasn't countered is generally fatal (even to a tank but obviously that'd be different in normal content). He's also an example of how not adjusting for the threat of server instability can be cheesy due to the fact his shield-pen RA taps will get clipped/stacked on top of each other every once and a while by the server if it has a stutter (which is unsurvivable even to someone who could normally live through 3 taps due to how the damage gets processed). It would be a bit of work determining how to best adjust the weight and boss behaviour but would be effective and result in pretty much all of the buggy cheesiness being removed without fights feeling easy if done correctly.
  11. zNot Loyal Player

    Hey,

    i definetly get what you are saying that if the only Tank gets turned into a gorilla it would be game over but my question could it be made so that the person that stands close to the boss (which should be the Tank) cant get turned into a gorilla at all? Or the Person that holds aggro of the Boss cant get turned into a gorilla? Or is this not changeable? This will force him to stay near the boss and you could adjust the gorilla grodd knowing it based on this knowledge.

    And what proxy said is what i would agree with overall. Make it hard on the Tank but no one-shots it should be multiple very large and it would also fit in the image of a enraged gorilla grodd in Elite version, the elite Boss should be the Tanks biggest concern :) alongside the few adds which do die really quick anyways.

    And for the last boss of this elite Raid which could be interesting too on the Tank(s) and we do need to remember that people can still use 2 Tanks for that fight depending on how the adjustments are going to be there for Elite if there are things that you wanted to do in the first boss fight to Challenge the Tank but couldnt do due to fixxed reasons id suggest doing that in this bossfight further especially knowing that 2 Tanks are a option or maybe even a requirement if you wish to do so i would support that and that would put more room for adjustments on the Tanks.

    Also the last bossfight has alot of room to Kite as a Tank which is not good.

    And i think having the second boss fight being easyier/easy on the Tank is fine and Thank you for focusing more on Tanking difficulty alot of the times this gets overlooked at.
  12. Proxystar #Perception

    I'm not sure whether this was the intention on what you were saying, but if it was, dare I say it, but I'm not sure I agree with over tuning any content to be similar to that of the upper rounds of survival mode lol, I think that's probably a bit much and that sorta thing can stay in that instance where it's more appropriate.

    When I say tanks should be taking big shots I certainly don't intend that to mean even every shot or every single second or third shot should be a killer if not countered correctly. In my opinion there should be periods where they are though, to ensure the tank is continuing to pay attention, similar to that of a skull attack, but nonsense like in SM where every single focus blast is a one shot, unless you're ducking, dodging or lunge spamming and hanging around in grey zones, yeah massive no from me, no offense intended.
    • Like x 2
  13. zNot Loyal Player

    And i agree with this too the thing is that the difficulty needs to be shifted towards the Support rolls (mainly the Tank since it all starts with the Tank) currently its just as you as a DPS check without real challenge from a support roll perspective.

    The support roll difficulty needs to be higher in Elite raids,the current way of 5 DPS setups in a 8 man elite raids and a buff/battle troller lets us rush through it quickly which also makes the elite content much easyier then the devs have intented to and leaves us bored quickly into a episode.

    Theres no real teamwork involved with such a pure heavy DPS setup and yes Raids like nexus and paradox were prime examples of very well designed raids that werent about simple damage output checks of DPS but about the Tank doing his Job and not dying while doing so and healer helping him to survive constantly which creates this teamwork in between the support rolls and kiting wasnt a thing back then either which forced Tanks to actually Tank.

    Also currently we have way more single target damage (DWFS/gadget DPS/artifacts)then we had back then which makes this 5 DPS damage setup even worse plus as i said the buff troller.

    Another thing is that (which ties with the thing i said earlier too much DPS in the group) The fights in Elite raids should take us some decent time to finish i would say around 10 minutes because a elite boss that dies in around 5 minutes or under feels really underwhelming and feels rushed and adds that die so quickly before they are even able to do something take away difficulty from Tanks aswell.
    • Like x 1
  14. AV Loyal Player

    Not overtuning, adjusting the weight of existing combo tuning. I'm not saying to make things hit like they do in SM. Right now we can practically ignore the counter system in standard content though, so I'm saying having boss combos weight the damage more the deeper into the combo they get would allow for reduced cheese but also promote players actually countering effectively.
  15. zNot Loyal Player

    Countering the boss isnt that difficult look at SM it would be too simple also group members can counter it for you this is not really what the dev should focus on,the boss regardless of the Tank doing counters or not should be a big and constant threat (without doing one shots) if the Tank doesnt do the counters he should get punished but as i said counters alone arent enough to threaten the Tank.

    Should there be things the tank has to counter? Yes but it shouldnt be the main source of danger about the Elite bosses,the Boss itself should be the threat constantly with attacks that cant be countered with attacks the tank has to deal with.

    Thats why Tanking SM vs Tanking Elite raids is different but what SM shows is that we as Tanks are very Strong and can take in massive damage and this is what Elite raids are missing again no one shots but overall higher threat to the Tank(s).
  16. AV Loyal Player

    No but it would also mean that the bosses getting immunity would actually mean something. Like I can utterly ignore the counter system while tanking standard elite content at pretty much no increased risk as is. I'm not saying to make them the only threat, I'm just saying that having the tail-end of a boss' combos have a greater weight of the combo damage would make the counter system & boss immunity less trivial while also avoiding SM-style scaling that results in kiting. Would shift things from "combos can't kill me and I can ignore them" to "most of a combo can't kill me but if i ignore it completely it's gonna hit me hard enough that, if there's other damage coming in, I might die." Gives us a reason to care. Damage from boss' counterable attacks is way out of whack atm with the instant damage ones being the most threatening and the heavily forecast ones being low-threat.
  17. zNot Loyal Player

    Sure counters can be made more deadly enough to make the Tank care about it i agree with that but that is not enough first we need to make the other parts of the bosses itself dangerours to give constant danger to the Tank(s) thats what proxxystar and me and Scytthe were giving feedback about.
  18. AV Loyal Player

    I don't think it's possible like that without forcing every tank to kite in every situation. As a Fire tank, the content that plays to my Strengths already requires me to be balls out in combat and if was tweaked to a point I couldn't actually hang in combat anymore my entire kit falls apart and I become a poor-man's ice tank + am forced to kite nonstop, (eg. CTe fb causes this if solo tanking, even now to a degree). Similarly, Ice tanks already struggle in fights that play to their weaknesses for similar reasons and pushing the general DPS-in any higher would kinda screw them altogether. Seems like they've already pushed the boundaries of raw damage-in and DPS-in to the limits. I think all they can really do in that regard is continue to have content with a balanced approach where one boss is good with a specific tank power and another boss isn't as good for that power and better for another.
  19. zNot Loyal Player

    The first boss of clocktower i said it a few posts earlier on this thread is not how it should be the reason why people were kiting that extreme was for the random one shots that were happening.

    Me and proxxy said no random one shots so what exactly is your point? Do you fear that tanks have finally show they skill of surviving and not kiting away? It seems like you are kiting Tank which explains why you try to find excuses.
    In elite raids fire Tanks can do anything a ice tank can do if you arent good with it dont confuse the dev,Thanks.

    If you think you are going to perform better with ice then go Ice if not dont complain to try to ruin the experience of others by saying they‘ve pushed the boundaries of raw damage in to the limits this is litteraly the opposite in the Elite Raids otherwise there wouldnt be me,proxxy and Scytthe (we are all Tanks) saying similar things.
  20. AV Loyal Player

    If they did that then Fire & Rage would be completely unkillable (and if they toned up DPS-in to compensate then Ice would get constantly wrecked). Things that seem like cheap one-shots to one power are trivial to another. Steady DPS-In that Fire shrugs off is an issue for Ice. Burst eHP designed to challenge Ice will nearly instagib soft tanks.

    If they try to make it so every tank power can't get burst down then fights become completely trivial to other tank powers. For example, CTe FB isn't hard/cheap for an Ice tank. Conversely, Fire curbstomps Trigon but Ice has to work a bit more for it. It's virtually impossible to challenge an Ice tank in a situation built for an Ice tank without making it completely impossible for every other tank and vice versa. Bosses are burst-eHP checks or DPS-in/HoT checks and if they they go middle of the road the only thing left to actually kill tanks is Simon Says/Team Jumprope mechanics.
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