Dev Discussion Starro: The Threat Below Raid Feedback

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to the official feedback thread for the new event raid the Threat Below! Please feel free to discuss the new raid with your feedback, bugs, and other issues you may encounter.

When leaving your feedback, please specify if you are in the Challenge version or the level 34 clamped version.


Thank you! And don't let Starro take control!

Clamped version:

Everything is incredibly easy. You go in there and seeing someone die is incredibly rare. Managed to get all of the feats in there easily and with hardly any effort at all. How easy it is really makes it quite boring. I understand why you want easy content, but man, this is just too easy that's it boring.

Member version:

Definitely an upgrade from the clamped version. The first run in there we actually had few problems. After few attempts and wipes we managed to figure out the mechanics (before running it on Live I had no idea of anything and only watched the previous livestream. I made sure not to test it or read feedback as I find it ruins the Live experience) and sorted out some strategies. Did a couple of quick runs around 10 mins and popped all of the feats in there apart from the feat for not going down for the whole raid. The last boss seems to be quite tough to complete without having any deaths due to the randomness of the laser and how hard it hits.

Overall feedback:

I enjoyed the raid. It had some interesting mechanics, especially with the mind control, and I had good fun in there with the league tonight. I do wish that the feats were more exciting as once again we have the exact same feats in different versions of the raid. Normal GoM and Elite GoM were copied and pasted and so are most of these ones. Please, just come up with some new and exiting feats for different version of the raids.

The first sub boss loot is bugged. It doesn't always happen, but completing the clamped version of the raid will lock you from elite and vice versa.

Yup had this too. Multiple people in my league had this happen on multiple toons.

Also our 1st run the last boss bugged out. Every person was mind controlled and no one could break out. It lasted quite awhile too and we were just stuck and eventually wiped after a few mins. On test i was able to use my own quick lime to break mind control. And on live someone else has to break u out. Not sure if this was changed or what was on test was a bug. The 1 part of getting mind controlled i couldnt stand is i was trolling and the AI immediately used my supercharge. Which wasted it cause at the time it wasnt needed but its throwing a group on the shield which protects them. If im mind controlled i should be attacking them, not shielding them. Just seems weird to me.

There is a feat, cant remember the name atm, its at the 2nd boss. Its not letting more then 3 adds spawn from hatchlings or something like that. Now we were clicking cogs all over that fight and could not figure this out. Any explanation from the devs or any players would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Lastly the feat descriptions are strange imo. Some say challenge in parenthesis in the title of the feat and others say the exact same thing in the description. How are we supposed to differentiate which is the clamped and which is the member version for these feats? I guess it could be the (challenge) in the feat title is the member version. Point is its confusing. And i dont mean to be rude here, but its been brought up many times in the past about making feat descriptions easy for people to read. Doing the feats should be the difficult part, not reading the descriptions. In the future just please make them easier to read, direct, and to the point so we know what we are suppose to achieve. Thanks.

Oh the starro laser. I really really dislike asking for a nerf. But that thing hits like a truck. And u guys said u were going away from 1 shots. Well having an attack hit ya that takes 95% of your health and then lights ya on fire so the DoT then ticks and takes away the other 5% in about 2 seconds is technically not a 1 shot but may as well be one. Not saying nerf it but i hope the we are going away from 1 shots doesnt lead to more attacks like this. Where it can be said its not a 1 shot but we all know it pretty much is.

The raid was 7cr lower. The feat was normally to get before. Due to the CR raise some Starro mechanics are too much in terms of damage and ended up one-shots. I'm sure its worth to bug report it so they can attune the damage of the raid to make this feat working for more than just a handful of people ^^

Yep. Played through it as 192 CR on Live and those one shots take me down to around 5-10% health so it's quite an easy feat with a max CR group, but with 189/190... eh, too much luck needed.

Maybe it's just those dead healers >.>

Jokes aside, it seems a bit overtuned for 'entry' CR 189/190.
Besides having 300+ SP isn't a luxury we all have at this very moment.

Maybe actually make it a % based attack with a certain minimum?

Also, not sure if mentioned (At work right now so can't read everything) but Aquaman seemed to be bugging every now and then.
He would fall back in the last boss room and didn't move untill the boss actually knocked him back. Which implied that the shield couldn't be removed. Not sure if it's something we can reproduce, but rather bothersome.

good fun raid..did it with Electricity dps (me) nature dps and munitions dps...1 tank...2 healers 2 controllers...my ? is WHAT are the tables for on first boss? when tenticles come up....we just tanked controlled AQUAMAN at door on square

You activate the table, than you need to activate one of the pools so that Starro adds don't come out from the activated pool. A feat is attached to it.

We're investigating this. Thank you for the report.

Your entire party being mind controlled was something we knew could happen. Watching out for the Starro "mines" we call them, is part of the mechanic in the fight. Either avoid them or KO them. My hope was that after studying the fight, you guys would figure out where the tiny Starro spawn. If you look carefully, you'll see the empty spots where they don't spawn.

The Quicklime breakout sounded bugged on PC Test. It was always meant to break out others, not yourself.

And also, finally, about your supercharge. We wanted all of your abilities to be used while in a mind controlled state, even super charges. Unfortunately, the system doesn't care what kind of supercharge it uses. It will fire what you have on your loadout.

We'll be fixing the feat names a tiny bit. That feat, the " Starro Elimination Squad" is only intended for the member or "Raid" version. You'll need to grab the quicklime from the tables and dump it on the Hatcheries to slow down the minion spawns.

I understand. Internally the name of this raid changed a few times and so did the descriptions. Officially the member version has "(Raid)" next to it. So it should read "The Threat Below (Raid)". This is the Member version and we'll be making a small tweak to the text to reflect this.

We definitely don't want 1 shots. It sounds like this ability is just too strong. For reference, in your combat log, this is the attack called "Starro Double Beam" correct? I wanted this one to hurt a little more than his other standard attacks, it sounds like it's too hard.

Thank you for all of this feedback. It's good stuff. I'll continue making changes based on what you guys say!

We'd rather have skill attributed to obtaining feats. Luck is just frustrating. I'll tune down Double Beam attack since it is hitting harder than standard attacks. (Also, protip, that attack is aimed at the person who is the furthest away from Starro. But you didn't hear it from me! ;p )

You don't like the Member version only feats "Starro Elimination Squad" and "Conquered the Conqueror"?

Lol, seeing as dev say that feats should be more about skill than luck is the biggest oxymoron I've ever seen.

The only thing I would change with the raid is the damage during the mind control effects. It seems to do reduced damage out, and incoming damage is not that bad either. I think cranking both up would make this raid so much better. Not one shots, but more than what I saw last night. My super dropped and my dude was scissor kicking people. Again, not needing to one shot people, but it was doing no damage.

It would be nice since this can be done with a raid mechanic. Maybe think of bring it over to our power's also. Sorcery's power description says it does the same thing, but it never does.

It's not just choosing what's in your loadout it's also choosing any power you have a power point spent on...

My Nature heal is was constantly using gorilla supercharge when mind controlled and it's not in my loadout... Leaving me as a gorilla long after mind control ends... Since I don't run gorilla I didn't have that tray loaded with healing powers so that was unfortunate...LoL

Nice member raid though... Great job on the event!!!

Although the difficulty of the alert needs to be increased... IMO the enemies need to hit harder and be harder to kill... I'm pretty sure I can solo it as it is.

Duo's are always easy so that fine..

The regular stat clamped version of other stuff is also a little to easy..

Hear me out... Even though we are stat clamped most power sets are 1 shoting the ads in all the stat clamped areas. Roles are irrelevant the bosses won't even kill you.. even in the raid.. All DPS no problem. Takes some of the fun out of it IMO

Feedback
Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but Aquaman needs more of a tell for his ranged "water spray" attack in the raid version. Maybe a skull would be good? I found it very hard to see that attack unless I was attacking Aquaman from a long distance. If you were standing close to him, you were as good as dead at CR 190.

Yep, hes practically one shotting people with that. Sometimes, if too close to each other, multiple people gets KO.

--------------------------------------------------------
Also...i just ran the non-members raid and a bug happened.
During the last hallway, when the juvenile spores drops from the roof, i was controlled and when the effect pass, i couldnt do anything. Block, powers, trinkets, consumables, nothing. Just run around. Tried to get KO in the Starro fight thinking that would fix it, but no. I couldnt do anything for the entire boss fight.

Bumped into another bug. Went into the clamped version of the Raid and reset it with a league mate. Aquaman didn't drop any loot for both of us and we both didn't get loot locked after defeating him. We did get loot and get loot locked from the final boss and treasure chest. We had to queue back in and defeat Aquaman again for the loot. There seems to be few problems with the Aquauman boss fight in terms of the loot but the problem seems to be quite rare. It's the first time I encountered a problem and I've done many runs already.

Those ones I do. But then we have Fit for a King (Challenge), when we also have Fit for a King in Normal. Then we have Starro-ectomy (Challenge), when we also have Starro-ectomy in Normal. Then we have Starro Eyed Surprise (Challenge, when we also have Starboy (which is a different name but it's the same feat). It's repetitive and lacks imagination. I shouldn't have to approach a feat in one variation of the Raid and then have to do the exact same thing in a slightly harder or slightly easier version for another feat. Yesterday we tackled most of the Challenge feats and then had to downgrade to the Normal one and do the exact same thing but with it being so much easier. It was boring and really lacked creativity. You could have easily attached some feats to the Normal one and then created completely new (and hopefully harder) ones in the Member version. It spices things up and creates completely new challenges to be approached with more strategies and thinking if done correctly.

Weren't you healing our runs?


Ah yeah, forgot about that bug. For the devs, we encountered it multiple times where Aquaman would get stuck and would not throw the spear. We had to wait for the boss to hit him and that would make him once again move around and throw the spear.

Indeed it is. I wouldn't tune it down too much, but just so that someone at 189 or 190 could survive the initial burst damage of the laser but would then die from one or two ticks of the DoT if there was a lack of healing.

Personally, I think turning that into a Skull attack would make things too easy, when it already isn't that hard. It's the only thing in that boss fight that can kill the group and cause a wipe if everyone is positioned correctly. On that note, maybe in the future the devs should look into spreading things out like the tentacles so they cover the whole of the the room. Right now people are bunching together in corners or hugging walls so they can't get hit by anything (except for the Aquaman water spray thingy which needs to be lunged by the tank) and I'm not a fan of sitting in corners to avoid mechanics or enemies. If those tentacles were further spread around the room, it would really force the group to work together to eliminate certain ones and clear the room to create space. It would definitely be harder and much more fun.

Exactly what I thought

As for the raid , on the standard version I encountered on a couple of occasions the mind controlled atlanteans could not be freed via attacking where prompted and stayed laying on the ground , I think this was the part before the Aquaman boss battle but can't remember exactly but it meant we had to disband and restart at least twice.

Apologies if it's already been reported.

Being more about skill doesn't exclude other ways of obtaining feats. In raid situations, we'd rather luck have less to do with obtaining them. As far as damage is concerned, we're adding the PVP toughness stat to people who are mind controlled.