Dev Post JackieKo Posted October 25 Dev Post Posted October 25 Hi everyone! Please answer the following questions about the new lair boss, the Propagator Core XR-53. Feel free to also leave overall general feedback. If you are streaming or recording your gameplay while on PTS, we would love to check out the VODs. Seeing players experience the content in real time is incredibly helpful, so feel free to post them here or DM them to me. Additionally, players will be getting a very early look into 7.6 content at this stage. To set expectations, know that the content that will be released at this time is still a work in progress and not polished. As an example, you may see placeholder or unfinished assets and art. If you are reporting a bug, please clearly state that and if necessary, include steps that would allow us to reproduce said bug. Important notes for this current iteration of PTS: Players can either fly to Ilum and walk through the phase door or use Group Activity Finder (this will be the only Encounter listed in that window). The name of the Encounter is called Relentless Replication Veteran Mode is currently blocked. Trash mobs have not yet been implemented. The final model for the boss has not yet been implemented. Gear vendors are available in the Supplies Section of both Fleets and near the phase gates. Please feel free to answer as many or as few of these questions as you’d like. All feedback is valuable. Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? What was your operation comp by role? Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Did you find the phase transitions clear? How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Thanks! 2 1
Ranadiel_Marius Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Nope. We did at least five runs, and I felt like they were just a waste of everyone's time. What was your operation comp by role? 4 DPS, 2 Heal, 2 Tank Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? I guess it was intuitive? I don't know because we never beat it, so I don't know if we were doing things wrong or not. Our tank commented that they didn't get the boss's movement though. Did you find the phase transitions clear? It has phases? We got it down to 35% on our best run and it didn't seem like it ever changed what it was doing. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Never cleared it, but it felt like it was taking too long. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I mean I noticed them and I understood they meant danger, but I didn't find them helpful or distracting. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? I wasn't paying attention to specific damage by specific abilities, so no idea. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Again, group never cleared it, and I can't tell you what went wrong for sure so I don't know if it was because something was too complex or not. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Significantly harder than any other Story Mode Operation that I've run (have not run R-4). Part of that is just that we didn't know how to run it, but it also just seemed a lot more punishing (and tedious) than most story mode operations. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Powerful construct was fine? Imperfect Constructs had way too much HP. We tried to kill them on a few of our runs, but the idea never stuck because you needed 3 DPS (maybe 2 if they both notice it fast enough?) to kill them and having DPS constantly killing them would just mean we weren't doing anything to the boss because they were constantly spawning. This is probably the mechanic we failed on, but I don't see a PUG pulling that off regularly. Organized group with voice chat probably could do it, but that level of coordination feels too high for Story Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. *shrug* Nothing jumped out as a bug, but I was mostly focused on not stepping in the digestive acid. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? I'm sure experienced raiders will be able to pull this off, but as a story mode lair raid, it is way too difficult for PUGs that include people that don't do serious raiding. Also, I was playing as melee, and the boss just didn't feel good to me because I had to constantly run out of range of the boss because of the digestive acid while I was at 14 or something stacks. Probably did not help our group at all that melee DPS had the choices of dying or doing nothing. 1
AenonJurtis Posted October 25 Posted October 25 (edited) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Yeah honestly it seemed like it had potential, both to be a somewhat challenging SM boss but room for interesting VM mechanics. Plus I really like the art/aesthetics of the approach and the room itself. What was your operation comp by role? We had 2 healers, 1 tank, and 5 melee DPS (which as you know, is a real pain for this fight) Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? The tanks filling up along side his stacks was a really nice touch, I think that the Imperfect droids probably need to have a bit better indicator of who they're targeting (similar to Nefra) Did you find the phase transitions clear? The only phase that we got to was when the droid got to 5 stacks and spawned his Constructs, didn't get far enough maybe to see more. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? As I just alluded to, we didn't clear. And I would say that unless we totally didn't understand a critical mechanic 86 million HP is far too much health for a SM lair boss, especially with the floor filling up with green. We had ~7 - 8 minute pulls and never got him below 50% (this was a pickup group and we were averaging 60k DPS which I think is totally reasonable considering all the DPS were melee). The fight is either dramatically overtuned, or something important wasn't intuitive and we never figured it out. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Not sure if it was due to my camera, but I never saw these skulls, and after all our pulls I'm not entirely sure what they'd signify (maybe his stack count??) Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? I think the Digestive Enzyme on the floor ramps up too quickly, especially with how long the fight was taking we were needing to stack the circles and if you strayed into a stacked one you'd quickly get > 20 stacks and be in serious trouble. All the other abilities seemed tuned nicely. Two healers felt about right. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Once again, either we didn't understand the mechanics or everything was clear and the boss just had too much HP. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? See above, I'd say in its current state it is the hardest SM content in the game. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? If we were meant to kill the Imperfect Construct, they have too much HP. The Powerful Construct (and mistaken one) felt perfect. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. No bugs Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? As I said, I really like the vibe of the encounter. The abilities are cool, the premise is cool, and the art is pretty. I just think that either it is too complicated for us and something that weakens or damages the boss wasn't clear, or it just has too much HP. Edited October 25 by AenonJurtis 1
Lakemine Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Yep echoing everything else the other 3 here have said. Its health is way over tuned and the adds health is to high. Is there a way to clear the green puddles? I think if its health was WAY lower and there is a way to clear green, then its fine. Oh something else. Is the XR-53 supposed to move or just stay till he jumps? And what precipitates him jumping?
Elvarania Posted October 25 Posted October 25 To answer the questions: Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Yes it was fun. The location looks interesting and there are clearly some mechanics I am missing. Indeed, I sincerely hope the mechanics are NOT to just kill adds until they stop spawnign, and then to take 20 mins to kill the boss. I think the fight will be fun when working as intended. What was your operation comp by role? 1T, 5D, 2H. PT tank, 3x PT Pyro, 1x Sniper, 1x Assassin, Sorc/Merc heal. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Somewhat. The mechanics and theme of the boss is clearly based around 'feeding' the boss and filling the tubes, and forcing it to replicate something strange or unusual, or to destroy the tubes or something. We will continue to fight it and try to work it out. Did you find the phase transitions clear? No. There were no clear phase transitions other than the large exploding droid spawning after the boss gained 5 stacks. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? It was way too long, and 86mil HP is insane. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Sort of, although we thought it might be related to mechanics? In the end, one of our PTs mentioned he had 95 stacks and didn't want to lose them for Yield, so they were not a threat in a healing sense. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Difficult to say. Healing was pretty easy overall, providing people were not standing in AoE too much. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Well just the mechanics overall, as we don't know them yet!! Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? I suspect this boss will be viewed similar to R-4 by the community in that it will be too difficult for a PUG group to tackle. We are an experienced raid team with MM clears of every operation, and we couldn't quite figure out what to do here. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? No difficulty in defeating them, but again, mechanics wise we don't know if what we were doing was correct? One pull we tried to continuously kill all droids, but doing this was almost like fighting a 'hydra' in that one once was around 10%, another spawned, which makes us think it's not the correct tactic. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. I mean apart from the boss not having any legs and 86mil HP, I can't think of any. Oh, apart from the droids not spawning after 5 minutes!! Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? So, a weird fight. I think we bugged it? We spent an hour or so trying to figure out the mechanics. 86mil HP for an SM boss is insane, so clearly there are some sort of mechanics required to do a significant amount of damage, or increase player dmg. I suspect the mechanics are something to do with the 4 liquid filling tubes around the room, and clearing/managing the green toxin on the floor. However, nothing seemed to 'work', so in one of our pulls we concentrated on killing ALL the adds that spawned. After 5 minutes and 5 spawns of the large explosive droids, the imperfect droids just completely stopped spawning. We proceeded then to just DPS the boss, with the odd Prey Seeker and exploding droid spawning. Took 21minutes to kill the boss. The fight has potential to be interesting, and we were clearly either missing some mechanics or some mechanics were not working as intended. There was nothing interactable that was obvious to me, nothing to click, nothing to aim at the boss or explode with droids to damage the boss or increase our damage, all of which seem like the way the mechanics were going. We looked at the abilities on jedipedia and noticed that certain adds spawn based on who 'feeds' the boss, but didn't get a chance to try that. We will certainly be trying again this week, whilst keeping a keen eye online for any tips and tricks. Any yellow feedback from yourselves would also be very appreciated. 1
Darthjantom Posted October 25 Posted October 25 (edited) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? At this stage, not really. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? The AoE's and stuff we saw boss do seemed self explanatory for most part. Did you find the phase transitions clear? We did not see any phases? How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? We did not manage to clear it at all, we had several pulls. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I never saw any skulls? Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? We tried to figure out what the mechanics to the boss were, but are there even any? It seems like it's just a big dps check to kill it before room fills with green puddles? If there are any mechanics we were unable to figure them out at all. We noticed the 4 tanks on outer walls, but they don't seem to be interactive in any way. The exploding adds causing the puddles seem to spawn so fast it felt impossible to kill them to prevent green puddles at all, especially with the boss having 86mil HP too, we barely were able to even really damage the boss. Nor did they seem to do anything to the boss, we did notice they seem to give some kind of stacking buff, but the damage taken from puddles was just too much for that to be of any use. Overall i find these questions hard to asnwer as we did not really see any mechanics at all besides the spawning of the 3 add types? Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Honestly can't tell whats a bug when we cant figure out the intented way to even beat the boss. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? If the intended way to beat boss is to out dps room filling with green puddles (as it seems other groups are doing), then thats an insanely long fight. But that can't be the intended way to beat this boss right? UPDATE 26-10-2024: My group just killed boss today doing it the long way (kill goo puddle adds for 10 minutes until they stop spawning, then spend ages just killing boss), took us 24:47 minutes. IMO this boss really needs a bunch of nerfs to it's health and add health, and some actual mechanics. Dodging AoE's and killing adds is NOT a mechanic, most bosses in-game have that. It needs something, maybe goo affects boss or adds, or way to cleanse goo puddles (like on Apex Vanguard). It seems the 4 big tanks on sides represent the 4 stacks on boss that ultimately spawn the big add? Maybe add something there so the tanks are interactive and something can be done to prevent the big add from spawning? As it stand, even if boss gets his HP nerfed a lot, it's just not a very engaging or fun fight imo. Edited October 26 by Darthjantom Killed the boss today.
SeanGil Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Hello ! First, i'd like to say im very excited to get a new lair boss, its been a while since we got any kind of new operation. i'd like to share overall experience first and then shortly answer your questions first the enviroment seemed very nice, very fitting to the theme, we ran around a bit didnt see everything but the snowing part was awesome, and the room of the boss set the right mood imo. when the fight started we set out to get the mechanics and it took us a few tried to see if we got anything right. trying to change how we approach this with every pull. we were 8 man public group 1T 2H 5D 2 of those were rdps and the rest melee, we didnt manage to kill the imperfect constructs because there were too many of them, so we moved on to try and kite the boss which barely ever moves, stacking in melee range so the imperfect constructs explode around same location and then again... boss not moving mdps can't hit because all around him is green and another powerful/mistaken construct spawn, dps goes to kill that and imperfect explodes there further covers the room in green. try to run out of the green - seeker driod get someone stunned on green, group kills it, guy almost dead, boss shoot his projectile attack, guy is dead. we ended up not clearing it after 6 or 7 tries. i did talk to a friend NiM raider who said they cleared it, just tank and spank, also they killed the imperfect construct, so given raid group can clear it, but public group can't i think the current setting is not right for sm difficulty, i would hope to go for difficulty closer to Izax (Gods op) sm then Kanoth sm (R4 op) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? I think it can be a fun encounter once ppl know what the mechanics are, i like when bosses are not just tank and spank. What was your operation comp by role? 1T 2H 5D (of which 2rdps) Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? I feel like there might need to be some green residue on him with all that green he shoots around, im not sure about his design if you'd tell me about the attacks before i saw boss i'd be imagining the boss much different. Did you find the phase transitions clear? is that the harvest to build stack to creating powerful/mistaken construct? i think we got most of it, but there was no *phase* change just mechanics, or we didnt get to the phase change. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Didnt clear, with that said, 86mil hp seems like alot for sm with not phases where boss gets more dmg. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? i usually opt to play with camera zoomed as far out as i can, i didn't notice the skulls are they there to indicate whose the next imperfect construct targets? that would be nice if thats what the mechanic is for, if its for incoming boss attack, i just follow its castings so they make no difference. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? i would make the stack of digestive ensym self cleanseable. mistaken construct seem to hit harder then powerful construct or maybe we just noticed them too late and they built stacks... Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? i don't think any ability was too complex, although im not sure i got all the mechanics right. i just think at the current state dealing with imperfect construct and the boss and the seeker is too much for sm Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? 86 mil HP is a lot for sm in my opinion. at the current state this boss requires Veteran mode coordination from group, sm is not about having to be in voice chat to call out attacks and stuns, thats for veteran mode, so basically a group has to kill all the imperfect construcy (at least 3 dps) get the seeker driods when they stun while not stopping to kill the ever-spawning imperfect constructs, and when the boss creates powerful/mistaken constructs focus those before the stacks build, and ... kill the boss. 86mil hp. thats alot for sm, i would suggest either drop the hp of the imperfect construct so 1 dps can deal with them (similar to adds in toborros courtyard) or spawn many less of those so it'll be like a phase - deal with add now, go back to boss after. make the boss kite-able and not just 1-2 attacks that make him move, and drop his hp. the result will be that for Story mode public groups can either kite it around when the imperfections explode filling the room with green but they can still kill him before the room fills, if they have the dps for it, or they can manage killing the imperfections while also killing the boss, and it'll still not be an easy tank and spank boom over boss. another approach will be to make the green clear-able like Kanoth fight. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? lower hp on imperfect construct, can't have half the group focus on adds that never stop spawning. powerful construct is right for sm in my opinion, if take too long you die to the stacks increasing the dmg but thats the mechanic so i think its fine. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. after dying in battle i could instantly respawn at the start location like a wb not an operation boss (phase boss), the first time i did i went straight back and me and another guy were outside the door and in battle, when everyone died and respawned door didnt open because we were in-battle. had to stuck and rez again and it reset. it didnt happen again though so i have no idea how to re-create it. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? im the first to appreciate mechanics and the need for teamwork in a group content. with that said, most public groups can't get through the first boss of R4 sm, take nature of progress and a couple of gods of the machines operations - those are do-able with most public groups but still require alot of mechanics. the battery in natures last boss, izax and its phases you have to know the tactics or you wipe, same even for the third boss in gods, or for the huntsman in nature. whats hard about them is not the hp, its just you have to follow the mechanics or you wipe due to the mechanic. R4 is different first boss you have to follow the mechanics while also going through dps check, watchdog and kanoth you need voice chat to call casts and thing and communicate during and last boss is just everything of it together. ppl don't run public groups of R4 because the sm version requires VM coordination. this boss is the same at the moment, its do-able if you have VM coordination and a full group in VC. i wouldn't want sm to need that. i would like sm to challenge me with following a set of mechanics "go in the circle, go out, stack on boss, kill the big add now, smack boss, kill stun driod, smack boss, go in the circle, go out... that type of mechanics so everyone knows what they need to do all the just because of how the battle proggression goes and not because the need to call thing. and then VM would be the need to call things and NiM would be 20million more mechanics added for ppl who doesn't like to sleep at night xD i'm kind of scared to thing what VM is going to be like Thank you
ThadiusMoor Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? The fight makes no sense to me and I can't even understand what to do. What was your operation comp by role? We had a full group with the following configurations 2t, 2h, 4d. 1t, 2h, 5d. 1t, 1h, 6d. None of them were even close to killing it. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? None of it seemed intuitive at all. In fact, the only thing that was intuitive was that if you stood in any of the floor stuff, you die. Did you find the phase transitions clear? We didn't even get past 75%. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? There was zero kills. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? They didn't even appear at all. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? The poison on the floor was extremely too powerful and no one could even stand in it for more than a couple of seconds without dying. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? The whole scenario makes no sense and we couldn't figure out how to even kill it. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? This operation is extremely over-powered for a story-mode operation. The boss has way too much health, as do all the adds. Also, the boss's regeneration negates any damage we did do to him when we could. Melee basically becomes worthless since you are doing no damage to the boss since you can't even get close to him to do any damage once he starts putting poison all over. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? The adds have too much health, and when dps has to kill those, the boss is taking zero damage, which makes the kill-time basically infinite and not even possible. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. I couldn't even hazard a guess because we couldn't even understand the fight. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? This operation makes no sense at all, and in terms of story, there is nothing that even makes me understand why it is there in the first place, aside from just being more content without purpose. All in all, I highly doubt I'll ever do this operation on the live servers at all, which, for me, makes it dead content on arrival.
frutepy Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? No What was your operation comp by role? 2T 4D 2H Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Not at all Did you find the phase transitions clear? No How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Haven't cleared Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Didn't notice. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? There are far too many of the droids that drop the circles that can't be cleaned up. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? This is way too difficult for a story encounter. 85 mil life is ridiculous. The mechanics are not clear at all. The adds have so much health that you can't get them down before the explosion before they explode without the whole group focusing and then more droids have spawned which you don't have enough time to destroy. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? way too difficult. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Powerful construct was ok. Imperfect construct is way OP. with the green goo. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? This fight is ridiculous. Everything about it screams HM or nim but we're in sm. We shouldn't have to be in vc with nim level people to get a clear.
DarkLadySylvanas Posted October 25 Posted October 25 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Not really. I've been at it the entire evening. It's now 2 am, so I'm stopping for tonight. What was your operation comp by role? 1T, 1H, 6 DD Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? The Boss fight is intuitive... and not so much. The mechanics, as they are now, seem straightforward. Boss spawns adds on the group. Adds explode after 15 seconds and leave a permanent green pool that deals stacking damage. Boss spawns Prey Droids after casting a spell with "Prey" in it, which imprision a player not unlike the Rakata Mindtraps in Eternity Vault. Boss "harvests" things once in a while, but it apparently does not do anything. Neither does his regenerative trance. He also has a red stack about how much material he has. After reaching four, when he would get a fifth one he instead casts Prime Directive which spawns a kill right now or wipe add. After killing a few of those he has a debuff saying he has run out of materials... but still behaves the same way. The boss has a standard damaging attack, a leaping attack, a conal attack, all of which are straight foward. One attack that puts a zone under it AFAIK. But that isn't very clear. So yeah... very mixed bag regarding the clarity of what the boss does. Did you find the phase transitions clear? I assume what is meant by phase here is that the boss is doing always the same cycle of abilities with no variation whatsoever? If it is so then yes. But when you speak of phases I think of different parts of the fight requiring different strategies. I failed to defeat it for now, but it seems to me after bringing it to 40% on our best try, that the combat is the same from start to finish. Given how much HP that boss has, that is insanely boring as is, but I doubt that's how it's going to actually be in the end. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Some have reported 20 to 25 minutes. That seems consistent with my groups damage output. This is Story Mode. Not Veteran or Nightmare Mode. The fight length felt at least Veteran level. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I don't really have an opinion. It's the first operation where such a visual aid exists. I thought it implies a mechanic where you had to deliberately stack the debuff given the different colours. So based on SWTOR's history: Confusing. HOWEVER, considering the way character trays are overcrowded with icons, I think it a GREAT idea to have a visual aide for a key combat mechanic like this. Even if it is just a good ol' GTFO signal. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? None too strong, none too weak. But it felt like an attrition fight. That we lost repeatedly. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? I don't think any single mechanic was too complex assuming I understood them right. The tactic seems to be: Ignore explosive droids, kill prey droids and powerful droids at once, and kill the boss before the entire room is flooded with green gunk. The tactic is fairly straightforward. The DPS check for Story Mode is however unforgiving. Also what do you have against Melee Classes? Madness Sorc is a happy camper here, but melee spends a lot of time just staring at the boss unable to do anything until the boss FINALLY decides to leap out of the toxic puddle it sits in. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? I think this was appropriate for Veteran Difficulty as it currently is. But for Story it's incredibly overtuned. I did not play R4 yet, so I can't compare to it, but yes indeed, it was markedly more difficult than any other Story Mode Operation or Lair Boss. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? I think Powerful Construct is fine as is. Demands a good reaction time and is a wipe mechanic that I think is healthy to have. Imperfect Construct, well, I'm not sure how we're supposed to go about these. Either ignore and make them blow strategically and hope to kill the boss before we run out of space, or just kill them. Issue is, if we kill them it turns into an attrition war against the boss since little to no damage can be done to it at all if dealing with the constructs. If that is indeed the goal, I would say that for Story mode they have too much health. On average, killing one takes 12 seconds. At best 6. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. I think the encounter does not have key elements of it working. It seems logical there would be a way to clean the room eventually, or interact with the four big columns in the room. I mean, having them there just as a visual representation of the number of red stacks the boss has is... well... underwhelming. It feels like a lot is missing here. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Give a way for melee to do something else than twiddling their thumbs while waiting for the Boss to come to the group after sitting for ages in a corner surrounded by goo. Spamming Throw Saber on cooldown is not fun gameplay.
Ranadiel_Marius Posted October 25 Posted October 25 So I just took a look at the boss's abilities on Jedipedia, and it looks to me like the ability Recovery Protocol is the phase change? If that is the case, then my group triggered the phase change and I don't believe anyone realized it was a phase change. The only thing I noticed was that it was an unusually long ability, but I was busy with other stuff so I thought it was just healing or something. 12 minutes ago, SeanGil said: i usually opt to play with camera zoomed as far out as i can, i didn't notice the skulls are they there to indicate whose the next imperfect construct targets? that would be nice if thats what the mechanic is for, if its for incoming boss attack, i just follow its castings so they make no difference. As you stand in the green stuff, you gain stacks of a DoT. The more stacks you get the more damage you take. As the number of stacks go up, the number of skulls above your character increase. I was playing melee, so it was something that I noticed a lot. I want to say the highest I saw was five.
SeanGil Posted October 26 Posted October 26 28 minutes ago, Ranadiel_Marius said: So I just took a look at the boss's abilities on Jedipedia, and it looks to me like the ability Recovery Protocol is the phase change? If that is the case, then my group triggered the phase change and I don't believe anyone realized it was a phase change. The only thing I noticed was that it was an unusually long ability, but I was busy with other stuff so I thought it was just healing or something. As you stand in the green stuff, you gain stacks of a DoT. The more stacks you get the more damage you take. As the number of stacks go up, the number of skulls above your character increase. I was playing melee, so it was something that I noticed a lot. I want to say the highest I saw was five. well i got to a point i had 29 stacks on me hahaha i was trying to kill a stun driod IN the green but thanks for explainig this so its basically a "notice your stacks" sort of thing? if so its cosmetic and mostly pointless in my opinion. Recovery Protocol happens after he gains the 5th stack which mean he pops powerful/mistaken construct. its not a phase change just the end of the mechanic and then it all starts over.
Elvarania Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Would just like to add that we've killed it a second time, but once again the Imperfect droid adds stop spawning after 5 minutes, and then you just have to deal with the Prey Seeker and large droid that spawns after the boss hits 5 stacks. It just becomes a tank and spank, but with 86mil HP it takes about 20 minutes to kill it. Someone has mentioned that after you kill the boss, it respawns with 30mil HP. Whilst 30mil HP is still a lot more manageable, the TTK on the adds seems quite high, but I daresay it will change the dynamic of the fight - you will now focus on burning the boss/large add before the room is full of green toxin. I hope that the veteran mode brings some other mechanics as well. Overall it's a cool boss, awesome (and slightly creepy!) aesthetic. BUT in its current state it's essentially unkillable for PUGs/lower geared raid teams, which will make it very frustrating to gather materials for the new augments, and surely will make the GTN price for the materials ridiculously expensive.
Elvarania Posted October 26 Posted October 26 18 minutes ago, LadyAdmiral said: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2285307022?t=0h14m56s I honestly have no ****ing clue what this boss is about lol. Though we only had an hour of poking it I understand he wants to get 4 stacks of red, then a big guy shows up, and you wanna do that multiple times, but otherwise..... lol. It did not feel fun at all. I think we could have eventually done it by staying out of the green over the course of a year but... 2 tanks 4 dps 2 healers I have no idea what the skulls MEANT. As the yellow post states, the skulls are meant to be a 'threat indicator' of standing in the AoE. However, because the skulls increase and get redder, AND the boss has a mechanic where a conal removes your stacks, I suspect a veteran mechanic might be to obtain a certain amount (a healing check) and 'feed' them to the boss, which will trigger some other mechanic.
DeadhunterHD Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Was a nice and easy fight, I think it gets a bit crowded at the end but nice leech mechanics. What was your operation comp by role? 1T( Assassin) 6Dps (2 Pyro PT, 1 AP PT, 1 IO Merc, 1 Anni Marauder, 1 Engi Sniper) 1H (Merc) Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? The droid that sometimes spawns out of visual range was sometimes hard to notice. Did you find the phase transitions clear? Who? How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? 11:50, I think way too less HP for SM *sarcasm end* Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Noticed them but they drowned in the visual clutter of voids and other abilities Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? It was actually fine. Our tank didn't need many def CDs, but for SM okay Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Not really Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? I mean for SM a lot of health but the rest was fine, I think with a decrease to 60 - 70M HP everything should be fine Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Nah we stacked the Imperfect Construct around the boss arena and worked our way from the outer edge to the middle. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. The Powerful Construct sometimes just spawned over 80m away and wasn't even visible. The stunning one just sat afk in a corner sometimes too. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Bit much HP for SM, you could decrease the HP of the little void droids but except for the whole arena turning green it was a nice fight.
megawarz Posted October 26 Posted October 26 (edited) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Was kinda boring, felt like NiM apex currently, just with no mechanics What was your operation comp by role? 1/6/1 Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? dont care about art Did you find the phase transitions clear? by phase, the dsync droids that stun/aoe pulse How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? 9:53, kinda long for lair boss, but expected when its only behind 8m Izax in terms of HP Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? never noticed them Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? felt there was a bit to many xplody droids, but green stacks did decent dtps around 10+ stacks Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? since boss has no legs, boss doesnt move Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? wasnt too difficult, but would for sure watch sm heroes fail to this Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? fine, but they were dsync 90% of the time, so finding them was annoying Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. boss has no legs Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? would reduce hp from 86m to 60m so that a normal kill comp isnt 13 min, but around 7-8 Edited October 26 by megawarz
masterpwnface Posted October 26 Posted October 26 (edited) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Boss was not too difficult, just fairly tedious due to having 86m hp What was your operation comp by role? 1 PT tank / 1 Merc Healer / 1 Anni Mara, 1 Viru Sniper, 1 Madness Sorc, 1 Hatred Sin, 1 Pyro PT Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? The bosses abilities seem straight forward, however we felt that it could be made to feel a bit smoother if there was more of a lock out timer between his abilities so that we could move him around more easily Did you find the phase transitions clear? Phase Transitions did not seem super clear as all of his abilities were just the same. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? It took us just under 10 minutes to kill, which I think is fair. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? The small skulls were a tad confusing as we were unable to figure out what they were supposed to signify Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? The 1 add that spawns after his Directive cast that pulses damage is a little too high for an SM in my opinion, everything else seemed a bit on the weak side outside of "Lethal Strike" which I feel is appropriately tuned. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? No, overall strat seemed very straight forward. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Strat wise I feel like this one is a bit easier than other Lair bosses, however it's difficulty was in how long the fight takes. That being said I feel like this one is not super friendly to players not in a voice call currently. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Both of these adds felt appropriate, The only thing that was semi difficult was the other add that can spawn other than the Powerful Construct (due to its damage output) Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Occasionally the "Stun" droids and Larger adds would be invisible. Only way I could find to make stun droids visible again was to use an AoE ability on the person stunned, or pull the stunned target somewhere else. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Edited October 26 by masterpwnface typo
Seraseven Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? No. I was playing a melee DPS and it was just plain awful due to all the green stuff on the floor. What was your operation comp by role? 1 Tank, 5 DPS (3 Melee and 2 Ranged) and 2 Healers Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Most of his direct attacks are pretty clear. No idea what Recovery Protocol and Prime Directive are supposed to do. Did you find the phase transitions clear? If I hadn't seen this question it would have never occurred to me that there even are different phases. On our best pulls we only got the boss down to something like 55%, maybe there are different phases after that. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Since we never cleared it I can only guess. It seems way too long. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I noticed them but I have absolutely no idea what they're supposed to tell me. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Damage output was fine. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? Not really. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? In its current state it's way too hard for a Story Mode boss, mostly due to his high HP. Most of the current NiM bosses are easier to kill. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? If the Powerful Constructs are the big ones that have a big AoE attack they would be fine if they were actually visible from across the room. Usually they weren't visible, though, which caused some problems. The Imperfect ones have too much health. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Without knowing how the boss is supposed to work I don't really know what's a bug and what isn't.
srtaskyywalker Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Nope, fight is really tedious and extremely melee and tank unfriendly in terms of how much you need to disengage What was your operation comp by role? 2T 5D 2H Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Didn't find anything confusing but the boss is really not intuitive considering how much it stands still casting Did you find the phase transitions clear? Is there a second phase? Boss did the same thing over and over again for 12 minutes How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Too long Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I didn't even see them at all Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Everything hits like a wet noodle Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? I think it's more about the coordination it takes for the stacking for story mode players for the poison puddles Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? I found it easy but I can see Story Mode pugs struggling trying to coordinate to stack the puddles since they never go away. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? They were very easy to deal with but if the intention is to just kill every add they have too much HP for story mode Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. Poison puddles disappearing Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Lots of criticism: Boss stands still way too much casting, so it makes annoying for melee and tank players. The Tank damage down is absolutely a bad idea as tank swap debuff, it should be armor vuln/damage taken or to force no dps with taunt for this, just make a tank skill that hits both tanks. The puddles disappearing are very annoying but manageable. Fight felt too much like a dummy for the most part and very tedious to just sit there waiting for the boss to move.
fluffiestseal Posted October 26 Posted October 26 (edited) Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Overall enjoyable, but fairly repetitive. What was your operation comp by role? 1 Tank (Sin) 6 DPS (2 Pyro PT, 1 AP PT, 1 Anni Marauder, 1 IO Merc and 1 Engi Sniper) 1 Heal (Merc) Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Cleaves and voids were telegraphed well. Moving the boss around the arena felt somewhat unresponsive due to overlapping ability casts rooting it in place. Did you find the phase transitions clear? There were phases? How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? 11:50 min kill time was fine, but probably a bit much for SM difficulty. | https://parsely.io/parser/view/991754 Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Yes and no. The skulls are only properly visible when having the camera close to the player character. If zoomed out they get lost among the visual clutter of voids and abilities. Voids and their stacks did not tick very hard so not much sensing of any danger was done. The most pressure we felt was the room getting very green after 8-9 min of running along the outer perimeter. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Not really. Damage taken was fine for a SM difficutly encounter (our group was at 47,5k DTPS with a lot of leeching) Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? No. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? In it's current state it is likely too hard for SM difficulty. The damage check is probably pretty tight for groups that run mostly SM or legacy HM ops, especially when changing group comp to 1T/5DD/2H. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? No real difficulties here. We burned Powerful/Mistaken Construct when they spawned and ignored the Imperfect Constructs for most of the fight, double stacking voids to conserve space and only killing them if out of position (ie. after killing a Powerful Construct half way across the boss room). The fact that sometimes, the Powerful Construct spawns so far away that the game does not load it (visually) from where the group is located is somewhat annoying, but ultimately manageable. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. 1) He float 2) Prey Seeker Droids (stun adds) sometimes spawned across the room and did not move, thus doing absolutely nothing Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? The encounter definitely has potential, but waiting for HM to form a final opinion. On an unrelated note: please keep the encounter in its curernt state for a while longer, we want to try some funky strats Edited October 26 by fluffiestseal
Huskernutz Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? I'd give it like 1.5/10 on first impression. What was your operation comp by role? 2 Tanks, 1 Healer, 5 DPS (all ranged). Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Not really. There're no indications for how the Harvested Materials buff functions in relation to triggering Prime Directive, nor how Prime Directive functions visually in the fight. I think having more clarity with when this phase transition happens, as well as an indicator for when a stack of Harvested Materials increased it stacks, and how spawning the add from Prime Directive works will help a lot. I would also add to this that if the Digestive Enzyme debuff is supposed to be important to manage in the encounter, there needs to be better visual clarity for the edges of the pools that drop from Imperfect Creations, I think having a clear circle to show the edge of the AOE would help a lot for space management, as well as if we are intended to the Imperfect Creations or not; for our kill we just ignored them and filled up the space of the arena while focusing the boss. In addition to this, there is no visual indication that Hungering Strike removes Digestive Enzymes stacks when you get hit. Did you find the phase transitions clear? Not at all, there is no clear visual indication for when Prime Directive -> Recovery Protocol is going to occur, nor what is happening during the channel. How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Very bad, took us 13 minutes to clear fully focusing the boss with 5 decent dps. The boss should probably have like 20-40% less HP. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I think if there was a raid announcement alongside it for when you reach the next +5 stacks of Digestive Enzymes that would help indicate that it's a bad debuff. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Feels about right for a Story Mode imo. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? No, just unintuitive for how the primary mechanics are supposed to function: Prime Directive, Hungering Strike, the adds, etc. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? In its current state I think pugs will struggle to clear it as it's feels mechanically unintuitive for what you're supposed to be doing and will way too long to kill with average dps Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? It's kind of unclear whether you are supposed to kill Imperfect Constructs to avoid the puddle drops, or just ignore them and fill the room up slowly. If you are intended to drop the puddles, then they should function exactly like the Overloaded Assault Droids in the Nefra encounter and be immune to dmg as well as some way that you can aggro to bring them to specific locations, or have them target specific players based on role, or distance. We only had the Powerful Construct spawn a few times during our attempts, but it felt very unimpactful in comparison, just a bigger version of the Imperfect Constructs. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. No major bugs outside of the ones currently being tracked. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? My biggest point of feedback is the boss movement, it constantly rooting itself for every cast bar is does when the room is being filled with the add puddles felt awful for our tanks. The boss should be able to be moved for most if not all its spells. Additionally, I think Hungering Strike should follow the person that it is targeting rather that preventing the boss from turning or moving so players can better effectively remove stacks of Digestive Enzyme. I would maybe also suggest making the cleave for Hungering Strike to be 90 degrees rather than 45. I already mentioned the adds, but it should be very visually clear where the edge of the puddles is that drop from the Imperfect Constructs as managing Digestive Enzyme stacks appear so be a core mechanic that will be emphasized in Veteran Difficulty. Finally, I think the Prime Directive mechanic (phase) personally feels very underwhelming. There's no major indication that it's about to spawn an important add and there's no clear indication when it's going to start the channel, there's also no clear indication for what the purpose of Recovery Protocol is other than downtime to go kill the add that spawned. However, the boss is still attackable, and the Imperfect Constructs are still spawning continuously, so basically every Prime Directive channel the boss ended up deep stuck under a bunch of add puddles and we had to wait until it finished and stopped casting it's next spells to get back into melee range. 1
WraithAssassin Posted October 26 Posted October 26 Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? Not in the slightest in the eight or nine or so pulls i've done. What was your operation comp by role? First attempt was 1T, 1H, 6D (mostly melee) with me as melee DPS, second attempt was 1T, 2H, 5D with me healing. Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Aside from seeing the boss do a cone ability, i didn't see much of what it does aside from standing still during the repair phase or what the ability is called. Did you find the phase transitions clear? There are phase transitions? How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? That's a funny question to ask. Not a clear. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? I can already tell there's an increasing sense of danger by the debuff bar ticking when i stand in the puddles and the puddles themselves just existing. The skulls aren't that helpful but they're also not distracting. Just an odd addition. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? Not really. Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? No. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? Who on the team thought giving this thing 86mil HP was a good idea? It has more health than NiM bosses. For story mode, it's absolutely ridiculous for pugs to even attempt. Trying to manage people during Colossal Monolith is bad enough when it comes up for Seasons, but this!? Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? Powerful's the right amount of squish for a DPS check before it burst kills everyone. Imperfects need a channel timer increase or a health nerf or a lot less spawns. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. None i've seen. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? Oh where do i begin... The boss, again, has too much HP to warrant being a SM boss. It's ridiculous to think that a pug can get together and just do this. The Imperfects need a tone down somewhere as per my previous note. The puddles and how the boss acts currently is another prime example of this absolute wild hatred the dev team has with melee DPS. The pulls i did ended up with melee DPS waiting for a chance for the boss to come close to be attacked instead of staying with the boss and taking great amounts of damage because the boss is staying in puddles. The fight is already slow enough with it's high health and trying to manage add spawns, why further punish people for choosing to be a melee instead of a ranged DPS? As the boss stands right now if this was put on the live servers, i have to ask... Who is this boss designed for? Because prog group guilds, pugs and many people won't clear this for a long time.
Shorinjin Posted October 26 Posted October 26 • Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? It was okay. I probably wouldn't want to do it more than I absolutely had to for story or cheevos. And even then, might just avoid it. • What was your operation comp by role? 1T, 1H, 6D • Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? It wasn't too hard to follow what the boss's abilities were doing after a few times seeing it. It did take a bit longer to figure out the Imperfect's circles were a timer where you might normally see a castbar channel for that. • Did you find the phase transitions clear? The ONLY way to know there was a "phase transition" was to have "target castbar" enabled and somewhere very visible on screen, or have StarParse open and someone in the Discord voice chat call it out. • How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? DNF. Our best attempt only got it down to around 85% • Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Saw the small skull sometimes only when camera was close to my character. Did not know what they were for. Thought it was a debuff marker that wasn't in my debuff tray. • Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? The damage on the Mistaken's AOE is really high. • Were there any abilities that you felt were too complex, specifically for a Story difficulty encounter? The Mistaken droid's AOE definitely caused the most wipes. • Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? So much HP. Too much, probably. • Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? The Powerful and Imperfect Constructs were fine. It was the Mistaken that needs work. • Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. An Imperfect Construct spawned in the center of the room and not move. Others would spawn after and jump to us. But that one just stayed in the middle until someone got close. Unsure how to reproduce as it only happened once that I saw out of 7-ish pulls. • Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? The BIGGEST problem our group encountered so far, was the Mistaken Construct would spawn on the other side of the room. OUTSIDE OF RENDER DISTANCE. We eventually learned that "Recovery Period" or whatever that ability was called, meant the Mistaken had spawned and was healing the boss, but we would still have to run across the room just to get it to render. Then it would usually be so far into the green goo, that we'd die just trying to get to it. Also, I was ranged dps, so I could stay outside the green goo and still attack most of the time. But for melee, there's not much room at all to maneuver to hit the boss and stay outside the goo. Especially since it seems like the boss only really wants to move when it come in for that conal attack.
Setta Posted October 26 Posted October 26 (edited) 12 hours ago, JackieKo said: Did you enjoy fighting the Propagator Core XR-53? I enjoyed learning new mechanics with like minded folks, instead of looking at a guide and having it all been laid out for us. That said, the fight is a complete mess, and dare I say it a disaster. 3 / 10. What was your operation comp by role? We had several, because people kept leaving after a wipe or two, and we were at it for a while. I was tanking even though I normally dps in guild raids. That said we had 1T, 2H 5D (one was melee). We also had 1T 1H 6D (one was melee). We also had 1H 7D (again 1 melee with taunt). Knowing that the art is still WIP, did you find that an ability was confusing after you had seen it multiple times? Put another way, did you find what the boss was doing to be intuitive? Would not call it intuitive. Couldn't figure out why the boss just stood there (later realized he's healing). Did not realize why some cones follow the tank, and other do not. Did not realize that skulls were a stack of goo debuff counted by 5, although the skulls top out at like 4 or 5 skulls, so like 20 / 25 debuff equivalent while I went all the way up to 99 at one point as we tested stuff out. Intuitive is not what I would call this boss. To be fair, if I stepped into a number of the raids never having done them before, I'd probably still be trying to figure out the exact mechanics if someone did not explain them to me, so /shrug. Did you find the phase transitions clear? There's transitions phases? Well I'll be a..... How did you feel about the clear time of the fight? Going to be honest we didn't clear. I believe we were probably close, but can't say for sure, as i don't know where the actual clear mechanics are. For all I know there's a hidden phase you're talking about that I never saw, and the fight is much longer than I think it is. That said, I'm pretty sure we were 15+ min in on multiple pools, and we didn't clear. So let me put it this way. I have done nim bosses (and I'm not talking about nef / dash with faster clear times. 86M Hp, self heals, and adds that you have to swap to on a near none stop basis. Yea I think someone doesn't understand what tuning a sm boss is supposed to be like. Did you find that the small skulls effectively communicated an increasing sense of danger? Did you notice them during the fight? Were they helpful or distracting? Completely irrelevant. I wasn't sure what they were at first, it wasn't until several pulls later that we started having an idea of what they were indicating. That said, I didn't notice any significant damage increase (although I was a tank & we had good healers). I also hit 99 stacks of goo one pull, cause I just stopped caring and wanted to see how bad the damage became, and nothing changed really. Maybe it'll be important in VM, but atm just a useless visual. Were there any abilities that felt too strong or too weak in damage output? In terms of just flat damage output no. I think this is actually fine more or less. In terms of health pools, spawn timers, and other things, yea it's poorly balanced. Did you feel that the Propagator Core XR-53 was sufficiently difficult for Story difficulty? Did you find it significantly more or less challenging than other Story mode Operations? It's over tuned. It's easily harder than any lair boss before it by a mile. Technically I feel like the mechanics are simpler than that of monolith boss on Ziost for instance. However the speed at which the imperfect droids come out at, and their health bars are to high. When you add in stun droids, that require your attention as well, because they lock up another dps or heals or w/e there becomes to many things to worry about to kill properly without having a crazy composition like 1H 7D or something similar. That or having high end raiders that can dish out the damage. Did you feel that the difficulty of the Powerful Construct and Imperfect Construct were appropriate for Story mode? Did you have difficulty dealing with either enemy? What is "Powerful Construct"? Imperfect constructs come out to fast as I said. That or they could use a hp nerf (pick one). Seeker droids are fine. Mistaken Constructs are also fine. I'm going to assume this is what you meant with powerful constructs. Please mention any bugs that you encountered, and please include any steps required to reproduce that bug. There were 2 that we noticed. 1) The 3rd Mistaken Construct on one of our pulls just went immune to all damage for about 5-6 secons, at 9% health. We don't know why, he just did, and then proceeded to blow up after. 2) I can't tell if this is a visual bug, or the server not recognizing where you are on the map, as this does happen often enough in other raids. However the goo actually extends further than the visual would indicate. Because several times I would be standing outside of it, and still gaining stacks. Again the server may have thought I was standing in it, even when I wasn't. I should of done a jump check, but I didn't think about it, and just kept backing up. Do you have any other thoughts, comments, concerns, or criticisms about the Propagator Core XR-53 fight? I did say that I find this fight to a complete mess and even a disaster and I'd like to explain why. 1) This is by far and away the most anti melee fight in the game. Look I understand that ranged should be better on some fights, and melee better on others. But this isn't a standard OP where certain fights go to one side or the other, and the next boss changes a bit. This is just a completely anti melee fight, and only 1 fight so there's virtually 0 reason to bring a melee along. Especially the longer the fight goes on the worse it gets. I would hate to see this fight as the difficulty ramps up for vm or god forbid a mm. The goop is going to destroy certain classes from getting in, unless they're just god like players. So if I was forming a pug, (instead of grabbing guildy raiders that I'm familiar with) and a jug or pt wanted to join, I would be very hesitant on inviting them atm. 2) Due to the nature of the fight, self heals, high health, constant swapping to adds. This doesn't feel like a we have to do x mechanics to win, it's more of a we have to survive long enough to have the goop droids stop spawning, and then burn the boss, and his other adds. About the only real mechanic becomes for the group to stack well enough so as not to use up all the floor space before this happens, and once you learn the dance it's not particularly hard either. Which means it's just a tedious slog for no reason other than to have people spend 20m on this fight. It's horrible design. Especially since the other alternative is to be so dps heavy that you kill the imperfect constructs over and over again, mostly ignoring the boss to more or less come to the same result. Once people get their achievements this will be played less than R-4 and that OP is really dead. 3) I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities. Instead of having players focus on different mechanics, the players are focusing on staying alive. While we haven't tried this, I'm starting to wonder if 3H would make this fight obsolete. Maybe there's an enrage timer I don't know about, but honestly I'm thinking this would make it simple enough for the tank to be harvested enough times to go through all of the Mistaken Constructs with little effort on the group's part, and with the extra healers, you could stay in goo longer and just stack better overall. If so this would be a grave oversight, but I can test it tomorrow. Edited October 26 by Setta
Recommended Posts