Winter of Woe Community Chat [MERGED THREADS]

Figured it'd be a good idea to get this started so people can discuss what works and what doesn't. Please feel free to post feedback below!

Comments

GroundedWisdom

*I do have QS, he's Unranked.

DNA3000

Summoners aren't meant to get high rewards for literally nothing. (don't say time; that isn't a relevant resource in the game's economical balance).
I find this to be a fascinating observation.
@Kabam Jax if this is true, then why do arenas exist?

As far as I can tell, the purpose of arenas is to give players a way to trade time for resources. As long as you're winning most of your fights, arenas don't cost any in-game resource. It just costs time.

Of course, arenas don't have "high rewards". So maybe player time *is* an implied resource - just, one with low value in the game's economy.

(Please understand, i intend no malice here. This post is not sarcastic. I just saw this quote and it really got me thinking about the value of our time in this game.)
Jax is not a game economy designer and was speaking colloquially about this specific situation, and overgeneralized.

The more complex and nuanced issue relates to game balance, and what it even is. Most people talk about game balance like it is a thing, but it actually refers to relationships between things. A thing can’t be balanced, it can only be balanced against other things.

The arena is intended to be a grinding activity that rewards time spent. Skill plays a role, but it is a relatively minor role. Optimal play in the arena might increase your rewards by 50% compared to the average case, but there’s no way to, say, use skill to triple your rewards, or increase them by a factor of ten. Skill is not a major balancing factor in the arena, so its influence is deliberately muted.

Challenge content like the so-called Everest content is designed to be the opposite. The goal is to provide a skill hurdle for rewards. No amount of time is intended to “earn” anything. The arena is designed to allow players to trade their time for arena rewards. Winter of Woe is not designed to trade time for its rewards. So the answer to the question “shouldn’t I get something for the time I spend in Winter of Woe” is no. Just like the answer to the question “shouldn’t I get a lot more rewards in the arena if I am a lot more skilled” is also, no.

And the answer to the question “well, why can’t everything be dependent on time and skill” the answer is, to radically simplify a completely different subject, because there’s no valid exchange relationship between the two. It takes a certain amount of skill to become the top finisher in Battlegrounds or Alliance War. How much time corresponds to that level of skill, such that if I spend more time than that the game should consider me to have expended more effort to reach those goals? There is no answer to that question. And that’s true, at least for this game and these developers, for lots of other rewards. There’s no amount of time that equates to the effort required to become Valiant, or to earn a T4A, or gain an Abyss Nexus. Grinding for rewards, ala the arena, is a special case situation the devs carefully regulate, where they have decided that this much time equals this much rewards.

Every thing in the game has a complex set of balance relationships between them that correspond to how the game values them in different circumstances. But that doesn’t mean you can just trade anything for anything else. Those exchange opportunities are limited. And player time is similarly limited; it can’t be traded for stuff arbitrarily, The arena, and other grinding opportunities, are the exchange portal for player time. And for that matter, so is cash. Cash also cannot be arbitrarily traded for things on the game. It is the game stores that are the portal to exchange cash for certain in-game things, including units.

Unfortunately, this can open an indefinite descending Matryoshka doll of issues. Why are exchange opportunities limited? Availability distributions. Why are those the way they are? Player behavioral range accommodation. Game economy discussions are never simple, and wading into them is hazardous territory, even at the best of times. And these are not the best of times.
When it takes seven paragraphs to try to mitigate an awful foot-in-mouth gaffe, that’s a bad sign. I’m less concerned about what one of the game’s mouthpieces says than I am about whether it was something overheard frequently from the devs.

Dr. Zola

To be candid, all game economy discussions require a ton of verbiage, especially in hostile environments. If the notion is that everything should be expressible in short simple statements, the devs should simply never address any economy questions or issues, ever. Even when I’m discussing economy issues with the actual professionals in friendly environments, it often takes more words to cover the subject than would be necessary to put people to sleep on the forums (Brian Grant and I have a reputation of doing just that repeatedly on the Discord). That’s why it is so dangerous for anyone to say anything, and why you’ll probably never see a game economy AMA for this game on a public forum in your lifetime.

It might seem borderline condescending to say that a topic requires more nuance than most people are willing to accept, but the fact is I’m the only idiot still trying regularly and the general reception is consistent and obvious.

DrZola

Summoners aren't meant to get high rewards for literally nothing. (don't say time; that isn't a relevant resource in the game's economical balance).
I find this to be a fascinating observation.
@Kabam Jax if this is true, then why do arenas exist?

As far as I can tell, the purpose of arenas is to give players a way to trade time for resources. As long as you're winning most of your fights, arenas don't cost any in-game resource. It just costs time.

Of course, arenas don't have "high rewards". So maybe player time *is* an implied resource - just, one with low value in the game's economy.

(Please understand, i intend no malice here. This post is not sarcastic. I just saw this quote and it really got me thinking about the value of our time in this game.)
Jax is not a game economy designer and was speaking colloquially about this specific situation, and overgeneralized.

The more complex and nuanced issue relates to game balance, and what it even is. Most people talk about game balance like it is a thing, but it actually refers to relationships between things. A thing can’t be balanced, it can only be balanced against other things.

The arena is intended to be a grinding activity that rewards time spent. Skill plays a role, but it is a relatively minor role. Optimal play in the arena might increase your rewards by 50% compared to the average case, but there’s no way to, say, use skill to triple your rewards, or increase them by a factor of ten. Skill is not a major balancing factor in the arena, so its influence is deliberately muted.

Challenge content like the so-called Everest content is designed to be the opposite. The goal is to provide a skill hurdle for rewards. No amount of time is intended to “earn” anything. The arena is designed to allow players to trade their time for arena rewards. Winter of Woe is not designed to trade time for its rewards. So the answer to the question “shouldn’t I get something for the time I spend in Winter of Woe” is no. Just like the answer to the question “shouldn’t I get a lot more rewards in the arena if I am a lot more skilled” is also, no.

And the answer to the question “well, why can’t everything be dependent on time and skill” the answer is, to radically simplify a completely different subject, because there’s no valid exchange relationship between the two. It takes a certain amount of skill to become the top finisher in Battlegrounds or Alliance War. How much time corresponds to that level of skill, such that if I spend more time than that the game should consider me to have expended more effort to reach those goals? There is no answer to that question. And that’s true, at least for this game and these developers, for lots of other rewards. There’s no amount of time that equates to the effort required to become Valiant, or to earn a T4A, or gain an Abyss Nexus. Grinding for rewards, ala the arena, is a special case situation the devs carefully regulate, where they have decided that this much time equals this much rewards.

Every thing in the game has a complex set of balance relationships between them that correspond to how the game values them in different circumstances. But that doesn’t mean you can just trade anything for anything else. Those exchange opportunities are limited. And player time is similarly limited; it can’t be traded for stuff arbitrarily, The arena, and other grinding opportunities, are the exchange portal for player time. And for that matter, so is cash. Cash also cannot be arbitrarily traded for things on the game. It is the game stores that are the portal to exchange cash for certain in-game things, including units.

Unfortunately, this can open an indefinite descending Matryoshka doll of issues. Why are exchange opportunities limited? Availability distributions. Why are those the way they are? Player behavioral range accommodation. Game economy discussions are never simple, and wading into them is hazardous territory, even at the best of times. And these are not the best of times.
When it takes seven paragraphs to try to mitigate an awful foot-in-mouth gaffe, that’s a bad sign. I’m less concerned about what one of the game’s mouthpieces says than I am about whether it was something overheard frequently from the devs.

Dr. Zola
To be candid, all game economy discussions require a ton of verbiage, especially in hostile environments. If the notion is that everything should be expressible in short simple statements, the devs should simply never address any economy questions or issues, ever. Even when I’m discussing economy issues with the actual professionals in friendly environments, it often takes more words to cover the subject than would be necessary to put people to sleep on the forums (Brian Grant and I have a reputation of doing just that repeatedly on the Discord). That’s why it is so dangerous for anyone to say anything, and why you’ll probably never see a game economy AMA for this game on a public forum in your lifetime.

It might seem borderline condescending to say that a topic requires more nuance than most people are willing to accept, but the fact is I’m the only idiot still trying regularly and the general reception is consistent and obvious.

No, I appreciate your efforts. But you shouldn’t have to be the one trying to explain away someone else’s statement.

Dr. Zola

ChaosMax1012

Just did a few runs, heres my observations.

1. Absorbing man will not throw a special attack for the life of him if unstoppable isnt up, and typically will turtle up until bane timer gets you or until unstoppable timer runs up. This makes light intercepts difficult to achieve, and causes bane to chip at your health. To counter this, you need a champion that is able to shut down the unstoppable
2. Absorbing man has ridiculous regeneration of course but this is easily dealt with if you counter his special attacks with a heavy. The issue as i already stated is his lack of cooperation in throwing the special attacks, leading to bane chipping you out, forcing you to into an attack that sets absorbing man up to light intercept you.
3. Absorbing man instantly kills you if he catches you with a combo. Ideally you will want a sustainable champion, or someone who can avoid the need to parry, as his damage through block has an additional burst that is devastating.

So with that conclusion, i have come to an analysis as to how to defeat WoW Absorbing Man without fail. Here are the steps:
Step 1. Have 2 hands
Step 2: Keep in mind whichever deity, divine being or faith you hold nearest to you
Step 3: Put your hands together
Step 4: Pray that you get a good AI

It took me hours to develop a solution that was both practical and effective so i could share with my fellow summoners, but it seems your fate lies in the hands of the AIs cooperation, your energy refills, and if all else fails, Sir Unit Man.

In all seriousness here is my feedback: Bane should never coexist with a node that involves unstoppable. This isn’t being directed towards endgame players with high skill levels, its just being devious and shows lack of understanding of what players are being put up against. If a fight relies on the cooperation of the AI and not the players skill level, the fight should be reevaluated immediately. You can stop the bane timer while the opponent is unstoppable, but whoopty doo, the block damage is even more devastating. And the fact the AI is programmed to turtle up intentionally when the unstoppable isn’t up makes the fight even more dreadful, it should be consistent the whole fight. Other than that its a pretty well thought fight that proves to be challenging, but the node combination mixed with the fixed AI designed to screw players over and waste good attempts just sucks out all the fun and all the challenge the fight has provided. What a waste.

Sw0rdMaster

Viv doesn't work only because her main damage is instant incinerate which the nodes stop and you still have to play around unstoppable too much

@BeroMan did it and thanks to him for the tip, i managed to do it to.

https://youtu.be/FRSx8j32cuA?si=RtQ3tRu4SHm3ndN8

Graves_3

*I do have QS, he's Unranked.

What are you working with? Is it possible to post your roster? We may be able to suggest potential options. If you can afford to rank QS, he may be a way to get the first completion and 2 points. If you fully boost and ascend your 5* hulk, you may be able to get it done with 10-12 revives. You have to parry heavy at the beginning to switch to energy damage mode and then play conservatively till you have just under a bar of power. Stun lock him and go to town. By the time you are done, he should have sp3 ready and KO you. Revive and repeat. If you are lucky then you won’t have any healing since technically abs man shouldn’t throw any specials. Just be careful throwing sp1 while he is unstoppable.

GroundedWisdom

*I do have QS, he's Unranked.
What are you working with? Is it possible to post your roster? We may be able to suggest potential options. If you can afford to rank QS, he may be a way to get the first completion and 2 points. If you fully boost and ascend your 5* hulk, you may be able to get it done with 10-12 revives. You have to parry heavy at the beginning to switch to energy damage mode and then play conservatively till you have just under a bar of power. Stun lock him and go to town. By the time you are done, he should have sp3 ready and KO you. Revive and repeat. If you are lucky then you won’t have any healing since technically abs man shouldn’t throw any specials. Just be careful throwing sp1 while he is unstoppable.

I'll give it a go. Thanks.

Graves_3

*I do have QS, he's Unranked.
What are you working with? Is it possible to post your roster? We may be able to suggest potential options. If you can afford to rank QS, he may be a way to get the first completion and 2 points. If you fully boost and ascend your 5* hulk, you may be able to get it done with 10-12 revives. You have to parry heavy at the beginning to switch to energy damage mode and then play conservatively till you have just under a bar of power. Stun lock him and go to town. By the time you are done, he should have sp3 ready and KO you. Revive and repeat. If you are lucky then you won’t have any healing since technically abs man shouldn’t throw any specials. Just be careful throwing sp1 while he is unstoppable.
I'll give it a go. Thanks.

There was a typo in my previous message. I meant play conservatively until you just under 2 bars of power. Rest is as I wrote.

GroundedWisdom

I caught that. Stun lock. Thanks.

Tedders

I was able to get all the objectives this week. I think the fight was a bit too unforgiving with the over the top regen rates and the limited amount of champs...but what I didn't appreciate was how bugged the fight was and how long it took for responses from Kabam. I hope in the future they will pin the known bugs to the top of the forums so we don't have to dig through posts.. I can only imagine how painful using a bugged Warlock was to do this fight and the Sandman root heavy interaction is just strange. Overall I liked the challenge but I hope that this will be the hardest fight not the easiest

Grub88

You would think the harder fights would be closer to the end like in all other content, lets keep hoping though

Terminatrix

Void works great if you're not concerned about the objectives! 😁 I've only made a post about him before seeing this one 5 days and 18 pages later lol

End of my fight:

https://youtu.be/GbOzvNoBWqY?si=jE1ZD2yQgYJfgBx_

5 reasons I chose Void:

1. Class Advantage (Hits harder and Degen works slower)
2. Petrify to stop regeneration (Spam Sp 1)
3. Incinerate immune. AbsMan can be pushed to Sp 2 if needed and it won't affect Void.
4. One hell of an intercepter.
5. Sp 2 inflicts Power Sting which will give a weakness or degen.

UlfricFrost

This is simple, Kabam you are in the wrong here. If you are going to leave a ridiculous fight in the game at least make the cost to do the fight either free or the cheapest it can possibly be. Blah blah blah blah blah revive farm blah blah blah blah blah. Fix the problem, listen to the community, DO BETTER.

I_tell_no_tales_1

Absorbing man has evolved into Mike Tyson and will light intercept every hit I try to land

TangerineBalls

Outrageous that Kabam have made the WoW 10 energy to run this event. Knowing full well people will be forever restarting the event over and over to retry this fight. It’s going to take 30,40,50+ goes at trying to nail this guy and that’s going to cost crazy energy refills. Low blow from Kabam, they should be making this type of challenging content 1 energy to run, the amount of retries required to get your muscle memory and skills honed in for such a fight. We’re going to get 7 goes with a full energy count, before having to splash out on refills. Another sly way of potentially fun content… errr not so fun!

GroundedWisdom

I'm down to 2 Refills and still no luck. You either play perfectly through one run through, or you're screwed. I don't understand how a Fight like this is left as it is. This isn't just a challenge. The only people who enjoy this are the best of the best of the best at the game, and that's not a gauge to place on Players, even at the Paragon and up stage. I'm either going to give up on this or drive myself crazy. Either way at this point, it's hard to find the willingness to keep trying. Every technique I try ends in me getting side swiped, and spending all my energy trying again. Grr. Lol! Not fun.

GrO_ot78

Got him down with R4 200 sig Void, fully boosted. Spam sp 1, no regen, a few revives, done 🫡

Raganator

Having now done the fight, I don't have much to add beyond what has already been said. I love Everest content, but this fight may be my least favorite - and at minimum hits my top 3 least favorite (list includes Abyss boss, no retreat champion boss (back in the day), and this fight). Just not fun or enjoyable. Any given node or interaction on their own would probably be fine, but it seems we are back to the point we were like 5 years ago - just keep adding nodes to try and outsmart the players. I don't even see this fight as being creative. And yes, the energy cost is just stupid.

Chovner

I'm down to 2 Refills and still no luck. You either play perfectly through one run through, or you're screwed. I don't understand how a Fight like this is left as it is. This isn't just a challenge. The only people who enjoy this are the best of the best of the best at the game, and that's not a gauge to place on Players, even at the Paragon and up stage. I'm either going to give up on this or drive myself crazy. Either way at this point, it's hard to find the willingness to keep trying. Every technique I try ends in me getting side swiped, and spending all my energy trying again. Grr. Lol! Not fun.

You know it's bad when this man isn't somehow defending something Kabam released.....

This fight is nuts, I've burned through so much energy with nothing to show for it other than stress, PTSD, and a cracked phone case from phone rage quit syndrome

GroundedWisdom

I'm down to 2 Refills and still no luck. You either play perfectly through one run through, or you're screwed. I don't understand how a Fight like this is left as it is. This isn't just a challenge. The only people who enjoy this are the best of the best of the best at the game, and that's not a gauge to place on Players, even at the Paragon and up stage. I'm either going to give up on this or drive myself crazy. Either way at this point, it's hard to find the willingness to keep trying. Every technique I try ends in me getting side swiped, and spending all my energy trying again. Grr. Lol! Not fun.
You know it's bad when this man isn't somehow defending something Kabam released.....

This fight is nuts, I've burned through so much energy with nothing to show for it other than stress, PTSD, and a cracked phone case from phone rage quit syndrome

The Regen needs to be adjusted, or the Brute Force, one or the other. Then it's a slog, but it's more doable. As it is now, it's just torture.

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Chovner

My wife's instructed me I'm only allowed to try that fight once her and the kids have went to bed, because I'm apparently "too touchy" for about 30-40 minutes after burning through 70 energy on the fight lol.

I'm stumped, I've NEVER had this much trouble making progress in a fight. And I want to highlight that I'm not expecting to solo the fight, just make positive PROGRESS. I'd say I've spent 10 revives worth of energy trying the Gamma objective and the best I've done is 15%. One run I decided to just revive a couple times and after 6 revives Abs Man was at 100% health, and I was at the end of my patience.

I was able to get the fight done with 7* Sandman, but it was the one time where the AI actually cooperated and acted aggressive the whole fight. Every other time since then Abs Man holds block and waits for me to do something (usually dash in) to light intercept me, or just waits me out until brute force and unstoppable kicks in... BRUTAL!!! I can't even imagine how I'd be doing if I was trying the robots objective (I don't think I will

)

o_o

Absorbing man has evolved into Mike Tyson and will light intercept every hit I try to land

DrZola

My wife's instructed me I'm only allowed to try that fight once her and the kids have went to bed, because I'm apparently "too touchy" for about 30-40 minutes after burning through 70 energy on the fight lol.

I'm stumped, I've NEVER had this much trouble making progress in a fight. And I want to highlight that I'm not expecting to solo the fight, just make positive PROGRESS. I'd say I've spent 10 revives worth of energy trying the Gamma objective and the best I've done is 15%. One run I decided to just revive a couple times and after 6 revives Abs Man was at 100% health, and I was at the end of my patience.

I was able to get the fight done with 7* Sandman, but it was the one time where the AI actually cooperated and acted aggressive the whole fight. Every other time since then Abs Man holds block and waits for me to do something (usually dash in) to light intercept me, or just waits me out until brute force and unstoppable kicks in... BRUTAL!!! I can't even imagine how I'd be doing if I was trying the robots objective (I don't think I will )

I burned a dumb number of pots and simply HulkSmashed. I watched a few videos and concluded “what the heck, let’s ride and see what happens!” As others have pointed out, it’s basically get close to Sp2 and drop Sp1 into a physically vulnerable AbsMan. Watch out for the unstoppable and go ham stun locking until you die. Don’t even think about letting Abs drop anything other than a Sp3.

It isn’t fun. It’s poorly designed. The game doesn’t seem to be able to handle all the interactions going on. Things like lag, AI behavior, striker misfires and janky inputs seem even more prevalent given the high stakes and punishment built into the fight.

Will I hit the #robot objective? Maybe. I flirted with Viv and WL a few times and just put the game down and watched football.

Weirdly, energy is less of an issue right now—but only because I’ve found myself not turning to the game much at all. When I do, it’s to auto-fight one of the silly-easy energy suck quests that popped up alongside WoW this week. I even forgot BGs existed for the last 5 days.

All of this can be summed up thusly: if the intent was to nudge me to put MCoC way on the back burner, then mission accomplished!

Dr. Zola

Chovner

Yeah I decided to do what I normally do every month and go back to knocking out TB and Paragon EQ, then move onto other things. This was the first month in a while I had little progress in EQ halfway through the month.

Last EOP was challenging but I was still having fun constantly trying to take on that rotation's boss and doing a little better every time until finally committing to a decent run, throwing revies and pots and knocking it out. This boss is no fun, no learning, infinite loop of pots in my case... Necropolis was hard and satisfying, this is hard and kinda garbage.

I'd rather fight Necro Air Walker with every Necro global node one at a time to knock off this one objective as opposed to fighting this Abs Man once...

Standardman1989

We still don't have the answer for the additional point when it is relevant. I finished with Hulk but only 2 points

ItsClobberinTime

Jeez 18 pages full of complaints... Kabam, do better, almost nobody's happy with this.

PistolcuApa

I've done the robot task with r4 viv vision ascended. Took me 15 revives because the bloody ai did not want to co-operate. 1st run was with hitmonkey 5 revives. With the free point they're awarding, 20 revives ain't so bad for 2 t6bc and 2 t3a. Or is it? Used like 10 stashed energy refills.

Malchaeis

For anybody stuck and can't solo him, there is a way to chip damage him. It's not an ideal way by any means but it can work if you have revives. Usually around 50% health, his regen can completely overwhelm your advancement if you die and restart the fight. He will only start to regen once he throws his first special. Using just level 1 revives, try to do as much damage as you can and try not to bait his specials. If Using she hulk, just do the fight normally (parry heavy attack to add slow etc.) and use your special 1. Hold block after it and usually he will dash in. Intercept him either with a light attack or a dash of your own if your fast enough. Can try to get a heavy in by charging it but Brute force might kill you before he throws his special. But as long as you die before or to the special he won't regen much. Can chip 3-9% health or more off depending on the AI or your skill a revive. Like I said it's not ideal but an option.