Into the Spider Lair - Why I think the boss is badly designed.

[Impirias.2137]

DISCLAIMER: The post below will contain spoilers for the end of the Meta Event in Inner Nayos, related to the end of the SotO expansion. Read at your own risk.

Hello,

I would like to start this out by mentioning that I sadly was occupied during the actual release of the last chapter of SotO, and have come back right as Janthir is launching. Still, I wanted to finish the tale of the wizards and funky "aliens" first, so off I went to see what was added to inner Nayos.

So, apparently, the final act is a continuation of the Knaebelag fight - sweet.  I do a little bit of reading on the wiki to understand the mechanics and not be completely lost, and off I go to do the meta.

Dragon down, loot the circle of chests, get ready, and off we go with my trusty skyscale to bomb Eparch's firewall. Simple, not to tedious, overall - decent mechanic, considering that it's followed up with eyeball popping. No problem whatsoever there, and Vialgos isn't too difficult either. And then comes the split, along with my first negative feedback.

"Stairway to hell" feels....lackluster ? Bunch of vets and elites, one side has mini watchers to kill, the other side has prisoners to free, and the rest is what honestly feels like 17 flights of useless stairs. I understand that from a "lore" perspective, we're assaulting Eparch's home and stuff, and he has all his homies gathered up, the loyalists trying to stop the rebellion type of assault. But every time I do it, regardless of how good of a group it is, it feels like I could've spent those 3-5 minutes doing something more productive with my life.

Anyway, no use crying over it, let's get to big boy Eparch himself. Big boss boy, with the usual spawn of adds and a wonky mechanic. Nothing unsseen with a world boss or meta event final boss. Now, what I say next comes from the perspective of someone who has done every meta and world boss throughout base game and the expansions, but it is still very much my own opinion and I do not in any way believe my aforementioned opinion is subjectively more correct to that of the devs or perhaps more experienced players. 

1 - The "Buff" pools. So, these are "double-edged" buffs that players can pick up, granting them a positive and negative effect. The bad part here is that once you roll through one of these, you get it for a little over a minute, in which you cannot replace it if you roll through another one (Either I have somehow not succeeded in doing so in the roughly 10 events I've done these past couple of days, or it really is like this, so again, apologies if I have been left with the wrong impression of this mechanic.). Here the design is bad in my opinion, because any inexperienced player will have no idea what the pools are, and even though I believe the playerbase of this MMO is not the kind that overlooks details or shy's away from from opening a wiki to read a mechanic, there will be those that are clueless to what exactly they are buffing themselves with. Glasscannon DPS picks up a Rage attunement and suddenly they are on the floor. The intuitivity of the mechanic is missing, unlike other meta events I've been a part of, where It was perfectly fine to do with randoms. Maybe include a stat icon that players may recognise more easily, or something for a bit more clarity. And as a solely personal preference, unrelated to other metas or bosses - why must there be a downside ? Taking into the perspective the whole fight, having a free buff to help with no downsides just feels a bit better to me, especially in instances of smaller groups doing the meta.

2 - Bullet Hell. If I didn't know better, I would like to describe the dot pools and the moving damaging walls with a plethora of obscenities and vulgar bad words, but of course, this is not the place for it. Instead, I would like to enquire on why is it so important to include such a multitude of obstacles on a relatively small boss arena, where the group needs to maintain their attunements, damage the boss and deal with the rifts already.  If it was a raid or a strike or fractal with a limited amount of people, the clarity of it wouldn't be as much of a problem, but when you have  nearly everyone on the map instance in the boss room, using their skills, pop-up holes on the ground become a particular problem. I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of my Reaper and how to use his kit to deal damage and tank a few hits here and there. But in my limited experience, I've noticed two things happening:
A - more squishy DPS characters getting downed, and taking another person down with them, as that second person tried to get them up.
B - People focusing on dodging the various high-damage garbage being thrown in the room, and not being able to focus on doing damage to Eparch or to the rift mobs.
Considering that the arena is Eparch's mom's basement, the pop-up pools and the damaging waves feel a little too much. Maybe put them as a "turn" that follows the rift closures, Ignaxious had a simple design of DPS>Hide behind Pillar> DPS taking turns.

3 - Personal Lore gripe. WHY ARE WE FIGHTING EPARCH, THE LITERAL KING OF THE DEMON REALM IN A BASEMENT ???? Ok, this one has very little to do with the boss fight itself, as my opinion is that the arena is fairly small for the encounter. Definitely feels smaller than Soo-Won's for example. Like, I get that Cerus was the poster boy for SotO, so his story-instanced fight and the temple of Febe strike mission honestly LOOK better. Why couldn't we fight Eparch in a massive throne room, befitting an actual king ?  With him turning into the giant scorpion, I even see the opportunity of him straight up teleporting the group to a desert arena (The PoF assets are right there, since so many other assets were reused in this expansion.) Not saying to copy something from a different game, but the only way I can best describe the idea I have stirring in my head is the Radahn boss fight in Caelid from Elden Ring.

Anyway, I felt like I needed to get that off my chest, after failing half of the attempted meta events this week. Luckily I haven't failed all of them, but it just left a bad aftertaste, unlike ever before.

P.S.: Sorry in advance for any nonsensical phrasings. I'm a little tired and English is not my first language.

[Hotride.2187]

I had a few map mastery achievements left to do, 2 in inner nayos. So recently I returned to it and joined the meta a few times. Oh boy.

At launch, as is usual, the "hardcore" players play, so the metas I joined were OK. Players on support builds, players doing solid dps, etc.. So I didnt pay much attention to the forum complaints - this wasnt soo woon 2, where it was organized group AND high failure chance at launch.

Now that I was back, oh dear. I dunno if there are organized groups for this meta (for dragons end I know, having had to join them), maybe for those groups the meta is fine, like it was for me on its launch. But for just some tag filling the map (well, 2 tags)... oh dear. No successful attempt, not even remotely close.

Though I did try the meta on Sunday, maybe that also played a role (generally more casual players on weekends).

Plenty of confused players asking in the map chat "is this meta always like this".

Just as a disclaimer, I dont care about the meta either way, just wondering whats the purpose of an outlier like this meta.

Edited September 6 by Hotride.2187

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

It's not a basement bro it's a LAIR ok?

[Blacksarevok.8104]

you can remove your pool buff if you stand in the fountain that clears the consumed buff

[Randulf.7614]

As said above, there are fountains round the edge. These clear the corruption rebuff you get, but also remove any buffs you get from the pools. The commander leading any of your groups should have explained this - normally they did when I used to do the meta

I agree it’s too much visual noise and the adds spawn too quickly. It’s needs a bit more time between adds and a defiance bar that can be broken. Since Anet are gleefully obsessed to unhealthy levels with increasing the visual noise, they won’t be toning it down.

I am a bit surprised it’s not been slightly tweaked already, but I don’t know what success rates are like over the past month 

[Skub.8240]

The visual noise wouldn't even be as bad if some of it was less red. Dodging red AOEs and Red waves on a red floor in a hazy red room while red enemies swarm in through portals and a giant red boss fills up like 80% of the red makes the red too red.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 9/7/2024 at 6:29 PM, Blacksarevok.8104 said:

you can remove your pool buff if you stand in the fountain that clears the consumed buff

And in case you missed them, it's the red fountains filled with red liquid, on red floor in red room, illuminated by red light. With no other marking whatsoever, and no explanation to their function, unless you don't actually have any buffs to remove and happen to get targeted by a specific mechanic most players will likely not be hit with.

[Sjentra.3409]

I kinda figured this would be DOA after the first few weeks because there's no time slot and having to do 2 other metas before it is basically a death sentence.

I know i will never be going back even if they added a guaranteed infusion every week

[Pinkeh.4207]

I usually do the events leading up to the spider (as it is good XP). Then i leave and won't waste my time on Eparch.

If i want the map currency for nayos i can just do the flappy bird and demon knight with guaranteed success.

Edited September 10 by Pinkeh.4207

[asket.5674]

This meta just pays off if you are lucky to get least 30 semi competent players or run it with an organized squad. Eparch could easily have 50% hp less and still be spongebob but at least not that of a bore.

[Eekasqueak.7850]

Yeah the boss arena especially is just dreadful, and they really overdid it with the amount of stuff thrown on screen when you fight him.

[QueenKeriti.5176]

Looks like they may have nerfed him a little in the patch notes. Anyone who does it on an updated Nayos map, please post if there was improvement because I probably won't have time to try until weekend 🤣

[Astralporing.1957]

Although i can't miss the fact that the "nerf" touched none of the main issues with this fight. I mean, yes, the boss HPs were overblown (this is basically a norm nowadays, tbh), but it was a relatively minor issue compared to the whole set of design failures that have been already commented on in this (and other) thread.

[nosleepdemon.1368]

As someone who did this meta largely blind and experienced a failure that would have been a success with maybe 20 more seconds on the clock, I agree with you. I had no idea that the buff pools were what was ticking my hp down when I was trying to do damage - I was too busy avoiding all the aoe and moving damage walls and trying to close rifts and stop the champs and take down break bars. That entire fight is a clusterkitten. It wasn't until the final encounter where, absent of any obvious other sources of damage, I had a moment to check wtf those rage 'buffs' were doing and was then able to avoid them.

[nosleepdemon.1368]

18 hours ago, Sjentra.3409 said:

I kinda figured this would be DOA after the first few weeks because there's no time slot and having to do 2 other metas before it is basically a death sentence.

I know i will never be going back even if they added a guaranteed infusion every week

This is another issue with it - you need to get lucky with LFG before you even reach the other problems because it is not on a timer.