Dev Discussion Starro: The Threat Below Raid Feedback

Personally, as I mentioned before, I think most groups were struggling with 2 things, which was what caused them to give up and go home.

1. At Aquaman fight, the amount of healing in to aquaman.
The damage from the tentacles was fine, it made you focus on positioning and burning one tentacle at a time. As groups have said, the feat was doable by using 2 or more tanks to interact with the tables.
The damage from the starro adds was fine. They would kill people in 2 shots, but this was avoidable if the tank grabbed them immediately.
The damage from aquaman's attacks were fine, as long as the whole group wasn't standing in the same spot. Did it one shot 2 or 3 people? Yes. If that wasn't intended, go ahead and nerf the damage. But most groups could perform pickups without problems.
The spawn rate of the adds was fine too, in my opinion, except for the healing mechanic of aquaman. So if it's possible to have a higher spawn rate but keep the lower healing, that's fine. If healing and amount of adds are inseparably linked, then the nerf to the amount of adds is the right call. Otherwise he's impossible to burn unless you have all 191+ dps and a sole healer. That sounds more like elite to me than a normal raid.

2. Starro's Flatten Attack.
While the mechanic of him looking behind himself is interesting, there's no way to coordinate that in a PuG group where people are just trying to avoid walking into the juveniles and dps at the same time. Non-PuG only groups sounds more like elite and not a normal raid. It's OK if it hit's hard enough to knock out dps. But a fire tank that's blocking, recieving heals from the healer and self-heals should be able to survive and still have at least 50% health or more. (if I roll out of block to move away from Starro I lose my defense buff so it's worse). This isn't Survival Mode: Starro. It's just a seasonal event with a raid comparable to KCT or OLY, which are easily doable at the recommended CR.

1. Oh, and a bug report. This is regarding the clamped version, not the member version. Everytime you defeat Aquaman, there are still one or two tentacles left out that do not despawn after the fight. They keep attacking and you have to kill them.

2. Also, there is a bug where people who are mind controlled (I've seen it happen to healers twice) end up as if they belong to the enemy faction, even after you break them out with quicklime. So healers can no longer heal the raid, and trolls can no longer give them power. It doesn' t matter if they get mind controlled again, from then on they belong to the enemy camp. And these weren't Suicide Squad pairings either.

Honestly I'd say the elite raid only feels very slightly easier. I would say 1, but I hate extremes, so I'll go with 2. It's not much easier.

Please for god's sake , destroy the nerf hammer already.

1 with pugs, 4 with league.

The over all raid isn't very pug friendly but it's not very complex over all. I feel most of the difficulties are due to CR differential and the one shots that can happen.

I completely agree - its all about the healing issue for beating him - even with a heal debuff. The other things (spawn time, tentacle dmg etc) matter for the no spore spawn feat.

My leagues dead. I've pugged all mine. When everyone understood, including me, to stay back. We finished. The one shots are a pain, but the normal 1 tank, 2 heal, 1 troll worked fine. if they make it to easy, then anyone can complete it. Then it just gets turned into OLYr or GOMr, a melee burn fest. I wouldn't say in avoiding one shots make's it a skill thing, but it does promote a little teamwork and call outs for pick ups. If people spec'ed for it, like the neck mod to help with blocking, or troll powers carrying group shields, or carrying your own shields.

We have plenty of things to help make the raid easier. Just making it easier just cause everyone can't melee and run thru the thing seems like the trend we always do. Let's change the pattern and leave this hard. It is an event, which will be back.

Just something that bothers me a little.

After the Starro boss fight sometimes members of the group remain mind controlled. This is very annoying when I'm either trying to open the treasure box thing or just picking my loot and a mind controlled member or even members of the group continue to attack and stun me.

Would it be possible to ensure that everyone has their own minds and control back after Starro is defeated?

Finding LFG groups is difficult, not many shouting for it, so I end up Queing.
I had fared well with my 189 Alts on LFG; but in pug groups if players are under 189 damage drops precipitously.
My 189 Alts with Synth Mods do double the damage of most decent Pug players.
In an LFG group I might be #3 player; in Pug in #1 double other Pugs.
I don't think I'm That Good; I think the High CR Pugs don't know what they are doing.
I would give the changes a 1 for pug groups.
Some of these "Top Players" should Que Up for a Pug run to see the horrors.
Of course, they'll be CR 192 and that will make a big difference.

I don't know what you are trying to preach to me. The only reason it isn't as quick as oly or gom is because the npcs are such a high CR that you can't kill them quickly.

Don't re-adjust aquaman fight, it's just fine how it is. People can still die in there and still requires people to stay away from tank, lots of heals for the tank, and allows us to do the slime mechanic more smoothly without the annoyance of the superspawn or 1shot tentacles. It's fine how it is. My rating is not a number, but it's now smoother.

The last boss however still needs a 1shot taken out. Little more tankable as he never on tank most of the time. The weapon attacks I guess he does is fine as long as the dps stay away from him. That seems to be only mechanic in there to stay alive is to avoid the non tankable boss. But I feel that one of the attacks that is long range (the one shot I think?) should be a pink ball of damage aoe on us so it makes us spread out. I'm tired of seeing even pug groups all hold each other's pockets and all die cause the boss went to them and they didn't move.

One more thing, an annoyance issue in both raids: is it intended behavior for starro to pop his shield so quickly? I feel like it should be more health based like every 15% he shields like in the throne of the dead Hades fight. I'm not sayin nerf it, just use a different method of madness so we can follow along.

How does one possibly die in the Aquaman fight? I'm not even joking when I say I haven't seen one person die there since the nerfs. Every single run, league and pug, have all been flawless and the feat popped. The tentacles do no damage. The adds hardly spawn. There's just one AoE which spawns that hardly ever hits anyone. The only problem is Aquaman shooting the water and with him jumping back into the middle constantly, it's usually not even hitting the group. If it does happen, a simple lunge solves that problem. There's no difficulty to this boss fight at all. The Member version feels exactly the same as the Clamped version except it lasts longer. That's it. I'm not saying turn it into something incredibly hard, but man, we should at least notice a slight difficulty spike from the Clamped version when entering the Member version of the Raid.

Starro does move around a lot, but he always returns to the Tank. If you closely watch him, he goes through a sequence of moves. Our Tank tonight was calling out exactly when he was about to teleport away from him and when he was about to return, before it happened and managed to be correct every single time. The only annoying thing in there right now is the Lunging Strike. That needs to be reduced in damage and allow for players to block it. There are ways to work around it but hopefully TLantern will sort it out quickly. The exploit players are using in there also needs to be sorted but TLantern is already working on that.

The Starro shield is health based. Not sure why you're asking for something that is already there? It happens when he reaches certain percentages of his health.

with pugs its a 2. with league its an 8 you guess nerf last boss way too much. we had healers under the flatten attack taking little to no damage taking all attacks like it was nothing. before all we had to do was block if he was beaming and move if he was coming towards you to avoid being hit. now you don't have to even move just block and you take no damage. as for the aquaman fight it went from being tedious because we had to stay long range do the the tentacles hitting hard to people being able to melee and survive aquaman's water blast.

Or maybe some people are just sick and tired of fist boss being the hardest while the last boss is a breeze.

Lunging Strike absolutely ruined our attempts at the No Death feat today. It's a "One Shot outta' nowhere" at midrange. I'm assuming it's not intended to be this way, especially since there is no warning whatsoever.

We actually did the No Death feat today so it's still definitely possible with how hard Lunging Strike is hitting. Despite it being doable, it still needs some changes. It needs to not hit as hard and have a tell that can be reacted to. I also don't think it's intended and hopefully TLantern shorts it out soon.

Definitely still doable, just not for our group today. Did triggering "Flatten" as often as possible make the difference, or would you consider it more RNG in your run through today? I don't necessarily see how you avoid Lunging Strike otherwise.

We didn't really set out to trigger Flatten as often as possible, but as I mentioned above, it's certainly something that is so weak that when triggered is actually beneficial to the group due to it stopping him from doing something else. I wouldn't say we finished it because of RNG. We heavily analysed the Boss and played it safe and were patient. Very patient.

in my oppinion, its to hard for my alts (all at cr188, only alfa and 6.3 generator mods).
my fully modded main character can do it with other fully modded 190+ ppl. but try to pug:
you will allmost never make it. and i think as it is more of a gift to members (additional marks),
i dont even bother doing the member raid with any other character than my main... its ok.

dude doesnt know what he is talking about RAID is fine im 189 electric 250 sp and we burned aquaman with 3 dps.. me hardlight and nature.... its called A SKILLED TEAM THAT WORKS TOGETHER..being all 191 has NOTHING to do with it.....pickups is key....STOP DPS AND PICKUP YOUR TEAMATE....geez....thats the problem these lazy players want to burn through content and us REAL VETS cant enjoy the fight....sad....the raid is fine just wish it was longer and more adrenaline rush like KANDAQ or PARADOX WAVE NEXUS ....ETC......the raid is fine....learn to play right and know your team