Is it just me, or does the new fractal boss have WAY too much health?

[LichOverlord.6329]

So me and 4 of my guildmates tried out the new fractal (Silent Surf) today, and we ended up spending easily 30min on the last boss alone (took us a couple tries to figure out what was going on with the shades since the grapple skill was kind of unwieldy).

Now, we're not exactly meta, but we're not bad at the game by any means (yes, fairly casual, but it was only fractal 25 , not even tier 2!) - yet, even with a pretty decent comp of dps with fair uptime of all boons, Kanaxai on tier 1 just died disgustingly slowly. These same people are able to clear Strikes like Whisper of Jormag in half the time it took us to kill this boss - what gives?

Surely it can't be just me that feels this way, no? I really do feel like Unknown Demon (Kanaxai) needs at least like a 20% decrease in health, because the brief stun window just does not make up for his insane health pool, and by the end of the fight everyone in my group was pissed off and had headaches from the tedious exhaustion we all felt.

 

[kiwipearls.5237]

We just attempted it as a guild today and also found we were not doing much damage at all.  Got it down to 50% and took us over half n hour to get there.

Like you, we dont feel we are bad at playing and can do most every other content really easy especially a L25 fractal as most of us are up to Tier 3.  But a Tier 1 should not be this hard or take so long.

It was very confusing.

Have watched the videos (the few already uploaded) on You Tube and we werent doing anything different than most of them, but the health seemed to be going down quick.  I am not sure if those vids were before there was a patch update (heard something about 95% damage something or other fix).

[Linken.6345]

19 minutes ago, kiwipearls.5237 said:

We just attempted it as a guild today and also found we were not doing much damage at all.  Got it down to 50% and took us over half n hour to get there.

Like you, we dont feel we are bad at playing and can do most every other content really easy especially a L25 fractal as most of us are up to Tier 3.  But a Tier 1 should not be this hard or take so long.

It was very confusing.

Have watched the videos (the few already uploaded) on You Tube and we werent doing anything different than most of them, but the health seemed to be going down quick.  I am not sure if those vids were before there was a patch update (heard something about 95% damage something or other fix).

That was the revenant having 95% damage reduction in spvp and wvwvw.

[Luthan.5236]

Need to check some of the vides later. Glad I did not try it yesterday evening/night. Was not in the mood for spending a lot of time - and with a guide (vide or wiki) first ... it might help. I fthe boss still takes too long when using correct mechanics ... they might need to make changes.

Actually I had hoped for a new fractal in terms of length of the classic ones. With this having a new own category for achievements I guess it is a bit longer? Hopefully more like the Nightmare one not like the Observatory or Sunqua. (We already have enough long stuff in it.) A challenging boss is fune - mainly concerned about the length towards the boss and I already can see people starting to get annoyed with the mechanics. Especially new players trying to figure it out.

Tried to explore it a bit solo but could not progress any further where the NPC guy said to throw a flare. (Where I just landed then used the last skill on that circle on the screen but it did nothing. From a vid I just checked it seems like you either need to stand there for some time ... or more people need to join. Seems to have triggered progress once all 5 in the video where in the circle.) There I guess it needs a group of players to work together or the puzzle was to hard for me to figure out lol. Jumping with the skills already is annoying to a lot of other players. I liked that idea a bit.

[Fueki.4753]

He definitely has far too much health. I played in on Tier 2 today and it was a horrendous slog to get it over with. It wasn't even a fun fight. If he's going to survive anyway, the fight should have ended at 66% or at least at 50%.

Nothing else in that fractal was fun either. The traversal stuff was just boring and tedious. The abilities having charges instead of being unlimited didn't exactly help either.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[soul.9651]

Or you are doing 5k dps 

[Fueki.4753]

7 minutes ago, soul.9651 said:

Or you are doing 5k dps 

Even for casual low DPS players, the fight shouldn't take 15+ minutes on T1 or T2.

T1 and T2 are not meant for the sweaty high DPS cookie cutter players.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Even for casual low DPS players, the fight shouldn't take 15+ minutes on T1 or T2.

T1 and T2 are not meant for the sweaty high DPS cookie cutter players.

If people have no clue about the mechanics and deal barely any damage it is perfectly understandable it takes ages. I've done Sunqua T1 enough times with newer people to know that 15-20 minutes is perfectly reasonable for a group hardly capable of dealing more damage than a healer.

Just because it's low tier the boss doesn't have to fall over from a sneeze.

[Randulf.7614]

It’s overtuned for t1 and didn’t align with other t1 bosses except maybe Sunquua which I haven’t done for years (I’m not a fan of it)

Edited June 28, 2023 by Randulf.7614

[Fueki.4753]

26 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

If people have no clue about the mechanics and deal barely any damage it is perfectly understandable it takes ages. I've done Sunqua T1 enough times with newer people to know that 15-20 minutes is perfectly reasonable for a group hardly capable of dealing more damage than a healer.

And Sunqua Peaks is another offender that needs to be toned down.

If Arenanet keeps putting such bosses into low tier fractals, it's pretty much literally them saying "we don't want you, the people this tier is intended for, to have fun with this boss".

Bloated HP bars are unfun slogs and don't belong into T1 and T2.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

2 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And Sunqua Peaks is another offender that needs to be toned down.

If Arenanet keeps putting such bosses into low tier fractals, it's pretty much literally them saying "we don't want you, the people this tier is intended for, to have fun with this boss".

Bloated HP bars are unfun slogs and don't belong into T1 and T2.

Except in a mediocre group you can kill Ai CM in 10 minutes. Ai CM is ~30 mil HP combined with atleast a minute of no ability to deal damage, maybe even more. Any decent group won't even see her storm mechanic, because they'll bring her down so quickly.

There are so many guides on how to gear a character for as little as possible and play said character well enough to be a good damage dealer. 

[Fueki.4753]

9 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Except in a mediocre group you can kill Ai CM in 10 minutes. Ai CM is ~30 mil HP combined with atleast a minute of no ability to deal damage, maybe even more. Any decent group won't even see her storm mechanic, because they'll bring her down so quickly.

There are so many guides on how to gear a character for as little as possible and play said character well enough to be a good damage dealer. 

And a casual, even a casual fractal frequenter, might simply not have fun sitting on the same boss for such an amount of time.

I certainly don't want to sit on either of those bosses for such amounts of time. I doubt I'm the only one avoiding these slogs.

Edited June 28, 2023 by Fueki.4753

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

19 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And a casual, even a casual fractal frequenter, might simply not have fun sitting on the same boss for such an amount of time.

I certainly don't want to sit on either of those bosses for such amounts of time. I doubt I'm the only one avoiding these slogs.

Fractal boss taking 10 minutes: too long
Literally any OW meta boss taking 15-20 minutes: yay

[Fueki.4753]

15 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Fractal boss taking 10 minutes: too long
Literally any OW meta boss taking 15-20 minutes: yay

You seem to forget that fractals are meant to be done in piece  of four.

If Arenanet continues to turn fractal bosses into slogs, that'll eventually end up being 40+ minutes on the bosses alone. And that's not even considering the rest of the fractals, which Arenanet also made longer and longer over the years.

A meta doesn't take that long, unless it's map-wide metas, which I tend to not do anymore, because it's too tiring.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 minute ago, Fueki.4753 said:

You seem to forget that fractals are meant to be done in piece  of four.

If Arenanet continues to turn fractal bosses into slogs, that'll eventually end up being 40+ minutes on the bosses alone. And that's not even considering the rest of the fractals, which Arenanet also made longer and longer over the years.

A meta doesn't take that long, unless it's map-wide metas, which I tend to not do anymore, because it's too tiring.

If it takes you anywhere above 10-15 minutes on a boss it's time to look up some guides how to play this game as that's the perfect case of Skill issue. Not even T3 pugs take that long with all the salt added.

[Fueki.4753]

2 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

If it takes you anywhere above 10-15 minutes on a boss it's time to look up some guides how to play this game as that's the perfect case of Skill issue. Not even T3 pugs take that long with all the salt added.

I did in on T2 specifically because I'm not interested into the sweaty meta cookie cutter build craft stuff.

Average and casual players should be able to have fun in fractals, too, without turning to sweaty things made by other people. That's why multiple tiers exist in the first place.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

7 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

I did in on T2 specifically because I'm not interested into the sweaty meta cookie cutter build craft stuff.

Average and casual players should be able to have fun in fractals, too, without turning to sweaty things made by other people. That's why multiple tiers exist in the first place.

You complaining that your random build takes ages to kill a boss is like me complaining that tt's not fair that it takes 2 hours to get to the city, but I'm not willing to take the bus that gets there in 15 minutes.

I fail to see issues that prevent you from running your own builds.

[Essence Snow.3194]

1 minute ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

You complaining that your random build takes ages to kill a boss is like me complaining that tt's not fair that it takes 2 hours to get to the city, but I'm not willing to take the bus that gets there in 15 minutes.

I fail to see issues that prevent you from running your own builds.

So what is your issue with tier 1 (repeat tier 1) being less of a dmg sponge?

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

7 minutes ago, Essence Snow.3194 said:

So what is your issue with tier 1 (repeat tier 1) being less of a dmg sponge?

Nothing. Tier 1 is not a damage sponge.
Damage sponge implies it takes a lot of DAMAGE to kill.
If it takes you ages to kill a boss, because you have no damage it's not a damage sponge.

[Essence Snow.3194]

10 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Nothing. Tier 1 is not a damage sponge.
Damage sponge implies it takes a lot of DAMAGE to kill.
If it takes you ages to kill a boss, because you have no damage it's not a damage sponge.

"Less" being the keyword. I do just fine as I run Arc and know my dmg is fine. I also have no issue killing bosses in a timely manner, but this isn't about me or you specifically. This is about players participating in intro level fractals. This is why we have tiers in the first place. This is why tier 1 doesn't have instabilites and require as much AR as higher tiers.  Making  tier 1 more friendly/fun to beginning players ensure that they continue playing the content and hopefully move up tiers. Thus those of us at higher tiers may have more players to play with in the future.  It's win/win unless one is selfish and wants the new content to be exclusive to them.

[Farohna.6247]

I failed tier 1 yesterday early in the day, came back later after watching a video, and went again in the evening.  Had a great time, lot of fun.  It's definitely understanding the mechanics better.  Had one person in group who was kind enough to tell us to look away from the eyes, that kind of thing.

I don't love the extra skills to use as they don't refill enough to be useful by the end....is that different at a higher tier?  Overall I'd say it's with Sunqua Peak maybe in terms of difficulty, and should improve as people get familiar with it.  Some fights aren't a dps race, more of a stay alive marathon.   They'll probably nerf it a bit.  

And I don't do fractals often...just tier 1 and a very few tier 2.  I went in with an open world condi ren build (don't hate lol), and did ok once I figured out what to do and where to go. 

Edited June 28, 2023 by Farohna.6247

[Nephalem.8921]

6 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Even for casual low DPS players, the fight shouldn't take 15+ minutes on T1 or T2.

T1 and T2 are not meant for the sweaty high DPS cookie cutter players.

Oh your cookie cutter nonsense again.

Considering its basically only 3min jumping puzzle and endboss a 10min bossfight should be fine and 10k dps per players would achieve that in lower tiers.

Its not cookie cutter builds, its your useless builds which are the problem here. I hate the new fractal for many reasons but the hp are not the main issue. It overly punishes melee builds again.

[Spawnkuecken.5074]

I don't like it at all. It feels like a 5 man strike mission than a Fractal. For T1 it is overtuned I think the new people really get problems with it. Even on T4 I often have to explain things.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

17 hours ago, soul.9651 said:

Or you are doing 5k dps 

that's the average damage of a t1 pug group, and you shouldn't expect more because they're beginner fractals. i did this with a group on the first tier just to learn it, and while the whole party was doing 5-8k, i was doing 17k, and it still took over five minutes just for this one boss.

[Nephalem.8921]

2 minutes ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

that's the average damage of a t1 pug group, and you shouldn't expect more because they're beginner fractals. i did this with a group on the first tier just to learn it, and while the whole party was doing 5-8k, i was doing 17k, and it still took over five minutes just for this one boss.

Which is fine since the fractal is almost just that boss.