Dev Discussion Episode 43: Return to Earth 3 Alert

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Episode 43 Alert tread for Return to Earth 3! Here you can comment and talk about the new Alert as well as report any bugs and provide feedback for the new content!

Now go and save the Universe from Perpetua!


Known Issues
- Elite Superwoman tuning issues. A fix is coming to balance her

Feedback for elite:
It's a bit extra the superwoman puting the fire on your feet at the same time as she's lassoed you. Which I imagine that's part of the next tuning for her. But honestly it's doable with a good healer, my issue would be that it seemed dependant on page of destiny more than anything.

I understand there are around 4 different lasso attacks. The one that puts an arrow, the one that puts a timer on you and then the skull one where she goes to a corner and then pulls you and then the skull one that sends in to the air.

Is the one that sends you in to the air supposed to control you for that long though? I think the interaction with the fire would be fine if it wasn't for the timing.

Also the one that puts a timer on top of you doesn't seem to be doing much, you break out of it and that's it.

I gave the Elite version a try through random queue and yeah, the flame while lassoed is supremely cheap and I'm glad it's being addressed. I was tanking it and I was hard stunned, had the adds, had Superwoman doing melee taps, and the fire was under me. I actually made it through but it took a Page of Destiny proc, my SC + EoG going off before the lasso, and my Soder...

not that it mattered in the end, lol.

I wanted to say thats the most fun i had in a elite alert out of any elite alert could be the best elite alert for my taste - we ran it without a troll and we used 2 might dps,1 tank, 1heal and no omega no augment buffs cr of the group ranged between 362 to 366 max is 378,the difficulty is just fine and exactly where it should be especially for the support rolls (tank,heal).

I honestly don't know how to run this alert...

• First boss, my fingers hurt from tapping square so many times trying to get out of Superwoman's lasso. I feel like every 5-10 seconds, I have been having to break out of her lasso. Not sure what the mechanic is when you have the red out arrows under you.
• Ultraman, not sure if he's suppose to go for regular Kryptonian cases or the ones with the Owlman symbol on top?
• On the last boss of the Devestator, is the doomed form random? Why are so many spores forming? When you get changed into doomed form, it takes a second to move and I feel like that would affect people's ability to get the spores on time. Also, people don't read that apparently when he charges, that he needs to break the rock things so not really sure what the purpose of that is.

These are part of the known issues with her fight. There should be a fix coming soon that eases the stun time of her lasso levitate in Elite. Plus, if you are still stunned by the levitate I made it so the fire fields don't hurt you.

I've only ran regular and event yesterday.

Regular:

• Superwoman's fight is quite a lot of lasso, but I see that is being addressed. So I'll wait for the patch TLantern is putting in.
• Ultraman's fight is... unique. It definitely is a lot different than the raid version. I laughed pretty hard when he did the spinning a teammate attack. I just... Don't understand the barrel mechanics. They are very far away, since the room is really large. My team ended up ignoring them altogether. If they are supposed to help, I feel they should be closer or something. If this is more important in Elite, then even more so should there be some sort of emphasis on utilizing these things.
• Devastator's fight is just like Ultraman's in regards to mechanics. You can straight up ignore the mechanics and not know why they are there. Like the Crystals that spawn, we just didn't bother with trying to have him charge at them. The transformation to Doomsday is interesting because it empowers the boss if you don't absorb the clouds... But, it really didn't matter, it just made the fight longer. I don't think this boss needs to be reworked, just ideas for future content, because right now, the last boss is the most boring of the 3. Of course, I don't know what's different in Elite version.

Event is about the same as Regular, just less adds and you can really ignore mechanics. Though, Superwoman's fight had some struggle for the other players in the group, but I think the changes to Superwoman's control effects will help in that regard.

Can someone just explain how exactly to defeat Devastator? Have not had successful attempts since release. My group consisted of a tank, healer and damages and it seems we all fail when it comes to someone that has to pick up the spores. Healer claims they can't because they need to heal and I'm assuming the tank feels he needs to remain with his role. What exactly are we doing wrong? I saw a video and all I understood is that we have to pick up the spores as close to group. This was in regular mode.

I think you can only absorb spores in the “doom form,” which seems to take over someone at random. If there’s a way to get it intentionally, I haven’t figured it out yet.

Devastator feels clunky to fight. Some things that feel weird:

- A player gets Doom form way before the first spores start spawning. The spores spawn later and then the boss gets the buff no matter what. Feels cheap.
- Picking up the spores feels...awful. It takes so long to suck them up, as you have to channel over each one individually. It doesn’t seem worth it to do at all. And if you’re a healer or tank and get transformed? Forget it. This feels like an unfinished concept. It’s genuenley a confusing experience the first time you run the alert, since you can’t abosrb the spores quickly enough before Devastator gets buffed again. It’s better to just ignore the mechanic and burn him to the next phase.
- Devastator’s spike attack (the one that appears below your feet) has such a big radius with a really small window to roll out of there. If you are using any ability with an animation, it’s almost impossible to jump cancel and roll out of it in time before it hits.
- The charge mechanic is weird. Sometimes he charges pets, causing him to stop before hitting the spikes that players try to bait him into.

Devastator being invulnerable to counters makes the fight actually pretty boring and not enjoyable as a tank, even in elite. I don't think this will be changed, but just something to keep in mind.

Also, Superwoman is still randomly doing a cheap strong heat vision while players are still helpless in lasso.

Hello TLantern!

After consistenly finishing the elite alert for the past days I do have new feedback

Superwoman fight: Perfect as it is right now, I don't think any further change is needed.
However I've noticed 2 things I got killed as tank a couple times in what seems either the fire was not rendering or it was not visible at all I'm not sure if it's because the small fire aoe wasn't visible because of the other effects.. So if anyone else can confirm this happening would be good to know.

Ultraman, could there be a delay from when the ads spawn and the canister spawn and then ultraman decides to charge the kryptonite canister? There isn't enough time usually as a tank to go pick up the ads and then position ultraman close enough to the fake canister
Sometimes it works out but if there is only 1 canister and it's on the other side of the room where the ads spawn it's not going to happen so we end up frozen. Other than the fight is perfect.

Devastator, I love this fight in general it makes me feel like survival mode for some reason. My only piece of feedback onto this is that getting the doom form or getting out of it takes a long time, the animation is quite long. We've had couple instances where the healer can't heal the tank because he got caught up in the animation in the exact time. It's not a huge deal but it would improve the fight.

I also experienced this in elite. As best practice the minute you break out of lasso block.

Idk what all the mechanics do like the wonder fight, but do they do anything? Just burn and I was out of that alert. No tank, no healer, just troll and pew pew.

Regular feedback: a bit easy and can ignore most mechanics with a good healer. We did a lot of 1/3 group runs. No issues. Everything feels good tho for something that has to be run daily. Nothing stood out honestly. Tank and 3 dps was also the same. Tank with clarion is perfect in there for pug groups. But had 0 issues with it and everything seems to work right. Tho the Ultraman kryptonite barrels don’t make any sense to me.

Elite: did it a few times. Tank/heal/2 dps most times but 1/1/1/1 works great too. Boss health seems high but not terrible. I like it but for a daily, it’s a bit much imo. Takes about 24mins it seems vs 10-11mins for regular. Which is probably about right? It’s a much easier elite than the last few have been. We just ignored every mechanic again basically. Never made devastator hit spikes but he did once or twice of his own accord and we can either ignore the spores by moving around a lot or suck them up. No issues either way. It’s fun, I like. Spammable vs the last few were tough without a perfect group. Wouldn’t be against seeing it get a bit buffed up with the damage

I am going to change it so he will not transform healers in addition to his highest hate target. At the moment he will not transform whoever is most hate, so as long as the tank is doing their thing, the tank is safe.

The spores will eventually buff Devastators defense and damage if too many spawn, if you can absorb at least 3 (Normal mode only) then he will return to normal. That is until more spores spawn again. In Normal mode you wont have to worry about spores anymore when he enters his charging phase.

The actual Spore collection mechanic works seems very unclear to me, Like where in relation to the spore do you activate the power?
On top of the spore? or do you face the spore(similar to Doomsday Metropolis)?
How long do you have to stand in a spot for the absorption to work?

Perhaps teach the player how to do it before you (for instance in an open world mission, where we can master it), before making it a mechanic

She hit me in tank role for all my health with just a heat vision and I didn't see that coming first time it happened since I started running it. By now I've done this alert about 10 times with my tank and it's first time it happened so just wanted to make sure that this is working as intended, maybe I've missed something?

Edit: I forgot to mention this is elite.

Great changes to the alert, thank you.
Could you confirm the heat vision damage is working as intended? Just to know that I should look for some tell.
Besides that experience on my screenshot I saw that happen to another tank today.

Does this mean that if a party consisted of nothing but healers, that no-one would ever get transformed?