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Drakkar - How Would You Improve the Fight?


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I respect the team that developed Drakkar and thank them for new content (as always) however in my opinion the Drakkar world boss fight was a huge let down. This may have been because I heard, maybe wrongly, that this would be an encounter with the difficulty of Triple Trouble or Tequatl but instead we got another stack-on-foot HP sponge.

However I do believe all the ingredients are there for a harder fight without fundamentally changing the encounter and so I'm giving my ideas. If any of you have further thoughts feel free to post but be aware that requesting huge changes such as not being in the cave are not going to happen- realistic changes please. (FYI one of the plus points for me WAS the confined space- made for a different encounter.)

1) Less noise (less AOEs at most times) and up the damage of Drakkar's large scale AOE attacks but at set %HP times so people have a chance to get their block on and prepare. This creates a sense of impending doom as the HP 'timer' ticks down and forces players into defensive mode.

2) All other times we need localised AOE damage with heavy pushes and pulls into that damage that can be mitigated by clever movement. Chill should play a big part here.

3) More minions- elites and hard champs designed to take your focus away from the pushes, pulls and AOEs. Maybe with their own skills during a Drakkar invulnerable stage like in the Specimen Chamber (Sandswept Isle). They should also hit like trucks, not bicycles.

4) The stamps...slaps... thing Drakkar does with his hands(?) need to hurt more and maybe push back to a wall of elites at the back of the cave or damaging totems meaning jumping the icicles is recommended. This also takes the zerg away from the hands (may need to adjust the HP of Drakkar slightly lower to account for the lower DPS?).

5) The portal stage has a LOT of promise in this fight. All three gates up at the same time with the group forced to split between the three. The champs inside should be legendaries with unique skills per portal and they should NOT scale with player number (I've heard this is a thing, may be wrong). If I wanted to go further I'd add mechanics like, for example, mini light puzzles to create traps to then damage the legendary or a room with Jormag's ice on the ground in specific spots that change....the possibilities here are endless. Even have the possibility of failing to give Drakkar a specific buff.

6) The 'shield stages' should be a bigger thing IMO. Have the players destroy ice totems or something to power up the shield which then eventually explodes pushing Drakkar back into the ice wall. He swims around and we're then back in the fight.

These are just some off the top of my head and I'm no expert but I feel that these changes, while requiring an overhaul, would not involve drastic changes although I could be wrong. Feel free to add yours... unless you feel the fight was great! To each their own.

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Main issues that I see:

  • Too easy
  • Repetitive
  • Takes too long.
  • Lack of incentive

Too easy: adding more unpredictable attacks, more dangerous AoE's , and simply bumping up some damage numbers would already help a lot. Also, the 3 raven portal bosses are ridiculously easy, actually make them combat worthy. And lastly, add more mobs spawning during the fight just to add pressure to players. I think people were expecting something on the levels of triple trouble, supposedly, that's what was said in a stream, though I can't quote that.Drakkar is an excellent chance to make proper use of the masteries in some way, but unfortunately, these add no value other than having that free CC that makes the shield bubble part kind of pointless...

Repetitive: I think the biggest slap in the face was when drakkar retreats after 20%, it was really cool to transition mid fight to a different part of the map, added a lot of cinematic value, BUT THEN, when you are in this new area, the mechanics stay exactly the same! I think that's where people start getting annoyed/bored at the repetitive nature of the boss (already seen AFK farmers). He needs some unique mechanics after this stage, or after each phase really (after each raven portal).Also, the shield bubble part, where he attacks from the center, why exactly do we get in the shield bubble? Everyone does it out of instinct, but when I walked out of the bubble during this, nothing really happened, feels almost unintentional.

Takes too long: I wouldn't mind this were it not for the 2 problems stated above. But even then, I think the battle could take a tiny bit less, bump down the hp a bit (not much), and it wouldn't feel as grindy to people. An event that takes approx 30 minutes, should stay relevant throughout the 30 minutes, otherwise we get the same problem as the eastern meta of bjora marches.

Lack of incentive: no worthy rewards. Though I saw the devs mentioning that drakkar would be updated to be able to drop ascended gear, which is fantastic! What makes me sad though, is that, unlike the other dragon wordboss achievements, drakkar's achievements do not reward a backpack. Give us a backpack arenanet ;-(

With all that being said, the boss is visually stunning, music is beautiful, the area where you fight him is awesome, overal a real wholesome experience, held back by flaws that could be easily fixed.

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An idea I had floating around was (not only to boss fights, but to zones as well) is to completely change the environment you're in.

Drakkar could be a good example for this: we are fighting under/in a frozen lake, so why not flood the area and have to fight him underwater after a certain % of its HP? But for that Arenanet would have to streamline underwater combat and skills with their terrestial counterpart, so your skills wouldn't be useless.

One could extend this to completely change a map on certain conditions: failing a meta event could lead to whole sections of the map being flooded, caved in etc and this would open up another set of events to revert this.

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@"BlackyWarsX.5384" said:An idea I had floating around was (not only to boss fights, but to zones as well) is to completely change the environment you're in.

Drakkar could be a good example for this: we are fighting under/in a frozen lake, so why not flood the area and have to fight him underwater after a certain % of its HP?

I would love that, but sadly i can already hear the complains of the "We hate UW combat!" crowd even at the mere suggestion.

Anyway, i stumbled on Drakkar boss fight while i was exploring the new map (or rather, the new portion of the old map) and i have to say it was a pretty cool boss fight visually, although i agree that it was a bit long and repetitive (it was pretty much the same fight over and over). It would be awesome if they changed it to have diffent mechanics after each phase (or at least the final phase). As for the difficulty, i don't know. I didn't go down even once during the fight (maybe because my P/P thief heals herself every time she inflicts damage) but i saw plenty of downed people around me.

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Drakkar is very ok. Nice sound also!!!But may be it should easy,because in non prime time after some time it will be very hot challenge.Yes, now when we have hype and best dps players come it is fun, but let see in future also please!!I have strong feeling that roleplay players from our guilds can to much pressure on that world boss.

So will believe it will be nerfed after half year for players who want complete achiv but not start story for some life reason.

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They said there's a new "harder events" mechanic, that if you do some events and stuff it will spawn some harder events/versions, maybe Drakkar has one too, and we haven't found it yet.Or they could create one for Drakkar, so people would have to complete a lot of events in the map to spawn this "harder Drakkar" with more mechanics and better rewards, kinda like Silverwastes when you look at it.

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@Cylokin.2560 said:That break bar needs to be buffed, it is broken too fast and easy.

Remember, most players on map and at meta are of the more dedicated crowd currently. Just as with the last Bjora Marches map meta, expect more casual players (with less experience, there is also experienced casual players) to join into the meta over time. A very easy breakbar turns into a quite difficult breakbar with time and influx of less experienced players.

Case in point, it took a couple of days for me to see a Bjora Marches map meta fail (the one with the giant needing to get chained), but now I've seen that one fail multiple times. This might also just be due to many players just not wanting to bother with chains (which says a lot when a full map can't even get 6-7 people to do chains).

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I along with many pugs yesterday still put it down to being the best world boss so far, there is more interactions and takes a bit of effort to bring down.Yes I think the difficulty could go up but I think they are on the right track here.

This whole episode actually felt like that anet was trying to get the casuals trained upto more harder content.. like the green circle mechanics very similar to vale guardians circles and the new strike just shows that they are really putting in am effort to familiarize players to more difficulty (yay!)

I'd say overall well done anet ! Keep at it

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One of the big things it needs to space players out. I had hoped the fight would be up on the surface of the lake, with it smashing it's way upwards. A large boss needs space so that we can see it, its mechanics, the telegraphs and not be hamstring by all the visual noise.

Tequatl may be easy now, but it is at least a well constructed fight because it forces players into different positions in every part f the fight except the stun phase. The best fights fully separate the zerg into smaller groups - Marionette, Vinewrath, Gerent, TT etc. Even adding mechanics, Drakkar is in too confined an area to be able to see them to play against them.

I'd also like to see the Whispers become a mechanic in some way as players fight to stay focused whilst being seduced. It would give extra character to the boss.

Relocating the boss now is too late, so they need to find a way to add mechanics, but also make telegraphs fully visible to players esp in melee.

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The design of Drakkar is amazing, that team did a wonderful job.As far as the mechanic of this meta... bleh...

First of all the bugs:

  • The In Combat issue after a failed fight is NOT fixed. Multiple people had that issue. Relog is ONLY option. (In Combat is extremely buggy to begin with and needs an overhaul
  • The fact there's a room below it with enemy NPC's makes autotarget pick those sometimes. How that is even possible is beyond me, but the layered target bug where you target stuff accidentally through thick walls and floors is a long standing one, so in this case: Anet could and should have seen this one coming
  • Some mechanic put on you that prevents you from taking portals to Champs while under this influence that have timers up to 60 seconds is ridiculous. I already missed champions completely due to this extremely high cooldown. Therefor a bug in my eyes, (cannot be removed, cleansed)
  • Raven Portals that you cannot use to get out of there, but constantly reminds you with ugly bold popups that you need to train the Raven Flight (WHICH I HAVE TRAINED!)

Then the mechanics of the fight...Nope... just Nope. It's same ol same ol... constant freeze to slow you down, constant rings to dodge and constant being feared like EVERY BOSS out there. Other than the champs you gotta go to through portals, there's nothing new there.Not offering ideas since the replies before me did a better job in that, than I can.

Design Team: You did a great jobMechanics design: Too much copy/paste

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I strongly disagree with those calling this boss "too easy" haha not even CLOSE to being true! I just logged off from a failed Drakkar fight because players didn't seem to understand a few things;

  • Don't stand under Drakkar's feet when he stomps (almost always kills everyone who stands there)
  • We are given 3 stages of portals/minions before the main boss to gather up the energy required to use the new powers on each type of creature AND Drakkar himself during the boss fight (Many people didn't seem to get this either)
  • You need a couple of the masteries completed for the Raven portals during the fight

The one thing I will agree with is the boss fight is timely, being twice the length of Tequatl's boss fight on a slow map (14-16 mins). I believe he needs to be at 80% to start the 2nd phase of the fight, and it takes quite a few times breaking through the wall to get there. I think if they shortened this to him only breaking through 3 times until he hits the 80% mark it would be better. The fight overall is refreshing and I truly believe in redeemed the game from those complaining it "lacks content". Those are the ones who race through new stuff in a day then complain until more stuff is developed. Slow down and enjoy each part of the game as it was intended.

I think Drakkar is well done, and the developers/designers should be proud of their work.

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Did it multiple times (one of each raven portal shrine) as well as joining on a fail map when it was minutes away from the end (people probably didn't CC with the special action).

What I noticed is a group of about 15-20 is more efficient than a full 50 because the rooms are too small for that amount of people.

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@"Caitybee.3614" said:I strongly disagree with those calling this boss "too easy" haha not even CLOSE to being true! I just logged off from a failed Drakkar fight because players didn't seem to understand a few things;

  • Don't stand under Drakkar's feet when he stomps (almost always kills everyone who stands there)
  • We are given 3 stages of portals/minions before the main boss to gather up the energy required to use the new powers on each type of creature AND Drakkar himself during the boss fight (Many people didn't seem to get this either)
  • You need a couple of the masteries completed for the Raven portals during the fight

The one thing I will agree with is the boss fight is timely, being twice the length of Tequatl's boss fight on a slow map (14-16 mins). I believe he needs to be at 80% to start the 2nd phase of the fight, and it takes quite a few times breaking through the wall to get there. I think if they shortened this to him only breaking through 3 times until he hits the 80% mark it would be better. The fight overall is refreshing and I truly believe in redeemed the game from those complaining it "lacks content". Those are the ones who race through new stuff in a day then complain until more stuff is developed. Slow down and enjoy each part of the game as it was intended.

I think Drakkar is well done, and the developers/designers should be proud of their work.

No masteries were required for the portals unless they changed it. It was basically a hp sponge, with a cc bar and portals anyone could enter who hadn’t already entered one.

I would like to know if it actually has been changed to require masteries in some significant way because that will be a start towards redeeming this

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The debuff to enter the portals is too long and I find that people just wait for it to expire to enter and kill the mob. Or the mob gets killed while you're waiting and you're just stuck there in the empty room during that time. The debuff just feels awkward and unnecessary.

I think one thing that could be done is to have the Whisper of Jormag spawn while those portals are up, so you have this extra boss to fight while people are going into the portals to kill the champs. Gives them something to do, and the Whisper has a bit harder mechanics than Drakkar. Also keeps everyone from immediately rushing through the portal - though the aforementioned debuff may be their way of preventing Drakkar from despawning if everyone enters the portals and leaves the room empty.

I enjoyed the fight from the one time I got to do it so far aside from that though. Drakkar's abilities aren't that intimidating though, so I can understand the disappointment with that. But ultimately what would that look like? More random aoe that does more damage? More mobs spawning in to help that need to be cleaved? More cones to avoid?

I think one mechanic they could have particularly found useful with Jormag and the way Jormag corrupts is to create somekind of mind control mechanic. Certain players get targeted and their characters get taken over and must be taken down. Perhaps they use their slotted skills and cooldowns and have to be beaten down to like 20% health to be set free. As it is right now the only thing that happens is that we get turned into a block of ice, and I'm not even entirely sure that happens during the Drakkar fight.

One issue with that mind control mechanic may be the way the game itself is coded though. Because it might involve temporarily replacing a player character with a copied npc - or something akin to the doppleganger. This may be easier in games like world of warcraft because of pre-existing logic that accounts for world pvp. Maybe it's just not something they can do without completely breaking some legacy code. If they did add something like this though, I could see it being a cool theme for a new elite spec for mesmer or something.

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@"cptaylor.2670" said:One issue with that mind control mechanic may be the way the game itself is coded though. Because it might involve temporarily replacing a player character with a copied npc - or something akin to the doppleganger.

Place a doppleganger, fully stealth the copied player and remove all skills is perfectly do-able I'd think in relation to the code. Having the HP match the doppleganger and locking the camera to it for that specific player may be a stretch but I'd certainly love to see this as well.

Maybe even have this happen to multiple players at a time, x% of the total number in the cave.

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I think this fight has great potential but it still has one fatal issue that makes this fight boring instead of thrilling.

This issue is the combination of two characteristics of the fight :

  • Big HP sponge which makes the fight long and tedious
  • Repetitive mechanics all throughout the fight

Taken separately, those issues are minor (a long fight can be fun with a variety of mechanics to overcome, and a repetitive fight can be fun if it's done quickly) but both together makes this fight far from enoyable.

I believe the goal was to make the fight challenging. However, big HP bars are NOT challenging. They just make the fight longer and transforms it into a race against the timer when DPS isnt there. Failure should be a matter of mechanics and success should require communication. HP sponges dont accomplish that.

To improve the fight, I would implement simple changes :

  • Reduce the amount of HP
  • Remove some boss attacks from the first phase of the fight, and add them gradually to the later phases as the fight advances (this should actually make the boss start easier and become more challenging, which is an effective way of making a fight more fun and impactful)
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@aspirine.6852 said:

@Moradorin.6217 said:Make it shorter

^^ this.

I agree. It's not a raid boss and shouldn't be as complicated as one. If they make the open world bosses similar to raid boss mechanics, they may as well make raids open world metas so they can get more people on those maps.

It could be around TT difficulty, but it isn't designed that way with the 3 heads. It's fine as is to me. Been with groups that failed because there wasn't enough DPS. I was in 3 so far that were successful. If by the 13 minute mark Drakkar has more than 50% HP, rip unless a flood of people come in. That's an opportunity for hero level DPS folks who can save those runs when they load in.

As a side note, I'm really happy the boss doesn't interfere with the meta. They occur at different times: Drakkar at 5 after the hour, meta at :45. I can jump from Drakkar into the meta without hesitation.

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@XYLO.7031 said:

@Moradorin.6217 said:Make it shorter

^^ this.

I agree. It's not a raid boss and shouldn't be as complicated as one. If they make the open world bosses similar to raid boss mechanics, they may as well make raids open world metas so they can get more people on those maps.

It could be around TT difficulty, but it isn't designed that way with the 3 heads. It's fine as is to me. Been with groups that failed because there wasn't enough DPS. I was in 3 so far that were successful. If by the 13 minute mark Drakkar has more than 50% HP, rip unless a flood of people come in. That's an opportunity for hero level DPS folks who can save those runs when they load in.

As a side note, I'm really happy the boss doesn't interfere with the meta. They occur at different times: Drakkar at 5 after the hour, meta at :45. I can jump from Drakkar into the meta without hesitation.

Yea I like that they are adding to the same map rather than making new maps for each episode and also glad that they are keeping the events from each episode as it grows. Personally, I think it is arguably a better design. Better because in LW4 it always felt like the previous maps go empty and therefore go to underused after the new map dropped. This way with people all still in a common instance it wont feel empty and should feel like we all have more to do with basically the same resources.

As to the OP topic I just think the event can drag out a bit, I like that it has different things to do as it goes, it just feels like the slogging through damaging Drakkar takes too long unless everyone is using good Power builds, etc which in typical open world pve seems unnecessary.

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