Sunqua Peak could afford some tuning along the different tiers

[hugo.4705]

Sunqua Peak is surely beautiful and each boss fight do feel unique. But it is one of the longest fractal out there.

 

Most of the fractals can be completed very rapidly, in less than 20 mins: Thaumanova, Urban battleground, Cliffside, Chaos, Solid Ocean, Snowblind...

With nice group compositions and knowing the mechanics in most of case can make you gain time.

 

However, the final boss of Sunqua Peak is very annoying. Beyond the aoe spam, what bother me is the fact it is just a fricking Health sponge.

The last boss of Sunqua Peak doesn't remember you anybody? Yes High Priestress Amala in Twilight fractal.

 

The final boss is built exactly the sale annoying way:

1-Has multiple phases, which with differeng attenument. (God / element)

2-Each phase consist of AoE spam on your screen at a point not knowing what is happening and what the game want you to do.

3-Some mechanics to spice even more like nedding to kill secondary foes, jumping above a shockwave or hidi.g behind a rock.

 

Even Nightmare fractal is clearer with Arkk literally screaming at you "go under my shield" with in same time the big orange warning aoe on ground. It is hard to add more pointing arrows pointing at rock shields and other vital mechanics outside of attacks?

 

But the biggest annoyance is the health pool.

Why just why? Each time it feels like I have been in the frqctal for one hour.

 

Anet, can you divide Sunqua peak final boss health by 2 in all Tiers? Can you make the skills pools diffetents with more or less help depending on tiers? T1/T2 should do 0 one-shot attacks. No volcanic giga explosions. Less tornadoes, fireball etc aoes. Everthing in T4 sure, but not in T1 and T2.

 

Btw, you can also divide water spirit rock boss health by 3, no fun losing time just hitting a rock pile.

 

[Fueki.4753]

While Sunqua Peak would do well with the HP and damage of the last boss being shaved on T1 and T2, I think fixing the bugs should be prioritized.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I feel like its okay in T4, but in T3 and lower its just horrible.

 

Let's be honest, there's very little difference in some of the newer Fractals between the lower tiers and the final tier, just the instabilities. In regards to the balance of the Fractal itself its basically the same, especially at the end bosses, and specifically in Shattered Observatory, Siren's Reef and Sunqua Peak.

 

I've talked about it many times before, but its like a dev forgot to take scaling into account. Having a health pool that takes some PUGs 20mins+ to take down in T1 isn't balanced. (And yes, T1-T3 are designed for PUGs.)

 

Every group I know of skips these Fractals unless they're daily CMs.

 

(I think one of the biggest problems is how much bosses move around these days, making it difficult to do any kind of DPS unless your party is made up of professional athletes. And now CC bars are harder to break without consumables, which has made the situation worse on top of already overscaled breakbars in lower tiers.)

Edited August 17, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[Fuchslein.8639]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

While Sunqua Peak would do well with the HP and damage of the last boss being shaved on T1 and T2, I think fixing the bugs should be prioritized.

 

This. I don't know how often i was catapulted into nothingness although I walked the same way into the whirlpools as others. The same with friends ....
Yesterday I even lost my mistlock before first boss, because I was simply catapulted half the way and then only survived through my mistlock ~~. Super annoying.

What I also notice, although you stand behind the rocks you sometimes get dmg. Some even get into downstate. Even standing further away often does not help. No idea whether this is intentional and I'm simply overlooking something, or whether this is also a bug.

 

Furthermore, I would rather wish that you can cut the gibberish. The longest at sunqua(t4) is the babbling.

[WindBlade.8749]

I almost forget that this fractals is long since when you do cm you only do the finall boss and you never do the t4 daily since it's count for the t4 daily and i don't do the recs.

Edited August 19, 2021 by WindBlade.8749

[Hotride.2187]

From my POV, it would be great if the story-telling (skippable cutscenes, unskippable cutscenes, monologues, waiting on NPCs to slow-walk for too long) is done in T1 only. I've seen all of this 100s of times already, and it wasn't interesting even the first time. Stop wasting my time.

[Nephalem.8921]

On 8/17/2021 at 3:59 PM, Hannelore.8153 said:

I feel like its okay in T4, but in T3 and lower its just horrible.

 

Let's be honest, there's very little difference in some of the newer Fractals between the lower tiers and the final tier, just the instabilities. In regards to the balance of the Fractal itself its basically the same, especially at the end bosses, and specifically in Shattered Observatory, Siren's Reef and Sunqua Peak.

 

I've talked about it many times before, but its like a dev forgot to take scaling into account. Having a health pool that takes some PUGs 20mins+ to take down in T1 isn't balanced. (And yes, T1-T3 are designed for PUGs.)

How can it take 20min for some pugs when the cm version SOLO is ~14min or something? I encountered some of these groups that would have taken 20min+ without me. Just checked all the boxes with a 2k dps hammer rev, 2 tanks and some other useless build. I was more than 90% of the group dps.

Instead of whining about hp numbers the players could also realize that they are the problem and their builds are just not suited for instanced pve.

Sunqua does scale a lot actually. You can ignore almost all mechanics in t1-2 and still a lot in t3. Thats actually a bad thing because then in t3 they finally realize that the boss had mechanics that need to be dealt with.

It has far lower health in t1 and even a very low breakbar compared to the cm t4 version. The game is power creeped to the max and every whine about healthbars in pve is just a massive l2p issue.

On 8/17/2021 at 3:59 PM, Hannelore.8153 said:

 

Every group I know of skips these Fractals unless they're daily CMs.

 

(I think one of the biggest problems is how much bosses move around these days, making it difficult to do any kind of DPS unless your party is made up of professional athletes. And now CC bars are harder to break without consumables, which has made the situation worse on top of already overscaled breakbars in lower tiers.)

Every group that does cm skips the normal version because of the unskippable rp that gets added into fractals nowadays. They are not skipping it because the bosses take too long to kill.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

37 minutes ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

How can it take 20min for some pugs when the cm version SOLO is ~14min or something? I encountered some of these groups that would have taken 20min+ without me. Just checked all the boxes with a 2k dps hammer rev, 2 tanks and some other useless build. I was more than 90% of the group dps.

Instead of whining about hp numbers the players could also realize that they are the problem and their builds are just not suited for instanced pve.

Sunqua does scale a lot actually. You can ignore almost all mechanics in t1-2 and still a lot in t3. Thats actually a bad thing because then in t3 they finally realize that the boss had mechanics that need to be dealt with.

It has far lower health in t1 and even a very low breakbar compared to the cm t4 version. The game is power creeped to the max and every whine about healthbars in pve is just a massive l2p issue.

Every group that does cm skips the normal version because of the unskippable rp that gets added into fractals nowadays. They are not skipping it because the bosses take too long to kill.

The entire point of the tier system is the lower Fractals are for newbies to learn from. A player isn't expected to know about things like min/max'ed builds and DPS rotations until around tier 3.

 

The game itself explicitly says only T3+ is for experienced players:

Expert scales 51-75.

 

This doesn't mean players start T3 as experts, it means they transition to experts while reaching lv75. There's been so many dev discussions on this, yet players still misconstrue the meaning of low-level Fractals.

 

The rest of the Fractals (of which there are many) are fine, as originally intended.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Hannelore.8153

[brutalbarbarian.1403]

All of Sanqua's moves are very predictable and entirely avoidable. She's 100% mechanics, with no randomness and minimal sudden reflexes required . 

What I used to tell people in T3 and lower who were clearly struggling - is to ignore her when she goes off to the side, and focus on side-stepping the aoes that come. Then when she comes back to the middle, focus on CC'ing her, doing dps, then getting out of the middle once the breakbar's recovered.

Edited November 30, 2021 by brutalbarbarian.1403

[LegendsOfTheWist.7591]

Ai is designed to be a condition damage boss in a game-mode that's primarily designed to cater to power compositions via sheer accessibility.  With power DPS compositions you have terrible DPS uptime against the boss.   In T3 and lower getting break-bars down is mega-challenging.  They will not be consistently broken; CC will be wasted on the sides, the T4 experience & CM experience (even solo CM experience) is fundamentally incompatible with inexperienced players. 

Trying to compare the T4/CM experience of Sunqua Peak with inexperienced T1/T2 players is akin to comparing a water rocket to a rocket ship and leave Earth's Orbit.  Ai is an extreme irregularity, and given the prevalence and the ratio of solid/competent/meta-builds to "new player builds" and the heavily skewed ratio of power > condi builds Ai really shouldn't have so much HP to T1/T2 - nor should she have all the same mechanics as in T4, but it is what it is.

Edited December 5, 2021 by LunarRXA.5062

[Astralporing.1957]

It's a tendency that appeared back when they started introducing new, harder fractals. T1 Nightmare is sighificantly above the difficulty level of the old T1s, but at least that fractal was created with tier scaling from the get go. Shattered at T1 is also an outlier, and that is even after several rounds of nerfs - when it was originally introduced, there was basically no difference between different tier versions at all, which resulted in T1 groups getting murdered with no forewarning. IIRC Oasis had to be tweaked after release as well.

By the time Sunqua came along, devs apparently just completely forgot that Fractals have any players below t4/CM level.

Edited December 6, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[ArchonWing.9480]

The newer fractals require you need to know what you're doing. Honestly not enough is done to prepare players for higher tiers and the explanations are not good.  There's nothing wrong with skipping it if you feel it's a waste of time especially if they talk too much or it's just annoying. Truth be told I just ignore that fractal.

Also, t1 .....??? You don't need a build for that lol.

Edited December 6, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Tails.9372]

4 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

T1 Nightmare is sighificantly above the difficulty level of the old T1s

Not really, from what I've seen T1 PuGs struggle more with fractals like Cliffside, Underground Facility (especially with the path where you have to place bombs) and Thaumanova Reactor than they do with Nightmare.

3 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Also, t1 .....??? You don't need a build for that lol.

Of course you do, some bosses have like 4-5m HP. Fighting that with a group of people which, on average, do 1-2k DPS would take forever. You don't need "meta builds" for T1 but most T1 PuGs would be screwed if it weren't for the 1-2 people carrying them (especially in Siren's Reef and Sunqua Peak).

[ArchonWing.9480]

5 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Of course you do, some bosses have like 4-5m HP. Fighting that with a group of people which, on average, do 1-2k DPS would take forever. You don't need "meta builds" for T1 but most T1 PuGs would be screwed if it weren't for the 1-2 people carrying them (especially in Siren's Reef and Sunqua Peak).

I mean yes, there's probably someone carrying, but a lot of those players are going to be moving up and aren't going to be around to carry that much. But you don't need much of any build to do even 2k dps. I mean I guess if your trait slots were empty and you literally didn't have a "build" but I meant more you don't need like some super meta build like what is frequently suggested. I probably should have included the term "specific build".

Besides, 6000000/10000 = 600 = 10 minutes. Sure that's very long, but hardly the end of the world. On stuff like Siren's, not understanding the green/red mechanic and the wind is going to cause much more failures than poor DPS. Or doing the maze. So unlike some Fractals, you can't really just bash your ahead into it repeatedly and hope for success.

The greater problem is that they seemed to assume everyone did raids and knew what green/reds were about.

 

Edited December 6, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Vidit.7108]

From what I've seen in the lower tier pugs, Sunqua is one of the 5 or so fractals newbies are skipping. I've had a lot of t2 groups where i do Sunqua or Shattered and that's the first time clear for at least 1 or 2 people. A lot of t2 players have developed the habit of solo ranging Sunqua because it's probably not possible without boon support and cc to do it otherwise. 

It's not to say they didn't do anything to make t1 and t2 easier than t3 and t4 Sunqua but they are really hard for what they are. Combine with the fact Sunqua still takes the longest to do, the lower tier newbie players and casual fractal players just won't do it sometimes.

T3 Sunqua has more people that seem to know what they're doing but I honestly think these might be newer t4 players or people who don't want to deal with double Sunqua.

Sunqua in general has felt like it was just shoved out the door and ignored since launch. It still has many prolific glitches and that almost 10 month period where the air phase would soft lock have made it feel abandoned. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

14 hours ago, Vidit.7108 said:

Sunqua in general has felt like it was just shoved out the door and ignored since launch. It still has many prolific glitches and that almost 10 month period where the air phase would soft lock have made it feel abandoned. 

I sorta feel that way about all the new fractal past Shattered. Twilight was decent, Deepstone was ehh not horrible but more boring in parts.  Sirens is Sirens. At least Twilight Oasis was kinda good.

[Vidit.7108]

@ArchonWing.9480I see feeling like they stopped paying attention to them after the launch window, but they did circle back to all the other new fractals (except maybe sirens) and none of them come close to the amount of issues that Sunqua has had.

The closest I can tell Sirens has had to a balance pass is the swivel mounted spectral artillery being made harder to aim and trash mobs having their damage stealth nerfed during the May update.

At least when other fractals teleport you into a fight there isn't a random chance you die to fall damage instead. That's been in Sunqua since launch.

[Firebeard.1746]

I think the major issue with Sunqua is both the boss encounter and the fractal itself take a lot of time. 

 

The boss has a lot of movement and alot of time periods where you can't dps it either due to mechanics or it just not being attackable. It makes any wipe very brutal in terms of time taken, it's not a fun fractal to be in with people that are learning or even just have bad reflexes. 

 

Then you add in the fact it has a lot of prelude and it's just awful. If it were just a boss. It'd be okay. Maybe. 

 

I still think Siren's reef is a tad over the top. 

 

 

 

 

[Nephalem.8921]

On 12/6/2021 at 2:37 PM, Tails.9372 said:

Not really, from what I've seen T1 PuGs struggle more with fractals like Cliffside, Underground Facility (especially with the path where you have to place bombs) and Thaumanova Reactor than they do with Nightmare.

Of course you do, some bosses have like 4-5m HP. Fighting that with a group of people which, on average, do 1-2k DPS would take forever. You don't need "meta builds" for T1 but most T1 PuGs would be screwed if it weren't for the 1-2 people carrying them (especially in Siren's Reef and Sunqua Peak).

Which t1 boss has 5m hp? most are closer to 1m or below that. Skorvald cm has just 5,5m hp. Its still instanced content. you are not supposed to win if you cant kill a 1-2m hp boss within a normal time limit. Do you want to balance the game for toddlers? New players are not stupid or bad and you can at least expect some skill.

Some ff14 LEVELING dungeons have more mechanics and are harder than gw2 t4. You just need to beat the "dont use a useless tank build" boss which is quite challenging for some older folks who are just way too stubborn to listen to advice. You need A SINGLE decent dps player to burst all t1 bosses before the rest of your party can even do something. Sunqua is the only exception because there your phases will actually start to last like 10sec so your new player teammates can actually get a hit in.

[Bakeneko.5826]

On 12/9/2021 at 11:14 AM, Firebeard.1746 said:

I think the major issue with Sunqua is both the boss encounter and the fractal itself take a lot of time.

The boss has a lot of movement and alot of time periods where you can't dps it either due to mechanics or it just not being attackable. It makes any wipe very brutal in terms of time taken, it's not a fun fractal to be in with people that are learning or even just have bad reflexes.

Then you add in the fact it has a lot of prelude and it's just awful. If it were just a boss. It'd be okay. Maybe.

I still think Siren's reef is a tad over the top.

Sunqua could use bos HP nerf by 10% at all difficulties, including CM, even more on non-dark part for CMs, as standing around during meteor phase and water bubble phase is annoying time waste (would love for her to be damageable during water phase and move from "you have to do it for x ammount of time" to "you need to deal this much dmg for her to phase". 

On 12/10/2021 at 3:19 AM, Nephalem.8921 said:

Which t1 boss has 5m hp? most are closer to 1m or below that. Skorvald cm has just 5,5m hp. Its still instanced content. you are not supposed to win if you cant kill a 1-2m hp boss within a normal time limit. Do you want to balance the game for toddlers? New players are not stupid or bad and you can at least expect some skill.

Some ff14 LEVELING dungeons have more mechanics and are harder than gw2 t4. You just need to beat the "dont use a useless tank build" boss which is quite challenging for some older folks who are just way too stubborn to listen to advice. You need A SINGLE decent dps player to burst all t1 bosses before the rest of your party can even do something. Sunqua is the only exception because there your phases will actually start to last like 10sec so your new player teammates can actually get a hit in.

This is not FF14. Fractals is one of the best end game system ANY MMO has, it starts with little to no mechanics and weak dmg on T1 and ramps up to T4 where all mechanics and full intended dmg is present, and some even having CMs to push everything just a step further (tbh, anet should just drop CMs in fractals and make them into T5 cat without needing motes, would be way more pleasing to say T5s 😄 )

[Nephalem.8921]

19 hours ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

This is not FF14. Fractals is one of the best end game system ANY MMO has, it starts with little to no mechanics and weak dmg on T1 and ramps up to T4 where all mechanics and full intended dmg is present, and some even having CMs to push everything just a step further (tbh, anet should just drop CMs in fractals and make them into T5 cat without needing motes, would be way more pleasing to say T5s 😄 )

This is not how this works in practice. In practice everyone just ignores the low damage mechanics. Most of them dont even notice them until you do the same content in t3 or t4 when players die or notice the mechanics for the first time.

There is no point in having the tether mechanic in lower tier since the rampup is so slow that you can just fully ignore it. It will never trigger. The arkk bubble for example gets ignored by low level pugs because it just doesnt do anything. The only way to teach mechanics is having fewer and slower mechanics but damage should never be lowered. Currently the fractal tiers tweak only number of mechanics and damage and the latter results in nobody knowing mechanics before t3 or t4 when they suddenly start doing damage which is one reason why t3 is such a fiesta.

They early tiers teach players to ignore most mechanics. Its not a useful tutorial.

[Tisuchan.1456]

I have done the fractals for ages as a daily - Since there is this fractal, I have unfortunately lost the interest/fun in doing the dailies and now no longer do them at all although it had always been fun for me and I even did the CMs before - This one feels more like a Strike mission than Strike missions do though it's a Frac...

[Raizel.8175]

I'm not very fond of the newer fractals in general and especially Sunqua in particular. Ever since PoF - I believe - A.Net really cranked the overall visual noise up to an - at least almost - unbearable level. Pairing that with the AoE-pressure of newer fractals makes it even more annoying and sometimes makes me want to use energy-sigils in fractals for more dodges. It's even worse in Sunqua where you have rather short DPS-phases and rather long phases where you have to deal with mechanics - especially because the boss moves a lot which is somewhat entirely different to how GW2 boss encounters usually work. That all summed up just makes Sunqua so very tedious.