AJTC5000 wrote: »

That being said, I'm no tank and I've no idea if the health buff that the secret bosses grant is worthwhile (though I suppose if stacking max health for the last boss is the comfortable strategy, maybe it is - but I think tanks would be able to build to this without needing the buff, right?).

I main a tank, but I play all roles. I did pretty well with 37k health in our last go on last boss (considering it's the hardest hitting one). It's absolutely not necessary to stack health and the buff to health (regardless of the other buffs) is not necessary. You could even just slap on Plague Doctor and ingore buffs if you felt that stacking health was better and it would probably still be a much faster run.

The PTS notes say they've reduced the amount of damage Quick Strike does. I would need to see how much that has been reduced before making any real assessment, but even as it stood as of last try, for motif farming in a group I know, I would not bother with the side boss buffs. Even for day one achievements (trifecta, etc.), we might not bother with them.

code65536 wrote: »

Eh, it's so easy to slip up and make a mistake, though. I do like to access the skills on my back bar, and it's nice to drop block in order to reposition more quickly. And all it takes is one little mistake when doing things like that. Yea, if you never make a mistake, low health is fine: 37K is no different than 47K. But few tanks are so immaculate. I certainly am not.

I'm not sure where that argument comes from? Yeah, it's easy to slip up. The same was shown during the PC NA vs. EU live stream of Black Drake Villa when Nefas died. Isn't that the point of a DLC hard mode? Neither of us are talking about regular veteran or normal here. If you can breeze through it one-handed with your eyes closed, then it's not a challenge. In terms of having access to back bar, yeah, I enjoy that too. I bar swapped more than 70 times in the last attempt (roughly 6:30 fight time, meaning around 5-6 CPM and accounting for my Blockade casts, not really optimal, but still getting decent uptimes on Crusher). You just need to time it.

And you're absolutely right in that when it comes to a 50k light attack unblocked, 37k is the same as 10k or 49,9k, the number is irrelevant if it's below the damage and unblocked. My point was that, while blocking, the damage seemed almost insignificant even with the Battered DoT+incoming damage if you had a healer with a single HoT under you. I still 100% agree with the reduction in light attack damage as it is absurd, but arguing that it's "easy to slip up" with a DLC hard mode isn't really solid.

Week 2 update

Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

Still fun to play

How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

Easy / Medium DLC dungeon

Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

First and second bosses Vet HM

Last boss Vet HM (20%)

Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

First boss is still my favorite and will most likely be the gatekeeper on the HMs

What level and build was the character you used?

Magplar (1700) Kinras / Bashei / Kilt / 1 slimecraw

Do you have any other general feedback?

This dungeon is very unfriendly to melee characters all around. I would probably switch to a ranged build for convenience next time we go in there.

Boss 1 HM:
- Overall, the fight is fine. It's a decent mechanic check but it might stomp people as we rarely see those fights as "first boss". It will likely be a gatekeeper for PUG.
- The only "problem" I have with the fight is that the attro phase is very unfriendly for melee character, even worst when you have multiple. Reducing the width of the circle around the player would make sense here to allow more ease for melee.

Boss 2 HM :
- Overall, seems fine. The dps check on the dogs is decent. That boss didn't give us much of a problem.
- Still a bit confused about the lack of mechanics on that boss following the first one.
- Invulnerability of the boss doesn't feel good, maybe give a dmg reduction instead
- The tank had to juggle the lurcher at all time cause it keeps coming back if you kill it (why)

Boss 3 HM:
- This boss shall be known as Captain Snot / Flubber boi from now on.
- At which point is there enough Flubber to satisfy one person ?
- The spawn rate of the Flubber should be tuned down a notch to help melee characters
- Two adds at the same time during the execute seems a bit overkill. Maybe do something like the second boss, once the add dies another spawns until the boss dies.
- We ignored the Flubber cause even when focusing the dudes that spawn it, we still had a metric ton.

Overall, this dungeon is very unfriendly to melee characters and some adjustments should be made to help with that.

I ran this dungeon again on vet HM with a different group of people (who had never done HM before), to see what this week's PTS changes felt like.

The Waves and Swell abilities will now stagger player characters hit by those abilities.

I like this change. It makes the waves feel a bit more dangerous and important.

Reduced the damage from Quick Strike in all difficulties.

Thank you.

Drowned Hulks will no longer both charge targets at the same time.

Both hulks will definitely still charge at the same time.

Here's a set of two charges that were less than 0.4s apart:


And here's a string of five consecutive sets of double charges. And for all but the second set shown here, both hulks targeted the same player.


That having been said, I'm not quite sure why this change was necessary. Double hulk charges in my experience weren't a huge problem, and by doing their charges at the same time, it conveniently reduces the number of times we have to make the call to watch out for a charge. I think double charges are fine.

With the Challenge Banner active, Drowned Corpses’ Retch ability can now be interrupted as it can in Veteran and Normal difficulties.

I feel like this change was unnecessary as well, and I'm not sure that interrupting the Retch is even a good idea.

Why, you ask? Well, the corpses' Hurl ability is, in our experience, the bigger threat. It targets at random--disregarding taunt, I might add--and hits non-tanks for something like 8K. If multiple corpses happen to pick the same target at the same time, then that poor sap will just get deleted. However, when a corpse is busy doing its (very lengthy) Retch channel, it is not casting Hurl. During the first week, getting close to a corpse will cause it to enter Retch mode, so we were purposefully making them Retch so that we wouldn't have to deal with the more painful Hurl. Now, if Hurl were to respect taunt, then I would consider interrupting Retch to be useful; otherwise, I would not ever bother with it.

Retch never really felt that consequential in the first place, since the bile pools are getting cleaned periodically as the game cycles in new corpses. And now the Bile Burst cleans them too. Speaking of which, the Bile Burst cleaning the puddles does help make things slightly easier late in the fight, but it happens relatively infrequently, so its effect is somewhat muted (which is fine).


Overall, the balance seems fine and difficulty is comparable to the first week (if the tank had enough health to survive an unblocked first-week light attack).

Please dont nerf this bring back the original difficulty its to easy at this point.

f

code65536 wrote: »

AJTC5000 wrote: »

Make Hurl respect taunt as @code65536 suggested

I did not suggest such a thing. The point that I made was that interrupting Retch made limited sense given that an interrupted corpse will just spend their time Hurling.

Hailan wrote: »

Please dont nerf this bring back the original difficulty its to easy at this point.

Congrats. But I strongly disagree that it is "too easy".

I'll quote what you said earlier in this thread: "once you learn mechs for any boss and have some practice it’s not to hard to complete". That's kind of the point. ALL PvE content is "easy" once you've mastered it. Once you understand the mechanics, once you've refined your strategies, once you've practiced the fight, it will all become "easy". The example of this that most people can relate to is probably the final boss of vMA: Everyone back when it launched spent hours wiping on it, but once they got that first clear, the second clear became an order of magnitude easier, and it didn't take long for it to feel like a walk in the park.

Content is supposed to be easy once you've learned and mastered it. That's just how it is. So the question of easy-vs-difficult hinges on the learning curve. Voriak is hard because it had the steepest learning curve in all of vMA.

So how does the learning curve of Shipwright compare to that of previous dungeons? There is a reason I jot down my initial day-1 impressions, even though I usually soften my views later as I've run the content more. There's a reason I like to compare the number of wipes that it took to get a first clear versus older dungeons during their first week on PTS. Because this is how I get a sense of how the learning curve compares with what came before it.

Comparing our blind week-1 run from this PTS with our blind week-1 runs from all the previous dungeon PTS over the past couple of years, we wiped more times getting our initial first-boss HM kill in Shipwright than all of the previous first-boss HM kills from the previous four triple-HM dungeons combined. Same with the second boss. The discrepancy isn't as sharp on the third boss: We spent more time with Arkasis HM than we did with Numirril HM, but Numirril HM took more time than any of the other three final bosses, so as a whole, I would say that this dungeon has a steeper learning curve than any that preceded it. And this is the reason why, from day 1, I've said that this dungeon is harder than previous dungeons, because it has a steeper learning curve than previous dungeons.

Getting the trifecta on PTS is irrelevant (and not unprecedented). What matters is how long it took you to get to that point, compared to previous dungeons. And I would wager that it took you more time than, say, Red Petal or Cellar.

It didn’t take us long at all today was my first day back on the pts since last Wednesday and we played for maybe 2 hours with a healer who had never seen the mechanics before today. It is not hard the mechs are easy to see and deal with. I would argue brp is still harder and the content is years old and I don’t even consider vbrp or even unchained to be very difficult. The only mech semi tough to deal with is the phase where Nazaray can’t be damaged. It seems like that needs to be adjusted because she goes immune for so long and refuses to move out of the aoe that makes her immune. Everything else in there is not hard fist boss is super easy it has 4 mechs that have HUGE telegraphs. I don’t consider this dungeon to be hard. What’s sad is zos will continue to nerf it to the point where it’s a joke of dungeon like the cauldron and black drake villa verses making hard mode content hard. It should be a prog to clear hard modes and trifectas. Shouldn’t be a cake walk.

[*] Did you enjoy this new dungeon?

It was ok. Soloed it on normal.

[*] How did the difficulty compare to existing dungeons on Normal and Veteran versions?

This dungeon definitely feels much shorter and straightforward compared to other DLC dungeons. I like that. Can't comment on veteran. Vet DLCs are usually terrible on PTS/launch.

[*] Did you complete Normal or Veteran (or both)?

Normal.

[*] Which was your favorite boss in this dungeon, and why?

No favourites really. Most fights were straightforward with no long invuln phases or gimmicks.

Trash mobs

Mostly fine. The AOE stun from the voriplasm and the flameshaper fireballs from the skeleton mages are pretty hard hitting and really do encourage having some ranged interrupt. Not too many mob groups as well, thank goodness.

Foreman Braddigan

Surprisingly uncomplicated for a DLC dungeon boss, compared to other normal DLC dungeon bosses. I do think the fight could be pretty melee unfriendly, especially during the abombination phase with the AOE dot on everyone. Maybe make the circle smaller.

Another complaint is about the mechanic where he has an AOE around himself that splits into 4 AOEs that travel outwards, that again split into 4 AOEs if they touch someone. What is the point of adding a telegraph if the AOEs are all going to fly outwards in unknown directions anyway? The AOEs are pretty big and fast too, unlike something like Oxblood's fart AOE. If I was playing melee, the only way to reliably counter this is to run far away from the boss. I know this isn't an issue on normal, but AOEs on vet are usually 1 or 2 shots.

Nazaray

This felt like the most hectic boss, even on normal. The boss's light and heavy attacks both hit pretty hard and in general there's always something going on.

Again, I don't get this obsession with adding telegraphs to attacks when the warning and reaction time is so short. The poison rain circles and final large AOE that summons the wasp have such short warning times that it seems pointless to even add a circle, you're bound to get hit by some of the AOEs. Same thing with the blue AOE that travels around in a circle spewing smaller AOEs. This isn't about the difficulty on normal or vet. I am pointing this out as this sort of encounter design is antithetical to the concept of telegraphs. This isn't a bullet hell game, please stop spamming the fight space with practically unavoidable damage, overlapping mechanics, telegraphs and effects. The point of adding a telegraph is not just to tell people that the attack is going to land there, it's so that they also have reasonable time to get out of it or avoid it.

The 3 red dogs that spawn, they do seem to apply a pretty hefty DOT if you don't kill them in time. I think this is gonna be a dps race mechanic on vet. Don't think I will like this mechanic much.



Some weird bugs I saw during the fight, why are Caska and Zaji just chilling in the middle of the arena? Why is there a red telegraph when I've already killed the dog?

Captain Numirril

Was overall fine. The heavy attack from the boss, the "seas are my siblings" attack or such, will display a block telegraph on your character even if you're out of range when he uses it. Maybe add a small AOE in front of him to show the actual range of the attack?

Please make the vomit from the zombies and colossus disappear faster. In other fights, the reward for clearing out the adds is that the attacks and effects from the adds would disappear once you kill them. I don't see the point in having piles of gunk all over the place other than to unnecessarily complicate the fight, see my comment earlier about overlapping mechanics. When the wave AOEs sweep over the arena it washes away any vomit in their path but the vomit still seems to buildup way too fast.

I don't see the point of Zaji's callouts. His voice is annoying.

Based on other comments, there is apparently a stacking debuff mechanic on vet or HM. If there's a significant mechanic or debuff, please at least display warning messages on the screen rather than expect people to count numbers on buff trackers. See MOL "your armour has been shattered" FV "Rizzuk is chilling the air" etc. for examples.

[*] What level and build was the character you used?

Max level mag sorc.

[*] Did you happen to notice or find anything interesting? Just curious…

Yes, I found all the secret bosses. I like how you can actually reach them solo, there isn't some crap where we need to hit 4 buttons at once or some nonsense.

[*] Do you have any other general feedback?

First main point. I don't understand the trend towards having dungeons with "main path" bosses and "hidden" bosses. In base game dungeons, and some of the older dungeons, minibosses would be placed in between the main bosses so players could "relax" a bit, perform a relatively easier fight and get some nice loot from it. Why couldn't the wispmother, crazy axe person and storm sailor be miniboss encounters on the main path instead? They are relatively simple encounters, and there's already hidden treasure chests to reward those that explore. Though thankfully, the hidden bosses this time aren't a pain to access without a fully coordinated group like the ones in Dread Cellar or BDV, bleh.

Second main point. As mentioned earlier, please stop designing fights that are "challenging" only because of the sheer amount of mechanics, adds, AOEs and damage that they overlap and spam at you at once. I get way more satisfaction from older DLC dungeon fights such as Khephidaen and Dranos Velador (even before the nerf) that with proper movement and awareness, would allow you to reasonably counter or avoid almost all of the damage in a fight. This is because on top of proper telegraphing, those fights had been explicitly coded not to overlap significant boss effects. e.g. The Velidreth statue will never drop an AOE while Dranos is teleporting and when he's doing the shade stun mechanic etc. This is my main issue with some of the more recent DLC bosses and HMs from MOS/MHK onwards. As the boss's health drops, or goes into execute phase, the entire fight space just turns into a cluster f. I don't really find that fun. And when I do clear it, I feel the kind of relief one would feel when they finally turn off a TV that's been blasting static in their ears for the past 10 minutes.