Naboo Raid...
I want to start that I loved the Naboo raid at the start. It was a fun new puzzle to figure out. But several months on now I must say this is probably the single biggest chore in the game and I fully...
Forum Discussion
So first, let me say that the raid should NOT give such a bad experience to any player, and I totally hear that many players hate this thing.
With that out of the way, I'd like to talk about a couple things that make life easier -- this is not to defend CG, but rather to help you have better QOL despite the raid's problems.
- R7:
Most of the factions get significant bonuses at r7 that makes the r7+ tiers easier than all the lower tiers. Queen Amidala can be frustrating even at r7, I admit, but Jedi and Gungans are very reliable at r7 with minimal remods. The more squads you can get to r7, the easier your life will be.
2. Mod Loadouts:
To make life as easy as possible on myself, I use just a few loadouts. My Sana Starros mods go on someone who needs offence, potency, and speed, my GL Leia mods go on someone who needs a lot of speed and a lot of survivability, and so on. By taking the set of a toon that already has more or less what I need, without worrying about making things perfect, changing mods becomes much easier. (There are also paid solutions like HotUtils which is a great QOL benefit, but since it costs money, I do not recommend it for anyone with a lot of money to spend on games.) Try creating a tab with the default mods of all the toons you remod in the raids, then another tab with the toons whose mod sets you're borrowing for the raids.
Also, don't remod more than you need to. For the Jedi, remodding Lumi and Kit is probably necessary. But they might be the only two. I also remod my Jedi Knight Guardian (she's r8 for TB Ops platoons) because her mods are just completely terrible, but I don't remod the other two Jedi on my Lumi team. Gungans are so good at r7 and higher that you probably don't need to remodel any of them, though you can to make things easier if that bothers you less then playing the raid itself. My mods on my gungans are good enough, and I max out with them every time, but I'm sure that does depend at least somewhat on mods. If you fail to max even once at r7, try remodding Boss Nass and Boombadier.
3. Jedi:
This team can be incredibly reliable at r7+, though the first 2 waves can also be tricky. If the enrage timer is over 32% after the first 2 waves, restart right away rather than playing all the way through.
You can use KAM and a pair of strong supports (like GMY and Shaak) to really boost your power and reliability here, but if you have other Jedi and can get max scores without them, a second Jedi squad led by Kelleran Beq will need KAM + supports more than Lumi's squad. My Lumi squad is Lumi (L) + Kit Fisto, Shaak, Aayla, and Jedi Knight Guardian. Only Shaak is a truly good toon that weakens my KB squad by its inclusion here, but I like her dispel on basic against the DDK droids.
4. Gungans:
As mentioned above, this team performs very, very well. They are really the premiere team of this raid. If you don't have enough good mods that your Gungans are using all 6-dot mods right now, you might wish to remod, but they do gain quite a bit of turn meter and it shouldn't be too hard to max out every time -- especially with JarJar. If you don't have JarJar, maxing out is possible but not as reliable and remodding is recommended. Without JarJar the Omicron might help you. With JarJar it doesn't matter.
I know an Omicron might seem a steep cost, but this isn't about the power to do X. This is about quality of life. What is your sanity worth? Save an hour of your life each week: if you don't have JarJar, just drop the Omicron and feel happier instantly.
5. Queen Amidala:
Her squad requires her unique buff. She gains her unique buff only by gaining and then losing Healing over Time while her Decoy tank is on the board. A huge number of people -- including me -- have made the mistake of summoning the decoy right away in the battle, but with too many droids on the board, she doesn't last. Wait until there are only 2-3 total droids left in p1 (that includes the commander, so only 1-2 normal B1 droids) before summoning the decoy, then slow the battle down by using basics with everyone except MQG, who should use his middle ability if possible, basic otherwise.
This should allow you to pick up some HoT and have them dispelled by the Commander (or just expire) before the end of that wave, which will boost your survivability and damage. The max of this buff is 10 stacks, and you want them all. If you don't get 10 stacks by the end of the 2nd wave, restart. (Life gets easier at r9, but let's not talk about r9 -- it's too hard to acquire for most people.)
6. Other squads:
Other squads are much more subject to RNG, though Maul+Sidius teams can do serious damage, even max damage, if they are modded perfectly. This requires unique mod sets rather than just grabbing a full set from someone. Feel free to create those sets if you like, but with Maul+Sidius and any other squads besides Lumi, Gungans, and QA, it's easier to make peace with the fact that you're not going to get max score and just choose to live with less than max and be happy about that. Other squads (like KB squads) don't require such precise modding, but (like Maul+Sidius squads) they're also not as reliable as the three I listed above. If you're already maxing out the first 3 teams and you're feeling negative emotions about playing the raid, make a couple attempts and just settle for something reasonable.
TO SUM UP:
I know that CG has a responsibility to make the game fun and they're failing you, but there are some steps you can take to make things easier, less time consuming, and more focussed on the fun. Since the raid is here for another 5-6 months, putting in a bit of effort here can make a difference in your mental health for a good half year.
I'm not trying to make excuses for CG, but think about doing some of the above. It might be worth it.
One of the issues with "mod loadouts" is that we currently have 275 characters in the game. We only get 200 mod loadout slots. That hasn't changed in years and more than once devs at CG have said, "Wait, it's only 200? We'll take a look at that." Yet, here we are with only 200, STILL.
And putting in effort is one thing, but the RNG being so expansive that one run you do 200K and the next one you do 1.8 million is just dumb and CG is relying too much on RNG to run their game.
I generally try to make all my mods as permanent as possible, to cover as many game modes as possible, for the sole reason of not having to spend any more time than I have to. Considering, and I don't even know how many times I have brought this up, we have Raids, TB, GAC, TW, Conquest, JG, UJ, etc., the last thing I need is to worry about mods. The only times I swap and use layouts is for JG events. So that part doesn't bother me, but I can imagine how frustrating it must be for other players.
As for the second part, about RNG, yeah, 100% agree. It happened to me who knows how many times in the Endor raid, it keeps happening now on Naboo. And for some reason, the current and the last run seemed to be a lot more difficult. I'm slowly improving my score (currently at 4M), but it just seems that recently I've had to restart much more than I used to. For the KB team, I went from G12 to R5, I can understand having to adjust my strategy for that team. But with Maul at R7, for example, I've only been upgrading my mods and getting a bit more speed, I've gotten used to the strategy behind that team, and it's still extremely RNG reliant, especially with that ridiculous bonus turn mechanic.
I'm in the same camp: I keep my mods as permanent as possible. Even to accommodate new characters do I rarely move them around. That's just way too tedious to have to keep shuffling them around just because.
The rng is pretty bad. My r5 Gungans can auto the raid for max score on their tier. However, it's not consistent with how many attempts I take to do this. I've done it in one or two attempts, but I've had some weeks I restart the battle well over a dozen times. In the previous raids I would manually play my strongest one or two teams, then auto the rest, but with the un-skippable cutscenes in this one and the constant attacks by the enemies it's just too much effort if I have to keep restarting due to rng.
I responded somewhere else in this thread about it, but I'd like to see more areas of this game, especially raids, be SIMmable, since the feature already exists in the game.
Even with all the recommendations, the QOL is really low for this raid. I appreciate that you are trying to help ppl out, but this raid is just a big mistake from CG in my opinion.
- Got all the squads at R7 or above, apart from 1 team. I could get the last team to R7 too, but that won't give me a higher box, so it is quite useless for me.
- Using HotUtils for my mod loadouts
- Got the Jedi teams
- Gungans I got at R8 (JarJar at R9), this is actually the only battle that never ever causes a problem and is over fairly quickly and doesn't require any restarts
- Using Queen Amidala, MQJ and Padawan Obi Wan at R9
- Other squads I have are Lumi (R7), GMY (R8), Kit (R7), QGJ (R7), Plo (R8). Then Kelleran (R7), KAM (R7), Shaak (R7), Mace (R7), Aayla (R7). And last, B2 (R5), Sidious (R7), Maul (R7), STAP (R5), Magnaguard (R5). I wanted to get all my teams to R8, but because this raid is so extremely annoying, I have decided to not do that anymore.
To sum up:
This raid makes me want to rage quit the game every time I have to play this raid. It takes really an obnoxious time to do this raid every week (next to GAC, Conquest, TB, TW). The amount of RNG is very frustrating. Skipping it is also not an option, because you need stuff from all these events if you are in the end game.
I wanted to like this raid and started gearing up early to come prepared when it launched. Been scoring around 11M every time it has been around, but this raid is really not worth the time to destroy my mental health.
Even with all the recommendations, the QOL is really low for this raid. I appreciate that you are trying to help ppl out, but this raid is just a big mistake from CG in my opinion.
I actually agree. But I also think it's too late to change things here. That's why I created a separate thread for criticisms that will (hopefully) provide CG with some guidelines about how to make raids that better satisfy players. We need to establish minimum standards for every raid, not just criticize specific raids after release, when it's too late to change much.
Here's that other thread:
https://forums.ea.com/discussions/swgoh-general-discussion-en/structuring-the-next-raid/4966732
Only 5 likes so far, but the more it gets, the more likely they are to pay attention.
Read it and liked it!
Dude, you 100% miss the entire point of the OPs complaint. The raid TAKES UP TOO MUCH **bleep** TIME! All you did was add a **bleep** of **bleep** **bleep** that the OP needs to do to get satisfactory results to a **bleep** raid that has horrible RNG and flaky mechanics at best. The raid is a **bleep** joke and your BS answer is 100% defending CG you bootlicker
WHY THE **bleep** SHOULD YOU NEED R7 SQUAD JUST TO COMPLETE THE LOWEST TIER DIFFICULTY ON THE RAID? **bleep**
Shut the **bleep** up you **bleep** simp. The Raid is **bleep** broken and the **bleep** droids either shouldn't heal on every other droid attack while also increasing the shield down percentage on every droid attack or the **bleep** droids shouldn't get 3 turns each per one turn of each player character. SHUT THE **bleep** UP WITH YOUR SIMPING FOR CG
