...you're just slogging with almost no purpose - and with no fun - just to get some currency - and once you beat it after X days you start it up immediatly and pound your hea don the wall again.
My experience perfectly described. Except you didn't mention that the currency is paltry.
...in the process you have created something that is the no fun at all. It is a tedious chore at best. Most people don't even bother figuring out the mechanics of the raid because they just put in 5 teams and hit auto because they will probably get just slightly less damage than a run they controlled due to the mechanics and unpredictable nature of the battles.
I remember the same thing happening to a world of warcraft raid cant remember which one way back when that destroyed guilds and player base and it was eventually re-tuned after so many lost subscribers. This raid should have been the coolest themed raid the game could ever conceive outside of a death star raid but the reward for effort just killed the whole thing. Leave heroic the way it is so people can strive for those new g12 pieces but of ask the question "did developers even play the game before release or did they build it and they will come attitude? You look at suggested requirements and they're not even close to being accurate, I don't want a single squad doing 50% of a phase that's just nuts but when you cant manage 5% with the 5 teams your allowed to use under t7 outside of p2 and p3 and JTR teams you've essentially killed 90% of the games characters usefulness. I love theory crafting and what not and testing teams but outside of p2 and 3 you cant really do much until nihilus is dead on p4 either. Shouldn't we be getting gear in lower tiers to help raise us to get into the next tier? T1-2, t3-4, t5-6 ,t6-heroic? Doesn't feel that way? My 0 on pit and haat gives me better rewards and while I'm first in the t5 my guild runs I feel I'm only there because of two reasons. A. I have JTR, and B. I actually play it and most dont. Need to fix as I'm sure Solo movie wont draw in the revenue your forecasting it will, thats why you've offered other things like ability mat packs with it this time. Hope you fix as I dont have time for console games due to work and travel and this is such an awesome game but I've been down this road with everyone other online game I've ever played. I would add that if the raid was built around "future" potential toons that could significantly impact the damage then just tell us that but stop keeping people in the dark frustrated.
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 I
3.9Mil
Fett, Windu, STH, Ahsoka, Vader
Felt like it was a bit too tough, then we got the hang of it and did better. might attempt Tier 2 next.
At least some of my guild can participate in this one, we can't even start Tank Takedown yet, let alone even think of a Heroic Raid yet.
We just crept over 100m GP in my guild and do T4 in 1 or 2 resets, alternating to T5 every 3rd or 4th time the raid is launched. We do HPit in 10 minutes from when damage is free and HAAT takes about an hour. We're fairly casual but want to progress, but participation for STR has been "set" as optional due to the -imo- massive lack of reward vs. time invested. Right now we are close to finishing P4 and sit at 40/49 members posting damage and the lowest 10ish people have maybe done 1 or two runs.
Just yesterday I posted a zero in HPit and was more pleased with the rewards I got than those I got for investing at least an hour combined for our most recent STR. That can't be WAI.
I very much like the aesthetics of the STR but mechanics aren't exactly on point, imo.
P2 is good fun with the risk-vs-reward style mechanics and P3 is fine in T4 but gets a bit tiresome already in T5 where the stacks on Traya quickly burn even G11/12 toons and Stand Alone seems very inconsistent (maybe due to my lack of understanding of the mechanic - haven't had much chance to do P3).
I have experimented with several team comps but it does feel like it's JTR or go home - especially for P1, ofc.
DN lead works well in P1 because of the lack of protection otherwise I've mostly just thrown my hardest hitters in all of the phases. I'm building towards an Ayla-lead Jedi team = (almost) no debuffs due to tenacity boost and no buffs to better manage boss Annihilate. Same idea for a Rebel team with Farmboy Luke but I don't truly believe any of them will be viable at higher tiers - outside of a few exceptions Jedi don't hit hard enough to make it work, I think.
Like many others, I'll say that the randomness in P1 is very frustrating, since you often end up with damned if you do/damned if you don't situations - for instance, if only one of your toons has a buff it's a gamble on whether you should use Unb. Will or wait. If you're fairly certain using a basic will result in getting the defense down you can end up in situations where using basic attack will ensure that DN's drain will get his Annihilate off cool down, but using Unb. Will will ensure that Annihilate is still on cool down. Either way it's a restart or a significantly worse run, through no fault of your own. I'm perfectly fine with being punished for a mistake I make but when your run is doomed if you go with either of the only two options, it just feels bad. Same thing goes for DN getting a cooldown reduction for clearing a buff on a toon - having to decide whether or not to use Unb. Will or wait when you have 1 out of 5 toons with a buff for his next turn and then having him attack that 1 toon to get to Annihilate is very annoying.
Lastly, I also find it extremely annoying to often have to guess if your toon with the Unb. Will ability will actually get a turn (more) before Nihilus goes. The way Turn Meter is indicated in the game can be a bit of a nuisance in other parts of the game, but in content where it typically will mean the difference between a good raid-run or a restart (i.e. time wasted) it just doesn't work, imo.
These points might not be very different from so many other aspects of the game being RNG dependent, but it certainly feels worse. Lastly, the health pools of DN(both P1 and P4) in T4/5/6 really needs to be reduced. Something along the lines of 30% would make it feel less like a chore. The health pool(s) for P2 (and maybe P3) could possibly even be increased to make up for some of it. P2 is over for us quite quickly
I'll mention the rewards again since they are - imo - the biggest issue. I didn't expect our guild to be able to take on heroic in the near future and that's the way it should be. The game is better when there is something to work towards. We spent months and months getting to HAAT completion and finally having it on farm felt great. I've seen Carrie mention having a background in MMOs and that you guys kinda, sorta see swgoh as a variation of such. If that's the case then rewards for a raid should help the player advance to the next level of said raid (in WoW normal raid rewards get you to heroic, heroic rewards to mythic etc.). Sure, you might not get exactly the gear piece you need/want in a particular run, or you can pick up something helpful from another part of the game. While the latter is also the case with swgoh, to some extent, rewards for STR in their current state, in no way get us closer to move up a tier. If we were to rely only/mostly on those rewards it will be years before we would make any real progress in beating a higher tier. I sincerely hope another go at a rework will improve this.
I think the main point we are getting repeated to us is that this raid takes too much time for too little reward.
Why do the other raids not generate this much dislike? Simply put... they are quick to do and generate good rewards. I’m sorry but you’ve completely missed the mark with this raid. Other than whale guilds and you tubers no one has the time to put into this ONE part of your game. Because of this, guilds are dying.
Conversely, I love TW. The best idea you’ve come up with in a long while! Two days worth of fun with a reward. And it actually brings guilds together as a team in combat. Who can argue with that!
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 6 for a month, now farming Tier 7 with 24 hour rule
- 131 million GP
- P1 RJT, P2 GK/Leia, P3 Chex Mix, P4 Sisters
- First of all, T6 is a nightmare. I'm happy to have a guild full of people that focused on the goal of getting Heroic done and working towards that goal. I have to say though, we slogged through T6 for about 5 weeks and I truly feel for those that are still having to complete the lower tiers for worthless rewards. I dare say that T6 requires even more effort than T7 at this point. The amount of health the bosses have is just ridiculous and the time investment is not compensated properly with the rewards. I'm so much happier to be farming heroic. We were taking 2 days of non stop participation to down T6 and we can do T7 in about 3 hours with 30-35 members doing 90% of the damage.
- That being said, in regards to Heroic/T7, there is one small change that you could make that would make for a much more enjoyable experience. PLEASE remove the RNG chance for bosses to take a 3rd action. This accomplishes nothing as far as difficulty of the raid. This chance at a 3rd action is NOT a limiting factor for completing the raid. It only serves to cause more frustration and retreats. I think that it's been said in this thread a lot, it's not the difficulty of the raid that people find to be a drag, it's the randomness factor and time investment. This 3rd action is the biggest contributor to the randomness factor in the T7 version of the raid. Retreating over and over to try and get a decent run is the single biggest reason that people hate your raid. I actually rather enjoy the T7 version of the raid except for this one detail.
Thank you for taking the time to consider the community feedback on this.
This dude coming on here talking about we got a 24hr/0 dmg rule....I love it. But in all honesty interesting to see a guild running heroic say its slightly less hassle and easier than t6. I'd agree I found heroic aat easier than regular for some reason also.
My guild is pretty sick of how Darth Nihilus functions in the raid. One of my guild officers WierdC had this to say about Nihilus in Phase 1 and 4: "It would not be so bad if he didn't have his current mechanics. For example, if he was just able to remove/copy buffs BUT NOT decrease his cooldown it wouldn't be so bad. You can usually remove those buffs with the right loadout.
Instead you have to balance his remove/copy, his cooldown decreases, and his annihilate with the "ultimate shield" ability. Oh, and his AI doesn't consistently use the abilities correctly. For example, if all three of his abilities are available sometimes he uses the ally call and the force drain, other times he goes straight for annihilate."
The T6 rewards were comparatively awful, and generally hard to justify the time investment with its massive HP pool. The extra RNG attack in the Heroic raid is incredibly frustrating and makes playing around the raid mechanics feel bad. The Heroic rewards / Traya were a motivation to continue, but also the drastically decreased time sink for heroic compared to T6.
The mechanics of Sion and Traya are interesting and nicely thematic to KOTOR II. The Nihilus mechanics, especially in Heroic with the coin flip 3rd action, really dampen the enjoyment of the raid.
As a side, I did prefer the flattened rewards we had briefly as a concept, though the reduction from the current system was massive (mostly on heroic). The upper end rewards of heroic in the current system were reduced by over 80% in the flattened system. The system itself was better, but the massive nuke on the payouts I think gave it a really bad spin. I know you were working on improving that, and I hope you can work it out and reintegrate it into the game. The Rancor and AAT especially could really benefit from flattened rewards as sunset / "legacy" content for older players.
I haven't read most of these posts, so apologize for redundant information, but here goes:
Tiers: T4 and T5 alternating
GP: 92m
Teams:
-JTR resistance
-troopers (thrawn lead with magma in p1, otherwise veers lead with starck, always death and shore)
-wedge lead rebels (biggs, cls, han, ezra)
-nihilus lead sith
-boba lead mix team with hoda, tarkin, stormtrooper, fotp
-just got assaj zeta so looking forward to trying NS, especially in p4.
Motivations:
Reaching heroic, getting traya shards and g12
Demotivations:
-Multiple restarts to get good runs every single day because of the RNG factor.
-Repetitive mechanics leading many in the guild to get frustrated and drop in participation. This is tearing up our guild and we are looking for a merge to get closer to heroic.
-Rewards for sub-heroic tiers are not commensurate with the effort required. I finish first or second every raid and the rewards for t4 and t5 are generally worse than rancor rewards, which can be finished on auto in 7 minutes. Pretty low full gear drop rate in my experience--while heroic folks get a guaranteed full g12 piece drop every time? This is frustrating.
-Some teams that work well in heroic are unique to heroic and not the best teams for sub-heroic tiers, making it tough to motivate everyone in the guild to understand the heroic teams and work on learning how to use them. For example deathmark is amazing for dealing damage in sub-heroic tiers, but in heroic it's really best used as a forced taunt in the chex mix team.
Enjoy/Don't enjoy:
I do enjoy some of the raid mechanics, and appreciate that you worked hard to make an interesting raid that would be a challenge. That said, it is frustrating not being able to predict whether DN will annihilate when its cooldown is at 1. Not to mention the RNG factors in getting a good chex mix run or the +/- third action thing in heroic, which I have personally not yet experienced as we aren't running heroic yet.
Bottom line, if the rewards for the lower tiers were better, I think we would have much more enthusiasm for completing this raid each time and working towards heroic. Perhaps a guaranteed full piece drop.
What tier or tiers did you play?
Heroic, t6 prior to that.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
135M
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
P1-Jedi Rey and friends
P2- Wampa+Sabine
P2-Leia +tanks
P3-Chex Mix
P4-Night Sisters
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Non-heroic raids are very out of balance. The effort required for the rewards received just don't like up. The high health and being limited to 5 teams per day makes the raid drag on for way too long. The heroic rewards should be enough motivation to get past the lower tiers. I cannot imagine running non-heroic for a long period of time. Guild members had already stopped trying which just made them draw out even longer.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I like the mechanics of every phase of the raid except for Nihilus in p1. Only having one legitimately effective team does not make for an enjoyable experience. Once we were able to complete heroic this raid became rather enjoyable but the time running non heroic was nearly unbearable.
I think a good solution for t6 is to make it the same health and difficulty as heroic, but add in roster refreshes daily. This would allow guilds to judge how close they are to heroic ready and the raids would not drag on as long as they currently do.
I have personally done T5, T6, and Heroic. We have completed them all, and are now regularly completing Heroic.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
We have approximately 130M GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
I have played many teams, but now run JTR and Phoenix in phase 2, Chex Mix in phase 3, and hold fire in phase 4 until Nihilus dies. I am working on a NS team for that component, but then use my suboptimal but strong teams (Vader, Troopers, etc) on Sion. I use all remaining trash after that.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivators:
1: Theme of the raid is very cool
2: Traya shards
3: Full G12 piece on heroic is a nice get
Demotivators:
1: Stacking tenacity mechanic, which renders my creativity worthless. Just do what everyone else says works, because other strategies will not work.
2: Attempting to manage Nihilus's annihilate timing
3: Frustrating RNG dependent run quality in P2 (if Sion stacks to Suffering quickly, I have to start over)
4: Confusing and convulated conditional kits on enemy abilities: i.e. If X, Nihilus gets Y when he does Z. If A, then Nihilus gets B when you do C. If J, then Traya's lightsabers apply K and if L they apply M and if N they apply O.
5: General feeling that even good performance has a minimal impact on the raid
6: On non-heroic tiers, the raid will often drag on for days. The longer the raid takes, the less it feels like the rewards are worthwhile. If the raid took an hour, then people would harp on the rewards less probably.
7: Need to restart runs over and over rapidly burns me out.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I believe this raid has inferior mechanical design to the hAAT raid. Many of the mechanics are convoluted and difficult to understand. Even after doing the raid more than a dozen times, I still have to read tooltips over and over to grasp what is happening. There are still things I am missing or frequently forgetting.
Numerous mechanics have no rational or properly designed counter. The player is asked to mentally track enemy cooldowns while those cooldowns are constantly being modified. Mistakes require complete restarts if you are trying to semi-optimize your score.
I'm reading this again and again. And experiencing it within my own Guild. We have always been a tight-knit, friendly and supportive bunch. We take the game seriously but we know it's just a game. In the last month, for the first time ever there have been arguments, disputes and people leaving. It's really sad to see, for me.
Tier 4-5
All phases
110 gp
all g12 - palp lead, maul, Vader, mauls brother, thrawn. Averaging 600 k on phase 1or 4, 2-3 get approx 1.5 - 2 mill.
Gear 9 Jawa for phase 1 Get approx 300-500 k damage
Gear 12 - new Luke lead, tank raid kenobi, raid han, rebels Ashoka, r2 - phase 2,3 gets about 1.5 - 2 mil damage
All gear 12 - Boba Fett, r2, masked kylo, scavenger Rey, original Leia, phase 1 - average 500- 800 k damage
Gear 12 sid lead, 6 Star g11 wampa, g 12 masked kylo, g12 sith assassin, gear 11 TFP - phases 2-3, sometimes 4 - average 1.5- 2 milk damage
Clones gear 12 except g11 echo, phases 2,3 - 2-2.5 mill damage
The issues are with phases 1 and 4. They are a chore and it makes participation in my guild less than 50% for the entire raid. No one likes these phases. Drop the nihilus protection, lower the hp for these phases. Those are the easy solutions
We have tried them all, not ready for 7 yet, currently on tier 5 after tier 4 rewards put us off.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
102m GP at the moment
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Our guild has a spread of players, about half have Jedi Rey, we have tried lots of teams and looked up lots of guides.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
We would like to earn the teir 6/7 rewards but getting participation is really difficult. The raid is slow going the feedback across the guild is that it just isn't fun, we have started to understand the mechanics in p1-2-3 but p4 is tough, doing a fraction of a percent doesn't make for a fun way to spend an hour or more. At least the Rancor in its early days and the tank had a sense of progress, you knew set teams could do a chunk of damage or the rancor could be beat if you got your team good enough. So far it feels like only a guild with full JTR teams can do this. I am hopeful that new teams will come through and we can make progress again.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
See the above, we enjoyed it at first with the excitement of something new after months of having the tank on farm but the flip side was the disappointment of it not living up to our hopes.
Edit - after tonight's run, tenacity of the bosses making so many toons pointless.
Everythinng except JTR as only a few in or guild have her.
Nihilus in P1 and P4. It would be one thing if the worst possible tedious micro management gave results but the mechanisms are so unpredictable. And it’s boring since it just seem to be JTR or don’t bother. It’s demoralizing that it’s only one toon that does all the difference.
The rewards are absolutely terrible, it doesn’t seem to matter if you do T4 or T5. You grind for a couple of days and finish top 10 and get 6 pieces of gear salvage. It’s demoralizing.
It’s hard to see anything particular good with the raid as it isn’t funny but the sound effects and animations are good.
We could do tier 3 but frankly everyone in the guild hates the raid so much it's hard to keep interest. Frankly none of the lower tiers rewards are worth it nor is the difficulty scaled to be similar to other raids (for example the tier supppsedly equivalent to normal aat is way harder). Point being everyone hates the raid so much for its garbage rewards we'd rather get trashy rewards for <24 hrs of our time than ever so slightly less trashy rewards for 3-4 days of our time. For record I'm. A guild officer
Phase 1 is the worst because the mechanics basically hard counter almost everything. It's not fun to have invested in a bunch of meta toons like cls and find they can't do anything in this phase. Kinda of a joke how if you don't have very specific toons you basically can kiss away doing any useful damage. Phase 4 is similarly terrible because you fight DN again.
I do like phase 2 and to a lesser degree phase 3. Phase 2 seems best balanced to the written tier requirements. Phase 3 isn't crazy fun but it's not bad, kinda average for a raid. In both cases I feel like there is fun theory crafting options for me to try. Against DN I just feel resigned to not doing any useful damage since I lack JTR.
I think everything except Nihilus is fine but Nihilus is so terrible that it makes you hate the raid. The problem is Nihilus's protection mechanic and unpredictability. The protection mechanic means only a few teams can do anything against him pretty much have JTR or bust. That in itself isn't bad design for the heroic tier. Heroic should require specific teams because it is meant to be done by long time players. However for the lower tiers that are expected to be done by new players it doesn't work at all. New players simply don't have the roster to field specific teams or have JTR.
Also the rewards are terrible. My guild can do Heroic Rancor and T6 tank which gives end game gear but can only do T3 Sith which gives a few low level gear salvage. Rancor and Tank are far far easier and give much better rewards.
What tier or tiers did you play? We do T5 constantly. We did 1 T6 but it took too long.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? We are over 130 million.
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? T5 rewards are not worth the time investment to try and get huge scores.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? I like that each phase has different mechanics to figure out and that each Raid Boss is different. I dislike the rewards. Get rid of challenge gear across all tiers and increase T5 and T6 rewards to better reflect the time investment to beat them.
- Tier 4 generally, tried tier 3 once to see if it was quicker - it wasn't really
- About 31m GP
- Wedge, Biggs, zzR2, zCLS & Leia; Classic BHs with 4* Bossk lead; zThrawn, TFP, DT, GMT, Shore; zzVadar, zzPalp, zDooku, Sion, Sidious
- Nothing motivates us to do it, it is just there so we might as well have it running
- The raid sucks, it is no fun and the rewards are rubbish. T1 is awful. How can you defend with the special ability against a mechanic where you cannot predict if DN will annihilate. No skill, no fun, the guild generally hates it and most people don't bother or auto it.
I'm reading this again and again. And experiencing it within my own Guild. We have always been a tight-knit, friendly and supportive bunch. We take the game seriously but we know it's just a game. In the last month, for the first time ever there have been arguments, disputes and people leaving. It's really sad to see, for me.
What tier or tiers did you play? We do T4 constantly. We did 1 T5 but it took too long.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 79M
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
A few have JTR/Resistance (a lucky few). Imp Troops, Nightsisters, Empire, Bounty Hunters, Jedi, Clones.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? T4 rewards are not exciting. Participation is super low. We worked hard to gear up for HAAT. This raid feels like it has no end.
What about the raid did you enjoy? The new characters were interesting. So there is a sense of novelty. I thought it would be fun to try new squads. But...turns out it’s all JTR all the time.
What did you dislike about the raid? after spending a week on it originally, then starting again, it got old and repetitive. The constant restarts (for the 2 who still try) are a boring grind.
It’s hard but is a goal for players to achieve. Rewards are not even close to being commensurate to the effort in building toons to defeat this. Rewards need a big boost.
[*] What tier or tiers did you play? We used to alternate between T4 & T5 but have now switched to T3 and just auto-play.
[*] What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 113M
[*] What teams you did you attempt the raid with? I've tried a ton of combos both of my own creation and ones recommended online. My go-tos tend to be zJTR Resistance, Wedge Rebels, zAsajj Nightsisters, zVeers Troopers, and one experimental squad each day. I do about 25M-35M total damage per raid.
[*] What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? Too. Much. Time. Even on full auto, doing five good squads takes about 25%-35% of my daily playing time. If I take the time to attack carefully, it's more like 40%-60%. That's a huge commitment for what amounts to maybe 5% of my total rewards collected in a week (if I have good RNG). And it's pretty much Every. Single. Day. if I want the reward percentage to even hit that already low percentage.
[*] What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? The mechanics and challenge of it are actually pretty fun in small doses but not when it becomes the majority of daily play. I would probably love it as a raid that takes a single day and occurs once or twice a week*. Or maybe even as a multi-day grind that occurs monthly (a la Territory Battles). Currently though it's the most time-consuming part of the game, it has the least rewards for completing it, and it has lead me to auto-playing almost every piece of content in the game just so I can maybe keep my game play under two hours a day. Like many others, I'm now asking myself why I'm spending that much time every day trying to rush through a game with the least engagement possible just to check off all the boxes of all the activities, especially when all of that extra time isn't making me feel like I'm progressing through the game any faster than I was a year ago when the game took half as much time (or less) to really savor it and enjoy.
(*Yes, I know I can quit my guild and find one that can crank out Heroic in a day. Given that I'm the only active officer holding my guild together, I was willing to give EA a couple of weeks and see how they fix this. I would like to be optimistic that someone will figure out that designing content that substantially increases time spent in the game but also hugely reduces the rewards-to-time-spent-in-game ratio just doesn't make sense and can potentially wreak havoc on your player base.)
Thank you for your time and good luck in getting this all sussed out.
Just an additional thought to my original post to add. Perhaps the big reason that Nihilus is a key point of frustration is that he feels like he has everything going for him and no weakness to exploit. With Sion you can turn his pain/suffering debuff against him since it buffs your damage, while Traya you can topple or exploit Stand Together or Bonds of Weakness, so they feel like there's some kind of weakness to hit.
But Nihilus? He gains protection when you hit him with basics, which almost all teams need to do regularly simply because cooldowns are a thing on every other move, and damage to his protection is essentially wasted. Like all STR bosses, you can't debuff him unless they're unresistable debuffs. Hitting him makes him faster, which makes it harder to plan turns, which is particularly awful considering he's the one you need to do that against the most. Buffs other than Foresight are much less effective or arguably a liability against him, since he dispels on basic, gains the buffs he dispels himself, and on top of that also reduces the cooldowns of not only Force Drain but Annihilate when he does so. He ignores your protection, cutting the durability of most characters by more than half just innately. When he Force Drains, he increases your cooldowns, likely forcing you to use more basics on him, feeding him more protection. And on top of all of that, he has Annihilate, which now not only instant-kills with no chance of revive, but gives him a huge buff, so if someone gets hit with that, you definitely want to restart, as it will massively reduce your run's total.
And what do you get to fight back with? Unbreakable Will, which basically exists solely to let you survive Annihilate. Unlike Sion or Traya, there's no way to use this as a weakness of Nihilus' that will let you do better, it just helps negate one of his many strengths (albeit the most overwhelming of them if it didn't exist, granted).
Seriously, notice that the teams that do well against him are only those that exploit effects that do damage based on the health percent of the boss - JTR with expose, and to a lesser extent Deathtrooper with Deathmark and that one thermal detonator team. These same abilities do well against all STR bosses, because of the health bloat of the raid - it's just that nothing does better than them against Nihilus, because he has no weaknesses to exploit, and seemingly every advantage going for him.
In contrast, in phase 4 he's more manageable, because Traya and Sion's mechanics are in effect, and Bonds of Weakness in particular being exploitable by the Nightsisters helps make it more possible to fight him effectively (albeit not without many of the same frustrations brought on by his many strengths). But on his own, in phase 1, there's nothing like that, only things that work entirely to Nihilus' favor.
@CG_Carrie Can we at least get a comment regarding the level of disgust being expressed at this raid? Ths cannot possibly be what you wanted when you thought up and launched the raid. I imagine the intent was to have people spend in order to build teams to beat the raid. Instead the elite players have compressed into a small number of guilds creating a massive power vaccuum in the mid and lower GP guilds. My guess is that this was unforseen. But now that we see it, can you please fix this raid. To summarize literally every post before this one: Its too hard and most of all not fun.
[Tier] initially III, settled into IV
[GP] 50m guild, 1.5m personally
[Teams] P1 (JTR, Sith/Nightsisters), P2 (First Order, Empire, Troopers), P3 (JTR, Empire/Troopers), P4 (JTR for Nihilus, FO for Sion, auto the rest until it's mercifully over)
[Motivation/Demotivation] I enjoy the puzzle and the challenge and having to think critically about how best to use my roster; JTR is the only team I have that makes discernible progress, so the rest involves lots of experimentation. A substantial part of my motivation is that I'm a guild leader and one of only two people who has unlocked JTR, so to have any chance of finishing, a lot of it's on me. And if I don't make the time for it, I can't ask anyone else to. The demotivating aspects are substantial; the rewards are not nearly adequate at any rank for the amount of time involved. The highly rng-dependant gameplay is exhausting; the number of restarts required for p1 and p4 is borderline ridiculous. And I say that as someone who has watched all the gamechanger videos to be sure I understand the mechanics and slows down play to 2x to make sure I get the counts correct. I still have to do it over and over. The worst part is seeing most of my guild left out because they don't have JTR or the other few characters that seem to work. They are all good sports, though, they nevertheless make the effort.
[Likes/Dislikes] Conceptually, it's a cool raid. The mechanics are interesting, though as mentioned, too rng-dependent. And really I just like having a third raid. I would like to see the time reduced, though I think suspending the escape mechanic and creating something that was nearly impossible to auto was a good decision moving forward. It feels good to have created teams that can substantially auto Hpit - it's a reward unto itself - but that doesn't need to be something we can do in every aspect of gameplay. However, the Sith raid is a painful time-sink. It often isn't quality gameplay, it's just time lost. And while flattening the rewards was not the answer (just ask my top contributor how he felt about earning over 23m and getting nearly the same payout as the person who auto'd it every day), the rewards overall need to be substantially better.
Thanks for asking for input - with some revisions, I'm sure we'll come to enjoy this raid as much as the others.
Ok, throwing this in to hopefully have it dispelled. In a recent discussion elsewhere, it was said the guilds imploding, and the strong players forming strong guilds was known to be a result of the Sith Raid and the design of it was geared to cause just that. The logic being strong guilds spend money on the game and as such are their focus, low quality rewards will either force weaker players to spend or drive them away. Having an organized grouping allows the Devs to guage their numbers and move forward with even more difficult content.
I wonder how many identical posts it will be before OP says ok...mechanics are wonky/ridiculous and rewards for sub-Heroic are insulting for the effort (consider that Mk3 carbanti challenge day is way more rewarding). I was under the impression that the rewards were being worked on but this thread doesn't make me believe that to be the case.
Rewards aside it feels like the raid was designed with a power creep (level cap/gear level) that was supposed to come at the same time and then didn't. I mean why else would the raid mechanics negate such a crazy amount of character abilities. Also...why is JKA a hero? What about his *current* abilities provides any benefit in the raid? Just another example of either planning way too far in the future, changing your mind halfway through the raid design, or just throwing random things at a wall to see what would happen.
This had the makings of a fun raid but the delivery of it is just lacking on so many fronts. I'd honestly be ok if my guild just completely ignored this raid as it doesn't add to my enjoyment of the game in any way.
Replies
My experience perfectly described. Except you didn't mention that the currency is paltry.
And this - spot on.
Just yesterday I posted a zero in HPit and was more pleased with the rewards I got than those I got for investing at least an hour combined for our most recent STR. That can't be WAI.
I very much like the aesthetics of the STR but mechanics aren't exactly on point, imo.
P2 is good fun with the risk-vs-reward style mechanics and P3 is fine in T4 but gets a bit tiresome already in T5 where the stacks on Traya quickly burn even G11/12 toons and Stand Alone seems very inconsistent (maybe due to my lack of understanding of the mechanic - haven't had much chance to do P3).
I have experimented with several team comps but it does feel like it's JTR or go home - especially for P1, ofc.
DN lead works well in P1 because of the lack of protection otherwise I've mostly just thrown my hardest hitters in all of the phases. I'm building towards an Ayla-lead Jedi team = (almost) no debuffs due to tenacity boost and no buffs to better manage boss Annihilate. Same idea for a Rebel team with Farmboy Luke but I don't truly believe any of them will be viable at higher tiers - outside of a few exceptions Jedi don't hit hard enough to make it work, I think.
Like many others, I'll say that the randomness in P1 is very frustrating, since you often end up with damned if you do/damned if you don't situations - for instance, if only one of your toons has a buff it's a gamble on whether you should use Unb. Will or wait. If you're fairly certain using a basic will result in getting the defense down you can end up in situations where using basic attack will ensure that DN's drain will get his Annihilate off cool down, but using Unb. Will will ensure that Annihilate is still on cool down. Either way it's a restart or a significantly worse run, through no fault of your own. I'm perfectly fine with being punished for a mistake I make but when your run is doomed if you go with either of the only two options, it just feels bad. Same thing goes for DN getting a cooldown reduction for clearing a buff on a toon - having to decide whether or not to use Unb. Will or wait when you have 1 out of 5 toons with a buff for his next turn and then having him attack that 1 toon to get to Annihilate is very annoying.
Lastly, I also find it extremely annoying to often have to guess if your toon with the Unb. Will ability will actually get a turn (more) before Nihilus goes. The way Turn Meter is indicated in the game can be a bit of a nuisance in other parts of the game, but in content where it typically will mean the difference between a good raid-run or a restart (i.e. time wasted) it just doesn't work, imo.
These points might not be very different from so many other aspects of the game being RNG dependent, but it certainly feels worse. Lastly, the health pools of DN(both P1 and P4) in T4/5/6 really needs to be reduced. Something along the lines of 30% would make it feel less like a chore. The health pool(s) for P2 (and maybe P3) could possibly even be increased to make up for some of it. P2 is over for us quite quickly
I'll mention the rewards again since they are - imo - the biggest issue. I didn't expect our guild to be able to take on heroic in the near future and that's the way it should be. The game is better when there is something to work towards. We spent months and months getting to HAAT completion and finally having it on farm felt great. I've seen Carrie mention having a background in MMOs and that you guys kinda, sorta see swgoh as a variation of such. If that's the case then rewards for a raid should help the player advance to the next level of said raid (in WoW normal raid rewards get you to heroic, heroic rewards to mythic etc.). Sure, you might not get exactly the gear piece you need/want in a particular run, or you can pick up something helpful from another part of the game. While the latter is also the case with swgoh, to some extent, rewards for STR in their current state, in no way get us closer to move up a tier. If we were to rely only/mostly on those rewards it will be years before we would make any real progress in beating a higher tier. I sincerely hope another go at a rework will improve this.
Why do the other raids not generate this much dislike? Simply put... they are quick to do and generate good rewards. I’m sorry but you’ve completely missed the mark with this raid. Other than whale guilds and you tubers no one has the time to put into this ONE part of your game. Because of this, guilds are dying.
Conversely, I love TW. The best idea you’ve come up with in a long while! Two days worth of fun with a reward. And it actually brings guilds together as a team in combat. Who can argue with that!
This dude coming on here talking about we got a 24hr/0 dmg rule....I love it. But in all honesty interesting to see a guild running heroic say its slightly less hassle and easier than t6. I'd agree I found heroic aat easier than regular for some reason also.
Instead you have to balance his remove/copy, his cooldown decreases, and his annihilate with the "ultimate shield" ability. Oh, and his AI doesn't consistently use the abilities correctly. For example, if all three of his abilities are available sometimes he uses the ally call and the force drain, other times he goes straight for annihilate."
As a side, I did prefer the flattened rewards we had briefly as a concept, though the reduction from the current system was massive (mostly on heroic). The upper end rewards of heroic in the current system were reduced by over 80% in the flattened system. The system itself was better, but the massive nuke on the payouts I think gave it a really bad spin. I know you were working on improving that, and I hope you can work it out and reintegrate it into the game. The Rancor and AAT especially could really benefit from flattened rewards as sunset / "legacy" content for older players.
Tiers: T4 and T5 alternating
GP: 92m
Teams:
-JTR resistance
-troopers (thrawn lead with magma in p1, otherwise veers lead with starck, always death and shore)
-wedge lead rebels (biggs, cls, han, ezra)
-nihilus lead sith
-boba lead mix team with hoda, tarkin, stormtrooper, fotp
-just got assaj zeta so looking forward to trying NS, especially in p4.
Motivations:
Reaching heroic, getting traya shards and g12
Demotivations:
-Multiple restarts to get good runs every single day because of the RNG factor.
-Repetitive mechanics leading many in the guild to get frustrated and drop in participation. This is tearing up our guild and we are looking for a merge to get closer to heroic.
-Rewards for sub-heroic tiers are not commensurate with the effort required. I finish first or second every raid and the rewards for t4 and t5 are generally worse than rancor rewards, which can be finished on auto in 7 minutes. Pretty low full gear drop rate in my experience--while heroic folks get a guaranteed full g12 piece drop every time? This is frustrating.
-Some teams that work well in heroic are unique to heroic and not the best teams for sub-heroic tiers, making it tough to motivate everyone in the guild to understand the heroic teams and work on learning how to use them. For example deathmark is amazing for dealing damage in sub-heroic tiers, but in heroic it's really best used as a forced taunt in the chex mix team.
Enjoy/Don't enjoy:
I do enjoy some of the raid mechanics, and appreciate that you worked hard to make an interesting raid that would be a challenge. That said, it is frustrating not being able to predict whether DN will annihilate when its cooldown is at 1. Not to mention the RNG factors in getting a good chex mix run or the +/- third action thing in heroic, which I have personally not yet experienced as we aren't running heroic yet.
Bottom line, if the rewards for the lower tiers were better, I think we would have much more enthusiasm for completing this raid each time and working towards heroic. Perhaps a guaranteed full piece drop.
Heroic, t6 prior to that.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
135M
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
P1-Jedi Rey and friends
P2- Wampa+Sabine
P2-Leia +tanks
P3-Chex Mix
P4-Night Sisters
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Non-heroic raids are very out of balance. The effort required for the rewards received just don't like up. The high health and being limited to 5 teams per day makes the raid drag on for way too long. The heroic rewards should be enough motivation to get past the lower tiers. I cannot imagine running non-heroic for a long period of time. Guild members had already stopped trying which just made them draw out even longer.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I like the mechanics of every phase of the raid except for Nihilus in p1. Only having one legitimately effective team does not make for an enjoyable experience. Once we were able to complete heroic this raid became rather enjoyable but the time running non heroic was nearly unbearable.
I think a good solution for t6 is to make it the same health and difficulty as heroic, but add in roster refreshes daily. This would allow guilds to judge how close they are to heroic ready and the raids would not drag on as long as they currently do.
I have personally done T5, T6, and Heroic. We have completed them all, and are now regularly completing Heroic.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
We have approximately 130M GP
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
I have played many teams, but now run JTR and Phoenix in phase 2, Chex Mix in phase 3, and hold fire in phase 4 until Nihilus dies. I am working on a NS team for that component, but then use my suboptimal but strong teams (Vader, Troopers, etc) on Sion. I use all remaining trash after that.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
Motivators:
1: Theme of the raid is very cool
2: Traya shards
3: Full G12 piece on heroic is a nice get
Demotivators:
1: Stacking tenacity mechanic, which renders my creativity worthless. Just do what everyone else says works, because other strategies will not work.
2: Attempting to manage Nihilus's annihilate timing
3: Frustrating RNG dependent run quality in P2 (if Sion stacks to Suffering quickly, I have to start over)
4: Confusing and convulated conditional kits on enemy abilities: i.e. If X, Nihilus gets Y when he does Z. If A, then Nihilus gets B when you do C. If J, then Traya's lightsabers apply K and if L they apply M and if N they apply O.
5: General feeling that even good performance has a minimal impact on the raid
6: On non-heroic tiers, the raid will often drag on for days. The longer the raid takes, the less it feels like the rewards are worthwhile. If the raid took an hour, then people would harp on the rewards less probably.
7: Need to restart runs over and over rapidly burns me out.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
I believe this raid has inferior mechanical design to the hAAT raid. Many of the mechanics are convoluted and difficult to understand. Even after doing the raid more than a dozen times, I still have to read tooltips over and over to grasp what is happening. There are still things I am missing or frequently forgetting.
Numerous mechanics have no rational or properly designed counter. The player is asked to mentally track enemy cooldowns while those cooldowns are constantly being modified. Mistakes require complete restarts if you are trying to semi-optimize your score.
I'm reading this again and again. And experiencing it within my own Guild. We have always been a tight-knit, friendly and supportive bunch. We take the game seriously but we know it's just a game. In the last month, for the first time ever there have been arguments, disputes and people leaving. It's really sad to see, for me.
All phases
110 gp
all g12 - palp lead, maul, Vader, mauls brother, thrawn. Averaging 600 k on phase 1or 4, 2-3 get approx 1.5 - 2 mill.
Gear 9 Jawa for phase 1 Get approx 300-500 k damage
Gear 12 - new Luke lead, tank raid kenobi, raid han, rebels Ashoka, r2 - phase 2,3 gets about 1.5 - 2 mil damage
All gear 12 - Boba Fett, r2, masked kylo, scavenger Rey, original Leia, phase 1 - average 500- 800 k damage
Gear 12 sid lead, 6 Star g11 wampa, g 12 masked kylo, g12 sith assassin, gear 11 TFP - phases 2-3, sometimes 4 - average 1.5- 2 milk damage
Clones gear 12 except g11 echo, phases 2,3 - 2-2.5 mill damage
The issues are with phases 1 and 4. They are a chore and it makes participation in my guild less than 50% for the entire raid. No one likes these phases. Drop the nihilus protection, lower the hp for these phases. Those are the easy solutions
What tier or tiers did you play?
We have tried them all, not ready for 7 yet, currently on tier 5 after tier 4 rewards put us off.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid?
102m GP at the moment
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
Our guild has a spread of players, about half have Jedi Rey, we have tried lots of teams and looked up lots of guides.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying?
We would like to earn the teir 6/7 rewards but getting participation is really difficult. The raid is slow going the feedback across the guild is that it just isn't fun, we have started to understand the mechanics in p1-2-3 but p4 is tough, doing a fraction of a percent doesn't make for a fun way to spend an hour or more. At least the Rancor in its early days and the tank had a sense of progress, you knew set teams could do a chunk of damage or the rancor could be beat if you got your team good enough. So far it feels like only a guild with full JTR teams can do this. I am hopeful that new teams will come through and we can make progress again.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid?
See the above, we enjoyed it at first with the excitement of something new after months of having the tank on farm but the flip side was the disappointment of it not living up to our hopes.
Edit - after tonight's run, tenacity of the bosses making so many toons pointless.
I'll repeat it again. To keep players motivated they need to see that light at the end of the tunnel that they're working towards.
Been grinding for 2 years, building a roster and all I can do is be bored and frustrated in T5 for horrible rewards I don't need.
Try selling that experience to a new player.
102 mil GO
Everythinng except JTR as only a few in or guild have her.
Nihilus in P1 and P4. It would be one thing if the worst possible tedious micro management gave results but the mechanisms are so unpredictable. And it’s boring since it just seem to be JTR or don’t bother. It’s demoralizing that it’s only one toon that does all the difference.
The rewards are absolutely terrible, it doesn’t seem to matter if you do T4 or T5. You grind for a couple of days and finish top 10 and get 6 pieces of gear salvage. It’s demoralizing.
It’s hard to see anything particular good with the raid as it isn’t funny but the sound effects and animations are good.
Tier 1
We could do tier 3 but frankly everyone in the guild hates the raid so much it's hard to keep interest. Frankly none of the lower tiers rewards are worth it nor is the difficulty scaled to be similar to other raids (for example the tier supppsedly equivalent to normal aat is way harder). Point being everyone hates the raid so much for its garbage rewards we'd rather get trashy rewards for <24 hrs of our time than ever so slightly less trashy rewards for 3-4 days of our time. For record I'm. A guild officer
Phase 1 is the worst because the mechanics basically hard counter almost everything. It's not fun to have invested in a bunch of meta toons like cls and find they can't do anything in this phase. Kinda of a joke how if you don't have very specific toons you basically can kiss away doing any useful damage. Phase 4 is similarly terrible because you fight DN again.
I do like phase 2 and to a lesser degree phase 3. Phase 2 seems best balanced to the written tier requirements. Phase 3 isn't crazy fun but it's not bad, kinda average for a raid. In both cases I feel like there is fun theory crafting options for me to try. Against DN I just feel resigned to not doing any useful damage since I lack JTR.
34 mil GP
Rebels, Phoenix, Empire teams
I think everything except Nihilus is fine but Nihilus is so terrible that it makes you hate the raid. The problem is Nihilus's protection mechanic and unpredictability. The protection mechanic means only a few teams can do anything against him pretty much have JTR or bust. That in itself isn't bad design for the heroic tier. Heroic should require specific teams because it is meant to be done by long time players. However for the lower tiers that are expected to be done by new players it doesn't work at all. New players simply don't have the roster to field specific teams or have JTR.
Also the rewards are terrible. My guild can do Heroic Rancor and T6 tank which gives end game gear but can only do T3 Sith which gives a few low level gear salvage. Rancor and Tank are far far easier and give much better rewards.
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? We are over 130 million.
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? T5 rewards are not worth the time investment to try and get huge scores.
What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? I like that each phase has different mechanics to figure out and that each Raid Boss is different. I dislike the rewards. Get rid of challenge gear across all tiers and increase T5 and T6 rewards to better reflect the time investment to beat them.
- About 31m GP
- Wedge, Biggs, zzR2, zCLS & Leia; Classic BHs with 4* Bossk lead; zThrawn, TFP, DT, GMT, Shore; zzVadar, zzPalp, zDooku, Sion, Sidious
- Nothing motivates us to do it, it is just there so we might as well have it running
- The raid sucks, it is no fun and the rewards are rubbish. T1 is awful. How can you defend with the special ability against a mechanic where you cannot predict if DN will annihilate. No skill, no fun, the guild generally hates it and most people don't bother or auto it.
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good..
What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 79M
What teams you did you attempt the raid with?
A few have JTR/Resistance (a lucky few). Imp Troops, Nightsisters, Empire, Bounty Hunters, Jedi, Clones.
What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? T4 rewards are not exciting. Participation is super low. We worked hard to gear up for HAAT. This raid feels like it has no end.
What about the raid did you enjoy? The new characters were interesting. So there is a sense of novelty. I thought it would be fun to try new squads. But...turns out it’s all JTR all the time.
What did you dislike about the raid? after spending a week on it originally, then starting again, it got old and repetitive. The constant restarts (for the 2 who still try) are a boring grind.
[*] What GP is your Guild that is attempting the raid? 113M
[*] What teams you did you attempt the raid with? I've tried a ton of combos both of my own creation and ones recommended online. My go-tos tend to be zJTR Resistance, Wedge Rebels, zAsajj Nightsisters, zVeers Troopers, and one experimental squad each day. I do about 25M-35M total damage per raid.
[*] What part of the raid motivated or demotivated you to continue trying? Too. Much. Time. Even on full auto, doing five good squads takes about 25%-35% of my daily playing time. If I take the time to attack carefully, it's more like 40%-60%. That's a huge commitment for what amounts to maybe 5% of my total rewards collected in a week (if I have good RNG). And it's pretty much Every. Single. Day. if I want the reward percentage to even hit that already low percentage.
[*] What about the raid did you enjoy? What did you dislike about the raid? The mechanics and challenge of it are actually pretty fun in small doses but not when it becomes the majority of daily play. I would probably love it as a raid that takes a single day and occurs once or twice a week*. Or maybe even as a multi-day grind that occurs monthly (a la Territory Battles). Currently though it's the most time-consuming part of the game, it has the least rewards for completing it, and it has lead me to auto-playing almost every piece of content in the game just so I can maybe keep my game play under two hours a day. Like many others, I'm now asking myself why I'm spending that much time every day trying to rush through a game with the least engagement possible just to check off all the boxes of all the activities, especially when all of that extra time isn't making me feel like I'm progressing through the game any faster than I was a year ago when the game took half as much time (or less) to really savor it and enjoy.
(*Yes, I know I can quit my guild and find one that can crank out Heroic in a day. Given that I'm the only active officer holding my guild together, I was willing to give EA a couple of weeks and see how they fix this. I would like to be optimistic that someone will figure out that designing content that substantially increases time spent in the game but also hugely reduces the rewards-to-time-spent-in-game ratio just doesn't make sense and can potentially wreak havoc on your player base.)
Thank you for your time and good luck in getting this all sussed out.
But Nihilus? He gains protection when you hit him with basics, which almost all teams need to do regularly simply because cooldowns are a thing on every other move, and damage to his protection is essentially wasted. Like all STR bosses, you can't debuff him unless they're unresistable debuffs. Hitting him makes him faster, which makes it harder to plan turns, which is particularly awful considering he's the one you need to do that against the most. Buffs other than Foresight are much less effective or arguably a liability against him, since he dispels on basic, gains the buffs he dispels himself, and on top of that also reduces the cooldowns of not only Force Drain but Annihilate when he does so. He ignores your protection, cutting the durability of most characters by more than half just innately. When he Force Drains, he increases your cooldowns, likely forcing you to use more basics on him, feeding him more protection. And on top of all of that, he has Annihilate, which now not only instant-kills with no chance of revive, but gives him a huge buff, so if someone gets hit with that, you definitely want to restart, as it will massively reduce your run's total.
And what do you get to fight back with? Unbreakable Will, which basically exists solely to let you survive Annihilate. Unlike Sion or Traya, there's no way to use this as a weakness of Nihilus' that will let you do better, it just helps negate one of his many strengths (albeit the most overwhelming of them if it didn't exist, granted).
Seriously, notice that the teams that do well against him are only those that exploit effects that do damage based on the health percent of the boss - JTR with expose, and to a lesser extent Deathtrooper with Deathmark and that one thermal detonator team. These same abilities do well against all STR bosses, because of the health bloat of the raid - it's just that nothing does better than them against Nihilus, because he has no weaknesses to exploit, and seemingly every advantage going for him.
In contrast, in phase 4 he's more manageable, because Traya and Sion's mechanics are in effect, and Bonds of Weakness in particular being exploitable by the Nightsisters helps make it more possible to fight him effectively (albeit not without many of the same frustrations brought on by his many strengths). But on his own, in phase 1, there's nothing like that, only things that work entirely to Nihilus' favor.
[GP] 50m guild, 1.5m personally
[Teams] P1 (JTR, Sith/Nightsisters), P2 (First Order, Empire, Troopers), P3 (JTR, Empire/Troopers), P4 (JTR for Nihilus, FO for Sion, auto the rest until it's mercifully over)
[Motivation/Demotivation] I enjoy the puzzle and the challenge and having to think critically about how best to use my roster; JTR is the only team I have that makes discernible progress, so the rest involves lots of experimentation. A substantial part of my motivation is that I'm a guild leader and one of only two people who has unlocked JTR, so to have any chance of finishing, a lot of it's on me. And if I don't make the time for it, I can't ask anyone else to. The demotivating aspects are substantial; the rewards are not nearly adequate at any rank for the amount of time involved. The highly rng-dependant gameplay is exhausting; the number of restarts required for p1 and p4 is borderline ridiculous. And I say that as someone who has watched all the gamechanger videos to be sure I understand the mechanics and slows down play to 2x to make sure I get the counts correct. I still have to do it over and over. The worst part is seeing most of my guild left out because they don't have JTR or the other few characters that seem to work. They are all good sports, though, they nevertheless make the effort.
[Likes/Dislikes] Conceptually, it's a cool raid. The mechanics are interesting, though as mentioned, too rng-dependent. And really I just like having a third raid. I would like to see the time reduced, though I think suspending the escape mechanic and creating something that was nearly impossible to auto was a good decision moving forward. It feels good to have created teams that can substantially auto Hpit - it's a reward unto itself - but that doesn't need to be something we can do in every aspect of gameplay. However, the Sith raid is a painful time-sink. It often isn't quality gameplay, it's just time lost. And while flattening the rewards was not the answer (just ask my top contributor how he felt about earning over 23m and getting nearly the same payout as the person who auto'd it every day), the rewards overall need to be substantially better.
Thanks for asking for input - with some revisions, I'm sure we'll come to enjoy this raid as much as the others.
Ok, throwing this in to hopefully have it dispelled. In a recent discussion elsewhere, it was said the guilds imploding, and the strong players forming strong guilds was known to be a result of the Sith Raid and the design of it was geared to cause just that. The logic being strong guilds spend money on the game and as such are their focus, low quality rewards will either force weaker players to spend or drive them away. Having an organized grouping allows the Devs to guage their numbers and move forward with even more difficult content.
Hoping this is untrue.
/Rumor
Rewards aside it feels like the raid was designed with a power creep (level cap/gear level) that was supposed to come at the same time and then didn't. I mean why else would the raid mechanics negate such a crazy amount of character abilities. Also...why is JKA a hero? What about his *current* abilities provides any benefit in the raid? Just another example of either planning way too far in the future, changing your mind halfway through the raid design, or just throwing random things at a wall to see what would happen.
This had the makings of a fun raid but the delivery of it is just lacking on so many fronts. I'd honestly be ok if my guild just completely ignored this raid as it doesn't add to my enjoyment of the game in any way.