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R-4 Boss: Watchdog


JackieKo

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  • Dev Post

Please feel free to answer as many questions as you like for Watchdog.

 

  • What role did you play on PTS?
  • What difficulty did you test on PTS?
  • What are your overall impressions of Watchdog?
  • Does the Watchdog encounter deliver an appropriate level of challenge for its place within the operation?
  • Were the Polarity Bomb / Polarized Attack mechanics learnable? If not, which ones were problematic?
  • Were the polarities of players and attacks sufficiently readable at a glance? If not, which ones were problematic?
  • Do mechanics in the encounter give you enough time to respond?
  • What are your impressions about the pacing of events and mechanics in the encounter?
  • It would be very helpful if video of your encounter with the boss could be provided.

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I played a mDPS concealment operative, and we tested SM. The entire group was geared in 330, with several being augmented.

 

Overall it was a fun encounter, but the missiles allow for no margin of error with it being a one-shot,. The Multibeam Array was a very sudden and slightly confusing add considering it can also one-shot. Audio cues like in Dxun could help with the Array. Overall, this was probably the hardest of the three fights, and took us 3 tries until we downed it.

 

Difficulty-wise, I think the damage might be a little too punishing for new players or pugs not familiar with operations. The constant one-shot potential is a lot for SM.

 

The polarity bomb mechanics was easy enough to pick up, though the Ops Lead also gave us a heads up that we needed to buddy up with someone of the same color. I had no trouble with the orange/blue polarity colors.

 

The overall pacing of the mechanics and encounter felt pretty good. aside from the Multibeam Array. Missiles aren't too bad unless players start grouping around each other on the boss, and cause a large pile.

 

I think it's also worth mentioning that we had several deaths (8+) I think, but players were able to release back to the start of the op and go down the elevator again if they weren't in combat. I'm not sure if we would have actually cleared the boss without the stream of players.

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  • 3 weeks later...

We tested Watchdog in 8-man SM today and were easily able to kill it in the fifth attempt. It felt much easier than the first boss and it didn't take us long to understand the mechanic, though someone in the group already had experience with the boss and could explain it.

Combat log: https://parsely.io/parser/view/635493/6

 

In general, the fight feels very enjoyable. There's lots to do for every player; some coordination is involved but it's very intuitive (walk towards player with the same color), with bonus damage when playing the mechanic correctly (adding damage taken stacks to the boss). I'd say the boss is in a fine place and does not require further changes, except for maybe adding a burn phase in the end.

Compared to IP-CPT, Watchdog felt a little too easy but I feel it's fine for SM; if anything, IP-CPT is still too difficult.

 

Two bugs we noticed:

  • The "Matter Disruption" buffs can be removed by right-clicking. Please move this effect into the debuff tray when it is placed on a player, or disable right clicking.
  • The boss' Invert abilty is missing its icon.

Edited by Jerba
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I tested veteran mode. Full video of our testing after the March 16th patch and before. The latest patch on March 16th introduced bugs that pretty much make the encounter too frustrating to test:

 

• Detached PMX4 Bombs no longer disappear after being detonated by any means. Clip of this bug, plenty more in the full stream.

• Two PMX4 Bombs of a seemingly random polarity detach from Watchdog immediately before Watchdog casts Stalker Protocol, often resulting in an almost unavoidable major bomb detonation as soon as the Stalker Protocol cast ends. (These two bombs specifically do not seem to grant stacks of Matter Disruption to Watchdog even if detonated with the correct polarity Stalker Protocol, so this bug can only work against the player.) Clip of this bug, plenty more in the full stream.

 

And made some unnecessary visual changes that were fine before:

 

• PMX4 bombs are now red during their arming delay, rather than the color indicating their polarity. Clip of the new arming delay animation + clip of the old arming delay animation. (The new animation is nice in that the area of effect doesn't disappear for a second after expanding, but the old animation was nice in that the area of effect immediately showed the polarity color.)

• The polarity of Polarized Beam is far less readable at a glance without the "disc" in front of Watchdog's head during the cast. Clip of the old "disc" effect during Polarized Beam.

 

And some other feedback:

 

• Polarized Beam's damage feels overtuned even when executed correctly (i.e. when a player with a PMX4 bomb matching the polarity of the beam intercepts it). To be clear, this is after the fix so Polarized Beam is properly recognizing the polarity of its target.

• The effects for bombs detaching from players + "attaching" to the ground after Degauss could be clearer. The bombs completely disappear from the player before they begin "attaching" to the ground, so it's hard for players to tell exactly when it is safe to move without displacing their bomb. Clip of this.

• Areas of effect from The Missiles are too similar in color to negative PMX4 bombs.

Edited by whereisezra
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We did some HM progression on this boss in the last week and I want to place some observations here (No kill).

Me personally was playing as a tank and we had a standard group composition of 2T 4D 2H.

 

- As the post above mentioned: the bombs on the ground not disappearing is extremely frustrating to make any progress.

- Having 2 Tanks and 2 melee DD leaves no room to move. With the size of the bombs this either means you have to take the dmg from missiles or you move completely out and suffer a dps loss.

- Degauss is a 1s cast. We found that during degauss you can already stack up without exploding eachother, but 1s is too short for any reaction and moving on top of each other. So grouping up the bombs is quite hard.

- With that we had the bombs spread to some degree (We split the room in two halves where there was only one color per side). Even with trying our best, Stalker Protocol was too quickly over and we were rarely able to pick up all the bombs. That left us with some bombs in the middle of the room that hindered us in the further phases.

- As a tank I was moving Watchdog during Stalker Protocol, with the amount of movement we did during degauss, it felt as if the bombs locations on the ground were desynced. I noticed that the animation of them exploding and the stacks on the boss increased when my he walked over the bombs registered on server side, while for me the bombs were at different locations. This was quite frustrating as I sometimes picked up the wrong color by accident.

- With Degauss and Stalker protocol happening almost instantly after each other, we had the bomb of the tank below Watchdog. While casting Stalker protocol, the boss is rooted. So we ended up picking up that bomb below him immediately, with a 50% chance of it being the wrong color. We couldn't think of any way on how to avoid that.

- With how moving intensive the boss is, "Pounce of Pursuit" is quite annoying. I may not have learned yet how to play around it, but since I expect it to be more of a soft punishment, I wish the range where it triggers is a bit further away.

 

We ended up stuck somewhere during the first polarized beam. With the bombs not disappearing, there was too much chaos on the field and mistakes kept accumulating.

Imo making the bombs just a little bit smaller would solve some of our issues without having a huge impact on the boss design.

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Today, we tested the boss on SM again and had no problems killing it.

 

The damage dealt to the tank felt too high for SM, there was a lot of spike damage. In addition, the damage when matching a blue and orange circle feels way too high for SM; same goes for the debuff when you are supposed to stand still but keep moving.

However, with a couple wipes most groups should be able to kill it, so I'd say it is correctly tuned for SM.

 

We didn't notice any bugs today.

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Boss mines are insanely desynced since the last VFX changes.

Also the VFX changes seem pointless. The red circle makes it harder to distinguish which color you and others have.

It was more clear before those changes. Would suggest reverting them, which might also solve the desync issues?

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  • 2 months later...

Hello I did not play the previous iterations. I tested story mode.

 

I play story operations frequently and vet/nim once a week. I play tank.

 

XAM_XAM VIDEO - https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1493707351?t=03h17m43s (but later on in the vid)

 

We ran out of time to actually complete this boss.

 

OVERALL - Kinda confusing and weird compared to the previous boss which was hard and crazy. Didn't complete it but didn't feel quite as fun as the previous one.

 

COLORS - We struggled figuring out what was going on with the colors. Do we have to match? Not match? etc etc. I think we got it eventually but it didn't feel intuitive (I don't know how it would feel intuitive though). The penalty for failing (ex overlapping opposite colors with the boss and murdering the entire group) seem overlay harsh for a story mode. We also realized that we could delete bombs by matching colors... and I accidentally overlapped with opposite trying to get to a matching twice and murder our whole group haha. I also don' feel entirely sure how he scanning mechanic works - if you're rooted to the floor, are you just supposed to eat any missiles on you with your face?

 

DEGAUSS - We were told one of our wipes was because "degauss" didn't happen as a bug by another player, earlier on before we started understanding the color mechanics.

 

BUG - We had the visual of the orange/blue globe/circle persist after death. So you'd walk into the fight anew and still have an orange circle. Getting a new circle color didn't reset it even after the fight started so if you had orange persisting after death and randomly got assigned blue you'd get a blue-white-orange circle LOL.

 

MISSILE COLOR - Is the missile color orange to make things harder? I struggle to tell it apart from the blue/orange mechanic color.

 

BOMBS ON GROUND - Oh. I didn't even realize they fell onto the actual ground until seeing this thread.

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If its helpful here is my little guide for players on how I think the fight works for an explanation.

 

Watchdog is the second boss, and has a large focus on colors for its mechanics.

 

Missiles - The boss will cast Missiles. You can have your team mates group up to start to drop missiles in the same spot then step out of them once they are on the floor - they look like simple orange circles.

 

Colors - The boss will randomly assign each player in the raid a color - blue or orange, which shows up as a glowing circle around your character.

 

Stacking Circles - If you want, during the first time it happens, you can stack up with a player of the same color, and you'll delete eachothers colors making it easier to move around. If you stack up with someone of the opposite color you'll kill each other, so move carefully.

 

Colorful Floor Scan - If the floor is orange, and you are orange, don't move. If the floor is blue, and you are blue, don't move. You should be rooted to the floor when you match its color, but things like Force Speed with Egress might let you move... but if you move while you match the floor color, the boss's scan will be triggered and he'll pounce on you and immediately kill you. So stay still, make sure to use any defensive cooldowns if you get stuck in a missile. Other players who either don't have a color, or the opposite color of the floor, should move and give you space while you match.

 

Boss's Circle Color - Later in the fight the boss gets a colorful circle as well. If the boss is blue, and you are orange, STAY AWAY. Do not let your mis-matching colors overlap with the boss or you will kill your entire group. Tanks may need to do a tank swap so that the tank who has the boss matches the color of the boss - otherwise the tank with the boss will need to run away and not get caught.

 

Stalking - During the stalking phase, the boss will target a player and start chasing them very slowly. The player just needs to stay away. The tank can kinda taunt but seems to lose aggro quickly. If you are on voice comms, have someone call out target of target - "so and so, run away".*

 

Arrows - Later in the fight, the boss will create a colorful arrow between himself and another random player. A player who matches the color of the arrow will need to BETWEEN the player being pointed at and the boss. So if the boss points an orange arrow at me, I would need another orange player to run between me and the boss. [[DIDN'T GET TO TEST THIS OR ANY ADDITIONAL MECHANICS]]

 

[[something about the bombs falling on the floor?]]

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Yesterday, we killed Watchdog SM on the second try.

 

Kill video (healer POV):

 

The boss feels correctly tuned for SM (it is easier than the first boss, but if anything, the first boss should be nerfed and this boss left unchaged).

The mechanics are a lot of fun once you understand them. There is plenty of movement involved but nothing impossible, and the DPS check is loose enough to allow for players moving out of AoE. Outside of some graphical bugs, I'd say the boss can be released as is.

 

Since we quickly killed it, we didn't notice a lot but here are a few notes:

  • When three players stack, their Polarized Proximity Bombs are removed. This should not happen because then one player is unable to cleanse his bomb. Please ensure that only two Bombs will ever be removed and any more bombs nearby will persist.
  • The visual effect of Polarized Proximity Bombs will sometimes persist after death & return to area start.
  • Stalker Protocol happens so quickly that there's not enough time to position the boss. The instant wipe when the boss touches an orb with the wrong color feels overtuned for SM, especially when players don't know what killed them.
  • A few times during Polarized Beam, we had no Proximity Bomb left and I'm pretty sure we did not accidentally remove a Proximity Bomb. Please add some sanity checks to the RNG so that Polarized Beam does not always land on the same color. In any case, our tank easily survived the Polarized Beam with DCDs.

Edited by Jerba
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When three players stack, their Polarized Proximity Bombs are removed. This should not happen because then one player is unable to cleanse his bomb. Please ensure that only two Bombs will ever be removed and any more bombs nearby will persist.

You are not supposed to remove the mines like that, this tactic doesn't work on VM. You are probably supposed to let them fall on the ground and collect them with Stalker protocol, which is currently almost impossible due to the constant visual bugs and desync.

 

After degausus the mines are seen in different places than they truly are. Most of the time it's impossible to recognize the mines and also the mine animation stays on players even when they have no mine. With such desync it is unplayable.

 

This boss is in no shape to be released like this. All other bosses are fine as they are right now, some tweaks and they are perfect. This should be the priority boss for fixes.

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You are not supposed to remove the mines like that, this tactic doesn't work on VM. You are probably supposed to let them fall on the ground and collect them with Stalker protocol, which is currently almost impossible due to the constant visual bugs and desync.

Thanks for the information, I just checked our video and it appears you are correct. Previously, we assumed that all mines had to be removed when Watchdog Protocol starts but apparently, you just need to stand still, then there's no problem with keeping the mines.

While we did notice the visual bugs with mines persisting post-fight, it was not a problem in SM; we have not yet been able to get to this boss in VM but we'll try again next week.

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When the floor is blue or orange so the player has to be stationary I cant see the floor colour well... Could the colour be a brighter thicker beam circling around? I found the bombs left by the orange and blue circles were not always visible.

 

The OP is generally a little mechanic heavy for story mode..

 

Personally i think forcing people to stand in circles and not move is counter intuitive when every other op you have to get out of circles..

I think a boss like dp council is more enjoyable ground mechanics like kiting raptus cleavs / calfy dropping circles, clock phase when it was a thing.. It felt more fun going nuts on damage and getting OUT of stupid.. I find the watchdog mechanics a little irritating..

Edited by LEEscoundral
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Both Watchdog VM and SM

The Multibeam array spawns way too late in the fight, that in both difficulties the boss dies before the add has a chance to spawn. is the add supposed to be an enrage mechanic ? If not, the time it spawns at should be reduced or the boss health increased.

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Watchdog VM

Sometimes there is an extra beam after degausus, which results in a tank dying. There are no mines left to intercept the beam and u can't use a mine on the ground. Should be fixed

 

We compensated for that with Sage God Bubble intercept.

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This is another very fun fight. Will this fight be done by average pugs. I highly doubt it. IMO, again I think mechanics need to still be in the fight for learning HM, but the penalty for failing a mechanic needs to be greatly reduced for the average SM player.
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In regard to VM:

 

The team really needs to fix the polarization bombs not disappearing when they have been detonated already. It's just stupid to have to remember which ones have been triggered and which not.

 

Other than that, the encounter is fine though quite unforgiving with the stack mechanic on the boss.

We've also experienced some issues with missiles hitting players despite them clearly and visibly being outside. Maybe that's just some lag spike here and there though. What's a bit irritating is the missile impact zone being slightly bigger than the visual suggests. there's just no reason for it. Either the visual is too small or the actual impact too big. Choose one and adjust accordingly. Doesn't really matter which

We've also run into threat issues where the boss would leap to a ranged DPS despite the tank still being above them in threat. It just doesn't seem to work all that well. Not experiencing these issues with other bosses on the live server. It's like the threat threshold for his pounce of pursuit skill is out of whack a bit.

 

One mechanic issue many seem to have is the 5th polarization beam after degauss has been cast that is a mechanic death no matter what you do. Right now, the only thing we have found to avoid it is to simply have the sin tank vanish to interrupt the cast.

Edited by Aethyriel
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This is a followup post for my feedback on VM in regards to the recent changes.

 

If you're able to fix that bombs disappear after being detonated during Stalker Protocol I'd say this fight is in a very good state. It rewards playing it cleanly very well with increasing the dmg on the boss via the debuff while making it ever so slightly harder if you're not able to do that.

The only small thing I'd still criticize is that the first Stalker Protocal happens rather quickly after Degauss, so if the Boss is not moved rapidly after Degauss he will start the cast on top if the tanks dropped bomb. If it happens to be the opposite colour -> raid wide detonation. Not a big issue, but sometimes it feels to be a bit too close to comfort.

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