Borg Battle Royale

annemarie30

done it few times now, seems to have very unbalanced runs
a couple runs were pretty easy. there was one though where the last round REALLY big borg started one shotting the entire team. I would rez, and before I could hit Vger probes or the kumaarke pink bubble, I was dead again.
I have figured out that these borg have little/no resists to cold so my Ice Queen will pull the duty going forth

rattler2

Anti-Borg weapons, like the TR-116 and Tommygun, basically weapons that are Kinetic or Physical based, seem to be quite effective still. I tried it for the first time today on my Cryomancer and for the most part it was smooth sailing until later. Went down twice, but overall did pretty good.

vetteguy904

Kumaarke's set seems to work decently once you get the timing down. that lightning stom thing works really well in conjunction with Sompek lightning. just wish the arm weapon put out more hurt. I kinda like the Electro thing, so I'm ready if peter parker shows up

duncanidaho11

One thing to be on the lookout for when difficulty is this inconsistent is team scaling. To collect some data, look at the status information if your other players (i icon in their status UI, after clicking on them) and note what level they are. If there's a gap, watch out for exceptionally hard runs. If not, see if it's an easy run. An issue could be arising if the team's level is averaged but the enemy NPC's are set to a maximum static level (two different methods of scaling applied between team and foe.)

I've heard of vets get mercilessly spawncamped in their runs while I've glided through mine. Eg. there's something not right about difficulty settings, and team scaling issues are the first culprit to investigate (as they also explain the heterogeneity of runs. If everyone is near or max level, the problem does not arise).

vetteguy904

it Does NOT help when your teammates decide that the Bat'Leth is all you need. The usually go down first, and it dominoes from there unless you have 1-2 who have some massive AOE power to give time to geth all team members back up.

krisxr400

Idk i still run old school space/ground gear and don't seem to have any problems dispatching enemies and staying alive. Yet most players all copy the same gear as one another, lukari this, disco rep that, flashy event console this, and yet they pop and go unconscious often, there is so much gear content in this game that if you play long enough you can come up with some hard hitting and survivable builds, or you can just go to redit and copy what everyone else runs for equipment, skills, doffs, and boff seating abilities.

questerius

vetteguy904 wrote: »

it Does NOT help when your teammates decide that the Bat'Leth is all you need. The usually go down first, and it dominoes from there unless you have 1-2 who have some massive AOE power to give time to geth all team members back up.

More into katana myself.
Quick decisive melee kills while stealthily dropping mines/explosives around the Swedes err Borg.

fleetcaptain5

vetteguy904 wrote: »

it Does NOT help when your teammates decide that the Bat'Leth is all you need. The usually go down first, and it dominoes from there unless you have 1-2 who have some massive AOE power to give time to geth all team members back up.

I did fine on my melee toon. :shrugs:

fleetcaptain5

I wish they'd made the arena bigger.
In many teams, half the team isn't even moving because they're just spamming obelisks, turrets and crystals from one point.

It seems the people designing this mission forgot that there are so many spam possibilities nowadays.

protoneous

Did the difficulty of this map get turned up a little after the 5/31/24 patch ? It seems like after a certain point the borg are hitting a little harder.

No, this is not a complaint. It's actually kind of nice

rattler2

Not that I know of, but I did notice something today. My Tommygun became totally useless against the Mirror Borg. It wasn't that they were adapting to it, it was just straight up Immune, and there was nothing I could do about it. Had to resort to cold damage.
Not sure if bug or what.

fleetcaptain5

Didn't notice much of a change either. Though I have been playing newer and older toons after each other while updating the gear on some of the newer ones, so it's hard to tell for me anyway.

But I did fine on one toon that went from random picked-up loot to a full ground set. Another toon who's still using crappy stuff took more damage, but that's to be expected. She may have taken a bit more damage, but again, I wouldn't know for sure.

davefenestrator

I was in a run where we reached a round with 12 a..mumble borg and they were dropping a combination of hold/stun and one-shot-kill on the team who were all respawning in the death zone. After about 5 minutes of this I gave up and took the 15 minute penalty. This might have been winnable if there were more respawn points and the one picked was randomized instead of closest-to-death-location.

It was like one of those Gravity Kills runs where there seemed to be no chance of finishing it, and I've finished those in a 3-person team.

vetteguy904

rattler2 wrote: »

Not that I know of, but I did notice something today. My Tommygun became totally useless against the Mirror Borg. It wasn't that they were adapting to it, it was just straight up Immune, and there was nothing I could do about it. Had to resort to cold damage.
Not sure if bug or what.

right after kuumaarke shouts the borg are adapting? it's not just the Tgun. I was minimizing kits and using the omega carbine mostly. when i noticed AP was not working as well, I switch to the portable phaser cannon and using ball lightning and andorian squall. worked well.

the red circles have me a bit confused. they are clearly borg, but they don't seem to do any significant damage

rattler2

vetteguy904 wrote: »

the red circles have me a bit confused. they are clearly borg, but they don't seem to do any significant damage

The nanite clouds?
Its a DoT hazard. Probably not healthy to just stand in bad.

captainkoltar

davefenestrator wrote: »

I was in a run where we reached a round with 12 a..mumble borg and they were dropping a combination of hold/stun and one-shot-kill on the team who were all respawning in the death zone. After about 5 minutes of this I gave up and took the 15 minute penalty. This might have been winnable if there were more respawn points and the one picked was randomized instead of closest-to-death-location.

It was like one of those Gravity Kills runs where there seemed to be no chance of finishing it, and I've finished those in a 3-person team.

I've found myself in this situation too with one of my runs. We did get it done eventually, but it was painful and not much fun once it got to that point. I do sympathise with anyone who'd choose to bail though!

questerius

captainkoltar wrote: »

davefenestrator wrote: »

I was in a run where we reached a round with 12 a..mumble borg and they were dropping a combination of hold/stun and one-shot-kill on the team who were all respawning in the death zone. After about 5 minutes of this I gave up and took the 15 minute penalty. This might have been winnable if there were more respawn points and the one picked was randomized instead of closest-to-death-location.

It was like one of those Gravity Kills runs where there seemed to be no chance of finishing it, and I've finished those in a 3-person team.

I've found myself in this situation too with one of my runs. We did get it done eventually, but it was painful and not much fun once it got to that point. I do sympathise with anyone who'd choose to bail though!

I had one such run.
One player dropped out immediately, one was riddled with an arms length of injuries and number 3 was afk.

There was a fire zone at the spawn point so it took a moment to get away from there.
Afterwards the Gorn kill was relatively simple. Greatest challenge was dropping the revival nodes in time.

Sadly in events and random teams you sometimes get a weak team.

questerius

rattler2 wrote: »

Not that I know of, but I did notice something today. My Tommygun became totally useless against the Mirror Borg. It wasn't that they were adapting to it, it was just straight up Immune, and there was nothing I could do about it. Had to resort to cold damage.
Not sure if bug or what.

Sometimes the Borg use "adapt" similar to the kit module thus becoming immune for the first damage type that hits them.
Since many experienced players use the Disco gravity box or Tommy with the physical damage, it is possible that caused the immunity against physical. If it is similar to the kit module it should only be temporary though.

rattler2

questerius wrote: »

Sometimes the Borg use "adapt" similar to the kit module thus becoming immune for the first damage type that hits them.
Since many experienced players use the Disco gravity box or Tommy with the physical damage, it is possible that caused the immunity against physical. If it is similar to the kit module it should only be temporary though.

No idea. But the interesting thing is I only noticed it with the Mirror Borg. I was able to use my Tommygun just fine against Control Borg and Prime Borg, but Mirror... I had to resort to alternate damage sources.

questerius

Found this wiki:
https://stowiki.net/wiki/Borg_Kingdom

It seems the adaption is unique to the Borg Kingdom

darknovasc01

The worst run I've had so far saw the entire team one-shot killed right at the start of round 12 (as it happens I had also seen the damage immunity crop up earlier in the run as well, physical damage again but this time with Leck's knives) - this was after the latest patch as well.

The problem we had trying to get back in and complete the run was that one of the mobile mounds basically sat just outside the respawn area, and proceeded to take us out within seconds of respawning. It got so bad the mound actually came into the respawn area with us and camped us - not fun

I think we all ready to quit after about 10 minutes of this, but in the end we managed to finish that damn mound off eventually by timing our respawns and each hitting it with V'Ger probes so it was always taking damage. I don't mind the difficulty spikes, and I always expect to be unlucky at some point and get the odd team wipe, but I can easily see the one hit kills and spawn camping putting off some players from bothering with this TFO any more than they have to.

spiritborn

darknovasc01 wrote: »

The worst run I've had so far saw the entire team one-shot killed right at the start of round 12 (as it happens I had also seen the damage immunity crop up earlier in the run as well, physical damage again but this time with Leck's knives) - this was after the latest patch as well.

The problem we had trying to get back in and complete the run was that one of the mobile mounds basically sat just outside the respawn area, and proceeded to take us out within seconds of respawning. It got so bad the mound actually came into the respawn area with us and camped us - not fun

I think we all ready to quit after about 10 minutes of this, but in the end we managed to finish that damn mound off eventually by timing our respawns and each hitting it with V'Ger probes so it was always taking damage. I don't mind the difficulty spikes, and I always expect to be unlucky at some point and get the odd team wipe, but I can easily see the one hit kills and spawn camping putting off some players from bothering with this TFO any more than they have to.

1 hit kills might be difficult to avoid depending how it happened, but there should be a "safe zone" that allows respwaning without being attacked.

questerius

Did anyone use the Zhat Vash Disruptor Pistol or Rifle?

Description says the secondary fire mode is a charged blast, but given that they were opposed to artificial lifeforms i expected an effect against mechanical foes.
Cannot find that in the description though.

darknovasc01

Heh, had another wipe on 12 - that mobile mound followed us into the spawn area again, but we managed to wear it down a little quicker this time. Fire and forget AOE like V'ger Probes helped again when you only get a few seconds before it whacks you, and luckily a few had Agony Field as well.

Of course just as we finished the mound off one of the Elite drones wandered into the spawn zone too, just to see what it was missing... not quite one shot kills, but still not nice when you are hit as soon as you spawn.

Everyone was level 65, for reference.

Finally, lag spikes really hurt in this particular TFO - I had the screen freeze completely for a few seconds in this last run. It recovered, but I was almost KOd by that point with everything going on. Lag seems to have been getting worse again these past few months, at least for me, with screen freezing for a few seconds getting to be a regular occurence ingame (and it does not seem to be based on what is happening onscreen, I have had it happen just doffing for example).

vetteguy904

this mornings run was ridiculous. I think i was the only person to use pets and aoe. had one person die in round 1 2 in round 4. i started staying to the right side, behind where the borg spawn and wad using symphony of light and Vger probes. alternated between the electric gun and the phaser cannon

davefenestrator

darknovasc01 wrote: »

Heh, had another wipe on 12 - that mobile mound followed us into the spawn area again, but we managed to wear it down a little quicker this time. Fire and forget AOE like V'ger Probes helped again when you only get a few seconds before it whacks you, and luckily a few had Agony Field as well.

Of course just as we finished the mound off one of the Elite drones wandered into the spawn zone too, just to see what it was missing... not quite one shot kills, but still not nice when you are hit as soon as you spawn.

Everyone was level 65, for reference.

Finally, lag spikes really hurt in this particular TFO - I had the screen freeze completely for a few seconds in this last run. It recovered, but I was almost KOd by that point with everything going on. Lag seems to have been getting worse again these past few months, at least for me, with screen freezing for a few seconds getting to be a regular occurence ingame (and it does not seem to be based on what is happening onscreen, I have had it happen just doffing for example).

Since even level 10s are allowed to join, I'd call this a design flaw for an event TFO. "Must have independent high-damage persist-after-death summon" isn't listed as one of the requirements

protoneous

I gave up

there was nothing I could do about it

I do sympathize with anyone who'd choose to bail

all ready to quit

ridiculous

Gameplay that is less scripted can certainly be a lot of fun. It's great to see so many players sharing feedback, builds, and tips.

Playing this TFO is SO much more refreshing than some of the other event TFO's where it can feel like nothing you do really matters.

This is one of the very few event maps I find myself playing more than just once for the daily.. purely for pleasure, immersion, and the challenge of trying to find ways of doing better

I think the devs did an outstanding job on the “Borg Battle Royale” and hope to see more of this sort of game play in the future.

davefenestrator

protoneous wrote: »

I gave up

there was nothing I could do about it

I do sympathize with anyone who'd choose to bail

all ready to quit

ridiculous

Gameplay that is less scripted can certainly be a lot of fun. It's great to see so many players sharing feedback, builds, and tips.

Playing this TFO is SO much more refreshing than some of the other event TFO's where it can feel like nothing you do really matters.

This is one of the very few event maps I find myself playing more than just once for the daily.. purely for pleasure, immersion, and the challenge of trying to find ways of doing better

I think the devs did an outstanding job on the “Borg Battle Royale” and hope to see more of this sort of game play in the future.

Out of curiosity, have you run into the problem at round 12 of the Borg spawn-camping the respawn zone yet?

I'm fine with a challenge, and I agree the previous no-win space and ground event versions were too easy. Being one-shot on respawn isn't my idea of fun.

questerius

Getting back, these kit modules make the run a lot easier for the entire team:
- Engineering Kit Module - Flare Mortar Mk XII
- Science Kit Module - Integrated Electrical Field Mk XII
- Tactical Kit Module - Containment Field Mk XII

fleetcaptain5

vetteguy904 wrote: »

this mornings run was ridiculous. I think i was the only person to use pets and aoe. had one person die in round 1 2 in round 4. i started staying to the right side, behind where the borg spawn and wad using symphony of light and Vger probes. alternated between the electric gun and the phaser cannon

I never use pets, unless I'm doing a dedicated build on a toon.

And honestly, the Vger probes, Symphony of light and all are so overpowered that they become boring real quick. I actively avoid that stuff. Don't worry, this time I won't call for nerfs, I'll do that another time. xD


Anyway, single-target builds like Melee ones or powers that require combinations like expose-exploit-builds - stuff that requires some skill to use instead of pressing a simple 'I win'-button - are much more interesting, imo.

I do have some toons like a Cryomancer one that I use when I want to get stuff done as fast as possible. But if I want to enjoy what I'm playing, these easy builds are the last things that I'd use.


So yeah, maybe your team was just trying to enjoy a challenge.

questerius

Symphony of light ?

Do you mean the ball lightning kit module?