My hopes for Necropolis
Milan1405
Member Posts: 952 ★★★★
Hi guys, I just did a run through of the mutant domination carina challenge with the usual suspects (stryfe, apoc, mags) taking path 5 in abyss and thought I would give my opinion in what Kabam gets right and what they could improve on in the next piece of Everest content coming up.
First of all, the rewards. Sadly the rewards in abyss became outdated pretty. quickly, especially the carina's challenge rewards which is why I never bothered with them, I just did it now as I had tons of revives expiring since act 8.3 was easy and did not require much item usage at all. However, the rewards for necropolis look absolutely insane with 7 star 2-3 gems and playable maestro!
To start this off, there were a few things that I did like (on path 5, at least). Firstly, the opponents attack rating is very fair, as you don’t take much damage on parries or when you require to block special attacks or repaying for an opening. I also liked the fact that if you did get hit (such as due to a BS evade) then you could mostly tank a combo and be fine.
I also did enjoy some of the fights, some of them quite unexpected, such as invisible woman, mordo, mesphisto and thing. I think the invisible woman fight is surprisingly good since willpower you continuously heal you to offset the damage you take from power stings, so it’s not unfair. Also it’s ‘only’ a 2 million health fight which doesn’t feel like a slog and I felt it was largely skill based since as long as I was paying attention, I could stop attacking and back off when she went invisible, and there are also other counters to this such as nick fury above 5 tactical charges, apocalypse concussion debuff can help out, vigilance buff champions etc.
Mordo as well was surprisingly fun, since as long as you are paying attention you can always just heavy him against the wall when he gets his power gain. He also wasn’t stingy with his specials even though I didn’t have a taunt on him or anything (maybe I just got lucky) and his sp3 doesn’t hit too hard so you’ll usually survive it. Mephisto was a similar situation where you just need an incinerate immune champion and to manage his power gain from his aura stacks and the fight went pretty smoothly.
I like how thing didn’t have a super annoying node on him but just the standard abyss nodes and could just be killed with most champions. You don’t need any specific counters, just manage his rock stacks and watch out for his unstoppable by not pushing him above 15 stacks. Also the protection isn’t much of an issue since you won’t really be hitting hard enough to constantly trigger it. There were also other fights like aegon and sinister who were pretty fair fights and fairly standard solos.
Now, what do the fights that I previously listed have in common? They are all around 2-3 million health which felt like a long but do-able fight. However, fights like red skull, gulk, Yellowjacket etc were just a pain. Kabam need to learn that these 5-6 million health fights are just a huge, boring slog. Even using magneto, who shuts down red skull and yj completely, led to me using revives as they were so long and I just lost concentration as I actively didn’t really want to play anymore. I took breaks during my run, but even so I came back to the game dreading finishing these bigger fights as they were so dreary. They felt like a chore rather than a fun experience. Also these health pool fights also have damage mitigation which makes them even longer.
Necropolis at the moment seems to have 7-9 million health pool fights which sounds honestly terrible on top of the nodes, some of which will probably be niche or impose champion restrictions. Obviously nothing is set in stone, and I would implore Kabam to rethink this as champs like CGR can take 9mil health fairly easily so Kabam will of course put nodes and abilities in to stop this from happening, leading to us probably using champions who will be able to combat the nodes but take a lot longer. I would much rather kabam have tricky nodes on a 2-3 million health pool fight, where players will likely be much easier to concentrate for the whole fight and find it fun as opposed to 3 times that length.
This leads into my next point about damage caps. I understand why they are there, such as to stop the aforementioned CGR and others nuking fights into the ground, but 1.5% seems far too low. A lot of people would like to see a 5% damage cap instead, but even a 3% cap would feel a lot more fair and less restrictive.
Continuing on from my point about the colossal health pools, I HATE the ridiculous ‘die now’ mechanics. It serves absolutely no purpose except to cost the player needless revives and potions and units. In labyrinth we experienced it and same in abyss. And it was TERRIBLE in every single way. It just makes it a miserable experience. For example, the massacre fight is actually well designed. I was having a good time going through it with apocalypse, maintaining spacing and manipulating the AI into block and then I just have to accept that Im going to die when he has 60% health left. What the hell?? It ruined a perfectly good run for no reason at all, and then I failed to get back my mojo in the second attempt and ended up using 2 or 3 more revives when realistically I could have continued and might have got the solo in my first attempt without the ridiculous node. I’ve seen the same stupid mechanic is slated for Necropolis and I really hope Kabam do the right thing and remove it, as from the sounds of it, the node will still trigger after a certain amount of time even if you delay it a bit with strikers. PLEASE KABAM, GET RID OF THIS.
Another BS mechanic is the evade in abyss and labyrinth. It is annoying and unnecessary. Im very glad it is being removed from Necropolis.
Now, I don’t know if Thor rags was bugged or something, but I absolutely hated this fight. I used magneto and played properly, with max pacify and petrify etc but this annoying idiot kept getting power gain when I stunned him even when I had 100% aa reduction in the first set of charges. And on top of that, he has over 5 million health. Awful fight.
The collector. Moronic fight design here, just BS abilities on top of more BS abilities. The worst fight by miles. I hope the nameless grandmaster is much better. I’ve always been a fan of the idea of having ‘tough but fair content’. So if someone plays really well they should be able to solo the fight, even if it is really tricky. I actually felt pre nerf act 6.3 and 6.4 struck this balance pretty well on the most part as content was tricky but definitely doable. I took it path by path, really planning and when I played well I could do many paths itemeless. I have faith in Kabam here, since the 6.4 grandmaster is a fantastically well designed fight. Tricky to get down but very possible to solo with a wide range of champions, and I hope to see a fight along similar lines for the Necropolis boss.
TLDR: sorry for the long write up but here are my main points to Kabam about Everest content:
-Please remove any ‘die now’ mechanic as it is simply awful fight design and has no place in any game, unless it is conceivable that you can infinitely delay this due to the use of strikers. It’s just miserable to die for no reason and have to revive even if you play with high skill.
-I’m very glad the evade node has been removed as this was just annoying in previous content.
-Please don’t make it a massive slog. I think 7-9 million health fights is just too much. Especially if they have annoying nodes/defenders as well as damage caps. 3 million health is much more manageable if the fights are going to be super hard or annoying, such as having damage mitigation.
-Increase the damage cap from 1.5% to something more reasonable like 3%
-Also to avoid making the content too much of a slog don’t have too many fights on a path or lower the number of path needed for exploration from the intended 8 to 5 or 6.
-Make the fights (and especially the boss) tough but possible to solo if a player has very high skill. Don’t make it anything like the clown-fiesta collector boss in abyss.
Once again, apologies for my ramblings, just skip to the TLDR if you don't want to read it all
First of all, the rewards. Sadly the rewards in abyss became outdated pretty. quickly, especially the carina's challenge rewards which is why I never bothered with them, I just did it now as I had tons of revives expiring since act 8.3 was easy and did not require much item usage at all. However, the rewards for necropolis look absolutely insane with 7 star 2-3 gems and playable maestro!
To start this off, there were a few things that I did like (on path 5, at least). Firstly, the opponents attack rating is very fair, as you don’t take much damage on parries or when you require to block special attacks or repaying for an opening. I also liked the fact that if you did get hit (such as due to a BS evade) then you could mostly tank a combo and be fine.
I also did enjoy some of the fights, some of them quite unexpected, such as invisible woman, mordo, mesphisto and thing. I think the invisible woman fight is surprisingly good since willpower you continuously heal you to offset the damage you take from power stings, so it’s not unfair. Also it’s ‘only’ a 2 million health fight which doesn’t feel like a slog and I felt it was largely skill based since as long as I was paying attention, I could stop attacking and back off when she went invisible, and there are also other counters to this such as nick fury above 5 tactical charges, apocalypse concussion debuff can help out, vigilance buff champions etc.
Mordo as well was surprisingly fun, since as long as you are paying attention you can always just heavy him against the wall when he gets his power gain. He also wasn’t stingy with his specials even though I didn’t have a taunt on him or anything (maybe I just got lucky) and his sp3 doesn’t hit too hard so you’ll usually survive it. Mephisto was a similar situation where you just need an incinerate immune champion and to manage his power gain from his aura stacks and the fight went pretty smoothly.
I like how thing didn’t have a super annoying node on him but just the standard abyss nodes and could just be killed with most champions. You don’t need any specific counters, just manage his rock stacks and watch out for his unstoppable by not pushing him above 15 stacks. Also the protection isn’t much of an issue since you won’t really be hitting hard enough to constantly trigger it. There were also other fights like aegon and sinister who were pretty fair fights and fairly standard solos.
Now, what do the fights that I previously listed have in common? They are all around 2-3 million health which felt like a long but do-able fight. However, fights like red skull, gulk, Yellowjacket etc were just a pain. Kabam need to learn that these 5-6 million health fights are just a huge, boring slog. Even using magneto, who shuts down red skull and yj completely, led to me using revives as they were so long and I just lost concentration as I actively didn’t really want to play anymore. I took breaks during my run, but even so I came back to the game dreading finishing these bigger fights as they were so dreary. They felt like a chore rather than a fun experience. Also these health pool fights also have damage mitigation which makes them even longer.
Necropolis at the moment seems to have 7-9 million health pool fights which sounds honestly terrible on top of the nodes, some of which will probably be niche or impose champion restrictions. Obviously nothing is set in stone, and I would implore Kabam to rethink this as champs like CGR can take 9mil health fairly easily so Kabam will of course put nodes and abilities in to stop this from happening, leading to us probably using champions who will be able to combat the nodes but take a lot longer. I would much rather kabam have tricky nodes on a 2-3 million health pool fight, where players will likely be much easier to concentrate for the whole fight and find it fun as opposed to 3 times that length.
This leads into my next point about damage caps. I understand why they are there, such as to stop the aforementioned CGR and others nuking fights into the ground, but 1.5% seems far too low. A lot of people would like to see a 5% damage cap instead, but even a 3% cap would feel a lot more fair and less restrictive.
Continuing on from my point about the colossal health pools, I HATE the ridiculous ‘die now’ mechanics. It serves absolutely no purpose except to cost the player needless revives and potions and units. In labyrinth we experienced it and same in abyss. And it was TERRIBLE in every single way. It just makes it a miserable experience. For example, the massacre fight is actually well designed. I was having a good time going through it with apocalypse, maintaining spacing and manipulating the AI into block and then I just have to accept that Im going to die when he has 60% health left. What the hell?? It ruined a perfectly good run for no reason at all, and then I failed to get back my mojo in the second attempt and ended up using 2 or 3 more revives when realistically I could have continued and might have got the solo in my first attempt without the ridiculous node. I’ve seen the same stupid mechanic is slated for Necropolis and I really hope Kabam do the right thing and remove it, as from the sounds of it, the node will still trigger after a certain amount of time even if you delay it a bit with strikers. PLEASE KABAM, GET RID OF THIS.
Another BS mechanic is the evade in abyss and labyrinth. It is annoying and unnecessary. Im very glad it is being removed from Necropolis.
Now, I don’t know if Thor rags was bugged or something, but I absolutely hated this fight. I used magneto and played properly, with max pacify and petrify etc but this annoying idiot kept getting power gain when I stunned him even when I had 100% aa reduction in the first set of charges. And on top of that, he has over 5 million health. Awful fight.
The collector. Moronic fight design here, just BS abilities on top of more BS abilities. The worst fight by miles. I hope the nameless grandmaster is much better. I’ve always been a fan of the idea of having ‘tough but fair content’. So if someone plays really well they should be able to solo the fight, even if it is really tricky. I actually felt pre nerf act 6.3 and 6.4 struck this balance pretty well on the most part as content was tricky but definitely doable. I took it path by path, really planning and when I played well I could do many paths itemeless. I have faith in Kabam here, since the 6.4 grandmaster is a fantastically well designed fight. Tricky to get down but very possible to solo with a wide range of champions, and I hope to see a fight along similar lines for the Necropolis boss.
TLDR: sorry for the long write up but here are my main points to Kabam about Everest content:
-Please remove any ‘die now’ mechanic as it is simply awful fight design and has no place in any game, unless it is conceivable that you can infinitely delay this due to the use of strikers. It’s just miserable to die for no reason and have to revive even if you play with high skill.
-I’m very glad the evade node has been removed as this was just annoying in previous content.
-Please don’t make it a massive slog. I think 7-9 million health fights is just too much. Especially if they have annoying nodes/defenders as well as damage caps. 3 million health is much more manageable if the fights are going to be super hard or annoying, such as having damage mitigation.
-Increase the damage cap from 1.5% to something more reasonable like 3%
-Also to avoid making the content too much of a slog don’t have too many fights on a path or lower the number of path needed for exploration from the intended 8 to 5 or 6.
-Make the fights (and especially the boss) tough but possible to solo if a player has very high skill. Don’t make it anything like the clown-fiesta collector boss in abyss.
Once again, apologies for my ramblings, just skip to the TLDR if you don't want to read it all
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