One Death in Elite Content No Longer Needed?

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by BumblingB, Sep 20, 2021.

  1. 9001BPM Steadfast Player

    Actually, that grapple hook does have some use for grabbing consoles and rallies… not that the latter is amazingly useful for elite but still… :(
  2. Great Architect Loyal Player


    But it is manifestly how it is. If they do not think that is Elite, then that would not be what they release. I'll go with the argument that solos and duos are the way to garner Renown if you're not a group player and IMO that's fine, but also not the issue.

    I'm not digging at Obsidian personally. I can't - he has admitted that Celestial is his weakest power. He simply doesn't understand my powerset the way I do. There aren't any 25% Healer SCs to abuse EOG, for instance. And Celestial has the worst group shield in history at 100% SC and asking you to die unless the Tank is expecting it. Sacred Ground has similar issues - another 100% SC that doesn't even show it's AoE graphically like e.g. Sorcery or Water do.

    And hence I'm told that no Healer in his experience uses PHR + Orb.
    • Like x 2
  3. xxHELLSTROKExx Loyal Player

    Well, he said orb/phr/page and I was the one that countered that by saying I do and have solo healed all elites haha. Sorcery. I've tried celestial a few times and always end up bailing on it. And I get what you're saying but he (and others) generally say to use trans/ strat because it's a money saver as well as doing healer and dps roles very well. It just so happens that those are considered meta. I personally don't agree and don't have any of those on any of my toons anymore and do very well at anything. But again, test test test. If I had been smart/ frugal, I would have taken his advice and just played that way. So I see it as good advice.

    We are getting so off topic tho so I'll stop now. Still sticking with my vote of keep the death count. Again, with the assumption that content stays around the current level of difficulty. I know for sure that I wouldn't have had the struggles I did if we could just continue to pick up. Ise for example since it's current: the vacuum cleaner from hell just jumps around the room playing death tag. Takes out 1 then moves onto the next. Easy pick ups with time for 1 player to get them all. Right now, a challenge. Infinite, not in the slightest
    • Like x 2
  4. BumblingB I got better.

    That's understandable and to be honest, a real point with StU on difficulty. It's just higher health and damage. But it's not the norm and I'm sure the devs will look at that feedback going forward. (There is more than enough threads about it, right now.)
    • Like x 1
  5. Great Architect Loyal Player

    At best we could increase them to 3, not 2 - but that's a 50% increase.

    I'd rather go with something that I've been thinking about. First knockout, you get a self-pickup (as in the never-used Lazarus Water arti), but it counts towards the 2. You can just pick yourself up first time only. It's not game-breaking, since it stays inside the rules. But it does take a lot of heat off the DPS, who generally do not have the shields to pick you up.
  6. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    You would still have access to bloom and your movement mode SC being 2500. Nature is in really the same situation, sure they have bug for 2500 but their supercharge is just as unhelpful as cursed idol is in todays content. We have really only had DOT heavy instances in SGE/PCE/CTE and augments usually counteract that DOT making supercharges that focus on HOTS unneeded. EoG also grants you the 5% extra stats during a supercharge so as celestial you could pop bloom on yourself and then use virtuous light to heal the group after a burst tick and then it just free increased heals from EoG when it procs etc. If you wanted to stick to pure heal you have the interaction between transformation card and PHR. You want to use Orb which you can't use repeatedly, can get stolen by dps using amulet so it wont even go to the tank or in cases of players standing in raid mechanics it goes to them. You also have your page proc kicking in when they dip that low so your orb heal would kick in after page already would have saved them so your orb heal is less. With transformation card you are procing PHR repeatedly as celestial with the hots/burst you have access to and you can keep placing the personal shield on the tank or player your orb heal would have gone to and shields in this game matter more than heals.

    If its your personal preference or something you don't care about having the greater healing potential than fine Orb works just great and don't let people tell you otherwise. I'm personally not going to advocate or a healing setup that I feel mathematically isn't the best route. But as with everything I ever say I welcome the debate on the topic.

    You can heal elites or any content with 0 artifacts just as easy. So when I see the statement "well I have healed everything with that setup etc" means nothing overall. The way I approach DCUO will be the most optimal approach which sets you up to have no issues in content. Doesn't mean its the only way but its a way that can be completely justified and routed with knowledge and fact.
    • Like x 2
  7. Yass Queen Hyppolyta Dedicated Player

    I like the idea of an artifact that grants the user the ability to do unlimited pickups even in elite. That way, there'd be a cost or a sacrifice involved- maybe a troll or healer art?
  8. Heywiar Committed Player

    Absolutely not.
    • Like x 2
  9. Yass Queen Hyppolyta Dedicated Player

    100% yes.
  10. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    I’m good with the Death Counter, on paper. To me, it encourages people to not just attack the boss without consequence.

    But yes, the random one shots can be a bit unforgiving at times.
    • Like x 1
  11. Canadian Justice Committed Player

    As far as one death is concerned, that's a dev choice. They can develop content as they please.

    But so long as mechanics dictate that Phase Dodge and Amazonian Deflection are used as the only real way to counter those particular mechanics.... something should be done. Abusing 2 clear outliers as the main way of survival doesn't seem elite to me, just poorly built mechanics cheesily dodged. I don't get why blocking isn't a good enough tactic, abusing outliers shouldn't be required. If PD and AD grant full mitigation, maybe block should provide an extremely high percentage mitigation for those specific mechanics. Obviously block can't grant near full mitigation for everything, but it should be far more useful than it is when specific mehcanics are at play.

    And if one death stays as the default for base level elite content, I'd suggest taking things a step further for enhanced elite content. No deaths or you're out, maybe one death for the whole raid. Let people prove their skill in the ultimate test. Make things truly hard, punishing and unforgiving. No mistakes, no forgiveness. And certainly, no cheese.
    • Like x 3
  12. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    In alot of the "one shots" they are supposed to take you down to a fixed percentage of health when you block, the mechanic is supposed to be blockable and just barely survive. The issue is this has been broken alot of the times in raids, even Fos2 being the most recent so if you block you still die regardless. Which then means you have to resort to 1 of 3 things: phase doge, amazon deflection, running to grey range. We can't help that its bugged or how long it takes to get corrected but we can't just sit around and do nothing until it gets fixed. FGSE was a good example of this working. Plenty of huge burst damage but if you blocked/augments none of it was one shots.

    There is a difference between scripted one-shots and mechanics being broken to not account for a player blocking
  13. Proxystar #Perception

    Sure, like I said I understand your pessimism and I'm not saying it wouldn't take a reasonable amount of effort to get it right.

    It doesn't hurt however to throw ideas around though and it sounds like you're not against the idea because the idea is bad just that you don't trust the developers to properly implement it in general, which is fine. :)
    • Like x 1
  14. Canadian Justice Committed Player

    True. But I just don't see why there has to be such a disparity in the end state based off whether you block or use PD/AD. Blocking shows you recognize the mechanic, see it as a threat and have taken steps to counter it. For one tactic you survive without issue, the other you are left near death or dead.

    The devs could even revamp movement trees or add powers to each power to give a comparable damage mitigation power to all trees. That would work too I guess. I just don't like pigeonholing powers/builds to work around what I see as developmental oversight.
    • Like x 1
  15. Proxystar #Perception

    My thoughts were about ignoring somewhat the prior content it doesn't really matter, in the same way some content was designed before the modern elite era, the old elite content would be before a future era.

    I was simply picturing a true hard mode that didn't artificially limit players by death count moving forward, which one could loosely call the true mode and then a much easier watered down mode.

    Do elite players care more about what's happened in the past or more about what happens in the future?

    I wasn't intending either that the death counter be removed in existing elite content either just for clarity, just in future content if they were to make a change in that direction :)
    • Like x 1
  16. xxHELLSTROKExx Loyal Player


    True story on not needing artifacts. My water healer uses solar amp/ la mort/ scrap while healing amd no supercharge lol. Not spending money on that alt
  17. farm3rb0b Committed Player

    So...the OP in this thread links out to a post I made where I inserted an offhand comment about 2 deaths not really being all that l33t. That's cool that it's now devolved into this. Not your fault BB, but definitely good to see that the forums is the same as they were when I played years ago. :rolleyes: I stand by what I said though...even while agreeing with the comments of familiar names. Some thoughts while I've been reading through this thread:
    1. I do wish the 2 death portion of elite was never added. From the beginning. There were great raids with awesome mechanics that people complained about elitists way before the death barrier.
    2. I also realize now that it's in place, removing it would trivialize a very small subset of feats
    3. Being able to read mechanics and tells through a lengthy and difficult battle and come out on top as a group = Elite. To me at least.
      • Not dying is great! A dead dps = no dps. (Sorry damage peeps, that one just rolls off the tongue best.)
      • Being able to coordinate a pickup (or multiple) while still juggling other content requires more skill, in my opinion, than continuing to stand and pew pew through more health and harder hits. But...I mean, it's a huge part of our league mentality I guess to recover if the pewp hits the fan.
    4. If the tradeoff was:
        • (A) Leave things as they are with 2 deaths = Elite
        • (B) Remove the 2 deaths only piece, trivialize a few old feats, and start designing content that makes you perform way harder than you are now
      • sign me up for (B).
    That all being said, I've always been a vocal champion of instances being more mechanics heavy. I'm a controller main since I started. I want all the things to do. Tank and spank fights where damage and health pools have been increased don't knock my socks off. We came back and I was ecstatic at the card game in Into the Dark Multiverse because it's different. No deaths should very much still be feat-worthy. Hardknock feats have been around since base game. But the death barrier shouldn't be what makes elite content elite.

    Edit: Also, to those saying all things that kill you are 100% avoidable. I can't agree with you given recent content. I doubt this is going to be 100% just StU content that has this issue, but there's something wonky with enemy precision damage right now. If a boss uses a regular weapon attack and it kills you through a block or hits you for your health through a healer shield? That's broke, y'all. Sure, Phase Dodge and Amazonian Deflection are great tools. Should I have to look outside my powerset abilities to grab some mitigation option or a primary attack? Come on.

    There's also been a long history of things not necessarily drawing on screen, or not instantaneously. Even with good internet and graphics settings on max. I haven't seen that recently like we did way back when in things like Prime Battleground, but the game has definitely had bugs between the time/size something draws and the damage hitting.

    Those latter two damage points might be few and far between, but make a huge difference to me. I'd care a lot less about 2 deaths = elite content if every single attack, 100% of the time, gave me an option to mitigate. Shield, block, get out of the red zone, some other mechanic on screen. When there's absolutely nothing the character can do to mitigate? Death barriers don't make sense.
    • Like x 5
  18. Proxystar #Perception

    Sorry, I did just have to respond to this comment, because using the term "just as easy" implies that the healing artifacts have no value, clearly they do.

    Taking them off doesn't make the content "just as easy" it's obviously not just as easy otherwise wouldn't use them in the first place, taking off the artifacts would make the content objectively harder and that's also just factual.

    If the artifacts truly are as worthless as to suggest content is "just as easy" as without them then what you're realistically saying is base healing is far too powerful and probably if people were looking for content to be more challenging you've just built the perfect case to nerf healing in general. :)
    • Like x 1
  19. BumblingB I got better.

    The idea tossing is really the part that I was hoping to result in when creating this thread.
  20. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    I am implying they are overkill, they have value but every 4 or 5 seconds do you need the PHR shield proc or the group heal? no, do you need to run 3 supercharges that don't even heal just to spam eog? no. Do you need the rescue heal from PoD if players are following mechanics? no cause it wouldn't even proc. Not saying they have zero value, just in some runs you wouldn't gain any benefit really from them besides the general eog spam.

    Healers will have just as much power to spam rotations without artifacts OR you can just go water heal and just rotate shields and not need to heal. "just as easy" is exaggerating for sure but healers did just fine before artifacts and content really hasn't changed at all. Its just the default dependence on artifacts.
    • Like x 1