Wave 200+ is frustrating in a bad way: unavoidable damage

[Yextiny]

Observations:

- Centennial waves (200, 300, etc) can be a Seraph/Scion paired with a Juggernaut at the same time. Two very high health enemies that require constant careful maneuvering to dodge their projectiles / spawns / hazards while staying behind them. When paired, their mechanics often overlap in ways that are impossible to dodge (more often as their speed scales up)

- Speed scaling gets out of hand with agile enemies like seraph, shooting at nearly once a second by wave 300 with extremely fast player tracking.

- Several small projectiles that aren't destroyed on contact can melt a 120+ shield in ~1 second and are capable of killing you in the time it takes to pass over them. This makes a lone unnoticed energy ball more dangerous than being rammed into by a Juggernaut at max speed. With how busy the screen can get, it is frustrating to be so rapidly killed by something one either couldn't see or couldn't avoid.

- After wave 250+ or so, you can get an entire screen-full of mines, and their splintering projectiles become unavoidable damage with no safe part of the screen to get to.

Suggestions:

- Remove the possibility to pair Seraph/Scion/Juggernaut with each other in the same wave

- A hard cap on speed/maneuverability scaling for agile enemies (like Seraph), or lowering the cap if there is one.

- Lower DPS of persistent enemy projectiles/trails.

- Change mine waves so they can't fill up the whole screen / double-spawn

[dholland]

I agree about the screenfull of mines. There's nowhere to hide regardless of skill, and I suggested there be left some space in the thread about new player difficulty.

As far as double boss spawns, it probably depends on your ship control skills and reaction times and your gear.

Personally I don't have too much difficulty with twin bosses until wave 300+. Screenwrapping and cloaking with spectre is for me enough to avoid most of the damage and direct collisions, even though I take damage via warp strike, since I regain any lost hull within a few seconds of firing anti-matter missiles with Essence Sap. I don't (can't) use blink or strafe.

I can imagine it's a much tougher situation with any body other than spectre, and avoiding damage will likely require blink or strafe, which needs fast reactions and nimble fingers, with enemies able to see you and quickly rotate to face you. But the tools (blink, strafe) are there in the game to avoid the majority of damage, so it's unlikely to be changed. I find the situation a bit frustrating since I'm limited to very few builds that are viable with my abilities and RSI injury, but I do enjoy playing those builds.

[Yextiny]

Originally posted by dholland:

I can imagine it's a much tougher situation with any body other than spectre, and avoiding damage will likely require blink or strafe, which needs fast reactions and nimble fingers, with enemies able to see you and quickly rotate to face you. But the tools (blink, strafe) are there in the game to avoid the majority of damage, so it's unlikely to be changed. I find the situation a bit frustrating since I'm limited to very few builds that are viable with my abilities and RSI injury, but I do enjoy playing those builds.

I don't find "I was able to get past it with this very specific loadout" a compelling counter-argument. That actually just reinforces my point.

[Yextiny]

Just popping back in here to vent. Just today, I rapidly died 3 times to small persistent damage sources I couldn't see, even with all the bloom and etc effects off. Feeling "cheated" out of runs feels really really bad and makes me regret investing the time into the run.

This game is probably the #1 offender for "unfair" deaths in my gaming history. Still love it, but, man, does it make me angry sometimes. If you went back in time and showed me a compilation of the number of times I was 20-30min into a run, just got the build fully set up, only to die in less than 2s to something I couldn't see or avoid, I would probably not have bought the game.

[No One]

Step 1: let the mines home in on your position and line up.
Step 2: set yourself adrift.
Step 3: set them all off.

They will mainly miss. Of course if you set them all off some damage is unavoidable, so have a recovery plan.

Alternative:
Combine all the damage resistance hull mods. Adaptive armour, force armour, and aegis, then stand still and set them all off. Yeah you'll take a bunch of hits, but they're all small hits and you'll stack adaptive armour like mad, so you should survive.


If you have a pile of elite shredder mines in the middle of the screen what you want is generally emergency systems + flash shielding. They'll pop your shield and then you hide in the middle of the blast.

Emergency systems is also how to deal with Seraph+. I recommend definitely going all the way to tempest break. The lightning will let you know your shield has popped, and how you have most of a second to GTFO. Use blink or strafe to get away from the problem.

Because in Nova Drift you usually get 100-0 in a single combo, I consider emergency systems essentially mandatory. it will straight counter a bunch of the issues.


BTW for dodging juggernaut, nothing beats apotheosis. Much easier to deal with when it's mechanically impossible to get hit by its main attack. You get kinetic boost on the way to emergency systems...