Mob difficulty core tyria vs expansions

[AliamRationem.5172]

53 minutes ago, jason.1083 said:

I wouldn't even say that the smoke field is a bad design. Really the only bad thing in terms of how mobs work in the game imo is that they get invulnerable once they're out of their patrol range, so you can have situations where they agro on you, come over, attack once and then run away with invulnerability. 

Which is obviously not a mechanic of specific enemies rather than how the game works, but it's the only really annoying thing. 

I think it's fine for Mordrem Punishers or Svanir Brutes to oneshot, or smokescales have as much dodging and blinding capacity as they do because they are supposed to be difficult and annoying like that maybe except the part where they can do their chain attacks when you're on a flying mount above them and dismount you while you can literally do nothing about it. And to add to that I'll point my finger to the canids, because when they borrow themselves to attack you from underneath they essentially tether themselves to you and have infinite range, you can mount up in the meantime and travel across the map and they will still come out from the ground underneath you. 

 

Can't say I'm a fan of enemies that become impossible to hit for extended periods of time.  Call it whatever you want.  This includes smokescales that become invulnerable after leaving their smoke field, griffons that fly around evading, canids and worms that burrow underground and then pop up a mile away, and mordrem desolators that just randomly decide when you get to hurt them.  I much prefer enemies with mechanics that can be countered and don't just waste a bunch of time forcing the player to wait them out.

[SlayerXX.7138]

12 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Disagree that this is poor design (except for the smokescale blind field).  I could describe multiple methods for handling all of these enemies, but it's not going to convince you.  Just wanted to say I love HoT design all-around and wish they still designed maps that way.

Smokescale doesn't even blind you, it is just in Permadodge while in the smokefield. HoT mobs are overdesigned and feel like they are not playtested as a whole. Like you need to switch your loadout every 10 meters. Bristle back require a reflect to beat. I think you can equip a range weapon and strife with swiftness?, but that feels more like an exploit instead of game design. Pocket Raptor punish the lack of an AoE weapon. On release of HoT people were better equipped, because they all were 80 for a while. Playing as new player through HoT now with a "fresh" 80 is some high jump in difficulty. Now at least there is season 1 for free, as I got into the game it was core->HoT. I think I rolled up in Yellow trinkets and god knows what gear.
HoT graphic Design is one of the best. Peak animation clarity. The veteran Vine event Dinosaur in auric basin(not the one who runs away) is one of the best mobs. Every animation is so clear and self explanatory.
I would like more difficult OW, but not as the base line, but with obvious dangerous zones that communicate to the player to be prepared. So they can be mostly avoided by Player who don't want to get too sweaty.

[Endaris.1452]

Being familiar with LS2/Silverwastes definitely helps as a bridge.

There are some mobs native to both Silverwastes and HoT and if you already know your way around Mordrem Trolls, Teragriffs and Leeching Thrashers that's a couple dangerous mobs less you have to get familiar with in HoT.

Overall HoT mainly emphasizes interactivity with your opponents.
In core Tyria you can basically just button-mash slaughter your way through almost everything as enemies attack slowly, don't really pack a punch, don't CC you and don't really try to survive. Dodging becomes more of a "style point" thing as you can mostly straight up murder everything without issues.
In HoT stuff jumps around, CCs you, tries to heal itself and packs a punch. At the start it hurts a lot, yes, but once you get familiar with the specifics of each mob type, they become exceedingly predictable and thus as easy to deal with as any other mob. But the dodge button is certainly more of a necessity than in core Tyria.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Smokescale doesn't even blind you, it is just in Permadodge while in the smokefield. HoT mobs are overdesigned and feel like they are not playtested as a whole. Like you need to switch your loadout every 10 meters. Bristle back require a reflect to beat. I think you can equip a range weapon and strife with swiftness?, but that feels more like an exploit instead of game design. Pocket Raptor punish the lack of an AoE weapon. On release of HoT people were better equipped, because they all were 80 for a while. Playing as new player through HoT now with a "fresh" 80 is some high jump in difficulty. Now at least there is season 1 for free, as I got into the game it was core->HoT. I think I rolled up in Yellow trinkets and god knows what gear.
HoT graphic Design is one of the best. Peak animation clarity. The veteran Vine event Dinosaur in auric basin(not the one who runs away) is one of the best mobs. Every animation is so clear and self explanatory.
I would like more difficult OW, but not as the base line, but with obvious dangerous zones that communicate to the player to be prepared. So they can be mostly avoided by Player who don't want to get too sweaty.

Bristlebacks do not require reflect to beat.  Most classes have access to some form of channeled block, invuln, damage-to-healing, additional evades, etc. which can be chained together with the standard dodge to avoid all damage for several seconds.  Bristlebacks also have a breakbar, which will stop the projectile attack and stun them for 5 seconds.  I believe strafing at range works to avoid some of the damage as well, or simply walking/porting out of range.  You can also just brute force them if you use a high damage build (20k DPS will take them down in less than 8 seconds).  The point is every class has ways of dealing with this enemy.

Pocket raptors do punish the lack of an area damage weapon.  But you have a weapon swap (Who uses two single-target weapons?  Is that even a thing?) and barring that you have utility skills and traits.  Even on a class with no weapon swap like weaver I could kill pocket raptors all day long with no weapon equipped just by rotating in and out of fire with sunspot fire aura, burning rage, and pyromancer's puissance, dodging around with evasive arcana in fire and earth, or using utilities like fire signet and primordial stance.

HoT is a jump in difficulty, but gear isn't that important.  To illustrate the point, here's my weaver soloing Balthazar in all green gear with nothing in the build that cost more than 10 silver.  Granted a new player isn't likely to be able to do this even in exotic gear, but it's a game, you know?  There's nothing wrong with learning how to use the available skills to overcome challenges while you also work on acquiring better gear and unlocking elite specs.  Maybe a new player in random yellow/orange gear isn't going to be soloing champs, but there's no reason they can't learn to deal with the regular enemies in HoT.

As I said, this isn't likely to convince you and I like HoT, but understand that not everyone does.  That's fine.  But calling it poorly designed and then offering examples of mechanics that have multiple counters and ways of dealing with them doesn't fly with me.  To me, that's good design.  As opposed to things like mordrem desolators that just stay invuln until they feel like allowing you to kill them or enemies that just roll over and die without putting up a fight like most everything you encounter in the core game.  Call it "sweaty" if you like, but I like my games to push back enough that players feel a need to overcome by using what the game provides as opposed to just stumbling through the game pushing buttons at random.

 

[SlayerXX.7138]

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

As I said, this isn't likely to convince you and I like HoT, but understand that not everyone does.

Of course it doesn't convince me. You didn't engage with what I wrote. I'm 50% sure you falsely quoted me again instead of another person? I never said I dislike it right now, I said they are overdesigned. You or me being able to handle something proofs nothing, we have unhealthy amounts of game time. That was my point, there should be difficult parts of Maps instead of Baseline difficulty, so casuals don't get murdered in the streets and veterans can get their challenge. HoT mobs are overdesigned in the sense they are mini encounters, which is cool in Isolation, but sucks if you have a whole map of them.

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I like my games to push back enough that players feel a need to overcome by using what the game provides as opposed to just stumbling through the game pushing buttons at random.

Let assume every 10 hours playing you get a little better. How many hours have you now? How many hours does it take to reach HoT?

Edited July 10, 2023 by SlayerXX.7138

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, SlayerXX.7138 said:

Of course it doesn't convince me. You didn't engage with what I wrote. I'm 50% sure you falsely quoted me again instead of another person? I never said I dislike it right now, I said they are overdesigned. You or me being able to handle something proofs nothing, we have unhealthy amounts of game time. That was my point, there should be difficult parts of Maps instead of Baseline difficulty, so casuals don't get murdered in the streets and veterans can get their challenge. HoT mobs are overdesigned in the sense they are mini encounters, which is cool in Isolation, but sucks if you have a whole map of them.

Let assume every 10 hours playing you get a little better. How many hours have you now? How many hours does it take to reach HoT?

It doesn't fly with me. I started after HoT release and as a new player I loved the place.  I see nothing wrong with it and everything wrong with faceroll boring core maps.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

Core maps were made for people in green and yellow gear and everyone was awful at the game. Hot came out when there was a two year push to make thr playerbase better. Hot was advertised in the same vane as dark souls, watch the announcement at pax south if you do not beleive me. 

Remember late releases in core tyria were hard, teq, tripple trouble and even silverwaste pushed players to get better. Most player could not complete these encounters until anet removed the condi cap and object started to be abled to be crit. 

You have to view content at the times it was released, not under modern eyes. This is why I think LS1 is so crap. Instead of rereleasing as is, warts in all, they made changes which makes it a Frankenstein's monster of modern and 9 year old design.

[Sewedir.3027]

On 7/9/2023 at 9:43 PM, Jin.8501 said:

No it's nice. Could be even harder. Not everything has to be easy always. Spend some time learning and overcome the obstacles 

I want to roll over everything because I have exotic or ascended gear. 

4 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

It doesn't fly with me. I started after HoT release and as a new player I loved the place.  I see nothing wrong with it and everything wrong with faceroll boring core maps.

If I play Diablo and I have a full set of ancient legendaries or legendary sets I expect to roll over normal difficulties. Difficult mobs should be reserved for areas that were designed with group play in mind and for areas that are for solo players.

2 hours ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

Core maps were made for people in green and yellow gear and everyone was awful at the game. Hot came out when there was a two year push to make thr playerbase better. Hot was advertised in the same vane as dark souls, watch the announcement at pax south if you do not beleive me. 

Remember late releases in core tyria were hard, teq, tripple trouble and even silverwaste pushed players to get better. Most player could not complete these encounters until anet removed the condi cap and object started to be abled to be crit. 

You have to view content at the times it was released, not under modern eyes. This is why I think LS1 is so crap. Instead of rereleasing as is, warts in all, they made changes which makes it a Frankenstein's monster of modern and 9 year old design.

I hate dark souls. If I got good gear I expect things to be easy like in any other RPGs. If you want to make the game harder please be my quest but give us better gear. Zones shouldn't be created with the mindset that you need nearly the best gear in the game.

[Smoky.5348]

9 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

Bristlebacks do not require reflect to beat.  Most classes have access to some form of channeled block, invuln, damage-to-healing, additional evades, etc. which can be chained together with the standard dodge to avoid all damage for several seconds.  Bristlebacks also have a breakbar, which will stop the projectile attack and stun them for 5 seconds.  I believe strafing at range works to avoid some of the damage as well, or simply walking/porting out of range.  You can also just brute force them if you use a high damage build (20k DPS will take them down in less than 8 seconds).  The point is every class has ways of dealing with this enemy.

But, see, it's not that simple. It's not always a 1v1, and when it is, enemies are spaced out so that another joins the fray when you're almost done with the battle. Most any enemy is easy in a 1v1, but there's almost always multiple things coming at you. And because of that, if you need to chain skills to negate a single eight second-long projectile spam, you're going to have that much fewer skills for the next enemy who just showed up (who is prolly another of the same enemy).

For context, l always play the most defensive CC builds I can get comfortable with. Pistol-shield turret Engineer is my safest class with a reflect, a knockback, a block, three knockdowns, and three healing skills that can combo with explosions for more healing (with a fourth non-combo heal for good measure). And, I came up with this build fighting through Core Tyria. Is that efficient? Prolly not, but any other engineer build feels too vulnerable. Using all that, I can handle HoT. For sure. But, I'm still scrambling and exhausting all those options if I get a little swarmed because I need all those options. And if l go down, it never feels fair. It feels like a Smokescale jumped me after I used up my shield skills and l couldn't get a turret out in time. It feels like a bunch of Bristlebacks were watching the fight offscreen and each waltzed in at the least opportune times. It feels like I lost over half my health out of nowhere, and now I need to heal it all back ASAP or else the non-chip chip-damage will put me under.

I should be struggling because the enemies are difficult, not because they are unfair. They should not have both high damage and attack mechanics that lead to high damage. Just nerf the damage to reasonable levels. A common enemy should not kill me from high health with a single attack skill! Enemy encounters can be challenging without every attack hitting like a truck. It's for that reason why I much prefer fighting enemies around PoF; they won't effectively one-shot me in spite of my defensive build tendencies.

[AliamRationem.5172]

11 minutes ago, Smoky.5348 said:

But, see, it's not that simple. It's not always a 1v1, and when it is, enemies are spaced out so that another joins the fray when you're almost done with the battle. Most any enemy is easy in a 1v1, but there's almost always multiple things coming at you. And because of that, if you need to chain skills to negate a single eight second-long projectile spam, you're going to have that much fewer skills for the next enemy who just showed up (who is prolly another of the same enemy).

For context, l always play the most defensive CC builds I can get comfortable with. Pistol-shield turret Engineer is my safest class with a reflect, a knockback, a block, three knockdowns, and three healing skills that can combo with explosions for more healing (with a fourth non-combo heal for good measure). And, I came up with this build fighting through Core Tyria. Is that efficient? Prolly not, but any other engineer build feels too vulnerable. Using all that, I can handle HoT. For sure. But, I'm still scrambling and exhausting all those options if I get a little swarmed because I need all those options. And if l go down, it never feels fair. It feels like a Smokescale jumped me after I used up my shield skills and l couldn't get a turret out in time. It feels like a bunch of Bristlebacks were watching the fight offscreen and each waltzed in at the least opportune times. It feels like I lost over half my health out of nowhere, and now I need to heal it all back ASAP or else the non-chip chip-damage will put me under.

I should be struggling because the enemies are difficult, not because they are unfair. They should not have both high damage and attack mechanics that lead to high damage. Just nerf the damage to reasonable levels. A common enemy should not kill me from high health with a single attack skill! Enemy encounters can be challenging without every attack hitting like a truck. It's for that reason why I much prefer fighting enemies around PoF; they won't effectively one-shot me in spite of my defensive build tendencies.

I don't mean to be insulting, but building too defensively is not something that the game needs to fix on their end.  As a pistol/shield turret engi you have more than enough CC, healing, block and reflect available to handle whatever the game throws at you.  However, if you're taking way too long to kill enemies and instead relying on health and armor to stay alive, then some enemies are going to be much more of a problem than they should be.  I'm not going to tell you how you should build, but there are ways to craft high sustain builds that also deal plenty of damage to dispose of dangerous enemies quickly without having to use up all your defensive cooldowns.

Here's a sample clip of my favorite open world weaver build handling some veteran smokescales and bristlebacks while employing different tactics: 

This is a celestial build, so there's plenty of healing, armor, and health on it.  I also have focus offhand which is a defensive weapon much like your shield.  But my trait and utility selection are very offense-oriented and I'm able to quickly stack might on myself to boost damage.  The result is a balanced build that can pump out great damage while also having the sustain to handle basically anything.

Personally, I would be very disappointed if creating builds like this felt like a pointless exercise because nothing deals enough damage to be a threat or requires utilizing any defensive cooldowns to survive.  Likewise, if enemies didn't feel threatening enough that you really feel the need to eliminate them as quickly as possible.  For me, that's what makes playing a build like this in a place like HoT so much fun.

[The Boz.2038]

HoT is a huge spike, the enemies in it are design to make your life miserable, because it is from a time when ANet thought "let's get players to group up to play this open world content" was a grand idea.
PoF and EoD mobs are significantly easier to tackle, even if some of them are still annoying as heck.

Bristlebacks have no redeeming qualities; they are a binary check that just makes you wanna not engage with them any more.
Arrowheads would be *awesome*, if their telegraphs worked properly. Sadly, they do not, and have not since release, so eh...
Rolling devils are outright badly designed. It's as if they are begging to be counterable, but are just not.
Etc.

inb4 "git good": It is possible to have no trouble beating content and still realizing said content is badly made. It's called "being good", lol.

[AliamRationem.5172]

17 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

HoT is a huge spike, the enemies in it are design to make your life miserable, because it is from a time when ANet thought "let's get players to group up to play this open world content" was a grand idea.
PoF and EoD mobs are significantly easier to tackle, even if some of them are still annoying as heck.

Bristlebacks have no redeeming qualities; they are a binary check that just makes you wanna not engage with them any more.
Arrowheads would be *awesome*, if their telegraphs worked properly. Sadly, they do not, and have not since release, so eh...
Rolling devils are outright badly designed. It's as if they are begging to be counterable, but are just not.
Etc.

inb4 "git good": It is possible to have no trouble beating content and still realizing said content is badly made. It's called "being good", lol.

100% "git gud".  Content is not "badly made" just because you say it is and your claims are objectively false.  

How do arrowhead telegraphs not work properly?  Take a look at this clip and tell me where the telegraphs aren't working properly.

Bristlebacks are a "binary check"?  What does that even mean?  Are we going with the claim that you need projectile hate to defeat them?  Again, look at the video above.  Do you see the kills using breakbar or chaining evades without utilizing projectile hate?  I use a melee build or I could have also shown you ranged strafing or simply moving out of range to counter them as well.  What's binary about it?

Rolling devils are countered by CC.  They are intentionally weak to it and will literally roll over and let you kill them if you CC them.  Also, like many HoT enemies they don't have much health so you can take them down quickly by playing aggressively.  But like pocket raptors, if you just run around like a chicken with your head cut off trying to escape then they will probably run you down and kill you.

If you're saying you don't like HoT, that's fine.  But that doesn't make it poorly designed.  All of these enemies have counters you can use to deal with them.

[Passerbye.6291]

If difficulty is to be adjusted, I'd go for a gradual progression of difficulty in core maps instead of lowering HoT or any other map. There is no map in this game that is too hard. HoT mobs are really well designed for the most part with the exception of things that just needlessly drag out a fight with no way for you to engage. Other than those however, almost every single mob can be beaten with relative ease so long as you know what you are doing, and yes, this includes champion hero points etc. Famous examples of this being toad HP in VB, balthazar HP in AB. etc. There are very few exceptions to this and it often comes down to just learning the mechanics of any given mob. 
You are not supposed to walk into HoT and roll your face over all sorts of mobs, the game somewhat forces you to learn and understand what is happening on your screen, and that is a very good thing.

I do wish that the ramp up in difficulty was more gradual though, because as it stands, you basically learn to shut your brain off and face tank everything across the entire core game, instead of learning to understand and deal with mechanics, resulting in this awkward situation of some new players struggling in HoT.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 minute ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

If difficulty is to be adjusted, I'd go for a gradual progression of difficulty in core maps instead of lowering HoT or any other map. There is no map in this game that is too hard. HoT mobs are really well designed for the most part with the exception of things that just needlessly drag out a fight with no way for you to engage. Other than those however, almost every single mob can be beaten with relative ease so long as you know what you are doing, and yes, this includes champion hero points etc. Famous examples of this being toad HP in VB, balthazar HP in AB. etc. There are very few exceptions to this and it often comes down to just learning the mechanics of any given mob. 
You are not supposed to walk into HoT and roll your face over all sorts of mobs, the game somewhat forces you to learn and understand what is happening on your screen, and that is a very good thing.

I do wish that the ramp up in difficulty was more gradual though, because as it stands, you basically learn to shut your brain off and face tank everything across the entire core game, instead of learning to understand and deal with mechanics.

I'd be behind that.  The core game is extremely dull in part due to how weak the enemies are and how many of them don't really do anything that requires you to utilize skills to overcome them.  Then you get to HoT and nearly every mob is designed with that in mind.

[Passerbye.6291]

6 minutes ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'd be behind that.  The core game is extremely dull in part due to how weak the enemies are and how many of them don't really do anything that requires you to utilize skills to overcome them.  Then you get to HoT and nearly every mob is designed with that in mind.

When, I first started the game, I was almost entirely a solo player, I lacked the awareness necessary to deal with a lot of condis, and react dynamically to things. I partly attribute this to starting the game as a minion reaper as many people suggested to be the easiest, most faceroll class at the time and it was. But it, over the course of my gameplay, taught me to ignore basically everything, this also bored me to the point of quitting the game. I later got into playing classes like scourge, renegade, mirage which had varying levels of difficulty to them regarding soloing content. But once I was out of the mentality of IGNORE EVERYTHING!, I found HoT mobs to be an absolute joy, I went into this frenzy of soloing anything and everything ranging from HP champions to legendary bounties, then real group content. Honestly, I would wish a similar experience for everyone, and I really hope this opportunity is not taken away from anyone by making expansion maps dull like most core content. 

A lot of the mob types people tend to hate teach you to be a better, more aware player, and we could definitely use more of that around here, not less.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[Dante.1508]

Its all the CC.. CC is so toxic.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/9/2023 at 10:35 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Core dps specs did what, like 15-20K? Yeah we're up to 40K+ nowadays. It's not so much that mob "difficulty" spiked as it was keeping them interesting to fight because of Anet doubling down on power creep.

More like 20-25k, and that was mainly because there was no access to perma quickness and alac yet. Original benches from early HoT weren't all that great either (apart from occasional stuff like tempest 49k large hitbox bench, reapers getting to 60k due to jagged horrors fun, or initial burnzerker stacking, but the two latter cases got hit with nerfhammer quite fast)

[vares.8457]

2 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

Its all the CC.. CC is so toxic.

Maybe try and use your skills. The CC in the game is fine. 

Edited July 11, 2023 by vares.8457

[kharmin.7683]

37 minutes ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

If difficulty is to be adjusted, I'd go for a gradual progression of difficulty in core maps instead of lowering HoT or any other map. There is no map in this game that is too hard. HoT mobs are really well designed for the most part with the exception of things that just needlessly drag out a fight with no way for you to engage. Other than those however, almost every single mob can be beaten with relative ease so long as you know what you are doing, and yes, this includes champion hero points etc. Famous examples of this being toad HP in VB, balthazar HP in AB. etc. There are very few exceptions to this and it often comes down to just learning the mechanics of any given mob. 
You are not supposed to walk into HoT and roll your face over all sorts of mobs, the game somewhat forces you to learn and understand what is happening on your screen, and that is a very good thing.

I do wish that the ramp up in difficulty was more gradual though, because as it stands, you basically learn to shut your brain off and face tank everything across the entire core game, instead of learning to understand and deal with mechanics, resulting in this awkward situation of some new players struggling in HoT.

Wasn't that how Orr was at launch and it ended up getting nerfed?

[Dante.1508]

10 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Maybe try and use your skills. The CC in the game is fine. 

Yes tell that to 500 raptors spiking you at once and 3-4 frogs immune to all your attacks while CCing you constantly putting your skills on cooldown.

8 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Wasn't that how Orr was at launch and it ended up getting nerfed?

Yes exactly it was. Because it was unplayable solo.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Dante.1508

[vares.8457]

5 minutes ago, Dante.1508 said:

Yes tell that to 500 raptors spiking you at once and 3-4 frogs immune to all your attacks while CCing you constantly putting your skills on cooldown.

I never have problems in HoT maps, they are far from being too difficult. Seems to be a personal skill issue. 

[Passerbye.6291]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Wasn't that how Orr was at launch and it ended up getting nerfed?

I don't think I was around back then. But overall, I find quite a lot of the nerfs to difficulty unnecessary. For instance, on EoD release, end of dragons meta was a huge issue in terms of difficulty due to failures and quite a lot of people were complaining despite the fact that after doing the math, a group of streamers (haven't done the math on it myself mind you) stated that it required an average of 7.5k dps or something along those lines to complete and they ended up getting called toxic elitists. To me, this made absolutely no sense, considering the fact that 7.5k is less than auto attack damage for quite a few builds even without boons. Imo, all the end of dragons meta required was getting rid of the RNG on soo won becoming invulnerable for prolonged periods of time if you were unlucky. 

As a playerbase, we are very quick to ask for nerfs to difficulty, refusing to adapt in any way, shape or form. I really refuse to believe that people, with few exceptions, are incapable of doing most of the content this game has to offer.  We're often unwilling to improve ourselves as it is much easier to find fault at the difficulty itself. Call me oldschool but we used to strive to achieve results in games, instead of going the route of "I'm a single father of 8 and I only have 4 minutes to play a day, I demand legendary gear to be delivered via mail by next Thursday, I paid for the game!". Hyperbole aside, I'm pretty sure we're aware of the existence of this type of players and the sheer number of them.

It often doesn't even come down to how high your DPS is btw. For instance, take the whole turtle (tortoise?) mount fiasco on EoD release, where people cried bloody murder about having to do kaineng overlook strike for it, saying how it was too difficult for some and that it should not be a requirement. Meanwhile, I healed this group of people through kaineng overlook while explaining mechanics in the middle of the run and we killed it first pull. Now, people are probably thinking, just because you got lucky with a good group doesn't mean the content was easy. Except I was the only one who was remotely aware of the mechanics, and even then we still ignored the sniper CC phase, making anyone who got targeted by the attack go down and resurrect them. And to prove that it wasn't an exceptional group, the run itself took 1 hour 24 minutes, the highest dps was 1.5k. All we had as a group was the determination to see things through. I still keep the anonymous dps report around since it was by far the weirdest run I had ever been a part of :).

Edited July 11, 2023 by Passerbye.6291

[AliamRationem.5172]

5 minutes ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

I don't think I was around back then. But overall, I find quite a lot of the nerfs to difficulty unnecessary. For instance, on EoD release, end of dragons meta was a huge issue in terms of difficulty due to failures and quite a lot of people were complaining despite the fact that after doing the math, a group of streamers (haven't done the math on it myself mind you) stated that it required an average of 7.5k dps or something along those lines to complete and they ended up getting called toxic elitists. To me, this made absolutely no sense, considering the fact that 7.5k is less than auto attack damage for quite a few builds even without boons. Imo, all the end of dragons meta required was getting rid of the RNG on soo won becoming invulnerable for prolonged periods of time if you were unlucky. 

As a playerbase, we are very quick to ask for nerfs to difficulty, refusing to adapt in any way, shape or form. I really refuse to believe that people, with few exceptions, are incapable of doing most of the content this game has to offer.  We're often unwilling to improve ourselves as it is much easier to find fault at the difficulty itself. Call me oldschool but we used to strive to achieve results in games, instead of going the route of "I'm a single father of 8 and I only have 4 minutes to play a day, I demand legendary gear to be delivered via mail by next Thursday, I paid for the game!". Hyperbole aside, I'm pretty sure we're aware of the existence of this type of players and the sheer number of them.

It often doesn't even come down to how high a DPS you do btw. For instance, take the whole turtle (tortoise?) mount fiasco on EoD release, where people cried bloody murder about having to do kaineng overlook strike for it, seeing how it was too difficult for some and that it should not be a requirement. Meanwhile, I healed this group of people through kaineng overlook while explaining mechanics in the middle of the run and we killed it first pull. Now, people are probably thinking, just because you got lucky with a good group doesn't mean the content was easy. Except I was the only one who was remotely aware of the mechanics, and even then we still ignored the sniper CC phase, making anyone who got targeted by the attack go down and resurrect them. And to prove that it wasn't an exceptional group, the run itself took 1 hour 24 minutes, the highest dps was 1.5k. All we had as a group was the determination to see things through. I still keep the anonymous dps report around since it was by far the weirdest run I had ever been a part of :).

I'm not sure how you can put any faith in the 7.5k value while at the same time acknowledging the highly variable DPS uptime during the fight.  How could that be accurate? 

Having said that, I agree that the solution was to reduce the variability.  This goes back to the concept that enemies having random periods of invulnerability where they decide when you are allowed to attack them (e.g. mordrem desolators, griffons, etc.) is poor design.  If you're going to have variable invuln periods (as opposed to invuln periods that are predictable and part of the fight mechanics), then they should only be variable based upon factors players can control.  For example, if mordrem desolators were invulnerable until you CC their breakbar, that would be acceptable by this logic.  That player input appears to have no impact on their behavior makes them poorly designed.

The same applied to the Soo-Won fight.  Since her attack queue appeared to be random, she could sometimes string together invuln periods with no way for players to impact that behavior.  It was a legitimate complaint, regardless of the overall tuning of the fight.

[Passerbye.6291]

1 minute ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I'm not sure how you can put any faith in the 7.5k value while at the same time acknowledging the highly variable DPS uptime during the fight.  How could that be accurate? 

I think it was after they fixed the variability. But as said, I haven't done the math myself, it was meant to serve more as a general ballpark. The point I was trying to get across was that, it didn't require fully fleshed out raid builds or perfect rotations to complete the event, just a very basic level of understanding and earnest participation by the people involved, as opposed to the usual graveyard of tombstones refusing to resurrect, hoping that others do the dirty work for them.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Passerbye.6291 said:

I think it was after they fixed the variability. But as said, I haven't done the math myself, it was meant to serve more as a general ballpark. The point I was trying to get across was that, it didn't require fully fleshed out raid builds or perfect rotations to complete the event, just a very basic level of understanding and earnest participation by the people involved, as opposed to the usual graveyard of tombstones refusing to resurrect, hoping that others do the dirty work for them.

IIRC those calculations were made with a ballpark DPS uptime of 12 minutes (considering invulns, spread phases, etc).