Ambulas Makes Terrible Sortie

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

Of all the sortie assassinations, none (except maybe gltch-head Lephantis) has a higher fail rate than Ambulas. People just do not seem to understand the mechanics behind it. This may be because few people actually fight Ambulas normally, or perhaps because it is just a strange boss to begin with.

First off: The Ambulas is a tank. It can hold its own for several seconds even against a hysterical Valkyr. Add to the fact you may fight two or even three at the same time, and you have a tough fight.

Second: Hacking. The hacking of Ambulas itself is not hard. What makes it difficult is that hoards of enemies come to reactivate it. The most aggressive of these enemies being the hacker drones. These drones rush to the Ambulas, ignoring players, in an attempt to reactivate it. These drones also have a large some of armor and health, making them especially tough to kill in time in a sortie.

Third: Sortie effects. The boss is hard enough on its own and at a high level. Though if you add something crazy like "radiation hazard", then you just have a madhouse. Now any sort of crowd-control is deadly to allies, meaning all enemies will need to be killed manually.

Please look into a rework, or perhaps some sort of mercy so random matches actually have a remote chance at beating this Sortie boss.

[Dragazer]

There are a few frames that can solo it with ease with the proper builds, I'll leave that for you to figure out.

PS: Only the hacker drone can reactivate Ambulas, any other enemy does nothing to it.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Dragazer

[DirePresent]

3 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

There are a few frames that can solo it with ease with the proper builds, I'll leave that for you to figure out.

Also, Operator mode helps... a lot.

And I'd also suggest going solo whenever rad is involved.

Edited December 17, 2017 by Alangme

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

4 minutes ago, Dragazer said:

 

PS: Only the hacker drone can reactivate Ambulas, any other enemy does nothing to it

Not true. Any Corpus humanoid can walk up to it and reactivate it in half the time the drones can.

[(PSN)HSomDevil]

34 minutes ago, (Xbox One)alchemPyro said:

The Ambulas is a tank. It can hold its own for several seconds even against a hysterical Valkyr

Yeah Valkyr is pretty great isn't she. ;)

[Dragazer]

Just now, (Xbox One)alchemPyro said:

Not true. Any Corpus humanoid can walk up to it and reactivate it in half the time the drones can.

If that's what you really think, I can see why you were having trouble with today's sortie lol.

[-VM-Fawxco]

I honestly don't think that it should be changed. People have been complaining about bosses being to easy, and now that there's finally a challenging boss.  I just did it solo as an ice tank chroma without problem

[GinKenshin]

I was away when the first rework and event for it launched, and today's sortie was my 2nd time fighting him (1st time was also in a sortie) and the mechanics of the fight were very easy to understand and clear to me. kill it, hack it, defend it......it's not as hard as people claim to be, it's just the right setup for the right fight 

I'm not claiming I didn't die, cos I did and my random party did too, but I never felt that it's hard or unfair, if it's hard that's because it's the 3rd sortie which is reasonable


the problem I have is how you get to fight it.....farming items just to fight a boss is complete bullS#&$ imo 

[-Temp0-]

That's why I skip him and Kela normally.

They're really annoying and boring.

Цитата

People have been complaining about bosses being to easy, and now that there's finally a challenging boss

None of the bosses in WF will ever be "challenging". Eidolon comes close to being interesting but that's about it.

Edited December 17, 2017 by -Temp0-

[MakeLuvNotWerFrame]

with a bit of planning and teamwork this sortie boss is nearly the easiest to defeat.

banshee 50 meter range 3 energy per second with ~740 energy capacity just CC's with soundquake under the center stairs leading up to the platform

limbo banish/cataclysm

mesa or chroma or just any general high dps frame weapon combo

you will find that once you have this squad you just kill hack and wait out the timer.

boring but we chose to make it that way.

maybe take some time and think about team combos and really use frames/abilities/weapons instead of being lazy and asking for preplanned
general cheese loudouts.

but who am I to tell others what to do. you're free to try and fail/win on your own

Edited December 17, 2017 by MakeLuvNotWerFrame

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

15 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

I was away when the first rework and event for it launched, and today's sortie was my 2nd time fighting him (1st time was also in a sortie) and the mechanics of the fight were very easy to understand and clear to me. kill it, hack it, defend it......it's not as hard as people claim to be, it's just the right setup for the right fight 

I'm not claiming I didn't die, cos I did and my random party did too, but I never felt that it's hard or unfair, if it's hard that's because it's the 3rd sortie which is reasonable


the problem I have is how you get to fight it.....farming items just to fight a boss is complete bullS#&$ imo 

The concepts of the fight are by no means hard, its just that it totally wrecks most random teams. Like you said, people have to grind just to fight the normal boss. As a result most people can't practice on it and maximize on its mechanics. Most of my losses to it are because my teammates don't properly defend the downed Ambulances. A Valkyr (or any really high DPS frame) can down an Ambulas no problem, but they often have to sacrifice suvivability and/or crowd control for that DPS. Getting a team that is balanced and coherent AND well versed with the boss is a nightmare.

[Shaw1996]

It took me two tries with random Squad since during the first try, there were two failed hacked Ambulas and 3 delivered. So the chance of victory happening would be pretty low. I didn’t go down once while the rest of the squad was dropping like flies since Volt was spamming his Ult while he was Radiated. Still managed to delivered all 6 successfully on the second try. I normally kill the Ambulas with my Radiation Arca Titron in 6.31 seconds with Hysteria but today, it was taking more of a beating.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Shaw1996

[UltraLYT]

I thought I could just solo with Mag for this sortie, found that Magnetize does not work on Ambulas anymore.  The bubble got immediately nullified whenever Magnetize was cast on Ambulas.  Confirmed in simulacrum.

I then used Chroma to finish it, the only threat that you need to be careful is the security team (Scrambus, etc.) rushing out to disable your abilities. 

[Paradoxbomb]

Frustrating as it was to have randos up and abandon the team halfway through the fight, it was legitimately satisfying to beat this boss with a team instead of soloing it for a change, and at level 100 no less. And it is quite nice to have a boss that requires a bit more coordination and strategizing than "pump DPS into weakspot until dead"; it's something I think the game should have more of, not less.

That said, my only two critiques about the Ambulas fight are:

1. It's a bit too hectic on Solo - And this is coming from a veteran player. Mind you it's still easy enough to do with some powerful weapons and the right gear, but I can't imagine how on earth a low/mid level player is supposed to fight Ambulas, hack him, fend off waves of enemies and repair drones, and avoid orbital strikes all at the same time. Mind you they could go in with a squad, but no one seems to play this node, which leads to my second gripe.
2. The Amino beacons - Not a fan of this mechanic. These point systems for Kela and Ambulas were alright for their events, but for regularly playing and farming the bosses they just feel like a needless layer of padding which unfortunately discourages players from revisiting what are (IMO) probably some of the better bosses in the game (putting the Devs work to make an actually in-depth boss fight to waste no less). So players who beat them already don't bother to fight them again because of the grind they have to go through to get to them again, while players who still need to fight them are screwed because potential teammates to help them are now scarce. Not to mention you get the scenario with today's sorties where people have no idea how to fight the boss in the first place because they don't/never bother to practice on the original node. I think a good compromise for this mechanic would be to make so that players only need to earn the points to fight the boss once, after which they're free to revisit them at their leisure and without the need to re-farm more points.

Edited December 18, 2017 by Paradoxbomb

[Worm4real]

9 hours ago, Dragazer said:

There are a few frames that can solo it with ease with the proper builds, I'll leave that for you to figure out.

I like how the initial response to "this is terrible" is "well you can just solo it with a really specific build". I mean whatever if you have a setup where the time investment of soloing makes it worth it to pull from the sortie lotto, that's great.

26 minutes ago, Paradoxbomb said:

And it is quite nice to have a boss that requires a bit more coordination and strategizing than "pump DPS into weakspot until dead"; it's something I think the game should have more of, not less.

I really question the idea that people are having trouble with this because of coordination, you pump DPS into the Ambulas, hack it, then pump DPS into anything coming near the Ambulas. The major difference is that you lose if you don't make the DPS check, unlike the rest of the content in the game. Personally I don't want to see more DPS checks in the game.

At the core of it you have a fight that people don't like and that even less know (because they were told to pick Excalibur) then you ratchet the level way up and obviously it's terrible, It's a lot of bother for a lottery ticket and I wish I hadn't even bothered to try it tonight. In the end DE has the numbers and I'm sure they see more people ignoring sorties when it's Ambulas or Lephantis assassination because that's simply not content people want to do.

[Shaw1996]

1 hour ago, Paradoxbomb said:

 

1. It's a bit too hectic on Solo - And this is coming from a veteran player. Mind you it's still easy enough to do with some powerful weapons and the right gear, but I can't imagine how on earth a low/mid level player is supposed to fight Ambulas, hack him, fend off waves of enemies and repair drones, and avoid orbital strikes all at the same time. Mind you they could go in with a squad, but no one seems to play this node

Ambulas is where you farm Excalibur too. So a low/Mid level player have to go through the Struggle to get a Starter Frame. So it would be a good idea for a new player to start with Excalibur so they can take the easy route for Volt and Mag.

[Laurios]

There is a real bug, sometime, one ambula cancels his hack, we can kill it again, but we can't hack it... its mark stays yellow :/

[Worm4real]

9 hours ago, Shaw1996 said:

Ambulas is where you farm Excalibur too. So a low/Mid level player have to go through the Struggle to get a Starter Frame. So it would be a good idea for a new player to start with Excalibur so they can take the easy route for Volt and Mag.

It's the first idiot trap of the game and why everyone is emphatically told to pick Excalibur at the start of the game regardless of what they find interesting.