Jun/betrayal mechanic feedback and suggestions

Hi, I am a long time Jun farmer and I finally decided to make a forum thread to highlight what is really frustrating in the mechanic and what could be improved.

1 - Transporation and Fortification could be alternating instead of being random
This league more than anything is heavily focused around aisling considering the price, up to 15d on tft.
When you find out after a couple missions and mastermind is already at 100 that your aisling was hiding as transportation or fortification leader you might want to spend more missions to interrogate her and get her to research.
But its really annoying when aisling is rank 2 in fortification and you want to get her out but you get 3/4 transportation in a row.
Maybe we could have this as natural behavior instead or on a keystone.
Or even a possibility to block either one of the two completely if you wanted to focus hillock more on weapon or armor quality?

2 - The leader system is obsolete
Back when the mechanic came out, the rank 4 reward was gated behind the leader position.
This has been changed couples league back to be on mastermind because nobody would run mastermind before, we would just keep the same 3 members in research and run research safehouse on repeat.
The issue is that now the leader system is still here and it makes leaders much less likely to spawn than regular members even with the "effective leadership" notable.
This often creates a scenario where you've done 5/10 missions and still have no clue who is leader even in research or intervention sometimes unless you do the safehouse. I think the odds to spawn the leader could be at least improved a little bit.
Also the betray option to become leader is pretty much pointless now, it could be changed or removed maybe.

3 - Members spawning alone repeatedly
Recently I had an experience where aisling was rank 2 in research, mastermind at 100 and I basically only needed one execute to run it.
For 7 missions in a row she spawned alone (with the 3 reinforcement chance small passives), and I made sure to keep one rank 0 member so that he is able to spawn with her and get the execute on aisling.
This is really frustrating because you're essentially wasting tons of missions and time not getting anything extra.
Since you need at least 2 members in the encounter to have a chance to get the execute option, it would be nice if this happened a bit more often when it is possible and maybe lower the chance to get 3/4 members at once in exchange.

4 - "Intelligence Gathering" notable
I think you want to control your progression, gaining randomly 10 intelligence can push you to 100 intelligence at the wrong time and its overall not helping.
Considering you can get mastermind to 100 with 2 uses of the intelligence sextant you have more than enough intelligence gains without this.
Personally I never take this, I'm curious how many people actually take it.
Maybe its good in some cases where you just want to rush mastermind for the rewards and veil items early?

5 - Guff is really useless
Stop locking me up!
Why do I always get the short end of the stick?
Maybe the day you have some interesting rewards at least in 1 or 2 places :)
I think he could use a reward update, the crafting benches are a cool idea but its hard and not fun to use because it is timed.
Also maybe he could get some scarab in intervention maybe in the future?

6 - Alot of chatting in the mastermind fight
The fight feels quite slow but thats just my personal opinion, it gets really boring when you've done it hundred of times and it doesn't really do much damage to kill you either.

7 - Vorici's white sockets in research
The weighting on vorici white sockets is heavily weighted towards 1 and 2, I don't have exact statistics but it feels like you get 1 white socket around 50% of the time.
This is really annoying and feels unrewarding to sell, and also frustrating for the buyers when they get 1/2 white so often.
And let's be real hardly anyone needs 6 white, maybe it could be changed to be 2-6 or 2-5?

8 - Keeping track of members kicked out
If i'm not wrong there are 3 members that are always out of the board, but it would be nice if we had a way to keep track of it.
They don't need to be revealed upon reset, but once you kick someone out you would see who it is.
That way we could know when we've kicked enough members out to get aisling on the board assuming she started outside.
I'm also not sure if whoever enters when you kick one out is random or deterministic, but I think it should be deterministic to keep a logical entering order.
This could also be good information for players that may not know that not all members are on the board and would waste time searching for aisling where she is not or be confused as to where she is.
[Edit] I just made a test today and it confirms that members reentering is random. I have visibility of all the members that are on the bench, aisling is outside and haku that I kicked out reentered before aisling.

ps : If i'm not wrong, next league jun should be tradable probably the same way as temples are now.
This will be interesting, less waiting time for sure but prices will also change alot accordingly to the offer.

bump

i'd rather gut betrayal all together and keep the things that matter cause it's just bad. Also might not fit for poe2. and be outdated.

Bump

I hate how they gutted the drop rate for the helmet, i farmed around 38-40 ( i lost count) catarinas this league and didnt get a single helmet. all from t16 mapping.

Also catarina can obliterate you if she does that blink strike thing and you just run from it over and over then eat it.

@op.....how long have you been farming Betrayal? Because you have some SERIOUS misunderstandings or lack of understanding of the mechanic in your post.

1. You CAN block Fortification / Transportation completely: all you need to do is unlock the safehouse as quickly as possible and it will never show up again in the next jun missions.

2. You CAN "force" more members to spawn: the whole friend / enemy system is all about gaming the amount of members that show up per encounter. And then you can use this to also "force" more encounters with the desired person (Aisling) through relationships, thus getting more opportunities to move them around. It also allows you to basically control WHO shows up when reinforcements / rivalries are procced.

3. You are wrong about the "leader" system: There WAS NO tier 4 reward for the vast majority of Betrayal's existence. You would make people leaders so you get 2x the number of their respective rewards. The whole 4th tier reward thing is a very new mechanic, introduced as a way to bring relevance back to Catarina who was almost ALWAYS the least useful fight as it would reset all your hard-earned board set up. And now WITH the tier 4 rewards, its more important than ever to have the correct leaders set up to even have access to those tier 4 rewards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you only GET tier 4 rewards if that person is rank 3 AND the leader.

4. Kicking members....just keep kicking until you actually see the person you want. There is absolutely no need to "keep track", because the person wouldn't be revealed yet anyway. If you have the option to kick someone who is useless, it is pretty much ALWAYS the best choice.


If you actually DO know all this stuff....then most of your complaints make no sense.

**Ed: I AM wrong about leaders...everyone gets upgraded to t4 through mastermind regardless of leader, haven't really focused on Betrayal enough recently to notice this. In this case, I totally agree with OP that leadership is all but useless now.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

@op.....how long have you been farming Betrayal? Because you have some SERIOUS misunderstandings or lack of understanding of the mechanic in your post.

1. You CAN block Fortification / Transportation completely: all you need to do is unlock the safehouse as quickly as possible and it will never show up again in the next jun missions.

2. You CAN "force" more members to spawn: the whole friend / enemy system is all about gaming the amount of members that show up per encounter. And then you can use this to also "force" more encounters with the desired person (Aisling) through relationships, thus getting more opportunities to move them around. It also allows you to basically control WHO shows up when reinforcements / rivalries are procced.

3. You are wrong about the "leader" system: There WAS NO tier 4 reward for the vast majority of Betrayal's existence. You would make people leaders so you get 2x the number of their respective rewards. The whole 4th tier reward thing is a very new mechanic, introduced as a way to bring relevance back to Catarina who was almost ALWAYS the least useful fight as it would reset all your hard-earned board set up. And now WITH the tier 4 rewards, its more important than ever to have the correct leaders set up to even have access to those tier 4 rewards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you only GET tier 4 rewards if that person is rank 3 AND the leader.

4. Kicking members....just keep kicking until you actually see the person you want. There is absolutely no need to "keep track", because the person wouldn't be revealed yet anyway. If you have the option to kick someone who is useless, it is pretty much ALWAYS the best choice.


If you actually DO know all this stuff....then most of your complaints make no sense.

1. Yes I already know that, its useful sometimes but you don't always have 100 intelligence when you need it. It could be nice to have as a thing you can toggle at need to improve your efficiency.
Sometimes when I find out late that aisling is transportation/fortification leader I don't even bother trying to get her out and reset, it's just faster because of the time you would waste even just spawning her once.

2. The current meta is to rush mastermind, as far as I'm concerned i usually get it ready in 10 missions on average. With so few missions, you don't have much time to set up relations at all so thats not very relevant. They get lost upon reset.

4. Yes I choose to kick a member out when I don't know where aisling sometimes even hillock/vorici just for the chance to bring aisling in, she is so valuable despite being crazy :p
Its just a suggestion to improve the visual tracking of whats going on in your syndicate, I think it could be nice.

Leadership matters for leo in intervention to drop paradoxica.

Idk about anything else.

my suggestions:

1. make betrayal encounters ALWAYS meaningful. always have a minimum of 2 members at all times.

2. head of a department should always be the highest ranked member. if the head is 1 star and you promote another to 2 star, the head gets kicked out and is replaced by the high ranking member.

3. make more options available for level 3 members to make you promote them to the head.

4. all syndicate options STOP when mastermind is at 100%. but mastermind encounter is itemized like incursion temples.

and my unpopular opinion:

make mastermind intelligence ALWAYS increase slowly. if this is not done players will simply abuse the syndicate repeatedly, for example scarab farming.