The Impossible Mr. Trapdoor and Issue 19's New Theme

I'm not entirely sure how much of an impact the lava made in my fights but the temptation of the lava is too great to not do it.

Lets just say that turning on Granite/Rooted on the last Apex TF battle would net you unresistable, autohit damage in the form of an initial blast + fast damage over time ticks.

Which can be stacked up to 8 times.

Nevermind the DoT killing anyone within a second or two under that condition, the blast would defeat you outright.

Thankfully it has a long visual and audio queue and is generally not stacked too much, unless the team is Melee AT heavy. For the rest of the 90% or so of the game, you're fine. I guess I didn't give you enough of these:

Stone has always been a bit lopsided. The original idea was that Granite was supposed to be a tradeoff. Sure, it's awesome, but you wouldn't want to be in it constantly. But due to buffers and Teleport, the tradeoff has mostly been negated, and because of the straightforward mechanics of 99% of the game to date, the speed issue really hasn't been something to worry about; you just stand there and trade blows with the AV or whatever.

So now we're getting TFs that involve moving battles. Apex has one, Tin Mage sort of has one, and it's not unreasonable to figure we'll get more like that. Trapdoor is your training session for those fights. It's pretty forgiving, but it's supposed to introduce you to the idea of trading blows for a while, then running away to accomplish something else, then coming back to the boss.

In a very real sense, you need to be able to solo Ramiel's arc to be properly prepared for the content it's gating.

Look at this! Look at it! Is there something wrong with this picture!?

Of course there's something wrong with that picture. Where's the glorious AOE destruction?

That is the very definition of a target-rich environment.

I do think Trapdoor probably should be reset after a death, rather than continuing to spawn bifurcations. Once he's gotten several out, it really is difficult for a single player to control the situation, which means either you need to call in buddies or else reset the mission.

That is a single player. At least, somewhere in there.

According to the post I linked, they fell asleep.

Even so, if you can't beat Trappy on the first attempt, you're still better off resetting the mission. I hate that.

I've soloed Trapdoor on all my characters, if I recall. Only one had any problems -- the MA/Regen scrapper. I jumped into the fight with scrapperlock on, ignored my health, and got him to a sliver of health before I died. Totally surprised me. I took round 2 without breaking a sweat.

The Honoree, on the other hand, is impossible for some character builds. My knockback-specialized AR/Storm corruptor could not defeat the Honoree, no matter how many inspirations he swallowed. My defenders also had some severe problems; it might have been possible, but I decided to get friends. Controls -- both hard and soft -- are worthless against the Honoree, as are To-Hit debuffs, and that negates a lot of strategies that are valid everywhere else in the game.

No biggie, though. I don't mind if there is content that my character cannot solo. Even Superman has kryptonite.

Haven't been playing for a while, but had to get Going Rogue on the Steam sale, and as a result encountered the nice Mr. Trapdoor. Escaped on the first encounter, figured the clones needed to be dealt with, returned and killed all who spawned, then died. When I came back Trapdoor was deep in lava, no clones around, though he looked to be in full health. I tried to attack him but was greeted with a text box. I figure he died in lava while I was away, the silly bugger.

Heh. That's pretty funny.