Overview
- Titan’s Training Sim is a Survival Mode 2.0 instance taking place in the Titans Tower.
- Progress points are given after every two rounds and after round 10 the adds and bosses appear again, but with higher CR.
- Size: 4 player
- Required Combat Rating: 253 (260 recommended)
- Suggested Dominance: 10207
- Reward: Data Chips
Synopsis
- The Teen Titans are looking for the best of the best to run their new Advanced Holographic Technology through its paces. Think you've got what it takes?
General Tips
- It's a marathon, not a sprint. More DPS = shorter fights = less time for mistakes to happen, but max DPS doesn't equate to cleanest/safest. I've found a balanced approach is best.
- You don't need to be some meta DW flurry spam group to do well. SM is all "about passing the exam," ie. knowing the mechanics and doing them. The better you do the mechanics, the easier your life is to the point you can completely trivialize most of the bosses. Mechanics come first, always.
- The DPS doesn't need to be max CR/SP as long as they're good at the mechanics and can do good damage regardless. The supports, especially the tank, should be, as you really want the toughest shields you can get your hands on. That said, the tank is the most important and beyond that there's a lot more flexibility. Don't think you can't do SM if you aren't maxed out yet.
- Robot Sidekick (and pets in general) is your best friend in here
- Manacles of Force is worth thoughtful consideration
- Additional tip that virtually everyone has overlooked: Lazarus Pit Water is OP af in SM, especially in the longer, higher rounds where it's basically up as often as you need it to be and it has the potential to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat where you'd otherwise lose 40+ minutes of work. With the potential exception of DPS vs Vampire Lord (due to the soft DPS checks on his shadow pets), the more people who can run it the better. I keep it in my primary boss loadouts then have backup "He is Risen" loadouts that I quick swap to to replace Lazarus w w/e artifact I want. Don't just insta-pop it though; do revives like normal with Water as a last resort, to be popped at the last second if it's in doubt that someone can reach the cog in time. Even if you know you're going to die as soon as you get up, you'll still get another 10s window where hopefully a teammate can revive you.
Tank Build
- Tank is the most critical role in SM and, in addition to knowing the bossfights to a tee, you should be built to maximize your chances of success. Since that's heavily PVP dependent with no sustained blocking and no adds (that you're ultimately responsible for) outside of trash waves, that means your tank build's gonna be a lot different.
- Home Turf Mods:
- Head: If you're Super Speed, and using it, Energized Dash Attack is ideal. Otherwise this is player's choice.
- Neck: Fortified Assault, with extra in your inventory in case you want to switch to Fortified Blocking for Ultraman (if his lunge combos are messing you up more than his ranged attacks). Overall, Fortified Assault is BiS in SM since we spend most of our time kiting and waiting to PVP the bosses
- Chest: Hearty
- Legs: W/e one helps you, if any
- Hands: Regenerative Shielding
- Feet: Explosive Block. This makes boss fights so... so much easier. With PVP mechanics being so prevalent, you nets you a lot more time with the boss on its *** while allowing you to instantly reset him back to kite distance.
- Artifacts:
- Manacles of Force + Dilustel Refractor + Mystic Symbol of the Seven. This gets you max health, max dom, max resto, and max survivability.
- Weapons:
- Rifle vastly simplifies your job in 9/10 boss fights. The ability to PVP at max range while maintaining your distance is invaluable. It also has the best lunge "duration," allowing you to pre-empt, for example, skull attacks on bosses that often have lungeable skull attacks, completely negating all damage and allowing you to do a second counter before the window closes.
- Loadout:
- Maximum mitigation and survivability with a single, instant, ranged taunt. The more clippable your loadout, the better. Obviously this will vary from power to power but the goal is to be able to save yourself in those "oh ****" moments. SM is long stretches of boredom followed by near-death moments. If you can, Dash Attack is a good
- Soder/Trinkets/Etc:
- For most of the climb you can rock offensive trinkets/pets/etc but at a certain point, especially for certain bosses, you should have a 100% pure "I don't want to die, mommy!" setup. For that, I recommend you have an armoury with. Sidekick + Personal Dampening Field + Fiendish Brute's Tome + Heartthrob. Sidekick should be popped whenever available. Personal Dampening Field is a free, clippable, stacking 32k shield. Clipping Heartthrob to Fiendish Brute's Tome nets you an instant, massive health buff, which can be used defensively like an additional shield.
- Unorthodox Min:Max
- Use Robot Sidekick combined with the Soul Link Affinity. It's exceptionally reliable, gives you an extra 2% mitigation, ups group DPS with no additional effort, gives the bosses something else to target, and can body block.
Round 1
- Lex Luthor
- Weapon: Hand Blasters
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Prefers RA tap-tap-hold zappy-zaps but does do Solar Flame.
- Feints RA to Block
- Feints Block to Lunge
- Will Block normally, w/o feinting
- Fight Mechanics:
- Turns and laughs at target then does either green laser or missiles (Root followed by lethal bombardment). There is no skull indicator for this mechanic.
- Best Tactics:
- Tank: Keep Lex at outside of room. Stay at mid-max range, kiting as needed. PVP accordingly. Easiest/safest weapon to tank Lex with is Rifle, but any weapon will work fine.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay at the very edge of max range, circling the room as needed in order to maintain position relative to Lex. If Lex turns to anyone and laughs, that person should run out of range immediately to negate the attack. If the attack was going to be bombardment, he'll instead do it at his feet.
- Survival/Mitigation: Most damage is mitigated by doing the mechanic cleanly. Expect the tank to take some damage from Solar Flame at higher levels. Maintain a base level of shielding but Tank & Healer should keep a reserve nut for any "oh ****" moments that may pop up.
- Tips:
- If you're slow and don't move out of range of the mechanic fast enough, you'll get rooted by Lex' bombardment, you'll have to breakout before you can roll/run away. Sometimes people forget about the rooting component of the attack and die comically, rolling/running in place.
- If someone is killed by bombardment, do not attempt to revive them until the green LL logo has disappeared. Despite the missile animation being complete, the (lethal) damage persists until the aoe dissipates.
- The green laser will OHKO non-tanks
- For tanks, intentionally allowing yourself to become rooted by bombardment is an effective (but risky and unnecessary) means of activating Breakout Protection
Round 2
- King Shark
- Weapon: Brawling
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Uses normal RA BB, normal Block, and normal Lunge (potentially flowing directly into a melee combo)
- Depending on your latency, it can be rewarding (but extremely risky) to roll away following his lunge. Negates all damage from follow-on combo but potential exists he'll clip you with Hold-Hold and gain immunity.
- Feints RA into Block. Be cautious, as fill fake the feint sometimes and cancel the block portion. Wait for visual confirmation of block.
- If Shark pins a player and starts omnoming them, he can be Lunge countered
- Fight Mechanics:
- On Skull indicator, Shark will face a played and launch himself swimmingly at them. Everyone needs to roll away as if he connects with his target he will pin them and begin omnomnoming them (lungeable). If he doesn't connect, there is an extreme high probability that he will do a (lethal) PBAOE spin attack for massive damage + CC. He can and will target the tank with this attack.
- Spawns water spouts that wander the room and must be avoided.
- Does conal PBAOE chum barf that follows the tank
- Best Tactics: Tank: Kite around the outside of the room while PVPing accordingly. Keep a close eye on his skull attacks, evading accordingly and immediately lunging if someone gets pinned. Maintain max distance. Easiest weapon to tank this fight with is Rifle. If using other weapons, clip your lunges to avoid closing the distance every time you go to PVP him.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay at the very edge of max range, circling the room as needed in order to maintain relative position. Avoid whirlpools while keeping a visual lock on Shark, ready to evade his skully omnoms.
- Survival/Mitigation: The combination of Water Spouts and Shark's skull shenanigans make the fight seem more chaotic than it is. Maintain situational awareness. Most deaths occur due to people being too close to Shark after his skull charge and eating his PBAOE. Healers, be prepared to dump some life-ness at the meat shield anytime Shark lunges. Tank, keep some of your mitigation nut in reserve to back the squishy up anytime you get lunged; expect to take a lot of damage.
- Tips:
- Don't bunch up
- As much as possible, never face shark towards the center. If the tank has to cross paths, do it so he faces outwards so as to avoid hosing the group with chum barf.
Round 3
- Vandal Savage
- Weapon: Staff
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Does uncounterable RA taps
- Feints Block into Lunge
- Feints Lunge into RA (really loves doing this)
- Never (or virtually never) does normal lunges without being connected to a feint. If you think he did a normal lunge but you can't tell if he feinted Block into Lunge, don't block until you see the melee combo start or you risk granting immunity
- Your lunge reflex instablock game is gonna be strong after having faced a brawler. Turn your muscle memory off and remember not to block the second he lunges because it's always, or almost always, a Feint and he will ruffle your jammies
- Fight Mechanics:
- Has two skull attacks, which he alternates. Random which one he starts on but it doesn't matter because the animations are completely distinct.
- Pentathrust Skull attack - very fast such that if you're in range, it's gonna hit you. Will merc non-tanks but pretty safe for the tank
- Ye Olde Tusken Dune Raider Skull attack - slams the butt of his spear into the ground then pumps it into the air like you called his mother a bantha. Anyone not blocking will be OHKO'd.
- Every now and then he'll look away from the tank, throw his poop at someone, and jump at them. He will often follow this with a lethal (to non-tanks) PBAOE slam attack, a (lethal to non-tanks) frontal spear slam, or his (look if you're a non-tank just assume everything that his you is always gonna kill you in here ok?) Pentathrust skull attack
- Best Tactics: Tank: Kite around the outside of the room while PVPing accordingly. Be very careful not to react incorrectly to his feints. He's otherwise pretty harmless. Easiest weapon to tank this fight with is Rifle. If using other weapons, clip your lunges to avoid closing the distance every time you go to PVP him in order to ensure he does as many of his freebie knockdown feints as possible.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay spread out at mid to long range. If you ever see him turn and throw his poop, **** immediately.
- Survival/Mitigation: People (stupidly) die in this generall by not GTFOing when he throws his poop or by not blocking his Tusken Dune Raider co-splay. Remember to block ever skull until you're sure it's safe. Everyone should keep their soder off CD to pop immediately after Dune Raider goes off, which will hit everyone who's blocking for hefty %-based damage.
- Tips:
- Uses Skull attacks less often when continually kited and properly PVPed
Round 4
- Johnny Quick
- Weapon: Martial Arts
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Does unpredictable lunges, combos, and RA hold-hold-hold attacks
- Usually runs around doing his bs, ignoring the tank, but will occasionally remember he can PftT and use weapon attacks.
- His tornado arms attack is interuptable and extremely dangerous to everyone if left unchecked
- Adopt a quick and reactive PVP posture when it comes to handling his normal melee and RA weapon combos.
- Overall, he rarely blocks so it's a decent tactic to stand in the middle and spam Rifle lunges at him. At the very least, stay in the middle and reactively lunge his tornadoes and BB. You risk granting immunity but you mitigate a huge amount of his most dangerous attacks
- Fight Mechanics:
- Johnny 's main schtick is he'll pop a Skull then teleport to a random target (all pets are included his target list) and do either air punches, spinny-ma-gig, or tornado arms. Tornado arms is the most dangerous as it can down an entire group extremely quickly and it needs to be interrupted immediately.
- When he says "Tag... You're Dead," he's being an edgelord but also about to tether three group members together with electricity, drawing them together via constant CC and dealing lethal damage if they get too close
- At 75%, 50%, and 25% health remaining, Johnny summons his afterimages around the middle circle of the room plus one afterimage in the exact center. Everyone needs to run to the center and kill the image there, then huddling in fear until the rest explode. (Ill advised alternate tactic that's good to know below)
- Best Tactics: Tank: Stay in the middle of the room so you're always in range to lunge immediately. Johnny is "untankable" and you don't even technically need a tank for this fight.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay spread around the room. When he skulls, get ready to pre-emptively block and roll, timing it so when he teleports there's no one there for him to pwn.
- Survival/Mitigation: His tornado and his Hold-Hold-Hold RA are his most dangerous moves and impossible to predict. Tank and healer have to stay focusses and avoid getting complacent. His RA spam in particular is the attack most likely to drop a tank, but only because he lulls everyone into a false sense of security. Quick response via shields, soders, and priority heals will neuter him.
- Tips:
- Keep your pets out at all times. More pets = more targets = safer for you.
- This is one of the easiest but also the most annoying fights, with RNG being the biggest risk factor
- When tethered, in addition to staying away from everone else, everyone still needs to avoid his other mechanics. This is extremely frustrating because of the way tether CC works but you can still lunge and roll while it's happening. You just have to spam the inputs as fast as you can.
- Alternate afterimage method: If you firmly press your junk against the outer wall exactly smack dab in the direct centerpoint between two of his outer afterimages, you will not be hit when they explode. This is useful to know if you somehow can't make it to the center in time, but don't practice this.
Round 5
- Vampire Lord
- Weapon: Hand Blasters
- Supplies: This is the only fight with virtually mandatory supplies, depending on the tier you're at. @5 - No additional supplies needed @15 - If the non-tanks don't have Radiant light to keep the shadow pets stunned, you're gonna have a bad time. It's "doable" without them but... don't. @25 - Don't even bother attempting this without Radiant Light + Righteous Pyres for the pets. If you can swing it, extra Pyres for Lord are helpful.
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Does both RA tap tap hold zappiness and Solar Flame. Solar Flame can do massive damage (possibly bugged depending on what weapon you're using)
- Does normal lunges, followed immediately by a second hold attack about half the time. Can be rolled/walked away from or blocked.
- Does a lungeable skull beam attack (similar to tala's Absorb Heat animation) that, if left uncountered, will probably kill the tank
- If you time it correctly, you can double stuff the interrupt to his skull attack and get double the knockdown time (super valuable as it will re-knockdown even if he breaks out)
- Feints block into lunge
- Feints RA into block but hardly ever does the block part.
- Thanks to his slow lunge speed, Explosive Block is outstanding in this fight. You can pretty much tank him without moving most of the time while he bounces himself off of you
- Fight Mechanics:
- This is essentially identical to the Darkness Rising version with the following exceptions: i) Pools can't be closed with Illuminating Light, ii) No adds aside from the shadow summons, iii) Shadow bat won't pick you up in its mouth like a chew toy, iv) shadow pools neither heal nor protect Vampire Lord
- He has multiple skull attacks, two of which are interruptable via lunge. He will either summon bats, summon bats followed by orbital strike, launch shadow juice out of his hands tracking the tank, beam the tank, or teleport to a pool and try to drag everyone in
- Summons a shadow pet at 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20% health. These need to be focussed and taken down fast
- Best Tactics: Tank: Kite around the outside of the room, being wary of the tanks. Do not ever move between Vampire Lord and your teammates, as this risks dragging his skull attack across them in a way that risks wiping the group. Easiest to tank this with a rifle, as it allows better pre-emptive lunging. When pets are summoned, your primary responsibility is controlling Vampire Lord. Let the group handle the pet with Radiant Light, Orbitals, and Pyres. Maintain focus on Vampire Lord and control the battlefield.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay in the middle of the room, slightly spread out while avoiding the outer edges of the inner circle. This is a tighter kite than usual and you don't want to be anywhere near Lord's face. Otherwise, he'll almost never bother you except to summon flying bats or orbitals on you, which are easily avoided. Make sure you have Orbitals, SC, pets, basically your full nut ready to dump on the shadow pets he summons. They're the most dangerous element of the fight and need to die quickly.
- Survival/Mitigation: Solar Flame is his most dangerous attack and can wreck a tank fast. It needs to be reliably lunged and tank and healer need to be ready to hit their "oh ****" buttons to save a life.
- Tips:
- Save your resources for pet summons and have your Light/Pyre ready in tray
- If blocking when he tries to draw you into his shadow pools, he can't pull you
- Tanks should intentionally let his pull hit them, at max range, and immediately breakout to gain free immunity and to trigger Breakout Protection
Round 6
- Black Manta
- Weapon: Dual Wield
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- PVP wise, easiest enemy to deal with
- Feints RA into Block (frequently)
- Feints block into lunge (frequently)
- Does normal lunges.
- Sometimes his normal lunges will "bug out" and he'll land short of your block and start doing a combo. You can either walk away to negate it, or roll away (I don't recommend this until it's established he's in a long combo). Can block the combo but it gets riskier at higher levels
- Sometimes successfully blocking his normal lunge has a significantly delayed response, wherein the counter won't trigger for ~1s after the lunger is over. Stay blocked until you see him fall on his ***. If he stop blocking, the counter won't trigger.
- Does counterable normal RA taps
- Does normal blocks infrequently
- This is another fight where Explosive Block is outstanding, since he feints into lunge a lot
- Once PVP'd Tank often has enough time to grab 3-4 bombs during bomb phase
- Fight Mechanics:
- This is essentially a heavily watered down version of The Threat Below
- Will occasionally press a button on his arm and summon a manta bomb at random position, sometimes in the air. You will hear a subtle beep as well. Stay away from these bombs, as they're lethal.
- He only has one skull attack: after a very short grace period, he will use his eye beams on a random player. You can either be out of range (seems unreliable, has a large range) or you can be blocking and immediately breakout and start blocking again once the beam hits you. No matter what you do, this attack is buggy and it's going to kill non-tanks most of the time. Be ready with pickups but be mindful of his randomly summoned bombs when going for and accepting res.
- Will summon a circle of bombs three times throughout the fight. At least every third bomb needs to be deactivated. Get the critical bombs then clean up the rest as best you can. Tank can help if he can get a counter off.
- Best Tactics: Tank: Kite wide around the room and PVP accordingly. Stay at max range. You can be targeted by eye beams so stay vigilant and do the mechanics for them as required (they're less lethal to the tank). If you're using a weapon other than rifle, be extremely careful when lunging that you don't land on a bomb about to go off.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay at max range, spread out around the room and keeping out of the tank's kite path. Do your best to not die to eye beams but pucker up cuz you're gonna. Help each other up as quickly and safely as possible.
- Survival/Mitigation: Negligible threat to tank but be prepared to hit the "oh ****" buttons if he's caught up blocking a melee combo. Winning this is all about fast, effective revives.
- Tips:
- Try to keep a repair bot active on the field (you squishies are worm food in here) but communicate when you're using it so everyone doesn't go at once
Round 7
- Deathstroke
- Weapon: One Handed/Staff/Rifle/Bow
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Almost all of his skull atacks are lungeable. Times correctly/preemptively, they can all be double-stuffed to keep him on his *** for twice as long
- If you see him do a backflip, start lunging him as it's immediately followed by counterable RA (also double-stuffable)
- Does Arrow Storm (lungeable but hard to double stuff)
- Feints block into lunge
- Does rifle's lungeable combat role (will usually CC you and require breakout)
- Blocks normally
- Does normal lunges (just walk/run away when he does this and it cancels his follow-on combo)
- Fight Mechanics:
- Shortly after you start the fight, he will drop a supply drop on himself and do his lethal beam attack. Tank needs to move him about haveway to the center of the room and keep him pointed such that, when he starts turning his beam, the group will be able to safely follow it in a circle around him. (The beam always goes clockwise)
- At regular intervals he will activate Ikon Suit, which must be broken by damage. It's a good idea to coordinate an Orbital Strike order, as the Ikon Suit spacing is such that if everyone takes turns dropping a Strike each per Ikon, the first person to go will be ready again just before the fifth Ikon Suit happens.
- He mostly just chases the tank around and gets put on his *** like a chump
- Best Tactics: Tank: Kite wide around the room and PVP accordingly. Stay at max range to make it harder to for him start melee comboes. Tanking/PVPing this with rifle is easiest.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Don't get too close, don't clump up, and don't fall asleep.
- Survival/Mitigation: The most dangerous attacks he has are rifle forward roll and his melee combos. The rifle forward roll can pull off some nasty damage spikes if the tank gets CC'd at an awkward time. If you hear/see the rifle, drop heals/shields
- Tips:
- Do not forget about the beam attack at the start of the fight. Do not forget about the beam attack at the start of the fight. Do not forget about the beam attack at the start of the fight.
- _ You should be lunging Deathstroke out of everything. Rifle is ideal for tanking him as it lets you start your lunge the moment before the skull disappears & the attack starts and interrupt before any damage is done, followed immediately by another lunge for a second interrupt on the same vulnerability window. You should never be anywhere near him, staying at max range as much as possible.
- The only skull attacks he has that aren't counterable are his beam at the beginning and Shock Staff (which he'll only do if someone is too close).
Round 8
- Minotaur
- Weapon: One Handed
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- 100% incapable of blocking. Can be pre-emptively lunged with impunity. (Seriously, you can trivialize much of this fight if someone other than the tank just spams rifle lunge on him non-stop)
- Spams RA hold attack for heavy damage to tank. Will do it 2-4 times back to back.
- 100% incapable of feinting
- Does normal lunges followed by melee combos. You can walk away if you're moving when he lunges but the comboes track well and have a good range, so can be hard to pull off reliably Usually safe to roll but if you're not quick you'll eat the tail end of tap-tap-tap-hold.
- Fight Mechanics:
- Fundamentally the same as Underworld Trials minotaur without the adds.
- Will occassionally throw beefy, slow-moving axes that deal heavy damage. Avoid them
- Will summon orange spinning weapons around the room that follow a specific player. Avoid it and don't drag it onto other people.
- Skull attack - aims at a player and charges them. Tracking stops when he starts running
- Summons holographic chains on the cardinal directions of the room (a chain spawns every other charge). Group has to get him to break the chain with his charge. Failure to break the chain results in increasingly negative consequences in the form of more and more deadly and aggressive behaviour from the minotaur with each successive miss.
- Will occasionally do a soft "lunge" that does low damage but causes a large knockback/stun effect and is generally followed by more deadly attacks on w/o it connects with
- Best Tactics: Tank: Loosely kite him around the room but try to keep him positioned such that you can get a good charge at chains when they spawn. Most important thing is to stay away and lunge his RAs. Strongly recommend rifle for this fight, as it allows for cleaner pre-lunging while staying at a safe range.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay away from minotaur and dodge axes/aoes. Quickly identify and position to break chains.
- Survival/Mitigation: The primary danger to the tank is Minotaur's RAs. Tank should maintain low level mitigation while keeping most available to pop whenever minotaur starts his throw spam. During throw spam, healer should be read to keep the tank topped off.
- Tips:
- Do not prioritize chains over dodging aoe. The easiest way to wipe this fight is by grouping up at a chain with an aoe tracking someone and everyone getting caught/CC'd in it because they had tunnel vision trying to break the chain. W/e is being tracked, either stay farther out from the wall than your teammates or stay a little offset and, if you're targetted with charge, line it up at the last second. You can afford to miss a few chains but this is the hardest fight to revive people in (minotaur doesn't have a set rotation with grace periods to allow for revival, like the more overall lethal bosses do).
- Tanks can be the target of charge. Charge target may not be who it looks like it's going to be (he can swing 45 degrees sometimes before he starts running, it's janky)
- When tanking, don't be afraid to use Dash Attack's movement boost to quickly reposition if an AoE is uncomfortably close to you while he's doing his charged ranged attack spam. That's the combination of factors most likely to cause problems in general. While you can simply move and let someone else handle the lunges, just popping Dash trivializes the situation, lets you get clear instantly, and gets you back on point.
Round 9
- Ultimate Soldier
- Weapon: Rifle
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Spaaaaaaaaaaaams mortar for hella damage. Needs to be lunged every time.
- Lunges (does neglible damage and you can/should just walk away from it)
- Fight Mechanics:
- Occasionally summons a green shield that needs to be broken by DPS or he heals (it goes down easily)
- Occasionally points his Pez Dispenser in the air and launches an umbrella of baby blue Pez around the room. Keep an eye out for the bright blue spots on the ground so you're not near them when they explode.
- Skull attack is dependent on proximity. If no one is anywhere near him, he will always do flamethrower. If anyone is too close, he might instead do an extremely dangerous lighting attack that hits everyone, regardless of where they are in the room.
- Occasionally summons easy-to-spot and avoid bombs around the room. Most dangerous to the tank.
- Best Tactics: Tank: DO NOT USE RIFLE FOR THIS FIGHT. USE ANY WEAPON BESIDES RIFLE. If use rifle, it's quasi-stationary lunge means you eat full damage from at least one and often two volleys of Mortar every time he does it. This is extremely hard to deal with at round 19 and completely untenable at 29. It's important you use a weapon with a full lunge range so that you're both countering Mortar and evading most of its damage. Do not clip cancel your lunge until you are safely outside of Mortar's AoE. Kite him around the room, with the following priorities: #1 - If he Mortarts, lunge him and immediately **** as far away as possible while remaining within lunge range. #2 - Kite at max range at all times but avoid moving into the grey. If you're too far, your lunge will fail to counter Mortar. #3 - Anytime he lunges you, **** to max range immediately. The most dangerous possible situation to be in in this is US lunging then immediately doing a skull attack, as he's close enough it could be his lightning blast. Done correctly, you can do this entire fight without a single lightning blast. While kiting, be careful of bombs that may be ahead of your kite path (you won't see them until they're close since your camera should be locked on US), close to US (such that you may land in them when you lunge), or in the lunge path to US. At higher levels, be extremely diligent about avoiding his baby blue Pez on the ground. It won't kill you by itself but Pez Asplosion + Mortar can.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: Stay at 100% max range at all times. Being ultra-vigilent about dodging his Pez on the ground, as it can OHKO you. When he skulls, always block and stay blocked until you're 100% certain he's doing fire and not lightning. Fire begins with the barrel of his rifle pointing about 5-10 degrees up abruptly without him moving much otherwise. Lightning begins with him swinging his whole body dramatically and dropping his left elbow for the world's most epic fist pump. If you're not blocking and he does lightning, you're probably dead. If it's fire and he's pointing it at you (which... WHY ARE YOU IN RANGE TO BE FLAMETHROWERED?! STEVE!?) you have to away roll immediately and keep rolling until you're out of range or you're probably dead (the fire is sometimes invisible)/
- Survival/Mitigation: You survive this respecting this angry vet's his personal space. Stay far away and if you do get even mid-range for any reason whatsoever, take a sec and go back to max range. You will only lose this by not respecting his personal space.
- Tips:
- Give the man his space
- Done correctly, this one of the easiest fights. Done incorrectly, it's the hardest.
Round 10
- Ultraman
- Weapon: Brawling
- Tanking PVP Mechanics:
- Feints RA to block (doesnt always do the block part)
- "Feints" heat vision (no block after)
- Does normal charged RA for heavy damage
- Does normal lunges (often followed by immediate melee Hold attack, making it hard to roll away without giving immunity unless your latency is mega tight)
- Does normal blocks
- Does lungeable RA taps for high damage
- He'll routinely fly at a random player then immediately return his focus to the tank and do random PVPable attacks to him. Be ready to counter.
- Fight Mechanics:
- Has all the same mechanics as in The Panopticon, but watered down for four players. Fewer owl mines spawn, Lasso of Submission dicipates slightly more quickly, dark red fire AoE is a lil less lethal. All still need to be avoided and handled.
- His normal attacks do very high damage to the tank
- He will frequently drop aggro, fly at random players, and do a lethal ground slam. There is no skull associated with this attack. The second he faces anyone but the tank, everyone needs to be GTFOing.
- He has a single target heat vision attack that's very similar to Black Manta's Eye Beams.
- He will summon a conal PBAOE of red bouncy lights for low-mid damage
- Does a wide laser blast
- Will randomly do freezing breath in a clockwise direction followed by heat vision, originating from the exact position ice breath finished, in a counter clockwise direction, ending approximately 5 degrees beyond the point where it began.
- Overall, this is the most chaotic fight
- Best Tactics:
- Think of this fight as having 3 phases as follows:
- 1. Tank murder phase. Ultraman will go balls out with regular spike damage on the tank. If the tank dies here, odds of survivial drop. 2. Squishy murder phases. Ultraman forgets about the tank and crushes the squishies' skulls. Up to two people can die here without it being too big of a deal 3. Recovery phase. Ultraman slows his roll, letting you get people up Then Back to phase 1. Rinse and repeat. Throughout all of this, he will be doing his random mechanics.
- Tank: This is the hardest to tank. Every fight up til this one is your ***** but here, your capacity to dictate the terms of engagement are limited. Ultraman's PVP is varied and unpredictable, and his movement is chaotic. This fight has a very noticeable built in "grace period" right after he drops aggro and (probably) kills someone. Prior to dropping aggro, he will do everything he can to kill you, then you'll get a little breathing room, then he'll chill out a bit after he's sated his bloodlust on your squishies and (unless you totally **** up the post-squishy murder niceness buy derping the PVP and granting immunity) he'll stay chill for a comfortable amount of time such that revives can take place.
- Troll/Heal/DPS: 1. Stay the **** away from each other. When he picks a random target his angry ground slam is happy to murder all three of you if you're bunched up. DO. NOT. CLUMP. UP. If there's a supply drop, take turns. Act like everyone has the flu. 2. Prioritize dodging mechanics over dealing damage. This fight is designed to kill you, sometimes unavoidably. It is designed like Black Manta such that frequent, instant death is a guarantee. If you die to something that could have been avoided, the person who's reviving you is going to eventually die to his phase 2 nonsense and you will wipe. 3. Recognize which phase you're in. Phase 1 = keep the tank alive. Phase 2 = **** and do your best to survive, evading his flight charges. Phase 3 = Pickup anyone who got wreckt in phase 2.
- Survival/Mitigation: Aside from the above points, it's important to maintain a steady level of mitigation on the tank at all times during phase 1 with bursts of "oh **** button" when needed. Ultraman, like Johnny Quick, somewhat includes pets in his target list so keep you pets out at all times.
- Tips:
- Buckle up
- Not a bad idea to keep a repair bot out. Only use it when Ultraman's on his *** or when you know it's safe. Same rules as Black Manta.
- This is basically a more abusive version of the Black Manta fight in that you're not meant to live. You're meant to recover gracefully.
- If you accidentally breakout of being icecubed, don't panic. You can jump on top of someone else's ice cube and negate all damage. You can stand behind as well but your positioning is more critical. You can also range the attack by running all the way away to the far wall (jumping on top of another person's ice cube is safer, if you're close enough)
- If a member is down and he starts his freezing breath, if you start the revive before you're frozen the revive will succeed.
20-30 Bosses' Key Points
- Lex Luthor - Handle same as previous iterations but tank needs to be on top of pre-empting Solar Flame (not in one-shot territory yet but getting there)
- King Shark - Tank needs to pre-empt PVPing Stomp Smashes, keeping in mind he'll spam it several times in a row. The biggest challenge here is just getting used to King Shark's use of brawling, which differs slightly from Ultraman who you're still going to have muscle memory for from 20. KS leaves more time for roll-out but also requires different Phase Dodge timing. His Chum Barf(TM) is now lethal to tanks after ~1s. As tank, do not attempt to block break him... his feint brackets often bug out and even when they don't the room's mechanics severely occlude them and make it so attempting to block break is the riskiest thing you can do. If you see him block, you block until you're 100% sure he's actually just blocking and not feinting a lunge (this is best practice in general in SM, as the feints are buggy).
- Vandal Savage - The only difference here is that his Pokey Stabs(TM) Skull attack should now be avoided, as it's moderately lethal and the dot it applies is pretty potent now
- Johnny Quick - Same squishy **** he's always been but his tornado attacks are a lot more lethal. Also, if you let him get off an uninterrupted MA ranged combo it can wipe anyone in a ~90degree arc where he's facing. More important than ever for the group form a triangle around the room with the tank in the center, lunging his BS w/e needed.
- Vampire Lord - Same basic approach as 15 but it's now pretty important to PVP Solar Flame properly or pre-emptively, as it can one-shot. Similarly, when he teleports, the entire group should run out of range every time. Even with strong DPS output, there's enough time between pet summons that everyone's Orbital Strikes will be back up and the DPS will have 100% SC again, so pet burn is still fairly tame and coordinated assault can deal with the pets within 3-4 Radiant Lights. As able, tank should still taunt the pets while being careful to PVP Vampire Lord, communicating with the group to pop the 4th Radiant Light if needed (use Dash Attack for this to get in and out quickly w/o risking Vampire Lord using Black Splooge Blast(TM) in the direction of the team.
- The biggest strategic challenge this fight presents is how to handle the manner in which he summons his pets. Snake is by far the tankiest and most dangerous, so Snake popped first or last is ideal. Similarly, the ideal pet summons occur with consecutive pools being used. This means the most dangerous possible situation is if the second pet is summoned in the middle pool, enabling Vampire Lord to teleport to either side and pull/DoT everyone while they're trying to keep the pet CC'd/murdered, wiping unprepared groups as this is hard to deal with reactively. The easiest way of shutting his BS down is for people to put Pious Aura in their Utility Belt before the 2nd pet spawn; he'll summon -> group hammers pet like normal -> VL teleports -> pop SC group shield + pious auras -> VL pulls but gets shut down completely by Aura and shields -> laugh while killing pet. Once the second pet is dead, everyone can safely remove Pious Aura from their belts but still needs to run away from his teleports/pulls
- Black Manta - Same as always but his melee combo finishers are now unliveable. Tank should kite/pvp like usual, using roll/PD to mitigate his melee bs and Amazonian Deflection to deal with eye beams (I didn't use it but I suspect Man-Bat form would make escaping his melee significantly easier). Explosive Block is more valuable here than anywhere and helps land Orbital Strikes more reliably but when you see him feinting into lunge, take a few steps back towards him (his lunge range is slightly dwarfed and if you're at or near max range there will be a semi-dangerous delay before the block actually procs and bounces him). If the tank does go down, do not attempt to revive if Black Manta is near the corpse or there's a solid chance he'll Fart Jump(TM) away and kill you.
- Deathstroke - Same as always but his bullet spray is now extremely dangerous. Other than that, PVP like normal and pre-empt his bs.
- Minotaur - PVP like normal and pre-empt his bs. His melee combo is still livable but you're better off just eating the tap tap tap part then popping PD for the HOLD (choppity chop) part then immediately blocking near the end of the animation to try and get a free bounce proc. As long as everyone communicates where the whirling hammers are and the hammer target kites it appropriately, this is pretty straightforward. Tank should keep Dash Attack in reserve for either getting out of risky-looking situations where there's a hammer closing in or Dash should also be popped if there's a chain up and the charge targets the tank, as Dash will allow you to quickly spin him to face the chain. The more people who pop henchmen during/immediately after the charge the better, as they'll encircle him while he's staggered and bodyblock him against the wall for their full duration if done correctly.
- Ultimate Soldier - Mortars are now extremely lethal. You need to either roll away or lunge him when you see the white mortar shells at about the height of your head. Too soon or too late and you'll take full damage. Phase Dodge should be kept in reserve and Amazonian Deflection can be used to ignore mortars. He'll occasionally enter a mortar spam phase where he'll keep taking a few steps forward then mortaring over and over until he's PVPed; this is dangerous because he can really cut into the middle of the room if he's not put on his *** in a timely fashion. Expect this fight to take ~25-30min, therefore expect server lag bs to result in several seconds of weird behaviour at some point during every attempt (I actually do encourage the use of Man-Bat form for 29, simply to mitigate the fact that lag can/will result in bs Arcs w/o it while running from his lunges). Everyone who can should use Grimorium Verum and as many pets as possible in general, as it makes him stop and flame the air way more often.
20-30 Bosses' Key Points (continued 2)
- Ultraman - Just remember that Ultraman will pretty much always do Ice Ice Baby(tm) followed by Scatter Shot followed by 2x slow charges, with PVP attacks delaying one or both charges. Until you've seen his second charge, no one should be doing anything that can at all prevent them from immediately GTFOing from a potential charge (including DPSing). Just be cool until both charges happen, stay spread out, then go to town after charge two as you're safe until his next Scatter Shot -> Charge phase. Always go into a defensive posture after he Scatter Shots and don't resume offense until charges are done.
- Because of how much time you spend dodging or waiting to dodge in this fight, most of your damage is going to come from pets and from Orbital Striking his derpy *** while he's freezing. This, combined with the fact that pets soak Scatter Shot, means that the more pets people run the better. Anyone who can remotely swing it, including MT, should have Robot Sidekick. Your best offensive artifacts for this, by far, are Grimorium Verum and Dead King's Scepter (especially Dead King's Scepter).
- Once you've got the above elements nailed down, he's pretty straightforward. He's also still extremely luck-dependent in that he's always capable of doing some dumb bs like lasso someone -> charge/kill the lasso target -> do PVP attacks delaying second charge, forcing team to begin res before it's safe to do so -> finally charge again, interrupting or killing person doing res -> invisible Swoop Attack someone at the other end of the room, killing them instantly. Fun stuff. Because of this, everyone should be running Manacles. It isn't needed but think of it as an insurance policy. Similarly, the more people who run Lazarus Pit Water in the event that people can't res in time, the better (have a second armoury to switch to once Lazarus Pit Water is activated/spent). If everyone has both of those things, it will heavily mitigate the RNG aspect of this fight.
- For tank, the only truly important artifact is Manacles. At 30, I run Manacles, Lazarus Pit Water, and Dead King's Scepter. If I have to activate Lazarus Pit Water I then switch to a different armoury where it's replaced with Grimorium Verum. If you're nervous you can still run Dilustel + Mystic Symbol but in my experience, if your manacles isn't up there's not a lot of living by the skin of your teeth, ie. if you go down you go down hard enough you're not gaining anything with them.
- Pickup order is important. Off tank should maintain somewhat of a readiness posture, helping to PVP Ultraman and being ready to insta-res any non-tank who goes down, topping shields up and popping Dash Attack to become the ultimate first responder. If the main tank drops, off tank needs to grab Ultraman instantly and kite him away from the corpse. Lastly, expect Swoop Attack to bug out 1-2 times per fight, instantly killing any random target w/o animation/movement from Ultraman (it's hella buggy and hella cheap).
- Initial guide used by courtesy of Crash Allen'
Gallery
Videos
- DC Universe Online Survival Mode (2019) - Season One - Exclusive Rewards
- DCUO Survival Mode (2019) - Season One - Regular Vendor Update (New Materials, Aura & Base Items!)