Battlefield missions on The Chosen One difficulty

[Gemzo]

So I turned the difficulty up to max when I reached continent 3 and a while later I decided to try a battlefield mission. Anyone else agree that it's a tad insane? As soon as the mission starts you don't have long until the towers pummel your base into dust. If you get close enough to hit them you have to dodge projectiles from 2 or 3 towers at the same time, each of which does enormous damage to you if it hits. Shields get taken down in 1-2 hits and I don't really have the mana to spend on shielding myself AND attacking the posts in range to hit the base. Even if I can survive, the base certainly won't. The only way I can see this going down is going hardcore glass cannon, stacking one element (and using that shield, so it can take maybe 1 or 2 more hits) and blitzing the towers while blocking all the shots with your shield so that the base can survive. Of course, even then, you can't magically block every shot since there are just too many...

In short, has anyone else tried this mission type on The Chosen One difficulty? I only tried a few times but it's pretty silly. I think the towers shouldn't spawn in range of attacking your base, definitely. And possibly make your allies scale a little bit? They get oneshot by the towers so they don't really fare so well.

[Misery]

I have at least noticed that the robot allies are just BAD at handling certain things;  like flying enemies, if one goes overhead, *I* have to chase it down EVERY FREAKING TIME because those dolts WILL fire at it but they WILL miss.  I dont know why they bother.

That, and them getting stuck on bloody Magma Rhinos (is it just me, or are these in literally EVERY battlefield regardless of region type?).   They honestly seem incapable of even damaging those; it almost looks like they crash into the rhinos, and just stop firing until the rhino eats them.


Oh, and I might also point out one other issue with these missions:  the towers themselves.  They DO NOT stand out enough.   I often find it hard to tell where they are, depending on the background;  in the swamp it's the worst, MOST of the time they're hidden behind background foliage.   And with all of the crap flying all over the place, I have to stare at the minimap to figure out WHERE each one is without crashing into it.

[TechSY730]

Oh, and I might also point out one other issue with these missions:  the towers themselves.  They DO NOT stand out enough.

I can agree with that. It's more of a coloring and brightness (aka, contrast) issue than a shape issue, IMO.

I think the towers shouldn't spawn in range of attacking your base, definitely.

Agreed, and that should hold for all difficulties too. "Turret walking" into bases in RTS games is annoying enough to deal with if (and that is a big if) they manage to pull it off, spawning with that already in place with no chance to counter it is just, frankly, dumb.

[LayZboy]

Miasma towers firing from across the map?
Yeah they are annoying.

[TechSY730]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone feel the Miasma orbs are OP? Great explosion damage, good speed, great range, damage over time that is strong, and the large number of projectiles tends to mean the DoT will stack multiple times. All together, this means that miasma orbs can quickly kill even high HP characters on lowish combat difficulties at tier 1.

Actually, there is already an issue on mantis about explosion type damage being too strong and I think I will submit one about DoT effects being too strong, or at least being able to stack too many times.

[Coppermantis]

I just wear a heatsuit in battles, it makes dodging the miasma harder but without DoT it reduces a lot of damage. Firebats and the like also do much less damage.

That said, in times when heatsuits are unusable, The Missiles can be a tad annoying but not really OP. If you can fly/jump/crate hop above them and quickly stomp the tower with a high-damage spell such as Flamethrower, the missiles can't do too much to you.

[Gemzo]

I took another stab at this and it turns out these missions on TCO still a few notches over the top. While you can now actually start the mission because the towers won't immediately slaughter your base, the actual mission is still rather difficult. The main problem I'm having is how enemies have LUDICROUS range. Missed shots from them shooting at the useless allies fly for _several screens_ and then hit the base for extremely high damage because of TCO difficulty.  The damage adds up very quickly and in order to protect the base from this spam you essentially have to hold 40% of the map at all times, which is not possible when you have to go back to heal (and you will have to heal quite often considering the high damage towers deal along with the constant stream of enemies).

This isn't entirely a battlefield problem as a general problem, but enemies really have ludicrous range. Their projectiles should not fly nearly that far. It is okay if they outrange the player by quite a bit, but not like by three times (or more!) as much range. If you have some reason to keep the crazy range, at least give the battlefield base some sort of radar dampening effect, where enemies have to be at least within a somewhat reasonable distance to damage it.

In addition, the battlefield allies really are useless on TCO. Even a single enemy solos every dude on the battlefield while I heal, or would if several more weren't constantly being spawned to help the one enemy out anyway. The best I can ask of the allies is to absorb a hit once in a while but they also act as targets for the enemy to shoot at, which means more projectiles are spawned than if I were alone anyway, since I use a cloak of shadows at all times.

Oh and the mission seems /possible/ but... Well, unless you have an AMAZING dodging run (or just have a glass cannon and blitz everything) and win quickly, it'll end up being a long, drawn-out battle. Which is fine, but you always lose because of the mentioned long-range spam chip damage issue combined with the allies being unable to hold the enemies off whatsoever while you heal. If you yourself constantly hold these enemies off, you will never get a chance to heal for a long enough time and will probably end up dying eventually.

[Misery]

Are these really THAT much nastier on TCO difficulty?  I'm playing on the one right below that, "Master Hero" I think, and I've never come anywhere near actually losing a Battlefield mission.

Heck, it's rare that my base take more than just 2-3 hits;  usually I dont let anything get that close.


One thing I find works on super-ranged projectiles (like the irritating ones fired by the Screamer bats), is to use a shield to sort of "catch" them.   Fire up a shield, and just deliberately crash into the projectiles;  use the shield to absorb them instead of letting the base eat them.

This also stops DOT damage from fire;  if you're on fire, turn on a shield.  I'm not entirely sure if it works with non-fire shields..... since the fire version is almost always the one I'm using..... but that one at least cancels out the DOT's damage effect (though you have to keep it on until the actual DOT time wears out).   I try to use higher-mana characters for this mission type for exactly that reason, so that if I need to shield AND attack at the same time, I dont have everything fall apart because of lack of mana.


I dont think the purple orbs are OP either; they can be annoying, sure, but..... they really arent that hard to dodge once you get a feel for exactly how they move, and of course you can simply shoot them down; slower projectile spells in particular can be good at this (like Tidal Pulse, which also pierces), and spells like Insect Orb can be good for quickly popping any that get too close to you.

[Gemzo]

I do take hits using a shield to protect the base, but you have to understand that enemy fire rate is like doubled on TCO comapred to master hero. Or at least it felt like about double when I switched... So blocking everything isn't possible. Oh and the shield doesn't last very many hits, and I don't have the mana to kill them off entirely while constantly running a shield to block even a few shots. I do have quite a bit of mana but they have even more HP, and every moment I have to turn the shield on is mana I could have been putting towards actually killing them and stopping the projectile spam.

And yeah I think shields block knockback and status effects, regardless of element.

[darkchair]

I had similar complaints on Master Hero, but that was pretty quickly solved by me correctly optimizing my character.

I just started playing on Chosen One and it seems feasible to me.
I feel that the point of this difficulty is supposed to be beyond challenging, it's supposed to be the difficulty that you roar of victory after finally beating the overpowered enemy after spending hours being beaten to death by it. That's totally not my call, it's the developer's, but my first impression is that the mission is feasible relative to this difficulty level.
Then again, I'm only on Continent 2 Tier 1, and the pool of enemies I've been facing seem pretty light for this battlefield mission, so I may very well be wrong about this.

Yeah, the turrets are huge in this type of mission. Especially the dark and light turrets can be infuriating, as sometimes there's no real way to feasibly kill them without gathering a huge hoard of allies to tank (thanks to the effective area they cover), and that usually takes forever.
(Also the earth turrets are pretty awful, I'd recommend they get buffed)

Yeah the robots are of course fodder that need your help to win. They can do some damage but you have to do most of the work.
(The spawn seems variable on the robots, is this happening, and is there a strategy to it?)

Another thing I was recommended was to try and use crates to eat the stray shots that get by. It's helped me with the sonic bats that can get in to the base.
(Your allies knocking them around with their shots is infuriating as well, but that's a part of the job)

[Gemzo]

None of the tower types give me too much trouble. It's just that the allies cannot handle any enemies (especially flying ones, even on lower difficulties in that case) that get past me while I focus on a tower, so I am forced to prioritize not letting anyone past. Thus the tower never goes down, I eventually have to retreat and heal, and then the base takes chip damage from projectiles. The base then dies before I can manage to clear most of the towers for extreme breathing room. Thus like I said, the only good way to clear this mission I can think of is a glass cannon who just blitzes through. Since things die fast they won't have to dodge as much, but will die in a few hits. Still beats an almost guaranteed chip damage base loss.

The earth towers are the easiest of the towers, yes. Maybe they should shoot a shotgun-spread of bullets instead of the circular spread they do now. Might be too damaging if all the pellets hit though.

As for crate blocking... That never came to mind. I usually write off using crates for much since like almost every enemy projectile attack in the game has infinite piercing. But in battlefield missions, of course, this sounds great. Probably isn't a game-winning tactic but nice anyway.