Hi Holotable Heroes,

Welcome to the Speeder Bike Pursuit Raid preview post! The new Raid will be releasing soon and we wanted to give you a sneak peak of what you can expect and encounter as you take on this new event in the woods! 

New Speeder Bike Pursuit Raid

First things first, everything you know about Galaxy of Heroes has changed in this Raid.

Would you like to know more? 

Before we dive into the post, our Lead Designer wanted to take you down memory lane and provide some insight on the inspiration for the Speeder Bike Pursuit Raid!

“On Sunday, May 29th, 1983 I stood in line at the Cinema 150 in Santa Clara, California with my father to see Return of the Jedi for the first time. To say the movie changed my life would be a vast understatement, and the speeder bike chase through the forest of Endor was at the very center of it. When we looked at the year of 2023 we wanted to celebrate Return of the Jedi’s 40th anniversary and we were trying to figure out what the next Raid in the game would be so we could use our new Raid system.

“I mocked up a very crude animated gif of a scrolling background and a few speeder bike sprites flying over it. Fortunately for me the art team wanted to see if they could “plus up” the visuals and they delivered what you see today. We also wanted the enemy defeats to be those big cinematic moments you saw during the movie: being shot, crashing into trees, and performing the sideswipe to carom the enemy off the path. Finally, when it came to the abilities of the characters we knew we couldn’t just have all the units use their normal kits’ abilities, so we categorized all the Special Abilities on the raid-allowed characters and remapped them to new abilities that did what we needed the raid mechanics to do.

“The Speeder Bike Pursuit Raid is a radical departure from anything you’ve done in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes to this point. We ask you to approach this brand new content with an open mind and experiment with the mode (and remember, you don’t have to submit your Raid attempts, so you can practice with plenty of different squads and how the different units work together!) We’re excited to bring you this brand new way to play with your collection, expanding upon our systems and utilizing them in new and interesting ways.” -CG_Miller

What’s Different? 

• How units are defeated
  
• How you earn points
  
• Synergies
  
• How mods impact the battle
  
• What your abilities do

“Some of our favorite teams we tested with were from a variety of factions, mixing and matching to make the most of the raid bonuses.”

Other things to consider:

• Units’ Basic and Special abilities are different
  
• No revives, no assists, no bonus moves
  
• Uniques are altered to fit the raid
  

Now into the meat and potatoes of the information! 

When you first enter the raid, things are going to look immediately different from a normal battle in SWGoH. Instead of having Health and Protection bars, you’ll see each enemy has four different icons above their head. These icons are indicative of the various ways a character can be defeated in the raid. They’ll start with a maximum value, and abilities will remove stacks from that total. Once a stack type reaches zero, the character will be defeated.

On the player side, you’ll see two icons at the start of battle. Players can only be defeated with one stack type, but they gain some additional icons throughout battle that serve to increase their survivability, manipulate the difficulty of incoming waves of enemies, or allow them to dodge incoming attacks from enemy units. It is important to note that these stacks will fluctuate throughout the battle. Imperial Troopers, for example, may also use their stacks of Evasion to deal additional stacks of Damage to enemy characters. In addition, Jam can be consumed by Ewoks to deal additional stacks of Timber, or will be consumed to lower the difficulty of the incoming wave. Please note that it doesn’t affect the next wave, as that has already spawned in, but will affect every other wave. So the amount of Jam present on your squad when you defeat wave 1 will result in adjustments to the difficulty of wave 3.

You’ll earn points by defeating an enemy, there is no final boss in this raid, so defeat as many as you can! Additionally, you’ll earn points by mitigating the amount of stacks removed on your own characters, through evading attacks or repairing stacks of Damage on your characters. 

(Note: the features below are still receiving final balance and tuning)

Enemy Units: 

• Recruit
• Scout Trooper
• Commander
• Shadow Scout

Enemy Abilities:

Available Characters and their NEW Abilities

Granted Abilities

“At first glance, Statistical Rework is a lot of information to absorb, but it really boils down to the idea that the stats granted by Leader and Unique abilities, as well as the mods that players have equipped, will provide additional effects for your abilities in the raid.” - Designer

Granted Ability: Faction Bonus: Rebel

• When this character uses a Basic ability, they repair 2 stacks of Damage on all allies. This character gains a stack of Shield for every stack of Repair above max on self.

Granted Ability: Faction Bonus: Imperial

• This character starts the battle with 5 stacks of Jam. When this character uses a Basic ability, they remove bonus stacks of Damage to target enemy equal to the number of stacks of Evade on all allies. Then, this character loses all stacks of Evade.

Granted Ability: Faction Bonus: Ewok

• When this character uses a Basic ability, they remove bonus stacks of Timber to target enemy equal to the number of stacks of Jam on all allies. Whenever an enemy is defeated with Timber, all Ewok allies gain 2 stacks of Jam.

Affected by Mods

Granted Abilities: Statistical Rework

These ranges are based on a character's Start of Combat value, taking into account Leader and Unique bonuses as well as Mods.

Health: 

Provides stacks of Shield based on the characters Max Health at start of battle. Shield: Will be consumed to block stacks of incoming Damage

• (0 - 10,000) Block 5 stacks of damage (Shield)
• (every additional 10,000 up to a cap of 200,000 Health ): Block an additional 1 stack of Damage
• At cap this results in 24 stacks of Shield

Protection 

• Same as above, for a combined total of 48 stacks of Shield at max

Physical Accuracy

• (0% - 4.99%): No effect
• (5% - 14.99%): Remove 2 additional stacks of Sideswipe when Removing Sideswipe
• (15% - 24.99%): Remove 4 additional stacks of Sideswipe when Removing Sideswipe
• (25% or higher): Remove 6 additional stacks of Sideswipe when Removing Sideswipe

Physical Critical Avoidance

• (0% - 25%): No effect
• (25% - 49.99%): Remove 2 additional stacks of Timber when Removing Timber
• (50% - 74.99%):  Remove 4 additional stacks of Timber when Removing Timber
• (75% - 99.99%):  Remove 6 additional stacks of Timber when Removing Timber
• (100% or higher):  Remove 8 additional stacks of Timber when Removing Timber

Physical Critical Chance

• (0% - 30%): 10% chance to reduce an ally's cooldowns by 1 at start of turn
• (30.01%-50%): 15% chance to reduce an ally's cooldowns by 1 at start of turn
• (50.01-75%): 20% chance to reduce an ally's cooldowns by 1 at start of turn
• (75.01% or higher): 25% chance to reduce an ally's cooldowns by 1 at start of turn

Critical Damage

• (150% - 179%): No effect
• (180% - 199%): Gain 10% Turn Meter when cooldowns are reduced by the effect above
• (200% - 219%): Gain 20% Turn Meter when cooldowns are reduced by the effect above
• (220% or higher): Gain 30% Turn Meter when cooldowns are reduced by the effect above

Attack Damage

• (0 - 2999): No effect
• (3000 - 5999): Remove 4 additional stacks of Damage when Removing Damage
• (6000 - 9999): Remove 8 additional stacks of Damage when Removing Damage
• (10000+): Remove 12 additional stacks of Damage when Removing Damage

Armor

• (0% - 49.99%): No effect
• (50-69.99%): Block 1 incoming stack of Damage
• (70% or higher): Block 2 incoming stacks of Damage

Physical Evasion

• (0% - 4.99%): No effect
• (5% - 9.99%): Gain 1 additional stack of Evasion when gaining Evasion
• (10% - 14.99%): Gain 2 additional stacks of Evasion when gaining Evasion
• (15% or higher): Gain 3 additional stacks of Evasion when gaining Evasion

Health Steal

• (0-9%): No effect
• (10-24%): Repair 1 stack of Damage when Removing 16 or more Damage
• (25-39%): Repair 2 stacks of Damage when Removing 16 or more Damage
• (40% or higher): Repair 3 stacks of Damage when Removing 16 or more Damage

Potency

• (0-29.99%): Remove an additional 2 stacks of Distract when Removing Distract
• (30-49.99%): Remove an additional  4 stacks of Distract when Removing Distract
• (50-79.99%): Remove an additional  6 stacks of Distract when Removing Distract
• (80%+): Remove an additional 8 stacks of Distract when Removing Distract

Tenacity

• (0-19.99%): No effect
• (20-39.99%): Keep 1 stack of Evasion after evading
• (40-59.99%): Keep 2 stacks of Evasion after evading
• (60-79.99%): Keep 3 stacks of Evasion after evading
• (80-99.99%): Keep 4 stacks of Evasion after evading
• (100% or higher): Keep 5 stacks of Evasion after evading

Raid Modifiers and Cadence Update

Much like Krayt Dragon Hunt, you can apply modifiers to adjust the difficulty of your attempt and earn more points for your Guild. 

As a reminder, don’t be afraid to try more difficult modifiers - you can always rechoose them and attempt again without any penalty. Your Raid attempts will only count if you submit that attempt, allowing you to retry without submitting a score as many times as you want.

These difficulty modifiers also allow many different levels of players to participate in the event. Much like KDH, the base difficulty will be around G10/HSTR and can be scaled up to challenge even the strongest players in the game. We would also like to note that while Relic 9 characters will provide a power advantage, the way in which Enrage works will encourage folks to try different team compositions to earn the most out of each attempt. 

With the Speeder Bike Raid, you will be allowed 8 attempts instead of the 5 you are familiar with in the Krayt Dragon Hunt to accommodate the 3 character team sizes.  

Additionally, with the Speeder Bike Raid, we will be adjusting the cadence to allow a longer time between runs but rewards have been adjusted to stay consistent. This cadence is being introduced to relieve pressure on Guilds who provided feedback based on their experiences with the KDH cadence. 

Things of Note: 

Launch costs will go from 90k to 180k tickets to reflect this change

Ticket cap for Guilds is being increased from 150k to 210k

Raid Modifiers

Level 1 

• Enemies gain 10 Speed and remove an additional 4 stacks of Damage with each ability. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 10%. 

Level 2

• Enemies gain 15 Speed and remove an additional 4 stacks of Damage with each ability. Every 3 turns an enemy takes, they repair 2 stacks of Damage on themselves. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 25%. These effects do not stack with prior modifiers. 

Level 3 

• Enemies gain 15 Speed and remove an additional 6 stacks of Damage with each ability. Every 3 turns an enemy takes, they repair 4 stacks of Damage on themselves. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 40%. These effects do not stack with prior modifiers. 

Level 4 

• Enemies gain 20 Speed and remove an additional 6 stacks of Damage with each ability. Every 2 turns an enemy takes, they repair 4 stacks of Damage and 2 stacks of Distract on themselves. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 60%. These effects do not stack with prior modifiers. 

Level 5 

• Enemies gain 20 Speed and remove an additional 6 stacks of Damage with each ability. Every 2 turns an enemy takes, they repair 5 stacks of Damage, 2 stacks of Distract, and 2 stacks of Sideswipe on themselves. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 80%. These effects do not stack with prior modifiers. 

Level 6 

• Enemies gain 25 Speed and inflict an additional 8 stacks of Damage with each ability. Every 2 turns an enemy takes, they repair 5 stacks of Damage, 4 stacks of Distract, and 4 stacks of Sideswipe on themselves. The number of stacks required to defeat each enemy is increased by 100%. These effects do not stack with prior modifiers. 

Big 3 on earning Points:

• Defeating Enemies
• Evading Attacks
• Repairing your units

What is impacted by randomness (RNG)? 

The main things impacted by chance in this raid are Evasion, Cooldown Reduction, and enemy targeting. Increasing stacks of Evasion will give characters a maximum chance of 40% to avoid an incoming attack, affecting both the survivability of your characters and the Damage output from Imperial Trooper characters. Cooldown Reduction is both a chance effect, and a randomly targeted effect - applying to one of your other allies. This can mean higher stacks of Jam, more Evasion and Repair or just extra chances to focus on specific defeat types. 

ECONOMY

Guild and Personal breakdown

Rewards for Guild and Personal tracks have been updated to reflect Raid cadence.

As stated before, Mk III has moved from Krayt Dragon Hunt to the new Featured Raid, Speeder Bike Raid and with that we have increased Mk1 and Mk2 in the Krayt Dragon Hunt.

Speeder Bike Raid Max Earnable Currency

Krayt Dragon Hunt Economy Adjustments 

Pre Speeder Bike Raid Max Earnable Currency for Krayt Dragon Hunt

Post Speeder Bike Raid Max Currency for Krayt Dragon Hunt

(Note: items listed above are still receiving final balance and tuning)

Thank you for reading our Speeder Bike Pursuit preview post! We are extremely excited to get this new raid into your hands and hear your feedback.