Talk:Early Fall 2018 Event/@comment-25289497-20180921222220

At the beginning of this week, I managed to finish this event on Hard difficulty. While I am still farming for Gotland in E-5 node Z2, I want to write down my closing thoughts on the entire event. For my replays of all the maps and phases in this event, you can check out my imgur album (with comments) here: https://imgur.com/a/zMp1TMq

In a previous post, before the EOs were released, I wrote that I found the main operation maps to be fairly easy. Of course, my opinion has not changed since then. However, I want to add to my previous remark that the main operation maps in the current event feel appropriate in a medium-sized event (although that is saying how many maps the event counts, not the difficulty) in my experience. Furthermore, I think it is a really good move to bring back many of the ships as drops in the first maps to keep newer players happy as well. Many of these ships are very useful, unique and/or powerful too.

E-4 started out with a TP phase. Unlike in previous events where the TP phases were very tedious but not necessarily difficult, the TP phases in this event (E-2 as well) are actually very short. E-4 TP phase could be finished in mere 3 (successful) sorties. I think this is a very welcome change as TP phase tend to become stale very quickly.

E-4 HP phase ramped up the difficulty significantly compared to previous maps/phases. While Summer Supply Depot Hime escort could easily be killed with proper equipment setup, getting a kill on the boss herself was more of a challenge. Dock Hime was surprisingly tanky for a "DD" type abyssal. Still, it was not that particularly difficult to land the final kill on her. I would say E-4 was an alright challenge and somewhat of a fun map. The submarine strategy for the pre-final kill phase was pretty funny too and also very effective and efficient.

Next up, E-5 phase 1, nothing notable to say about this one other than it being extremely easy.. It was a very big letdown for the final map of the event, even though it was still the first out of three phases.

As most of you know by now, the second phase of E-5 is the hardest part of this event. And indeed, I entirely agree with that. Although the pre-boss nodes were relatively easy, the boss node consisted of tanky targets, several installation types and many imps. As if most of them were not already troublesome to deal with, the boss herself, Summer French BB Hime, was extremely tanky and would not go down easily even with a lot of focus fire. In the end though, I felt that E-5 phase 2 was still not a sufficient challenge for me, especially considering the lack of a "proper" Spring event and the many delays..

As expected, the third phase was indeed somewhat easier than the previous one, but by no means as easy as the first phase. I appreciated the fact that the fleets of the previous two phases could be re-used in the third, which opened the room for some experimenting and more optimization. Either route had its advantages and disadvantages of course. Initially, I took the CTF route, but found the passing rate to be somewhat low, without normal node support. I found a lot more consistency reaching the boss node with an STF, though my CTF seemed to be more powerful. I stuck with my STF until the end. Although the boss fleet in final form seemed very horrifying with the main fleet consisting of all very powerful and tanky Himes, once debuffed, the final kill phase was actually surprisingly easy, even easier than pre-final kill phase.

Concluding, in terms of difficulty, this event is a little bit of a letdown to me, considering that we did not have a "proper" event last season and the current one having been delayed quite a bit. Though, I still think it was quite a fun one with improvements to old mechanisms.

Only thing left for me to do is to farm Gotland (I am on my fifth day farming..)!

Thanks for reading this wall of text! And good luck to those who have yet to finish the event! Don't forget you can check out my replays from the link above. ^-^