Enhanced Powers mission

[Dariisu]

I finally hit my wall on hard mode and it's the Enhanced Powers mission.

So far I have been able to figure out what the game wants me to do for most missions and have got the all in one bonuses for every single mission, but this mission is so confusing to me. Anyone complete this mission and can provide any tips?

[Cheeseness]

I'm not sure what kind of approaches you've tried, or which heroes you're fielding, but if it's helpful at all, here are a couple of general things that I keep in mind when trying to minimise this level's challenge:
- Leave Alpha till last - when there's only one of him, he's fairly easy to avoid/ignore, and that lets you focus on disarming the Nightjars and the Giant without him getting in the way
- Being mindful about where Nightjars and Giant die can help you charge your ultimates fast
I'm sure others will have suggestions - there are a number of valid approaches to this level, and specifics are going to depend on the heroes in play.

[Dariisu]

Hmm I see. For this mission I've been using the reccomended heroes so Ignis, Kinetic, Mercurial, and Rebound.

[x_equals_speed]

I did this one earlier today.

I went for the giant first, because I wanted all of the secondary objectives and the one for the giant is "prevent it ever using this one specific move" so killing it quickly was the best way to achieve that.

While doing that I fairly consistently avoided taking big damage from it (never end a turn in line with it, always disarm it if it picks up a rock) or the Nighjars (always disarm them) which meany only taking chip damage. That meant only taking single points of damage from relatively weak enemies and there, which could largely be soaked on decoys, healed or just ignored on the tankier heroes.

After the giant was down the Nightjars were next because their objective required disarming them enough times and that was naturally already underway. You've killed them a bunch of time before this mission, there's nothing particularly special about these ones.

Killing Alpha requires a bit of finesse. The trick is that when you injure him he splits into two and when you injure a clone it creates a new clone and so on. However while the clones all display multiple lives they don't actually have them - they'll poof out when they run out of health until there's only one left.

At first I tried to kill him quickly, hitting him for the biggest damage hit I could manage (4.5 damage, with a boost from Mindfire) so he'd split into two half hitpoint versions and then I could easily kill the clone and go back to having one enemy. However the "Absorb energy from kills" objective was going to be missed, so I swapped to intentionally tapping him for light damage to create more clones before winning the level to make sure that objective happened.

Either way, the trick is to delay everyone's actions until just after his turn and plan out all of your moves before you make the first one. Figure out a combination of attacks that creates and then kills clones such that by the time it gets back to his turn there's only one of him and he taps you for just 1 damage.

For me, the new hero helped avoid going down to chip damage quite a lot, since he's got a heal, the ability to put out a decoy that'll suck up two hits and his ultimate heals him to full health - but I imagine other damage mitigation strategies could work just fine.

[x_equals_speed]

Originally posted by Dariisu:

Hmm I see. For this mission I've been using the reccomended heroes so Ignis, Kinetic, Mercurial, and Rebound.

I'd leave Ignis at home, she does a lot of low damage and damage over time, which is the worst thing for having Alpha spawn a bajillion clones with high health.

[Baphled]

I didn't have much luck with the recommended characters, but I swapped in Weathervane and Facet for Kinetic and Rebound (playing on hard).

I disarmed everyone and had Facet facetank the Nightjars. Then it's mostly avoiding the giant and disarming him when he raises the rock. Everyone else has enough disarm to keep the Nightjars from doing their charged move. And box out Alpha using Facet's growth.

Then bully the giant, then deal with Alpha. Using Facet's ult you can prevent Alpha from acting, this spreads to anything he duplicates. While the chain lightning and Ignis attacks don't deal a lot of damage, they can hit a lot of people and Alpha doesn't have much health before he explodes anyways. This is actually pretty useful for getting some of the character challenges, and with so many bodies you'll quickly get your ult recharged.

[Dariisu]

I was finally able to do it! I just had to swap out Rebound and Kinetic for Hyde and Weathervane like the 2 other comments suggested. It's insane how easy this mission became with these 2 swaps compared to how impossible it felt with the reccomended team which is bizzare since for every prior mission I have used the reccomended team and had no issues beyond my own bad strategy for times I couldn't complete the mission.

[Cheeseness]

Originally posted by Dariisu:

I was finally able to do it! I just had to swap out Rebound and Kinetic for Hyde and Weathervane like the 2 other comments suggested. It's insane how easy this mission became with these 2 swaps compared to how impossible it felt with the reccomended team which is bizzare since for every prior mission I have used the reccomended team and had no issues beyond my own bad strategy for times I couldn't complete the mission.

Congrats on getting through!

Different players have different strengths and different playstyles. The mission is readily completeable with the recommended heroes, but a lot of it comes down to how you use them. Kinetic and Weathervane are valid, and a very powerful combination!

[Artifice Knight]

Yeah. Not to go against the grain, but I love Ignis on this mission. On one hand, what everyone is saying about how her damage is low and does chip and spawns clones is /absolutely/ true. You'll probably end up with a half dozen if not more Alphas.

But her ultimate does 3 damage to /everyone/ on fire. Which instantly clears out the Alphas.

I think anyone can do this fight-high damage people like Rebound, Kinetic and Mindfire can take out Alpha before the clones start, while AoE people like Ignis and Weathervane can clear out hordes. I've been using this fight to farm some of those harder challenges-getting Facet to taunt 4 people at once, having Kinetic hit 8 people in a single ultimate, etc.

Really the only character who I don't think does well in this fight is probably Mercurial. While she's a powerhouse elsewhere, the combination of low damage, no AoE, lack of damage, and that Alpha doesn't care if he's disarmed doesn't let her contribute much.

[Cheeseness]

Another thing to keep in mind with Ignis is an Alpha clone that's on fire is hit, the new clone they spawn will be on fire too. If they spawn into fire, they'll also start with 0.5 lower health.

Originally posted by Artifice Knight:

Really the only character who I don't think does well in this fight is probably Mercurial. While she's a powerhouse elsewhere, the combination of low damage, no AoE, lack of damage, and that Alpha doesn't care if he's disarmed doesn't let her contribute much.

Is this taking into account that punching enemies into Rebound confers a free backstab? She's super handy for that, and being able to fire off Rebound's ultimate more frequently can have a huge impact in this mission.

[Artifice Knight]

And in response to the above I did not know about that interaction! I've been punching people into Weathervane, Facet, and Kinetic for counterattacks. I didn't know that Rebound had one too. I'm not sure if it'd make a huge different for Alpha, but thats still quite cool. And yeah, triggering Shadow Blitz against Alpha always feels great.

[Merlinmast]

Originally posted by Artifice Knight:

And in response to the above I did not know about that interaction! I've been punching people into Weathervane, Facet, and Kinetic for counterattacks. I didn't know that Rebound had one too. I'm not sure if it'd make a huge different for Alpha, but thats still quite cool. And yeah, triggering Shadow Blitz against Alpha always feels great.

I think the benefit of Rebound is with a perk, it charges her ult

*Edit* I'm dumb at work, I literally repeated what the Dev just told you lul

[Cheeseness]

Originally posted by Merlinmast:

I think the benefit of Rebound is with a perk, it charges her ult

For the way I prefer to play, Rebound's ultimate being able to pull a full health Alpha down to zero without spawning any clones, or reduce multiple Alphas' health significantly before they split helps speed things up a bit (in addition to everything else)