Epic Occult Labs.. Maybe a bit too far !?

So as most people know, we have the Occult Labs running this month, alongside the usual Event Quest. Now we have seen these kind of labs before (the MODOK ones), but these ones are slighlty (well A LOT) different.

First of all, I know the rewards for epic difficulty are better than highest difficulty in MODOK labs.

But the difficulty of these epic labs is probably a tad too much. Now each of these opponents or bosses in Epic labs, are similar in stats to the main bosses in Uncollected EQ difficulty's FINAL chapter. They have attack ratings around 10k, so each hit through block is like 1-2k, even more sometimes. But still, even that is manageable. The main problem arises with the nodes. Now you might get lucky sometimes and get all fights with 1-3 nodes, even 4 and all of those are not much problematic. But when these champs have 6 nodes and those too, really hard ones, it makes this, what was supposed to be a bonus quest for some extra rewards, an item drain. Now the entries are limited too, so you can't just quit and rejoin.

I know someone will say, if they are too hard for you, just leave it. But that's not a solution. That's not how BONUS side quests should be like. Like I finished epic without using any items that I can recall. But these epic labs can sometimes just be too much (e.g. faced an IMIW on final boss node with 6 local nodes. Yeah!! It sucked)

Comments

Run477

I disagree. I think the difficulty is fair for the t5b/t2a reward possibilities. I have had to use one revive in all epic labs so far. And this month’s epic event quest is ridiculously easy—particularly if you have a blade. So I wouldn’t use this month’s epic eq as a barometer. I have a feeling it was scaled down bc of the forthcoming symbiote level difficulty.

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DTMelodicMetal

Players have the option to pick 1 of 5 difficulties and each difficulty's team PI recommendation is fairly accurate. Kabam also made an announcement about Epic Difficulty not being easy. Epic Labs is the best game content we've ever received in terms of learning new ways to fight well against difficult AI.

Failing is the best way to learn where you need to improve. Can't handle Aspect of War/Evolution/etc. nodes? Practice intercepting. Struggling with nodes that switch your champion's and the AI's health? Learn to structure fights more effectively and use a different strategy than parry/5-hit combo/parry/special attack/parry/and so on.

I've enjoyed Epic Labs more than all other content Kabam has released. Epic Labs fights require more strategy than anything we've seen so far and are more difficult than all other content we've received so far. I haven't needed use potions or revives for Epic Labs when my strongest champs weren't locked in AQ or AW and I still say Epic Labs are never "easy" to complete. Fights that have lucky RNG with nodes and opponents have little room for error because of 9-11K+ attack and 100K+ health.

I hope Act 6's difficulty is at least at the same level as Epic Labs. Putting in the work to complete content of this difficulty will actually mean something if account sharing to have someone complete content for you is on the same path as AW Piloting.

mmmfriedchicken

Hardest I've attempted is Expert...
Rolled 3 times on 1 champ to remove the full power immediately buffs. Those buffs stacked for instant sp3 KO. Other fights rolled dice to avoid 300% power gain and other fun "you die now" factors. Multiple "Aspect of..." on a single node can really mess you up. I will say these higher difficulty are really good practice of how the buffs work with (or against) each other.

Gotta up your game to finish or drop down a level. The rewards were not worth the items used or frustration IMO so I decided to just run heroic difficulty for those rewards. At my current level its either too easy or painfully ridiculous.

However, with the "Aspect of..." buffs I would like Kabam to display timer countdowns. Since these fights don't show time, would it be too easy if I knew when our health bars are about to flip?

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Gamer

It fiar just the but Rng with the. Champ u get is bad somtimes im Not Got a Korg yet but when im se him im migth try if im Not gone kil him im just go back out.

Lovejoy72

I would say that, if your goal is to use no items, then most of the difficulties are not in line with the rewards. That is, the top rewards of the content I can do is great, but the rewards I have been getting have not been worth the item use. And I suspect that the strands will be too valuable for the symbiote level to not finish a run.

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DNA3000

Superman69 wrote: »

I know someone will say, if they are too hard for you, just leave it. But that's not a solution. That's not how BONUS side quests should be like.

So just exactly how should the hardest difficulty in a quest with a chance for one of the most constrained rewards in the game be like? Should the hardest difficulty with the rarest rewards always be something you can do without too much difficulty?

To be honest, I'm finding Epic to be very difficult, especially when I have teams in both AQ and AW. But I don't think I'm supposed to be the benchmark for deciding what the top level difficulty of the game is supposed to be. Maybe it is hard because it is supposed to be hard. Maybe it is hard for you because it was targeted at frankly stronger players.

Every difficulty level except the highest one should follow some reasonable progression scale, with relatively predictable difficulty gaps. That's what all of the lower difficulties are intended to do: to break up the playerbase into bands of performance and offer content targeted at that band of players. But the highest level difficulty isn't designed to do that: it is designed to offer the highest progression players interesting content, and that's especially difficult to do because the spread of progress at the top is wider than it is anywhere else. You're still not going to be able to reasonably challenge the absolute best players while still offering something remotely achievable among the highest tier but not absolute top players. The devs have to have some discretion to bump difficulty higher at the very top for that reason.

That's not just something I made up either: that was how Kabam described what uncollected difficulty was going to be when they first introduced it. Just because you are uncollected, doesn't mean uncollected difficulty will be easy for you. And just because you can do one uncollected monthly, doesn't mean all of them will be equally easy, and doesn't mean every top difficulty special event will target that same difficulty level.