Divide Quest - Impressions, strats, etc

Quite sure they skewed this quest against solo on purpose, at least number wise. The buff not only takes 90 seconds to appear for the first 4 floors, but it ends up at 3x damage total only. Assuming 4 players in the same party are equal in performance, solo would have 25% less dps (and before buff, 75% less). Then there is also the aggro, though this can be either a Pro or a Con depending on your class and player skill.

The main problem arent the stats and DPS though, but the missions goals and layouts. Most missions seem to be tailored so you have people separated doing different things in the map. Collection is by far the worst for solo. Your only viable option is to kill the boss, but you need to be lucky its blue so it gives you enough points(so far for me it seems 1/3 of the time is not, so you get screwed). On the bright side, if it spawned blue, it will keep respawning blue.

Bombing is also unfair because of the traveling involved and I dont know if its lag related or bad timing when I kill, but sometimes the "chain reaction" explosions wont work, and you are forced to kill the spawns individually. Seems fair because this can happen in party, but problem comes when the chain is supposed to happen in 2 separate corners of the map, so you forced to kill individual spawns on each side.

Boss stages only problem is how trash mobs will spawn in different corners(Vopar is the worst imo) but given the nature of the solo buff and the 2nd wave of trash happening about in the same time, this is probably the most balanced of all for solo. TDs also seem very easy after they scaled the collection rate for solo, but not sure if spawns changed too. If they didnt, then is definitely skewed because of the extra traveling needed from 1 tower to another. Final Stage is cool, because is just a damage check without anything else and buff is given from start.

The worst part is they did so people would be inclined to form parties and not go alone, like they been trying to for a while. All good, except they that managed to mess it up by making it 6 separate sets, so it becomes a huge chore to find a party in first place and people end up soloing anyway. Quest was fun the first few days, but after I realized it flaws, I despise it with such passion now.

That being said, you can solo S rank the first 20 floors without much trouble despite all the handicaps. Is just pass that it gets very demanding. And of course, going with randoms have a big chance of getting you players which will be a liability. Not just DPS wise, but them dying too much, or messing up during bombing missions, or just not knowing what to do in TDs. Overall though, the weekly grind I have to do for modules is more comfortable with a party, even bad ones. Finding one is a problem though, so I end up just soloing most of the time :p

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Originally Posted by echofaith

Quite sure they skewed this quest against solo on purpose, at least number wise. The buff not only takes 90 seconds to appear for the first 4 floors, but it ends up at 3x damage total only. Assuming 4 players in the same party are equal in performance, solo would have 25% less dps (and before buff, 75% less). Then there is also the aggro, though this can be either a Pro or a Con depending on your class and player skill.

The main problem arent the stats and DPS though, but the missions goals and layouts. Most missions seem to be tailored so you have people separated doing different things in the map. Collection is by far the worst for solo. Your only viable option is to kill the boss, but you need to be lucky its blue so it gives you enough points(so far for me it seems 1/3 of the time is not, so you get screwed). On the bright side, if it spawned blue, it will keep respawning blue.

Bombing is also unfair because of the traveling involved and I dont know if its lag related or bad timing when I kill, but sometimes the "chain reaction" explosions wont work, and you are forced to kill the spawns individually. Seems fair because this can happen in party, but problem comes when the chain is supposed to happen in 2 separate corners of the map, so you forced to kill individual spawns on each side.

Boss stages only problem is how trash mobs will spawn in different corners(Vopar is the worst imo) but given the nature of the solo buff and the 2nd wave of trash happening about in the same time, this is probably the most balanced of all for solo. TDs also seem very easy after they scaled the collection rate for solo, but not sure if spawns changed too. If they didnt, then is definitely skewed because of the extra traveling needed from 1 tower to another. Final Stage is cool, because is just a damage check without anything else and buff is given from start.

The worst part is they did so people would be inclined to form parties and not go alone, like they been trying to for a while. All good, except they that managed to mess it up by making it 6 separate sets, so it becomes a huge chore to find a party in first place and people end up soloing anyway. Quest was fun the first few days, but after I realized it flaws, I despise it with such passion now.

That being said, you can solo S rank the first 20 floors without much trouble despite all the handicaps. Is just pass that it gets very demanding. And of course, going with randoms have a big chance of getting you players which will be a liability. Not just DPS wise, but them dying too much, or messing up during bombing missions, or just not knowing what to do in TDs. Overall though, the weekly grind I have to do for modules is more comfortable with a party, even bad ones. Finding one is a problem though, so I end up just soloing most of the time :p

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Pretty much this in a nutshell. Still, I would like to do all 30 floors one day in a group of 4 players if only to unlock that title.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by echofaith

Quite sure they skewed this quest against solo on purpose, at least number wise. The buff not only takes 90 seconds to appear for the first 4 floors, but it ends up at 3x damage total only. Assuming 4 players in the same party are equal in performance, solo would have 25% less dps (and before buff, 75% less). Then there is also the aggro, though this can be either a Pro or a Con depending on your class and player skill.

The main problem arent the stats and DPS though, but the missions goals and layouts. Most missions seem to be tailored so you have people separated doing different things in the map. Collection is by far the worst for solo. Your only viable option is to kill the boss, but you need to be lucky its blue so it gives you enough points(so far for me it seems 1/3 of the time is not, so you get screwed). On the bright side, if it spawned blue, it will keep respawning blue.

Bombing is also unfair because of the traveling involved and I dont know if its lag related or bad timing when I kill, but sometimes the "chain reaction" explosions wont work, and you are forced to kill the spawns individually. Seems fair because this can happen in party, but problem comes when the chain is supposed to happen in 2 separate corners of the map, so you forced to kill individual spawns on each side.

Boss stages only problem is how trash mobs will spawn in different corners(Vopar is the worst imo) but given the nature of the solo buff and the 2nd wave of trash happening about in the same time, this is probably the most balanced of all for solo. TDs also seem very easy after they scaled the collection rate for solo, but not sure if spawns changed too. If they didnt, then is definitely skewed because of the extra traveling needed from 1 tower to another. Final Stage is cool, because is just a damage check without anything else and buff is given from start.

The worst part is they did so people would be inclined to form parties and not go alone, like they been trying to for a while. All good, except they that managed to mess it up by making it 6 separate sets, so it becomes a huge chore to find a party in first place and people end up soloing anyway. Quest was fun the first few days, but after I realized it flaws, I despise it with such passion now.

That being said, you can solo S rank the first 20 floors without much trouble despite all the handicaps. Is just pass that it gets very demanding. And of course, going with randoms have a big chance of getting you players which will be a liability. Not just DPS wise, but them dying too much, or messing up during bombing missions, or just not knowing what to do in TDs. Overall though, the weekly grind I have to do for modules is more comfortable with a party, even bad ones. Finding one is a problem though, so I end up just soloing most of the time :p

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bomb stages rely on ping and being in mostly empty blocks. if either of those get disrupted, those stages become a pain. even with 200-250ping, FFA is still doable, though a few may fail occasionally. empty block matters the most.

i will agree that collection is stupid rng, especially with the buff bug existing for solo (and duo). however, you can still s-rank (75%+) easily within 4 minutes even at step26-30, you just might not get the 20 boxes. 16-20, i always get 100% collection and 20 boxes no matter what since stuff dies so much more easily.

the rest is skewed if anything to favor of solo play. let's do a comparison

ship infiltration HP:

1p - 100% (100% per person)
2p - 140% (70% per person)
3p - 180% (60% per person)
4p - 200% (50% per person)

divide quest (relative) HP:

1p - 300% damage (300% output
2p - 165% damage (330% output, person 2 needs to put out at least ~82% of person 1 to be better than solo)
3p - 120% damage (360% output, persons 2&3 combined needs to put out at least 75% each (150% combined) DPS of person 1)
4p - 100% damage (400% output, persons 2&3&4 combined needs to put out at least 67% each (200% combined) DPS of person 1)

in short, there is a reason most boss stages are cleared solo equal or faster than a 4p unless all 4p are on the same page, similarly skilled/affixed/etc. this is particularly true in step20/25/30 where the effective HP is high enough that you can really feel the lower damage output make a difference.

while solo and organized groups are great for this quest, i would say the best way to describe divide is that it's anti-pug.

p.s. i will add that solo'ing is quite enjoyable once you get used to how the quest works. only collect is annoying, and it's because of rng which is out of your control. even in duo collect can be very annoying. even after i've solo'd more than 50mil points (120mil+ points total), i still enjoy the quest a lot

The worst part of divide is emer and medals. As for bomb maps, with 280ms the only ones i can't really pull at all are naberius kuklonahda and amduscia el ahda chains.

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Originally Posted by wahahaha

The worst part of divide is emer and medals. As for bomb maps, with 280ms the only ones i can't really pull at all are naberius kuklonahda and amduscia el ahda chains.

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Why are emer and medals the worst part?

It's most ironic to me that the person who is constantly talking shit about people being too casual for expert and how it is
important to make the requirments more strict, complains about the quest being not good to do solo.
As probably one of the rather casual expert players even I have little to no problem to reach S ranks in the mission.
Even with buff bug or crappy positioning of crystals during collection, I think it's doable.

I will admit, the thing that gives the most trouble in Divide Quest is Execours 1-hit-K.O. attack. I have yet to find
the right timing to dodge to not get screwed but in the worst case I can just jump out of it's reach, so it's not too bad.
Boss route can be challenging to sometimes, depending on the debuffs they place on you and the buffs the enemy
receives and the bombing routes can be annoying if the chain explosion doesn't trigger due to lag / bad ping.

That said, I mostly play stages 16-20, sometimes 20-25 these days to farm the weekly points on a couple of my characters
and grab the weeklies rewards, since sadly, I have no luck at all with modules dropping. Haven't seen a single Mitra Module dropping yet,
maybe 3 or 4 Varuna and a couple Execour here and there. Rare Drop RNG on that is what infuriates me the most sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Zulastar

After trying this a while I can clearly state:

1 Some maps designed in a way order to be impossible an S-rank for a solo players.

2 It waste just to much time before apply me my solo boost.

3 In 16-20 it even didn't gave me a solo boost at last boss and it's impossible to S-rank it without it: I waited for it 1/3 of a time saving my charged ULTS and 'cause of that only a B-rank while all previous were mostly S with just few A...

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after reading what everyone else said, i dont know what to say. DQ is kinda hard to not S rank anything unless you're bad or something

Only issues I really have with Divide Quest are when bomb chains don't work. I guess looking at recent post maybe I should start playing Divide Quest on empty blocks. I like being solo anyway.

I had taken a long break from PSO2 for about a year and came back recently and really, really like Divide. As most people have been saying, the mode is pretty good and my gripes with it are pretty small. I like how it's scaled and I like that it's soloable 1-30 for any player with decent skill/gear but it's also fun to grab your friends and do as well.

When I'm running solo, I try to avoid the Kill Enemies Steps for all the reasons listed above. It feels bad when chain bomb goes wrong because of connection related issues. Collect Steps can be hit or miss post Step 20 but I can always get S-Rank it's just collecting all the modules is not realistic when solo. Post-fix Defend Steps are my favorite when solo just because they probably overtuned them for solo and they're extremely easy to clear now.

I also really like Divide since it actually offers manageable progression. Divide Shop has the most current Crests, the most current Medals and they offer a lot of them for trade-in every month so you can always be making progress towards Stil weapons or even other stuff (last month I traded Divide Medals for 250 Crests to pick up a Genon Rifle for Ph). My only gripe is that Pyuras weapons require random drop 15*s BUT with the use of Divide Medals, you can trade for the materials you need, albeit slowly. The character-based weekly 1M rewards are also extremely nice and really help the progression move smoothly.

Also re: Zula, I only consider myself at best a slightly above average PSO2 player and I solo 1-30 all of my Divide weeklies on 8 characters on Gu, Hu, Ph and Et and have 0 issues. Sure, Step 26-30 I may get an A Rank now and then based on Step RNG but other than that really no issues. Perhaps it's the Dunning-Kruger effect...?

What are all the ways to get Luminmech Grainne Crystals besides the monthly trade in? I know you get one for free from the limited arks mission and as a drop, but are there more from titles and stuff? How often can you expect to find one?