Some criticism on Lairs(Dr. Destoyer Factory)Spoiler!

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Well, excuse my bad english, but its not my first language and its 4:45 AM so I am a bit tired.

We just played trough Telisos Telescope tower and Dr. Destroyer´s factory and I have some input on it.
First the good things:
- Nice length, takes perfect amount of time(until you get to the last encounter)
- Decent difficulty(Until you get to the last encounter)
- Fun theme/lore

So on to the bad things, its mostly about the boss encounter.

Mega-Destroyer chains special ability's so he holds, then do 4k wtfBBQ damage and then another 2k damage within the time it takes to break hold. So most, if not all gets "one-combo-shotted" - solution is simple, add CD on his specials. You cannot balance the game around people having perfect tank builds or support builds. People will make wrong choices when they make their chars, either for RP or out of lack off knowledege.

Also the size on the model of Mega-Destroyer is so big that you cant see the special power charge-up icon over his head. Solution is simple - reduce the size of the boss.

Next is the HP pool on this encounter is ridiculous for a 5 man party, the encounter feels like it takes forever. - Solution is a little more complex, maybe add some usability to the consoles/"fire lava containers" to spill lava over them OR you can keep it simple and just nerf their HP.

And then onto the more general critic, aggro/threat. Granted I haven't done extensive testing on this but it seems like the Mega-Destroyer has some random-target abilitys but he doesnt change back to the tank so he kills whoever he sets his eyes on, unless you are a tank. We ended up having 2 tanks trying their best to build threat while the other one was blocking him. But to no avail, the healer ended up with aggro before the second tank.(Tanks in protector - healer in sentinel).

And their is also some bug with Dr. Destroyer running up into his tower and camping it if you wipe. You are then free to clear out the mobs around the Mega-Destroyer and also take out the upgrade modules. This needs fixing as well.

The Ultimate Brain encounter:
Its just ridiculous, If your melee your gonna get knock backed ever 2-3 second. If you stand 10-15 yards away from the boss, your safe from all his specials, including the balls of lightning in phase 2 and 3. Solution would be to make the balls run around in a path that isnt circular around the boss. Also, he need to get some ranged powers, was a very silly boss encounter.

Buster didn't do anything and didn't get any damage when we attacked so we just passed him.

Please look into this. Lairs are fun and I hope the rest off them aren't as unfinished as the 2 first Ive tried.

Hoel
Officer of Daedalus.

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Things that pop out at me from reading this, first, buster isn't a boss, he is just a training dummy/tv show reference. Second, the ultimate mind does have ranged attacks, he has a couple charged lightning attacks that will kill most characters if not blocked, they are however broadcast via an animation as well as a surge of lightning going over the brain so its pretty easy to block. The entire brain encounter is very boring, once the cloning vats are down its pretty much stand at range and block when you see the boss doing something. And yes, the bosses probably have too much hp, especially the ultimate mind, it doesn't make the fight harder at all really it makes boring.

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What tv show reference is he? :) I didnt get it, neither did anyone in my team. Thanks for the response.

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What tv show reference is he? :) I didnt get it, neither did anyone in my team. Thanks for the response.

Mythbusters

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Ah ofcourse, the trusty dummy from Mythbusters.

I would love some Dev commenting about the state of the lairs. If they have commented about it elsewhere please post a link or something.

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Just did the the Tower a few hours ago, was a challenge with the changes to defensives, but still doable.


The final encounter needs to be tweaked. The brain HP is way too high and it really made the whole fight jsut boring.

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I play a healer myself, and what your explaining isn't a random target issue, it's an agro issue for healers. At present, even with over 140 Pre + support stance at level 26, I will pull agro off a tank just by topping them off. Spent 10 mins playing hump the pole when facing a Cosmic destro as all he was interested in was me.

If your using proper tanks - Con/Pre builds - then agro is properly borked. Hopefully something they will fix in the future.

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Also the size on the model of Mega-Destroyer is so big that you cant see the special power charge-up icon over his head. Solution is simple - reduce the size of the boss.


Another solution would be to replicate the warning sign in his target icon. So instead of his ugly mug, you'd get the purple fan thingy or the yellow one to warn you that he's loading up on the specials.

I mean, folks tend to be staring at the pic anyway, to keep an eye on his health bar and how fast it's going down. So, incorporating into his portrait would make it noticeable and actionable for players

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Could we please have some dev responses regarding lairs? Would be nice to know if they are happy with them like they are or not.

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i foudn it advantageous for me to tank the mega destroyer on the catwalk, with proper positioning he will only use his eyebeams and missles and charge attack on you, and you can actually see his head.

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If you have specific issues or things which you think are bugs, be sure to enter them as bugs in game (/bug) and mention it here. In Lair's specifically, we tried to make the various boss fights a challenge and use a multi-stage fight model with different mechanics there and there. If something seems like too much of a "bag of HP" then the best thing you can do is have everyone in your group use the "I have the same issue!" option for a bug submitted about the bosses difficulty. That way we get data on builds and item selections that can help us determine if there's a problem somewhere (sometimes they might be meant to have a ton of HP and you just need to figure out the schtick to expose them or debuff them.). Also if the tells at the various stages of the fights aren't obvious enough, that's a bug too.

-S

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Thanks for the response even tough you evaded my specifics. I will continue to do some criticisms off the lairs as we go. Sadly the group I play with are somewhat slow levelers so they havent passer level 30 yet. We did Necrull today but its to late now for a writeup on it. I will come back with that tomorrow.
But a quick note about it is that it seemed like a one phase fight to us.

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If you have specific issues or things which you think are bugs, be sure to enter them as bugs in game (/bug) and mention it here. In Lair's specifically, we tried to make the various boss fights a challenge and use a multi-stage fight model with different mechanics there and there. If something seems like too much of a "bag of HP" then the best thing you can do is have everyone in your group use the "I have the same issue!" option for a bug submitted about the bosses difficulty. That way we get data on builds and item selections that can help us determine if there's a problem somewhere (sometimes they might be meant to have a ton of HP and you just need to figure out the schtick to expose them or debuff them.). Also if the tells at the various stages of the fights aren't obvious enough, that's a bug too.

-S

submitted my ticket that the ultimate mind is a "bag of hp".

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I didn't like the fact that when you die in the factory, you have to go through numerous doors and loading screens to get back to the fight. could you maybe have a direct door to the destroyer main room from the first room that triggers when you start the boss fight?

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I have to go back for the guys head cuz i didn't read the other mission, lol

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I did Doc Destroyer before the defensive nerf... very easy just took forever. I'll look for the too much hp ticket when I get on tomorrow and click "I have the same problem".

Also, we had maybe one drop from the entire boss sequence between the 5 of us playing... Two hours of difficult lair with almost no reward (the XP and resources from just defeating enemies aren't much of anything) is very disheartening :(

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Burial Cave

Well, last night we ventured into the place called the Burial Cave. In the door we are met by Necrull himself. He continues to rant like villians do about how he will rule the world before he vanishes into his cave. We then have to go trough his minions to get to him. This parts works nice, its perfectly long. There is only one issue throughout the instance, aggro.

Our dedicated healer flips on his Guardian role in his build and out-threats anything we can put out just by healing. So he can heal himself while he tanks(Shield power + Advantage lets you block while channeling). Thanks to this its pretty much a breeze. We started out tough, trying to tank it with a guardian and the healer in support role, all that happened then was that our healer got wtfBBQ pummeled on every pull because off the massive aggro he gained while healing the others.

So please explain to me how aggro is supposed to work in this game because its not like anything else Ive played before. As an example, we have a munitions player starting the pulls with some nice AoE(Mines(They seem to not give aggro to the player using them). I then shoot one off the mobs in the pack with Force Blast and I get the attention off most off the pack, the only one who seems to stick on the other guy is the one he uses his energy builder on. And then I need healing, get it and the healer has all the aggro, even from the one henchmen I took 50% HP from in one shot.

Sorry about the rant about aggro, now lets move back to the subject. The Burial Cave, Necrull´s lair.
We have now reached his room and we go for it, only to get wtfBBQ´ed by torment a few times, not quite getting the mechanic off the fight.
On the next pull we decide to spread our-self out so we don't stand close to each other. This works wonders.
We start wearing Necrull down and when he reaches the milestone HP values he spawns a few adds, nothing mines wont handle. So again, a HP bag with a few adds. Nothing challenging, the only thing that seems iffy is the aggro. It keeps popping between all off us for awhile. So all you can do as a non-tank is block all the time he has his eyes on you and wait for his wtfBBQ torment or aggro switch.
So all in all, its a dull encounter without much challenge to it.

So if anyone else have other experiences with this encounter please post here, but it seems pretty dull.
I am aware however that Necrull received a nerf in the 2. September patch so he might have been changed drastically.

And for the incentive to go back? There is none, after completing the mission there and getting the perks, there is no reason what so ever to go back there. Please fix the loot in the lairs. Its the only thing that will add re playability.

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I love the lairs so far! Well, Teleios tower is a pain, stupid cloning vats with stupid Perfection of Body's with stupid holds and stupid warbeasts and.... yeah. That's an annoying floor :P

Destroyer's Factory was a blast though. I totally owned the robot-building puzzle, my group just waited for me to put the stuff in and beat up the mobs that came in :P

However, Foxbat died at the end (I cried a little inside) and he did not respawn, even though we could all see a big yellow quest ! on our minimaps at his initial location. Dunno if this is a bug or intended.

Burial Cave was fun too. We got Necrull down even before he got nerfed. (The solution is to have multiple people tanking him--if anyone dies to the tentacle **** spell they can just fly back to his room). We found a Friendly Ghoul but he didn't do anything for us.

Excellent work on Lairs so far, Cryptic. Keep it up!

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There was no tentacle **** spawn after nerf :-( I like tentacles.

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If something seems like too much of a "bag of HP" then the best thing you can do is have everyone in your group use the "I have the same issue!" option for a bug submitted about the bosses difficulty.

Hang on, how do we do that? Far as I can tell, you can only do this if a GM has flagged your bug report to appear on the public list of bugs. Otherwise nobody else can see it to say "I have the same issue!"

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I've found all the lairs to be a joke so far. There have been no hurdles or difficult areas. In every EVERY instance the groups I've been in have just zerged through without having to rely on CC, agro management, or even healing in most cases. Oh, and I've only had 5 people on one dungeon... And I'm talking about curial cave, destroyer, telios, and viper nest.

The only even remotely hard one was viper nest because when you die the entire boss encounter respawns.


There's no learning mechanic to any of the fights, it's a complete and total zerg fest. There's no learning mechanic to any of the trash, its the same thing. Individual mobs don't do anything special as far as I can tell. There's no reason to say "hold the power armor while we kill the 2 henchmen"

Mob packs need to respawn ENTIRELY when you die, that alone might prevent the zerg aspect that instances have right now. If I kill 3 mobs in a pack of 4 and then die, there should be 4 mobs when I get back. Not 1.


I was really hoping lairs would be on the same level as FF1/EQ2/WoW raids, but for 5 people. I wanted them to require some thought and a bit of skill toa ccomplish.. oh, and drop loot that made them worth farming.

Right now I wouldn't even call this a PvE game. It's just a button mashing face-to-keyboard action adventure game.

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If anyone in your group was using Ice Wall your entire argument is invalid.

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The only issue I have is there are no items that drop off the final boss encounter, making it almost pointless in doing the lairs mulitple times.

What is the point in repeating them if there is no incentive?

Oh, and fighting the brain as melee is a complete nightmare.

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The only issue I have is there are no items that drop off the final boss encounter, making it almost pointless in doing the lairs mulitple times.

What is the point in repeating them if there is no incentive?

Oh, and fighting the brain as melee is a complete nightmare.

It's easy. Just line yourself up with the ramp you come in on so that you never get knocked into the water.

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Yeah, I would like for a dev to respond when it comes down to the loot tough. What incentive is there to run a lair more then once? Why isnt there loot for killing the lair BBG?

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It's not getting knocked back into water that's frustrating, it's getting knocked back every 2 seconds.

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Another solution would be to replicate the warning sign in his target icon. So instead of his ugly mug, you'd get the purple fan thingy or the yellow one to warn you that he's loading up on the specials.

I mean, folks tend to be staring at the pic anyway, to keep an eye on his health bar and how fast it's going down. So, incorporating into his portrait would make it noticeable and actionable for players

wow actually please repost that in suggestions so it might get noticed.

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Bah, just solo'd my way to Destroyer - Got him to 1/3 hp and his arms proceeded to **** me...come back, and he's locked in his little room. Killed his arms, cleared the entire room, and he still wouldn't come out. Bit of a waste, but at least I got one mish done =/.