Test Discussion Episode 16: "Desecrated Cathedral" Alert & Elite Alert PC Test feedback thread

I was thinking about some of those instances while running the Elite alert today. I maintained an active villain character during that time period and dealing with the reflect mechanic everyday wasn't fun. It was always easy to tell who had played on villain side when Love & War first came out. Villains knew when to stop attacking on the Wonder Woman fight. Heroes generally didn't at first.

The reflect mechanic just feels worn out at this point, especially after being used in some of the HoP II content.

Um..... Round 8 of SM came out before that with Donna Troy. Most of the good heroes knew about the LnW reflect before well it dropped.

FOS3 Medics
Bottle Duo boss (forgive me, forget his name, the transforming one.) DLC3
Sentry DLC7 (It was a minor reflect? Or am I remembering wrong?)
Knightsdome Duo Wonder Woman DLC 8
Tunnel of Lust Duo Donna Troy DLC 8
Them Divided Wonder Woman DLC10
Love and War Wonder Woman DLC12
Thorne of the Dead Hades DLC13 (In a way Punishers are a reflect as they absorb damage and hit back based on amount absorbed.)
Happiness Home First boss and Lashina both have a reflect attack. DLC14
Of course two of the SMs had them too.

There is quite a bit of use of Wonder Woman themed that have the reflect attacks. I'm not sure if it is an over abundance of reflect, but they do seem to use it in the instances that are harder.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. We're looking into the things brought up in this thread, and I will try to address them as quickly as I can. Cheers!

It's definitely an interesting Alert, especially with it being "Elite" that's for sure. As always, I will be speaking from an Élite & Competent perspective:

Normal Version:

Once everything is mastered to perfection, this is a 4DPS fest again just as Fatal Exams. Yes, that includes Raven. Since we have unlimited revives in Normal, 4DPS is the optimal way to go. But of course, this can only be done by the Élite & Competent.

Elite Version:

Once everything is mastered to perfection, everything leading up to Raven is a 4DPS fest. Don't worry, videos will be up when the time comes to proove this. Due to the limited Revives and her reflect ability, I can confidently say Elite Raven CANNOT be done without AT LEAST 1 Support Role (preferably a Tank at best). So for Elite Raven, the optimal setup for her will be 3 DPS and a Tank. But again, this is for the Élite & Competent.

As far as Raven's Reflect is concerned:



As it stands right now 99% of the Populous will be INCAPABLE of CONSISTENTLY defeating Elite Raven with her current Reflect mechanic. Personally, I LOVE it. It's fast, powerful, and keeps EVERYONE in the group on their toes. It is PREDICTABLE and can most certainly be avoided. Watch the above video to learn how you can CONSISTENTLY defeat Elite Raven.

Since it was our 1st attempt in the Alert, we did many Trial and Error and learned alot from using 1-1-1-1. But now that we know what to do, we will be increasing our DPS to AT LEAST 3 moving forward.

Final Feedback: Excellent Alert, no changes at all needed (as far as the Alert Mechanics are concerned). The majority of the Populous will be able to complete the Normal Version. However, ONLY the Élite & Competent will be able to CONSISTENTLY complete the Elite Version in a timely manner, and of course, this is intended.

All in All, for the Élite & Competent, the Normal Version will be a 10 minute run (MAX), and the Elite Version will be a 15 minute run (MAX).

My people and I are looking forward to being Full Elite and Max Geared within 48hrs tops once this hits live. Until then....

As always > Stay Competent!

Yeah, Reflect is overused. And this new trend of not providing a significant tell is particularly annoying, especially when you're running a powerset with which it is difficult (or impossible) to halt attacks. It ends up being a tedious exercise in pickups. Sure, the Tank can communicate subtle tells, but all we need is a small latency difference combined with the time from the Tank seeing the tell and communicating it, a combo powerset, like Celestial, and we have no chance. To keep from dying, I have to halt my combo and jump cancel the attack. Ran HH with the league last couple nights. All on TS with good communication. Still went down repeatedly to Lashina. Makes me not want to even run the content. Must say, I'm not looking forward to the new alert, if it releases like this.

Hey all. Just to follow up, there will be some fixes coming soon to the PCTest server to address some of the feedback brought up over the weekend and today.

The issue with player-characters getting stuck in the door on the floor of the Jared fight will take a little longer to fix, but we're working on a solution. In the meantime, I've reduced his and James' aggro a bit so you're at least less likely to engage them unintentionally.

The boss fight resets will behave differently so a linkdead player won't keep a fight from resetting once the patch make it out.

Raven's 'Reflection' ability will have a tell soon, and I'll pass the feedback along that similar mechanics are feeling overused to some folks. It will also fire less frequently once the patch gets published.

Thanks again, and feel free to chime in with more feedback (particularly once we get these fixes out)!

PS. I forgot to mention, we're working on a fix for the elite mode loot lock issues reported as well.

Finally got to run the normal version last night with league mates. Not bragging, but we 3 manned it because we couldn't/didn't want to find another person. (One of the members used a friend's account and queued with a 4th that was just a body.) Fun alert, and was quite challenging with only 3 people. Jared posed the biggest problem because we were finding our groove as a 3 man team, only wiped on Raven once because all hell broke loose when she spawned her soul projections. Can't wait to mess around with elite, but it will likely wait til it goes live.