Season 2 Chapter 3

Avengers alliance came out with the 3rd chapter of the second season last week. The mastery reward this time is the alt suit for Daredevil. I just finished it about 2 hours ago. I would have finished it much earlier if it wasn't for a few issues I ran into. So it took me this long. Usually I can knock it out in like 5 days max. I didn't even start on this until a day late because of a stupid task chain item. And I also spent way too much time doing one thing. So I might as well just get down to it.
First off I'm overall ok with Chapter 3. I don't think it was their best work, but also don't think it was their worst. Let me explain it step by step.
Task chain: As those of you that play AA you know that in season 2 instead of mastery stars you have to complete several steps the first being the task chain. This is a chain of requirements you must meet. Once again the 2nd task is to collect a distress call. This happened in the first chapter, but they fixed it in the 2nd so I thought they learned their lesson. Nope so I had to wait a whole day before really getting started. One of the last tasks which require you to defeat 5 Hydra Burners and 5 Maggia Captains is a pain in the butt because the Burners RARELY appear. The Captains are also rare. You can go an entire mission where you only fight the 2 with the boss and the 1 with the heroic battle. And you won't know if you'll find more until you get deep into the mission therefore end up wasting quite a bit of energy. There is also a task involving a heroic battle which I'll get into next. Overall it seemed like a lot of energy gets wasted both in the game and in real life.
Heroic Battles: These are suppose to be challenging battles that are based off actual comic battles. In season 1 they were a little buggy but overall not impossible. Cable and Deadpools was the one that was the most challenging since at that time Cable's TO outbreak hurt him and it was needed in the 2nd part of the fight and you couldn't just change like you can now. The 2nd season had very good fights. Nothing too hard, just a little tedious, but overall not impossible. Then here comes chapter 3. I don't know if the person who programs these decided to say screw the players or what. Out of the 6 heroic battles 3 are complete flips in the air. I'll hit them one at a time and come up with a very simple fix.
The very first match is Mr. Fantastic v.s. Doom and a Doombot. The gimmick is to use Mr. Fantastic's Bifurcator (level 9 ability) on the doombot to make him hit Doom who then attacks back and puts his ring debuff on that can sometimes stun. Seems pretty easy except there are major issues with this. The first is that Doom and the Doombot will use steal essence. This will boost all of their stats while draining yours. That means your attack, defense, accuracy, and evasion go down. They both will do this the first turn. So right off the bat you have two stacks of this. This makes for a hard match right out the gate, but wait what if Doombot attacks Doom. Well then you don't have to worry about Doombot stealing your essence, but here's the other problem. The attack he does on doom, at best, will do 1/12th damage. That's it. At best. I've never seen it even crit. And if you have Doombot do this he'll like to use arc lighting which will then cause weakening reducing your attack stat by 25% and then Doom will do another steal essence. You can already see how this is impossible if you don't get to at least attack first. You basically have to use Mr. Fantastic's Tumble ability to deadly crit. If you are lucky. Even if you use the close e-iso. I spent 2 and a half days trying to do this. Until I finally finished the mission and came back on challenge mode and managed to go first and finally win. So what fix do I have. Oh that's easy. Two steal essences for once. Either the doombot and doom get one full of doom each or Doom gets two. That's it. Up Doombots damage to doom and/or cut down Dooms health. If you are going to allow for more steal essences then have Bifurcator remove them and/or refresh Mr. Fantastic of that debuff. They have given abilities special abilities to techniques before such as Spider-woman turning AIM soldiers into enemies that heal if they have pheromones put on them. Hercules gains stacks of "hit me" when he recharges. So those things are not unheard of. I and many others won't do this one again until it's fixed and even if it is I probably wouldn't since I don't use Mr. Fantastic.
Next is Hawkeye's heroic battle. He faces two hydra burners and bowman. Already there is a disadvantage since hawkeye is normally a tactician and bowman is an infiltrator. Bowman will also use mark of death and hate arrow which will still hawkeye. That's a turn loss. What is the big gimmick for this one. When hawkeye uses pinpoint target and then fires the burners leak fuel which will ignite and hurt all enemies if a fire attack is used. The problem with this is the fact that the burners won't use fire attacks most of the time. They will decide to physically attack Hawkeye. And even if you managed to get the burners down you have bowman who will get an attack right after you attack him. So let's say you use one of his alts well you just lost your 2nd attack so when you get stunned that whole round is a wash. Thus the problem. There is no clear cut way to win. I bought Hawkeye's heroic age alt hoping Hawkeye had a fire arrow. If he did he never used it. So this is another one that is pure luck. So what is the fix? This one is a hell of a lot tougher to fix. The first is to eliminate 1 of the burners and make this a 2 on 1 match. Or change Bowman's class. They did it with Mystique for Nighcrawlers. The other thing is to allow Hawkeye to launch fire arrows if he has burned debuff on him. Heck even take away Bowman's stunning bow ability or make the AI rarely use it not use it every time it's done cooling down. It's a headache and basically suffers the same problem Mr. Fantastics did. The gimmick doesn't really help. Heck Ms. Marvel got a gimmick that strengthened her attacks when hit with energy attacks in her Heroic Battle which also was in chapter 3. She also has absorb energy which will heal her if an energy attack is used. It makes the battle long, but it can be done.
The last headache one involves Phoenix. Again the big problem with this one is the gimmick doesn't really help if you don't go first. Phoenix is up against Selene and a Hellfire solider. You have to use Psi-blast on the solider who will then get weakened resolve. Your next move you can use mind link on him to protect you from Selene's attack. The problem is exactly what it sounds like. This takes two rounds to set up. Which isn't bad because most of Selene's attacks are psychic and Phoenix has a passive that makes those rarely hit. The problem comes in her lone physical move which puts Stare of the Abyss debuff on Phoenix. This debuff has to be one of the most powerful ones in the game. It takes away a good chunk of any heroes health. The only way to be immune to it is to have a passive that makes you immune to bleeding, poisoning, radiation exposure, chilled, or burned. All things Phoenix does not have. So right there you lose pretty much all your life. Yes it goes away after a turn, but two of those and you are done. The best way to fix this is to give Phoenix two turns per round. That or make it one round to set up the solider as an ally. Or simply take off the stare at the abyss debuff from Selene's attack. Both would work.
Now before a lot of you say oh just go in again I'm sure it will be different. It's not. Heroic battles follow one format. If you start a Heroic battle and say miss if you use an attack on let's say doombot. Every time you play that heroic battle that time around you will miss against doombot on that specific attack on that specific opponent. The battle will follow the exact same script until you finish the battle or finish the mission and do the mission again.
That being said there were missions they did a great job on. The best being the mission with Black Widow, Wasp, and Black Panther. It's challenging without being impossible. The gimmick works. Black Panther's vibranium attacks damage Ultron. This makes wasps lvl 1 and lvl 6 abilities do more damage. Even if you get to the last wave Wasp can do it herself. Her lvl 6 ability gives nimble which makes pretty much all attacks Ultron uses miss. It's one that you feel good for doing and glad they put it in. The battle of Spider-man and Black cat was great. Again not impossible just tedius. Plus their alts actually help. Unlike with Mr. Fantastic, Phoenix, and Hawkeye. If you use their alts it makes it a little easier. Even Ms. Marvels is doable.
Boss drops: The boss drops for the first 5 missions are pretty crappy. They are devices that boost a specific type of class. They aren't really useable outside of PVE, but at the same time why waste a slot for it? The epic drop and drops from the Premium mission on the other hand are pretty good, but overall no one will be farming for drops unlike in previous chapters. They were a flop.

All in all Season 2 Chapter 3 goes up there with my least favorite Chapters and honestly I can't say there have been too many. In season one there may have been missions I hated doing, but those are now easy since I have a lot more heroes and weapons to use. So I guess I should rephrase that. Season 2 Chapter 3 is the only entire chapter that I have no been a fan of. I do not have high hopes for Chapter 4 at this rate.