Azure Nebula (Advanced) badly thought out?

yorethel

Just played Azure Nebula (Advanced) twice on general pug and both times failed because the quality of players and their gear is too random in a pug environment.

Rescuing 3 ships very quickly is all but impossible unless you have a very high dps group or 2 ppl getting aggro whilst the others not firing weapons rescue the ships, but trying to explain this to random pug players is like hitting your head off a wall as most people just wanna shoot things and blow some sh** up! Add to this the Tholians fondness for disabling your weapons every other second and this is a failure from the start half the time.

So I'm asking if perhaps this encounters advanced element was badly thought out given the randomness of pug players and their gear? Maybe a re-think is needed, or the game needs to introduce a gear score on items and stop badly geared people from entering public Advanced/Elite queues.

I had a similar issue the other day, I usually do Bug Hunt on elite, my characters are all well geared and I seldom have any major issues. All of the group except me completely ignored the purple bug at the beginning and the mission failed in the first part (I almost melted into my seat at that point in disbelief) I did a lot of damage to it but the bug reached the wall and glitched so I couldn't get LoS, had the ******* in my group bothered to shoot it at the start, there would have been no issue.

I got the distinct impression that they hadn't bothered to play through the normal one at all and in fact got carried by other better players normally.

Just my idea, not sure if anyone else is experiencing the same issues, but I think there needs to be some way of weeding out the lazy people from advanced/elite queues.

lindaleff

Just get a Scorpion, and make sure no one follows you around. You have an innate cloak, so you can solo the map if you needed to. But for KDF, you are screwed.

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duncanidaho11

Most of the time when my team fails Azure its because people didn't separate themselves into THREE teams. You'd think it'd be self evident, and damned easy to sort out, but there's quite a few out there who don't seem to be able to competently self organize.

ddesjardins

Two team strategy works well.

1.) split against the 2 lowest value ships.
2.) Once the guards are taken down, one ship remains to disable the tractors.
3.) all available ships head to the next low value ship.

It helps to have a team lead to call it out. It works just fine.

aelfwin1

Yeah, both badly though out and badly implemented .
The secondary fail timer is at the bottom of the mission objectives, so you don't see it unless you scroll down .

And if you have ships that are single target focused (no faw or csv) then they have issues getting all the aggro (even if they wanted to) .

Plus the timer is way short .

Again a bad "optional" thanks to DR .

... and to those who can make it , good for you ... , however the price of the gas the mission awards is the highest in the market , so that makes me think that your success is not shared by the majority of what's left of this game's population ...

aelfwin1

lindaleff wrote: »

Just get a Scorpion, and make sure no one follows you around. You have an innate cloak, so you can solo the map if you needed to. But for KDF, you are screwed.

So you take a shuttle into a ship mission ?
Or did I misunderstand you. ?

duncanidaho11

aelfwin1 wrote: »

So you take a shuttle into a ship mission ?
Or did I misunderstand you. ?

I've seen it happen. The shuttle just focuses on releasing warbirds.

cookiecrook

I find myself annoyed with Azure Advanced as well. My Vesta can solo a single group in under 3 minutes but the other 4 getting it done on two other ships really is more miss than anything. Out of the half dozen I have ran in the past few days, only one instance had the DPS to get the objective done before the 3 minutes was up. I ended up just running CE Advanced as it yields more marks per instance and I can get Nukara marks from there also.

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blazeritter

If you use tractor repulsors, I actually find the Falchions easiest to free (since there are only three Tholian ships there). I can pretty easily push those three well over 10k away and hold, but it's rare to get one person reliably who will follow me around and release the warbird.

It's frustrating to have all of the Tholians 20k from the warbird, and have two people still following after me trying to kill the thing instead of just freeing the ship. It would help if there were some kind of instant ping or alert to tell them to go back to the ship instead of trying to both chat and stay alive.

woodwhity

yorethel wrote: »

Rescuing 3 ships very quickly is all but impossible unless you have a very high dps group or 2 ppl getting aggro whilst the others not firing weapons rescue the ships,

And here is your problem with tactics. Aggro can work, but Tholians use FAW. Best way is to use TBR+TBR or TBR+Projected singularity to push them out of 10km of you. Then you can clear the tractorbeams without problems. That way you can even solo a scimitar.

You dont have to destroy them, you just have to not let them shoot on you. And thats very easy. Its interesting that especially non-dps-people follow a strict DPS-Mindset, which of course doesnt work out.

gfreeman98

So far I'm 1 for 2 in PUGs. Luckily I read this before I ever attempted it:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1310601

kayajay

REALLY you should get the option of selecting the level you're playing at. Advanced for level 30, Elite for level 40, etc. How are people supposed to play the games when they need them to get the reputation gear to get stronger or to level?

alex284

Before DR people complained that there's no strategy in this game except for pew pew. Now people complain that the strategy of "don't attack, just do the objective" is waaaaaaaaaaay too complicated for this game's player base.

Might be true. I don't pug anything that isn't normal difficulty anymore.

xillom

I've PUGed the advanced Azura three times since DR and only once has the team gotten past "rescue 3 ships".

If it wasn't for some of the rewards in the advanced+ queues, I'd play normal to save time.

rodentmaster

While I think it's a leftover from pre-DR BS difficulty changes (i.e. Hitpoint Sponge Rising), it is possible as long as you're slightly coordinated.

It's really easiest to do 2/3. If you do 2/2/1 the 1 is the weakest link and just wasting time.

Form 2 teams before you start the mission. Have at least 1 hitter (aggro, if you will) in each team. Don't call out directions UNTIL the numbers load. It's usless to call "N" and then find out it's a 5 off the bat. Go for the 2 lowest numbers, and each team sticks together. When done, hit the next lowest number (or closest, if they're the same).

There are a number of things you can use to help keep you clear. Grav wells on the furthest ship can suck others away from the "rescue zone." Quantum singularities that suck ships along. TBR, of course. Magnetometric pulse. Acetons attract agro and will keep the enemy distracted to a certain extent. If the "hitter" has one he/she should drop it. The Tholians use FAW as mentioned so they don't have to target the rescuers to interrupt them. In this case aceton won't help much. Other times it's handy. Tractor+pullDOFF can drag the enemy away. Barrier shield can give you a few seconds of cover. And don't forget T5 romulan rep. It's basically a cloak that lets you do stuff without being targetable by the enemy.

There are more, but that's off the top of my head.

I also wonder if Mask Energy Field would be helpful in this regard. It might let you stay "cloaked" while rescuing -- it might prevent those interrupting stray hits.

xillom

Mask Energy Field does the trick for sure in terms of bringing beams down, but it doesn't prevent the stray FAW hits.. so it's occasionally enraging.

rodentmaster

xillom wrote: »

Mask Energy Field does the trick for sure in terms of bringing beams down, but it doesn't prevent the stray FAW hits.. so it's occasionally enraging.

Sounds like a bug report is required on that one. FAW should only affect what it can target. MEF means you're untargetable. The two should never meet.

markhawkman

rodentmaster wrote: »

Sounds like a bug report is required on that one. FAW should only affect what it can target. MEF means you're untargetable. The two should never meet.

No it doesn't. It's a pseudo cloak. IF the Tholians can see you they can hit you.

daqhegh

None of the advanced queues were designed with player experience in mind. Point made and agreed with. Can we stop making these threads now?

rodentmaster

That depends: Are the devs going to change them?

The two answers are the same. You cannot appologize for the current state of the game and be taken seriously. Most of the playerbase is currently upset and struggling with ABSURD changes (changes which we were lied to in regards to how they would be implemented). The playerbase is smaller than ever. People are leaving en masse. Cryptic have freaked out and are scrambling to lure folks back, trying to understand from their arbitrary spreadsheet numbers why this is happening (and failing, btw). Even the devs know this is a massive fiasco. The problem is they aren't rectifying the situation.

So yes, threads like this are very much required. They will continue to be until it is resolved.

rodentmaster

edit: fixed

markhawkman wrote: »

No it doesn't. It's a pseudo cloak. IF the Tholians can see you they can hit you.

But.. they CAN'T see you. That's the thing. I haven't used it in a while but I did use it for a while with 3pc KHG. Especially on ships that didn't have cloaks. Even rank 1 of the skill adds +4555 stealth. That's a cloak, basically. They have about 4900 stealth, but it's a pretty small difference overall. That means outside of a certain short range the enemy cannot see you. Right?

Now we look at FAW. FAW is a skill that targets 2 possible targets with the same firing cycle for a beam. However, that means to target those options it must SEE the options and choose them at random.


You see my confusion? Either it masks or it doesn't. It SEEMS to mask. The entire point is to mask. So if it doesn't... the system is broken and useless, right?


Hence, a bug report would be warranted.

ghyudt

Its actually possible to do this with little dps. There is actually no need to even bring weapons into this mission at all. If you, as an individual player, know how the tholians NPCs behave, the. There's no need to try to communicate with anyone. Let the inexperienced players draw the attention of the tholians, and sneak in and rescue the trapped ship. The tholians will warp out after a few seconds, and the novice will move on to the next ship, and it starts all over again. Me, I prefer to break off from the group and go do each one on my own, since its faster to work on more than 1 at a time.