Tyrion87 wrote: »

IwakuraLain42 wrote: »

Tyrion87 wrote: »

Apart from vICP, I remember the days when vWGT was a challenge. When during the fight with Molag Kena you actually had to beat a couple of storm atros while the fight itself lasted longer than 1 minute. When during the Planar fight players had to cooperate and the order of touching the pinion mattered.

Now it's all gone. You just burn everything. You don't see a single atro. You don't take turns in touching the pinion.

Sorry, this just shows how far out of touch you (and the rest of the elite bunch) are with reality of most of players are. Most players that are able to finish these vet dungeons (and no, we are not talking about "light attack spammer") need 2-3 pinion cycles on the Planar fight and they see enought Storm atros on the Molag Kena fight. The average dps for most veteran players is 15-20k dps and that is not enough to burn through all mechanics.

Tyrion87 wrote: »

Vet mode should pose a challenge even for good endgame players while normal mode should be for casuals (like it used to be... in good ol' times). What do we have instead right now? Normal is for farming, vet is for casuals. There is no challenging content for 4-man groups of good endgame players anymore. If someone counts vDSA, that's obviously not enough. ZOS caters so much (too much) to casual players, neglecting completely more dedicated part of their playerbase. If this is the direction of ZOS for vet modes, they should introduce a third tier of difficulty asap otherwise they will be losing players even more.

This just shows the typical disdain quite a lot of elite players have for the rest of the player base. You already have a lot of end game toys (vMA, vDSA, vMoL, vHoF, SoH dungeons). Why why should ZOS spent any more money (and building dungeons and trials costs money) that is only available to a tiny minority of the player base. There should be more new veteran content on the level of the base game (dungeons and trials).

Not every content in this game has to be doable for everyone. There are players of various levels of proficiency and experience in this game and all of them needs something challenging to keep them entertained. And you are just another egoist that would like to have all content within your reach. I am aware that casual players constitute the majority of the playerbase. That's why, due to the changes to vet modes that seem to be the general direction of this game now, I suggested that there should be a next tier of difficulty since right now no dungeon pose a challenge to good players anymore. It would hurt you somehow? You would keep your nerfed vet content for yourself.

And oh... believe me, I'm far from being a so-called 'elitist' haha I just like the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction when I do something tough and when I worked for it really hard with my friends.

There is a difference between "any content should be reachable" and "and NEW content should be reachable". ZOS has failed to deliver any NEW veteran content that is doable by the majority of the player base (and calling them "casual" just shows your elite mindset) since the base game release. Everything else (like the "new" veteran dungeons in 1T or the craglorn trials) is just recycled content. I don't have the number but I'm pretty sure the completion numbers for SotH (and a to lesser degree IC) are abysmal low. This means that there has been no meaningful new content for most veteran players since 3 years.

And yes, I expect any player that has a basic understanding of the game mechanics and can put out 20k dps to be able to finish most (non-HM) content in the game.

Blackleopardex wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

Yoku wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

1) You guys talk about minor tweaks as if they were major nerfs. They're not.

2) Veteran modes of this dungeon, WGT, COA and the other DLC dungeons all need major nerfs. Why? Because you can't find any pugs in the group finder who can complete them.

COA is not a DLC dungeon.... but why you dont search 3 friends and try hard until you complete?? atleast this is how i did it in the beginning...

vCoA2 is hard but not an dlc one, pugs are pugs, see it as an major debuff.
On the other hand vCoA1 is easy, we 3 manned it because of bug in finder. one death, me because of fall damage
The only issue is sets, why does spell power cure drop from WGT and not wayrest or fungal 1

No it's not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXghSpgcs4

That video shows the original vCoA, prior to One Tamriel, prior to it becoming vCoA2. That iteration of the dungeon was easy and definitely soloable.

And then came One Tamriel, and what was once vCoA now became vCoA2. The health of the Fire Maw was more than doubled. Skoria's health was increased and he hits harder. vCoA2 became significantly harder (the irony was that they had just slightly nerfed the dungeon in the patch prior to One Tamriel, and in the OT patch, it got buffed so much that it was noticeably harder than it was before the previous patch's nerf).

And then magblade tanks took a pretty big hit in Morrowind with how Siphoning Attacks was completely gutted. This, on top of the Morrowind nerfs, means that the character in that video would most likely be unable to solo Skoria.

There really is no denying the vCoA2 is one of the harder dungeons. Even if you consider it to be "easy", I doubt you would call it "easier than the other base game dungeons".

As for whether or not it's deserving of its nerf, yes, it was. Note that the CoA2 nerf this patch affected the Fire Maw and only the Fire Maw. This nerf is justified because the Fire Maw is one of the earlier bosses in the dungeon (the first "major" boss), and it doesn't make sense in terms of difficulty progression to have a difficult boss this early in the dungeon. And, yes, it is difficult if you actually try to fight the boss the way it was intended--i.e., killing the adds. If you have enough DPS to straight burn the boss, then the Fire Maw is very easy. But if you ever try to do it using the "intended" way, the number of adds is simply overwhelming. The reason people straight burn is in large part because the proper method is just a giant cluster****. The nerf to vCoA2 this patch means that the intended method is more viable, and it encourages people to follow the mechanics instead of trying to skip the mechanics at all cost. And I, for one, am entirely in favor encouraging people to do the mechanics instead of having mechanics be so punishing that it pushes groups to try to skip them.

On the topic of vICP, the nerf to the Overfiend was justified for the same reason. It's the very first boss, and not even a "major" boss, yet it is one of the hardest bosses in the dungeon. I do a random Group Finder PUG every day (for the bonus XP and to see what it's like outside of the bubble of the endgame community), and every time I join an ICP-in-progress, the group is always stuck on the Overfiend. Bosses should have a difficulty progression. I can solo the final boss of vICP, but I can't solo the first boss of vICP--that says to me that the first boss is a bit overtuned, and this change that they made is just fine.

The nerf to the shades on the final boss is a bit perplexing, though. In my experience, PUGs have the most difficulty with the Darklight mechanic, not with the split mechanic. In fact, the split is usually a good time to recover from deaths and build some resources if needed. The change to the shades' health was unnecessary. But on that same token, nerfing the easiest part of the fight doesn't really change the overall difficulty, since a boss fight is as difficult as its hardest component.

TL;DR: I support the nerfs to vCoA2 Fire Maw and vICP Overfiend. I disagree with the vICP Lord Warden shades nerf, but don't think it will affect the overall difficulty of the boss fight in any appreciable way.

ZoS went by completion numbers and the DLC dungeons are notorious among pug'ers for being "auto-skip" dungeons. Most of these dungeons require communication and coordination to a degree higher than the typical dungeon. Failure to do so results in wipes - which wastes time and causes players to avoid the dungeon in the first place.

If you have a problem with the change, just go into vICP with no armor or CP150 gear - for "challenge".

Blanco wrote: »

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

They cut the fat from the dungeon.

The sky isn't falling, you need to learn to share

ew, no.

Kidding. Kidding. it's a joke

In all honesty, I just wish that they could have made everyone happy.

A purist like me didn't want to see it nerfed because I feel it's lowered the quality of the dung. On the other hand, more people probably need to complete it.

Maybe they could have upped the difficulty of normal.

You can never make everyone happy. The devs always try to keep both sides happy and that's hard to near impossible to do.

For everyone person whining about a nerf, is another who's happy about the nerf. Then there's a 3rd group of players who are indifferent to the changes and rolls with them.

i qued yesterday fo icp norm, dont need achieves or 2 keys since i have 420. all were level 15 or under. they all qued for rand norm dung i was doing pledge , well 1 left so me dps and 15 tank and 10 heal. niether done it before , we finnished but took awhile. they should remove dlc dungs from random qs.

Vaoh wrote: »

Not surprised. I just wish they would finally create an Undaunted tutorial to show players how to deal damage besides light attack spam and spamming Stonefist....

Most PUG groups cannot complete content because they consist of players who are horrible at playing roles. They can't learn without being taught or by losing enough times to learn. Until then content will only get nerfed, both angering players who somewhat understand how to play and still being too tough for those who don't.

Teach players how to play ZOS - no need for nerfs to vICP in particular. Also there's the argument that "Veteran" difficulty shouldn't be easy but.... oh well We had players who completed vWGT with only light attacks a long time ago yet even that dungeon was nerfed.

This is the biggest problem. You can't expect a game that really does cater to solo players to prepare those same players for group content without some kind of bridge. I mean, even questing with other people is playing alongside them more than playing together to accomplish the same goal.

Blackleopardex wrote: »

CromulentForumID wrote: »

Blackleopardex wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

Yoku wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

1) You guys talk about minor tweaks as if they were major nerfs. They're not.

2) Veteran modes of this dungeon, WGT, COA and the other DLC dungeons all need major nerfs. Why? Because you can't find any pugs in the group finder who can complete them.

COA is not a DLC dungeon.... but why you dont search 3 friends and try hard until you complete?? atleast this is how i did it in the beginning...

vCoA2 is hard but not an dlc one, pugs are pugs, see it as an major debuff.
On the other hand vCoA1 is easy, we 3 manned it because of bug in finder. one death, me because of fall damage
The only issue is sets, why does spell power cure drop from WGT and not wayrest or fungal 1

No it's not
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TXghSpgcs4

You of course know that your accomplishment proves absolutely nothing about how hard the content is for other people, right? I couldn't do what you did there, so it is an accomplishment.

Or are you saying because you can do it this way, anyone should be able to do it the normal way?

Congrats. Now it's not only an accomplishment, but a humblebrag.

I'm not even saying these dungeons should have been changed. I just wish all of these threads didn't become a way to plug videos. Easy for you isn't easy for others.

I'm just making my points. If I had no valid provable arguments it would make it very easy for the opposite side of the topic...

And I'm expecting that many people would be able to to this if they set their mind to it, read the tool-tip for the skills and moved out of aoe. tbh...

I think the mechanics throws most groups the most. Especially in the last fight with the swirling white circles and the fall from the heavens.

Coordinating two per portal with your average Pug is nearly impossible.

I personally don't have trouble with this dungeon but relying on others (to understand even after explaination) is something I choose not to do.

I honestly dont know what happened over the years. Where has this mindset spawned from? How on earth is challenging 4 man content in an mmo or rather how its executed here, meant for elite players? The biggest offender here is ZOS ostensibly having a very low level of respect for the intellect of its player base, and that sounds offensive but allow me to explain.

Naturally with how mmos deal with player progression and character power gain, organic difficulty is not generally something you find in this genre. However there is a middle ground, and the issue is exacerbated by ZOSs unwillingness to provide players with the right instruction to help players overcome and reach the win conditions for a given challenge.

This is why the participation trophy generation is often brought up. Provide the path of least resistence for long enough and eventually players will be unwilling to step beyond their comfort zone and even further let it fester and entitlement begins to develop.

Zos would rather reach the largest audience possible (of existing players) when creating group content as opposed to taking a position of pushing players to step up and rise to the occasion via in game guides, systems to teach you your role and what is generallly excepted of you at a high level, an improved or more clever way to teach the nuance of veteran dungeon mechanics via their normal version counterparts.

I understand the negetive implcations of the term elitism and how many players will diminsh and belittle others for not being at a certain skill level and i am very much against that type of behavior but nothing sickens me more then when a developer allows a scrub mentality to permeate its player base. To be ok with letting their players settle for JUST enough.

The perfect harmony balance in online game design is to give only as much as you take when creating obstacles for players. Trust your players enough and dont treat them like vegetables. Give them the tools and guides without holding their hands.

Now in reality you can throw all that out the window because dlc needs to sell, and naturally the more accessible a game or content is, the larger potential revenue can be acheived. That is the sad truth.

But if we "raise the floor" then everyone feels special and can complete content!

Since no one was doing it obviously needed a nerf. I tank and heal I waited more than five hours to que for it or find a group to do it. This was the rule not the exception. For fungal grotto for example about 20 seconds or less. If you thought it was easy good on you.

DHale wrote: »

Since no one was doing it obviously needed a nerf. I tank and heal I waited more than five hours to que for it or find a group to do it. This was the rule not the exception. For fungal grotto for example about 20 seconds or less. If you thought it was easy good on you.

I agree. It doesn't help that the helm (in my opinion) isn't particularly good.

The guys with yolo swag speed run groups should try pugging these. They may feel differently.

Yoku wrote: »

Emma_Overload wrote: »

1) You guys talk about minor tweaks as if they were major nerfs. They're not.

2) Veteran modes of this dungeon, WGT, COA and the other DLC dungeons all need major nerfs. Why? Because you can't find any pugs in the group finder who can complete them.

COA is not a DLC dungeon.... but why you dont search 3 friends and try hard until you complete?? atleast this is how i did it in the beginning...

Not everyone wants to?or maybe people like randoms and its to hard on the average pug?

Luigi_Vampa wrote: »

ZOS has data on how many people complete this dungeon, from group finder, pre-made etc... That is how they choose if the dungeon needs nerfed. I don't agree with it, but ZOS probably has a certain completion percentage rate they are trying to achieve. The dungeon has been out long enough and they want light attacking PUGs to complete it now.

Sucks for the hardcore crowd. I think they should add a Nightmare Mode with better rewards, (smaller loot table, or tokens, gold jewlery) or something. Keep Nightmare mode out of group finder, only pre-made groups can enter and give elite players something rewarding their dedication.

Yes to the nightmare Mode.

no more rewards cause people are jealous, and I don't want these jealous to destroy this mode by creating nerf thread simply because they want to loot these gold jewerly ... We just need more achievement with this mode .

Well I proposed a long time ago having a "handicap" mode for group content where your CP get disabled but rewards are better: gold jewels, weapons and armor only in certain traits etc.