Thoughts on Halloween EB Balance

[mechahamham]

I love the Halloween ToT EBs, and I love fighting them. I love that each one has one or more 'tricks' you have to learn.

 

They're not perfectly balanced, though. (Thanos: "As all things should be." *SNAP*) They're good, but there's still lots of room for improvement.

 

Solo, the EBs are almost undoable for a lot of characters. They seem like they're balanced for groups and/or the multi-group ToT leagues that gravitate to Kallisti Wharf and Murder Motel in Peregrine. The 'sore spots' seems to be characters in their 20s and early 30s, and low DPS characters, even if they're otherwise powerhouses.

 

For example, among my characters that struggle with them is a Psi/Sonic blaster optimized for 'Blapping'. She can easily wade through the entirety of the 'Whispered Rumors' mission at 33 without a break, but just doesn't have enough damage and fuel in her tank to burn down one of the EBs, even well slotted with IOs. Psi blast just has bad fuel efficiency in that regard for a lot of situations. Even inspiration loading doesn't solve the problem since Psi's relatively low base damage isn't enough to deal with the EBs.

 

My personal solution to getting her the ToT badges while solo was to use Ouro to exemp to a level 24 mission so that the EBs didn't spawn, and then joining the team in Kallisti to work on giant monsters and EBs once she had the other badges. This is a reasonable compromise, IMO, but is a little convoluted.

 

My understanding from last year was that there was a planned code change to make the EBs not spawn at all for solo players. Apparently that didn't happen in time for the event this year. (I think we're all coping with 'We all have less free time right now.') I'd personally like to see something along the lines of the EB spawns being affected by Notoriety settings. If you have 'Solo Bosses' activated, they do spawn, but if you don't, no EBs.

 

In small groups, they seem almost perfect, with a few serious caveats. The first of those is the Arisen Mummy's 'Knockout Blow'. Knockout Blow can, as the name suggests, all but one-shot a lot of players. Ironically, it's a hair easier for a solo player to deal with this since they have more (perceived) mobility away from a group and can kite the Mummy around a little more effectively. (Players who are allergic to themselves or others moving around... seriously, cut that out.) The Mummy's long-lasting 'Diseased' debuff can derail a small group. While the debuff itself is just fine for the encounter, the duration could definitely use to be cut down a tad... maybe cut it by 50%?

 

In large groups, the EBs just simply aren't a challenge. The Murder Motel and KW teams don't even blink when a horde of them show up. (They don't even notice when a horde of Nightmare EBs pop up in the Zombie Apocalypse invasions.) I personally don't think we should balance encounters where a raid-sized team is chewing through content originally targeted to solo players and small groups. However, what I would LIKE to see is to make the EBs just a tad more... chunky... for the large groups.

 

How about this? If the EBs spawn at 50 for a player in a team, they spawn as AVs rather than EBs, using the Mission Architect scaling rules.

 

Thoughts? How do you feel about the balance of the Halloween EBs?

[starro]

Omg the EBs pop out all the time.  I feel like too many and my little controller gets squashed.  Change nothing, I like the challenge. 

[Ghost]

Make them easier?

 

IMO this game is easy enough and the devs shouldn’t be in the market for finding ways to make it even easier.

[Andreah]

When I ToT solo (or when i'm the first one and am starting a league) I get out my trusty Vanguard Heavy. It really helps on those EBs.

[Glacier Peak]

I like the Halloween ToT Elite Bosses as they are.

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, mechahamham said:

Solo, the EBs are almost undoable for a lot of characters.

And it can vary hugely depending on AT, powersets, and build; I was running my Elec/Elec Sentinel Shoka Lecheniye (Шока Лечение, 'Shock Treatment') around one of the buildings in Kallisti Wharf when I realized how boring it was to ToT with her. I knock on a door, get 'Trick', the spawn comes out, and with no more than two attacks, the entire spawn is at zero End with floored recovery, and it's just grinding them down while they flail fruitlessly. The EBs are annoying only because of how much longer it takes to grind them down; otherwise, they're no more of a threat than the minions. While on other characters, the EBs require significant inspiration use. The same goes for other content; I have a Rad/Rad Brute that runs Heather Townsend's arc at +4/x6 as the best tradeoff of XP against time while others struggle at x1 and +1 net level (+4 once they get all three level boosts, for example). The different ATs and powersets play differently; that's the point.

 

Perhaps the difficulty setting that downgrades Bosses to Lieutenants could be checked to downgrade the EBs one step to Bosses, at the cost of, say, them losing the 5x XP and badge count for them.

[Luminara]

Everything except the mummy is easy.  Crone won't even engage if you stay at range, she just hovers where she spawned, staring at you like an idiot.  Vampire's weaksauce once the Dark Servant is toasted.  Werewolf's a pushover and the only threat the Reaper poses is to your framerate.  Even the mummy isn't really much of a badass, since it moves like the geriatric burn patient it resembles and doesn't have any ranged attacks.

[A Cat]

Crones are the only one I have struggles with due to hurricane debuffing my to hit. At least this is my perspective as a melee player. 

[nihilii]

I like the EBs as is, as a solo player.

 

I think the suggestion to tie it to reputation is a great one.

[Andreah]

Edit:  Srmalloy already had this suggestion and I agree.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Andreah

[tidge]

A suggestion for players that cannot handle, or otherwise don't feel like defeating Hallowe'en elite boss monsters: ToT near something that has police drones. Run to the drones and et the drones zap them.

 

I will admit that I have some characters that aren't threatened by the bosses, yet defeating the elite bosses takes significant effort. I'll just drag the EBs from door-to-door until I want them drones to clean them up.

[MoonSheep]

not everything in the game needs to be solo’able by a squishie, having infrequent instances of mild challenge is absolutely fine

[Hedgefund]

I was very disappointed last year when I saw the dev statement these EBs would not spawn for soloers the next Halloween (now).  I was very happy the first time I knocked on a door and an EB showed up.  I sure hope they keep them.  If folks want some way to disable them for themselves, fine, I want them.

[High_Beam]

My problem is EBs popping out of doors when I am solo.  Lost count of the number I have pulled to the drones in the Brick.

[arcane]

22 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

not everything in the game needs to be solo’able by a squishie, having infrequent instances of mild challenge is absolutely fine

This

[Akisan]

I'm pretty happy with the EB balance (TBF, I perma-hold all of them other than the Mummy [Immune], which I instead slow to 10% movement and then kite), though I wish ToTing respected notoriety.  There's no reason for an EB+Lt. to pop out of a door on someone set to +0x1, which makes solo ToTing unnecessarily dangerous.  Similarly, being able to go to one of the Halloween salvage vendors to set EB/No EB would be a very nice option to have.
 

I'm not sure about the EBs popping out as AVs unless your AV flag is set - the EBs already do a lot of damage and have some really nasty debuffs.  I regularly solo the EBs, as they're not very difficult for my build, but I'd have a rather hard time bringing down any of them as AVs (I could probably do it, it'd just take way longer than it's worth).

 

And I have to agree with the duration on the "Diseased" debuff - it often lasts long enough for me to find (and kill) another EB before it runs out (assuming I didn't find another Mummy..).  Halving or even quartering its duration wouldn't really be a nerf to the Mummy during the fight against it.