Well, I made a few tries today. I didn't do well--never made it past first boss. First run, our team overall wasn't well-coordinated, though we all had good builds/gear. Second run, I was the tank. Despite being great at tanking Ice, this hero simply wasn't good enough to tank Grond Clone. I am tempted to rebuild the character for the express purpose of being able to do this mission, but I'm not sure it's worth it for me.
Taking a couple hours for a lair (including 30-40 minutes advertising/waiting for a team) wasn't too fun for me.
Still, the game really could use a mission or two like this one, for two reasons:
1. An mmorpg can and should have a "toughest mission" that only the best groups can finish. A challenge, a pinnacle. 2. As gear creep continues, this mission will continue to be challenging for quite a while.
Despite this mission not being fun for me, and being too hard for me, I think that Champs needs to have this in game.
P.S. The VOs in the boss level are incredibly annoying.
Despite being great at tanking Ice, this hero simply wasn't good enough to tank Grond Clone.
If you can survive against Frosticus, you should have little problems against Grond as long as you play it smart. If you want to make the fight much easier you'll have to remove the grondlings from the equation. I've run the lair with 3 different tanks, and long as we made sure the grondlings were taken care of, it's one of the easiest boss fights.
There are two ways to handle the grondlings, either you bring a strong crowd control character (I haven't really tested this one, so can't say how good it will work), or you bring an off tank that does nothing else then agro the grondlings without ever killing them and pulling them away from the bossfight (on SG runs we usually do this, since we have to many tanks anyway).
Despite being great at tanking Ice, this hero simply wasn't good enough to tank Grond Clone.
If you can survive against Frosticus, you should have little problems against Grond as long as you play it smart. If you want to make the fight much easier you'll have to remove the grondlings from the equation. I've run the lair with 3 different tanks, and long as we made sure the grondlings were taken care of, it's one of the easiest boss fights.
There are two ways to handle the grondlings, either you bring a strong crowd control character (I haven't really tested this one, so can't say how good it will work), or you bring an off tank that does nothing else then agro the grondlings without ever killing them and pulling them away from the bossfight (on SG runs we usually do this, since we have to many tanks anyway).
No thats not it at all. our addtank was doing a very good job but our tank simply could not hold aggro with AoPM and hybrid role vs the other AoPM hybrid in the team. If he had tank role it may have been different, but even dialing back my dps didn't really work, Poppa grond loves my character too much.
So the more dps focussed AoPM build pulled agro from the more survivable AoPM build? And this was a surprise?
If you are thinking of yourself as a tank, and not just "a character that doesn't die", and you insist on AoPM and hybrid role, you better be sure your agro management is superb. And on the other side, if you planning on playing dps with AoPM might want to invest in an agro wipe.
Is TA already nearly dead? I was on for a couple hours last night and couldn't find any groups doing it. Perhaps oddly it was easier to find people doing LI.
Is TA already nearly dead? I was on for a couple hours last night and couldn't find any groups doing it. Perhaps oddly it was easier to find people doing LI.
The problem with the TA lair is that it isn't very friendly to most from what I am hearing in terms of complaints (and having run it on a few characters with significantly lowered HP).
The mechanics of each fight are new and specific to each fight and it generally is not explained too well within the lair itself, primarily relying on players to deduce or learn that "by absorbing Psionic Bombs they can be diffused" (or whatever Teleios says) translates directly into "Do not absorb more than 2 per person and clear out all the bombs within X amount of seconds or the entire team wipes.".
Most who have passed the lair at least once (myself included) have had prior knowledge of mechanics from testing or from seeing it in previous content (OSVs & Teleiosaur on MI). (It should be noted that not alot of players actually get to experience cosmic bosses like Teleiosaur in the open world, so rely on boss tells (which are a bit strange on the Hatchling or knowledge from other players to work out that fight's mechanics.)
This lair also requires team work. Team work is something that up until this lair was introduced, was not really enforced or perhaps a better term would be "encouraged" and now suddenly this lair requires skilled team work and for everyone to be on the ball.
Another issue is that as all players are different and have different play styles and ways of building, this lair favors the big three (TANK/DPS/HEAL) in a very large way (especially tanks).
There are also some issues with bosses in who they target (for example, Medusa seems to go for me no matter what. I have yet to be in a team with a tank who can keep her from looking at me.), as well as some unsavory mechanics (Grond's area denial mechanic in a relatively limited space?, Medusa's instapwn Psionic Bombs etc ).
Basically it is very unlike any content in CO, so there's going to be a level of aversion to it, especially that you can potentially go through the entire lair and come out the other side with 12 potions to show for it and that's about it. Also differing skill levels between players can be an issue, which of course means that those with similar skill will flock together and complete it (a bit like Fire & Ice).
I think mainly the idea of "tank n spank" goes completely out of the window in this content and it almost forces the killing of the boss to be a secondary objective to staying alive and watching out for mechanics.
That being said, when I have a solid team I have been able to greatly enjoy Gravitar, Medusa, Hatchling & Teleios fights. I cannot say the same about Grond, he uses his spit attack too often IMO.
Interesting. I hope this doesn't become something that only 15-20 people are able to end up doing (i.e. completing). That doesn't seem like a great investment of Dev time (even granted that it is largely a reuse of existing resources). F&I did have a learning curve, but to complete it you really only need 1 good tank and 1 good healer. The rest can be a real mixed bag in terms of type, gear and FF vs. AT.
I'll keep trying to get in to it because I want to be one of the cool kids (and to see if my CC character can really be useful here).
I will rebuild my tank when I get home from work, switching to Defiance and tank role. My health will drop down to 14-15K, I think, but my defense will be well over 200% at 6 stacks of defiance. I'm running Justice primaries with R7-8 mods, vigilante/Onslaught mix for secondaries.
Is TA already nearly dead? I was on for a couple hours last night and couldn't find any groups doing it. Perhaps oddly it was easier to find people doing LI.
There are people running it fairly regularly, but it's not very PUG friendly at this point.
Still, the game really could use a mission or two like this one, for two reasons:
1. An mmorpg can and should have a "toughest mission" that only the best groups can finish. A challenge, a pinnacle. 2. As gear creep continues, this mission will continue to be challenging for quite a while.
Despite this mission not being fun for me, and being too hard for me, I think that Champs needs to have this in game.
Semi agreed, game is much in need of a challenge, and I don't mind TA Elite w Elite danger setting having Frosticus (or worse!) level bosses and being rewarded appropriately for beating them. But with so few Frosticus level tanks, and so little new content, it would be nice if TA difficulty range was wider, say Elite- Normal danger scaled down some kind of Kenzi to Kenzi-Plus level spikes (a bit harder spikes, or more often),. I know people said it would fracture the community earlier when I asked if it was hard enough to warrant a normal mode (Normal queue, normal danger setting same thing to me), but Can/Can't play cause you are 1-shot fractures less than normal/elite.
Tricky to balance, and issues with elite players speed farming normal mode, and even trickier to divide the 1 to 5 tokens for current for TA. This last bit seems to paint the devs in a corner too, if an elite boss would have been worth 10-20 tokens, lighter GCR content could have been scaled i.e 5 normal TA boss, 5 for doing each rampage.
Short: we need both challenge, and varying levels of challenge.
Personally - I believe the rewards for TA to be not equal to the effort required to complete it. You need to bring a top level build. You need to have great gear (which now takes longer to earn), and you have to form the right team. In a game that barely has 300 total players on at peak hours -- it's just too much effort.
If the rewards were higher that might increase TA's popularity. But for the most part I see most players opting to skip it all together. There are few elite players who are running it as much as they can. But they are small segment of the existing player base.
Personally - I believe the rewards for TA to be not equal to the effort required to complete it. You need to bring a top level build. You need to have great gear (which now takes longer to earn), and you have to form the right team. In a game that barely has 300 total players on at peak hours -- it's just too much effort.
If the rewards were higher that might increase TA's popularity. But for the most part I see most players opting to skip it all together. There are few elite players who are running it as much as they can. But they are small segment of the existing player base.
I see these issues as more of an issue than the difficulty.
Also, even with a great team, it takes quite a long time to finish.
There are actually quite a lot of Frosticus level tanks out there, it's really not as demanding as people think. Your basic Defiance build can do it just fine.
Personally - I believe the rewards for TA to be not equal to the effort required to complete it. You need to bring a top level build. You need to have great gear (which now takes longer to earn), and you have to form the right team. In a game that barely has 300 total players on at peak hours -- it's just too much effort.
If the rewards were higher that might increase TA's popularity. But for the most part I see most players opting to skip it all together. There are few elite players who are running it as much as they can. But they are small segment of the existing player base.
How is better rewards for those already farming it going to increase the popularity of it for others who gave up on it for various reasons? Dangling more cheese over the murder machine to entice the bulk of the mice will only ensure the cats multiply their winnings.
'Farming TA now routinely...hmm, yeah, needs better rewards, guys.' I'm sure it's quite the genuine regard for the 'masses', truly.
Well I did suggest adding GCR in small amounts to other content, but the payout of TA in GCR is also too low considering prices in the recognition shop, and the difficulty and time required.
GCR via other avenues would be more in the realm of 'spreading the love'. Including, eventually, other Lairs though who knows what those will be like.
What existing content would they add it to? Seems like all the likely culprits are already giving SCR. And there is an apparent design philosophy to avoid rewarding solo effort. Which I would suggest pitching over the side, but /shrug...
We finished a run in just over 20 minutes with the proper team, no wipes; but it does require absolute teamwork; and everyone must be on the same page, one slip can cause a wipe on any of the bosses. You have to pay attention first, and foremost. A couple times it was smooth sailing until someone that just got into the groove got hit by a gold bubbles, or missed a medusa aoe block. The biggest issue I'm having atm, is getting the people that I know can do it together at the same time.
We finished a run in just over 20 minutes with the proper team, no wipes; but it does require absolute teamwork; and everyone must be on the same page, one slip can cause a wipe on any of the bosses.
Twenty minutes? That means each boss, and Teleios, took an average of 4 minutes each! It takes 4-5 minutes to get to the first boss, too.
Aside from that, the time spent finding a team probably took longer than the mission itself. This is perhaps one of the biggest issues that TA is going to have moving forward. There aren't a lot of folks that can do it, and even some that can just don't want to, or they don't have the time to spare in one play session.
We finished a run in just over 20 minutes with the proper team, no wipes; but it does require absolute teamwork; and everyone must be on the same page, one slip can cause a wipe on any of the bosses. You have to pay attention first, and foremost. A couple times it was smooth sailing until someone that just got into the groove got hit by a gold bubbles, or missed a medusa aoe block. The biggest issue I'm having atm, is getting the people that I know can do it together at the same time.
what gear?
what rank mods?
what legacy devices?
what AT's?
what FF?
We finished a run in just over 20 minutes with the proper team, no wipes; but it does require absolute teamwork; and everyone must be on the same page, one slip can cause a wipe on any of the bosses. You have to pay attention first, and foremost. A couple times it was smooth sailing until someone that just got into the groove got hit by a gold bubbles, or missed a medusa aoe block. The biggest issue I'm having atm, is getting the people that I know can do it together at the same time.
Speedrun Video please
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
I finally was part of a successful team. I turned my thematic Warlock (staff/poison/shadow, AoPM) into a Defile/Ebon Ruin spammer using AoPM and Con primary--Justice primaries (R7/8 mods), Vig secondaries. I threw in some useful devices for survivability, too, like a Nimbus and a Demonic Flesh Graft.
Turned out to be useful and helpful to the team--did not do the highest DPS (that was the 2GM build), but Warlock was consistent and required less healing and support with 15 K health and about 100% base damage resist.
Still, it took a long time, some personnel changes, and many retries of some bosses--including the new and improved Teleios at the end.
I hope the next lair revamp is toned down a bit from this, even if the GCR reward is also reduced a bit.
I hope the next lair revamp is toned down a bit from this, even if the GCR reward is also reduced a bit.
Doubt it, they are going for the Extremly Masochist Die Hards here, Die Hard who are not into ALTs
POWERFRAME REVAMPS, NEW POWERS and BUG FIXES > Recycled Content and Events and even costumes at this point Introvert guy who use CO to make his characters playable and get experimental with Viable FF Theme builds! Running out of Unique FF builds due to the lack of updates and synergiesPlaying since 1 February 2011 98+ Characters (7 ATs, 91 FFs) ALTitis for Life!
I formed a team once today. No one was new, and one team member new the lair inside and out, which helped.
Strangely enough, though this run was by far the easiest and fastest one for me, it wasn't as fun. The lair really is very long to complete for the rewards.
In three successful runs now, I've gotten only 62 potions and two R5 mods from the reward boxes. Meh.
1. Grond's aggro/threat mechanics are wonky. He occasionally targets players clear across the room, who are not attacking him or even healing, while a dedicated tank spams challenging strikes or crippling challenge. Grond sometimes simply attacks a player without regard for tank role from the very first attack in the fight.
2. The atomic fire pools do way, way too much damage sometimes. I thought I had a screenshot, but the UI screenshot command scrolled my combat log down and lost the info. The pools ticked for up to 20 K damage. Even with blocking, that meant 5-7 K damage.
there is DEFINITELY something wrong with grond's aggro code.
While I've had a whole lot of trouble with Grond's aggro, I think a lot of it is just that to maintain aggro you have to keep attacking, and that's hard to do when you're a melee tank and Grond is squatting in a fire pool that does 20k dps.
"The atomic fire pools do way, way too much damage sometimes."
Is the pool a stack? I don't think the pools look any different if they're stacked up. The graphics for those things are so subtle.
It's hard to attack Grond if he's spamming pee pools at the ranged tank. Grond just seems to be a mess all around.
One spit pool ticks three times once it has been cast on a specific target and location. What is interesting is that even if you are way out of the way, you will still take three ticks of damage which equal around, as has already been mentioned 5-7k per tick WITH blocking and at base is 20k.
Now considering he seems to use this attack about the same amount of times in a fight as Medusa drops bombs and TK Eruption...AND you're NTTG'd, it becomes essential to have a tank and a healer who can work together effectively and force him to spit in certain areas, which is easier said than done.
Maybe its just me and my lack of experience in raid groups, but I've certainly played this game for a long while, have a full set of justice and vigilante gear and one OV piece, all rank 8 mods, and a group of friends I play with with similar or better gear and experience playing. On multiple separate occasions we couldn't even get CLOSE to even putting a dent in any of the bosses. I know this is supposed to be high difficulty endgame content, but it really feels absolutely punishing and a bit degrading. I can't see how you could expect anyone other than the top tier 1% of players to be able to even attempt a mission like this. It simply DEMANDS complete and utter perfection of 5 perfectly built and coordinated players. I was really excited to hear there was new more challenging content, but this isn't a challenge, its just punishing. Punishing content only turns players away from the game. Honestly after a few hours of repeated failure I was almost ready to walk away from the game completely.
Maybe you had it set to Elite. That's when it starts to qualify for the description you gave. Make sure it's set to normal if you try it again. The lair is actually quite tame and doesn't require "perfect builds"...whatever that means.
Comments
Taking a couple hours for a lair (including 30-40 minutes advertising/waiting for a team) wasn't too fun for me.
Still, the game really could use a mission or two like this one, for two reasons:
1. An mmorpg can and should have a "toughest mission" that only the best groups can finish. A challenge, a pinnacle.
2. As gear creep continues, this mission will continue to be challenging for quite a while.
Despite this mission not being fun for me, and being too hard for me, I think that Champs needs to have this in game.
P.S. The VOs in the boss level are incredibly annoying.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
There are two ways to handle the grondlings, either you bring a strong crowd control character (I haven't really tested this one, so can't say how good it will work), or you bring an off tank that does nothing else then agro the grondlings without ever killing them and pulling them away from the bossfight (on SG runs we usually do this, since we have to many tanks anyway).
If you are thinking of yourself as a tank, and not just "a character that doesn't die", and you insist on AoPM and hybrid role, you better be sure your agro management is superb. And on the other side, if you planning on playing dps with AoPM might want to invest in an agro wipe.
The mechanics of each fight are new and specific to each fight and it generally is not explained too well within the lair itself, primarily relying on players to deduce or learn that "by absorbing Psionic Bombs they can be diffused" (or whatever Teleios says) translates directly into "Do not absorb more than 2 per person and clear out all the bombs within X amount of seconds or the entire team wipes.".
Most who have passed the lair at least once (myself included) have had prior knowledge of mechanics from testing or from seeing it in previous content (OSVs & Teleiosaur on MI). (It should be noted that not alot of players actually get to experience cosmic bosses like Teleiosaur in the open world, so rely on boss tells (which are a bit strange on the Hatchling or knowledge from other players to work out that fight's mechanics.)
This lair also requires team work. Team work is something that up until this lair was introduced, was not really enforced or perhaps a better term would be "encouraged" and now suddenly this lair requires skilled team work and for everyone to be on the ball.
Another issue is that as all players are different and have different play styles and ways of building, this lair favors the big three (TANK/DPS/HEAL) in a very large way (especially tanks).
There are also some issues with bosses in who they target (for example, Medusa seems to go for me no matter what. I have yet to be in a team with a tank who can keep her from looking at me.), as well as some unsavory mechanics (Grond's area denial mechanic in a relatively limited space?, Medusa's instapwn Psionic Bombs etc ).
Basically it is very unlike any content in CO, so there's going to be a level of aversion to it, especially that you can potentially go through the entire lair and come out the other side with 12 potions to show for it and that's about it. Also differing skill levels between players can be an issue, which of course means that those with similar skill will flock together and complete it (a bit like Fire & Ice).
I think mainly the idea of "tank n spank" goes completely out of the window in this content and it almost forces the killing of the boss to be a secondary objective to staying alive and watching out for mechanics.
That being said, when I have a solid team I have been able to greatly enjoy Gravitar, Medusa, Hatchling & Teleios fights. I cannot say the same about Grond, he uses his spit attack too often IMO.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
I'll keep trying to get in to it because I want to be one of the cool kids (and to see if my CC character can really be useful here).
If that doesn't work, then I'll just move on.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Tricky to balance, and issues with elite players speed farming normal mode, and even trickier to divide the 1 to 5 tokens for current for TA. This last bit seems to paint the devs in a corner too, if an elite boss would have been worth 10-20 tokens, lighter GCR content could have been scaled i.e 5 normal TA boss, 5 for doing each rampage.
Short: we need both challenge, and varying levels of challenge.
If the rewards were higher that might increase TA's popularity. But for the most part I see most players opting to skip it all together. There are few elite players who are running it as much as they can. But they are small segment of the existing player base.
Also, even with a great team, it takes quite a long time to finish.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
'Farming TA now routinely...hmm, yeah, needs better rewards, guys.' I'm sure it's quite the genuine regard for the 'masses', truly.
What existing content would they add it to? Seems like all the likely culprits are already giving SCR. And there is an apparent design philosophy to avoid rewarding solo effort. Which I would suggest pitching over the side, but /shrug...
Aside from that, the time spent finding a team probably took longer than the mission itself. This is perhaps one of the biggest issues that TA is going to have moving forward. There aren't a lot of folks that can do it, and even some that can just don't want to, or they don't have the time to spare in one play session.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
what gear?
what rank mods?
what legacy devices?
what AT's?
what FF?
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Speedrun Video please
Turned out to be useful and helpful to the team--did not do the highest DPS (that was the 2GM build), but Warlock was consistent and required less healing and support with 15 K health and about 100% base damage resist.
Still, it took a long time, some personnel changes, and many retries of some bosses--including the new and improved Teleios at the end.
I hope the next lair revamp is toned down a bit from this, even if the GCR reward is also reduced a bit.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Doubt it, they are going for the Extremly Masochist Die Hards here, Die Hard who are not into ALTs
I won't require experience, but I will expect people to read instructions, ask questions, and follow through.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Most of the people running it now have probably been running it.
Kudos to all who take newbies through, though.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Strangely enough, though this run was by far the easiest and fastest one for me, it wasn't as fun. The lair really is very long to complete for the rewards.
In three successful runs now, I've gotten only 62 potions and two R5 mods from the reward boxes.
Meh.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
1. Grond's aggro/threat mechanics are wonky. He occasionally targets players clear across the room, who are not attacking him or even healing, while a dedicated tank spams challenging strikes or crippling challenge. Grond sometimes simply attacks a player without regard for tank role from the very first attack in the fight.
2. The atomic fire pools do way, way too much damage sometimes. I thought I had a screenshot, but the UI screenshot command scrolled my combat log down and lost the info. The pools ticked for up to 20 K damage. Even with blocking, that meant 5-7 K damage.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
Is the pool a stack? I don't think the pools look any different if they're stacked up. The graphics for those things are so subtle.
It's hard to attack Grond if he's spamming pee pools at the ranged tank. Grond just seems to be a mess all around.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Now considering he seems to use this attack about the same amount of times in a fight as Medusa drops bombs and TK Eruption...AND you're NTTG'd, it becomes essential to have a tank and a healer who can work together effectively and force him to spit in certain areas, which is easier said than done.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
1. Tank makes first few attacks
2. Rest of team moves into room
3. Grond immediately lunges at another hero who has not yet attacked
*sigh*
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
She refused to tank Teleios for the entire fight and made me do it (I even tanked some other bosses for a bit). :<
I have lost the ability to say "PFF cannot tank in TA" and "I cannot tank anything".
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Silverspar on PRIMUS
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
- dps with 5k hp
- tanks without CON as a SS
- PFF tanks
- AT tanks
- AT dps
of things that have done, and can do TA. and that's just the ones I've seen.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.