Siege encounter from Maria Jenkins Mission

[Marshal Valor]

The name of the mission that Maria hands out that has this encounter is "Defeat Siege and all Warworks".

 

I've yet to find an EB in game that I couldn't handle solo. I remember the devs on live saying that the reason that they created EB's in the first place was because people were getting missions with AV's in them that they had no hope of normally fighting. So they came up with the idea of EB's so that people could take them on and do the missions.

 

Onto the mission! I went in solo with the team number set to x5, EB's on, bosses on. I have fought Siege many many times. I lost track of how many times I took him out on different characters and never once did I have a problem until today. I have always gone after the EB's from the contacts. I always enjoyed facing up against signature characters. Makes it feel even more like a comic book. I am a tanker and I have full sets of IO's and I was taking down Siege just fine. Then he heals. He heals again. He heals again. He heals again. This goes on over and over ad nauseam. I got irritated and ignored Siege and started taking down all the clockwork so now it's just Siege and I.

Again, heal, heal, heal, heal. This isn't a little heal. Its rather significant and it has a slow recharge time so he can pop it often. This is supposed to be soloable content. I shouldn't have to bring people into an EB fight. I was told "fight on a lower difficulty". The setting is on normal. The encounter was designed around the normal setting. Those settings didn't even appear until long after the devs created EB's. I was told "use inspirations". So the only way I am supposed to fight EB's is to suck up as many inspirations as I can and if I run out or take the wrong amount that's it? This encounter is either egregiously broken or it is unbalanced. Nobody likes an unwinnable scenario. 

I see nothing wrong with a challenge, until said challenge becomes unreasonable. This is not "normal". I used to write for White Wolf, I've done quite a bit of game design, and I also was an off the books consultant on EverQuest. A few servers were designed based off of suggestions that I made to the dev team. That's how some of the specialty servers were created such as the RP server. Now looking at this encounter with regards to challenging content; if I wanted to make the encounter more balanced I would increase the recharge time of the heal so that it doesn't become a nuisance. He couldn't really hurt me as a tanker but he was impossible to kill. The rest of the encounter seemed really well designed. 

 

I relented, went out and filled my tray with reds. Yes the whole tray. I burned through every single one of those reds (at 48) and that was the only way to beat him. I felt very disappointed afterwards and really resented that I was forced to use reds due to the nature of the fight with Siege. Then while I was in the mission the entrance disappeared. I know it's behind a truck. I came into the mission and flew past it a number of times as I was cleaning up clockwork. I had to use the base TP to get out of there. When I went back in, the red box that was the entrance was still missing.

[sponazgul]

Quick question: what kind of tank was this particular tank that had Siege problems? 

Was it more of a resistance tank than a defense tank? I think Siege's heal is one the requires a hit on you.

[lemming]

I have that mission set for one of my alts, and I did note, that char has difficulty with taking him out.   He's an Elec/Elec Tank.   He's the only character who has had the issue at +1 (or even with Alpha shift).    

[Frozen Burn]

56 minutes ago, Marshal Valor said:

The name of the mission that Maria hands out that has this encounter is "Defeat Siege and all Warworks".

 

I've yet to find an EB in game that I couldn't handle solo. I remember the devs on live saying that the reason that they created EB's in the first place was because people were getting missions with AV's in them that they had no hope of normally fighting. So they came up with the idea of EB's so that people could take them on and do the missions.

 

Onto the mission! I went in solo with the team number set to x5, EB's on, bosses on. I have fought Siege many many times. I lost track of how many times I took him out on different characters and never once did I have a problem until today. I have always gone after the EB's from the contacts. I always enjoyed facing up against signature characters. Makes it feel even more like a comic book. I am a tanker and I have full sets of IO's and I was taking down Siege just fine. Then he heals. He heals again. He heals again. He heals again. This goes on over and over ad nauseam. I got irritated and ignored Siege and started taking down all the clockwork so now it's just Siege and I.

Again, heal, heal, heal, heal. This isn't a little heal. Its rather significant and it has a slow recharge time so he can pop it often. This is supposed to be soloable content. I shouldn't have to bring people into an EB fight. I was told "fight on a lower difficulty". The setting is on normal. The encounter was designed around the normal setting. Those settings didn't even appear until long after the devs created EB's. I was told "use inspirations". So the only way I am supposed to fight EB's is to suck up as many inspirations as I can and if I run out or take the wrong amount that's it? This encounter is either egregiously broken or it is unbalanced. Nobody likes an unwinnable scenario. 

I see nothing wrong with a challenge, until said challenge becomes unreasonable. This is not "normal". I used to write for White Wolf, I've done quite a bit of game design, and I also was an off the books consultant on EverQuest. A few servers were designed based off of suggestions that I made to the dev team. That's how some of the specialty servers were created such as the RP server. Now looking at this encounter with regards to challenging content; if I wanted to make the encounter more balanced I would increase the recharge time of the heal so that it doesn't become a nuisance. He couldn't really hurt me as a tanker but he was impossible to kill. The rest of the encounter seemed really well designed. 

 

I relented, went out and filled my tray with reds. Yes the whole tray. I burned through every single one of those reds (at 48) and that was the only way to beat him. I felt very disappointed afterwards and really resented that I was forced to use reds due to the nature of the fight with Siege. Then while I was in the mission the entrance disappeared. I know it's behind a truck. I came into the mission and flew past it a number of times as I was cleaning up clockwork. I had to use the base TP to get out of there. When I went back in, the red box that was the entrance was still missing.

 

This *IS* normal.  Siege needs a certain amount of DPS / slows to overcome his heal and recharge rate of that heal.  That is the challenge of him.  

 

Also, not all content is soloable by all ATs and all powersets.  Sometimes, you have have to elicit help or use large amounts of inspires, or a lot of temp powers.  But using inspires and temp powers, you at least have still "solo'd" him.  

 

And I'm not sure why using a tray full of red inspires is a bad thing.  Or using pet temp powers, signature summons, or other temp powers to your advantage - that is why they and inspires are there in the first place.  Just because you have to tap into other resources on one particular toon / AT / powersets, doesn't mean the fight is broken or that AT / toon / powersets are broken.  The beauty of this game is that there is an Achilles heel to everything - you just found that toon's.  But you overcame it.  Kudos!  But that doesn't mean anything is broken or wrong.

[Psyonico]

Being forced to use inspirations is not an unreasonable requirement in certain circumstances.  They exist in game, are plentiful, and can drastically change the tide of a battle.

 

Also, electric melee tanks are short-ish on ST damage, so it makes sense that you wouldn't be able to overcome his DPS check without help.

[Ukase]

I've had scenarios like this with a number of characters. I made a dark/dark tank and was so focused on making him resist as much as possible...it couldn't even beat trap door. Mainly because I missed that soul absorption deal that boosts the accuracy and damage. 4 or 5 of those arachnos goons preceding Trapdoor, and somehow, I missed all of them because of a debuff, I guess. It was rather humiliating. I haven't played the tank since. Now it just holds all the emp merits and hero merits for that account. Sure, I could revisit the build, try something different...but no. There's probably nothing wrong with the character; it's the player that reeks in my case. 

So, I get the frustration. I have had tanks struggle with Siege and that heal. The heal always seems to come right before the recharge of my heavier hitting attacks. So, yeah, I used super reds from my base. That's what they're for. 

[Uun]

Siege is hard. I've gone after him as an AV with a team of 5 and we couldn't take him down. In addition to his heal, he has 50% resistance to S/L/E and 20% resistance to F/C/N. If you were on a tank that deals S/L/E damage, that's why you had trouble. Unlike most robots, he has no resistance to Psi damage (read his backstory).

 

I'll also note that you can recruit a team for this mission in about a minute. Siege is required for the Dimensional Warder badge but doesn't appear in Maria's arc (he does appear in the Flashback version).

 

16 hours ago, sponazgul said:

 I think Siege's heal is one the requires a hit on you.

Siege's heal does NOT require a tohit check. It's up every 30s and heals for 25% of his hit points.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=siege_siege_new

[Psi-bolt]

I don't understand.  You beat Siege solo using the tools that the game makes available to you (inspirations).  This suggests that there isn't a problem.

[sponazgul]

3 hours ago, Uun said:

 

 

Siege's heal does NOT require a tohit check. It's up every 30s and heals for 25% of his hit points.

https://cod.uberguy.net/html/entity.html?entity=siege_siege_new

I appreciate the fact-check!