A Friendly Competition....any tips?

Here’s the clip, sorry about the poor quality.

Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong please?

I have never seen that debuff with the black skull before and I’ve done this fight a few hundred times now at higher levels e14-17

Wouldn’t mind trying the fight with you. I won’t be online for a couple hours though. Can add my character Drenneth though to see when I’m online

Yeah, I’m dying to know what’s going on there lol. No bugs in the Secret World :v:

Edit: if that’s happening every time you try the fight @SWLaholic you should upload a video of the entire encounter because the only thing I can think is maybe you’re triggering some kind of hidden enrage mechanic but I have absolutely no idea how

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That would be the standardized enrage timer that almost all “group-capable” boss fights have. If I recall correctly, the default value (which we didn’t bother to change when building this fight) is 10 minutes.

Thematically, it has nothing to do with the Masked Woman fight. Mechanically, it was not an intended part of the design and just kind of came along for the ride. That said, there is value in having an enrage mechanic to prevent an “eternal” encounter and eliminate certain :cheese: approaches (aka exploits).

The takeaway here is that you’re hitting a 10 minute enrage timer shared by nearly all group-capable content. This fight was designed and balanced to have a 4-5 minute duration, and is group-capable.

I recommend taking a look at your setup and Anima Allocation, and seeing what you can do to increase your damage output.

If this is preventing you from completing the Investigation mission, I would recommend giving Story Mode a go - That is what it is there for. The higher Elite levels are designed as a challenge for characters who have both the gear and a suitably optimized character build: The higher the Elite level, the more optimized we expect the build to be.

If you have specific questions or concerns, the community can definitely answer them - there’s a lot of awesome people around here!

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lol its totally an enrage timer. I just waited out an E4 and after enough time started to get a count down after which the stacks started applying. It was about 10 minutes in though so I feel like the dps would have to be quite low. also may not trigger till a later stage of the fight because i pushed her past the point where she does the massive aoe after about 7-8 minutes of running around before that.

Edit: you can actually see the countdown in the video that was posted by the OP at the start. At a quick glance id start by swapping from full auto to burst fire because when are you hitting more then one target in there?

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There are a couple of things which stand out for me:

  • You’re using Assault Rifle without Incendiary Grenade. That’s going to drop your dps big time. I’d swap out Tactical Retreat for a grenade.
  • Using Full Auto on a single target is far less effective than using Burst Fire - I know it’s 5 energy instead of 3, but it’s still better damage.
  • I’d also swap your pistol ability Unload out for Dual Shot. For offhand pistols, Dual Shot is easier because it only uses 3 energy instead of 5.
  • You probably don’t need Clean Slate if you’re using Leeching Ray. The main time you’ll take damage is when you’re standing in the fire AoEs, the burning debuff doesn’t actually need to be cleansed, so Clean Slate isn’t going to do great things for you. I’d replace it with Lock & Load so that you can shoot your rifle more.
  • Anima Suffusion is also a bit unnecessary, Leeching Ray should be able to keep you up on its own. You could either use Trick Shot from pistols, or High Explosive Grenade instead, (I’d probably go with Trick Shot for the exposed buff).

Like the others have said above, you’re losing because of the enrage timer. Ideally, you want to keep up as much damage on the boss as possible. I’m not sure if you were just showing off the problem in the video, but when you’re running around avoiding destabilize reality, it’s ideal to try to keep the boss in your sights, and keep firing whilst moving. That way you can avoid standing in the nasty stuff whilst still damaging the boss.

In terms of Anima Allocation, I personally use 90 DPS / 10 Survival for this fight. That gives me enough protection stat to reduce the incoming fire damage so I can take a few ticks without dying, but still lets me hit the boss nice and hard.

Hope this helps, good luck! :smiley:

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And here I thought I was slow on E16 with my blood build…

Yes, this switches from E11 to E12. Just ran both back to back for efficiency comparison (e11 4 minutes 16800 distillates, e12 5 minutes 18100 distillates… yeah e11’s better unless I’m gonna use all my keys. the 2 min cooldown and time to run up t othe boss are a significant component of this time, so I’m killing e11 way faster.)

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Have used your recommended build and it works a treat! AWESOME thank you :heart_eyes:

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Thank you all so much for your explanations. You guys are awesome! :heart_eyes:

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I’ve never seen that enrage timer before! Very interesting stuff. SWLaholic if you are looking for good baseline abilities and builds to use, check out https://forums.funcom.com/t/how-to-build-all-weapons

Generally speaking, encounters that are designed with an enrage timer will have an encounter specific mechanic for that. Like the air force bombers in New York or the Machine Tyrant’s countdown. This mechanic is a fallback/safety net. It’s unsurprising that it isn’t generally seen.

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Is it generalized from Facility 5’s, or was that just for some reason a very long fight that could trigger it? Been a bit since I had to do it on Nightmare.

I remember hitting the enrage on Ur Draug back in the days when we ran nightmare dungeons in blue gear and had no clue yet! :smiley: