I started to pay more attention to Danger Room scenarios today, the different affixes just see what I can reasonably do with my best and no so best geared heroes. Just a few thoughts:
- Some mobs are way overpowered. AIM Obliterators, Mutate Shamans, and usually energy/fire damage with DOT effects like infectious or Incinerators (the gang dudes with fire bottles) do insane damage that I'm sure is not comparable to other types of damage. In cosmic scenarios one hit of a Mutate Shaman flame thingy (unavoidable attack btw, it will chase you around) hit me for 60% of my HP. I'm at 2500 Omegas, almost all 69 recipes and no challenge bonuses/top tier artifacts, so not exactly up there, but I'm sure even much better geared characters suffer with some of these attacks (which can't even be avoided or cleansed after they inevitably hit you).
Now, this could be expected as I was doing them alone, for content probably a tier above what I should be doing (more on this ahead) and in some cases I did manage to finish the scenarios and beat these enemies, but even in weaker scenarios like green and blue the damage disparity was very noticeable, even ending in instant deaths. Some boss attacks suffer from this too, but I haven't faced them all yet. Interestingly enough, Electro seems fine and has been one of the easiest of the bunch.
Relative to other types of attacks (mental and phys), these do much more damage in every difficulty, and considering my damage mitigation is pretty even, it is likely you can take 10 times as many hits from other sources before you see your HP falter to the same degree, so it is reasonable for me to assume some mobs or damage types are the problem, not really the difficulty itself.
- Mini bosses (orange name enemies) don't drop anything at all (maybe green gear or such) in White-Blue-Green scenarios, yet are very likely to drop a unique in Purple-Cosmic ones. It feels like there could be a middle ground somewhere that the loot tables are not hitting or something. Obviously I haven't exhaustively tested all scenarios available, but I've played enough to say this with enough certainty and it seems like a weird outcome.
- Mini bosses also have a ton of HP that can border on the ridiculous depending on the enemy they fall on. Sometimes that makes them harder or take longer to kill than end bosses which really shouldn't be the case.
- Difficulty is wild and I'm not sure it is always down to rarity. The challenge rating is misleading and not really a good measure of how difficult a scenario will be. This is pretty obvious to anyone who has played a bit, but considering bonus merits vary according to the affixes it might as well not be there at all.
- Good hazards to have: fire trap, minefield, blizzard, lightning orb, falling debris, wrecking ball... I'm probably forgetting a few. Fire patches is easy to avoid in open areas, a nightmare in very closed maps, which seem to be most.
- Thunderstorm and floor spikes have been the worst. This obviously changes a bit from hero to hero with variations like movement speed and mobility skills, but overall these 2 are the worst for me. Floor spikes do a shit ton of damage and come out extremely quickly and are hard to avoid compared to stuff like minefield where you have all day to get out of the way. Maybe I'm bad but considering I always get 80 to 120ms latency anyway I just don't bother with scenarios that have those.
- Turrets and totems can be bad but can be worked around as well. Good option for "harder" scenarios that aren't actually a kick in the balls like some other affixes. I actually got a group of totems that were mini boss status. I don't know how much HP they had but I didn't stick around to find out (It was a shitton). I'm also not sure if their effect were vastly improved by this, but it didn't feel like it.
Favorite tileset so far is Marsh. I prefer the more open areas, but also better for solo play because it feels there are more mobs. Marsh with "wealthy" affix is incredible. Subway not so much. Bamboo forest is also good overall and fast to clear in my experience. Worst is AIM base, especially with floor hazards. Those damn obliterators are the worst enemy right now, come in packs of three and if you get a mini boss pack of them they can even kill you from offscreen before you even have time to react.
Picking tech barrels and cars let me did relatively harder scenarios than I thought I would.
I thought I would stick to doing blue scenarios to farm fast merits by myself and the occasional purple here and there, but the reality is that difficulty varies much more with which mini bosses you get or the tile you pick than the rarity itself, so from now on I think I can do only purples and cosmics provided I pick them carefully and avoid the harder enemies listed above. The rarity atm doesn't seem to be doing much of anything. I had problems with the same mobs/damage types across the board with 3 different characters. That is of course, ignoring the harder affixes I just won't do with any character because those are obviously meant for much better geared characters than I have.
Overall, the mode is definitely better than I anticipated before release. Can only get better from here too. The downside is that it isn't really there atm and I feel there are tons of inconsistencies. It's difficult at a glance to see where I stand but I imagine picking the right scenarios will become easier as I get more familiar with the system.
/1 am wall of text ;P
