Serpents' Ire is too reliant on population.

[Venusama.5103]

Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

[Venusama.5103]

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

And has anyone actually witnessed successful runs with low player population?

[Tiger Ashante.1792]

Yes it's reliant on population but also this meta scales horribly and requires absolute precision and massive amount of CC's. I have made a post myself about it, asking Anet to tone it down as it's been 100% fail the 20+ times i've tried it, both with full squads and smaller groups.The massive reliance on CC's means players are having to sacrifice dps and this meta is both CC and dps check. Most awful and unbalanced meta in the entire game imo. I guess Maw in Desolation isn't much better as i never see anyone doing it.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

Defeating one of the zealots in phase 1 is entirely possible with 3 to 5. But beyond that I don't know. You would definitely need to treat it like youre playing high tier fractals.

Scaling I'm unsure about in phase 2, its definitely the hardest. Cant say I ever got there where i knew what other people brought.

The maw in the desolation has a similar requirement. I believe it is definitely possible with just 15, but because its not popular no one relly tries that.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@"Tiger Ashante.1792" said:Yes it's reliant on population but also this meta scales horribly and requires absolute precision and massive amount of CC's. I have made a post myself about it, asking Anet to tone it down as it's been 100% fail the 20+ times i've tried it, both with full squads and smaller groups.The massive reliance on CC's means players are having to sacrifice dps and this meta is both CC and dps check. Most awful and unbalanced meta in the entire game imo. I guess Maw in Desolation isn't much better as i never see anyone doing it.

Considering that maps have beaten the CC phase with the bar at half, I’d say DPS is not the issue. CC’ing the bosses is critical so that they can be killed. They do burn fairly quickly.

For those looking to do the meta:

https://forums.ttsgamers.com/topic/2989-serpents-ire-guide/

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

Scaling ist not good and the biggest problem is the reward from the meta. Reward ist underwhelming and because of that no one will play this event.The most player playing this needs something for a collection. for example mark y golem backback.i tried this event today 3 times and we failed 3 times because we were not enough players to control all 5 points around the lake.Sunday and not enough players ... there where 3 bounty trains on the same map. But when bounties are more rewarding then a meta, then something is wrong with the meta event.The first part is boring as hell. fly around and find 5 champions and then you get destroyed because you have not enough players. thats not fun. this meta event needs a big overall change.

[mercury ranique.2170]

I disagree. This has nothing to do with scaling. Off course you need some amount of people (20 is more then fine) But after that scaling works fine. The main issue is that you need 20 people who are cooperative and all others need to work along. I dont see How this is different from tripple trouble and tequatl,

I also see a huge difference between EU and NA. EU has two big communities who run content like serpent’s Ire, tripple trouble, tequatl and dragon stand on a regular base (and always succesfull). In NA this is not the case and the root cause why it is a lot harder. In the current state, EU is a lot more succesfull at this type of content.

[Lexi.1398]

Triple Trouble is successful at oceanic times (RnT) in NA, so it's not a population issue else that would fail.I'd guess that either: no oceanic guild runs serpents ire at oceanic primeOReveryones just terrible

or both. it's a difficult event that requires every single person to know what do and what their ccs are. which just doesn't happen.

scaling wise, i'd say the ideal is 40-60 people who know what they're doing (~10 people to each zealot in phase 1, they're only champion bounties so less is minimum, but around 8-10 is ideal small group). oceanic brings more than enough, if triple trouble isn't evidence enough then HoT defintiely is.

[Samnang.1879]

to be fair, numbers dont really mean success.the commander also has to explain to the people what cc to bring etc to make this meta successful. i kind of like it. it's like TD meta where u need to organize stuff and not just press 1 all the time... thats what hearts and world bosses are for

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Ore get people too cc i noticed they prefer not to to be fair most tries i done i noticed most people rellying on auto attack

[Zaklex.6308]

@Venusama.5103 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

And has anyone actually witnessed successful runs with low player population?

I have not witnessed it, only read posts by others that have stated they successfully completed Serpents Ire with as little as 10 players, so I'm sure there's quite a bit of not following the mechanics going on here.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I ran a successful run this time last Wednesday. There are several things at play here.

In theory, you could do the event with 30-35 people. However, to accomplish this, you would essentially need a raid comp. Every zealot would need a chronobuffer to give the party continuous alacrity and quickness, and the main zerg would need capped might, fury, quickness, and other offensive buffs. The rest of the team would have to be high CC classes, and everybody in the map would need to be on a power build and be intimately familiar with a good DPS rotation.

In practice, you get 20 condi scourges, I.E. the class with the worst ramp-up and the worst CC and notorious for having the laziest players. It is unfortunate, but a lot of players are unaware of how badly CC is balanced between classes. I.E.:

The thief is my favorite class to bring to this event, because it just shreds the breakbar. Choking gas does 100 bar damage every second, combined with Basilisk Venom's 750 every 40 seconds, Tripwire's 300 every 25 seconds, Palm Strike's 200 every 16 seconds, and Scorpion Wire's 150 every 20 seconds, you get a continuous scaled bar damage of roughly 150.75 every single second with hard CC alone, on top of all of the blind, weakness, and cripple it inflicts.

To compare, the standard scourge build only has 3 forms of CC: Garish Pillar (100 every 15 seconds), Charge (432 every 40 seconds), and Oppressive Collapse (200 every 20 seconds). This is a scaled bar damage of roughly 27.5 hard CC every second. The scourge can also take chilling grasp and wail of doom to raise this to 36 hard CC every second, but largely they don't.

So... my thief is roughly equivalent to five and a half scourges in regards to breakbar damage. Or, four scourges if they take better CC. Unfortunately, this event is a bit too hard to just take anyone. A single good player on a good class has the strength of several bad classes on phase 2.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

And has anyone actually witnessed successful runs with low player population?

I have not witnessed it, only read posts by others that have stated they successfully completed Serpents Ire with as little as 10 players, so I'm sure there's quite a bit of not following the mechanics going on here.

I think they’re either exaggerating how low of players they had or just lying. It’s not possible to beat it with ten players.

[Zaklex.6308]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

And has anyone actually witnessed successful runs with low player population?

I have not witnessed it, only read posts by others that have stated they successfully completed Serpents Ire with as little as 10 players, so I'm sure there's quite a bit of not following the mechanics going on here.

I think they’re either exaggerating how low of players they had or just lying. It’s not possible to beat it with ten players.

Well, one of the people I heard it from posted it in one of the many other Serpent Ire threads that have been on here...and from what I understand it's completely possible if everyone knows exactly what they're doing and follows the direction of the commander/leader. Personally I thought it would be optimal to have 4 squads of 10 people, but after hearing how the end bosses work I fully believe you can do it with 10.

[Imperadordf.2687]

I've done that event like 7-8 times and failed only once but;

• The scaling is terrible.
• Breakbars are HUGE.
• I love leading open-world metas but this one event is the only event I don't like leading.
• People don't listen to me mostly when I say "BRING CC PLEASE, EX: [banish]" 10 times and fail the CC phase, it's kinda frustrating.
• A solution would be lowering the Breakbars and increasing Zealot health. The rest is fine.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"Imperadordf.2687" said:I've done that event like 7-8 times and failed only once but;

• The scaling is terrible.
• Breakbars are HUGE.
• I love leading open-world metas but this one event is the only event I don't like leading.
• People don't listen to me mostly when I say "BRING CC PLEASE, EX: [banish]" 10 times and fail the CC phase, it's kinda frustrating.
• A solution would be lowering the Breakbars and increasing Zealot health. The rest is fine.

There's actually a lot of faith given when you make simple orders. For example, I have the daily message set so everyone who enters sees the group assignments among other things:

"Group 1 (zerg): Purple CircleGroup 2: Red HeartGroup 3: Blue SquareGroup 4: Green StarGroup 5: Cyan Swirl

Go clockwise on zealot defeat."

You'd think that would be enough, but it isn't close to enough. There are a lot of little questions that don't get answered, like

"What is a group?"""Where do I see these symbols?" --not knowing to look at the mini map"How do I see what group I am in?""Where is the option to enable grid mode?""How do I find my icon in grid mode?""What is a swirl?" -- not joking"What is Cyan?""Are these assignment really important?""If I don't know where to go, who should I ask?""What is clockwise?"

And so on. To that end, I've made a text document where I keep a couple of short utility loadouts for high CCPS for every class, just so I can copy and paste them in map chat. After all, when I say "bring CC", players not only not know what it means, but they also don't know how to tell a good CC skill from a bad one. They might just pick 3 utilities that cause cripple.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@"Imperadordf.2687" said:I've done that event like 7-8 times and failed only once but;

• The scaling is terrible.
• Breakbars are HUGE.
• I love leading open-world metas but this one event is the only event I don't like leading.
• People don't listen to me mostly when I say "BRING CC PLEASE, EX: [banish]" 10 times and fail the CC phase, it's kinda frustrating.
• A solution would be lowering the Breakbars and increasing Zealot health. The rest is fine.

Ore wipe the breakbar its clear people cant break bars so why have them in game

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

"What is Cyan?""What is clockwise?"

^^

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

And has anyone actually witnessed successful runs with low player population?

I have not witnessed it, only read posts by others that have stated they successfully completed Serpents Ire with as little as 10 players, so I'm sure there's quite a bit of not following the mechanics going on here.

I think they’re either exaggerating how low of players they had or just lying. It’s not possible to beat it with ten players.

Well, one of the people I heard it from posted it in one of the many other Serpent Ire threads that have been on here...and from what I understand it's completely possible if everyone knows exactly what they're doing and follows the direction of the commander/leader. Personally I thought it would be optimal to have 4 squads of 10 people, but after hearing how the end bosses work I fully believe you can do it with 10.

It’s impossible simply because of the negative damage buff each of the bosses share with each other. In order to do any damage, you would need three to have their bar broken at one time which would mean they’d have -66% damage reduction. There’s simply not enough time to beat all of them in time like that.

It becomes even less possible if each boss has someone at it as it’s being assumed that you’re averaging two players per boss and that they both can consistently break it’s bar and deal enough DPS quickly enough.

The mechanics of the fight simply make it impossible to beat it with just ten players.

[Venusama.5103]

I decided to take some time and command another meta during NA prime-time. Got a full squad of 50 players in comparison to about 20 at oceanic prime. Easily cleared the event. There's a lot of interesting conversations diving into the complexities of the different mechanics and scaling methods used on the back end of the events coding or whatever.

Personally I think the problem is a wide combination of issues detailed above, and they should scale down the eventoranet should ensure there is adequate population to sustain the events difficulty, at all times (which i don't think is do-able).

If you can't play during NA prime I think not having the ability to complete the event for rewards is ridiculous and that's currently the case, balance & player competency issues aside.

[Samnang.1879]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"Imperadordf.2687" said:I've done that event like 7-8 times and failed only once but;

• The scaling is terrible.
• Breakbars are HUGE.
• I love leading open-world metas but this one event is the only event I don't like leading.
• People don't listen to me mostly when I say "BRING CC PLEASE, EX: [banish]" 10 times and fail the CC phase, it's kinda frustrating.
• A solution would be lowering the Breakbars and increasing Zealot health. The rest is fine.

There's actually a lot of faith given when you make simple orders. For example, I have the daily message set so everyone who enters sees the group assignments among other things:

"Group 1 (zerg): Purple CircleGroup 2: Red HeartGroup 3: Blue SquareGroup 4: Green StarGroup 5: Cyan Swirl

Go clockwise on zealot defeat."

You'd think that would be enough, but it isn't close to enough. There are a lot of little questions that don't get answered, like

"What is a group?"""Where do I see these symbols?" --not knowing to look at the mini map"How do I see what group I am in?""Where is the option to enable grid mode?""How do I find my icon in grid mode?""What is a swirl?" -- not joking"What is Cyan?""Are these assignment really important?""If I don't know where to go, who should I ask?""What is clockwise?"

And so on. To that end, I've made a text document where I keep a couple of short utility loadouts for high CCPS for every class, just so I can copy and paste them in map chat. After all, when I say "bring CC", players not only not know what it means, but they also don't know how to tell a good CC skill from a bad one. They might just pick 3 utilities that cause cripple.

where is the "press any key" button?

[maddoctor.2738]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:You'd think that would be enough, but it isn't close to enough. There are a lot of little questions that don't get answered

I saddens me that the community of this game is so dumb. Most of those questions show a certain lack of knowledge of basic group-gameplay game mechanics.I'm wondering now, none of those players played heart of thorns? 4 full meta event maps that require organization and team work (and CC) should've been enough training to not see such dumb questions during Serpent's Ire. I understand that some got to Path of Fire without trying Heart of Thorns, and the rest of Path of Fire isn't meta-heavy, but they should be a minority, not the norm. Maybe another NPE is needed to train players better at playing the game.

[Elva.6372]

@"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said:There's actually a lot of faith given when you make simple orders. For example, I have the daily message set so everyone who enters sees the group assignments among other things:

"Group 1 (zerg): Purple CircleGroup 2: Red HeartGroup 3: Blue SquareGroup 4: Green StarGroup 5: Cyan Swirl

Go clockwise on zealot defeat."

You'd think that would be enough, but it isn't close to enough. There are a lot of little questions that don't get answered, like

"What is a group?"""Where do I see these symbols?" --not knowing to look at the mini map"How do I see what group I am in?""Where is the option to enable grid mode?""How do I find my icon in grid mode?""What is a swirl?" -- not joking"What is Cyan?""Are these assignment really important?""If I don't know where to go, who should I ask?""What is clockwise?"

And so on. To that end, I've made a text document where I keep a couple of short utility loadouts for high CCPS for every class, just so I can copy and paste them in map chat. After all, when I say "bring CC", players not only not know what it means, but they also don't know how to tell a good CC skill from a bad one. They might just pick 3 utilities that cause cripple.

First off, absolutely awesome post and you do the community a great service by highlighting so well your experience.

A little "Devil's Advocate" here on a few points:

• "What is a group?"

Speaking for myself and many others I have seen over the years, a good amount of players never group and don't even know how to manage the UI for groups. This is because ANet has designed the game where grouping is wholly unnecessary for most if not all of the content - so many players don't get any experience grouping or interacting in groups.

• ""Where do I see these symbols?" --not knowing to look at the mini map

Ties in with point above, I'm guessing they are looking around them in game world and expecting to see like the Commander icons or targets.

• "What is clockwise?"

The newer generation simply doesn't know analog clock terms or rotary dialing, lol. Seriously, and I guess, why would they?

I actually think it would be nice if the Commanders could have an in-game voice channel -where people could hear them give instructions.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@Venusama.5103 said:Popular/Unpopular opinion? Where do you stand?

I have personally attempted to command a couple of these meta's in OCEANIC prime-time on the NA servers to no success. Is it too reliant on population (which is severely lacking during NA off-peak) or is it simply an issue of players not understanding the mechanics?

Its a meta event so ofc its relying on population problem is its to difficult with difficult mechanics like breakbar wich requires specific skills

[Ayrilana.1396]

Well if Anet were to nerf the event, the best option (imho), would be do reduce the damage reduction that each boss takes down to at most 20% per stack. The amount that the bosses affect the bar can be reduced to the effect it now takes one minute more for all of them to deplete the bar.

That should make it a little easier to complete without making is a brain dead faceroll. That said, I still feel that the meta is fine as is.