Dev Discussion Episode 34: "JLD: Shattered Gotham" 8-Player Raid

Thanks for playing the Episode 34: JLD: Shattered Gotham Raid. Feel free to post any feedback or issues you come across.

-Millbarge

Elite has been way overtuned and is possibly buggy.

-The ticks of damage out of combat haven't been fixed. If the Madness meter is even remotely high, people will just die as they respawn. This need s to be changed.

-There should be a respawn directly outside of Tala's area rather than forcing people to platform again. This is a tedious, unnecessary aspect of the raid that is will get old fast (it already is, actually).

-Tala's healing is way overtuned, even with lunging her and a heal debuff it's too much to keep up with.

Elite:
The raid is really great. It's the easier one compared to Fellowship, but it's not easy easy. All the mechanics are fine, the madness damage outside combat just gives us extra to do and we have to move in formation to keep everyone's health up until Shazam comes back, which is cute, I like it.

The only issue currently is the meteor attacks on Tala sometimes appear invisible from some groups I heard about. But after a wipe or two most seem to show again.

Aside from that we beat it in 44 minutes and it's the raid everyone's finishing first, so the level of difficulty is better compared to last DLC, but hopefully future ones will take longer to complete than on the first day with older gear.

Feedback: Some of the investigations are quite tricky to get to - though rewarding. My best chance of getting to them (as I was Quantum) was to use Quantum Tunnelling and teleport across some of the larger gaps. But even to jump roll some of the (optional) jumps were tricky, and I would more often than not fall to my untimely death.

Thoughts: A lot of potential with the jumping between platforms - though I would have liked to see it more during a boss fight, likely against a large boss of Sea Beast size. The last boss would have been perfect for this, where you would have to jump between platforms to dodge devastating missile attacks from above, or a large beam. Alternatively you could have a puzzle where you can jump over moving platforms, or jump on each platform until they all light up and the door will open.

I kinda like this raid, but elements of it feel like a beta for a much better platform raid in a future episode. I'd be interested to see where you guys go with this now we have this sort of thing in content. Lots of potential.

I just finished Shatter Elite with my lg plats with solo supports in 27mins. The first boss fight was fine but the second boss fight and third boss still feels like its missing something. We will have the video of us solo supporting Shatter e up soon with cr of 262 to 265.

In addition to seeing the elite version re-tuned (it's overboard right now), there needs to be a way to avoid the platforming aspects at some point. Perhaps unlocking movement abilities in SG after the episode augments are maxxed?

Shattered Gotham Elite is fun, especially the first boss fight, however, the second boss seems like it is almost functioning incorrectly still. He starts out with a teleport, then decides to sit in his shield pretty much the entire fight and not move. He will generate his shield, we will crack it, and then he proceeds to go almost immediately to his next shield phase without ever moving. I Rage melee DPS'd him earlier this evening and never had to stop my rotation once the shield into shield into shield phases started happening. I was just free to go berserk on him...literally.

The final boss fight definitely has a bit more to it than the Faust fight but it still seems rather easy as the only dangerous thing he does to the group is the roll attack which can be easily avoided. In the end, the raid is fun but the Tala fight is the masterpiece design of this raid. Her boss fight is fun and engaging and makes people stay on their toes. Especially with having to lunge her at the right times and making sure no one gives her immunity prior to having to lunge her.

I liked the jumping stuff. The boss fights felt generic without anything special to them =/

Got the chance to test the Tala and Felix Faust fight before I went to bed.

In Elite both of them are dropping Damage over Time effects on a regular basis. I was playing nature and always apply three DoTs. At some point, I just spammed harvest over and over again because I thought you guys changed the DoT duration.
Nope, Tala, her Blood Golems and Felix Faust lose their DoTs at some points. For Faust it's I think when he teleports.

Tala...I don't really know. It just seemed so random when I stopped doing yellow ticks anymore - bare in mind with Harvest on cooldown. The only chance for the dots to drop because of me is if their duration was 2 Seconds until they expire.
At some point when the blood golems spawned I jumped at them in melee range and applied the Serpents Call, Vine Lash and Briar DoT just to see nothing after I applied all of them.

Haven't had the chance to run the last boss fight but it was really annoying to me to spec to precision as a nature dps just because I could not do any DoT damage.

This raid felt like a fairly easy alert plus jumping. I'll try elite tomorrow and see if it's more fun. This is my least favorite raid in years.

ETA: Played on Normal this time.

This raid was fun. (Elite)

I did enjoy pretty much all boss fights even though I do think felix faust should have some sort of close range aoe. He's not really scary as a boss and it felt like you can ignore all mechanics during his boss fight. I love that he spams his shield and it is an constant damage check but I also believe he needs to do something else also while it is active since he keeps spamming it 24/7 and isn't really doing much. As a dps I had a fun time and so did others in my group but our tank and troll kept saying that they feel like they weren't doing anything.

First boss was great and is in my opinion really fun and can be long if tank fails at lunging the boss to stop the healing. I also do like how it was since you need to be mindful of mechanics to not die by fires or meteors, etc. Also I do like how the madness meter worked in this fight since it was a lot easier to kill the boss with the more madness we had but we were running a solo heal during the whole raid and he was able to heal completely fine with a madness meter at 70+ all the time almost. None of us had our cores leveled to get the damage reduction from madness DOT so I do believe it should even hit harder only to make it so that you almost need two healers.

Last boss was also fun and I have heard a lot of complains about people wanting adds on this boss fight but I do believe it should stay the way it is. The boss isn't too scary but when he rolls he would constantly keep stunning our group which made it so that if you broke out late you could get killed and it kept people on their toes. Also I do love how the madness keeps ticking all the time ending in a one shot if dps can't kill the boss fast enough and it puts a lot of emphasis on good dps but also coordination which is what elite is made for.

Lastly I do think this is a great raid and in my opinion it is slightly easier than the other raid but I do think it is at a decent difficulty to make it spammable for some and playable for people with a lower skill level. If someone wants a challenge they can go to the other raid which is slightly harder. The only problem I had was the rock floor phases where you have to jump around and we spent maybe 20min waiting for one guy to get to the last boss. I think players should not be grounded and be able to use their movement or something to make it easier.

Is there any chance that when you get to the last boss that a teleporter can appear at the start of the raid saying "Teleport to Mordru's Arena" or "Teleport to End". If someone goes back to start for whatever reason (either by accident or to free citizens/collect briefings) and dies trying to traverse back, or someone leaves group and someone new joins for last boss, it can take a lengthy period of time to wait for said player to get to the bridge to the Mordru fight - presuming they don't die en route.

(Sorry I should elaborate here. If a player goes back to start from last boss area for whatever reason, and dies, they will spawn again at the start rather than at last boss area. So then they would have to work their way through the entire map to the last boss without dying in this case.)

Would make things a lot more time efficient rather than players waiting for 10, 20 minutes or more for other players to join/rejoin the group.

This is a reasonable request. My group last night had several issues with people disconnecting at the Mordru fight. Half the team disconnected at one point. So what happens when they start signing back in? You invite them back to the team and they have to run all the way back to the Mordru fight. While we were waiting for people to run back, another person was disconnected for being AFK. So the process of getting the team back together at Mordru took 20+ minutes. It should have taken 5 minutes max.

Event Version

Was fun. Adds and bosses hit for an appropriate amount of damage for event. Last boss the paradox tyrant had a different name above his head.

Jumping. While it was fun at first watching people leap to their doom and doing so myself several times, it became a nuisance and tiresome as the raid lagged on. Instead of death when falling can we just teleport back to the rally point. the whole fall and death takes too much time to die, respawn and start again that can make the game play slow and drag. In event version we just started without the entire group in most instances rather than wait.

Health level. I'm not a good DPS but in my group I was the highest DPS in the group. I think the event level health of all adds and bosses needs to be lowered to make up for the varied skills and powers of the large range of players allowed into the content. It doesn't need to be a cake walk but it also doesn't need to be hours of beating them into submission either. It should be at the level were one average dps is all that is needed to finish in a reasonable amount of time. This is event after all.

The following changes are checked in Internally and will eventually make their way to the Live Servers:

• (Elite Only) Mordru will now use the Artifacts under his control against you more often.
• (Normal and Elite Only) Fixed an issue where Mordru's health was lower than it should be.
• (Elite Only) Fixed an issue where Faust, Mordru and the Harbinger of the Devourer did not receive the assistance (adds) when they requested it.

-Millbarge

Oh...this is going to be even more fun. >=). Thank you Millbarge.

Stacked damage over time effects still randomly drop from the first two encounters. Haven't used them on the last one yet. Just went straight precision because why even bother playing the power when you can play the Flurry Shot dance.

Trying to run it now on the event version and it appears to be glitched. We are past Tala and apparently Constantine is supposed to get another transport but he's not doing anything. We have one player who cannot make the jumps and never made it to the 1st boss. Wonder if that is causing it? We disbanded and are trying again.

Re-run went ok. Still had a player lagging back but it didn't glitch and we made it up to Faust this time.