*Sortie third mission now has a chance to be an Assassination mission against a functionally unkillable boss!

[TheLexiConArtist]

Ambulas today. Turns out even the placeholder joke boss is pretty ridiculous when you crank its stats up to 11.

Nothing says fair like a no-animation Mag Pull into an Ember Fire Blast that starts a 300 hp per tick heat proc. Or two of them just because it felt like it.

That and the fact that it utterly ignored stealth and ran right up to where I was standing, attacking me anyway. No, I wasn't even using a loud weapon. It just didn't care. So fair to squishy frames that rely on control and concealment to survive and do the job. Meanwhile, Valkyr.

 

Another boss downed solo with my default loadout, yes, but another oversized-ball-of-stats 'challenge'. At least this one was only Energy Reduction again, not those awful overtuned Enhancements.

[IceColdHawk]

Just now, EDYinnit said:

Ambulas today. Turns out even the placeholder joke boss is pretty ridiculous when you crank its stats up to 11.

Nothing says fair like a no-animation Mag Pull into an Ember Fire Blast that starts a 300 hp per tick heat proc. Or two of them just because it felt like it.

That and the fact that it utterly ignored stealth and ran right up to where I was standing, attacking me anyway. No, I wasn't even using a loud weapon. It just didn't care. So fair to squishy frames that rely on control and concealment to survive and do the job. Meanwhile, Valkyr.

 

Another boss downed solo with my default loadout, yes, but another oversized-ball-of-stats 'challenge'. At least this one was only Energy Reduction again, not those awful overtuned Enhancements.

I'm pretty sure you won't like any sortie boss then if you're also struggling against ambulas.

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

43 minutes ago, IceColdHawk said:

I'm pretty sure you won't like any sortie boss then if you're also struggling against ambulas.

Define struggling? I killed it on my first attempt, didn't ever feel like I was in an unwinnable situation. I'm just using the thread to provide observations as I go, from the perspective of.. not using instant success like grossly overtuned weapons and godmode warframes.

Same as Kela, the problem's just with the complete unengaging effect of adding exponent stats (and some further augmentations).

It's no more of a challenge fundamentally than it is on Pluto, or Kela was compared to her fight on Sedna, in the natural habitats. You just have to spend more time pumping damage into the boss, and what bad or broken mechanics already exist are just.. no longer rendered forgivable because of a lacking net effect.

 

You get abruptly yoinked into fire on Pluto, with the units at level 31-33, it doesn't matter too much. The fire ticks for maybe 70 at worst and the supplementary normal Corpus aren't that threatening either. You also have less time for the damage to add up to a threatening level before you've killed the boss. Probably won't even break your shield if you have Redirection.

It happens on the Sortie, triple the level, and suddenly between the many-times-magnified damage of all sources and far longer time you have to spend at risk of the completely untelegraphed 'free damage' move before a victory... it's jumped past 'challenge' and gone straight to 'cheap'.

By no means is it a struggle, or close to impossible solo as Vay Hek was, but that doesn't make it any less irritating when you eat a death for something you had almost no say in, does it? Isn't that basically why Bursas got nerfed, people moaned that they'd just get oneshot before they could even try to act against the unit? I have all the cheapening tools available to me too, but not everyone does or wants to resort to their use.

[Nikbis]

About lvl 100 Vay Hek : I went on pub game with Nova prime / molecular build, with melee only (Jat Kittag, Shadow step focus) and did 35% of overall damage.

Was pretty funny :D

Edited April 4, 2016 by Nikbis

[InnocenceExorcist]

Our team had no issue killing Vay Hek's head every time he popped up.  Then the Terra Frame came out and he basically popped out as soon as he got in it.  Obviously you aren't doing something right.  I admit his little invulnerability stuff can be garbage, but still...

[Sargeant_Q]

I have one thing to say here.  Vey Hek is not damaged by Either EB or Bladestorm.  And Kela is not damaged by bladestorm at least.  Quite possibly EB as well.  I just wasn't play excalibur on that one.

[BlackCoMerc]

What gets me about these Assassinations are two things:

-One: They are lazy design. Recycled bosses with jumped up stats. So much fore lore and story. Nope; just recycle the dead bosses we have beaten (multiple times) already and pump their stats - especially health and armor - through the roof.

-They are not FUN. Or even really challenging. Unless you believe that having to hit the boss forty more times somehow increases challenge and not tedium. 

Assassinations, in my opinion, need to be removed from Sorties until such time as they can be afforded a badly needed quality pass.

[IceColdHawk]

Just now, BlackCoMerc said:

What gets me about these Assassinations are two things:

-One: They are lazy design. Recycled bosses with jumped up stats. So much fore lore and story. Nope; just recycle the dead bosses we have beaten (multiple times) already and pump their stats - especially health and armor - through the roof.

-They are not FUN. Or even really challenging. Unless you believe that having to hit the boss forty more times somehow increases challenge and not tedium. 

Assassinations, in my opinion, need to be removed from Sorties until such time as they can be afforded a badly needed quality pass.

How did you like the today's excavation then?

[BlackCoMerc]

Nope. No thanks. I no longer run sorties when the final mission is Assassination. Learned that the hard way. If I see the third mission is the level 100 Boss Assassination I skip Sorties that day.

Of course, I skip sorties most days any more. Tired of getting useless parts for weapons and feeling like someone is FORCING me to spend Plat on the rest of the weapon. A feeling reinforced the other day when myself, my partner and a forum full of other people ALL got the same Snipertron Receiver on the same day.

To me Sorties are useless. I could not possibly care less about Focus. I never use the ability and dont even have it mapped to a button I can press to be honest. I despise the entire system, from stopping the flow of the game to the new operator and his snarky, uninformed comments to the Focus Lens system, almost as much as I despise the Sortie reward system itself.

[Naftal]

I like the sortie assassinations. It's like getting a spy mission as the third mission. Fast to solo.

[Datcoolguy]

I'd like to make a big distinction here, people aren't complaining about the high difficulty, people are complaining about the cheap high difficulty

 

[rawr1254]

[IceColdHawk]

Just now, rawr1254 said:

Too lazy to make the meme now but let me fix it for you:

People fight tons of nullifiers and bursas in excavations and noone bats an eye.

People fight a sortie boss and everyone is losing their minds.

[rawr1254]

2 minutes ago, IceColdHawk said:

Too lazy to make the meme now but let me fix it for you:

People fight tons of nullifiers and bursas in excavations and noone bats an eye.

People fight a sortie boss and everyone is losing their minds.

Here ya go lol

[IceColdHawk]

2 minutes ago, rawr1254 said:

Here ya go lol

 

Wait...i just noticed this one is smaller than the one before...whyyy?  

Edited April 5, 2016 by IceColdHawk

[TheLexiConArtist]

Bringing it full circle:

People make a million threads crying out for Nullifier and Bursa nerfs and nobody bats an eye.

Someone makes a thread about the problems with a Sortie boss and everyone is losing their mind.

 

Less of the image macros though, not a contribution.

 

Vay Hek was a particularly egregious case, but the other bosses more or less all have their cheap tricks and free hits; the difference is that with Sortie stats and possible enhancements even further, those cheap tricks and free hits become less mild irritation and more infuriatingly punishing.

That's pretty much why I'm continuing to add the observations of such cheapness. With Kela, it was just how incredibly beefy she was with the Physical Enhancement, and the fact she had 20 times as much support, all of which are oneshot-capable thanks to several hundreds of extra slash damage on hit, made it unrealistic without cheesing, and tedious with. Ambulas wasn't augmented with an Enhancement, but attacking through stealth and having non-anticipated removal of player control (the Pull) and overblown damage values made for a fight consisting of more rolling around (to weaken heat DoT ticks) than the average Sonic game. Wasn't impossible, yet nor was it engagingly difficult.

[rawr1254]

18 minutes ago, IceColdHawk said:

 

Wait...i just noticed this one is smaller than the one before...whyyy?  

Ctrl + Right click  

[phoenix1992]

1 minute ago, EDYinnit said:

 

That's pretty much why I'm continuing to add the observations of such cheapness. With Kela, it was just how incredibly beefy she was with the Physical Enhancement, and the fact she had 20 times as much support, all of which are oneshot-capable thanks to several hundreds of extra slash damage on hit, made it unrealistic without cheesing, and tedious with. Ambulas wasn't augmented with an Enhancement, but attacking through stealth and having non-anticipated removal of player control (the Pull) and overblown damage values made for a fight consisting of more rolling around (to weaken heat DoT ticks) than the average Sonic game. Wasn't impossible, yet nor was it engagingly difficult.

Straight on point.
With this said, I enjoy the variety of missions and I prefer having them instead of... excavations.

[rawr1254]

7 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

Vay Hek was a particularly egregious case, but the other bosses more or less all have their cheap tricks and free hits; the difference is that with Sortie stats and possible enhancements even further, those cheap tricks and free hits become less mild irritation and more infuriatingly punishing.

That's pretty much why I'm continuing to add the observations of such cheapness. With Kela, it was just how incredibly beefy she was with the Physical Enhancement, and the fact she had 20 times as much support, all of which are oneshot-capable thanks to several hundreds of extra slash damage on hit, made it unrealistic without cheesing, and tedious with. Ambulas wasn't augmented with an Enhancement, but attacking through stealth and having non-anticipated removal of player control (the Pull) and overblown damage values made for a fight consisting of more rolling around (to weaken heat DoT ticks) than the average Sonic game. Wasn't impossible, yet nor was it engagingly difficult.

Well yea everyone says that but then when it IS physical resistance I see everyone bring Hek/Tigris/Soma/Boltor/Etc Which are WAY more physical damage than elemental damage. Same can be said for elemental resistance. People wind up bringing Ember/Saryn/Simulor/Tonkor/etc and then flip out when they did low damage. And cause Im just crazy bored here's another meme :]

[TheLexiConArtist]

3 minutes ago, rawr1254 said:

Well yea everyone says that but then when it IS physical resistance I see everyone bring Hek/Tigris/Soma/Boltor/Etc Which are WAY more physical damage than elemental damage. Same can be said for elemental resistance. People wind up bringing Ember/Saryn/Simulor/Tonkor/etc and then flip out when they did low damage.

I can't say with any certainty, but have you considered that at least some portion of these people are likely doing so because of the unclear wording of the Physical and Elemental Enhancements ever since the defensive and offensive properties were merged?

 

Say a Physical Enhancement mission comes up; it says that units are empowered with bonus Impact damage along with resistances being increased.

A none-the-wiser player brings along their Sancti Tigris. Why? Well, only a small amount of the S.Tigris damage is impact, so they think it shouldn't harm their output too much, right?

A Cold Elemental Enhancement mission comes up. Someone brings an Ember. Fire damage, they think, is fine - any element, just as long as they don't try bringing their Frost in as a damage caster!

 

You and I may know that Physical Enhancements resist all IPS, but buff with one; that Elemental Enhancements provide damage of one type, but give blanket resistanes to anything but good old IPS. Doesn't mean that everyone is in a position to remember that from the pre-merge modifiers, or intuit that from the small summary text of the existing, merged ones.

[rawr1254]

1 minute ago, EDYinnit said:

 

Ok so then dont be mad at the resistance but like always how poorly DE explained said resistances. DE themselves know they tend to not explain stuff enough hence them wanting/needing to rework the ENTIRE new player experience.

[TheLexiConArtist]

23 minutes ago, rawr1254 said:

Ok so then dont be mad at the resistance but like always how poorly DE explained said resistances. DE themselves know they tend to not explain stuff enough hence them wanting/needing to rework the ENTIRE new player experience.

The fact the offensive and defensive properties were merged at all is still ridiculous, though. Ridiculous extra power or ridiculously beefy, on top of having the highest levels in static content, is enough. Not both.

[Datcoolguy]

To be honest, i have done all the boss sorties except for vay hekk, and the way to defeat them was just to stand on a ledge far away for kela and shooting at it with my soma prime (no heavy caliber ftw) and standing on top of a pile of crates for ambula then wait till it stood still and shoot it again(yay for being able to shoot trough obstacles because hitscan), with my soma p, both bosses went down with less than one clip 

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

On 3/31/2016 at 7:23 AM, EvilChaosKnight said:

Melee only boss fight vs Vay Kek. I... I don't want to think too much about it.

I actually did this one melee only.  Fortunately for me it was a Redeemer which isn't actually too hard to get about 30k sustained dps out of the charge attack.  Granted, on him it was only doing about 3-4k, but still.  Sadly it was a reduced energy mission, because otherwise I would have been running a 100% abating link trinity instead of a hyperefficient one, and I could probably have killed him in somewhere between 5-10 shots instead of like 50.

I made the mistake of taking in a freshly forma'd dex sybaris, a quite pimped dual toxocyst, and the corrosive redeemer (sadly I didn't realize you could shoot the coil over his head to proc headshot for the toxocysts) so it was Redeemer or the highway, because the other two would have taken days in real time to kill him with.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Vitalis_Inamorta

[Vitalis_Inamorta]

On 4/1/2016 at 4:20 PM, EDYinnit said:

That moment when someone is referring to Soma/Boltor Primes implicatively as bad weapons.

The power creep is real. Spare a thought for the fact that those used to be absolutely top tier and haven't been nerfed in order to make them such 'bad' weapons in your current perspective.

They aren't bad weapons because of damage output any more than they ever were.  The reason they are bad weapons (and kind of always has been) is because they have very poor ammo efficiency for the damage they output.  Even with all headshots and completely stripped armor you get, what, like 5k a bullet with them?  There are other rifles that you can optimize for like 15-40k a bullet without even necessarily stripping armor, not to mention snipers, bows, and launchers.  There's a reason the more skilled players kind of "get over" the spray and pray weapons for hard missions.  Really the only spray and pray you'll see is weapons like the Quanta/QuantaV that have absurd ammo efficiency.

As for melee only, there's a melee weapon that breaks literally all of the rules about melee weapons, except the one about not using ammo.  If you're not using it for every single melee only sortie mission, you're doing it wrong (really, I bring it to every mission except the elemental enhancement ones, for obvious reasons [massively resisted] or when I want to run a blessing build on Trinity).  The combination of something like 30k sustained dps in a long punch-through AoE without using any ammo and without needing a maiming/count/rush build is just win.