So I "got through" Arcanaville's challenge...

Moonlighter · 06-05-2009 08:32 PM

...And by "got through" I mean I cleared the mission and all the waves with lots of cheating, lots of dying, and a whole bunch of swearing at my monitor. I am still learning the encounter and once I know all the enemies I'll see if I can do better.

So, I have a few questions for anyone who has done it. Or written it.

~ Wave 1 was challenging, but I completed it on both scrappers with no deaths.

~ Has anyone completed it as intended? It seems to me that I had to break line of sight a lot to mitigate the mobs with Build Up which technically breaks the rules.

~ In Wave 2, how do all the MM minions (including the Gang War peeps) have a 30% plus chance to hit a capped character? There was no defense debuff that registered on my defense monitor. Did anyone notice any Empathy types buffing with a ToHit buff maybe? (I am working on kill order and things are too hectic for me to figure our all the secondaries.)

~ I personally found Wave 3 harder than Wave 2 but maybe it's just me.

Some comments:

~ It's easier on Invincible than Unyielding by a fair bit. I forgot I was on Unyielding when I first started it.

~ SR is fairly weak as scrapper secondaries go. Martial Arts is really bad for a scrapper primary. My DM/Shields did *so* much better than my MA/SR.

~ They really need to up the recycle time on all AE mob self rez powers. It's to the point where one boss rezzed twice because it took me too long to finish the other boss. No mob should be able to ever rez more than once.

~ The boss heavy hitting attacks hit too hard. Total Focus does most of my bar in one hit.

~ Boss ranged attacks hit way too hard. I got hit by a Shuriken for over 1200 damage before it started picking bleed damage.

~ Waiting on click type mez powers after dying really sucks.

Next will be finishing up my Claws/Invuln for this and trying it again with my DM/Shields. The lack of a self heal on the Claws/Invuln will mean I'll have to cheat with inspirations. We'll see how much Shockwave helps.

Moonlighter

50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD

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k_nut · 06-05-2009 10:06 PM

congrats. ive run through it. twice on my scrapper. arcanaville told me i must have a love of pain.

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EricHough · 06-05-2009 10:06 PM

[ QUOTE ]

~ In Wave 2, how do all the MM minions (including the Gang War peeps) have a 30% plus chance to hit a capped character? There was no defense debuff that registered on my defense monitor. Did anyone notice any Empathy types buffing with a ToHit buff maybe? (I am working on kill order and things are too hectic for me to figure our all the secondaries.)

[/ QUOTE ]

If NPC masterminds get supremacy just like PC MM's then they would give thier pets a 10% to hit buff - I suppose some combination of stacking supremacy + scaling could produce this effect. Just a thought.

Not sure about any of the other questions - I tried the challenge a long while back when Arcanaville first designed it and decided it wasn't my cup of tea so don't know a lot about it.

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MunkiLord · 06-05-2009 10:35 PM

Congrats OP, I tried it once a long time ago. I'll try it again once I tweak my build to get a little better performance out of it.

FunstuffofDoom · 06-05-2009 11:19 PM

I tried it once. On tenacious, I died four times before completion, and I didn't bother sweeping the map. After wave three, I called it a night.

At the time, I was way too busy fighting for my life to take down numbers, but my recollections are that Wave Two gave me the most trouble. I had very little trouble defeating Wave One, and Wave Three fell with some- but less than Two- trouble.

All considered, I agreed with MunkiLord. It was a lot more stress than I needed.

Rieze · 06-06-2009 08:16 AM

What is this challenge? This sounds like something I would like to try. I need to read more of the boards I guess.

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Kahlan_ · 06-06-2009 08:35 AM

I've completed it as intended on my fortunata (I don't have any scrappers). So my insight may not be too useful for you. You can decide.

A lot of the enemies have tohit buffs. This means you will want one or more of the following:
1. a way to heal
2. higher than softcapped defense (around 60 seems to be the turning point)
3. decent resistances across the board
4. or exceptional tactics (often using knockdown/knockback effectively)

Also, you will want to avoid letting the energy manipulation bosses get into melee. They hit extremely hard as you noticed. The ill/rads can be just as much trouble. I used bunny hopping with combat jumping and hurdle continuously to try and position myself optimally. I imagine that would probably be harder on a melee AT like a scrapper though.

Siolfir · 06-06-2009 08:44 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

~ In Wave 2, how do all the MM minions (including the Gang War peeps) have a 30% plus chance to hit a capped character? There was no defense debuff that registered on my defense monitor. Did anyone notice any Empathy types buffing with a ToHit buff maybe? (I am working on kill order and things are too hectic for me to figure our all the secondaries.)

[/ QUOTE ]

If NPC masterminds get supremacy just like PC MM's then they would give thier pets a 10% to hit buff - I suppose some combination of stacking supremacy + scaling could produce this effect. Just a thought.

Not sure about any of the other questions - I tried the challenge a long while back when Arcanaville first designed it and decided it wasn't my cup of tea so don't know a lot about it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Whether or not the MM mob itself gets Supremacy, Thugs Enforcers have leadership powers including a weak version of Tactics which affect all Thugs within a 30' radius.

Each enforcer grants a 2.5% tohit bonus to each and every thug around them, whether summoned by that MM or no. I (ab)used this on one of my arcs back when minions still got Gang War and every mob was a Thugs/* MM.

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Werner · 06-06-2009 09:25 AM

I tried it a few times on both of my main scrappers (Invincible, RWZ challenge rules). Not much luck. If I IO out my Broad Sword/Shield Defense, I think he'll have a better shot at it. I intend to be running about 75% melee, 45% ranged and AoE defense. Resistance on Shield Defense isn't great, but at least it has quite a few hit points, which is functionally similar. I do plan to have Aid Self.

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Eislor · 06-06-2009 10:03 AM

BTW, some (maybe all) summoned mobs have a base 75% chance to hit, not 50%. For example the gun drones are 75%.

The henchman that are summoned by the custom MM's are the same as ours so 75% base.

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Werner · 06-06-2009 10:19 AM

And that's why I'm shooting for 75% melee defense if I IO out my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. I want to be able to wade through Architect Entertainment content nearly as easily as regular content.

"That's because Werner can't do maths." - BunnyAnomaly
"Four hours in, and I was no longer making mistakes, no longer detoggling. I was a machine." - Werner
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Moonlighter · 06-06-2009 10:28 AM

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And that's why I'm shooting for 75% melee defense if I IO out my Broad Sword/Shield Defense. I want to be able to wade through Architect Entertainment content nearly as easily as regular content.

[/ QUOTE ]

My these scrappers don't have an issue with Architect content if I run on Unyielding so I don't hit AVs. Well occasionally an Elite Boss will two shot me with Build Up if I am being cocky which I often am.

My MA/SR scrapper has Aid Self which is the only reason I even got anywhere in the Arcanaville challenge. The problem is with the lower hit points (accolades plus bonuses) and no top end resists the damage spikes are too great. The passive hit points and resistances on the DM/Shields make all the difference.

If I make a /Shields with Aid Self and still remain capped it might be stronger than relying on Siphon Life for such this particular challenge. I don't know if I could do that and keep Hasten in a build though.

Moonlighter

50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD

First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563

Moonlighter · 06-06-2009 10:29 AM

[ QUOTE ]
What is this challenge? This sounds like something I would like to try. I need to read more of the boards I guess.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's an AE arc. Just search for Arcanaville; she has three arcs.

Moonlighter

50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD

First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563

Test_Rat · 06-06-2009 01:09 PM

I beat it on a dom and a huntsman...

I guess it was meant for melee toons? I had little trouble.

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FunstuffofDoom · 06-06-2009 04:03 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I beat it on a dom and a huntsman...

I guess it was meant for melee toons? I had little trouble.

[/ QUOTE ]

What difficulty level did you use?

Arcanaville · 06-08-2009 05:05 PM

[ QUOTE ]
I beat it on a dom and a huntsman...

I guess it was meant for melee toons? I had little trouble.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you can stay at range, which a ranged toon can do without offensive penalty, the encounter is somewhat easier (due to the fact that MA critters like most PvE critters have much lower ranged damage modifier, among other reasons). Its also easier on heroic, when all the bosses scale down from Boss to LT rank.

The hardest difficulty level is probably Unyielding, when everything tends to be +2 and there's 50% to twice as many of them.

Although it was originally meant to be a step up from the RWZ Scrapper Challenge, its explicitly designed to allow anyone to try it, on at least heroic if not higher level. I believe the dynamic range of the mission from heroic to unyielding encompasses one of the widest possible high-level difficulty ranges the MA supports (or supported at the time it was written). Its been tweaked a few times to improve the overall balance (for example, it used to have too much -perception and too much overlapping damage auras, and at one point too many pets and confuse effects).

I was going to update the encounter, but I'm holding off until I15 goes live and stabilizes, because there are features in I15 I want to use.

Also, I thought I should mention that a couple of people have over time suggested that the mission was too easy, until I discovered they ignored the boss and just clicked the blinkie to complete. That is intended to be easy, if you decide to give up at some point (that feature is there to ensure that even if you give up, you can receieve the bonus tickets for all the kills you've accomplished up to that point).

If someone is actually capable of trivially defeating the entire mission on a difficulty level higher than heroic, while fighting all three spawn waves, I'd love to see a demorecord of it. Seeing what works would help me improve the next version without simply adding a ton of brute force to it (its easy to make it harder; its not easy to make it harder in a way that won't make it trivially impossible for most players).

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Arcanaville · 06-09-2009 10:08 AM

[QR]

I had a couple people tell me that the mission spawned too many "background" LTs which, due to them being sonic buffers, were too difficult to clear. I did some testing last night and it seems if you run the mission on an even level difficulty, you could get situations where there was so many of them, unless you had a way of scattering them it could get pretty ridiculous. It seems that at some point within the last few patches, the mission background group lost a minion: that caused all of the map spawns to spawn as LTs. At high densities that could get problematic.

I've fixed that and one other small error I detected in the arc that snuck in there. Anyone who tried this arc and were stymied by being mobbed by a map full of sonic LTs should retry it.

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Moonlighter · 06-09-2009 11:24 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[QR]

I had a couple people tell me that the mission spawned too many "background" LTs which, due to them being sonic buffers, were too difficult to clear. I did some testing last night and it seems if you run the mission on an even level difficulty, you could get situations where there was so many of them, unless you had a way of scattering them it could get pretty ridiculous. It seems that at some point within the last few patches, the mission background group lost a minion: that caused all of the map spawns to spawn as LTs. At high densities that could get problematic.

I've fixed that and one other small error I detected in the arc that snuck in there. Anyone who tried this arc and were stymied by being mobbed by a map full of sonic LTs should retry it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not stymied. Just... utterly boring, at least for my Martial Artist. It's not that they were hard, it's that spending 7 minutes clearing each spawn because my Storm Kick was hitting for like 30 was not exactly the exciting game play I was expecting. Well, until I attacked the boss and then it's ZOMG.

But to be honest my first impression of them was with my Martial Artist mistakenly set to Unyielding where I was getting 5 cross buffed Lts. My DM on Invincible had no issues.

Moonlighter

50s include MA/SD, MA/SR, DP/Elec, Claw/Inv, Kat/Dark, Kat/Fire, Spine/Regen, Dark/SD

First Arc: Tequila Sunrise, #168563

Darkonne · 06-09-2009 12:32 PM

[ QUOTE ]

I had a couple people tell me that the mission spawned too many "background" LTs which, due to them being sonic buffers, were too difficult to clear. I did some testing last night and it seems if you run the mission on an even level difficulty, you could get situations where there was so many of them, unless you had a way of scattering them it could get pretty ridiculous.

[/ QUOTE ]

In retrospect, I should really have noticed my difficulty was still on Ruthless (CL:4) when attempting the challenge. Now I don't feel so bad about all my gratuitous deaths.

[ QUOTE ]

I've fixed that and one other small error I detected in the arc that snuck in there. Anyone who tried this arc and were stymied by being mobbed by a map full of sonic LTs should retry it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I managed to clear the room before starting the test, so it didn't interfere with the challenge itself. The mass Lieutenants actually made for an interesting exercise at first: I developed a whole new respect for the Nemesis Staff's knockback and Psychic Scream's psionic damage. But the fun wore off after a while. :-)

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Arcanaville · 06-09-2009 03:24 PM

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I couldn't help but at least *try* to clear the entire room with the mega sonic spawns on Unyielding. I was able to do so 2 times out of 4 with my MA/SR, both times by using crane kick a lot (the two times I deliberately withheld CK to see what it was like when you couldn't scatter them apart, I eventually got unlucky and spiked to death while surrounded by a ton of them).

The room now spawns a combination of sonic LTs and bot minions, basically similar to the first mission of my Secret Weapons arc.

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