Test Discussion Episode 37: The Clock Tower (Raid)

Ran CTr last night: Pug group life!

On last boss 1st attempt, we had 8 people in there and we ended up wiping to the pools...
2nd attempt there were no pools and we didn't get turned different colors. So the last boss fight is glitched or something after first attempt sometimes, and it has happened both on reg and elite..

Idk what would cause it to glitch like that, but hopefully it gets fixed.. (Also, not sure if this has already been stated or not in this thread..) but it is still happening..

I hope ice tanks and other tanking powers are allowed to play properly, it would be very bad of them to create a raid that will exclude some powersets !

I ran the elite version of the first boss yesterday and the tanks(rage & fire) had no problems with bosses at all.Aggro was working fine aswell when they were on frenzy mode.Maybe you were debuffed when you were getting one shotted?There are some parts of the fight that you can get debuffed.

I feel like honestly a rage and fire tank are the key tanks to do it so far. Because I was earth and I was just getting smoked. Felt like the boss was getting blues the entire time, and almost never could counter one of their attacks.. Maybe they tweaked it to make it easier to pull them, idk I haven't ran elite the past couple days.

But when I did run it, Earth doesn't seem to be the best tank for that fight, especially with how much the bosses already penetrate through shields. Tried brick tanking as well, and brick was getting smoked too when it came towards the end of the fight. i definitely like the difficulty of the fight, just think some things should be messed with if they haven't already. I am all about hard content. Which is why I am trying to post as much feedback as I can.

the first boss elite we had a moment were the whole room was full of electric see screenshot below:

to much of the green arrows hitting people and electric is all over the place!

Any chance you could change the colour of the blue pools to a different colour, in last boss? So its not too discouraging to water healers running this raid. Green or yellow or even a darker blue.

Just been in Clocktower. At the last boss the aura on your head is way too small and unnoticeable when you have all the effects of water healer shields and trol supercharge shield. There's just too much going on sometimes too even notice it. After a wipe as well the next attempt we didn't even have the aura and pools so that's definitely bugged. This needs addressing and maybe the whole mechanic considered to be changed as there's a whole community of people that will simply be incapable to finish that last boss fight. Also on the adaptive mods the bonuses aren't indicating they are active when ranked up

No idea what you mean I have tanked this first boss in elite with earth' rage' fire's atomic and done it fine. Even with brick my brick would only die if I did not feed it power. For brick tanking ya need to go health spec because brick uses 100% of your health number as it's own. I would not hold block on high hits because when you do not hold block nearly all your damage goes to brick and you remain full hp . Give that a try ?

Please give us color blind people something else besides just a color for that last last boss mechanic..maybe a symbol...i have always struggled with these back to the lab raid all them years ago! Thanks!

Updates upcoming:

• Atomic powers Mass Density and Density will not give a metallic appearance during the final boss fight if you have one of the two polarities (red or blue). This is only blocking the visual aspect...everything else those powers do will still work.
• The initial damage hit from Exoblast taken by everyone will no longer ignore shields. The DoT will still ignore shields.
• The damage from Electrosurge will no longer ignore shields.
• When your polarity is switched (from red to blue or blue to red), you will have about 5 seconds of immunity from Exobyte Overcharge fields.
• In Elite during the final fight, one of the ORCL Pulse-bot adds will spawn with 2 ORCL Shield Drones that will shield that Pulse-bot. The shield drones must be defeated before that Pulse-bot can be harmed or interrupted. This is intended as a dps check. Let me know if it needs tuning.
• Damage balance pass on most boss abilities in both boss fights. This will continue as needed.
• Potential fix for what I currently think was preventing the polarity mechanic in the final boss fight from being used after a reset. But I will continue to look into this.
• Probably a few other minor bug fixes and polish I'm not remembering at the moment.

Thank you for all the feedback! I will continue to tune and fix things as I find them or you report them.

- Quixotic

You can get rid of those electric fields by taking out the ORCL Discharge Drones. These only appear in elite.
- Quixotic

I fixed some boss abilities that ignored shields and I'm not finding many more of them. In the first boss fight, especially, other than Catwoman's caltrops I'm not seeing anything that ignores shields. I'm thinking I resolved the ones that needed to be changed (should be in next update to pc test). If you find any that still seem questionable, let me know. I'm trying to limit shield penetration to mechanics with damage that can be avoided one way or another.

- Quixotic

If you destroy the drones (which have a decent amount of health points) the electric fields disappear but then the Drone re-spawns within 10s or so and the entire process starts over again which in its current rendition makes the fight near impossible. The adjustment that needs to be made to 1st boss in Elite is (either one of the following items will make the elite fight more manageable)

1. Take out 1 drone so that only 1 Discharge Drone is active but keep the green arrows spawning at the usual rate.
2. Keep 2 Discharge Drones but once a player has received a green arrow there is an internal cooldown of 20-30 seconds before that same player can receive another arrow (currently with 2 drones they can overlap where I will get the arrow, drop the electric field at the wall and then 3 seconds later have another arrow, repeated across 8 players and you get what the picture is with multiple overlapping fields)
3. Allow us to pass the arrows to the NPCs, like you had in Darkseid War Factory and have the NPC's not drop the electric fields
4. Reduce the hitpoints of the Discharge Drones SIGNIFICANTLY

As I said in my PM we could easily set that up so that you can see either how it actually works now, or after a change.

-OC

Good feedback! I'll make some adjustments to those drones. It's too late for today's pc test update, but I'll have something in for the next one.

- Quixotic

• 
  
  Is there any way to combine the visuals? There’s already a significant list of visuals in the game that force Atomic tanks to play the “is it or isn’t it?” game with the aura, most recently Drowned’s dead water effect. Now we have to guess if our shield is still active or not??? Y’all must hate atomic tanks.

Your atomic aura will still appear and can replace the blue or red one from the boss fight. The full body metallic material is the one that won't appear during the fight so that you'll keep the red or blue material.

We constantly try to find better ways to message important boss mechanics and that often conflicts with the messaging of player abilities. Atomic tanks run into it when we use a full body material or an aura on players in a boss fight. Other powers, like water, run into it when there's a field on the ground that you need to avoid but they place one you need to stand in. Especially when the fields are a similar color. Boss debuff fx versus player shields and buff fx. And so on. Beyond specifics, just the sheer number of fx can muddle everything on both sides.

We try to mitigate all of that as best we can. And look for better ways to message important boss mechanics.

- Quixotic

I do applaud you guys for thinking of new and creative ways to visually display mechanics. It’s certainly not easy 37 episodes in to the game to avoid repetitiveness. That being said, I have to admit that sometimes I wonder how much individual powers, roles and even movement modes are considered when designing and tuning these raids. It seems almost every raid has something about it that puts a particular power at a huge disadvantage (usually in support role) compared to other powers. And when I say that, I mean beyond the normal spectrum of powers’ comparative strengths and weaknesses (ex. HoT vs Burst heals, etc). There is no shortage of conspiracy theorist players who also notice this and think it’s a ploy to sell power respec tokens. While I don’t necessarily agree with them on the “why”, I do share their observations on the “what”.

So far for this new DLC alone, I’ve seen a boss fight that ignores all shields rendering Ice Tanks utterly impotent, a ground mechanic that, of all the colors and hues in the entire color wheel, has the exact same blue hue as the water pool and now a mechanic that makes Atomic’s shields invisible. I guess the one silver lining to Density being weaker than paper is that It’s a pretty safe assumption that it’s gone after getting hit once by any of the bosses attacks, lol

I really am very curious as to how much, if any, of the internal design and tuning process are individual power abilities, animations, etc are taken in to consideration. When asking yourselves the the question “how easily will _______ be able to correctly execute this mechanic”, is that blank just “player” or just “healer/troll/tank/DPS” or does the consideration actually get as detailed as “Water Healer/Nature Healer/ Celestial Healer/etc”? Or is the onus of that level of design and tuning consideration put squarely on the shoulders of public testers? I ask this knowing that you guys have limited time and resources and are doing the best you can considering all the constraints, so I hope this doesn’t come accross as harsh of a criticism as it may sound. I just really am curious.

Request:

Can the green arrow animation from the Discharge drone above our character made less see through?

Its sometimes easy to miss with all the other effects going on.

Don't know if you are still willing to make changes on the visual design, but I've made a mock-up to demonstrate some of my suggestions, mostly to further differentiate the two side to be more colorblind friendly:
1. Text that shows which polarity the player is at ala Mind-Controlled
2. Pools that show ⊕ ⊖ for additional visual reference, inspired by the traps in Rage/Avarice Impurity
...Actually what if the symbol is on the top of the player's head as well, just like the shield symbol in Last Laugh pvp maps?

If anyone has opinions on my ideas feel free to chime in.