- P2 = Imp Troopers, Phoenix, Ackbar/Leia. P3 = Chex. P4 = Nightsisters to kill Nihilus, then throw everything at it, often starting with Rebels. I can't play P1 because I don't have JTR.
- I am motivated by Traya shards, rare gear, and a feeling of obligation to my guild mates (who may or may not have the same motivations). I am not motivated by challenge gear. No need for a fancy solution: just remove it and add in more non-challenge gear, please.
- I enjoy the Sith theme of the raid and the characters that were introduced with it. I do not enjoy how static the raid feels. There's nothing dynamic about it. A lot of new mechanics and animations, but still just feels like a grind. I do not enjoy how JTR and Death Trooper are the only ways to do significant damage. If you want a raid to be a puzzle, it should change each run. Playing a puzzle for the 15th time is no longer puzzling.
Thanks for the invitation to give feedback! I know people can be plenty rude even without opinions being solicited, so it's kind of you to invite it.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
- 88M GP, and only a few members with JTR.
- T4 exclusively. T5 is possible but takes us 3x longer for barely any rewards.
- We have a lot of new players without access to JTR, NS, CHEX, Troopers, etc. So we have a lot of players whose best option is zEP, Jedis, Phoenix, or classix rebels.
- P1 is such a nightmare for our guild (no JTR or NS), that we REALLY struggle to get through P1. Not only is it slow, it's horribly aggravating, and the mechanics are either broken or intentionally designed to not annihilate when you expect, and waste your defense special. It's bull. P1 has caused so much demoralization, quitting players, and lack of participation. If P1 was removed, we'd have 10x more fun.
- We like the mechanics in P2 and P3. P1 is a nightmare and P4 is just recycled without the fun parts (boring).
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
You guys already have all of this statistical information, and a ton more.
Everyone, including CG knows phase 1 and 4 are ridiculous.
Everyone, including CG knows only the elite guilds can finish the raid on heroic, nothing below that matters. (Especially given the garbage rewards)
Everyone, including CG knows the stupidity of the raid is only widening the power gap in game.
Most of all, Everyone, including CG knows this raid IS NOT FUN. Games are supposed to be fun.
This is a failed end game experience experiment. Move on.
-What tier or tiers did you play?
Tier 4
-What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
70mil
-What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Various, no JTR but 7* Deathtrooper.
-What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivate? Some loot is better than none?
Demotivate? Boring, Nihilus' mechanics, how long it takes to do, not worthy loot, etc...
-What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
P2 and P3 are OK, P1 and P4 and quit worthy.
2) 60m GP then after the top 3 people (The only 3 with a JTR Team) left to join guilds that can do T6/Heroic we dropped to ~50m. Then after others stopped playing due to the top people leaving/didn't want to have to do the raid, we lost another ~5m to bring us to 45m
3) The raid generally takes ~3 days to finish, so everyone throws everything they can into phase 1. Which generally takes an entire day. No one in the guild has a JTR team, so Phase 1 goes very slow. Phase 2 and three are usually done within a 6 hours. Our guild generally uses the "best" teams available for them. Lately, most of the guild has finished putting together Chex Mix for Phase 3. Phase 4 takes another day to get through. We don't have any JTR teams, so its a long slog through getting DN down, then much quicker after that.
4/5) The shield on DN has to be the most demoralizing. Even doing high damage gets mitigated and even sometimes nulled entirely. Only have 1 option for reliable amount of damage on Nihilus is very discouraging to the guild, especially since JTR is one of the hardest farms in the game (the Vets requirement alone is enough to make most of our guild not make her a priority). I would recommend to make the shield on DN only something for T5/6/Heroic. And even at T5 scale it way down. Overall, I like the theme of the raid. And I also enjoy Phases 2 and 3. I even like Phase 4 once DN is down. The real downfall of the raid is centered entirely around DN from my standpoint.
The gear is really bad for such a low tier after the rollback. For a guild that does heroic Pit and HAAT there seems to be no point in even doing T2 of Sith, and T3 take even longer to do. Not to mention most of the gear that the top end members of the guild need come from T5+ of the raid... so we will not be seeing those tiers for quite a while.
""What tier or tiers did you play?""
T6 then heroic.
""What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?""
160m GP now
""What teams you did you attempt the raid with?""
Uh, everything.
""What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?""
I dislike the entire raid.
""What about the raid did you enjoy?""
The loot box.
"" What did you dislike about the raid?""
Everything. It is a colossal time sink. Making attempt after attempt and only getting .2% damage and having to wait for better rng to bring that up to a whopping 2% is NOT fun in the least. Bringing an entire team's gear up from g11 to g12 simply means the possibility to do miniscule more damage, but still having to run attempt after attempt in airplane mode to score at an acceptable level.
Your grand plan of "Every guildie matters and must contribute" to a raid to be able to down it is unsustainable. At my job we get two days off a week, several weeks off a year.. But no, not swgoh, have to contribute fully 100% 365 days a year. Alternative is to get booted from guild or have guild fail at the raid or other game modes. Frankly I don't want every single guildie to matter, I want to have a day off every now and then and same for my guildies.
I've been playing for two years and this raid, coupled with the time sink additions that have been added (TW is horrible in needing to constantly log on throughout the day to see if able to do a battle is bad time sink.) has been the direct cause of more people quitting the game in my guild than any other item. More people dropped out of guild and quit the game in one month than during the previous year and a half in the guild. I am now in another guild due to so many in the last guild quitting. I had fun in the last guild and enjoyed the people, I would have liked to stay on with them but in order to get things done in game left.
Time sink and a dozen attempts to get one run at more than 1% damage does not a fun game make.
We have worked T5, T6, and recently tried a T7 or HSTR
I’ve tried a decent amount of teams suggested by Game Changers and other Youtubers.
Mostly JTR phase1 E Troopers, Chex mix, and Hyoda combos.
I have to say nothing about this raid is enjoyable at all...
I never get off work, and get excited about attempting an attack run in this raid.
Rancor, and HAAT were fun and challenging, but this raid does not have any of those qualities.
I think the mechanics are too difficult, and way too RNG dependent.
Averaging a score below 1million, with all g12, well modded characters also is disappointing, especially how long it takes to take one character to g12.
I also don’t like that I need new health mods in this raid because protection is simply a waste.
The only thing I like is the cool backgrounds in each phase that the battles take place in. Bravo to the designers on the art concepts.
It’s very clear to me, that the only guilds able to finish this raid need 50 JTR and average guild player power of over 3million.
Sadly I have come to accept this reality until a new toon is released that is intended to do well in this overly complicated raid.
What tier or tiers did you play?
T3/4/5 but I think we've settled on T4 being the one that most peeps can contribute to.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
75m
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Troopers, Current Palp meta arena team with SiT as tank.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
It's a huge time investment. Takes our guild days to complete a T4 and almost a week for the T5. This is a mobile game, I'm not keen on staring at my phone for a super long time.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
It's a technically complex raid which I understand caters to some of the hardcore players. The mechanics behind it are impressive, none the less they're pretty brutal. As a player who loves Empire, it's a faction that's heavily dependent on debuffs so the stacking tenacity sort of shuts them down. I odn't much like the rewards we're getting for such low tiers of the raid. Like I'm not saying that a T4 should drop G12+ gear but as someone who doesn't have the time to get higher than 7th or so place, it's definitely just not worth my while.
All in all I know that this is a raid and that they require specific teams to do well, I just feel like all in all this one requires some seriously specialized heroes and teams that I chose not to farm. So I guess that's on me. I don't intend to unlock JTR or gear up my Resistance any time soon since I prefer dark side teams. So ultimately if my preference in heroes is what holds me back in this raid then I guess it is what it is. I farmed up Clones for hAAT and they ended up being pretty bad in other areas of the game so I got burned once already and don't even run them in P4 anymore since I think Troopers are better/more fun.
At the end of the day I play this game to have fun and STR doesn't come off as fun to me, more like a chore. I'm stoked for the Bounty Hunter rework. I think you guys nailed that. Can't wait for Bossk to go F2P and get him rolling in the raid. That should help myself and guild out.
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Tier 1 and 2
About 12 million GP
Using empire and other attackers. Not a large roster to choose from
Tier 2 takes us 5+ days for not very good gear rewards. Tier 1 gear rewards are even worse, totally useless really, but the guild currency is only slightly less than tier 2 raid so we've started doing tier 1 raids to earn some $$ until we burn through some launch tickets. Takes us about 2 days to clear a tier 1.
Biggest issue is the time it takes for meager rewards. This guild is small and lower level, but we're finishing tier 6 rancor in a couple days and AAT in about a week. It's silly that a tier 2 sith raid takes as long as a tier 6 AAT and does not have a comparable payout for the time and effort.
What tier? T5, T4, T4, repeat
What GP? 117m
What teams? Varies among members, but the established and previously mentioned comps.
motivation? Traya, and heroic rewards, eventually
demotivation? As previously mentioned - it's a big, un-fun, chore. RNG dependence. Ludicrous tenacity. Stingey rewards.
What about the raid did you enjoy? Battling Sion.
Pet dislike? Inability to remove 'Isolated' in phase4. what's up with that?!
I can appreciate the amount of work that went into crafting this raid, and the attachment to the mechanics that is probably felt by the devs and strategists. And yes, it's deviously difficult and defies any autoing - clear goals during development. But what it has been most successful in has been fracturing guilds, especially guilds that are non-homogenous in member/roster strength. I think this is a big negative when considering the long-term health of the community.
To be honest, if I could trade tickets for gear, instead of launching the raid, I would - until heroic runs seemed viable. Activity levels have dipped since it's release. Apathy levels have spiked. The 'job' of being an officer has gotten harder.
Fairly new to the game and the raids, but to me, this raid is my least favorite part of the whole experience of the game. Hammering away at the same opponents until all your characters die off is just not very fun. Maybe it would be different if I were maxed out on gear but the game play would still be the same. I don’t look forward to this one each day, but have to do it to get some rewards. I’d absolutely love to have a different raid replace this one.
1) I have completed the heroic tier.
2) Gp was about 140m.
3) I have tried most of the popular teams
Jtr resistance, chexmix, nightsisters, thrawn troopers, cls rebels, phoenix w sabine, other teams featuring sabine, AA leia spam.
4 & 5) as someone who comes from an MMO background I really enjoyed the first two raids I was excited for a third raid especially with one that was placed in the Old Republic and ultimately disappointed with what I got. I find it rather boring and tiresome I don't feel like I have that many choices in teams I can use or even what I can do during the fights themselves it seems like there's only one way to approach them. All of those things combined made me feel like I was just checking boxes off again there was nothing interesting and I I was and still am very close to just putting it down. And then there was all the back and forth and confusion with Rewards just kind of left me in a bad way.
So I'll recap here a little I enjoyed getting a new raid I enjoyed that it was set in the Old Republic. I did not find it very interesting or stimulating.
What tier or tiers did you play?
Tried Tier 5 & 6 with one guild, then tried Heroic with a new guild
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
145 Million currently, we beat it when we were at 137 million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR, Chex Mix, NS, Sith, and most of the other toons suck (my bounty hunters are too weak and the jedi faction outside of anakin in the chex mix team/Hyoda/GK are useless)
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Honestly it's been a slog since it was launched. The rewards have been horrible before I hit heroic. After we completed heroic the first time, you guys nerfed the rewards so then participation dropped and people got mad (I think you know what I'm referring to). Once you brought back the old rewards, participation was better. I think the better the rewards = more participation/enjoyment. Otherwise it's just a very tough, long, difficult raid without much purpose.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Having a JTR squad, I have enjoyed learning how to maximize damage with them on ph1. I dislike that it took me leaving an old guild I was part of to beat Heroic. I wish you guys would have learned from the HAAT and not made such a silly mistake of nerfing rewards after nerfing the Resistance faction's exposes.
Sith raid almost destroyed our guild. We are a 68 mill. guild right now. We lost more than 10 members because of quiting, loosing complete interest of the game or finding stronger guilds. If this raid didnt happen we might be around 80 mill. now. The moral is low, have to beg for participating in the raid. We had a lot of arguing about the raid, some former members stopped participating in STR completly we had to kick them because of the sake of others. We do T4 raid in 3 days, mostly because of a few stronger players like me. Im doing 30 mill damage, Im the best right now. We only have 2 JTR teams in our guild. One is mine. The rewards are worthless for the effort needed. P1 is too hard for most of our members. We use the strongest teams we have, a complete mess. We only have a few teams we can use succesfully, but we dont have time and interest right now to farm toons just for this (sorry for this) garbage. I use JTR,bb8,r2,restrooper for main damage. The others are Bh team, mix of empore and go, nightsisters, and a mix rebel team acbar or lando lead with cls. (Also the TW is frustrating too. For a 68 mill guild against 86 mill. We didnt won a tw in months, beacuse of the poor machmaking.)The sith raid is also too timeconsuming. Sometimes I dont have time to do the 5 attacks so I just put them on auto (I have a job and life too) if I do that, I barely scrach the bosses. I hope I helped a little, so you can change this, so we can enjoy the game again!
What tier or tiers did you play? We rotate T5, T5, T6 so we don't max out tickets.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 114m.
What teams you did you attempt the raid with? Standard teams mentioned above.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Demotivating issues: Any phase where Nihilus is alive is just flat out bad. The mechanics of the fight are awful and you try over and over until you get enough decent RNG where he uses his abilities in a predictable order.
Motivating: GE currency is nice but should definitely be increased due to the time sink the raid is.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
The randomness just kills it. It isn't fun. At all. It's easily the worst part of the game right now. Way too much time invested for absolutely horrible return on investment. It just gets worse and worse as the raid never seems to stop. It takes so long to complete that the sith raid is ALWAYS going on. It's demoralizing.
- What tier or tiers did you play? mostly T5, some T6 and monthly heroic attempts to gauge guild progress (currently wiping towards the end of p2)
- What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? currently 130m, just under 125m during most recent heroic attempt
- What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
I now have most of the standard recommended teams (JTR, Boba lead Wampa, First Order, Nightsisters, Troopers, chex mix)
- What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Not much positive motivating factors present at the moment, other than sheer bloody-mindedness. We're a relatively casual guild who aren't quite able to clear heroic yet, although that will hopefully change soon. Very disappointed to see that the lessons of AAT have not been learned in terms of balancing the non-heroic modes, T6 in particular has way too much health meaning it's a miserably long grind - the fact that many guilds have reported that the point at which it can be completed faster than the required tickets to relaunch it is the point at which you are probably ready to complete heroic is a horrible situation. T6 should have damage output close enough to heroic that it's a viable practice environment, but shouldn't have so much health that it needs to be always up for any guild remotely near heroic. At the moment we're doing T5 in a little over two refreshes, that's way below our potential as a guild but a significant proportion of our membership have given up spending their time on it at all, and to be honest the officer group don't really feel like we can blame them for that. In addition, as many others have mentioned the rewards are not on a par with the effort involved, although reducing the health of the raid (and thus time spent to earn them) may fix this just as well as increasing the rewards. I was actually happy when the announcement was made that reward loot was going to be equalised for all members, and then massively let down when it transpired what this actually meant - the initial announcement suggested to me that the loot per person would be roughly equal to somewhere between what top 10 and top 20 currently get, but as it turned out it was way worse, so everyone in the top half of each guild who worked hardest to down the raid got penalised.
- What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
The best part of new raids is discovering what tactics work and how to use new mechanics introduced, and the sith raid has some good features in this area. Both Sion's and Traya's mechanics are interesting and lend themselves to building teams to take advantage of.
The worst parts of the raid are unfortunatlely the parts that have either directly or indirectly been inherited from previous raids and for some reason we're still stuck with every time:
Firstly setting up raids which consistently eliminate groups of characters or team builds from being viable at any point, in this case by means of the excessive tenacity bonuses granted to the bosses. In a single phase this wouldnt be a problem, and in fact is probably a good thing to add a unique feel to a phase and encourage distinct team builds and tactics to be used, but when applied to the whole raid simply frustrates players as a chunk of their roster becomes irrelevant.
Secondly, and possibly as a result of the above, being totally dependant on a single team build to efficiently manage one or more phases of the raid, in this case JTR resistance for phase 1, made particularly offensive because of the requirement for use of a recent legendary character which causes massive friction within guilds as players who dont have the required character/team are pressured to either get it as soon as possible, find other ways of contributing competent damage, or worst kicked out of the guild.
Finally, and probably the worst problem is the RNG factor. This was also a significant issue in AAT before that raid became farmable, and it's clearly back here. The massive variance between attempts on a phase with the same team means that particularly for heroic, guilds who are only just able to complete the raid require their members to spend several hours re-running their attempts until they get a favourable run with high damage. There are two elements to this, one is bosses having abilites with a random element to them, which Nihilus is probably the worst example of in a raid to date - in order to get an efficient run you frequently have to guess whether he's going to attack a buffed character, how many people drain force will manage to affect, and whether he will actually choose to use annihilate when it's available.
The other major factor that causes RNG is the 50% chance heroic bosses have to take a third attack. This is one of the worst design choices in the entire game and somehow it has survived through all three raids, because it means that in order to get a 'good' run you're frequently making large numbers of attempts until you get one where the extra attack happens significantly less than half the time. While it makes perfect sense to up the bosses threat level in heroic, this is a terrible way to accomplish that - simply upping the damage on the attacks would achieve the same ends but without the random factor. In the sith raid this is made even worse as when combined with Nihilus basic being able to reduce his other cooldowns it becomes even more influential.
Apologies for the long post, thanks for listening. In short my wish list would be:
Reduce the health pool of T5 and T6 (but not their damage outputs as was done with AAT, they need to be balanced not trivialised)
Revisit the concept of levelling out gear rewards - the principle was good, the application was flawed
For future raid design, please please please consider how to minimise the negative experience for players - reduce the RNG factor, and don't include mechanics that eliminate large groups of characters from viable use or mandate the use of specific teams
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I play the heroic tier, my guild started about 5-6 weeks ago.
Guild GP was 136m when we started the heroic tier and now is 140m
P1 - JTR teams / P2 - Grinders squads (Sith, Phoenix, Ackbar/Leia teams/Hermit Yoda & etc.) / P3 - Chex Mix (CLS lead, Chirrut/Rex, Death Trooper, Raid Han & Pao) / P4 - Nightsisters at the start, then First Order Teams, Troopers and what teams the guild has left.
My main motivations are gear and Traya shards. I am a very good player in a top tier guild, my pg is about 2.6M, I am getting p1 at both arenas every day, got a good amount of g12/zetaed toons (especially my arena and raid teams), got very good mods and my JTR team currently holds the record of the highest score at the p1 (about 9%) inside my guild.
I don't enjoy this raid at all and I go through it trying to tolerate the experience as much as I can. Usually when I am playing the sith raid I start to hate myself for joining in a guild just to make the heroic tier of the raid.
I don't think my experience is bad because the raid is too hard (a raid can be hard and fun like a lot of games out there) but because the experience is too dependent in the rng. It's a pain having to reset every single run 5, 10, 20 times per team that I run until I am able to score a damage decent enough to post (about 2-4% per phase). Swgoh is a mobile game and it shouldn't be consuming that much time with an annoying rng.
My main feed back is: you can make the raid hard/very hard, just don't make the experience too dependent at the rng as it is because it kills all the fun and causes a lot of frustration.
Raid has killed the magic of the game. I'm a launch player, and have logged in everyday since then except for a short break due to life. I haven't logged in to play for four days now and probably won't again.
The raid is more like a job, and not fun in the least. When guilds can only use JTR on phase 1 because nothing else works, it should be obvious whoever designed Nihilus did a terrible job. Fighting him twice is just a kick to the groin.
My 60Mil GP guild has been playing Tiers III and IV of the raid. I use my three main teams (Phoenix, Empire, and FO) throughout the whole raid, simply because I don't have anyone better yet (though I hear Phoenix and FO are useful in certain phases).
I despise any phases of the raid that have Nihilus in them (1 and 4). The protection mechanic is ridiculous, and completely demotivates me from playing. Lately, I don't even participate during these stages. I don't mind the trickiness of avoiding the annihilates, and I can even live with the hitting through protection (though I don't really like that either), but his protection is just annoying. Actually, it makes no sense, since the playable version of Nihilus' leader ability actually removes protection, so why would the raid version be the only boss to have protection?
My favorite phase is Phase 2, but unfortunately that's also the easiest phase. My guild will often blow through that phase before I even get a chance to hit it.
Phase 3 is fun. I like the challenge, and the topple mechanic. I almost wish that you could topple her in phase 4 as well, but I see how that would be difficult with multiple raid bosses. tl;dr: Get rid of Nihilus protection!
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Hi, thanks for the opportunity to share some infos.
I learned to enjoy p1. With more time now me and my guildmates are reading DN a bit better to reduce its inherent RNG.
But this 50% chance for a third action is too much random. We can live with it, but it adds an huge amount of unnecessary RNG to the run.
P2 seems fine for me.
P3 is an RNG nightmare. I bet you didn't see the chez mix coming ^^. But now it raises an infinite amount of questions due to randomness buffs on the sabers, random isolate hits from traya. And once you topple the random counter and dodge.
It's a pity it may take 30/40mins for a 2 min fight.
This is the part we all like less in our guild.
P4 is **** hard but also readable and doable.
Overall it's a lot of RNG and tries to get the end results. Which is sad because we have to dedicate it a lot of time.
On the other hand now the rewards are definitely worth shooting the raid as hard as you can.
Our MAIN CONCERN now is the P4 scores glitch.
Top places should remain to the competitive and focused members, awarding their abilities and commitment.
It's not viable that every single raid positions are messed up because of this BUG.
Once you fix this, we'll get along.
To add to my previous comment, while I've enjoyed learning and playing with the mechanics of the raid, I've noticed some factors that would make the whole thing less RNG dependent, and more strategy dependant.
- in P1 Darth Nihilus has a 50% chance to take a bonus action after his second action. This alone makes the chances of a successful run RNG dependent. It's almost impossible to plan ahead because of this. It's highly frustrating to have to restart your 5-10 minute run because the AI RNG decided to attack a third time. Ultimately, it's stressful. This is the same for P2 with Darth Sion. Eliminating this feature would make runs now consistent without taking away from the strength of the raid boss.
-in P1 we have no control over who gets the second unbreakable will buff after the first was given. For instance, if bb8 gets the UW, there's no reason to continue the run because he's the catalyst for the team, and must take turns. Eliminating this feature and replacing it with something more controllable would alleviate this frustration. Perhaps whoever defeats the menacing foe gets the buff. This would be much more efficient and would allow us to strategize accordingly.
-throughout the raid, the bosses have stacking tenacity. This renders many characters useless, as debuffs have been prominent for some time. It's a highly frustrating experience but could possibly benefit from reevaluation.
- as I've stated in my previous post, I personally feel the rewards that are currently in place at the heroic level (guaranteed gear piece among salvage) are fair for the time/effort involved. For t6 and below, the rewards are underwhelming and because of this, I've noticed some are unmotivated to participate.
Please take these things into account as well. Thank you.
-Raid Tier:
Mostly played T4, did some T3 due to burnout/wasting raid tickets, but back to T4 because reward/effort ratio is so low and reducing tiers does not significantly reduce the effort/time involved.
-Guild GP:
65.7M, only half are posting total scores over 1M at this point (but we have decent participation in other activities)
-My teams:
P1
Nightsisters (talzin lead no zeta, asaaj zeta unique, zombie, daka, x)
Sith (Nihilus lead, palp, vader, maul, dooku, no active zetas)
Empire (Thrawn lead, magma + death + shore troopers, TFP, no active zetas)
P2, P3, and P4
Phoenix (Hera lead, ezra, sabine, kanaan, zeb, no zetas)
Rebels (CLS lead, R2, Chopper, ST Han zeta, Raid Han zeta/Princess Leia)
+ all P1 teams
My roster is still fairly shallow (no JTR, 1/3 of my roster is level 1, 1/2 of my leveled roster is below G9) and the mechanics and boss immunities preclude the use of many of the teams I had worked on making my roster feel fairly useless in the raid, particularly phases 1 and 4 (zFinn, FO, ackbar, droids, turn meter removing teams). Currently 20 shards from finishing the vets, so I should get JTR next time around.
-Motivations:
Demotivators
Rewards. We spend 5+ days with many people putting in multiple hours of running their best teams several times to get good scores and get junk. We start up rancor, wait 24 hours for people to tag it with 0, and then hit auto. 1 hour later, rewards that are, on average, BETTER than what we get in the sith raid show up in the mail. The effort/reward ratio is WAY off.
Boss immunity and tenacity stacking. Why bother creating such powerful debuffs/effects for playable characters if you recognize they are too powerful for pve? Is it somehow better for them to be overpowered in pvp... when people are competing against each other for the most powerful debuff? And then to base certain characters' toolkits around certain debuffs which the boss is immune to or resists... (shock as an example, but many others as well).
Phase 1. Everything nihilus does stacks together to make a terrible encounter. You can't buff up because that just gets stolen. You can't counter/assist because you just feed him protection. You can't debuff because of stacking tenacity. He increases your cooldowns, forcing you to basic attack him (which is a weak attack generally, feeds him protection, debuffs you, and buffs his speed/tenacity). Annihilate can be unpredictable resulting in The only workable team is JTR because it is the only team with unresistable expose. Jyn COULD work, but debuffs get resisted because of the stacking tenacity so the expose won't land. Catch 22! Gotta get through tenacity to use the unresistable expose of Jyn... (maybe if Jyn's lead was 50% to expose when attempting to apply a debuff...)
Enrage timers. Each of the bosses already has a soft enrage mechanic (or a mechanic that could easily become a soft enrage with a slight modification) that will make them eventually kill any team. (Nihilus's Annihilate has a faster cooldown/more ways to reduce the cooldown than Feed the Void so eventually he will be able to annihilate a character that is not protected. Sion's Cycle of pain/suffering could be tweaked to keep stacking giving him unlimited offense, Traya's bond of weakness has limited numbers of clears and will therefore eventually take any team to 1 hp with every action they take.) When you took out the escape button which was present for the other raids which allowed powerful teams to escape enrage timers, why did you keep the timer? Why did you make the escape button in the first place if you did not want teams to escape the timer? All of this confuses me. Since the bosses already have built in mechanics which can kill teams, it seems logical to remove the timer. A compromise could be to keep the enrage timer for heroic (haven't played sith heroic, but I have played both heroic and non-heroic tank and rancor) and remove it for non-heroic tiers. You cannot use your entire roster anyways since non-heroic tiers have attempt limits, therefore the theoretical purpose of the enrage (to use your entire roster) is a moot point.
Motivators
Phase 2 is quite enjoyable. The risk/reward game of phase 2 (and phase 4 after nihilus is dead) is the most enjoyable part of the raid. Two thumbs up for that!
-Enjoyment:
Motivators are enjoyable, demotivators are not.
JTR and troopers do the most damage. The rest is roughly the same, although bounty hunters show a little promise.
The main issue with this raid is keeping everyone interested. Myself and about 5 others do 90% of the damage. Most of our members auto 1 team and are done with it. When asked why they point out the raid mechanics make it way too tedious (does Nihilus really need protection regeneration? He's hard enough). I would suggest lowering the health pool by 25% across all tiers except heroic and for the sake of sanity, get rid of Nihilus protection regeneration.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
100mil
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Jtr, nightsisters, rebels, first order, empire, sith, jawas
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
I don't try. If I'm really bored I play manually, but mostly I auto. Fortunately, the raid eventually ends.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I do not enjoy the raid at all. Protection regen and debuff immunity (essentially) makes this raid totally unenjoyable.
We have received a wide range of feedback about the newest raid, The Sith Triumvirate and we would like to hear more about your experience. Please include the following information in addition to your feedback:
What tier or tiers did you play?
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
1. Tier 6, taking 4ish days. We run a heroic calibration raid every 4-6 weeks.
2. 130M GP
3. Full G12+3 JTR, Full G12+3 Thrawn troopers, G12 Nihlus led Sith, Chex Mix, G12 zAssaj led NS, Rebel/attacker hodge podges based on phase, usually based around CLS, Ahsoka, Wiggs, OG Leia, Hoda, zBarris
4. There is nothing motivating about this raid beyond obligation to the guild. There is nothing I can do to get Traya shards until the bottom half of the guild gets a half dozen zetas and does months of farming. In the mean time it is a demoralizing 90 minute frustrating time-suck with RNG based mechanics that break almost everything enjoyable or strategic about the game and nullifies nearly every synergy. It is the first thing that has made me seriously consider quitting since I started playing (at launch.) I would pay you money to never have to play it again without letting the guild down. I don’t care about the rewards. NOTHING is worth the time and frustration of engaging with this content.
5. If you want something positive, P2 is less broken mechanically than the other phases largely because it is deterministic and hence slightly less abusive and frustrating... But.. I never get to play P2 because it gets plowed through in 30 minutes at 1am right at reset while I’m sleeping (I can only assume the reset time is not 24 hours from start is some kind of sadistic sleep deprivation tactic.)
[*] What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
106 million
[*] What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Jedi Rey, Nightsisters, Troopers, Ewoks, CLS Rebels, Phoenix...Palpateams. Nihilus Leads.
[*] What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
The only reason I continue to do the raid is to help my guildies. The raid is a constant pain because it takes too long to finish...too long to contribute. For all the work I do I don't feel like I help even when I do 40 million damage in a few days. T4-6 rewards aren't worth the time investment.
The bosses Tenacity makes most people's roster feel useless. That feeling of uselessness is what has demotivated most of my guild and it's hard to motivate them to attack because they don't have the perfect roster.
There's just a general lack of fun with the raid and no real reward that's not in heroic.
I honestly have tried to like it...and can't find a way to enjoy it...and can't find a way to motivate the rest of my guild to enjoy it because no one does. There's not a positive thing said when I kick off the raid. It's just a collective sigh.
[*] What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I've only enjoyed the P2 mechanic. The rest of the mechanics feel troll-y.
Nihilus's annihilate isn't fun. It seems random and unpredictable which means just forfeit and start over. Any phase he's in most players try to avoid. The protection gain is not in line with his character fiction in the game. His leadership literally makes protection non-existent...seems inconsistent. Not being able to use basic attacks eliminates most teams from being effective at all even minimally. Him ignoring protection also makes a lot of characters useless.
P3 has one effective strategy. The damage over time punishment and the topple strategy just isn't fun. Isolate, I understand the theme...I just don't enjoy it.
P4 isn't great because of Nihilus he sucks the fun out of it. I honestly can't put my finger on what about this phase makes it not fun.
Replies
- 150M guild GP
- P2 = Imp Troopers, Phoenix, Ackbar/Leia. P3 = Chex. P4 = Nightsisters to kill Nihilus, then throw everything at it, often starting with Rebels. I can't play P1 because I don't have JTR.
- I am motivated by Traya shards, rare gear, and a feeling of obligation to my guild mates (who may or may not have the same motivations). I am not motivated by challenge gear. No need for a fancy solution: just remove it and add in more non-challenge gear, please.
- I enjoy the Sith theme of the raid and the characters that were introduced with it. I do not enjoy how static the raid feels. There's nothing dynamic about it. A lot of new mechanics and animations, but still just feels like a grind. I do not enjoy how JTR and Death Trooper are the only ways to do significant damage. If you want a raid to be a puzzle, it should change each run. Playing a puzzle for the 15th time is no longer puzzling.
Thanks for the invitation to give feedback! I know people can be plenty rude even without opinions being solicited, so it's kind of you to invite it.
- 88M GP, and only a few members with JTR.
- T4 exclusively. T5 is possible but takes us 3x longer for barely any rewards.
- We have a lot of new players without access to JTR, NS, CHEX, Troopers, etc. So we have a lot of players whose best option is zEP, Jedis, Phoenix, or classix rebels.
- P1 is such a nightmare for our guild (no JTR or NS), that we REALLY struggle to get through P1. Not only is it slow, it's horribly aggravating, and the mechanics are either broken or intentionally designed to not annihilate when you expect, and waste your defense special. It's bull. P1 has caused so much demoralization, quitting players, and lack of participation. If P1 was removed, we'd have 10x more fun.
- We like the mechanics in P2 and P3. P1 is a nightmare and P4 is just recycled without the fun parts (boring).
You guys already have all of this statistical information, and a ton more.
Everyone, including CG knows phase 1 and 4 are ridiculous.
Everyone, including CG knows only the elite guilds can finish the raid on heroic, nothing below that matters. (Especially given the garbage rewards)
Everyone, including CG knows the stupidity of the raid is only widening the power gap in game.
Most of all, Everyone, including CG knows this raid IS NOT FUN. Games are supposed to be fun.
This is a failed end game experience experiment. Move on.
Tier 4
-What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
70mil
-What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Various, no JTR but 7* Deathtrooper.
-What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivate? Some loot is better than none?
Demotivate? Boring, Nihilus' mechanics, how long it takes to do, not worthy loot, etc...
-What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
P2 and P3 are OK, P1 and P4 and quit worthy.
2) 60m GP then after the top 3 people (The only 3 with a JTR Team) left to join guilds that can do T6/Heroic we dropped to ~50m. Then after others stopped playing due to the top people leaving/didn't want to have to do the raid, we lost another ~5m to bring us to 45m
3) The raid generally takes ~3 days to finish, so everyone throws everything they can into phase 1. Which generally takes an entire day. No one in the guild has a JTR team, so Phase 1 goes very slow. Phase 2 and three are usually done within a 6 hours. Our guild generally uses the "best" teams available for them. Lately, most of the guild has finished putting together Chex Mix for Phase 3. Phase 4 takes another day to get through. We don't have any JTR teams, so its a long slog through getting DN down, then much quicker after that.
4/5) The shield on DN has to be the most demoralizing. Even doing high damage gets mitigated and even sometimes nulled entirely. Only have 1 option for reliable amount of damage on Nihilus is very discouraging to the guild, especially since JTR is one of the hardest farms in the game (the Vets requirement alone is enough to make most of our guild not make her a priority). I would recommend to make the shield on DN only something for T5/6/Heroic. And even at T5 scale it way down. Overall, I like the theme of the raid. And I also enjoy Phases 2 and 3. I even like Phase 4 once DN is down. The real downfall of the raid is centered entirely around DN from my standpoint.
The gear is really bad for such a low tier after the rollback. For a guild that does heroic Pit and HAAT there seems to be no point in even doing T2 of Sith, and T3 take even longer to do. Not to mention most of the gear that the top end members of the guild need come from T5+ of the raid... so we will not be seeing those tiers for quite a while.
""What tier or tiers did you play?""
T6 then heroic.
""What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?""
160m GP now
""What teams you did you attempt the raid with?""
Uh, everything.
""What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?""
I dislike the entire raid.
""What about the raid did you enjoy?""
The loot box.
"" What did you dislike about the raid?""
Everything. It is a colossal time sink. Making attempt after attempt and only getting .2% damage and having to wait for better rng to bring that up to a whopping 2% is NOT fun in the least. Bringing an entire team's gear up from g11 to g12 simply means the possibility to do miniscule more damage, but still having to run attempt after attempt in airplane mode to score at an acceptable level.
Your grand plan of "Every guildie matters and must contribute" to a raid to be able to down it is unsustainable. At my job we get two days off a week, several weeks off a year.. But no, not swgoh, have to contribute fully 100% 365 days a year. Alternative is to get booted from guild or have guild fail at the raid or other game modes. Frankly I don't want every single guildie to matter, I want to have a day off every now and then and same for my guildies.
I've been playing for two years and this raid, coupled with the time sink additions that have been added (TW is horrible in needing to constantly log on throughout the day to see if able to do a battle is bad time sink.) has been the direct cause of more people quitting the game in my guild than any other item. More people dropped out of guild and quit the game in one month than during the previous year and a half in the guild. I am now in another guild due to so many in the last guild quitting. I had fun in the last guild and enjoyed the people, I would have liked to stay on with them but in order to get things done in game left.
Time sink and a dozen attempts to get one run at more than 1% damage does not a fun game make.
We have worked T5, T6, and recently tried a T7 or HSTR
I’ve tried a decent amount of teams suggested by Game Changers and other Youtubers.
Mostly JTR phase1 E Troopers, Chex mix, and Hyoda combos.
I have to say nothing about this raid is enjoyable at all...
I never get off work, and get excited about attempting an attack run in this raid.
Rancor, and HAAT were fun and challenging, but this raid does not have any of those qualities.
I think the mechanics are too difficult, and way too RNG dependent.
Averaging a score below 1million, with all g12, well modded characters also is disappointing, especially how long it takes to take one character to g12.
I also don’t like that I need new health mods in this raid because protection is simply a waste.
The only thing I like is the cool backgrounds in each phase that the battles take place in. Bravo to the designers on the art concepts.
It’s very clear to me, that the only guilds able to finish this raid need 50 JTR and average guild player power of over 3million.
Sadly I have come to accept this reality until a new toon is released that is intended to do well in this overly complicated raid.
T3/4/5 but I think we've settled on T4 being the one that most peeps can contribute to.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
75m
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Troopers, Current Palp meta arena team with SiT as tank.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
It's a huge time investment. Takes our guild days to complete a T4 and almost a week for the T5. This is a mobile game, I'm not keen on staring at my phone for a super long time.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
It's a technically complex raid which I understand caters to some of the hardcore players. The mechanics behind it are impressive, none the less they're pretty brutal. As a player who loves Empire, it's a faction that's heavily dependent on debuffs so the stacking tenacity sort of shuts them down. I odn't much like the rewards we're getting for such low tiers of the raid. Like I'm not saying that a T4 should drop G12+ gear but as someone who doesn't have the time to get higher than 7th or so place, it's definitely just not worth my while.
All in all I know that this is a raid and that they require specific teams to do well, I just feel like all in all this one requires some seriously specialized heroes and teams that I chose not to farm. So I guess that's on me. I don't intend to unlock JTR or gear up my Resistance any time soon since I prefer dark side teams. So ultimately if my preference in heroes is what holds me back in this raid then I guess it is what it is. I farmed up Clones for hAAT and they ended up being pretty bad in other areas of the game so I got burned once already and don't even run them in P4 anymore since I think Troopers are better/more fun.
At the end of the day I play this game to have fun and STR doesn't come off as fun to me, more like a chore. I'm stoked for the Bounty Hunter rework. I think you guys nailed that. Can't wait for Bossk to go F2P and get him rolling in the raid. That should help myself and guild out.
Tier 1 and 2
About 12 million GP
Using empire and other attackers. Not a large roster to choose from
Tier 2 takes us 5+ days for not very good gear rewards. Tier 1 gear rewards are even worse, totally useless really, but the guild currency is only slightly less than tier 2 raid so we've started doing tier 1 raids to earn some $$ until we burn through some launch tickets. Takes us about 2 days to clear a tier 1.
Biggest issue is the time it takes for meager rewards. This guild is small and lower level, but we're finishing tier 6 rancor in a couple days and AAT in about a week. It's silly that a tier 2 sith raid takes as long as a tier 6 AAT and does not have a comparable payout for the time and effort.
What GP? 117m
What teams? Varies among members, but the established and previously mentioned comps.
motivation? Traya, and heroic rewards, eventually
demotivation? As previously mentioned - it's a big, un-fun, chore. RNG dependence. Ludicrous tenacity. Stingey rewards.
What about the raid did you enjoy? Battling Sion.
Pet dislike? Inability to remove 'Isolated' in phase4. what's up with that?!
I can appreciate the amount of work that went into crafting this raid, and the attachment to the mechanics that is probably felt by the devs and strategists. And yes, it's deviously difficult and defies any autoing - clear goals during development. But what it has been most successful in has been fracturing guilds, especially guilds that are non-homogenous in member/roster strength. I think this is a big negative when considering the long-term health of the community.
To be honest, if I could trade tickets for gear, instead of launching the raid, I would - until heroic runs seemed viable. Activity levels have dipped since it's release. Apathy levels have spiked. The 'job' of being an officer has gotten harder.
2) Gp was about 140m.
3) I have tried most of the popular teams
Jtr resistance, chexmix, nightsisters, thrawn troopers, cls rebels, phoenix w sabine, other teams featuring sabine, AA leia spam.
4 & 5) as someone who comes from an MMO background I really enjoyed the first two raids I was excited for a third raid especially with one that was placed in the Old Republic and ultimately disappointed with what I got. I find it rather boring and tiresome I don't feel like I have that many choices in teams I can use or even what I can do during the fights themselves it seems like there's only one way to approach them. All of those things combined made me feel like I was just checking boxes off again there was nothing interesting and I I was and still am very close to just putting it down. And then there was all the back and forth and confusion with Rewards just kind of left me in a bad way.
So I'll recap here a little I enjoyed getting a new raid I enjoyed that it was set in the Old Republic. I did not find it very interesting or stimulating.
Tried Tier 5 & 6 with one guild, then tried Heroic with a new guild
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
145 Million currently, we beat it when we were at 137 million GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
JTR, Chex Mix, NS, Sith, and most of the other toons suck (my bounty hunters are too weak and the jedi faction outside of anakin in the chex mix team/Hyoda/GK are useless)
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Honestly it's been a slog since it was launched. The rewards have been horrible before I hit heroic. After we completed heroic the first time, you guys nerfed the rewards so then participation dropped and people got mad (I think you know what I'm referring to). Once you brought back the old rewards, participation was better. I think the better the rewards = more participation/enjoyment. Otherwise it's just a very tough, long, difficult raid without much purpose.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
Having a JTR squad, I have enjoyed learning how to maximize damage with them on ph1. I dislike that it took me leaving an old guild I was part of to beat Heroic. I wish you guys would have learned from the HAAT and not made such a silly mistake of nerfing rewards after nerfing the Resistance faction's exposes.
What tier or tiers did you play? We rotate T5, T5, T6 so we don't max out tickets.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 114m.
What teams you did you attempt the raid with? Standard teams mentioned above.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Demotivating issues: Any phase where Nihilus is alive is just flat out bad. The mechanics of the fight are awful and you try over and over until you get enough decent RNG where he uses his abilities in a predictable order.
Motivating: GE currency is nice but should definitely be increased due to the time sink the raid is.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
The randomness just kills it. It isn't fun. At all. It's easily the worst part of the game right now. Way too much time invested for absolutely horrible return on investment. It just gets worse and worse as the raid never seems to stop. It takes so long to complete that the sith raid is ALWAYS going on. It's demoralizing.
- What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? currently 130m, just under 125m during most recent heroic attempt
- What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
I now have most of the standard recommended teams (JTR, Boba lead Wampa, First Order, Nightsisters, Troopers, chex mix)
- What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Not much positive motivating factors present at the moment, other than sheer bloody-mindedness. We're a relatively casual guild who aren't quite able to clear heroic yet, although that will hopefully change soon. Very disappointed to see that the lessons of AAT have not been learned in terms of balancing the non-heroic modes, T6 in particular has way too much health meaning it's a miserably long grind - the fact that many guilds have reported that the point at which it can be completed faster than the required tickets to relaunch it is the point at which you are probably ready to complete heroic is a horrible situation. T6 should have damage output close enough to heroic that it's a viable practice environment, but shouldn't have so much health that it needs to be always up for any guild remotely near heroic. At the moment we're doing T5 in a little over two refreshes, that's way below our potential as a guild but a significant proportion of our membership have given up spending their time on it at all, and to be honest the officer group don't really feel like we can blame them for that. In addition, as many others have mentioned the rewards are not on a par with the effort involved, although reducing the health of the raid (and thus time spent to earn them) may fix this just as well as increasing the rewards. I was actually happy when the announcement was made that reward loot was going to be equalised for all members, and then massively let down when it transpired what this actually meant - the initial announcement suggested to me that the loot per person would be roughly equal to somewhere between what top 10 and top 20 currently get, but as it turned out it was way worse, so everyone in the top half of each guild who worked hardest to down the raid got penalised.
- What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
The best part of new raids is discovering what tactics work and how to use new mechanics introduced, and the sith raid has some good features in this area. Both Sion's and Traya's mechanics are interesting and lend themselves to building teams to take advantage of.
The worst parts of the raid are unfortunatlely the parts that have either directly or indirectly been inherited from previous raids and for some reason we're still stuck with every time:
Firstly setting up raids which consistently eliminate groups of characters or team builds from being viable at any point, in this case by means of the excessive tenacity bonuses granted to the bosses. In a single phase this wouldnt be a problem, and in fact is probably a good thing to add a unique feel to a phase and encourage distinct team builds and tactics to be used, but when applied to the whole raid simply frustrates players as a chunk of their roster becomes irrelevant.
Secondly, and possibly as a result of the above, being totally dependant on a single team build to efficiently manage one or more phases of the raid, in this case JTR resistance for phase 1, made particularly offensive because of the requirement for use of a recent legendary character which causes massive friction within guilds as players who dont have the required character/team are pressured to either get it as soon as possible, find other ways of contributing competent damage, or worst kicked out of the guild.
Finally, and probably the worst problem is the RNG factor. This was also a significant issue in AAT before that raid became farmable, and it's clearly back here. The massive variance between attempts on a phase with the same team means that particularly for heroic, guilds who are only just able to complete the raid require their members to spend several hours re-running their attempts until they get a favourable run with high damage. There are two elements to this, one is bosses having abilites with a random element to them, which Nihilus is probably the worst example of in a raid to date - in order to get an efficient run you frequently have to guess whether he's going to attack a buffed character, how many people drain force will manage to affect, and whether he will actually choose to use annihilate when it's available.
The other major factor that causes RNG is the 50% chance heroic bosses have to take a third attack. This is one of the worst design choices in the entire game and somehow it has survived through all three raids, because it means that in order to get a 'good' run you're frequently making large numbers of attempts until you get one where the extra attack happens significantly less than half the time. While it makes perfect sense to up the bosses threat level in heroic, this is a terrible way to accomplish that - simply upping the damage on the attacks would achieve the same ends but without the random factor. In the sith raid this is made even worse as when combined with Nihilus basic being able to reduce his other cooldowns it becomes even more influential.
Apologies for the long post, thanks for listening. In short my wish list would be:
Reduce the health pool of T5 and T6 (but not their damage outputs as was done with AAT, they need to be balanced not trivialised)
Revisit the concept of levelling out gear rewards - the principle was good, the application was flawed
For future raid design, please please please consider how to minimise the negative experience for players - reduce the RNG factor, and don't include mechanics that eliminate large groups of characters from viable use or mandate the use of specific teams
I play the heroic tier, my guild started about 5-6 weeks ago.
Guild GP was 136m when we started the heroic tier and now is 140m
P1 - JTR teams / P2 - Grinders squads (Sith, Phoenix, Ackbar/Leia teams/Hermit Yoda & etc.) / P3 - Chex Mix (CLS lead, Chirrut/Rex, Death Trooper, Raid Han & Pao) / P4 - Nightsisters at the start, then First Order Teams, Troopers and what teams the guild has left.
My main motivations are gear and Traya shards. I am a very good player in a top tier guild, my pg is about 2.6M, I am getting p1 at both arenas every day, got a good amount of g12/zetaed toons (especially my arena and raid teams), got very good mods and my JTR team currently holds the record of the highest score at the p1 (about 9%) inside my guild.
I don't enjoy this raid at all and I go through it trying to tolerate the experience as much as I can. Usually when I am playing the sith raid I start to hate myself for joining in a guild just to make the heroic tier of the raid.
I don't think my experience is bad because the raid is too hard (a raid can be hard and fun like a lot of games out there) but because the experience is too dependent in the rng. It's a pain having to reset every single run 5, 10, 20 times per team that I run until I am able to score a damage decent enough to post (about 2-4% per phase). Swgoh is a mobile game and it shouldn't be consuming that much time with an annoying rng.
My main feed back is: you can make the raid hard/very hard, just don't make the experience too dependent at the rng as it is because it kills all the fun and causes a lot of frustration.
The raid is more like a job, and not fun in the least. When guilds can only use JTR on phase 1 because nothing else works, it should be obvious whoever designed Nihilus did a terrible job. Fighting him twice is just a kick to the groin.
I despise any phases of the raid that have Nihilus in them (1 and 4). The protection mechanic is ridiculous, and completely demotivates me from playing. Lately, I don't even participate during these stages. I don't mind the trickiness of avoiding the annihilates, and I can even live with the hitting through protection (though I don't really like that either), but his protection is just annoying. Actually, it makes no sense, since the playable version of Nihilus' leader ability actually removes protection, so why would the raid version be the only boss to have protection?
My favorite phase is Phase 2, but unfortunately that's also the easiest phase. My guild will often blow through that phase before I even get a chance to hit it.
Phase 3 is fun. I like the challenge, and the topple mechanic. I almost wish that you could topple her in phase 4 as well, but I see how that would be difficult with multiple raid bosses.
tl;dr: Get rid of Nihilus protection!
Hi, thanks for the opportunity to share some infos.
We run T7.
145M GP
Current top comps :
P1 :
#JTR, BB8, R2, Scavenger and Res. Pilot. Target 10%
P2 :
#Bobba, Wampa, GK, Sabine, Thrawn. Target >2.5M
#Veers, Starck, Shore, Snow, Storm. Target 700k
#tanks/healers + Princess Leia still improving
P3 :
#Chex CLS, Solo, Chirrut, Pao, DT. Target >6%
#JKA, TFP, Sergent, Rez Pilot, ROLO Target >1%
P4 (DN) :
#Asaji, Daka, Acolyte, Talia, Initiate. Target >15%
P4 afterwards, whatever left.
I learned to enjoy p1. With more time now me and my guildmates are reading DN a bit better to reduce its inherent RNG.
But this 50% chance for a third action is too much random. We can live with it, but it adds an huge amount of unnecessary RNG to the run.
P2 seems fine for me.
P3 is an RNG nightmare. I bet you didn't see the chez mix coming ^^. But now it raises an infinite amount of questions due to randomness buffs on the sabers, random isolate hits from traya. And once you topple the random counter and dodge.
It's a pity it may take 30/40mins for a 2 min fight.
This is the part we all like less in our guild.
P4 is **** hard but also readable and doable.
Overall it's a lot of RNG and tries to get the end results. Which is sad because we have to dedicate it a lot of time.
On the other hand now the rewards are definitely worth shooting the raid as hard as you can.
Our MAIN CONCERN now is the P4 scores glitch.
Top places should remain to the competitive and focused members, awarding their abilities and commitment.
It's not viable that every single raid positions are messed up because of this BUG.
Once you fix this, we'll get along.
Thanks for listening.
Cheers
Dont be fooled. They knew before this was posted. They are just trying to make it seem like they value or want our feedback.
- in P1 Darth Nihilus has a 50% chance to take a bonus action after his second action. This alone makes the chances of a successful run RNG dependent. It's almost impossible to plan ahead because of this. It's highly frustrating to have to restart your 5-10 minute run because the AI RNG decided to attack a third time. Ultimately, it's stressful. This is the same for P2 with Darth Sion. Eliminating this feature would make runs now consistent without taking away from the strength of the raid boss.
-in P1 we have no control over who gets the second unbreakable will buff after the first was given. For instance, if bb8 gets the UW, there's no reason to continue the run because he's the catalyst for the team, and must take turns. Eliminating this feature and replacing it with something more controllable would alleviate this frustration. Perhaps whoever defeats the menacing foe gets the buff. This would be much more efficient and would allow us to strategize accordingly.
-throughout the raid, the bosses have stacking tenacity. This renders many characters useless, as debuffs have been prominent for some time. It's a highly frustrating experience but could possibly benefit from reevaluation.
- as I've stated in my previous post, I personally feel the rewards that are currently in place at the heroic level (guaranteed gear piece among salvage) are fair for the time/effort involved. For t6 and below, the rewards are underwhelming and because of this, I've noticed some are unmotivated to participate.
Please take these things into account as well. Thank you.
Mostly played T4, did some T3 due to burnout/wasting raid tickets, but back to T4 because reward/effort ratio is so low and reducing tiers does not significantly reduce the effort/time involved.
-Guild GP:
65.7M, only half are posting total scores over 1M at this point (but we have decent participation in other activities)
-My teams:
P1
Nightsisters (talzin lead no zeta, asaaj zeta unique, zombie, daka, x)
Sith (Nihilus lead, palp, vader, maul, dooku, no active zetas)
Empire (Thrawn lead, magma + death + shore troopers, TFP, no active zetas)
P2, P3, and P4
Phoenix (Hera lead, ezra, sabine, kanaan, zeb, no zetas)
Rebels (CLS lead, R2, Chopper, ST Han zeta, Raid Han zeta/Princess Leia)
+ all P1 teams
My roster is still fairly shallow (no JTR, 1/3 of my roster is level 1, 1/2 of my leveled roster is below G9) and the mechanics and boss immunities preclude the use of many of the teams I had worked on making my roster feel fairly useless in the raid, particularly phases 1 and 4 (zFinn, FO, ackbar, droids, turn meter removing teams). Currently 20 shards from finishing the vets, so I should get JTR next time around.
-Motivations:
Demotivators
Rewards. We spend 5+ days with many people putting in multiple hours of running their best teams several times to get good scores and get junk. We start up rancor, wait 24 hours for people to tag it with 0, and then hit auto. 1 hour later, rewards that are, on average, BETTER than what we get in the sith raid show up in the mail. The effort/reward ratio is WAY off.
Boss immunity and tenacity stacking. Why bother creating such powerful debuffs/effects for playable characters if you recognize they are too powerful for pve? Is it somehow better for them to be overpowered in pvp... when people are competing against each other for the most powerful debuff? And then to base certain characters' toolkits around certain debuffs which the boss is immune to or resists... (shock as an example, but many others as well).
Phase 1. Everything nihilus does stacks together to make a terrible encounter. You can't buff up because that just gets stolen. You can't counter/assist because you just feed him protection. You can't debuff because of stacking tenacity. He increases your cooldowns, forcing you to basic attack him (which is a weak attack generally, feeds him protection, debuffs you, and buffs his speed/tenacity). Annihilate can be unpredictable resulting in The only workable team is JTR because it is the only team with unresistable expose. Jyn COULD work, but debuffs get resisted because of the stacking tenacity so the expose won't land. Catch 22! Gotta get through tenacity to use the unresistable expose of Jyn... (maybe if Jyn's lead was 50% to expose when attempting to apply a debuff...)
Enrage timers. Each of the bosses already has a soft enrage mechanic (or a mechanic that could easily become a soft enrage with a slight modification) that will make them eventually kill any team. (Nihilus's Annihilate has a faster cooldown/more ways to reduce the cooldown than Feed the Void so eventually he will be able to annihilate a character that is not protected. Sion's Cycle of pain/suffering could be tweaked to keep stacking giving him unlimited offense, Traya's bond of weakness has limited numbers of clears and will therefore eventually take any team to 1 hp with every action they take.) When you took out the escape button which was present for the other raids which allowed powerful teams to escape enrage timers, why did you keep the timer? Why did you make the escape button in the first place if you did not want teams to escape the timer? All of this confuses me. Since the bosses already have built in mechanics which can kill teams, it seems logical to remove the timer. A compromise could be to keep the enrage timer for heroic (haven't played sith heroic, but I have played both heroic and non-heroic tank and rancor) and remove it for non-heroic tiers. You cannot use your entire roster anyways since non-heroic tiers have attempt limits, therefore the theoretical purpose of the enrage (to use your entire roster) is a moot point.
Motivators
Phase 2 is quite enjoyable. The risk/reward game of phase 2 (and phase 4 after nihilus is dead) is the most enjoyable part of the raid. Two thumbs up for that!
-Enjoyment:
Motivators are enjoyable, demotivators are not.
We generally do tier 4 with an occasional tier 5
JTR and troopers do the most damage. The rest is roughly the same, although bounty hunters show a little promise.
The main issue with this raid is keeping everyone interested. Myself and about 5 others do 90% of the damage. Most of our members auto 1 team and are done with it. When asked why they point out the raid mechanics make it way too tedious (does Nihilus really need protection regeneration? He's hard enough). I would suggest lowering the health pool by 25% across all tiers except heroic and for the sake of sanity, get rid of Nihilus protection regeneration.
4,5,6
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
100mil
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Jtr, nightsisters, rebels, first order, empire, sith, jawas
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
I don't try. If I'm really bored I play manually, but mostly I auto. Fortunately, the raid eventually ends.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I do not enjoy the raid at all. Protection regen and debuff immunity (essentially) makes this raid totally unenjoyable.
1. Tier 6, taking 4ish days. We run a heroic calibration raid every 4-6 weeks.
2. 130M GP
3. Full G12+3 JTR, Full G12+3 Thrawn troopers, G12 Nihlus led Sith, Chex Mix, G12 zAssaj led NS, Rebel/attacker hodge podges based on phase, usually based around CLS, Ahsoka, Wiggs, OG Leia, Hoda, zBarris
4. There is nothing motivating about this raid beyond obligation to the guild. There is nothing I can do to get Traya shards until the bottom half of the guild gets a half dozen zetas and does months of farming. In the mean time it is a demoralizing 90 minute frustrating time-suck with RNG based mechanics that break almost everything enjoyable or strategic about the game and nullifies nearly every synergy. It is the first thing that has made me seriously consider quitting since I started playing (at launch.) I would pay you money to never have to play it again without letting the guild down. I don’t care about the rewards. NOTHING is worth the time and frustration of engaging with this content.
5. If you want something positive, P2 is less broken mechanically than the other phases largely because it is deterministic and hence slightly less abusive and frustrating... But.. I never get to play P2 because it gets plowed through in 30 minutes at 1am right at reset while I’m sleeping (I can only assume the reset time is not 24 hours from start is some kind of sadistic sleep deprivation tactic.)
[*] What tier or tiers did you play?
4-6
[*] What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
106 million
[*] What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Jedi Rey, Nightsisters, Troopers, Ewoks, CLS Rebels, Phoenix...Palpateams. Nihilus Leads.
[*] What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
The only reason I continue to do the raid is to help my guildies. The raid is a constant pain because it takes too long to finish...too long to contribute. For all the work I do I don't feel like I help even when I do 40 million damage in a few days. T4-6 rewards aren't worth the time investment.
The bosses Tenacity makes most people's roster feel useless. That feeling of uselessness is what has demotivated most of my guild and it's hard to motivate them to attack because they don't have the perfect roster.
There's just a general lack of fun with the raid and no real reward that's not in heroic.
I honestly have tried to like it...and can't find a way to enjoy it...and can't find a way to motivate the rest of my guild to enjoy it because no one does. There's not a positive thing said when I kick off the raid. It's just a collective sigh.
[*] What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I've only enjoyed the P2 mechanic. The rest of the mechanics feel troll-y.
Nihilus's annihilate isn't fun. It seems random and unpredictable which means just forfeit and start over. Any phase he's in most players try to avoid. The protection gain is not in line with his character fiction in the game. His leadership literally makes protection non-existent...seems inconsistent. Not being able to use basic attacks eliminates most teams from being effective at all even minimally. Him ignoring protection also makes a lot of characters useless.
P3 has one effective strategy. The damage over time punishment and the topple strategy just isn't fun. Isolate, I understand the theme...I just don't enjoy it.
P4 isn't great because of Nihilus he sucks the fun out of it. I honestly can't put my finger on what about this phase makes it not fun.