PSA: It is possible to do negative* DPS in Bloodtide Coast DRM boss fight

[Infusion.7149]

It is truly possible to do negative DPS in Bloodtide Coast (relative to solo or just autoing on the worst mismatched gear with weapons at range).Why?Cannons do zero damage to the end boss (no spoilers) when the Corrupted Ice wall is down. I found this out the hard way while "soloing" the boss to 40%. I was wondering why it was taking so long, apparently the four people on cannons weren't doing any damage. I tested this by stopping all attacks on the boss. The four people on cannons did less than 0.1% over the span of a minute. I had to coax them off the cannons this way, because people are oblivious to whether they are doing any damage at all.

Of course the same people were trying to kill mobs instead of bringing wood to the lighthouse fire despite the event at the sidebar clearly stating the objective, so the level of attention people have is approaching zero in DRMs. That can be safely "carried" , so it isn't as large a problem.

I'm not sure if this is a game design issue or a player-made one. While it would have been better to disable the cannons completely when they do nothing, similar to in Siren's Reef fractal I would expect people would at least pay attention to whether they are doing damage.(I had done all CMs for all DRMs already so I was just trying to be casual on necro, turned out it took more time than CMs.)

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Honestly the game is just really poor at explaining things or making them evident. The most we get is a few orange words on the right side of the screen, beyond that you're on your own and always have been, and its been complained about for years.

Players are bad but they're taught to be bad by a simplistic, underwhelming user interface.

There's not even a permanently visible combat log (usually its above the chat in most games), so players can't actually know what skills they're landing, what kind of damage they're doing etc. unless they're very attentive.

[ugrakarma.9416]

yeah some little more inattentive players do not realize that they are not doing damage and stay in the cannons.

if this is intentional mechanics, it should be clearer, like "pushing" the player out of the cannon when the boss wall falls. if not is intencional, then pls fix the damn damage.

to be just, the boss distance make the cannon player think that damage number inst showing up due to distance.

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

I am for sure seeing chunky numbers of 5k+ on normal cannon hits and 7k+ after breakbar was broken. Can't say how it transaltes to % of boss hp as I never had all of the team keep using cannons, it's usually they forget they exist until ice wall is up.

Oh and cannon hit on it's own takes nearly a half of boss breakbar on direct hit as well, but you are only likely to land one of those with the time breakbar is up.

That being said the boss is very far away from those cannons, so could it be that if all team jump camps the cannons, the boss is in "disaggroed" state with that OP "out of combat" regen on? nvm I've just re-read the OP and you do in fact say you were on the boss, so it had to count as aggroed....

(in my experience it is beneficial to have one player permanently manning the cannon because that player can break the ice wall faster then it takes the ones on boss to get to mount up and get to the ship....)

PS. that team of yours could also just as well be failing to land any shots with ground targetting of the cannons.....

[ShroomOneUp.6913]

@"Lord Trejgon.2809" said:I am for sure seeing chunky numbers of 5k+ on normal cannon hits and 7k+ after breakbar was broken. Can't say how it transaltes to % of boss hp as I never had all of the team keep using cannons, it's usually they forget they exist until ice wall is up.

Oh and cannon hit on it's own takes nearly a half of boss breakbar on direct hit as well, but you are only likely to land one of those with the time breakbar is up.

That being said the boss is very far away from those cannons, so could it be that if all team jump camps the cannons, the boss is in "disaggroed" state with that OP "out of combat" regen on? nvm I've just re-read the OP and you do in fact say you were on the boss, so it had to count as aggroed....

(in my experience it is beneficial to have one player permanently manning the cannon because that player can break the ice wall faster then it takes the ones on boss to get to mount up and get to the ship....)

PS. that team of yours could also just as well be failing to land any shots with ground targetting of the cannons.....

break bar damage is calculated differently then actual dmg. if something has a huge break bar damage it just a very high cc thing a majig. there are even traits that increase break bar damage without increasing actual damage. i guess the cannons are just using a 1200 untis launch CC

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@ShroomOneUp.6913 said:break bar damage is calculated differently then actual dmg. if something has a huge break bar damage it just a very high cc thing a majig. there are even traits that increase break bar damage without increasing actual damage. i guess the cannons are just using a 1200 untis launch CC

Yes, I am aware that it is calculated differently, thank you for concern ;)I was merely naming breakbar damage as additional feature of having a cannon on the boss.

[Bingus.4236]

A lot of the mechanics are explained verbally by NPC dialog but the problem is, in a noisy fight you can miss these. Especially if you turned the dialog down because it annoys you in other parts of the game. In this fight, I am pretty sure the dialog tells you to leave the cannon in the bloodtide coast DRM but, yeah a lot of this stuff is easy to miss., It is also annoying when the story characters are having conversations in the middle of fighting as well.

[Ayrilana.1396]

The CM is significantly easier to solo than doing it with a group of randoms. The CC bar usually is broken by a single EMP, and if it isn’t, just another CC skill will do it. You have better add control as you won’t be having clueless players dragging them onto the boss. Your attacks take off a greater percentage of the boss’ health.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

@Hannelore.8153 said:Honestly the game is just really poor at explaining things or making them evident. The most we get is a few orange words on the right side of the screen, beyond that you're on your own and always have been, and its been complained about for years.

Players are bad but they're taught to be bad by a simplistic, underwhelming user interface.

There's not even a permanently visible combat log (usually its above the chat in most games), so players can't actually know what skills they're landing, what kind of damage they're doing etc. unless they're very attentive.

Bad players are bad players, when cannon hits the wall it give big white numbers, when they hit the boss or portal or anything else there are no numbers. That should be red flag that they do not do any damage. I am big critic of Anet not trying to teach it players to get better, but this is a situation where the players are either too dumb or too unaware that the big white numbers they see everywhere in the game is how much damage they do.

[Sobx.1758]

@"Hannelore.8153" said:Players are bad but they're taught to be bad by a simplistic, underwhelming user interface.

...how exactly are they "taught to be bad by user interface"? Why do most people not have any problem with those "orange words" telling them what to do? How about you understand that the player attitude matters and some of them simply want to slack or try something out, even if that something is inefficient or won't work at all?

There's not even a permanently visible combat log (usually its above the chat in most games), so players can't actually know what skills they're landing, what kind of damage they're doing etc. unless they're very attentive.

The damage numbers are literally popping up above the target. They can also change the tab to the dmg log while they're fighting. But in this case -sure, it would be better to have an option to "pull a tab out of the chat window" and put it wherever you want on the screen. Now that I think about it, the chat window could use a bit of an update in general :D

[Ayrilana.1396]

A UI which essentially tells what players have to do instead of them thinking for themselves?

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

@"Shadowmoon.7986" said:Bad players are bad players, when cannon hits the wall it give big white numbers, when they hit the boss or portal or anything else there are no numbers. That should be red flag that they do not do any damage.

Except it still shows big white numbers (and somethimes even with the red "crit" thing under the number), but only does so if you actually score a hit on the boss edit: anything that is possible to damage actually.

(PS. turning on ground target snap to currently targetted enemy and mouse clicking the boss to have it targetted makes it easilly spammable with landing on boss every time, for at least as long as the rest of the team doesn't lure the boss to far away)

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I can't blame the players. Cannons are widely known for doing huge damage to creatures.In Serious Sam the ultimate weapon was a huge-ass cannon that only Sam can handle as gun. It ofc did massive damage.

[MarkoGold.7126]

just solo the missions they scale and you wont have to worry about carrying leachers.