Issues with Raptor Assassination

[WeJee]

So I've been doing fairly well for myself in this game since I picked it back up just a few months ago, really started to dig into the good stuff just this month.

So far, I've basically cleared everything up to Jupiter, save for that ridiculous Kepler run that I'm putting off until I get more mods for my archwing. No problems besides that. Sure, I've had a few missions I ran where I was under equipped, but I understand that it's just something I needed to learn and grow from, just like in Dark Souls: death should present a learning opportunity to become a better player.

So i swallowed my pride, scaled back my expectations, and sure enough, I have managed to solo most of the game and had a blast.

And then I got to the Raptor assassination and boy howdy.

First off the bat, as Volt, one of my favorite things is rapidly moving around the battlefield and discharging my abilities at  breakneck speed. Being able to jump through the air, drop a lightning bolt, and then zip away is awesome. Mobility is a big part of why I love playing Volt.

Raptor does not like my mobility, and doesn't stand for it.

Part One: Volt

His main attack almost always hits, even when I use my speed boost, and although I'm practically flying at a speed reserved for bullet trains, I find myself becoming familiar with his cannon shells. Not a bother, since my shields are both generous and rapidly regenerative, so I can usually get past the first few shots. Then the sly guy throws in those blue mines and then the real fun begins.

I first entered the battlefield an unlearned child, expecting to deal with the boss with both agility and creativity. What I got instead was a fistful of pain that resulted in all 1.7k of my shields and health being shredded in less than five seconds, while i was moving. Not to be dissuaded, I revived and moved back, gathered my thoughts, and ventured back into the fray.

I made it about thirty feet from the door before watching my still warm corpse fly from the ledge of the raised area and imitate Peter Pan's pixie-powered soaring. I won't lie,I got a bit frustrated here, and so I revived, moved back, and decided to try the safe approach.

I threw up a shield in the doorway and pulled out my lvl 30, modded out Paris, which I had modded out with extra puncture damage as per instruction from a helpful fellow on the regional chat, and notched the first shot. Out the arrow flew and it's shot rang true./

And that's when I learned Raptor has thicker armor than an Anime protagonist.

What's frustrating is that up to this boss is that every other enemy, be it man or machine, had ended up as humorous pinatas decorating walls from Mercury to the Void. Never had a problem as long as I landed the shots and threw out a bolt to pick off the stragglers, but fighting Raptor has left me feeling like a small boy facing a komodo dragon. Let the record show I did try both the Burston and Braton on the same mission, both times with puncture damage and saw similar results.

Eventually, I figured out that the Corpus nullifiers also nullifier-ed the Raptors ordinance, and spent a good five minutes hiding in their happy little bubbles as the Raptor uselessly pinged away at the glowing frame. That fun moment of discovery was cut short when one of the Nullifers I was hitchhiking with discovered an interesting bit of scrap and left to investigate, leaving me in the open to be greeted by Raptors welcoming shower of hatred and mines.

Being an avid Dark Souls player, I am something of a stubborn jerk, and attempted the mission at least five times, changing my positions each time and playing around with my abilities, which i learned on attempt two were about as pointless as a spear outsourced in China. Eventually, I moved to Excalibur. Another warframe I am well versed in, but not my favorite.

Part Deux: Excalibur

With Excalibur, I took a move tactical approach, as I had very little range and wanted to maximize my armor.

I was happy to discover that the armor addition did wonders to my resistance. I took those mines like a champ, when I didn't avoid them.That said, dodging a massive load of explosives does little to help when the enemy drops a batch every few seconds and said explosions also ignore the cover you placed your faith in. More than I can count was I betrayed by the broken and twisted metal that lined the arena, sent sprawling into the icy fields only to see more blue suffering land around me.

The damage was the same story.

Both the Braton and Burston did little to slow the Raptor, and on the rare occasions that I made it past the five minute mark, I ran out of ammo long before the Raptor even showed any indication of damage. The Paris, and even the Cernos which I didn't hope for to begin with, were equally as laughable. It was at this point that I decided to attempt matchmaking, as I am a lonely fool with naught but time to spare.

After about three hours of posting my request for a group in Recruiting, I heard nothing. Nobody seemed interested, and attempting to join a public match via the mission screen yielded no results. It was a little disheartening, to say the least.

Part Tres: Reflection

Upon sitting down and enjoying a drink with my roommate, and a few sojourns into the mission with experimental loadouts just to be sure, I have analyzed the fight and come to a few conclusions. Feel free to disagree with me, but I still feel my points have enough experience backing them to not be simply a case of 'Git Gud'.

Raptor is too fast- I don't mean this with his zipping around and hovering, but that does get a little tiring if you attempt to turtle inside the hallway leading up to him. No, I mean his attacks come too quickly. His main attack is nothing to be too concerned about, since even if it hits, it's not much damage off a shield with a high enough Redirection equipped. His mine dropping, however, is not appreciated. I sometimes died because I dodged his first mine drop, only to, mid-air mind you, collide with a second volley of mines he had decided to surprise me with. Was I surprised? Absolutely. Did I like the surprise? Up for debate.

 

Raptor is too stronk- I don't know what they plated this flying machine full of hate and gibberish, but I want some. He doesn't even seem to take damage from my attacks, which was strangely more frustrating than Kril. At least with Kril I could SEE that I was dealing 0 damage, which meant I could accordingly adjust my plan and try new tactics to secure victory. Even with Jackal, I still felt like the lack of damage I was doing made sense once I figured out the pattern and changed my targets. Raptor is insulting as it says I'm dealing damage, but apparently it's about as effective as an anti-vaxxer trying to convince the surgeon general to change their position.

 

Raptor is too smert- Were cover more reliable in this game, this wouldn't be as big a problem, but when coupled with the fact that 1) Raptor is flying and B) Cover don't work, his homing attacks, both the main gun and the mine launcher, are simply rude. They blast me out of the sky from exploding on the ground, and blast me apart from behind walls that they shouldn't even dent. I did notice they don't seem to work in the hallway, which was nice for awhile. At least until I poked out and was met with the fury of a thousand mines. It's just a little irksome to try being all ninja like when EVERY attack is always heading your way.

 

If the damage and the armor were cranked down, I feel like the fight would level out and reach a better balance. or if you still want the crazy damage output, which i can respect, i would ask the time between his big hitters increase and his tracking slack off a wee bit. That way, if I make a bad move, then I feel the pain, rather than just suffer for merely existing in the same space that Raptor has decided to occupy.

 

Let me be clear: I'm not saying this is a bad boss.

I just feel this is, as it stands, a bit unfair as a fight.

I like a challenge. Like I said earlier, I'm a big Dark Souls fan, and most RPG's where learning the bosses various tactics quickly find their way into my steam library. But the thing with a challenge is that it still needs to be fair, there needs to be a hint of a solution buried in the frustration. With Raptor, I don't see that glimmer. I just see more mines. Always mines.

 

I am building an Oberon and a Rhino right now, and here's hoping that once their leveled up I will see a change in this fight's appearance and maybe learn to enjoy this experience, but as it stands, I find this fight simply too difficult to pull off Solo with what I've been given up to this point.

What does everyone else think?

Good boss? Frustrating? Bad design?

And please, I would actually enjoy advice on ways to counter this boss. Like I said, I want to learn from this, because I really do love this game. It's just this and Kepler that prevent me from fully enjoying the game.

 

[GDSK-NXS]

First, avoid puncture damage, as a corpus unit, he is mostly shields, magnetic and impact are better, even just raw cold damage.
Second, marking him with a waypoint and hiding behind the multiple obstacles proved to be helpful against most of his attacks.
Third, you have to fight 3 of them AT LEAST to win the bossfight, as after you kill one, they drop a bomb with about 8? second timer, you have to drop it inside one of the three giant holes in the arena. Once the three are destroyed you win. Until then, every time the bomb explodes, a new raptor is summoned, and you can fight a lot of them and not get anywhere near winning.
 

[AegisGrey]

I admit I found this fight frustrating as well, both because of the massive damage output as well as the VERY short fuse on the reactors once you do kill raptor. Think I died more from not making it with the bomb than from the fight itself... :(.

On a side note, if you fail enough you can get all your scans done in one run!! :)

Also, where were you shooting it? I got the impression that hitting it in the wings did a lot more damage than the main body.

[TaylorsContraction]

You might want to bring a magnetic secondary to pop  its shields and a corrosive primary to strip its armor.

The fact that you couldn't damage it is a sign, go level your damage mods (farm endo) and try to acquire more damage mods so that you can use the elemental combos. Surprised that didn't occur to you....

Edit: damage aside, his attacks are indeed extremely hard to dodge. On sorties he will 1 shot frames bullet jumping perpendicular to his firing trajectory in mid air. Happened to me many times.

Edited September 19, 2016 by TaylorsContraction

[xxswatelitexx]

I don't get it - I can 1 shot \ 2 shot raptor with a Sancti Tigris no problem and I just use radiation at around 30k. 

Edited September 19, 2016 by xxswatelitexx

[WeJee]

I have returned, attempting to take your advice to heart, and lo I must say perhaps I just need a taxi for this boss.

You see, I decided to re-attempt the boss once this afternoon, as I had nothing else to do while waiting for both Oberon and Rhino to finish production. I even used a catalyst on my Cernos to see if loading it with as many damage mods as possible might at least make it a high-risk fight. If I couldn't take his hits, perhaps I could return the damage fast enough to throw the bombs down the shafts and escape before the Bursas came to stomp me flat.

First off, Raptor saw fit to immediately perform a Top Gun maneuver, which i thought silly as it would have smashed him into the wall with enough force to leave a movie-screen sized hole in the wall.

I was wrong.

It appears as though my good friend has moved INTO THE WALL and has made it a lovely home.

While I am in no position to make judgement calls on other people's places of residence, I felt the whole thing highly inappropriate, as I had a junction to unlock and a system to save, I decided to approach my foe and discuss his frankly rude behavior towards a Tenno warrior.

Needless to say, Raptor and I had a pleasant conversation where I learned that my bow, despite having max rupture and critical strike, was still as useful as a deaf man in an audio booth.Zero damage with every shot, and every weapon i had. A few bolts showed the same level of usefulness and I resigned myself to exploring the area to possibly plan out a new stratagem for my next run through.

Oh suck an egg you massive space toaster.

 

As stated, specked out bow did nothing, and I don't seem to be able to find any Mag mods for my Akvastos.

Also aiming at the wings did marginally more damage it seems. But when the margin was zero to begin with, it doesn't really make much of a difference

I am still looking for advice. I need to do more damage to this guy faster to make it past him,. let alone all three of his silly incarnations.

[zehne]

All the advice that can be offered is to rank up mods and find a weapon you like and forma it.  The way the mod system in warframe works currently is to say the least a HUGE DIFFERENCE in weapon performance.

For example;

• Tigris prime has: ~~ 1,500  damage, 10% crit with a 2.0 crit modifer and 30% status
• Modded Tigris p: ~~44,800 damage, 10% crit with a 2.0 crit modifer and 98% status

 

The difference in damage alone is 30X  higher, that doesn't even include the fact that it procs slash damage which makes an INCREDIBLE increase on it's damage output.  Simply put, if your weapon is doing hardly any damage you probably haven't modded it enough/correctly.  Most all weapons are capable of taking on lvl 100+ enemies if you invest enough mods into them.