Test Discussion Survival Mode Season 3

I don't currently plan to move Minotaur. The current setup has 2 bosses that have special loot drops in the 1-5 rounds and 2 that have special loot drops in the 6-10 rounds. That feels like good parity and would rather not overload one half of the set.
- Quixotic

Cool as, thanks for the consideration in any case.

I don't know if you could go as far as saying checkpoints every other round is gatekeeping SM. It was already a massive change over the previous SM's to have continual checkpoints. Especially for rounds like 30. You get the 30PP and just get to fresh que into the final round continually without any sort of drawback? to where past years you always had to do Ultimate Solider first. This SM will already be easy enough with phase dodge and laz pit.



half the time you won't even need laz pit with one simple ability tanking 3million damage

Sorry, the gate keeping comment I made wasn't meant to be about the checkpoints specifically although it tied in somewhat it was probably about the approach to survival mode more widely sometimes,

Truth be told it can feel like people (especially players and I'm not saying this is you) are a bit too worried at times about ensuring gates exist than about whether the experience in itself is more widely satisfying.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't lost on me that introducing a checkpoint at every round allows a player to keep coming back to every check point and on some levels that might create a perception of ease and probably to some players it would almost certainly make it easier.

What I would say though is that those people probably would've finished anyway given enough time and persistence so what you're really doing by increasing the checkpoints is simply removing the frustration for that group, which is the point I think Ala was making. I don't think you'll suddenly get a wave of casual players beating the entire thing simply because they can start again at each round they beat.

I am willing to be wrong though and if that were to happen, obviously you'd change it back.

I mean unless of course your intent is to make the mode simply frustrating for the sake of it, in which case I can entirely see your viewpoint, even if I don't agree with it.

I think some players tend to worry too much about whether or not people they see as "undeserving" are completing the content and the truth is, a lot of SM is on many fundamental levels quite imbalanced.

The mere fact we're looking at things like gray range tanking for example and all but encouraging it on some bosses lends in favor of powers like rage and ice, whereas other powers are at a disproportionate disadvantage simply because of the power they chose, This is also true of water in healer role once shields become meta at the higher rounds.

It's actually so bad in some respects that the only answer can be to either spend numerous more hours overcoming the same challenge by comparison (which is probably not fair on an objective level) or paying $10 to switch powers.

To make an example of something ice and rage can quite easily pop shields, engage rage state and kite all day without issue, Earth and Atomic don't have that luxury when they're stuck doing combos or constructing a Gemstone shield, Earth is also more likely doing Jackhammer at higher rounds, which obviously makes kiting more difficult. On the high rounds even if you get your Gemstone, given the delay in setting it up, you've probably got back in range and it's simply broken with a manacle proc in tow (or a laz pit going forward) on just a single BB from a R20+ boss - leading to the whole thing becoming a bit silly.

The point I guess I'm making is that I personally think the damage output from the bosses is probably over tuned, tanks can no longer be tanks, they're stuck playing the aggro-evade game because they have no other choice, which for some powers simply isn't as practical, you yourself have even admitted these Earth shortcomings in your own videos; so I'm not making them up. Realistically it's not a lot different from the "lunge spam" cheese you objected to after the first season.

I mean when you've got ice tanks for example sitting in gray range throwing snowballs to maintain aggro while everyone else also sits in gray range, I'm not quite sure that can be considered tanking? I mean... up to the individual perhaps, I guess right?

The thing with phase dodge as well, is I'd agree with you, if it didn't have such a short window of effect and a 16s cool down, it's not like its evading every mechanic, it's evading and attack every 16s and you also have to be able to reasonably predict the attack. What do you actually want to do to change that? longer cool down, less absorption, what?

Phase dodge just has to follow the normal BSM rules. It was also just 5000 defense and 5000 toughness ability in the past and was only used by tanks or healers to clip the animation of abilities like Brick summon or old fire annimations. In PvP it was used just to get the blocking effects without being able to be countered when being focused. You will recall how many players complained about phase dodge being only a superspeed ability and even now Superspeed is WAY more imbalanced with dervish, vortex, dash attack, tornado pull and phase dodge but no one seems to mention it

Amazon deflection for example has a super high BSM but you can also easily be knocked out of it where phase dodge is even 16.5 vs 30s cooldowna and really the short duration is not an issue because you don't die to DOTS in this game you die to burst damage. Even though I feel phase dodge shouldn't be a shield, because it isn't even coded as [SHIELD] which is why it ignores alot of mechanics as well because any shield penetration doesn't apply to PD.

Fair points.

With respect to Dash attack though, it does have its limitations and in some respect flight's Dust off is more advantageous especially in the fact you can use it while grounded.

Do you think tanks would be worried less though about taking things like phase dodge to evade damage if the damage output from the bosses was a little more reasonable to begin with? I don't see this same sort of kite tanking nonsense going on in the other MMO's so to me it's absurd its being encouraged and worse yet, being passed off as skill, it's saddening and SM tends to feed in to the kiting mentality.

I think the game has lost its way a little, look at what tanks were doing in Paradox for example, it definitely wasn't kiting.

That´s his whole agenda, i saw one of his videos when he proudly says that he spend 6+ hours crawling back from rd 13 to 20 in an old SM version... Go figure...

The problem that i have is that players like him want this game mode tailored to their needs and wishes, and as i said before they tend to have tons of free time to spend on the final rounds, so they don´t care to redo already beated rounds; in the end is more to ensure that everyone else have to deal with that annoyance and give up due to time constraints or pure frustation.

It's not so much the damage the bosses do because you would have to drastically change it. Stats revamp just wrecked the concept of face tanking. Even all past SM's were all about face tanking and the only boss I recall grey ranging was General Fabricant on OAN. The fortified blocking mod having the chance to absorb 80% incoming damage and to a larger extend immunity. Immunity had a large damage absorption based aspect to it so that you heavily relied on getting counters and if you didn't as a tank you would either struggle or die. Immunity has been wrecked by multiple dev teams trying to mess with it to where now immunity means nothing. There is no point to counter bosses as a tank besides just stopping their channeled abilities or just to buy some few seconds while they are knocked down and stand back up, where before you focused on counters to survive face tanking and fire tanks would hold block to get immunity to not be countered out of their block etc.

Until either of those two above are fixed we could properly face tank and completely ignore the need to grey range tank. To lower the boss damage enough so that you didn't need to grey range tank would take any risk away from the tanks dying and you would have raids were the tanks would be immortal and just have group members dying to room and floor mechanics because there wouldn't be enough damage to get through manacles or page procs.

We are getting off topic but nerfing damage wont make kiting go away, it will just make beating content while kiting much easier. Fos Round 20 bosses hit much harder than most SM bosses rn, yet kiting was not a thing.

I think it has to do a lot more with people adapting to the game's AI, how levels are designed to allow people to run across the run with bosses and the revamp increasing survivability while not blocking more than bosses being overtuned.

I hate kiting and think it ruined tanking most instances, but it wont go away without multiple changes in how AI or tanks perform.

Again fair points, it goes to show that there is a lot of work to go to bring the game back to the days where to truly shone. I take it then you agree with me about gray range tanking at least? I guess it's just a little sad that in the meantime we're stuck with this approach to content, if meaningful improvements ever come in at all.

Thanks for the chat.

Acknowledged. I think its a fair discussion to have in this thread though, because SM is really when this type of thing comes to a head, so it's a meaningful and on target discussion in any case. appreciate it.

Without getting into the agenda of a specific individual lol, I do appreciate the view point that at times this can be people's agenda. I do also agree, the time taken to complete some of the upper rounds of SM, certainly takes too long and get's a bit ridiculous to create a satisfying experience.

Survival Mode has always been referred to as such, even described on DCUO's main website

It is the entitlement of players in today's game where they feel everything needs to be handed to them and they are not willing to put in any effort to achieve anything. Checkpoints every round because I don't want to be bothered to have to survive even 1 extra round. Low health pools so I can quickly get through rounds because I have a job/family/no time to run SM so it should be made to be short because I still want all the high rewards.

What you won't find ANYWHERE on these forums EVER is me asking for Event or Regular mechanics to be increased or those instances made harder. I focus on elite/end game mechanics and difficulty because that community is poorly represented on the forums and to keep the integrity of DCUO like how it was in the past. What you will find on these forums are casual players demanding Elite content be brought down in difficulty to make it easier for them to run it and ask for mechanics to be removed because they can't learn to block or read mechanics.

You even said it yourself "give an skull warning and 3 seconds to react" on Krona's points. So lets just roll out that attack on a silver platter to players because god help them if they can't observe patterns and block because you know he points either right after or within 10 seconds of the 360 beam and within 30 seconds afterwards either does a point or that midrange burst animation. You will still have some deaths but when players actually watch for the easy tell of a point and don't group up for the aoe damage of the point to kill OR you just ensure you all have pets out where Krona can target a pet.

There are multiple types of content for different people. SM higher rounds are supposed to give players a challenge and occupy their time with something that tests the gear they grinded.

You talk about gate keeping, but you are trying to make the only % of a piece of content that is designed to attend a specific playerbase to adapt to your needs. It is okay to make SM more inclusive and they improved that a lot overtime, now the later rounds are not supposed to be for everyone. If you dont have time for them, come back next year or farm the earlier rounds...

can we have 1 free move change token so we can all benefit from the phase dodge achievement in season 3 survival, thank you

This is true, I don't disagree, but at the same time we do have to be reasonable, as long as there's no expectation that someone be a sweaty no life unable to take toilet breaks cause they're stuck in rounds that take 2 hours each, We don't need bottles piling up next to people's desks lol

So now having a Skull warning is somewaht giving up the dificulty of the fight? lol, then tell me why almost every special attack on the game has skull warnings?

Anyway i´m not going to derail this thread any further, you can still giving your feedback from your Elite High Horse, i will keep giving mine aswell, is the decission of the developers if they want to cater the game to the wishes of Obsidian Chill and Co. or develop the game for a larger chunk of their population.

DCUO already made huge concessions from what previously made SM hard. We don't have 8man, we don't have 2 bosses per round (at least till now but only two rounds out of 10), we don't have 3 waves of adds where the adds are what kept most groups out of SM high rounds. Players today would just quit DCUO if they had to face Round 20 Triads. Also checkpoints have been added to every other round, new consumables were added to increase stats just for SM. Of course players shouldn't be spending hours on 1 round but at the same time if they are, there is a reason to that, which most likely isn't due to the round itself.

It's almost as if they design SM for a specific population of their game hmmmm.

and yes adding a skull chevron above every single thing Krona does because you classify that as a special attack, outside his brawl weapon combos, does indeed dilute the difficulty because you, as a player, should be watching what the boss is doing OR having vocal communication in your group so that the point can be called out so that you block and make sure you aren't near a player or get to out of krona's range like you would the beam.

All that is required on the points is to reduce the damage on R9 specifically, and have it so that the mechanics cannot chain back to back. Even then with the healer using a proper shield rotation or players using the clarion artifact shield or the tanks using the superman ally shield or the group running laz pit can all be used to mitigate anything Krona does as well.

First round release they did die fairly quicky. We were all pretty well geared for test and I ran with above average people in a sense. I said it was fine because 1-10 is for the casuals as everyone agrees and then 11-20 is the next tier of difficulty scaling. That's how I've always seen it. But testing the health pools after I didn't think it would be that drastic. I don't think anyone's raising pitchforks, just acknowledging something that we all agree at this point need adjusting. And they are. Wasnt coming after you also. Dont take it personal. DC has been letting me down lately and nothing surprises me anymore. Forgive me if it comes off fed up or on the hate train haha

I will agree with you on the fact that grey range tanking should not be a thing, but it’s there and it is what it is and I don’t foresee this going away anytime soon unless they can come up with a way to fix it without breaking something else. And just out of curiosity, where in anything I said did I imply that you’re face tanking Baron? Like I said, he hardly does anything and should stay as a round 1 boss which Quixotic just confirmed - not for the same reasons you mentioned of course.

Because the justification for your placement of Minotaur at the higher round was the challenge Minotaur put on the tank and that this justified his presence there (outside of Quixotic explaining the loot balance; a reason I accept btw)

The truth is, if we were looking for a challenge at R7, there's numerous other bosses better suited than Minotaur, I'm not sure gray range kiting Minotaur around the room in a circle farming perpetual focus blasts (because Minotaur's AI is so stupid) so that every single other player in the instance can farm rifle block breaks from the center constitutes a challenge even when compared to Baron - they're virtually the same fight in that respect.

The only threat Minotaur poses to the tank is when a mistake is made by the tank where Minotaur is either fed blue or they get caught in range given every single focus blast constitutes a one shot even to the tank when above R20+, besides if you're ice just pop that snowball if he gets blue right and wait out the blue then pop another snowball and shield...

Despite Minotaur providing an opportunity to drop the abyssal horns he's actually one the dumbest SM bosses in existence,het's not a challenge he's an exercise in tediousness