Insanity of moving blue spots while you have powers that root you.

Playing the Apex TF over the last day has aquainted me to the insanity of developers dropping spots that move randomly on you while expecting you to use powers that root you.

Then you have the melee players saying well you need to pay attention - all while being stunned by some of the Champions and unable to actually move.

Is this the best we can expect? A gimmick to drop instant death is the best thing we can expect for making a challenge? How about adding enemies without status effects but yet with armor on all of them? I did this on an AE mission and everyone loved it. I had a few enemies that had specific hard hitting attacks that would hurt squishies - so the melee learned to handle those - I had some resistant to slows - some resistant to fire.

I love the Battle Maiden fight on all my characters. My master mind, my blasters, my defenders, my controllers, my scrappers, my tankers, my corruptor, my stalker, and my dominator.

Bummer you do not like it. Warriors have only a small chance to stun, but it does happen. Hopefully if you ever play it again "the melee learned to handle those" enemies that are mezzing your character.

I have played this last night with my characters (2 ranged blasters, a brute, and an ill/rad) and though I died a few times on each, I had lots of fun.

It's not 'instant death' - if you had no way to avoid it, you might be justified in calling it that. One key clue: If you have a rooting attack that is loong on animation (I have 2 archery blasters, so Rain of Arrows, I'm lookin' at you!), try firing JUST AFTER the last blue patch dropped, or even just after the blue warning patches appear (from OUTSIDE the warning patches, of course.)

And conversely, avoid firing when you haven't seen any blue patches for a while... they're likely on the way. That will give you the maximum time to react and avoid the damage.

TLDR: Observe the situation. Find a pattern. Adapt.

I own face in that fight with a traps defender. If I can handle those roots, you can handle yours.

Flight is your best friend in that fight if you're a squishie. The Swords can't get to you. The Champions' arrows have no stun. If you don't get out of a Blue Rain of Death in time, its -Fly drops you.. right out of it!

If you train yourself to attack - move - attack - move - etc..., then you won't make the number one mistake: queuing up two rooting attacks in a row. If you queue up a second attack and a BRoD is coming, you'll try to move and then find you can't, because the queued attack starts going off.

You're second best friend is the craftable recipe Envenomed Dagger. Since the BRoD causes attack chains to be broken, keeping the AV's Regen down is very important for a timely end (and for everyone to be focusing on the AV when she's there instead of messing with the adds). This enables any make up of ATs to be able to easily complete the TF in under 40 minutes every time.

So, you want a challenge that isn't so... challenging?

I can face that fight with an Energy Melee / Dark Armor Tank, a Dark Melee / Stone Armor Brute, and a Stone Armor / Mace Tank.

EM has a couple of deep-timed attacks, such as Total Focus and Energy Transfer, neverminding the root on Dark Regeneration. Stone Armor itself is a movement penalty.

One of the things Incarnate Content is going to FORCE YOU TO DO is to LEARN HOW TO BE FLEXIBLE AND ADAPT. The entire intention of the Incarnate Content is that you cannot approach any of the scenario fights with the same tactics that you use in non-incarnate content.

For the Battle Maiden fight, you have to be ready, and willing, to change up how you play. If you rely on a lot of Deep-Timed powers and your soft-capped IO build to get you through non-incarnate content, you are going to have to drop that particular playstyle, and work with powers that fire off quickly. So for archers, that probably means no Rain of Arrows... which is lousy DPS for that kind of fight anyways. For single hardened targets spread out as in the Battle Maiden fight, Archery is best served with an attack chain of Snap Shot / Aimed Shot / Snap Shot / Blazing Arrow / Snap Shot.

On top of that, you need to keep an eye out for the patches that are falling. There is a very visible indication, even on the lowest graphical settings, of the Spear about to fall. You need to be able to pay attention to the surrounding area, not put an attack on auto and then walk away from the keyboard.

If for some reason you are Blue Colorblind and simply cannot SEE the spear falling pre-animation, fine, go file a bug report that you have a physical disability that prevents you from playing through that encounter. Technical problems like players being unable to see the spear's pre-animation can be dealt with.

If you have a team-mate who has blue colored powers similar to the spear's color, ask them to switch to a costume without those power-colors. If the team-mate refuses, ask the leader to kick said team-mate for griefing. Again, this is a problem that can be worked around.

Yup, first time I ran Apex I faceplanted a few times. Since then, it's just not hard to get out of the way when that warning patches start up. I accidently clicked Sands of Mu (major rooting) right when one started and still got away in time.

I like the trick - it's a good escape from the 'stand still and bang on a bag of hit points strategy'.

I think it just takes getting used to.

The developers seem to want to move the game beyond "tank and spank." I think they're moving in the right direction, even if I don't agree with everything. They want to move away from formulaic encounters with just variations in the critters.

I ran my Earth/Storm through it last night and only died once. I was actually surprised, since it was my first time through with that character. Earth/Storm was actually pretty helpful for Battle Maiden. No -Regen on the team, but she was whacked in less than 15 for the MO badge. The mobs were absolutely demolished with the immobs and holds.

Well I would not have an issue with it except for one thing - why am I rooted?

If I could attack, bunny hop or whatever as you can in most games and in fact rooting is added in this game and occasionally it has been dropped on some powers by accident - why am I rooted?

I can fire an attack at an enemy and even while around a corner his reply is instant. I can't strafe and be out of range. So what is the point of rooting us? I love to move and fight - you say adapt and learn - I say it's a silly mechanism.

I do play more than one game and adapting to movement is great if I can move. So drop the roots and let's bang. I guess your idea of difficult and a challenge really differs from mine.

Status effects and shortcuts are not what I call a challenge, why not? Because only part of the characters are affected. Tanks, scrappers, brutes and stalkers don't even sweat the status effects - nor do Doms that pop as it starts.

So only the squishies are affected and it is just an annoyance.

With my Earth controllers, I can do good in that TF even if many of their powers are rooting for quit a bit. Earth Quake and Quicksands help to keep the team alive, as they trap wandering foes in it. However, their long rooting animations make them more challenging to cast. That's OK with me, I just need to adapt. The Blue Death is still slower than the casting time. You just have to be careful not to have ennemies around and to time carefully as well.

So I don't see any problem. The challenge is fair.

Heh, Earthquake seems to take forever if you fired it off while the blue mist swirls.

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!

Phew.

You can use long rooting animation attacks, you just need to know when to time them. That takes experience though.

You just need to get better at it. Ive run it twice on my mind/fire without dieing once, 4 times without dieing from patchs. And another time on my SS/fire without dieng from patchs (damn pylons got me once though *sigh*)

But guess what? AFTER patchs form i can still get 1-2 attacks off and still get away. Even stuff like burn, 2 second animation. Or confuse, another 2 second animation. Or KoB, which also has a 2 second animation.

So to the op, you sir are slow.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by je_saist One of the things Incarnate Content is going to FORCE YOU TO DO is to LEARN HOW TO BE FLEXIBLE AND ADAPT. The entire intention of the Incarnate Content is that you cannot approach any of the scenario fights with the same tactics that you use in non-incarnate content.

Quoted for truth, yes je_saist was quoted for truth. What is the world coming to?

About the only time this is a problem for me is when I don't realize a patch is coming, usually because of occasional clipping issues with the rough terrain, or because an ally's power effects made it hard enough to see that I missed it.

Every now and then I queue a power in a way that gets me in trouble. In general, I probably die to a patch once once in that fight one time in every two or three I attend it.

So I guess I don't really see the insanity.

I don't really understand OP's beef either.

It seems likely from your phrasing that you were killed by the falling swords, so, do you think Battle Maiden is too hard? Or too easy? Or the mobs should have different resistances or something?

When the WST was announced, I ran the STF for the first time ever. The Lieutenants pull got botched and we wound up fighting all four of Recluse's LTs at once, so it was a long fight. I was playing my hoverblaster at the time, and Scirocco seemed intent on killing me with his tornados, since every time he could cast them he threw them at me.

But I noticed that the tornados didn't immediately start damaging me, and I could fire off a power, strafe, fire off another power while the tornado caught up, strafe, fire off another, strafe...and so on. It probably did hurt my DPS, but it also kept me alive far longer than some of my more resilient teammates.

So it's not really a new mechanic, and it is possible to do. You just have to take the rooting into account when deciding when to move and when to attack.

I ran this three times last night on a Brute, a Fort & a Corr.

And while I agree with others that it's not super hard or ridiculous, I also feel that if the goal is to make the game more fluid and less tank and spank that the game's mechanics should reflect that.

I would love it if the game became a more mobile, fluid experience where things like travel suppression and being rooted during animations didn't exist.

Will it happen? Unlikely.

The time between blue patch appearing and hitting is around 8 seconds. The most you'll have to deal with your powers being is around 3.3 (unless you're firing an interruptable snipe).

I've done it with an Elec Brute with the whole 3.3 second animations. Done it with Dominator who's having to use long-root rain and patch powers. Done it with Masterminds (which people also say is impossible) with very few pet deaths, even having to juggle watching patches, watching myself, tasking pets to move, and healing/buffing the team at the same time.

Just practice more. It took a few runs but I can do this without getting killed at all now, regardless of char I take.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.