Mythbusters - Danger Room Edition

After chatting with players in game and reading responses in forums, there seem to be many myths regarding DR that is causing players to have a negative feeling toward the mode. This is largely due to most of the build guides in each heroes forum are for successful raiding and thus TTK-oriented. CDR builds are near non-existent.

I am not a theorycrafter, and not a math genius when it comes to in game mechanics and numbers. I failed my fair share of times before getting the hang of running CDR, so I strongly believe is doable by anyone.

I picked several examples maps to use below, to hopefully disprove some of these myths regarding DR. These examples were not picked because they were easy runs, rather they were picked to be specifically annoying for the hero I use. No ultimates were used to simplify the challenges.

For CDR I use a Rogue which utilize all area damage attacks. She is not a summoner and don't use stealth, so yes I have to eat a lot of the damage, but she is also not melee so don't require extreme defensive gearing. In this sense she is more in the average section. I was told running vids with summoner Doom would probably not prove anything. :P

Myth 1: "I have full 69 gear, 7500 omegas, BIS artifacts, 4x blessing, lvl 80 legendary, can do all Raids while watching TV. If I can't do CDR it must be overtuned.

Yes, we all heard this before. BIS TTK gear don't hold up very well in a TTL test is as simple as I can put it.

I chose the following maps as a good challenge to show that it is possible to overcome the most severe TTL challenge. Most maps are actually much easier than these:

Myth 2: "DR mobs HP are overtuned, it takes forever to clear missions and is not fun."

I chose a map that most people would probably put in the trash, since it is a huge DPS handicap. Just want to see how long it will take. Took less than 6 mins to finish the run. It does not really take 30 mins+ like some people claim.

Myth 3: "Miniboss have way too much HP and takes longer to beat than the final boss."

A lot of people are saying this in the forums, but so far 99% of miniboss do not behave as such. So we will have some comparison videos to check TTK for miniboss vs real bosses. I will use the turrets as they are easy to time, as ones mixed with mobs is hard to tell when the fight starts.

Both of these takes about 15 seconds to defeat. Boss fights take about 1 min to clear if going smoothly, takes 2 mins for troublesome ones. To even account for time wasted with dodging, miniboss dies after 1 rotation for me using 1 signature. Bosses are frequently still up after the time I get to use my 2nd signature. Please refer to Myth 5 section below for boss fight vids.

Now there is another category of mini-bosses, which are required for mission completion. Things like Virus Carrier and Brood King Wasp belong to this category, and they have significantly higher HP. However given that they are essentially the entire mission objective, and they contribute a huge portion to mission completion percentage, I think it is not unreasonable.

After extensive searching, the only mini-boss that was found (credit goes to @SneakyErvin) that has boss level HP is the mini-boss spawned from the Totem Affix. These are not found routinely on any maps except those with the "Totem" affix, and from trying to find them, the mini-boss version is about 1-3 per mission map. It took about 85 seconds to take down.

In conclusion, besides the Totem mini-boss, all other mini-bosses does not seem to have abnormally high HP. The totem one is easily avoidable and it does not attack so no real game-breaking bug was found.

Myth 4: "AIM range mobs just instantly disintegrates heroes, that map is unplayable."

Yes you should watch out for them, but if you are careful it can be done.

Did AIM without Medkit (no on-demand invulnerability) with Test of Survival. It did take a little longer since I have to play careful. No deaths.

Myth 5: "Magneto (or some other boss) is too OP in DR."

Well the bosses are supposed to be tough, just forget about their pathetic CMM and terminal versions. Imagine facing Magneto in the story...you SHOULD be afraid. But that being said, if you gear for more defense, they don't just one shot you without a fighting chance.

Here is DOUBLE Magneto, and just for fun, let's disable Medkit use. Fought for almost 2 mins, he hurt me bad, but no deaths and definitely no one-shots.

I have prove of double Kurse, double Malekith too if more prove is needed, but I think this should suffice.

Edit 1-22-16: Added Double Hood as some claims he one-shot heroes easily, and is even worse than Magneto. Most hits took less than 10% HP, worst hit took about 35% HP.

Edit 1-28-16: Several players expressed that fighting Hood in the above vid while at range and using Supersonic Cyclone was abusing an invulnerability skill and was the reason I was able to avoid getting one-shotted. To satisfy their curiosity, I respec to melee and left out Cyclone and fought Double Hood again. They were able to get a lot more shots in since I didn't spend a lot of time dodging or kiting. The results were similar to the first video, with the heavy hits taking about 35% of my max HP. No one-shots were landed despite the many chances they got. It took slightly longer probably due to the Test of Restraint affix, and that I was not geared/omega for melee.

Better yet, lets kick it up another notch. Here is Rogue tanking BOTH of Man Ape's telegraph attacks (pounce & spear throw). Telegraph hits occuring at about 0:13 and at 0:53

Again I want to emphasize, this is not from anything miraculous, is not about abusing any tricks. It is doable if you spec to a defensively-oriented build. If you don't have enough defense, Hood and many other bosses can absolutely one shot you.

Myth 6: "Contagious affix is extremely overtuned, is basically undoable."

No going to lie, this one I find to be dangerous. Melee heroes have it a lot harder, ranged heroes and summoner are not really bothered by this. AIM is chosen as the test map to ensure this is not only doable on easy maps.

A lot of other fellow CDR players have also submitted vids of their melee heroes doing Contagious CDR with no problem (please see last section).

Myth 7: "CDR makes my hero not feel like a hero, and is not fun."

Well depending on who you play this is not a myth. There are still several heroes who are in dire need of QoL. However, most heroes can be built so that you can handle a lot of the affixes. I think for every hero, there will be affixes that you will not like, and is ok to dump those.

For example, Rogue is a spirit hog, this we all know. So I tried this spirit management nightmare map just to see. Of course ran out of spirit a few times. But still survived it with no deaths.

So far I am liking the zone, and I feel it is fun. You can choose to run easy maps or you can choose to challenge yourself. The only take home point is, you need to gear specifically for the zone to be able to do it well. Build priority is to put as much as you can to survive the content, with what you can spare to optimize TTK last. It doesn't matter if your TTK
is 1:30 min on the high HP dummy, if you can't survive 5 seconds you have almost no TTK.

If anyone else have challenging runs done on other heroes, please post them here. Would love to see the play styles of the other heroes and the other ways to beat DR. ;)

Edited 2-9-2016
Despite what I said at the beginning that above runs were actually the more difficult ones, some players still thinks that I am purposely showcasing easy runs to make a point, and that CDR is much harder in reality.

So I will includes some actual easy runs in order to establish some context. If I were to pick the good affix maps to do, I frequently go under 4 mins per map on average (without using ultimate). So the ones above where I takes 8 mins to complete, it basically means I am using up 100% more time to complete, so no, they are not easy. The ones I go above 6 mins to complete, I am using up 50% more time to finish.

Sub 3 Min Completions:

Why is this important? This shows that the range of difficulty in CDR is pretty big. For every character, there will be easy affixes and there will be hard ones. When you first start you probably can't tell, so sometimes people are failing because of that. Once you learn to pick the better maps and affixes to run, you may find CDR to be easier (YMMV).

For those who are interested in the setup I am using:
http://marvelheroes.info/build/34107/

Edited 3-20-2016
Sorry guys, but like a noob I forgot my password to the build link, and the omega got reset. Here is what I am using ATM:

Edited 2-11-2016

Here is a video collection submitted by some of the most talented players who runs CDR and is willing to take the time to post up their vids. And to top it off, most of them are using melee heroes. ^:)^ It is a great honor they allow me to showcase their vids here, so here they are, in no particular order: