How to do boneskinner?

[Asum.4960]

@LadyKitty.6120 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Asum.4960 said:

@"Jimbru.6014" said:Strikes were supposed to be a gateway to raiding. Instead, Whisper and Boneskinner especially have become roadblocks. I have been told by a number of experienced raiders that there are at least a couple of raid bosses that are legit easier than those two, and I can believe it.

That's mostly a perception thing as the average quality of Strike groups is significantly lower than that of Raid groups, making them appear a lot more even than they actually are. Even experienced Raiders generally slack a lot more in Strikes, because they can.

A good group can full clear all strikes (5 bosses) in ~15 minutes and if an experienced 10 man group approaches them with the same dedication as they would a Raid Wing, they are practically just sneezing the bosses over.

So while Cairn with 7-8 well played 30k DPS players feels easier than WoJ or Bone with 5 <10k DPS players who make plenty mistakes, if you were to take the same group into the respective other fight the difference in difficulty would be very apparent.

I think WoJ and Boneskinner are placed quite well in their difficulty, putting Strikes in a good middle of the road position - although that doesn't mean there can't be more Strikes of a bit lower difficulty in the future again, I don't think these require any nerfs.

So the only way I've been able to reliably PuG boneskinner and Jormag is by stacking healers (and running my auramancer in whisper). I'd been having trouble with whisper ever since I came back, but then i realized, after I took my auramancer in again, that I may have been carrying my group before I took my last break. I prefer at least 3 healers on Boneskinner, but 2 works if they're worth their salt, if you have heals and everyone dodges, it's fine, so I think that's okay. I don't like whisper. That last phase is a poopfest. Not to mention buggy. I can't always clearly discern all the mechanics going on there's so much.. I did 3 healers on my last whisper run. 2 might be okay, but healbrand and auramancer take the cake in terms of making it puggable. The perma protection from auramancer (and range on shout heals) and the blocks from HB make the chains and some of the other mechanics less brutal. Granted, your team mates still have to avoid the mechanics, they're just given more time to with those buffers. Because protection doesn't keep you alive forever and you can only block so much, there's a limit. What really makes them hard is that there's no proper guides on them and people don't know what to build. or how to run them. I do have to say though, my most unsuccessful runs have been commanders trying to assemble raid meta comps, as opposed to survivability. Sure you make not get 2 bonus chests, but they're puggable if you focus on surviving first. The DPS bar isn't really that high.

You can cheese the last phase of Whisper with I think it was Flesh Worm. You won’t have to deal with the orbs.

I don't think cheese mechanics are anything we should rely on people new to raiding to do off the bat. I'll for certain try to spread this knowledge, but I don't consider it good design, even if there's a workaround. Interestingly enough, the player in the video didn't have 25 stacks of might at end (maybe 9, but it's hard to know how much was self buff vs. others), but did have regen. it also didn't have alacrity and quickness. This basically means that if it was a raid meta comp, that raid meta mechanics weren't working towards the end at the last phase. Even with no orbs. Though im' interested to know what composition this top raid guild was using. This was a GS power chrono it looks like.

Kitty also quite dislikes cheesing mechs much (except Gorseval's wall 'cause people haven't got it right since 2017) as that doesn't actually teach how to play better, only how to cheat better. For that reason Kitty's kinda wondered why many raiders whine "content is too easy, we need more challenging content q.q" when many of them try to find easiest shortcut to mitigate the challenge. In other words, to cheese the content. What's the point of challenging content if people take challenge away?

Those people want content that's challenging even if they try their hardest to beat it. They don't want to purposefully cripple themselves and not use creative solutions to problems they have come up with just to be challenged.

Game knowledge and creativity (external mastery) as well as mechanical skill (internal mastery) are two different skills that can and should be challenged by a game.

If an encounter just challenges Game knowledge and creativity and the fight is completely trivialized by a solution to that and offers nothing for skilled players to challenge themselves on after it has been figured out it gets boring longterm.If an encounter is just a numeric challenge, aka no mechanics that need to be thought about and creatively circumvented but rather for example just a tight DPS check, it feels like a boring fight right off the bat, especially for players who already are mechanically skilled.

Players who whine about content being too easy after "cheesing" it (which imo isn't cheating but just a cleaver engagement with the game mechanics) are simply looking for a different kind of challenge.

A well designed boss intended to be difficult incorporates both aspects of mastery over/in a game.

[Firebeard.1746]

@"LadyKitty.6120" said:Though Kitty's personal favourite choice of boonbot for Whisper and other strikes where people don't stack well is scepter+warhorn aura tempest. By spamming all shouts and pre-casting Wildfire+Phoenix+Dragon's Tooth, you can get yourself to about 15ish might in seconds and then spread it to allies with Heat Sync and then just rotate Fire-Earth (Sand Squall for boon extension)-Water (for heals) through the fight spamming shouts and skills and the squad has most excellent boon uptimes through the fight. Heat Sync and shouts have massive radius and thus even spreading out widely doesn't usually drop the boons at all and the other healers can focus 100% on healing without worrying about boon output. That probably sounds like invalidating Kitty's earlier point of "why Kitty insists on healers bringing might and at least some fury instead of being pure healers due to low opportunity cost" but warhorn boon tempest isn't used as healer in every single squad and Kitty's ended up cursing low fury uptime in pretty much every squad where she's been power dps and her sub's healer was heal scourge, staff tempest or scrapper. Feels sad as reaper trying hard to put the supports' boon efforts to good use by dpsing well. ._.

This is my Jormag personal favorite as well.