Dev Discussion Episode 40: Flash to the Future (Raid)

Thanks for playing the Flash to the Future Raid. Please leave any feedback or issues that you find here.

Elite: You may notice a terminal that allows you to choose different difficulty levels. There are four additional levels that increase the Elite Raid difficulty.

Known Issues:

• Elite Only: Difficulty Levels Moderate, Substantial, Severe, Critical are not dropping Wayne Casinos Tokens and other rewards correctly
• Elite Only: Centrifuge Feat can not be achieved in Elite Mode at this time. This will likely be resolved in the next patch.

Bug:

For some reason during the standard elite mode version of this raid, after the second loot drop, Brainiac reset back to 2/3 health and we had to do the second phase again.

I can provide video footage in private if needed.

Not getting any tokens from the elite raid, resetted it 3 times and got no type of tokens just renown and gen mods

We've identified this issue and are in the process of submitting a fix.
Standard Difficulty should be dropping loot correctly.

-Millbarge

Would it replace the replays or the tokens we didn’t get?

I’ll take that as a no lol

The elite scaling is completely messed up there no increase in difficulty all 5 checkpoints are beat within 70 mins of entering surely there’s something wrong there? Look into it otherwise this dlc will turn sour quickly, not to mention bugs involving double brainiacs spawning. Look into the scaling adding an exploding add into the mix isn’t a mechanic

As mentioned by DamageControl, I really saw minimal difference from Standard to Critical. Only difference I saw were the adds in the boss fight hitting harder, but even then the number of those adds that spawn are RNG, and you can end up having fewer adds during your attempts making the fight a lot easier. There are mechanics I was expecting to be 1 shots being on Critical mode such as the airstrikes, brainiac's pull mechanic while not blocking/being in range, brainiac spider ads with the ticking cogs on them while being in range of them, and none of them are. As well, Brainiac has a bug where his health can get reset after a cutscene.

Let me start by saying I DID test this raid on the test server. The comparisons made here are from experience in both versions of the raid and a theoretical version that would be amazing as what I thought critical mode was supposed to be theoretically.
When looking at all the episodic content in recent years we had elite raids and normal raids in which are beaten and you gain specific rewards for each. But when looking at these difficulties provided, these modes “should” be more difficult than elite content given that there are different difficulties for these raids. Think of a “critical” version of a raid. That sounds amazing right? However ,all 5 modes were beaten within hours of release.
What I originally thought critical mode as a thought to be above elite, I thought of boss patterns and more mechanics as the devs said. So, for example in the standard version of the elite raid you get the cut and paste version of the elite raid and as you escalate through the modes, more mechanics get tacked onto the pattern that you have to figure out and apply to your execution of doing the raid.
The raid on test was much more impactful for the group as there were mechanics not only that you had to react to like a normal skull attack, but also attacks the group collectively had to predict. How this raid played out on test server originally was Brainiac would start off his normal script of 1 of 3 moves which included the flamethrower/thruster attack, the pulse beam, and the pull in move. Out of those 3 attacks you have to go from there and predict what happens next in his script. What i mean by that is a very repetitive order was flame, then pulse, then pull that would happen. But what was actually interesting about this fight originally was that the pull attack was more impactful to the group as it 1 shot any one who was in range but was predictable based on his original telegraph. Adding more to that, his script could be interrupted with overlaying mechanics such as his phasing abilities such as strafe, when he teleports to the middle of the room, the charge attack, the multiplicity attack, and the one with the flashpoint ring around brainiac that would interrupt and sometimes reset his original script to again predict what happens next.
I personally only made it to moderate on test since it was bugged in our run and we ran into the same issues in live but found fixes for some of them. Here's a short list

-The ads in severe mode (brainiac corruptors) apparently are supposed to debuff anything that stands in its field. Our tank was in the multiple fields and was purely not getting affected by this supposed debuff, I do not know if that's intended or not
- The marks above standard mode of the raid aren’t appropriately distributed, as I only received 1 mark per boss
- The strafe in the raid does not 1 shot as it should in critical mode (in my opinion , you have a good bit of time to move out of it)
-After a mass phase (there are 3) after a loot drop, the boss’s health can reset possibly and you either have to do the phase again, warp out of combat, or wipe
-Brainiacs damage mitigation is randomly high upon coming into the boss fight or after a mass phase of the fight (again after a loot drop) What I mean by this is that My dual flurry shot tick for example would hit 5k when he was bugged and unbugged 10k base no crit as a dps in which we would wipe to undo this bug and reset.

That's honestly just a little feedback of what I thought of the DLC and my findings in test as opposed to live in which you don’t predict movements because they became meaningless almost in the translation from test to live such as the pull in mechanic that used to wipe whole groups in test, now it doesn’t one shot so dps have much less pressure on them and less to worry about overall as oppose to actually worrying about positioning adjacent to the ads, brainiac, and much more like rotating around the room at appropriate times.
Hopefully my feedback helps, thank you for your time.

Thats why i gave alot of feedback on the other Elite raid to avoid such a easy elite raid and i was expecting for this elite raid that atleast the higher stages atleast would be difficult turns out people are at 4-5 level already with previous episode stats day 1. elite raids should be the biggest challenge a episode has to offer many people including me found the elite alert way harder..

My suggestion: maybe he needs way more HP and more adds.

making elite raids more about support rolls less about high DPS would be appreciated,thats why Elite raids that are mostly about high 4-5 DPS setups with a buff troller are a horrible way to create difficulty for Elite with such a rushed concept people will always find it easy.

im fine with flash to the future elite raid being easyier if flashtastic voyage is hard and stays hard also when does it get unlocked? @devs its friday isnt the bug fixxed?

I know a group that beat all 5 levels of the Elite raid right after servers came up and it didn't even take them a couple of hours. They were surprised at the difficulty as they were expecting more of a challenge and even speculated that the raid might be bugged in some way. I don't know if something is actually bugged or the scaling was just poorly done, but I think it should be looked at.

Was expecting some big spikes of difficulty and learning curve from a raid with 5 elites difficulties, but no we get a raid beaten in all the difficulties 2 days after release.

Not even half as hard as Nexus or Paradox Raids or Fos2 etc back in the day. DCUO dumbed down, not to mention the leagues running full dps gadgets prec wich are stupidly broken.

DCUO dumbed down a lot, really missing old days in this game, this game is fun a lot of fun I love it, but it’s not even close in difficulty to back in the day sadly.

It’s time to make some raids that are not beaten in 2 hours without huge difficulty, take exemple from some other MMO, it will please everyone.

So I've been back in the raid since yesterday and something seems very strange with the scaling. The boss's defense (or something that affects how much damage we do to him) has been really inconsistent.

For example, in the Critical version, not just in the same run but in the same phase of the fight, my flurry shots were hitting for 5k crits at one point during the fight and then 40k on crits at a later point. Our attacks were doing almost 10 times more damage from one minute to the next and we didn't change anything in terms of controller debuffs or anything else. It's almost is if he's losing defense as his health goes down.

Temporary "fix" players can do: wipe. He'll be back at correct health.

And for the extra defense buff or whatever, same. Wipe and it will go back to normal. Ran across it a few times yesterday.

Haven't tried the higher difficulty settings yet so can't comment (weren't paying out so we weren't running for no coins) but yeah it is pretty easy. Almost got a 12min run, average was probably 17mins. Wiped once right on our 1st attempt. Had 1 more wipe in 10 runs.

We've identified a few issues with the stat adjustments for the additional Elite levels and have submitted changes internally. Additionally, Brainiac's Multiplicity attacks have been adjusted based on Elite levels.
Please see upcoming patch notes for the changes.

-Millbarge

This is separate from the hot fix last night?

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/dc...ver-hotfix-april-17-2021.315143/#post-4395215

Okay, on test I said I was sad with this episode because there was only 1 boss in this raid, but I thought it could be good since there were multiple elite levels...

Well, the elite levels didnt pay off, since there is only brainiac and his minions, the mechanics are very predictable. People beating this day 1 in less than 10 minutes dont surprise me.

When you guys said a hive like raid I was expecting something with multiple bosses controlled by brainiac in a single room, paradox wave style. This single boss style raid is very bad in my opnion and I hope this is the last time we see it. The multiple difficulties are very welcome, but didnt work for this one.

And if something is beaten on test by low sp/gen mods randoms with relative easy, its better to overbuff it than risk it being beaten on live day 1 and have people finish the renown in half a day.

Preach
This is exactly what i thought aswell.

Has anyone calculated how much Hp Brainiac Has ?