hmmm. last night was my best raid yet, both in terms of haul and the experience. no armor, but got atheon's epilogue (in the middle of a void burn woooot), hezen's vengeance (any good?) and the glass minuet ship. i'll take it. needed the shards too.
*shrug* i like the atheon change.
obviously the glitches need fixing (though I don't think we hit any on Normal :-x) and that's worthy of criticism, but the encounter design is solid. i get that it's frustratingly
different than what you're used to. but you'd get into these situations of panic in the past, where someone was left outside or pulled inside or left holding the relic and they'd have no idea what to do, and that meant a wipe. now everyone is forced to learn over time.
yes, you are forced by the cruel mistress of random selection. but there's a moment of chaos when ported (come on guys, even in the original version, you must get that the fight was designed to evoke this sensation), then a moment of assigning roles on the fly, and then execution. people who are tasked outside of their comfort zone will improve. groups that continuously play with one another will actually benefit in all parts of the raid from the increased knowledge of all 6 players.
last night i was outside on supplicant duty for the first time literally ever. with my group, I was simply never assigned this role and would never have had the chance to do it before. what we were doing was working, so I didn't want to ask to change it. I had no idea what a big aspect of the fight was even like. felt a little like the rest of my fireteam would've preferred to keep their original roles forever, which I get, but... this was cool for me. and it kind of blew my mind a little how quickly you can shift over from one side to the other based on the side they're on. Now I get how you guys always had the portal up and waiting for us! I learned a ton quickly and died the first time, and made it work after that. By the end of the the fight, I really did feel comfortable being slotted into any aspect of it- something I would not have claimed before last night and thus before the teleport change.
You can still assign two people the role of "supplicant/oracle killer only"- two people who will never touch the relic. There's actually more nuance to this pick than you might think. At first my thoughts were that you should just pick the people who are the least confident with the relic- but actually, if someone has really high DPS maxed weapons and is level 29 or 30, it's not ideal for them to have the relic because their DPS is removed from the equation during a damage phase. However, another good thing about the forced rotation is that it's now more likely everyone will get a chance to empty their heavy weapon into Atheon- whereas the relic holder, if the same person every time using the center platform, would never have been doing any damage.
A couple general notes/tips I took away, for anyone doing the various jobs in the Vault:
- Relic-holders: it's incredibly disorienting (for me, anyway!) when you run out of the portal with Time's Vengeance, and the clock is ticking. Even a slight struggle to find the center platform can result in a 10-15 second delay because it's so easy to get turned around in the room. I used to honestly screw this up something like 50% of the time, but what I do now is, when you come out of the portal, run toward the other players who are clustered roughly around the sync plate- the tags will all be visible amid the confusion- then locate the center platform and head toward it, and THEN announce to all to go to the center. Using this method, almost every single damage phase in which I have the relic now has 20+ seconds remaining upon hitting the center.
- Oracle-killers: once you kill the first Oracle, on either side, slowly advance forward down the stairs while killing the rest. This will keep you closer to the relic holder for a cleanse, and then closer to the gate when the buff kicks in, which means exiting sooner, which winds up actually translating to more DPS on the boss. Subtle change but makes a big difference for the full party.
- In the event that something goes wrong and the portal team is stuck inside for a while or the timer on the buff otherwise ticks down to <10s before getting to the center, it's a good idea to not go to the center platform that round at all. Just stay exactly where you are (clustered around the sync plate), kill supplicants and do any damage you can to the boss from there. The relic holder can easily cleanse you. I tried to explain this in a panic for one round last night and I realized what I should have said instead of my convoluted instructions was just "stay where you are!"
- Gatekeeper phase: I don't know who suggested it, but I used Bladedancer stealth for grabbing the relic after killing the Gatekeeper and it worked absolutely beautifully. I loved it. I feel very close to the point where I'd be comfortable soloing one of those portals now, something I would have told you was impossible 3 weeks ago. I now run Gunglinger from the door through killing the Templar, then Bladedancer Gorgons/Air-Dashing-I mean-Platforming-section/Gatekeepers, then back to Gunslinger for Oracles during Atheon, which all suits my playstyle juuuust fine. Big thanks to whoever mentioned this strategy.
Simple solution: don't jump. I don't see this as an issue, really.
Yeah, scary as detain fields during Atheon are to me, this is predicatable behavior which I don't see being "fixed." And it's good advice for anyone during the Templar (legit) too. Whenever his shield goes down/Atheon opens the timestream, do not jump until you're certain there's no detain field on you. Killed one of ours twice yesterday during Templar actually.
