which is why I said EL is pretty much the only map that does legitimately place demands on build/career choice
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Places demands…you say CoD doesnt? That place rather inherently craps rather hard on ranged and squishy classes ._.
Bulldozer style melee like slayer or footknight can manage by trading hits, the likes of pyromancer or waystalker goes down in 2 bad hits from some slaverat from behind and it doesnt help much that the backstab sound que is broken and has been for a long time either.
To reinforce that thought, velsix also pointed out that the only true solo build for waystalker is a hagbane one, so if you end up separated/working alone in that event using something else? Tough luck.
Similarly other a fair few other careers have extremely few options when it comes to self reliant builds while others just have problems with theirs. Like how halberd merc can cleave well but he cant reliably stagger a single stormvermin if a single slaverat helps mitigate the hit from a heavy sweep. Maybe even without the slaverat.
…Which is really a shame because i like that weapon .(
…
So yeah i do disagree, CoD does place demands on build at the very least, then it demands a much higher level of skill than cata does normally. Followed by demanding a much higher level of unity and teamwork than normal as well.
Just as an example of what probably falls under a “spammy” event, had a legend convo run the other day which ended up generating 4-5 assassins in the event and exactly 5 different blightstormers. Was playing with friends so it was a non-issue, but I can definitely see people losing their minds over something like that. Also I’ve never ever noticed such a selection of specials before, so it must be extremely unlikely. Since they don’t all spawn at once, I guess you can get the same thing in a row over and over again.
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Elaborating on this.The exploit in question was done by having someone die(or just get downed) inside the circle.What would happen was that the progress bar gets filled even with nobody in it.Pubs loved to send someone in as a “sacrifice” to do the event while they stay way back right after the 3rd Tome dropdown(the bridge with ammo box dropdown would cause event enemies to swarm you.
Even if you(and your team) didnt advocate for the exploit,it’s still a pretty common sight to see someone dying inside the circle,the others dropping down and kiting while still having the event go on and its progress bar filled.
Fatshark ended up fixing the exploit after months of it being ingame(and used extensively),they also buffed it up which I found to be rather funny(maybe an act of spite telling people to git gud?)
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It definitely doesn’t. Any 4 man group can easily wax the event if they do it correctly.
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Its incredibly annoying how different the fight is if you have atleast one career in your party that is able to deal reasonable dps to him.
You either fight him for some minutes, while the Hunstman shoves his pointy sticks up Nurgloth backside, or might have fun for fourty minutes while you try to pummel him to death in your QP stagger group.
I do enjoy the map, and the boss, unless I just switched to FK. (A fealing that gets shared with most boss maps.)
What would Convo demand that a standard QP group isnt bringing. You dont need to kill elites or monsters fast, which makes stagger careers nice to have. It still helps to keep the field clean, so damage careers are not at all worse.
All you do is stay alive by abusing the location, while focusing specials that might end you.
I honestly cant think of a combination that would cripple you hard enough to default lose that event.
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you’d have to be running straight up meme builds
Comparing true solo with getting separated from your team is complete and utter bollocks. You’re not even comparing apples & oranges here. It’s more like apples & octopuses.
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I agree that it’s overpowered, but Waystalker’s alternatives are not built for high pressure. It would be like saying no Dual Swords because their move tech makes it op for getting back on the platform (their move tech is very high movement speed) and no Fervent Huntress for mobility, or no Bolt Staff on Sienna in true solo. Waystalker only has two other ranged weapons. One is a sniper that needs space. The other is awful against armour. There’s no middle ground option here like how Shade has Volley which is good under pressure.
I’d like a more balanced version of the Hagbane too, but I do enjoy that it works under pressure more effectively than the other bows do.
My builds are not too optimal. The HM build didn’t have 60% BCR for consistency purposes and Invis would probably still be better than Power from Pain because of specials. The WHC build had thp on crit/headshot instead pf thp on cleave, wasn’t using Flense which I’d still being getting more dps from at my headshot %, nor does it have movement speed on Trinket. Wild Fervour would be more net dps (very high uptime in this event so even in true solo the extra crits make a massive difference vs CWs and a decently minor one for BoP’s ammo sustain), nor was I using Crossbow for 1 shot bodyshotting Assassins without tag and Packmasters with tag and for distant specials. Unless you’re saying crit chance, attack speed and Swift Slaying are too optimal. I use max attack speed because I enjoy how it feels.
A lot of Royale with Chesse’s builds but with minor modifications, such as a single talent change for either some more dodge range, movement speed or anything that makes them better when under pressure/avoiding getting surrounded will work. Nearly every hero has something or multiple things for this. In Cata quickplay versatile, decently mobile weapons and builds that perform moderately under pressure are common.
The biggest issue with the examples you and others have typed out are there aren’t any recordings. I’ve made myself subject to criticism here to help prove the accuracy of my arguments. I’d like to see others do so as well if they can (nw to anyone that doesn’t have obs setup/doesn’t know how to) (thanks @Incandescent for the Twitch example).
Use the audio cues and drop at the last second when you hear an Assassin. It’s worked every time for me. Assassins will leap to where you were on the platform, making dropping > shooting them very safe. I don’t have to do that/be as careful on HM because of dash and higher hp. Sometimes the audio bugs out, but that is a separate issue.
Your logic would indicate that nearly every strat that is not 100% full proof in a true solo setting is theory, but doing true solos isn’t a 100% consistent thing, and require adaptive play, quick reactions and sometimes a grind (until you get as good as someone like Core and finish maps on your first try which I’m not anywhere near yet). That’s what having four players is for. You should be able to trust at least one of them to shoot an Assassin off of you. Sometimes you’re not going to be in a perfect corner that lets you see any special coming. In true solo, sometimes you’re going to have to last second push an Assassin leaping through a horde, boss, gas and a Warpfire Thrower fire effect. That’s what makes true solos fun though imo, pulling off the impossible.
Not enough skill will mean a loss on Cata. Coordination in qp isn’t common but if you’re in a team of players that aren’t aware that the final is hard on Cata and requires a strat, nor have enough individual skill to yolo it than that’s a bad team. If they aren’t willing to listen to someone telling them a strat before dropping in, then they probably should lose.
It is harder than the other events. I feel that I and others have made reasonable suggestions to rein in the only real extreme parts of the event which are seemingly infinite build up (probably does stop eventually but it gets extreme), overlapping/too early CWs, the flashbang effect and a torch in a bad spot. Do you think this would not be enough?
I believe there’s a cap on disabler specials of the same type at 3. Are you sure the others weren’t spawning immediately after one was killed? Or do events ignore these caps?
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admittedly I only posted what I happened to have on hand, I’ve zero interest in going out of my way to record a “100% clean and easy to replicate” run of the map since it’s always gonna fall back into the same loop of semantics.
And honestly if the map can be done in such a way, consistently, that could also be achieved by an “average cata group” then that’d be an argument to make the event harder at that point.
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To my knowledge, in normal Legend runs the caps are 4 total specials alive at once and max 2 of the same breed (2 assassins for example). On Cataclysm this usually changes to 5/3, but it’s not always the case (I think areas that are populated exclusively with beastmen have their own separate rules). I don’t know how events work precisely, but what happened during that convo run was that we were killing specials very quickly, before they could bunch up. So if the event is not predetermined at the start of the run, maybe we got into the extremely unlikely situation where we rolled the same specials over and over again, as the overall pool of specials was always empty when they spawned and anything is (perhaps?) allowed.
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Convo demands teamwork, coordination and either a teamcomp that has a frontline to hold down elites or that everyone has a build that is able to survive entirely on their own as needed.
So while in theory pretty much any teamcomp could make it through there, in practice the skill needed for some teamcomps to make it through is multiple times higher than others and its more expectable that a skilled player would just carry them through, alone.
Indeed, but that does highight the fact that careers have common and normally good builds that kinda effectively get punished in CoD, sniper weapons for instance dont do well in that area at all.
I´d like a middle thing between the short and longbow, a composite one…problem is it´d probably end up being too much better than the longbow as long as it could oneshot stormvermin on headshots while having some of the swiftbow perks T_T
If you compare it to something like longbow waystalker with a spear, yep they are.
Yes but the skills to fully utilize them is not, people drop like flies to mixed hordes on their own or even during a 2-2 split.
An absolutely fair point, i can only feel bad as my poor old toaster can manage the game somewhat well but anything extra is beyond it, especially with network problems since a few patches ago T_T
Well that and i have no idea how to do stuff like cleaning and quality improvements that some do.
Fair point, but i´d also bring back attention to your statment about some builds lacking the ability to even try and do a true solo to start with which i believe is an important one. For such builds…and well being ranged who needs space and cant afford to trade hits, is kinda punished in CoD by virtue of the layout.
I do not, i really, really do not <.<
Sounds about right even for QP.
Eh i dont want a perfect corner, i just want a spot where i dont have enemies spawning in a circle close in on me as i believe being surrounded is just about the worst mistake one could make on a squishy low mobility career. Because honestly its beyond tilting when i check behind me and spot nohing, turn and kill one guy infront and then i eat an attack from behind before i even finished my second light attack.
Indeed, but CoD demands far more than any other map except enchanters.
Basically everyone knows its hard, problem is, how the heck can you coordinate a strategy in QP? In an environment that requires adaptive pathing and fighting? You can tell the people that “run in this direction if we need to drop” but then gas/stormer happens and that plan´s out the window.
“Shoot specials and we´ll be fine” Writes another, only to then have a situation where no one can shoot because everyone is in melee…so yeah no i dont believe there is any real strategy that a randomy QP team can consistently employ there.
In my experience, a struggling team will rarely make it to the point where the buildup is an issue, their squishies will just die from eating silent slaverat hits from behind while the melee eventually get picked off by specials. The only way to reign that in is to either limit the enemy access points more or expand the arena.
The flashbang? What torch? Timing of chaos warriors? I honestly have never been much bothered by any of these, except i suppose when the warriors have duplicate spawns but that´s a bug rather than design.
“Edit”
I just read another comment stating how you got CW´s and SV at the same time, damn i was starting to wonder if i´d dreamed that one up, that´s what i thought was normal for that map, and hence a great deal of confusion when replying to others in the thread.
To add on it, what i considered normal was chaos warriors+stormvermin+shields+2 packmasters&assassins spawning at the same time. And so when people tell me those didnt spawn at the same time i was really starting to doubt my sanity. ‘’
“end of edit”.
Nope, the worst and most damning aspect of the place is how enemies come in from all directions, and well i suppose the amount of access specials have because heck, even if my team is kind and shoot me free from the assassin i still just die if a single clanrat hits me meanwhile.Cause you know…40 damage from the assassin flying in from a cliff couple with a 60 hit from a clanrat and then any amount of chip damage is bad business.
He probably got consecutive spawns, i´ve had it occur too but i figure its either really bad luck or a bug.
Not really, cause if you jump down at the wrong time you are effectively on your own and if you cant deal with a mixed horde if unlucky with the timing you´ll get rundown. Like for instance what can a waystalker with a glaive&shotbow do about being rundown by 3 stormvermin and a packmaster without her ability in the open? Point in case is that some builds are extremely vulnerable and punished on their own.
Which is rather dirty then given how the event often forces drops unless you have a fair good factors of luck on your side such as teamcomp, enemy spawns and whatnot. Added with how the specials spawns can be extremely dirty.
i think its fine that some maps have harder end events than others
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It’s not even close to the same thing. In normal runs worst case scenario you can always just turtle upand kite back to a teammate. Obviously you can’t do that in true solo. And that’s not even mentioning how your teammates will be keeping some of the mobs off you by sheer virtue of existing. Pretending those factors don’t exist is bald faced dishonesty.
That you refuse to see any of this speaks volumes. Almost as much as the fact that you are continually moving the goalposts and constantly plumbing the depths of what-about-ism in a desperate attempt to prove… whatever it is you are arguing about. Honestly I’m not even sure what point you are trying to make anymore apart from just attempting to save face and get the last word in. Like that matters one iota.
Why some of the others in this thread continue to humor you is beyond my comprehension. They must be far better people than I.
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In a normal run yes it can work, it doesnt normally work in CoD however as enemies often block the bridges into the arena. So you are stuck running around. And as for teammates holding enemies off? Sure all enemies wont come running over to you if you jump down, that´d be silly to even assume, but saying that two stormvermin, a few additional mobs and a packmaster/assassin wouldnt ever do it is equally silly.
Especially not if those same stormvermin or even chaos warriors are part of why you jumped down.
I write of it because i´ve been through it, no other reason <.<
I would not waste my time with petty arguments over something that does occurs like once in a hundred runs. I write because i´ve been through a silly amount of runs there that ended,…very poorly, due to rather unfair inherent factors quite a lot.
That said though, spawn variation and timing variation seems to be much, much higher than i thought and some people have noted it. It may be that i simply got very unlucky with it, repeatedly.
And your point is? That your build is bad under pressure? Next you’ll tell me that Axe and Falchion BH is harder than Merc with Mace and Sword when surrounded. Sounds like you’re actively looking for failure or are at least attempting to do things your build is not capable of doing. My WHC build can’t kill elites ammo-cost efficiently at distance. Yours can. Strengths and weaknesses. Do I think that’s a good trade off? Hell no. I don’t play Waystalker though. I can’t figure out why you are either since the issues you’re having can be handled on other careers, like WHC. I enjoy being able to handle large amounts of enemies on my own not through singular elements like excessive stagger or ult spam. Killing Shot is already too much but I can’t turn that off and I can’t run minimum crit chance because then I’ll have bad/inconsistent Swift Slaying up time, and I enjoy high attack speeds. That’s why I use that build on WHC. You should try it. Tbh I think everyone should. It’s not original by any means, but it holds up well.
I don’t use the Spear for a reason. My suggested buff to it in a thread a while back was giving it an extra dodge, more consistent headshot hitboxes and making the other light stabs block cancel in the early release frames like L1 for consistency purposes, all to make it more capable under pressure. The issue you’re bringing up, which has become nebulous at this point, is a fault of the weapon and the career, not the difficulty of the final.
I hope you’re not trying to start some kind of contest. I’ve seen some people try to justify others succeeding where they fail by calling their runs lucky, their builds overpowered (yes, there are outliers, but a build being strong does not eliminate player skill as the core element to success, if anything that’s what excessively weak builds do for individual player skill), call them cowards for not pulling patrols and other nonsense.
Let it deal with all special types effectively and more quickly than the Longbow at close range, but without the same ability to kill elites and without the quick arrow fire rate of the Swift Bow. If it needs to one shot SV on headshot, then low monster dps or superarmour dps is another avenue to balance it out.
I don’t know anything about bows, so those are suggestions from a purely gameplay-orientated perspective.
Good. Sounds like Cata qp hasn’t gotten boring yet.
And whenever they’re surrounded, not helped by their allies, pushed into a corner, when no one takes boss aggro off of them in a small area after the boss targeted them first etc. A price that sometimes must be paid. I don’t like playing those careers because of this exact reason. If anything in my eyes most of them need some things about them changed (like specific mobility talents that are trash such as Fervent Huntress) but that’s another topic.
This is hardly something that any player who regularly plays ranged careers is new to, you included.
Type in chat "1 player stay on platform, rest drop.’ The 1 that stays on top should be reasonably tanky and able to deal with specials (so something like FK or Merc with the Handgun, not IB with the Drakegun). Replace 1 with that player’s name. If they ignore you they die. Survival of the fittest.
I’m not sure why you’re so concerned with winning this event before you’ve reached a higher level of skill. This would be like me coming on here and then complaining I couldn’t do Dark Omens true solo. That’s not official content (the true solo part), but the basic concept of getting better to beat something holds true. I can promise you that four Incandescents, four Cores, four Pershings etc. would 100% consistently do that event without cheese even if they had bad luck on every run on Cata. Something to aspire to. You’re not getting reds on Cata so losing isn’t important. If anything winning consistently is the first sign that someone should be moving to modded content.
The lighting change when leaving the circle is the flashbang. The torch is near the right (right from entering the arena) player respawn point. There’s a large gap between it and the wall that can’t be moved through, but on the other side you can move into the gap between it and the wall. It’s visually inconsistent and doesn’t line up with the accurate geometry most maps have, like at the start of Engines of War where the torches held up above the ground in the first large open area can be ducked under from between each leg holding them up. You can see that here in this video at 1:39:
Of course that’s a minor detail but little details, especially ones right next to the respawn point for players, are important.
Also, does anyone happen to know if each hero has a different hitbox for collision with the environment and/or enemy attacks? I’m wondering if Saltz being so skinny actually gives an advantage or not. Afaik it only affects friendly fire but I’ve never tested it.
A portion of a mixed horde.
That’s a problem with the career though. For example, there were several threads on Outcast Engineer that discussed this issue. To be good on its own/under pressure a career needs one of the following (and I’m sure I’m missing something):
- Delete-everything-on-top-of-me dps/Escape ult/stealth
- Dodge mobility
- Movement speed mobility
- High stagger
- High thp gen/damage resistance (endurance)
Let’s take an extremely simplistic look at the careers that have at least one of those things:
- Kruber: Merc – High thp gen. Huntsmen – Stealth. FK – Stagger/escape ult. GK – Thp gen and killing power.
- Bardin: RV – Stealth. IB – Dmg resistance. Slayer – Movement speed/stagger/escape ult. OE – Nothing.
- Kerillian: Waystalker – Nothing. HM – Dodge mobility/escape ult. Shade – Stealth.
- Saltz: WHC – Dodge mobility/delete-everything dps. BH – Nothing. Zealot – Thp gen/escape ult.
- Sienna: BW – Stagger/escape ult. Pyro – Nothing. UC – Stagger and thp gen.
Then there’s movement ults and specific talents that only really work with specific weapons (dagger on Pyro + Fleetflame).
Instead of playing a squishy ranged career in a team that you don’t trust, I suggest playing one that is good for qp, like Handmaiden, WHC, Zealot, Merc etc. This is comparable to an Exec Merc complaining about other players in qp not providing cc for them while charging a heavy.
From my perspective the average weapon performs more like the spear does, stronger more versatile things like rapier, fire flail are not the average.And thus, if a map is out of line, demanding you use equipment that are stronger than the average, do you buff all those other options or do you nerf the map to balance it out?
From my perspective, while not fully so extreme, its similar to saying that other builds should be buffed because they cant match the mistshade build.
This argument while fair generally does not float well when the same map can have extreme differences in difficulty. And infact there are build so strong that they do eliminate skill needed to succeed to a large degree. Builds that completely trivialize bosses, lords, patrols and such that should be threatening for any others.
So indeed, lets look at Enchanters lair just for how plain it is to see, is a group with dedicated boss kills that only gets chaff spawns lucky compared one that gets maulers&zerks or chaos warriors every such wave while lacking boss killers? With such extreme differences existing then yes, i wont hesitate to say that there was a clear difference in luck, what else could i call it?
…Disclaimer though, i do not berate others for not pulling patrols or such, i know that many arent comfortable or find it fun to fight them. : (
The composite bow is one between a small and large one in size made as the name suggests, by mixed materials. The main advantage compared to a longbow is the fact that despite their smaller size their power, range and accuracy was equal to or even exceeded the longbow. The main users historically were the mongols who used them for horseback shooting to…well known effect.
The main disadvantage? They had to be custom made for the user to have full use or the next one would need a very similar build and strength. They were also expensive and difficult to make and were vulnerable to humidity, requiring careful maintenance.
Now of course having a bow that is just a longbow but better would not work. So ditching that i was thinking a “middle size” bow with a bit less range, boss&armor dmg and cleave than the longbow but faster in turn with enough headshot damage to onehit any special. It would also maintain it´s accuracy and speed while walking as the swiftbow does on it´s charged shots.
Essentially a crossing between the long and swiftbow…my only headache is that i cant figure if it´d kill the longbow if it could nail stormvermin on headshots or if it´d be useless if it could not.
A matter of taste 
But point in case is that i worry about segregating the playerbase too much. If the upper limits of cata keeps rising how are people supposed to make the jump from legend without becoming dejected by the massive gap in difficulty?Also, If we buff weapons for cata, wont that make legend even easier? I played a couple of games to compare and i was almost dismayed with how silly easy it was.
I moved to cata because i felt it becoming too easy but going back now it was glaringly obvious.
Sound point, but i´d argue that CoD is the only place that forces them into bad spots so actively. Even on screaming bell i can kite a horde around and feel just fine just because i can see where enemies come in from before they hit me. I wont eat a heap of hits because i didnt look behind me one or two seconds ago.
Again, the worst part about CoD is that it´s a cramped space with omnidirectional spawns and specials that need to be sniped. Its a whole bundle of misery.
I think you and others are somehow thinking a much higher skill than normal is the normal ._.
The gap between legend and cata for instance is already massive, the gap between a normal cata player and a true solo is a bit smaller and the gap between cata and modded difficulty solo is like the one between legend and cata.
If other events became even harder to match, like righteous stand not just spawning a boss+ small horde+a few elites+few specials but instead 8+ chaos warriors and full size cata mixed horde+ specials and i am honestly pretty sure that a far too large of the population would just, give up.
…Am i weird for thinking there was nothing strange about not being able to get through that gap? I am too used to it.—That aside, the patrol fight was nice.
A simple look at those things is about right, ability based things aside, a number of the things you listed are build dependent such as WHC mobility or merc high THP generation.
Not that i can honestly see any situation where either of them really struggles with a few stormvermin and a packmaster short off ability on cooldown and out of ammo though.
It works just fine everywhere, except for in CoD T_T
I havent played the game silly much without learning a few tricks, i can handle mixed hordes on my own and dish out cheeky snipes as long as monks arent in business. But no matter how i plot, scheme or plan i cant come up with a solution for enemies, especially soundless ones, spawning behind or above me when i am fighting something upfront except staying mobile.
Which…doesnt work all too well there, and heck that hurts even when i play melee.
And to be honest even then i dont trust others to shoot specials either, generally no one in QP trusts anyone to shoot specials for them which is why even the footknights will whip out a gun if they spot one.
Even with a horde ongoing.
Dude you’re just making up criteria as you go at this point
Anyway I stand by what I said initially before this thread derailed into w/e it is now:
and I guess to add to that, a look into the locations that specials are spawning in since apparently some of them can be pretty unfair
Otherwise I do like having events that have the potential to get spicy like Convocation, Old Haunts and Enchanter’s Lair
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My argument was always that a map that places demands on teamcomp and build choices is not suitable for the QP rotation, and to argue for that i highlighted the fact that there are a lot of weapons/builds that just fall flat on their nose in CoD.
Even common ones that would do just fine anywhere else, simply due to silly stuff like how the layout promotes enemies poping out behind you which hurts ranged careers disproportionately. Or how the potential chaos warrior+stormvermin+special wave (velsix wrote it exists too!) just punts down teams that cant rapidly deal with armored targets.
…Now that wave does evidently not always occur,much to my surprise, same as the chaos warriors dont always spawn over in the nurgloth fight, but even so the difficulty when that occurs is much too high for a QP rotation map.
So i really wont change my mind, having all events have the possibility of such silly difficulty jumps isnt something i can view to be good. Its like the AI director tossing dice on “do i send the worst stuff possible at these guys or do they get a few slaverats?”