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Mechanon Fight FAQ

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  • flowcytoflowcyto Posts: 12,852 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Guys, it's charge *looks* like Fireball, but it's actually attack is like a powerful full charge Pyre.

    The AOE is bigger then the fire patch on the ground, because it's still a 25ft AOE from a 20ft tall robot, not a 6' tall humanoid.

    I have no idea why it LOOKS like Fireball when they charge it, but it does. So treat it as a PBAOE.

    I have been killed by a ground-slamming attack that's instant and has no indicator when on melee dps before- quite a few times now. Last time I checked the logs, this kill shot was flagged as this 'Pyre' you speak of, and its one of the main reasons this fight is too anti-melee. Afaik, the radius is tiny, so I think it only affects melee if they get too close under him. I am unsure of this, however.

    Got killed by a chain light that arcs behind him a couple times too. Now I block all charges as melee, even if I know they are just frontal cones. Problem is, the other Mega-D being too close makes this hell for melee- ya can't see the charge indicators on the other one- its too far above their head, and anims aren't always reliable indicators since they can delay or cancel from a diff anim and let loose earlier than you'd expect. If you are melee w/o a defense passive or Con SS, any unblocked attack from the other Mega-D is likely a one-shot.

    My advice: don't be a non-tank melee in this event. Its just not worth it.

    Also, I have noticed the damage immunity 'bug' (more like damage source overload) the past two times this event has aired, and Kaiz not too long ago confirmed that it had been a thing since launch- so its likely not just due to recent plasma sheer whoring. Also have had people tell me to stop using PB on liberated Mega-Ds (w/ only low hundreds in the sheer stacks), but this thread contradicts that warning. Am I to assume those players either dunno they are talking about w/ the healing, or are just afraid of the 'bug' from stacking sheer?
    <CO stuff> .: Petco :. // A basic FF building guide (see 1st reply) // PSA on Power Activation Delay // Ayonachan's Gift Horse (misc stat data)
    - Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
  • williamkonywilliamkony Posts: 582 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    flowcyto wrote: »
    Also, I have noticed the damage immunity 'bug' (more like damage source overload) the past two times this event has aired, and Kaiz not too long ago confirmed that it had been a thing since launch- so its likely not just due to recent plasma sheer whoring. Also have had people tell me to stop using PB on liberated Mega-Ds (w/ only low hundreds in the sheer stacks), but this thread contradicts that warning. Am I to assume those players either dunno they are talking about w/ the healing, or are just afraid of the 'bug' from stacking sheer?

    Yeah, they're just freaking out because they've been told Plasma Beam glitches them up. Plasma Beam is certainly very conducive to the bug given its rapid damage ticks and 25-stack debuff, but the move itself isn't the reason for the bug. If there are only a few people attacking, and that's the best attack available to you, go for it.

    The main issue with using Plasma Beam on a Liberated Destroyer (when the overload bug isn't happening), is that your damage might make them focus on you with their anti-vehicle beam. :P
    Dasher@Tool-box, donning his armor to prance into battle and blitz the enemy! No joke!
    Cupid@Tool-box, stunningly radiant stag ready to play matchmaker between villain and arrow!
    Vixon@Tool-box, frighteningly eager to summon despair for his adversaries!
    Jebin Zedalu@Tool-box, elementalist weaponmaster. ...One of these things is not like the others!
  • flowcytoflowcyto Posts: 12,852 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    The main issue with using Plasma Beam on a Liberated Destroyer (when the overload bug isn't happening), is that your damage might make them focus on you with their anti-vehicle beam. :P
    That could be it, but on recently liberated ones that are near dead I assume that's not much an issue. Haven't been killed yet cause of it, at least.

    Eh, I'll just keep using it until it comes time to focus Mechanon. W/ everyone being split up, the bug isn't likely to happen as is, but will keep an eye on the stacks and for the anti-vehicle beam.
    <CO stuff> .: Petco :. // A basic FF building guide (see 1st reply) // PSA on Power Activation Delay // Ayonachan's Gift Horse (misc stat data)
    - Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
  • baelogventurebaelogventure Posts: 520 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Liberated Mega-Ds Anti-Vehicle Beam is random targeting.

    Anyone in a vehicle anywhere inside of their targeting area, including behind them, can be hit by it.

    Also, it absolutely shreds vehicles. I was getting like 5k a tick on a Mk2 VTOL with 2x r6 Biosteels
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,397 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Not sure if anyone else commented on this yet they really need to fix the targeting on these cosmic villains. What do I mean? Well the target box seems to be around the mega destroyer's ankles so 90% of the giant can be visible but I can't target it because "You cannot see Mega Destroyer"

    This is especially annoying when fighting Mechanon because he loves to wonder down the ramp. I can be standing on the over pass, looking square at his head, but the game thinks I cannot see him. It's annoying and stupid. Not game breaking but Annoying and stupid.
  • guyhumualguyhumual Posts: 2,397 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    sterga wrote: »
    Since there is so much failure going on, I have to wonder if the average player just has no where near the DPS and survival needed to finish it. Challenge is nice and all, but it should be challenging to the average CO player, not top end builds for a temporary, open world event like this.

    This is my big concern as well. You figure at most we have 2 maybe 3 zones succeeding out of the 5. Likely only one most of the time. The event takes most, if not all, of the 20 minutes. And so we have people getting into zone 1 and never leaving, and the majority of the players experiencing failure. The mega destroyer attack was frustrating enough for most people, but we did usually succeed in multiple zones quiet regularly. Failure did happen often enough but I figure the old event was probably doing a bit better then 50%

    With Mechanon I suspect that we're talking a little better then 20%

    Now, having said that, I do like what they've tried to do with this event. I don't exactly like the event itself at the moment, but the theory behind the way they've set it up is solid. You're asking players to co-ordinate, success pretty much depends on this, and while I have little faith in most of the PUGs we see that with the right group of people (like in say zone one) there's almost guaranteed success.

    Success requires communication, co-ordination, and the sharing of jobs. Knowing how other groups are progressing is essential. Knowing which area needs help is important. Dealing with those spiders is vital, and having failed that, making sure those liberated mega destroids are taken down quickly before they have a chance to become more powerful. In theory this is great. In practice . . .

    Also problems with the mega destroids themselves are pretty much compounded with this event. They did a lot of damage before, melee characters are pretty much screwed, and now these spiders (which aren't at all bothered by the mega destroid attacks) can just run up and make the hard fight substantially harder. I've been trying to tank a mega destroid, when suddenly a spider runs up, I switch to try to take it out, and then the mega destriod hits me with his destroyer blast (the big boom). If I could watch the mega destroyer I might have blocked but, of course, I don't have eyes in the back of my head. By the time I get back I'm facing a liberated Mega Destroid.

    As a ranged character if I can't see the mega destroid's feet I can't target him. Most of the fighting takes place on uneven ground. If I'm at not at the top, on, or at the bottom of a ramp I can't see the spiders until it's too late.

    The damage the mega Destroids deal is pretty much overpowering, but liberated mega destroids are ridiculous. As a tank, a LMD killed be from full health, through a block with it's boom attack. If a Mega Destroyer is near full health when it's turned the fight is practically over. If everyone teams up and takes that monster down there's a chance that they can kill him before he becomes unstoppable, but if we have two changed early there's just no way. Again, I like the concept, but mega destroids on their own were a very tough fight, you didn't need to ramp up the difficulty as much as you did.

    And lastly, I don't use vehicles, but I'm sure there's some folks that do that are pretty upset with some of the nerfs and hobbling they've experience with this event. I don't mind seeing some of those flyboys blasted out of the sky but silvers and especially melee characters need some way of contributing to these fights. taking to the sky in the vehicles that you've pushed on us over the last two or three years seems like a good choice but seems like these anti vehicle attacks are nearly as bad as these no tell close range attacks designed to screw over melee characters.
  • mithrosnomoremithrosnomore Posts: 521 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Can anyone tell me if I'm correct that I spotted vehicles lined up on the parameter spamming Incendiary Rounds against these Spiders?

    It was something I was going to suggest even before I had seen this, I'm just not sure how quickly they, the spiders, were go down.

    So, if I understand this, the proper pattern to beat the clock is:

    1) Defend Champ HQ to keep the spiders from getting to the three Mega-Ds groups (North, South and West) from becoming liberated (which actually means under Mechanons control)

    2) While this is happening, keep beating down the Mega-Ds until the HP bar is low, but do not destroy them, yet...

    This is where I get confused. Is this where everyone attack Mechanon at once? Also, when do our heroes go back to attack the Mega-Ds to finish them off?

    Just to note, the spiders won't appear until the first Mega-D goes down.
    If you have all of the Mega-Ds at low health (I mean low, not just taking one down while the rest are all at 1/3rd-ish), then you only need to worry about that first wave of spiders.

    The Mega-Ds will all be defeated by the time the second wave appears, and at that point they are more nuisance than threat.

    The order, thin, is this....


    1) Work the Mega-Ds down more-or-less evenly. Do not take any down until they are all at 1/3rd or lower.

    Keep your eye on the Champions. They hate the Mega-Ds too. If you take one Mega-D down to 1/3rd before you start working on the other one in an area, the Champs may continue to pound away on the already weakened Mega-D and trigger the spiders before you are ready.

    Keep an eye on both Mega-Ds in "your area" (north, south, or west) and do not take one down too much further than the other.

    2) Once the word goes out that all Mega-Ds are at 1/3rd, begin working to KO them. Again, the ideal is that they will all get equal amounts of attention, but most players just beat up on the one Mega-D they were attacking, so one may be KOed pretty quickly.

    It is at this time that a spider-hunter or two may want to position themselves, and everyone in general should stay alert.

    3) Kill the spiders when they appear. This is just as important to success as "kill the Mega-Ds" and "Kill Mechanon", but it is not as obvious, and where a lot of attempts fail.
    Whether you are a "spider hunter" or not, if you see a spider, stop whatever you think is important and kill the freaking spider.

    While this is going on, you want to finish off any remaining Mega-Ds as quickly as possible.

    4) Take the fight to Mechanon. Do not use plasma beams, do not use containment field, do not use T-Bear rays.

    Life is a lot simpler that way.

    guyhumual wrote: »
    ... the descriptions I've seen it seems as though folks had top tier players and equipment and still took 18 minutes or so to defeat Mechanon. This talk about traveling to different zones to help others out is silly at this point as if top tier characters take that long to defeat one zone, the rest of the rabble isn't even going to be close to finished by the time their assistance becomes available.

    I am not a "top player", whatever that means. I have been using my "main" which is a free-form fire toon with semi-tanky leanings. When my name has appeared in the rankings list the vast majority of the time it has been towards the bottom of the list, and more than once I didn't rank high enough to appear at all.

    I do, however, understand how to follow a plan. I spend a lot of time moving around the fight area calling out needs rather than fighting.

    The different areas don't automatically know what is going on in the other areas. Sure, someone may call out "Z1 north both at 2/3rds" which is fine, but sometimes you see a few players focusing too much on one Mega-D in an area, so they need to be reminded to switch targets.
    Sometimes you see one area doing far better than another so they need to be told to move to help whatever area it is.

    If you have the bodies ready to help then the event is winnable. If you have too many people that just want to burn down "their" Mega-D as soon as possible, then you have a problem.
    guyhumual wrote: »
    You forgot:

    0.5. Get into a zone with good players running the event.
    0.6. Have no one accidentally kill a mega destroyer early.
    0.7. Have rides to begin with that you can get off of later.
    0.8. Have everyone, with no in game explanations, know exactly what's going to happen.

    I posted here the general plan.

    More than once in zone chat I have explained the event. Others have done the same.

    It isn't "know exactly what's going to happen", it's just as simple as "be able and willing to follow some simple directions when called to".

    Zone 1 figured it out after a failure the first time the event triggered. Whatever magical knowledge they had has moved to other zones and other players in the time since.

    Anyone that doesn't know what is going on just has to be able to read zone chat.
    Heck, even if you are in a zone not participating, just stop and read the zone chat while the event is under way.

    "Z1 north, stop attacking the weaker one, please". "Z1 west, both at 1/3rd". "Z1 south needs help, send bodies from west, please".

    Maybe you don't "get it" at at that time, but if you jump into the event next hour you should start to understand all of that really fast.

    The key to success isn't that everyone be optimized and experienced, it's just that they be willing to listen to the people that are calling out the fight.

    =============

    I will agree, though, with the notion that some people are far too willing to call a zone lost too soon.

    All I can say about that is to not listen to them. One troll could be hanigng out in the AH calling a zone lost.
    With time and experience you can start to get an idea of what might be doable, but don't take anyone else's word for it.
    If you think the fight is lost then change zones and give someone else a chance to get into the fight if they want to.
  • williamkonywilliamkony Posts: 582 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Good rundown, Mithros. One piece of advice I can give is to never, never start at the western battlefield. It's pretty much guaranteed that there'll be four or five times as many people there as are at the other battlefields, and they're not going to pay a lick of attention to the chat. It essentially becomes a race against them, your one-or-two-dozen players fighting four Destroyers, versus their thirty-to-forty players fighting one Destroyer (with four or five realizing they need to keep the other Destroyer low, as well.)

    Not trying to paint the situation as hopeless, of course; it's obviously possible to win it, given how frequently it happens. Just trying to stress the importance of going where you're needed. :P
    Dasher@Tool-box, donning his armor to prance into battle and blitz the enemy! No joke!
    Cupid@Tool-box, stunningly radiant stag ready to play matchmaker between villain and arrow!
    Vixon@Tool-box, frighteningly eager to summon despair for his adversaries!
    Jebin Zedalu@Tool-box, elementalist weaponmaster. ...One of these things is not like the others!
  • gaarafrednorrispgaarafrednorrisp Posts: 504 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    IF one of the Mega Ds gets liberated but the other doesn't, kite him over to the normal Mega D. The two then begin attacking each other. It's AWESOME!

    Also, Cryptic was kinda smart. Use those Backups you got from the previous event to deal major damage to Mechanon.
    AWWWW CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE! DON'T YOU DARE. BE SOUR. CLAP FOR YOUR NIGHTMARE AND FEEEEEEEEEEEL THE POWAAAAAAH!
  • cblue2013cblue2013 Posts: 4 Arc User
    edited September 2014

    I am not a "top player", whatever that means. I have been using my "main" which is a free-form fire toon with semi-tanky leanings. When my name has appeared in the rankings list the vast majority of the time it has been towards the bottom of the list, and more than once I didn't rank high enough to appear at all.

    I do, however, understand how to follow a plan. I spend a lot of time moving around the fight area calling out needs rather than fighting.

    If you have the bodies ready to help then the event is winnable. If you have too many people that just want to burn down "their" Mega-D as soon as possible, then you have a problem.

    The event is winnable, and yes people do need to follow the plan, but there are balance issues that aren't evident unless you're on the receiving end.

    The base Mega-Destroyers have been powered up in such a way that anyone with a Mark1 vehicle or non-tanky AT character is really in trouble; with a Mk1 vehicle you're insta-dead if you're in firing range when you see the "Boom!" animation go up. The extended range of that attack, combined with game and graphics lag, means there's no time to move out of the way. The best response to that would be a swarm attack (lots of vehicles moving in/out of range, firing off one attack and moving away) but to win the Zone that way you'd need a tremendous number of vehicles (possibly more than can fit in one zone!).

    The toons who can survive the Destroyer Wave (Mk2 vehicles and right mods, I guess) are essential to any win - and they're all playing the percentages and staying in Zone 1, most of the time (not that I blame them). Hence the "top player" comments. Without them, the other zones are a wipeout - choose either survivability, out of vehicle (and you'll lose the DPS race), or stay in the vehicles and die every 90 seconds or so.

    The event feels very much about the Mega-Ds and not about Mechanon, which is a bit disappointing. Partly this is by design (the upgrades to the Mega-Ds have made it all about defeating them, with Mechanon left to stomp about the place waiting for someone to turn up and shoot him) and partly the Plasma Beam/stacks issue. Mechanon actually seems better geared up for knocking down vehicles - he seems to have some pretty hefty missile attacks - and due to a game bug he's being taken down by 99 characters on foot, where he's no more threatening than the end boss in a Grab Alert.

    Great to have the new content and the event has grabbed people's attention, but for truly memorable gameplay it's close... no cigar.
  • stergasterga Posts: 2,353 Arc User
    edited September 2014
    Having high dps / high survival players is important to succeed. I've been in full zones doing everything right, as far as I could tell, take over 10 minutes to get even ONE Mega D down. Not even accounting for if one should be liberated at low HP and the giant HP sack that is Mechanon.

    I do believe having proper 20 man raid creation ability would make things like this MUCH easier to co-ordinate. One raid per side with dedicated spider teams? Three leaders managing their side with minimal zone spam needed for raid-to-raid communication? Making it easier for healers to actually heal? So much "yes" to all of that. (daydreaming, i know)
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