Why did you nerf the Eater of Souls?

[Deihnyx.6318]

@pah.4931 said:If you have half a brain it's easy to see why it was nerfed. Some people commenting about "how easy" and "didn't even realize it was hard" and others saying they "spent hours on it" and "its impossible" ... it was clearly a bugged / unbalanced encounter. And if you create a block like this, where some builds demolish the encounter without even knowing what the mechanics are and others can't beat it (because minions, for example, without anyway of even knowing the minions are causing the problem), then you have a problem. Imagine if you will, a raid boss that REQUIRED only 10 necromancers to win (exaggeration to make a point). But for those 10 necros, it's super easy to beat. If a normal, average raid group throws their face at this encounter and fails and complains, the 10 necro group will be confused. "Why are you nerfing it, it was easy, why can't we have hard things in this game?" ... it doesn't mean the encounter was hard or easy. It just means the encounter was poorly designed for a game with THOUSANDS of players with THOUSANDS of builds and playstyles.

You cannot (maybe, should not?) ever impede "story-mode" by imposing certain playstyles or builds.

Of course this was all made even worse by the fact that the encounter came at the end of a 40-minute prelude that could not be skipped and if you quit out, had to reply.

Get off your hardcore high horses and think critically about game design for a little bit. This had nothing to do with casual vs. hardcore. Or even skilled vs. unskilled.

Actually your demonstration doesn't show how it's "clearly bugged".It's normal that some builds have an advantage on some specific fights than others. That's the point of even having builds. Otherwise let's just have the same button A on sword with no other mechanics.Always coming back to GW1 but... there was a whole dungeon where using fire was simply not possible. Enemies would not burn. And another one where burning was very effective. That was the point of elemental attacks.In GW2? The type of conditions doesn't matter, to the point where you can poison buildings. And so what's the point of having so many conditions, what's the point of having more skills, more build possibilities, if players don't want to ever have to swap to anything?

Also in raids, you know that some classes will have an advantage on some fights and they won't be much of a use in others. Same for builds. People playing raids have assimilated that you're not supposed to stick with one build / class forever.

In this story instance, that one thread had lots of guides, for pretty much all the classes. It was just a question of changing a build and understand a mechanic... or simple stay far from the boss. Something that... in a game second expansion, should be expected.There was nothing "clearly" broken with it, as demonstrated by many.

Look, I understand that some players want it easy. But first, they should admit it and stop hiding behind things like "the fight is bugged/broken". Because you're not given every single instruction doesn't mean it's broken. And second, we should be able to keep the original fight intact (CM mode or whatever) for the other side of the GW2 playerbase who actually like learning and doing mechanics.

I was never able to try Caudecus as it was intended. I don't think people realize that it can also be frustrating the other way around.

[Rauderi.8706]

@Malediktus.9250 said:Maybe Anet should finally add difficulty levels to instanced content. So people who like it faceroll and people like me who like a decent challenge are all satisfied.

Same could be said for raids~

[Breezer.9273]

I personally don't think this needed a nerf either. I have seen time and time again players trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I admit killing the keeper of souls took me 5 attempts (I refuse to use guides for this sort of thing); but each time, I tried something different. Although the defiance bar was short there were other indicators that gave much more time to completely prevent the health steal. I think the game needs more challenging content like this boss originally was outside of raids.

[Deihnyx.6318]

@Rauderi.8706 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:Maybe Anet should finally add difficulty levels to instanced content. So people who like it faceroll and people like me who like a decent challenge are all satisfied.

Same could be said for raids~

As long as the rewards aren't the same and that they don't touch the "normal" fights at all. I have no problem with that.The problem comes from the people who don't play nearly as much but are causing Anet to nerf everything for them.

And if you don't agree with the "rewards shouldn't be the same" it's very simple. There are 2 ways to make a content feel rewarding:

• Make it harder to bring the joy of "fulfillment" when you beat something (something that only exists in raid and high fractals in this game)) as well as better rewards.
• Make content easy and repeatable and requiring a LOT of farming (2nd gen legendaries requiring stacks of amalgated gemstone)
• Bonus: RNG (the absolute worst that should never ever be a thing ever. Talking to you Teq/TT)

[OriOri.8724]

@Ashantara.8731 said:

@Erulogos.2591 said:Making him not snack on your (generally uncontrollable) minions/pets/etc is just good sense

Not really. As a ranger, it encouraged you to use the Soulbeast pet-merge (which is highly efficient in general, plus Soulbeast is just the better condition ranger build than the previously used vanilla one), and as a Necromancer, it also encouranged those MM fanatics to finally try a decent Necromancer build for a change. That was

a good thing

.

Funny how you ignore mesmers, who are always most shat on by anti-minion mechanics. It was not a good thing at all.

[Lyrim.2873]

If you fought it as a Spellbreaker, it was a hilariously easy fight before the nerf.

[elrin.4750]

I personally don't mind the nerf, let some people play it easy and get the same rewards. If I wanted something hard, i find my own way, like use blues/greens or just go naked during a fight.

[Drew.1865]

Imo raiding should be where the elite players face extremely hard mechanics and bosses. Story should be something everyone can complete. Just my opinion.

[Compass.9621]

@SirDrygan.1823 said:Is there a reason why ANET nerf this thing? Was it necessary? Didn't have the change to see what the fuss is about and bam. Nerf.

My take is, it was difficult and time consuming - that includes the time to figure how to beat the thing with your skill set and trait. Was it necessary? I think so. Many complained and it was not intended to be that way. The good thing is Anet listened and/or maybe checked the game data, saw the validity of the issue, thus tweaked it to make it perform as intended. Sadly not everyone is happy, as usual. The tweak/nerf act is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" for Anet. While i have already finished it before the change - using my mesmer, i am happy to see that there was really a flaw in the initial code that resulted in that unintended complexities. And i am glad Anet made the effort to correct it.

[Haishao.6851]

@pah.4931 said:

@Tyger.1637 said:

Fights are not broken just because you're unable to win them.Hundred of thousand of people didn't have problem killing it. Had it been broken nobody would have been able to do it.

Hmmm. Not sure if I agree with your idea of game design and what is "broken." First of all, if you can't login and everyone else can ... would you consider that "broken" or would you be happy that at least everyone else can play and would go on your merry way?

Second of all. It was a poorly balanced fight. Simple as that. If I want to play a Ranger with a pet, I shouldn't be forced to stow my (stupid AI) pet for an encounter in story-mode. OR, at the very least, I should be TOLD why I am failing the fight.

Calling a fight you're too unskilled to win "broken" is nothing more than an excuse to not improve.If I can't login to a game but everyone else can I will check my connection. I don't know how can you think this is related in anyway. To keep the analogy, what you were doing is block the game in your firewall then complain its broken because you shouldn't have to whitelist it in your firewall to allow connection.Something broken means that part of it doesn't work. If the boss leeched even when CCed, or CC didn't break its bar, or couldn't get hit by your attacks, or whatever, then it would have been broken. Your inability to use your skill properly against it doesn't make it broken.

I agree that minions, pets and phantasm/clones should not be target of the drain but to say you should not have to control your pet as a ranger is wrong. The core mechanic of ranger is their pets and controlling them. You can use F3 to call it back to you and if you need to get it out of there really fast, you can switch pet with F4 so the new pet appears right next to you. It's different with minions because there's no control over them. You can't even destroy them. This is why pretty much everybody think minions are trash. But new players usually love them because they get carried by them.

As someone who call people half brained and not so bright, you should have the capability of figuring out by yourself why you failed. If you're not even aware of what you do and what the boss is doing how can you pretend it's the boss that is broken and not your tactic?

[PseudoNewb.5468]

I think the break bar time extension was needed. There are so many skills that have a a long enough pre-cast, that short break barks makes many cc effect skills mostly ineffective unless you could figure out or guess the exact timing. I ended up guessing when to prep and pre-cast my cc skills in order to beat this boss with it's break bar mechanic, and I think that makes the boss' use of the mechanic poor.

I noticed it's health is not very high in the first place, so if you can burst it for more than it can heal between attack cycles, or even finish it before it even heals, then that is certainly a valid solution. And if you out ranged it, I guess that works. But don't discount the fact that for the people choosing to use the break bar mechanics, it was tuned to be quite a bit too fast for many people's chosen cc skills.

As far as the other ways it was Nerfed? I don't see the need, but then again there is no break bar tutorial in the game, so maybe they just gave up on making it a requirement.

[Orpheal.8263]

@Kheldorn.5123 said:This is the response from one of the devs: https://twitter.com/barefootmatthew/status/916132926240153600

Also, we already have a thread about this. No need to create new one.

To the Twitter:

Thats also what I would say as a Dev, to beware my face in front of the mass of players.. in the aftermath always suddenly something was either bugged and not running as "intended", to give yourself the reason to make the changes for that a tiny minority of players screamed for, that was too incompetent to play their Classes the way how you actually intended them to play them, so you changed it now to infantile mode to make this minority stifle in smoke, so that they don't have to cry anymore ..

This battle wasn't neither hard nor was it bugged..The only thing that this battle required of the player of any class, is to have some brain and to use over the course of combat a mixture between soft CC and Hard CC Skills with just some decent good reflexes to react quickly with Hard CC on the moment the Break Bar Turns blue, to stop the enemy from using his Absorb Attack. The rest of the battle is just DPSing him down, as he has not very much health and is easily soloable due to this, even more so, if you can create help through additionally attackers, like summons, or use environmental items that create additional attackers (ogre flute, flame elemental ect., sylvari turret if you seriously need that little extra DPS)

There were more than enough people willing to share their successful tactics with the people, builds and so on, with that they breezed through this combat with ease, and still Anet needed to lower the difficulty of the battle into nothingness, so that even the noobiest king of noobs could defeat this enemy blindly now LOL :trollface:

Can we then now also seriously reduce the difficulty of other things in this game that really need it more, when even such ridiculous things like this battle get nerfed now?Like for example making Ascended gear cheaper and easier to craft by removing the idiotic time gating for example?Or can we add to Raids also finally an "Easy Mode" with no Timer that forces DPS Races/Elitist Scum onto us with reduced rewards maybe?Or increase the drops rates of some way too ridiculous rare items like Orrian Pendant, the materials needed for the Dwayna Bows ect. that are required for some Achievements, which alone together woudl cost players, if you do these achievements al way ove multiple thousands of Gold, for rewards, that aren't by far all this much gold worth it (or implement alternative way,s how people can earn/craft these items as well, so that doing some specific events for a 0,00001 asian Grinder RNG drop rate isn't the only way to obtain these items, if you don't want to fork over like 400-600 Gold for 1 item ...)

Theres so many things wrong in this game, just some examples of wrong difficulty above there, but from all these things, which should seriously get looked over, you nerf this battle, which isn't difficult at all, but can be defeatet with the right tactics within a few minutes, without that you have been attacked by this soooo dangerous absorb attack even 1 single time, if you do it right!!.

[Samnang.1879]

It's just story, as long as they don't nerf raids or fractal cm, I'm good.

[SmirkDog.3160]

I basically slept through that fight. I can't believe people found it to be so difficult.

[BeeFrost.5672]

@Drew.1865 said:Imo raiding should be where the elite players face extremely hard mechanics and bosses. Story should be something everyone can complete. Just my opinion.

Agreed..everyone should have the opportunity to be apart of the story whatever their skill level. If you want harder content it's out there for you.And besides if it was sooo easy..(we have all heard by the constant bragging from other players)..does it matter if it was nerfed..cause you know you steam rolled him in like 2 mins. You kitten you. Lol.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Deihnyx.6318 said:Actually your demonstration doesn't show how it's "clearly bugged".It's normal that some builds have an advantage on some specific fights than others.

That wasn't about some builds "having an advantage". It was about the fight being extremely hard (almost impossible to do) for some builds, because of mechanics, while at the same time being faceroll easy (to the point of people not even noticing there are any mechanics to the fight) for other builds.

That's just plain broken design.

[holotype.1643]

I cheesed it with necro minions from a distance so I had no problems. I am always happy to use cheese when a designer intends to make a solo fight miserable. It was clearly a depressing boss design for alot of players though and I'm happy it was nerfed. I like challenge and I like fun when playing video games. I do not like spending an hour on a single boss. Maybe a raid boss with 20 other guildies and some interesting things going on.

[hellsqueen.3045]

The fact you could literally just walk away from it's life drain was a huge sign that it shouldn't have needed to be nerfed.The pet, minion (and presumably illusion) change to having it not snack on them is fine, like no other lifesteal enemy can snack on them and this one should be no different otherwise it makes a lot of builds redundant in a story mode.The rest just seems like they are catering to people who want to stand still and press 1. This isn't a game that promote standing still in most cases, we have free movement during a majority of the skills and casts and we have a dodge roll for a reason, people playing this game need to adapt to the playstyle that is movement orientated.

[OriOri.8724]

@Compass.9621 said:

@SirDrygan.1823 said:Is there a reason why ANET nerf this thing? Was it necessary? Didn't have the change to see what the fuss is about and bam. Nerf.

My take is, it was difficult and time consuming - that includes the time to figure how to beat the thing with your skill set and trait. Was it necessary? I think so. Many complained and it was not intended to be that way. The good thing is Anet listened and/or maybe checked the game data, saw the validity of the issue, thus tweaked it to make it perform as intended. Sadly not everyone is happy, as usual. The tweak/nerf act is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" for Anet. While i have already finished it before the change - using my mesmer, i am happy to see that there was really a flaw in the initial code that resulted in that unintended complexities. And i am glad Anet made the effort to correct it.

2 of the nerfs were defendable, and nerfs that I agree with (increasing the duration the breakbar is available for and removing its ability to heal off of minions). The third nerf, nerfing how much it heals (drastically nerfing it mind you, this wasn't a little nerf to its healing) was absolutely not necessary. With the first 2 nerfs you would have a fight where you had to use the mechanics to beat it easily, but the mechanic was easy enough to use. Now, you can just ignore the mechanic entirely and facetank his rather low damage and outDPS his heals to kill him. That is the epitome of a poorly designed fight.

So while some of hte nerfs were justified, the third one was extreme overkill

[Lokki.1092]

I'm one of the people that beat the boss, first try, without pause or even a minor hiccup. Honestly I thought everyone was talking about the Balthazar fight, and wondering if they realized you were meant to lose.

But I'm glad they changed it so that everyone can enjoy the story. The twitch portion of this game means that the skill gap can be huge. I still see people getting destroyed by Tequatl's wave all the time, it's perhaps the most telegraphed move in the game, requires no endurance, and still people cannot "dodge" it. These types of players should be able to get through the main story without any problem. Which does mean that it will be faceroll easy for others. But there is plenty of tough content for the rest of us.

[Spurnshadow.3678]

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@Snowywonders.1378 said:It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

Please enlighten us on how pet/minion classes are supposed to have prior knowledge of a boss fight before they attempt it for the first time? Are we supposed to be waiting for dulfy guides for story missions now?

It's a game! A puzzle. Something for you to figure out. And if you're one of those people who have no patience, then you can always look it up online and see hundereds of suggestions for your class and when to dodge. Piece of cake.

Please.

[Dante.1763]

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@Snowywonders.1378 said:It's not about the boss being challenging, it's at the point now that people can't and WILL NOT deal with enemy mechanics that go beyond pressing skill 1. Are you a necromancer with minions? Dont summon them for this fight. Are you a mesmer with clones? Time your shatters or avoid summoning clones. Are you a ranger? Use a ranged pet or put it on peaceful mode. No, having to do this for one fight is not a personal attack on your "play how you want" freedom, no matter how much you think it is.

GW2 is approaching yet another extreme when it comes to "balancing". The ONLY content that provides any sense of challenge is fractals/dungeons/raids. All group content. Anything solo, including just exploring the maps, is all watered down because people can't be bothered to learn.

Please enlighten us on how pet/minion classes are supposed to have prior knowledge of a boss fight before they attempt it for the first time? Are we supposed to be waiting for dulfy guides for story missions now?

It's a game! A puzzle. Something for you to figure out. And if you're one of those people who have no patience, then you can always look it up online and see hundereds of suggestions for your class and when to dodge. Piece of cake.

Please.

Except...you cant control(well) a pet(and as a person who plays a beastmaster build) you dont use ranged pets because they suck for everything, they still like to get in close for some damn reason(close enough he could still absorb health). I dont think you can control minions at all, and then theres the mesmers shatters(which for some builds are a major portion of their damage). So it absorbing health from those things was not needed, and good riddance that it got removed.

[Ildrid Ildhjertet.2489]

Disclaimer: I'm not a raider.

I do not see the need to nerf this, but maybe add a "just story" mote in the instance, where his lifesteal is disabled all together would be a good option.

I died 4 times on my Mirage, I was like "kitten this", opened my hero panel, changed a traitline, equipped 2 interrupt signets and crushed him so fast it wasn't even funny. (dropped Dueling and got Domination). I was really looking forward to doing this fight on other classes, because I feel this would be a great fight to "explore" options on different professions. But I didn't rush through story on any other class. Instead I kept hunting achievements, leveling an alt and now it looks to me as the boss has become a random trashmob. Now I'm not too keen to fight Eater of Souls on other professions anymore.

This was part of what I loved in gw1. Load up a build, play a mission, fail miserably, talk to my teammates and figuring out why we died and how to counter it. Then change whatever we felt needed changing and try again. It's not like you need to get a new set of armor to change your build in this game, unless you're going to the endgame pve content (fractals/raids).

Inb4 all bosses become multiple choice tests to see if you follow the dialogue.

[Fox Reeveheart.1890]

I don't know about you guys, but i fought him for over and hour and could not figure it out. I even looked up how to beat him, tried that, but he was so bugged that it didn't matter. I broke his bar several times over, but i still could never get him past 75% health.

I had to look up on youtube and someone got him caught behind a wall, so I did that before i finally won.

[hellsqueen.3045]

@Fox Reeveheart.1890 said:I don't know about you guys, but i fought him for over and hour and could not figure it out. I even looked up how to beat him, tried that, but he was so bugged that it didn't matter. I broke his bar several times over, but i still could never get him past 75% health.

I had to look up on youtube and someone got him caught behind a wall, so I did that before i finally won.

My bf is a Soldier stat Holosmith with Sword and Shield, he did it first try just by simply walking away from the abilities so it couldn't lifesteal. He never broke the stun bar.He took the fight in 10% stages between the lifesteal where he would just run and then jump in, rinse and repeat.The fight was not hard.