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

[Luthan.5236]

Done it now. The first time. I joind the fractal the first time - on T1. They were at the boss 4/5 players (lfg did not state that). So I need to do the previous part still ... to learn it. From a video it seemed like this is fast though.

The others in the party had high agony resistance so I assume they were experienced players. (I do not max in dps since I mainly play  up to tier 2 fractals ... usually not playing group content.) Still took some time. Did not feel like forever. Like ... Sunqua with experienced people.

First I noticed that the achievements seem buggy. Got the one for doing it witout Captain Tress's help. But I think it might be intended to be able to do that when joining at the end? Then the master tier with no deaths - though master tier afaik would need the T4 one (and there is the other master tier that I did not get of course ... for normal copletion).

Watching a vid first helped me. Also a guy explained stuff in the chat before starting the fight. I think when you need to go to the small islands you need to wait first? (Going early ... and it ported me back.) Some small orbs (nobody explained it and I did not really see it in the vid) seem to replenish the grapple hook charges.

Some mechanics (axes thing dropping and staying permanently as AoE and the eye) are known from other similar stuff. The thing with the numbers ... I know it from the strike for the turtle. I think this is a first-time thing for people that have not experienced it from EoD strikes before.

Sunqua is fine up to T2 ... for the boss - I enjoy it. Like the phases and that you can have some parts where it is possible to relax. (If people at least know how to stay alive and if the bug does not happen - when you wipe and it gets stuck in last phase. Don't know if that bug still exists.) The fractal itself is way too long. Dialoque where you have to wait. Many walking and mini bosses.

Silent Surf might be better here. Fun boss with good mechanics and less long part before it. It has less parts to relax though. I think. Compared to the Sunqua. A lil bit tuning down might be okay I guess? (Health-wise.) Since this also would move him to later phases where he tries more attacks then. Still keeping difficulty/mechanics.

I think we can keep this. I see an issue though if they plan to go forward with this - adding for the remaining fractals (until we have 25 unique ones) long ones as well. A simple one (no own achievement category) would be fine as well every now and then. Make it just one more long one. (So we have 5.) And lets hope they don't get sooo bored that they might want to change all of the fractals into longer ones. (Or adding more than 25 ... adding 100  unique ones and other ones at the higher tiers lol.)

Edit: Side note: I even dislike Observatory (the previous #24 fractal) cause it was long because of the two mid-length bosses. With not tooo interesting fights. Imo Nightmare has an optimal length. And is not unfun. Sunqua the best boss. Silent Surf-like intro with a Sunqua-like boss would be fun as well. 😄

Edited July 3, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Nephalem.8921]

8 hours ago, Joraan Adenard.2061 said:

WHY does Anet keep designing HP sponge bosses ? Increasing the health pool does NOT make a fight harder, just more tedious and overall LESS fun. Add fun, challenging mechanics instead, NOT more HP.

Gyala Delve final boss is a slog and is incredibly tedious to fight, and probable one of the worst designed fight in the game because of it. PLEASE DONT make this a standard from now on.

Also : WHY do we need 4 players to complete the puzzle ? As a daily, if you get only 2 players that suck at jumping puzzles, the fractal becomes impossible to complete. You can't carry, you can't skip. It will just be an incredibly frustrating daily.

It feels like Anet just doesn't know how to design fun encounters anymore.

More hp would make a lot of encounters harder.

Nightmare and SO bosses are extremely undertuned. You phase them while stunned. Hp needs to be high enough to not be burstable. Most things in fractals need hp buffs.

Edited July 2, 2023 by Nephalem.8921

[Linken.6345]

3 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

More hp would make a lot of encounters harder.

Nightmare and SA bosses are extremely undertuned. You phase them while stunned. Hp needs to be high enough to not be burstable. Most things in fractals need hp buffs.

That would make them unbareable for low dps players and make them stop doing fractals like they did raids tho.

[Nephalem.8921]

15 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

That would make them unbareable for low dps players and make them stop doing fractals like they did raids tho.

Why does the hardest difficulty 5 player content have to be balanced for casual no dps players in the first place? T4 fractals are as braindead as open world farm at this point.

[Linken.6345]

55 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

Why does the hardest difficulty 5 player content have to be balanced for casual no dps players in the first place? T4 fractals are as braindead as open world farm at this point.

Because if you want any more content to it have to be playable by a majority of the players mate.

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 6/28/2023 at 3:48 PM, Essence Snow.3194 said:

It's win/win unless one is selfish and wants the new content to be exclusive to them.

Exactly. I don't get the people here. What elitist brain rot does people compel to gatekeep a T1 fractal. They don't even do them.

Edited July 3, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

7 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Because if you want any more content to it have to be playable by a majority of the players mate.

The majority of the players already have their playground in the form of over half of the game on top of T1-3 being extremely easy and T4 being easy enough to be successful with a broken collarbone.
We aren't in 2012 anymore, the game has been powercrept to insanity where I can play the game while watching a video on my second monitor and still be well above the "good" DPS level just by pressing 2-3 buttons. Vindicator is - was? - a good example, 23-24k DPS by using a grand total of 4 buttons, one being dodge. 
If you're not willing to use builds that can deal damage in favor of some Soldier's Hammer Honor-Valor-Whatever Guardian then you shouldn't be complaining a boss is ""hard"" due to low damage when all the options are present.

When a pug playing GW2 for 2 weeks can join a W4 run, clear it with us without anyone even going "huh that guy does barely any damage" you can't really go on about "but casuals low DPS"

[branwen.1049]

On 6/27/2023 at 9:06 PM, LichOverlord.6329 said:

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.

 

Was this taking into account the damage reduction buff he gains when you break his defiance bar while he's winding up for his big attack? The group of friends I was doing the fract with stopped breaking his bar once we noticed he gained it, but the trade-off is he has more adds to do the annoying eye mechanic with, so we just decided to power through the defense buff because it was the less annoying of the two options.

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

On 7/2/2023 at 11:35 AM, oCynder.5136 said:

My only issue with a certain mechanic is to find the almost impossible shadowy thingy (from seeing the golden tether briefly) to collect it and then kill the aspect. That is very difficult to see. You would also think that if you CC it would stop the aspect but it doesn't. I'm not sure what the intention for that for heal supports to do there after CCing and supposed to deal damage to their personal aspect

The tethers seem to be possible to "intercept", like Sunqua Water Phase.
If this were the case, it wud simply mean breaking every 10% HP Breakbar properly to ensure only 4 Aspects spawn during 33% big hit, and then have the DPS player intercept a Tether to stop the need of Healer to waste time killing the Aspects on the minor platforms.

But, its new, theres a lot of random stuff going on.
Failing to kill the Aspects on the minor platforms at 66/33% doesn't even seem to increase their numbers after the Big Hit is done, just makes his dmg scale a little higher,
which again is pointless because we can just wait till the circle is full, then dodge.

People will find it "fun" for now, but mark my words, they will get bored of it real fast, if not already.

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

*Bugged, double post.

Edited July 4, 2023 by MercurialKuroSludge.8974

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

*Bugged, post number 3...

Edited July 4, 2023 by MercurialKuroSludge.8974

[rotten.9753]

8 hours ago, branwen.1049 said:

Was this taking into account the damage reduction buff he gains when you break his defiance bar while he's winding up for his big attack? The group of friends I was doing the fract with stopped breaking his bar once we noticed he gained it, but the trade-off is he has more adds to do the annoying eye mechanic with, so we just decided to power through the defense buff because it was the less annoying of the two options.

That's no damage reduction buff, that buff reduces breakbar damage and stun duration so each time you need more CC to break his bar and he will be stunned shorter and shorter.

Edited July 4, 2023 by rotten.9753

[Ashantara.8731]

The new fractal is very cool. I love the design of it and the JP is a lot of fun.

As for the boss, I think it is fine the way it is.
 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Shaogin.2679]

On 6/27/2023 at 9:06 PM, LichOverlord.6329 said:

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.

 

Not sure if you and the others here are aware, but if you fail to do the mechanics correctly, there is a stacking debuff that causes you to deal less damage and take more damage. This could be what is causing you all to take forever to kill this guy. I've done this fight on every tier so far with both experienced and newer players, and it really doesn't feel like the boss has crazy over-the-top HP or anything.

[Linken.6345]

7 minutes ago, Shaogin.2679 said:

Not sure if you and the others here are aware, but if you fail to do the mechanics correctly, there is a stacking debuff that causes you to deal less damage and take more damage. This could be what is causing you all to take forever to kill this guy. I've done this fight on every tier so far with both experienced and newer players, and it really doesn't feel like the boss has crazy over-the-top HP or anything.

Donno if they fixed it but it seems he got the buff regardless when me and my friends did it thursday night.

[Noodle Ant.1605]

its a bit snowball-y in terms of time where if the group doesnt have enough dps, the boss gets to execute more anti-burn mechanics (flux 2.0, eyes, numbers unless group is perfectly positioned or all have 1200-1500 range) and waste exponentially more time the worse the dps is. i also question the increasing defiance resistance since higher dps groups wont end up needing to break the bar as much times as a struggling, low-dps group. the boss couldve just have a higher, fixed breakbar

to put in perspective how much 26 million hp is (or 18 million for t1?), afaik the last boss in t4 sunqua has 15 million hp. t4 arkk only has 10 million. the whisper of jormag has 25 million. it does just simply have a lot of hp (comparatively, at least)

assuming the debuff the player has to manage in the encounter worked as described and was truly substantial, then there probably wouldnt be any need for a spongy boss. from my experience, it either doesnt affect condi or it really doesnt reduce outgoing damage by a significant amount. the real problem most players are dealing with is trying to squeeze in dps while the boss spams eyes and numbers back to back. the intended method is probably to conserve cc for the final phases when this occurs, but for most groups the boss wouldve had multiple stacks of dread defiance, both taking a lot of effort to break and not staying stunned for long for this to matter

[branwen.1049]

9 hours ago, rotten.9753 said:

That's no damage reduction buff, that buff reduces breakbar damage and stun duration so each time you need more CC to break his bar and he will be stunned shorter and shorter.

Oh is it only a defiance buff? I must've misread it during the fractal (to be fair, I was desperately trying to dodge attacks and not die lmao)

[LichOverlord.6329]

On 7/4/2023 at 2:40 AM, Shaogin.2679 said:

Not sure if you and the others here are aware, but if you fail to do the mechanics correctly, there is a stacking debuff that causes you to deal less damage and take more damage. This could be what is causing you all to take forever to kill this guy. I've done this fight on every tier so far with both experienced and newer players, and it really doesn't feel like the boss has crazy over-the-top HP or anything.

I've only done it personally on Tier 1, and the mechanic you're referring to isn't stacking on that tier

It simply dissapears after you kill the linked shade, or after 20-30sec

The only stacking mechanic on tier 1 is his defiance bar buff that stacks everutime you break him

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

we've found the most efficient way to do this boss:

- stack all melee in one place, then sidestep when all the axes drop instead of spreading them.

- stack stability or use a stunbreak during the eye phase. don't bother looking away as the healer can just heal through the damage.

- one dps player stays on the boss while everyone else spreads during the actual spread and numbers phases.

- dodge the attack when he teleports to you during number phase, then immediately regroup. don't want for everyone to get hit to start regrouping.

- during the platform phase just ignore it and dodge the big attack instead.

- break the defiance bar as often as possible; with alot of crowd control in your group you can do it 7-8 times total.

 

the key seems to be spending the least amount of time separated from each other as possible (the opposite of what the developers intended?), as the fight is purely a dps check and the longer it goes on the more likely your party will become exhausted and start making mistakes. the boss is easiest to beat when you have a good healer and just don't do anything as intended because its a huge dps loss to do so.

 

if the health of the boss was lowered, damage wouldn't have to be optimised and players could afford to do the mechanics.

Edited July 6, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Noodle Ant.1605]

boss channels every 10% and is a sitting duck while channeling and also afterwards if cc'd. its a fight thats heavily trivialised by high dps, pretty much like sunqua where you skip whole entire mechanics. at t4, the group only needs to chow through 2.6 mil hp before the boss is forced to stand still and channel again (giving ideal conditions to reach next 2.6 mil target). its a bit more obvious in t1 where each 10% is only 1.8 mil hp. so at certain dps thresholds, the boss becomes more and more like a dps golem

since the boss will only channel 9(?) times, the stacking defiance buff is meant to give overperforming groups some semblance of diminishing returns. however, the channel alone (plus windup the boss does before executing a mechanic) is probably enough time for these groups to make most of the progress towards the next "phase" (channel), even if they fail cc, where the debuff placed on a player by the summoned aspect does not seem to notably reduce their output anyways

maybe the boss would play a little differently if it followed a cycle where the channel is not dictated by %hp thresholds, giving lower performance groups more windows to chip away at the bosses hp, while giving higher performance groups something resembling a bit less of a dps golem

[Bakeneko.5826]

13 hours ago, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

boss channels every 10% and is a sitting duck while channeling and also afterwards if cc'd. its a fight thats heavily trivialised by high dps, pretty much like sunqua where you skip whole entire mechanics. at t4, the group only needs to chow through 2.6 mil hp before the boss is forced to stand still and channel again (giving ideal conditions to reach next 2.6 mil target). its a bit more obvious in t1 where each 10% is only 1.8 mil hp. so at certain dps thresholds, the boss becomes more and more like a dps golem

since the boss will only channel 9(?) times, the stacking defiance buff is meant to give overperforming groups some semblance of diminishing returns. however, the channel alone (plus windup the boss does before executing a mechanic) is probably enough time for these groups to make most of the progress towards the next "phase" (channel), even if they fail cc, where the debuff placed on a player by the summoned aspect does not seem to notably reduce their output anyways

maybe the boss would play a little differently if it followed a cycle where the channel is not dictated by %hp thresholds, giving lower performance groups more windows to chip away at the bosses hp, while giving higher performance groups something resembling a bit less of a dps golem

To be honest, trip to the boss is worst part of that fractal (again). I am hoping, that CM skips it like it does on SP

[PacoXI.7690]

Haven't seen many people complaining about the HP express how long they think the fight should be, especially when it's a fractal with essential one encounter. 

 

I've done it on every tier at this point just to see if the HP felt off on any OG them, feels fine with a proficienct group. Groups not asked take long, as expected. I'm trying to see the issue with the HP, not getting their though. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

42 minutes ago, PacoXI.7690 said:

Haven't seen many people complaining about the HP express how long they think the fight should be, especially when it's a fractal with essential one encounter. 

 

I've done it on every tier at this point just to see if the HP felt off on any OG them, feels fine with a proficienct group. Groups not asked take long, as expected. I'm trying to see the issue with the HP, not getting their though. 

the issue that players are repeatedly pointing out is that tier 1, 2, and 3 groups aren't "proficient groups", and they're not designed to be. yet this keeps getting used as an argument for why the boss's health is fine in the lower tiers, like these groups should somehow be experienced already.

 

your average t3 pug group has no healer, no boons, and 5k dps damage builds for the whole party, so the boss literally takes 15-20 minutes when pugging. however, too many of those commenting are approaching it from the viewpoint of a static or guild group or t4 group doing recs and not thinking about what its like for newer players who are trying to learn the game mode and still getting geared up with impartial builds and lack of experience.

 

since its a single boss fractal, it shouldn't be any longer than bloomhunger, mai train, and so on. at the very worst it should only take as long as solid ocean, which is already considered the slowest and most boring boss fractal.

Edited July 6, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Zohane.7208]

I just went in on t1 (25) with a team of random pugs (standard team build: hfb, alacdps (rene) and 3 dps). The boss fight took all of 5 minutes. From start of fractal: 11 minutes.

As always it seems that with just a bit of practice such that we learn the mechanics the fight becomes pretty normal for a "modern" fractal.

[PacoXI.7690]

2 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

the issue that players are repeatedly pointing out is that tier 1, 2, and 3 groups aren't "proficient groups", and they're not designed to be. yet this keeps getting used as an argument for why the boss's health is fine in the lower tiers, like these groups should somehow be experienced already.

 

your average t3 pug group has no healer, no boons, and 5k dps damage builds for the whole party, so the boss literally takes 15-20 minutes when pugging. however, too many of those commenting are approaching it from the viewpoint of a static or guild group or t4 group doing recs and not thinking about what its like for newer players who are trying to learn the game mode and still getting geared up with impartial builds and lack of experience.

 

since its a single boss fractal, it shouldn't be any longer than bloomhunger, mai train, and so on. at the very worst it should only take as long as solid ocean, which is already considered the slowest and most boring boss fractal.

How are lower tier supposed to learn that things like boons are valuable if encounters aren't designed to promote those things? Lower tier players will see that the boss is taking a while or mechanics are getting messy. That (should) prompt them to reexamine their builds. The game presents a challenge and the play uses the tools given to beat it. 

 

Mechanics at tier 1-3 are not overly punishing while not just letting players skirt pass them without a little bit of effort. I think that's fair.