Infinite Archive needs some Focused Efforts to make Improvements

kojou

My friend and I ran a duo Infinite Archive push to see how far we could get last night. Everything was going great until we met Lady Belain at 9-3-3. It wouldn't be so bad, except she ended our last push at approximately the same stage in Arc 9, and we were nervous if the same thing would happen again. The problem with this fight is when she gets to ~50% health she spawns ghosts around the outside of the arena and you take incredibly high damage from some unseen, unblock-able force and die within seconds. In earlier stages you see "puddles" on the ground and can run out of them, but for some reason in Arc 9 they are invisible, and you have no idea whether you are running into one or out of one. I assume this is not intended and a bug, but it was a real kick in the crotch to get our 3ish hour run ended at the same point we did on our last one and by the same bugged boss.

This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a slog to get this far. Not only do you need the right buffs, but the chances of getting the correct buffs to get this far are pretty low. We run Infinite Archive once a week, and our goal is to get past Arc 10. Anecdotally it seems like 1 in 3 runs will have a good enough combination of Visions to get past Arc 7 (at least at our skill level) and part of this is again because it becomes such a tedious slog if you aren't doing at least 100k DPS each. Once it gets to the point where trash stages are taking more than 3 minutes each we lose interest and just hope for a quick death to end the run. Marauder Gothmau is usually happy to oblige.

Obviously bugs should be fixed, so please fix Lady Belain, otherwise we are both going to quit running this, as neither of us want to get figuratively kicked in the crotch a third time.

Beyond fixing bugs I would like to propose the following minor changes:

1. Please reduce Marauder Gothmau's damage to more closely match the other Marauders. He is way over-tuned.
2. Please make the Khajiit Shield toting elite mob a little less silly... I know the mechanic is to not attack him when he turns red, but can we at least make him only reflect direct ranged damage?
3. After every Tho'at round give a re-roll for Visions if we get an undesirable set, or let us select from more options (6 or 9). This way we will be less likely to scrap a run because the buffs aren't there.
4. Cap the health increase of the trash round NPCs at Arc 6. You can still increase their damage, but having to spend so much time killing trash makes the run tedious (or you can just remove 1 trash round ).
5. Feel free to increase the health of Bosses to make those fights more interesting as a balance to the trash health cap for #4.
6. Curate the Verses so that ones that require things to die only come up during trash rounds. It is not fun when you are on a boss round and your choices provide absolutely no benefit because the boss doesn't spawn adds.
7. Also, Curate the verses so that if you don't have a skill of a certain type slotted (i.e. World Skills) that you don't get that one.

In general, I am ok with the balance of the verses and visions, as they do not really ruin the play-ability of the content, other than when RNG is not in your favor and you are in Arc 7 with no "Focused Efforts" vision (which has happened more than once). If you can give a special bonus to the Tho'at vision selection as mentioned in #3, or just automatically give us Focused Efforts for every time we beat Tho'at that would be fine too...

These are my pain points, but I'm sure there are others I haven't thought about.

El_Borracho

Lady Belain is absolutely nuts in IA. Ran into the same problem on PS-NA. I hate that RNG basically controls how far you can go in IA, especially with that boss.

Necrotech_Master

thats how all of these survival rogue-like modes work, its all RNG, sometimes you have good runs and sometimes you have bad runs

that being said, they definitely need to look at balance for some of the visions, like a 3% increase to direct or aoe dmg is pure garbage, where as something like attuned enchantments or focused efforts nearly doubles your dmg output with each rank

Araneae6537

kojou wrote: »

My friend and I ran a duo Infinite Archive push to see how far we could get last night. Everything was going great until we met Lady Belain at 9-3-3. It wouldn't be so bad, except she ended our last push at approximately the same stage in Arc 9, and we were nervous if the same thing would happen again. The problem with this fight is when she gets to ~50% health she spawns ghosts around the outside of the arena and you take incredibly high damage from some unseen, unblock-able force and die within seconds. In earlier stages you see "puddles" on the ground and can run out of them, but for some reason in Arc 9 they are invisible, and you have no idea whether you are running into one or out of one. I assume this is not intended and a bug, but it was a real kick in the crotch to get our 3ish hour run ended at the same point we did on our last one and by the same bugged boss.

This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a slog to get this far. Not only do you need the right buffs, but the chances of getting the correct buffs to get this far are pretty low. We run Infinite Archive once a week, and our goal is to get past Arc 10. Anecdotally it seems like 1 in 3 runs will have a good enough combination of Visions to get past Arc 7 (at least at our skill level) and part of this is again because it becomes such a tedious slog if you aren't doing at least 100k DPS each. Once it gets to the point where trash stages are taking more than 3 minutes each we lose interest and just hope for a quick death to end the run. Marauder Gothmau is usually happy to oblige.

Obviously bugs should be fixed, so please fix Lady Belain, otherwise we are both going to quit running this, as neither of us want to get figuratively kicked in the crotch a third time.

Beyond fixing bugs I would like to propose the following minor changes:

1. Please reduce Marauder Gothmau's damage to more closely match the other Marauders. He is way over-tuned.
2. Please make the Khajiit Shield toting elite mob a little less silly... I know the mechanic is to not attack him when he turns red, but can we at least make him only reflect direct ranged damage?
3. After every Tho'at round give a re-roll for Visions if we get an undesirable set, or let us select from more options (6 or 9). This way we will be less likely to scrap a run because the buffs aren't there.
4. Cap the health increase of the trash round NPCs at Arc 6. You can still increase their damage, but having to spend so much time killing trash makes the run tedious (or you can just remove 1 trash round ).
5. Feel free to increase the health of Bosses to make those fights more interesting as a balance to the trash health cap for #4.
6. Curate the Verses so that ones that require things to die only come up during trash rounds. It is not fun when you are on a boss round and your choices provide absolutely no benefit because the boss doesn't spawn adds.
7. Also, Curate the verses so that if you don't have a skill of a certain type slotted (i.e. World Skills) that you don't get that one.

In general, I am ok with the balance of the verses and visions, as they do not really ruin the play-ability of the content, other than when RNG is not in your favor and you are in Arc 7 with no "Focused Efforts" vision (which has happened more than once). If you can give a special bonus to the Tho'at vision selection as mentioned in #3, or just automatically give us Focused Efforts for every time we beat Tho'at that would be fine too...

These are my pain points, but I'm sure there are others I haven't thought about.

Those are good suggestions! I would be glad for Vision RNG to not be so much the deciding factor — having some rerolls would be awesome, as would removing those Visions that are universally worthless.

Thank you for the tip about the Khajiit mob boss! If he were shielded like Tho’at when reflecting damage, that would have been more intuitive — I can’t recall encountering a mechanic where turning red means not to attack them.

(Edit: silly phone typos)

Necrotech_Master

Araneae6537 wrote: »

kojou wrote: »

My friend and I ran a duo Infinite Archive push to see how far we could get last night. Everything was going great until we met Lady Belain at 9-3-3. It wouldn't be so bad, except she ended our last push at approximately the same stage in Arc 9, and we were nervous if the same thing would happen again. The problem with this fight is when she gets to ~50% health she spawns ghosts around the outside of the arena and you take incredibly high damage from some unseen, unblock-able force and die within seconds. In earlier stages you see "puddles" on the ground and can run out of them, but for some reason in Arc 9 they are invisible, and you have no idea whether you are running into one or out of one. I assume this is not intended and a bug, but it was a real kick in the crotch to get our 3ish hour run ended at the same point we did on our last one and by the same bugged boss.

This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a slog to get this far. Not only do you need the right buffs, but the chances of getting the correct buffs to get this far are pretty low. We run Infinite Archive once a week, and our goal is to get past Arc 10. Anecdotally it seems like 1 in 3 runs will have a good enough combination of Visions to get past Arc 7 (at least at our skill level) and part of this is again because it becomes such a tedious slog if you aren't doing at least 100k DPS each. Once it gets to the point where trash stages are taking more than 3 minutes each we lose interest and just hope for a quick death to end the run. Marauder Gothmau is usually happy to oblige.

Obviously bugs should be fixed, so please fix Lady Belain, otherwise we are both going to quit running this, as neither of us want to get figuratively kicked in the crotch a third time.

Beyond fixing bugs I would like to propose the following minor changes:

1. Please reduce Marauder Gothmau's damage to more closely match the other Marauders. He is way over-tuned.
2. Please make the Khajiit Shield toting elite mob a little less silly... I know the mechanic is to not attack him when he turns red, but can we at least make him only reflect direct ranged damage?
3. After every Tho'at round give a re-roll for Visions if we get an undesirable set, or let us select from more options (6 or 9). This way we will be less likely to scrap a run because the buffs aren't there.
4. Cap the health increase of the trash round NPCs at Arc 6. You can still increase their damage, but having to spend so much time killing trash makes the run tedious (or you can just remove 1 trash round ).
5. Feel free to increase the health of Bosses to make those fights more interesting as a balance to the trash health cap for #4.
6. Curate the Verses so that ones that require things to die only come up during trash rounds. It is not fun when you are on a boss round and your choices provide absolutely no benefit because the boss doesn't spawn adds.
7. Also, Curate the verses so that if you don't have a skill of a certain type slotted (i.e. World Skills) that you don't get that one.

In general, I am ok with the balance of the verses and visions, as they do not really ruin the play-ability of the content, other than when RNG is not in your favor and you are in Arc 7 with no "Focused Efforts" vision (which has happened more than once). If you can give a special bonus to the Tho'at vision selection as mentioned in #3, or just automatically give us Focused Efforts for every time we beat Tho'at that would be fine too...

These are my pain points, but I'm sure there are others I haven't thought about.

Those are good suggestions! I would be glad for Vision RNG to not be so much the deciding factor — having some rerolls would be awesome, as would removing those that are universally worthless.

Thank you for the tip about the Khajiit mon boss! If he were shielded like Tho’at when reflecting damage, that would have been more intuitive — I can’t recall encountering a mechanic where turning red means not to attack them.

the ascendant bulwark does only reflect direct dmg, when you hit him with direct dmg while hes doing that guard stance thing thats what puts the red circle under you that you HAVE to block

on my arcanist using the beam it never triggers that effect because its considered a dot (just like it never triggers tho'ats mirror shield)

edit: also to clarify, the ascendant bulwark does do this as a normal mechanic, but it is one that is only seen in coral aerie dungeon on hard mode

Dagoth_Rac

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Thank you for the tip about the Khajiit mon boss! If he were shielded like Tho’at when reflecting damage, that would have been more intuitive — I can’t recall encountering a mechanic where turning red means not to attack them.

Quite the opposite! When I saw him turn red, I thought he was enraged, so I tab targeted and went nuts on him, in hopes of killing this enraged mini-boss who was almost certain to one-shot me if I didn't throw everything I had at him. Bad idea!

Araneae6537

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Thank you for the tip about the Khajiit mon boss! If he were shielded like Tho’at when reflecting damage, that would have been more intuitive — I can’t recall encountering a mechanic where turning red means not to attack them.

Quite the opposite! When I saw him turn red, I thought he was enraged, so I tab targeted and went nuts on him, in hopes of killing this enraged mini-boss who was almost certain to one-shot me if I didn't throw everything I had at him. Bad idea!

Yes, exactly! This is what I have done as well! And then I get that big damage hit which confirmed to me that I need to focus on taking him out ASAP when he appears!

sharquez

When Gothmau comes to collect a thread.
https://imgur.com/RNHQdiA

kojou

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

kojou wrote: »

My friend and I ran a duo Infinite Archive push to see how far we could get last night. Everything was going great until we met Lady Belain at 9-3-3. It wouldn't be so bad, except she ended our last push at approximately the same stage in Arc 9, and we were nervous if the same thing would happen again. The problem with this fight is when she gets to ~50% health she spawns ghosts around the outside of the arena and you take incredibly high damage from some unseen, unblock-able force and die within seconds. In earlier stages you see "puddles" on the ground and can run out of them, but for some reason in Arc 9 they are invisible, and you have no idea whether you are running into one or out of one. I assume this is not intended and a bug, but it was a real kick in the crotch to get our 3ish hour run ended at the same point we did on our last one and by the same bugged boss.

This in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't such a slog to get this far. Not only do you need the right buffs, but the chances of getting the correct buffs to get this far are pretty low. We run Infinite Archive once a week, and our goal is to get past Arc 10. Anecdotally it seems like 1 in 3 runs will have a good enough combination of Visions to get past Arc 7 (at least at our skill level) and part of this is again because it becomes such a tedious slog if you aren't doing at least 100k DPS each. Once it gets to the point where trash stages are taking more than 3 minutes each we lose interest and just hope for a quick death to end the run. Marauder Gothmau is usually happy to oblige.

Obviously bugs should be fixed, so please fix Lady Belain, otherwise we are both going to quit running this, as neither of us want to get figuratively kicked in the crotch a third time.

Beyond fixing bugs I would like to propose the following minor changes:

1. Please reduce Marauder Gothmau's damage to more closely match the other Marauders. He is way over-tuned.
2. Please make the Khajiit Shield toting elite mob a little less silly... I know the mechanic is to not attack him when he turns red, but can we at least make him only reflect direct ranged damage?
3. After every Tho'at round give a re-roll for Visions if we get an undesirable set, or let us select from more options (6 or 9). This way we will be less likely to scrap a run because the buffs aren't there.
4. Cap the health increase of the trash round NPCs at Arc 6. You can still increase their damage, but having to spend so much time killing trash makes the run tedious (or you can just remove 1 trash round ).
5. Feel free to increase the health of Bosses to make those fights more interesting as a balance to the trash health cap for #4.
6. Curate the Verses so that ones that require things to die only come up during trash rounds. It is not fun when you are on a boss round and your choices provide absolutely no benefit because the boss doesn't spawn adds.
7. Also, Curate the verses so that if you don't have a skill of a certain type slotted (i.e. World Skills) that you don't get that one.

In general, I am ok with the balance of the verses and visions, as they do not really ruin the play-ability of the content, other than when RNG is not in your favor and you are in Arc 7 with no "Focused Efforts" vision (which has happened more than once). If you can give a special bonus to the Tho'at vision selection as mentioned in #3, or just automatically give us Focused Efforts for every time we beat Tho'at that would be fine too...

These are my pain points, but I'm sure there are others I haven't thought about.

Those are good suggestions! I would be glad for Vision RNG to not be so much the deciding factor — having some rerolls would be awesome, as would removing those that are universally worthless.

Thank you for the tip about the Khajiit mon boss! If he were shielded like Tho’at when reflecting damage, that would have been more intuitive — I can’t recall encountering a mechanic where turning red means not to attack them.

the ascendant bulwark does only reflect direct dmg, when you hit him with direct dmg while hes doing that guard stance thing thats what puts the red circle under you that you HAVE to block

on my arcanist using the beam it never triggers that effect because its considered a dot (just like it never triggers tho'ats mirror shield)

edit: also to clarify, the ascendant bulwark does do this as a normal mechanic, but it is one that is only seen in coral aerie dungeon on hard mode

To be clear, I asked that he only reflect direct *ranged* damage... It seems like there are things that do direct damage to him that are included with skills that only do damage over time, chill procs or whatever, that still light him up.

kojou

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

thats how all of these survival rogue-like modes work, its all RNG, sometimes you have good runs and sometimes you have bad runs

that being said, they definitely need to look at balance for some of the visions, like a 3% increase to direct or aoe dmg is pure garbage, where as something like attuned enchantments or focused efforts nearly doubles your dmg output with each rank

That is the problem... There is basically one way to have a good run and that is to get Focused Efforts. I don't mind that Focused Efforts is strong, as it is a fun thing to build around, but I would like to see other things that are possible to build around and get similar results.

Like if there were another combination of visions I could build around for AOE direct damage that my Templar would excel at, etc.

Necrotech_Master

kojou wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

thats how all of these survival rogue-like modes work, its all RNG, sometimes you have good runs and sometimes you have bad runs

that being said, they definitely need to look at balance for some of the visions, like a 3% increase to direct or aoe dmg is pure garbage, where as something like attuned enchantments or focused efforts nearly doubles your dmg output with each rank

That is the problem... There is basically one way to have a good run and that is to get Focused Efforts. I don't mind that Focused Efforts is strong, as it is a fun thing to build around, but I would like to see other things that are possible to build around and get similar results.

Like if there were another combination of visions I could build around for AOE direct damage that my Templar would excel at, etc.

templar is one of the ones that benefits a lot from some verses more than other classes

jabs + exsanguinate verse is crazy strong lol

as far as im aware, all of the visions that stack cap at 5 stacks, which means the ones that do boost aoe and direct dmg cap at 15% dmg increase, which is about the same as most gear sets

where stuff like even attuned enchantments is +75% effectiveness per stack (up to a maximum of 375%), that can make your enchantment almost 4x stronger than what it normally is

a lot of those vision buffs should probably be increased to at least 10x of what they currently do to bring them more in line with what the other ones do

kojou

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

kojou wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

thats how all of these survival rogue-like modes work, its all RNG, sometimes you have good runs and sometimes you have bad runs

that being said, they definitely need to look at balance for some of the visions, like a 3% increase to direct or aoe dmg is pure garbage, where as something like attuned enchantments or focused efforts nearly doubles your dmg output with each rank

That is the problem... There is basically one way to have a good run and that is to get Focused Efforts. I don't mind that Focused Efforts is strong, as it is a fun thing to build around, but I would like to see other things that are possible to build around and get similar results.

Like if there were another combination of visions I could build around for AOE direct damage that my Templar would excel at, etc.

templar is one of the ones that benefits a lot from some verses more than other classes

jabs + exsanguinate verse is crazy strong lol

as far as im aware, all of the visions that stack cap at 5 stacks, which means the ones that do boost aoe and direct dmg cap at 15% dmg increase, which is about the same as most gear sets

where stuff like even attuned enchantments is +75% effectiveness per stack (up to a maximum of 375%), that can make your enchantment almost 4x stronger than what it normally is

a lot of those vision buffs should probably be increased to at least 10x of what they currently do to bring them more in line with what the other ones do

I agree on Exsanguinate, but you can't really build around verses.

15% direct damage is nothing compared to 500% status effects. Once you get a couple Focused Efforts your skills just become a means to proc status effects and none of the other offense visions matter.

kojou

On the bright side we did finally get to 11-2-1 last Friday, so progress was made.