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Procyon V Adv difficulty
rebuilthk47
Member Posts: 94 Arc User
The Adv difficulty of the STF (TFO?) Battle of Procyon V seems more difficult than it was before. I don't mean the difficulty of the ships specifically. Though, I have noticed that what used to not wipe me out so easily (3-5 hits), is now wiping me out pretty easily (sometimes one-shot, and personal shield heal doesn't heal shields much if at all).
But other things like the mechanics are more difficult than they were, especially in phase 3. The krenim frigates with their AoE bubble attack come out so frequently and activate it in such close succession of it deactivating, that doing anything is nearly impossible. The frequency of the spawn rate for most of the ships is so high, than even on the lowest difficulty, phase 3 takes at least 10 min to finish, sometimes longer. It's practically double that on Adv. I am capable of melting most ships with a single round of weapons fire. Yet this is crazy. I fall asleep several times because it is so monotonous during the third phase.
There's also a strange thing happening where the enemy ships don't explode when at 0HP. They stay for ~5-10 seconds. This might be part of the lengthy time it takes and difficulty of dealing with the ships that come out of the portals.
I have never seen a group complete the optional bonuses for that stf, even on the easiest setting. The timer is unrealistic for 98% of the players. That's not a new one, just something that I'm bringing up.
But other things like the mechanics are more difficult than they were, especially in phase 3. The krenim frigates with their AoE bubble attack come out so frequently and activate it in such close succession of it deactivating, that doing anything is nearly impossible. The frequency of the spawn rate for most of the ships is so high, than even on the lowest difficulty, phase 3 takes at least 10 min to finish, sometimes longer. It's practically double that on Adv. I am capable of melting most ships with a single round of weapons fire. Yet this is crazy. I fall asleep several times because it is so monotonous during the third phase.
There's also a strange thing happening where the enemy ships don't explode when at 0HP. They stay for ~5-10 seconds. This might be part of the lengthy time it takes and difficulty of dealing with the ships that come out of the portals.
I have never seen a group complete the optional bonuses for that stf, even on the easiest setting. The timer is unrealistic for 98% of the players. That's not a new one, just something that I'm bringing up.
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Now, while I agree that P5 is tough even on advanced, it doesn't stem from the fact that enemies are too tough (although, true, they are probably harder to fight than borg, as they use shield-bypassing temporal abilities, and Na'kuhl also can turn themselves immune), it's because of awful game mechanics related to this map.
You need to close portals in a pretty short timeframe to complete the queue (or well, the optional in adv), and that task is not just challenging, it's painful. The map is designed so that it takes "not-very-short-amount-of-time" (I'm sorry, been a while) to close a portal, and everything you do interrupts it. You shooting, enemy shooting at you, you clicking a heal, you moving barely a km away from the portal - nope, progress cancelled, hit F and try to close the portal again.
So, what would be the reasonable approach to this?
1. Obliterating the enemy first and dealing with the portals after their dead? Joke's on you, the map is designed in a way that when enemy dies, another one appears almost immediately.
2. Hitting an immunity or temporary HP source before closing a portal? Can be mildly successful tactic, as this prevents enemies shooting at you from interrupting the closing for the duration, but they have lockout CDs and enemies can tear through your temp HP pretty easily.
3. Grabbing a tank to help you - maybe draw aggro or something? Sorry, no, at least the enemies in stage 2 and 3 spam AoE abilities, so it's pretty futile. Also closing portal also seems to generate aggro, so...
4. Use Crowd-Control abilities (TBR enemies away and trap them into GW), or even better - have one player doing that while the other closes portals. Right, that works with moderate success. You still have good likelyhood of "accidentally" killing a ship that you dragged/trapped far away, spawning another from the portal, but it has good chances of working... provided you can find a player capable of doing that.
I honestly have no idea what people designing it were thinking, did the thought of "let's make the process of playing this map as excruciatingly annoying as possible" cross their mind or they genuinely wanted to provide us with a good content that's something different than simply pew pew, but imo, this map is in dire need of a complete rework. In its current state, it's just dumb.
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I've run my tank through Adv and sat above Enterprise soaking up all damage coming it's way so everyone else can focus on portals. It was still so boring because it takes so long for the others, especially if they're gearing up and grinding out the marks, to do that. It was fun to not be taken out (this is before miracle worker), but still mind numbing and it put me to sleep on occasion. I get that they don't want to make it so that you can just go from portal to portal closing them, but seriously, the spawn rate is bad. The STF where you defend Waffle Station from the invading mirrors has that mechanic down right. THAT is not annoying mechanic wise, it's when your own team doesn't have a clue what to do that makes it difficult. I've done PV reg and Adv with full groups that knew what to do, and it was still super boring/annoying.
I even tried recently to use the multi-tractor array to pull a bunch of enemies away from the portal. No good. They either didn't budge, or I got no lock for some reason.
I think that, if all except one member uses the Threatening Stance, it should be possible to divert all the aggro on the team
and leave one player (the one that is not threatening) to close the portals. I need to test this, but feel free to try it with your group.