Steel Path - The Earth Road Trip

[phoenix1992]

Hello there.

This is a topic considering the Steel Path Earth experience. I am more than aware that mods may decide to merge it, but in my opinion every planet is a different challenge and should be viewed and tuned differently.

So how will we go ahead into that?

First, I completed all Earth missions and took a record for every one of them. I will not publish the video listing yet, unless it is requested due to the forum's warm feelings towards "self promotion". However, I will go trough all the missions with the help of the footage and explain how I tackled the challenges and the feedback I have from them. I used couple of frames - Mag, Saryn, Titania and Nova with different loadouts for better understanding of the tasks at hand. The missions were done in solo.

E Prime (Extermination) - Right out of the bat, E Prime was vile. I am not sure that it is a good "intro" to the Steel Path, unless people are into bondage. The challenge itself comes from the Nox units and... the wild Kubrows. Those things will and can one shot your squishy. However staying mobile + Adaptation will trivialize the mission.

Marina (Extermination) - Absolute copy paste of the previous mission. While the original note was meant for tutorial and introduction it feels very dull in Steel Path.

Mantle (Capture) - I was concerned that the capture target will be too beefy and I will get shot down while dealing with it. I was pleasantly surprised that this is not the case - couple of heavy attacks downed the target and the enemies did not pose enough threat for me capture without using any cheesy tactics.

Gaia (Interception) - This was the first roadblock. Enemies spawn and they spawn on mass, making holding the objectives a hard goal to pursue. While cycling trough Mag, Nova and Mesa, I ended up using a Saryn with Nova Specter, it was dicy but actually... fun in a way. I also got my first and only currency drop in here.

Cambria  (Spy) - Since ciphers are not forbidden the mission never posed a challenge. However, there is a point to be made that i met an eximus scanner that simply refused to die. I refused to bother with it.

Lith (Defense) - Here comes a major critique of mine. Someone in De (I think @[DE]Pablo) mentioned that there is not much to do with the AI in order to make it "smart". This is simply not true as 90% of the damage I received was from AoE as the enemies Bee lined towards the defense objective paying me close to no attention. Which lead to hilariously easy task to knock off.

Pacific (Rescue) - Same as with the spy, however the capture target has very little health. I used Titania for this run and just flew trough everything, while spamming ciphers when needed.

Venus Junction - It was, but a joke. At least in my case I brought Mag for both Junctions on Earth and she made short work with the specters.

Cetus - You can actually skip it. Go in Cetus, walk into the plains, walk back and exit. Node unlocked. I did the bounty as well, but the scaling was as horrid as the initial PoE scaling when it was released. Extremely bullet spongy enemies that shoot you from far on open terrain.

Eurasia (Mobile Defense) - Brought Nova, wished I was Mag.  While the enemies did pay me more attention than they did in defense, they still mostly tunneled into the bonus objective.

Everest (Excavation) - Enemies bee lined into the excavator, which has hilariously low health. The challenge is to place your CC properly, nothing more, nothing less. Anoying as hell, due to the health and b-line behavior.

Cervantes (Sabotage) - The mixer has a lot of healh. Waaaaaaaaaaay too much of it, to be honest and enemies still bee line for it. Beware of feral kubrows.

Erpo (AW Mobile defense) - I was dreading this and I was right to do so. While the mission seems buggy as hell - enemies don't even come for the objective and it is really easy to stay invisible with Itzal - Eximus enemies scale awfully and you can be shredded very fast on the last defense point.

Oro (Assassination, good old Vey Kek) - I brought Mag with Sniper - turned out it was better to whip out the Kuva Brakk and shoot him in the face. Any specter with CC will help a lot as the boss will shoot at it, instead of your tenno booty.

Coba (Dark Sector Defense) - And here the Steel Path collapsed for me. I brouht 2 forma Ignus Wraith stood beside the objective and channeled my inner Pyro from tf 2 (again with Mag). For 4 waves the enemies refused to touch me. On the 5-th one they hit me with Aoe.

Tikal (Dark Sector Excavation) - An easier version of the previous one as infested do not have ranged units on this node. They still bee lined like mad for the excavator and hit me only accidentally even if I was standing still.


Final thoughts :

1. The enemy armor is annoying. Not hard, just tedious. This scaling limits my load out potential only.
2. Enemies don't land enough damage on Earth - yes it is the first node, but it makes a jest of the proposal for hard mode.
3. The AI can be better. If it pursues the player instead of the objective (or the Specter i use as lures) it will actually pose a thread of me, instead of making me feel as if I am shooting fish in a barrel, while It will be less annoying to perform the mission. Major examples are both Defense and Excavation - the enemy trying to push me out from the object would be more challenging, while also more "threatening" as I would not be on the objective to defend it. The enemy AI not going so blindly for specters would also prove bigger challenge.
4. Operator mode and arcanes make a mockery of the gear coll down, even if you are not using frames that generate HP/Energy. This is not hard, it is just a kick towards players that have spend less time in Operators and Arcanes.
5. Ciphers break any pretense for "hard mode" in Spy and Rescye,
6. Invisible frames (which I did not use, or i would risk a snooze), invisible AW (which I did use) and very agile frames (like titania, volt and such) do not care for how fat the enemies are.


Hard mode... is a step in the correct direction. Hard mode as it is, however looks like a very lazy attempt to introduce difficulty and it is more likely to turn off players from it. I am not going to swing a stick at the reward table, as you are more than aware how bad it is.

Edit : I had forgotten Mariana, which is also Extermination and has the same flow as the other 2.
 

[Traumtulpe]

Earth was a joke. Too easy to be fun. Archwing enemies might as well have been level 1, I wasn't able to tell the difference.

[Oreades]

Wait they allow ciphers in hard mode spy? 

[phoenix1992]

5 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Wait they allow ciphers in hard mode spy? 

Yes.

[MechaKnight]

I trivialized all nodes as easily as I trivialized them in sorties before. I'm more offended that DE proposed solely durability as a solution to engage the player. We still fight the same dumb enemies in the same missions with the same victory conditions. The enemies could benefit from more options and perhaps missions should feature more variety. I discussed this topic in my thread here.

 

[sir.dmp]

Hi,

Could someone please help me with this issue I'm having - I've completed Venus mission nodes, but am unable to unlock the Orb Valis node (lock symbol) on the Steel Path.

How to go about it?

 

Thanks,

[phoenix1992]

26 minutes ago, sir.dmp said:

Hi,

Could someone please help me with this issue I'm having - I've completed Venus mission nodes, but am unable to unlock the Orb Valis node (lock symbol) on the Steel Path.

How to go about it?

 

Thanks,

Yo.

The "work" around currently is to walk into Fortuna, get out to Valis (just get in the elevator), and walk back to Fortuna. I am not sure if this is a bug, but it works.