Please nerf Boneskinner and Whisper before Steam release

[aaron.7850]

I know the fights well and I never die any of their attacks, but as a commander with 0 friends I always lead PUG strikes and accept anyone who joins with open arms and no elitism, but I often get groups that no matter how much I patiently explain the mechanics some groups keep wiping and wiping, leading to toxicity, frustration and disbanding.

Those two fights are disproportionately hard when compared to all the other strikes. And In support of our soon-to-be steam neighbors I propose some adecuate nerfs to ensure everyone is having fun, which is what games should be all about.

I am not saying Anet should turn them into cake-walks, but the difficulty should be between Bears and Cold-War... not cold-war x3 times harder.

[Randulf.7614]

Whilst I don't disagree they are hard (I've never completed Boneskinner and Whisper just the once), but I think we need to keep a couple of things in mind.

Steam players often are practised gamers. I'm not sure if it is wise to lower the difficulty for them when it hasn't been done for the wider, existing playerbase.Also, players will be starting earlier in the game and not seeing strikes for some time. I don't think any changes are need just to coincide with the steam launch as that really doesn't make any sense. If it needs to be nerfed, it's because Anet would have the data to say the strikes aren't working for the current playerbase. None of us can say whether that is the case or not.

Would I object to strike nerfs? No, because (selfishly) then I can get Boneskinner and Cold War done as well which I need. But I don't think nerfs are needed just because of Steam

[Algreg.3629]

so in essence this has nothing to do with Steam. And even if I followed your idea of connecting these two things, I think the average gaming skill level of the Steam audience is considerably above the current GW2 demographic.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@aaron.7850 said:I know the fights well and I never die any of their attacks, but as a commander with 0 friends I always lead PUG strikes and accept anyone who joins with open arms and no elitism, but I often get groups that no matter how much I patiently explain the mechanics some groups keep wiping and wiping, leading to toxicity, frustration and disbanding.

Those two fights are disproportionately hard when compared to all the other strikes. And In support of our soon-to-be steam neighbors I propose some adecuate nerfs to ensure everyone is having fun, which is what games should be all about.

I am not saying Anet should turn them into cake-walks, but the difficulty should be between Bears and Cold-War... not cold-war x3 times harder.

The intent of strikes was for them to be a stepping stone to raids. There needs to be a varying range of difficulties for strikes.

[Infusion.7149]

I do both of those whenever they are up as a daily strike. I was in one of the first groups that completed Whisper of Jormag as well.

Whisper of Jormag isn't fundamentally flawed unlike Boneskinner. Yes WoJ has a bunch of bugs (such as it not attacking below 25% , doing attacks way more often that it should, or doing a green circle mechanic at the same time as a red spread apart mechanic) and so does Boneskinner (for example the aftercast when using special action). Boneskinner literally has close to noone doing it "properly" the way the mission was designed and that's alarming.

You can cheese Whisper of Jormag quite easily with spirits/legends (renegade)/wurm (scourges mainly) , up until the 25% when orbs fly out it is fairly forgiving provided people don't chain each other or stack red circles. With Boneskinner if you run a full minstrel/trailblazer comp basically noone ever instadowns to the black puddles but in a typical group you want three healers (usually it's 2 Healbrands and a druid , scourge, or tempest).

The best carry class for Whisper of Jormag right now is a full condi scourge with the flesh wurm to stack barrier and block WoJ orbs.

A scourge with blood magic for a 15s AOE pull res is basically the best option for Boneskinner : it doesn't even need to be a full heal scourge it just needs to pull people out of the danger zones into the stack for res. Minstrel HB is a close second for Boneskinner if you run Merciful Intervention but that has no res pull capability. I've seen people run scrapper as well but function gyro cooldown after resurrection of more than one person is problematic.

Because I mostly WvW, when I run Healbrand I usually am in minstrel gear. What I noticed is that both Boneskinner and Whisper of Jormag do not ignore armor unlike the Frigid Footfalls effect in Cold War , that's a flat 10% of maximum health per tick so you actually want zero vitality or toughness gear.

So if there's any changes to be made, I would say maybe Boneskinner should probably slap players with conditions instead of power damage similar to fractal instabilities and the large pull that it does should not occur if the CC bar is broken. The ability of players to actually keep torches alight would be greatly impacted by such a change: right now it simply isn't practical for most builds. Bleeding, poison, torment, burning, etc could be applied at random. That would make the encounter more forgiving (conditions tick slower) but also make heal scrappers and tempests more potent.

[Smoosh.2718]

Hmmm I'm against this idea, I still believe that there is too much easy content in the game. A lot of players like being challenged else the game runs dry very quickly. I would love to see more open world maps that arent a face roll in difficulty, like Drizzelwood coast is. (since you can auto attack a vet mob there, not heal, move or dodge and still win).What has happened to peoples aspirations? Do we all not want to get better at the game we play or would we rather the game became an auto player (like all these mobile titles out there).

So no, we need hard content in this game. If people join the game and try to play the hard content... to only find out it was removed, what will keep them in the game then?

[Teratus.2859]

I don't think it will effect steam players but I agree these bosses need some attention.

Whisper isn't all that hard tbh, i've killed it with pugs without too much difficulty.For the most part you just gotta learn it's mechanics.. and tbh this is ultimately what the hardest strikes should be like.

Boneskinner.. this guy is just completely broken.I refuse to do this boss because I don't want to cheese it like virtually everyone does at this point because of how stupidly OP it's mechanics are.This thing is harder to fight legit than a good portion of raid bosses imo and on that alone it does not belong in strikes in it's current form.It's mechanics need a reworking and this ability to cheese it needs to be taken away as well.No boss should be so annoying and difficult to fight that it becomes easier to cheese kill it and ignore all it's mechanics instead.. when this happens I consider it a design flaw of the boss more than anything..

[Cyndercat.7615]

@Teratus.2859 said:I don't think it will effect steam players but I agree these bosses need some attention.

Whisper isn't all that hard tbh, i've killed it with pugs without too much difficulty.For the most part you just gotta learn it's mechanics.. and tbh this is ultimately what the hardest strikes should be like.

Boneskinner.. this guy is just completely broken.I refuse to do this boss because I don't want to cheese it like virtually everyone does at this point because of how stupidly OP it's mechanics are.This thing is harder to fight legit than a good portion of raid bosses imo and on that alone it does not belong in strikes in it's current form.It's mechanics need a reworking and this ability to cheese it needs to be taken away as well.No boss should be so annoying and difficult to fight that it becomes easier to cheese kill it and ignore all it's mechanics instead.. when this happens I consider it a design flaw of the boss more than anything..

You wont like raids then. More than half of the bosses mechanics can be ignored purely though good dps.

[Ashen.2907]

There are a variety of Strike Missions of differing difficulty levels. Why seek to remove diversity? Why actively pursue reducing the number of play styles accommodated by the game?

[battledrone.8315]

@"Algreg.3629" said:so in essence this has nothing to do with Steam. And even if I followed your idea of connecting these two things, I think the average gaming skill level of the Steam audience is considerably above the current GW2 demographic.

really? be prepared for a surprise, steam has a HUGE playerbase, and many of them are even below me in skill level.i hear the constant "but GW2 is so easy, compared to other mmos" , but in reality, its notunless they get their own forums too, be prepared for A LOT of nerf threads

[ZDragon.3046]

Well i dont expect anet to nerf them but they certainly should rework a few details on both strikes because mainly on boneskinner because it goes against their ideals for why strikes exists in the first place with the only way people can really successfully complete it.

I dont propose a nerf sorry OP i dont agree with you on that. But QoL is in order for both these strikes for good reason.

With both strikes1 Aoe's are buggy and some times either dont spawn or are totally inaccurate which makes it super hard for newer players to the strikes to actually avoid damage. This is especially bad in boneskinner with his jump attack that pulls everyone to the middle. A red circle fills the room but if you wait till its 90% full to dodge you have already been hit. For some reason you must dodge when the ring is around 70-80% to avoid the hit rather than when its closer to 100%. Sometimes when bone skinner runs forward to break a torch and jumps back to the middle there is no tell ring so players stand there and get smashed.2 Some attacks are just generally buggy this is much worse with whisper of jormag. Usually doing its last phase startting at 25% it sometimes buggs causing him to perform several different attacks all at once. I have been in that strike where he did the initial knock back attack after spawning 4 times in a row while performing other attacks like wave swipes, and orbs. Stuff like this wipes even experienced groups and its generally not fun when it happens.

Boneskinner's main issues.No one actually attempts to do the fight the way it was mechanically intended because time wont allow it if you want good rewards. When the strike first came out it was often more difficult for players to perform the actual mechanics and get the fight done in any kind of timely fashion. Thus the current stack strat was made because it allows players to by pass all the mechanics that they should be doing but its risky when not all players are on the same page which is the frustrating part.

Solutions for players who dont want risk the stacking strat.1 add more time to the strike over all allowing players to do the fight as intended.2 Add more time only when the intended mechanics are completed rewarding players for performing the mechanics of the fight.3 leave the stack strat as a optional thing for more coordinated groups.

Whispers main issues.To be honest this one is more about the bugs than anything just fix the bugs and its more or less kinda golden. The rest of this fight is more so visual than anything.

Solutions for QoL1 Fix the bugs, can i dodge ice spikes or not 50% of the time I can 50% of the time it wont let me even when timed correctly. Seriously look at Whisper in its post 25% phase having it bugg out and spam every single attack at once is super frustrating and can turn a solid gold run in to a bronze run.2 Make it more obvious to a player when they are chained so they are less likely to kill others with their chains. The colors of the chains themselves are hard to see through the visuals and maybe thats intended and is fine for everyone who is not chained but for the player who is chained i think the chain could stand out a bit more.3 Like the other strike suggestion consider adding bonus time for properly performing certain mechanics (breaking its defiance bar quickly etc)

@zombyturtle.5980 said:You wont like raids then. More than half of the bosses mechanics can be ignored purely though good dps.

I dont fully agree with this statement while yes some things are ignored with good dps there are still often options that allow players to still be successful when dps is lacking. Its one thing to ignore a few mechanics but in the case of boneskinner where near everything about it is ignored entirely defeats the purpose of why strikes were made. Xera is a good example where you can skip some of the mechanics with good dps but you dont get to ignore the special action usage or buttons or several other things about the fight. Boneskinner pretty much ignores the torches and many times the whisp and even in some cases breaking its defiance bar which is just insanity its just burte forcing it to the max which is not good for unorganized pug groups.

[Asum.4960]

Even though it's not going to happen, what GW2 would need for the Steam release is a reworked (slowly ramping) much more challenging core experience in which players past the first few tutorial levels (1-30) can't just walk around holding down autoattack or simply pressing everything off cool down anymore, to actually prepare players better for later content such as HoT or instanced PvE in general.

Tutorialise the importance of boons, give mobs pulsing boons, give mobs breakbars which telegraph devastating attacks that need to be interrupted, etc.

Not a nerf to the ~1% of content this game has in which holding down W and 1 isn't enough to win and get showered in meaningless shinies.

[Aza.2105]

Both bosses are fine. I did them on my first try after taking a long break from gw2. I'm not even a pve focused player. I didn't know any of the mechanics either, just used common sense. Big circles on the floor and seeing everyone move to the left? Maybe I should move to the left too. One cool thing about gw2 is how for well things are explained visually.

[Donutdude.9582]

I do not think this is required.

Strikes are meant to be a gateway to raids, so an element of difficulty is to be expected. In my opinion, difficulty should be turned up for Strikes, not down. I do not normally vote for more difficult content as I tend not to enjoy it, however Strikes are an exception for me. I like the challenge and I eventually want to start raiding anyway.

[Xca.9721]

If you don´t like challenges, feel free to do the easier strikes. Boneskinner and WoJ are both easy fights that punish you for not paying attention to simple mechanics. Not every strike boss should be beatable by mindlessly spamming autoattack.

[Antycypator.9874]

Whisper is fine, it's just people can't stop moving with chains and dodge deadly-whirling aoe.Boneskinner needs to be reworked, because we shouldn't be able to ignore mechanics.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Thosd 2 needs to be fixed to allow more ppl to finish them

[Randulf.7614]

Slightly off topic, but how does Cold War compare? I tried it early on but it was heavily bugged and have't returned since. I had assumed it was the hardest of the Strikes, but is that not the case? I consider myself average at best

[Ototo.3214]

I disagree. I've completed them, and will acknowledge they are harder, but I was under the impression that that was kinda the point. Strikes were supposedly meant to be stepping stones toward raids, so it makes sense for there to be somewhat of a gradient in difficulty between them; some will be easy, some harder. If they were all the same difficulty there isn't much point.

[ParadoX.3124]

It's not like bonneskinner is hard and need a nerf, it's more like he is bugged on CC special action and dmg is so high you don't even have time to walk and light the torches.Way easier to cheese it with overheal

[Teratus.2859]

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:I don't think it will effect steam players but I agree these bosses need some attention.

Whisper isn't all that hard tbh, i've killed it with pugs without too much difficulty.For the most part you just gotta learn it's mechanics.. and tbh this is ultimately what the hardest strikes should be like.

Boneskinner.. this guy is just completely broken.I refuse to do this boss because I don't want to cheese it like virtually everyone does at this point because of how stupidly OP it's mechanics are.This thing is harder to fight legit than a good portion of raid bosses imo and on that alone it does not belong in strikes in it's current form.It's mechanics need a reworking and this ability to cheese it needs to be taken away as well.No boss should be so annoying and difficult to fight that it becomes easier to cheese kill it and ignore all it's mechanics instead.. when this happens I consider it a design flaw of the boss more than anything..

You wont like raids then. More than half of the bosses mechanics can be ignored purely though good dps.

I am aware of that lol.

[Omega.6801]

The game should not change, just because it's going on steam.

[silklash.6154]

I’ve ran pug groups for the last 5 days and have cleared both no problem. Boneskinner just requires 1-2 hs to be honest.

And the heart of it is: it’s doable, so why nerf it? Must we have a game where every single content is easily done by pug groups on the first try? I’m glad that boneskinner and whisper are the only two strikes that actually require some form of a comp and brain to complete instead of the first 3 which are just liters golem fights.

[LucianDK.8615]

I sincerely doubt this will be any issue for new players, since they will be in core tyria for a -long- time to come. Not to forget the fact that those two strike bosses are now part of past episodes that now is paid content. So no, nerfs is completely unneeded.

[GummyBearSummoner.7941]

I would prefer not to see anymore nerfs in the game. I really loved HoT & it’s sad that it got nerf when honestly it was just LtP issues. This game is a bit too casual for the most part & I like a challenge. It helps me become a better player not just for myself but for when I’m in a group. The fight is fine as it is .