Camera Abuse, Aggro Abuse

[sir_spanksalot]

avatar of mercy?

one of my favorite amulets

[Contragor]

Avatar would be bis, but I need another aura for my build, so it has to be avenger of cairn

[Volek]

I may very well be wrong.

Same here I guess. Different expectations on how the game should ideally be.

what are the factors which contribute to a player’s enjoyment in SR?

That obviously differs from player to player, for me (and most of my friends) the biggest factor is consistency. You said SR is not supposed to be consistent and I can agree with that to some extent. Mutators are perfectly fine and rarely an issue, but if they are I either restart the run or pack some pharma to counter them. The main thing that’s bugging me is the discrepancy in difficulty between regular chunks and boss chunks, I feel it is often too big and too random without aggro abuse.

Thus far, I’ve been operating under the assumption that fun is associated with success. I.e. able to push deep into SR.

I agree that fun is associated with success, at least for most people. Some are just masochists I guess
Success is subjective though, pushing deep into SR isn’t for everyone. Take @Wolfshoes comment for example:

A lot of time I’ll play builds at an SR level lower than max that’s challenging-but-not-impossible, that means boss rooms that won’t spawn impossible to beat combos (at least the majority of the time) and where making errors will mean I’ll die sometimes.

However, I promise you - if a player is getting killed before SR 75, there are things they can do to overcome this RNG.

For instance, do these players go to grim tools to look up the monster which killed them? Do they ask for help, or voice their questions?

Well I guess you’re right, GD is a game that is hard to learn and even harder to master without guides. Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing though. Being forced to rely on guides in order to successfully play the game can be quite detrimental to the fun (i.e. pride of accomplishment).

But I’ll try to remember your promise the next time I get screwed by yet another mysterious damage spike

I’ll take 3-4 of my specs which have cleared 80+ and run it through 50.

I guess your 80+ specs won’t have much of a problem with 50. Maybe take an average build if you have one.

TBH, I just enjoy the theorycrafting

Still a big difference between us. I don’t enjoy theorycrafting at all. I might look up items in GT and sometimes plan devotion routes but that’s it. I try to spend as little time as possible in 3rd party tools.

[sir_spanksalot]

Being forced to rely on guides in order to successfully play the game can be quite detrimental to the fun (i.e. pride of accomplishment).

I don’t think one needs to rely on a guide per se, so much so as it is developing an understanding of game mechanics, and in so doing - finding a playstyle which fits you.

e.g. For me, as I’ve always said, it’s mobility. It’s the biggest mechanic I rely on for both survivability and offence.

That to me is the most beautiful aspect of GD. Your spec is something very personal to you.

E.g. I’ve tried piloting mad_lee’s chaos AAR MH and was no where as successful as he was with it. The converse is also true - lee has tried piloting some of my glass cannons, and found them too inconsistent for his playstyle.

At the end of the day, a guide is exactly that - a guide. It’s not a manual.

They offer an excellent window into the unqiue perspective of each theorycrafter’s thought process, and provide you the freedom to adopt concepts you find appealing/suitable to yourself, or to reject those that aren’t.

I don’t enjoy theorycrafting at all

Right. Understandably so, it isn’t for everyone.

Just like how I hate farming for crap, so I use GDstash

To some, relying on such a tool might trivialise the game. but to me, it opens up GD’s possibilities.

But I would highly recommend reading some of the guides on mechanics. If you can understand what makes a good build tick, you’ll be able to implement those concepts on your builds to help you overcome whatever challenge you may be faced with.

I guess your 80+ specs won’t have much of a problem with 50. Maybe take an average build if you have one.

I’ve also just finished SR 50 - 56 without dying on my doom bolter.

That being said, it took every piloting trick I know of to beat these boss chunks.

So I completely agree with where you’re coming from. These confined arenas are hell to pilot in, and I’m surprised at their difficulty.

I understand a lot better your frustration.

Still…If we were to set aside the use camera abuse, I hesitate to say that SR 50 is more (or less) difficult that SR 70 -76 because the 2 inherently different.

E.g. SR 70+'s slathablah the aethertwat is still the most difficult enemy I’ve ever encountered.

And my suggestion remains the same - find a playstyle you’re comfortable with!

Boss chunks @:

• 5:10
• 10:30
• 15:53
• 21:58 <— this was especially intense

[Aikimox]

Nope sir, this is a dead char by HC standards. Close calls in multiple chunks. For softbellycore it’s tough. Make it HC. Make it your only toon. Make it without GDStash. Then tell me how you feel when your HP drops by 70-80% like that. You can’t even make it to 52 in HC with this toon. No wonder HC is in this terrible state. Nobody gives a sh!t. Camera abuse my @ss! Wrong topic. Should be about damage mechanics like some guys said above.

BTW, big fan of your build!

[sir_spanksalot]

Nope sir, this is a dead char by HC standards. Close calls in multiple chunks. For softbellycore it’s tough. Make it HC. Make it your only toon. Make it without GDStash. Then tell me how you feel when your HP drops by 70-80% like that

Why impose your HC standards on SC players?

I’ve never once said this was a tanky spec. In fact, it’s no secret that I enjoy piloting glass cannons.

I like courting death. It’s what makes the game fun to me.

[Contragor]

dead char by HC standards

Don’t exaggerate bro. Not dead, more like experimental. For courting death and then embracing it.

But yeah, the topic is about camera not thread abuse

[sir_spanksalot]

For the record, this was what I regeared into when I was testing this spec in SR 80+.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62ayerk2

[Contragor]

I so wanna try it, but the stupid blacksmith doesn’t surrender the amulet, so can’t complete the challenge and move on yet…

[ya1]

Camera abuse my @ss! Wrong topic. Should be about damage mechanics like some guys said above.

Yup. Dmg/debuff mechanics aren’t extremely HC unfriendly. But that’s Zantai’s vision for the game. Russian roulette.

But aggromerabuse is godsend for HC players. Opens way for a much wider variety of toons to be playable in HC SR.

Anyways, I think camera aggro abuse is a good thing. Yeah, it trivializes sub 75 (yesterday did it on my Silver Sentinel with 8.5k health after Afflicted - super interesting to play with a squishy char against strong scaled mobs and bosses when your only advantage is being able to single them out) but makes things way more interesting for deeper shards where even single bosses are dangerous. And truth be told sub 75 has always been easy, camera changes very little. The only difficulty was getting unlucky with aggro, and this is not a matter of difficulty really just bad luck.

[Athremon]

E.g. SR 70+'s slathablah the aethertwat is still the most difficult enemy I’ve ever encountered.

Just for the record: You can either try to run from his green glibberish puddles - or stand right in front of him. If you’re practically hugging him, you won’t suffer much damage. Somewhat like “in the eye of the storm”. From my experience, this works every time.
I think this is not a bug, but a deliberate “help” for melee characters, for whom he could be a real nightmare.

[sir_spanksalot]

It’s moreso the threat he poses when you are swarmed by nems rather than 1v1’ing him

It’s probably a problem more specifically associated with me as I don’t use camera abuse.

[Knife]

Sorry man I am a little slow on the uptake. What is camera abuse? Is that like, editing/doctoring pictures/footage? Or some kind of camera setting that allows the game to run smoother? lol I am inclined to think its the first… But maybe its neither, I dont know!

[sir_spanksalot]

@knife:

1. Nothing to apologize for.
2. Camera abuse: When you rotate the minimap so that north is pointing towards the bottom of the screen, and not the top, you severely decrease the the aggro range of enemies.

Since the aggro radius for each enemy type is different (e.g. kuba will sniff you a mile away, and zantarin is almost blind), this exploit allows you to safely navigate boss chunks, as you pull each boss away from the group, one at a time.

So boss chunks in deep shards becomes a prolonged series of 1v1’s

[Knife]

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat! Hot dog, thats good to know! Thank you!

[sephelutis]

If we finally fix this and let SR be the actual beast it is then you’d never have this problem.

Theres a couple of builds when first SR came out truelly kited the entire room worth of bosses.

I honestly dont mind go back to SR50 to farm my loot (of which is already an explosion more than anything else in the game) if the community come appreciate just how difficult SR70+ really is when it comes to test builds.

And we might be going back abit on the speed clear.

[Maya]

I never bothered with Camera abuse. Mostly because I didn’t know about it until after I had made most of my builds…

Aggro abuse however, I did use and plenty of times. Without it even my best builds find some SR boss combinations straight up impossible.

That said, while I have been against removing aggro abuse in the past, I must say that I might be ok with it atm.

[sir_spanksalot]

I must say that I might be ok with it atm.

why the change of heart maya?

[Maya]

I must say that I might be ok with it atm.

why the change of heart maya?

Mostly because of Zantai’s stance on SR + more and more people becoming interested in the game mode.

If SR starts to play a role in GD important enough to be balanced around, then I rather not have anything nerfed/buffed until the Aggro abuse gets fixed.

Because say a build gets into SR 100 by fighting things 1v1.
And then the build gets nerfed or SR gets buffed.
It will be similar to balancing around the Crucible times of the best pilots in the community.

I don’t know how easier it gets with camera rotation, but without it, there are boss combinations and sometimes sheer bad luck where you end up not being able to 1v1 or even pull the entire room. So I rather not see balancing being done around luring bosses 1 by 1.

[Nery]

Mostly because of Zantai’s stance on SR + more and more people becoming interested in the game mode.

If SR starts to play a role in GD important enough to be balanced around, then I rather not have anything nerfed/buffed until the Aggro abuse gets fixed.

Because say a build gets into SR 100 by fighting things 1v1.
And then the build gets nerfed or SR gets buffed.
It will be similar to balancing around the Crucible times of the best pilots in the community.

I don’t know how easier it gets with camera rotation, but without it, there are boss combinations and sometimes sheer bad luck where you end up not being able to 1v1 or even pull the entire room. So I rather not see balancing being done around luring bosses 1 by 1.

I agree that if you want to balance around SR, you need to cut the shenanigans. We can see new wave of builders that exclusively play SR, so it’s big part of this community’s interests/concerns. But camera abuse thing can make weak or even flawed with mistakes build complete SR 75. Oh, 75 is great achievement, you want buffs? Quite the opposite, nerf that OP build.