I think it is like that because of the power creep we have in the game. These new dungeons probably released with the idea of having a subclassed character.

There's many guilds out there that teach mechanics for vet content and hard mode stuff. I'm in some and there's guilds advertising just that in chat daily. Just gotta find the right fit.

Because top level damage is like 10x higher than what it was for the first couple years of the game. Nowadays there are HA setups with very easy rotations that can do 120k+, when something like Maw of Lorkhaj released in 2016 it was pretty rare to see people do more than 20k DPS. If the new content was balanced around old DPS numbers the content would offer no challenge to people who care about or understand creating a viable build.

Most people in dungeon finder don't really understand the viable build part, but the game doesn't really do a good job of explaining it.

The game has consistently undergone power creep throughout it's lifespan and it seems the dungeon/trial team tunes their content to whatever power level players tend to have upon content release.

As there has been substantial power creep (high single target on release of patch 1.6 was about 15k), older dungeons tend to be substantially under-tuned relative to current power levels.

What is it that you are looking for from this post? Supposedly you only want responses from players that also struggle to complete the newest vet DLC dungeons. And you want them to tell you ... why it's so difficult?

You have one post in your history asking for advice on the last boss of Naj Caldeesh where Morvan was very helpful in trying to explain the AOEs you struggled with. That wasn't him flexing at all. If this is how you react to helpful advice I'm not sure why anyone else should bother to assist you.

Soarora wrote: »

It takes a bit for pugs to be able to clear new dungeons. Graven deep, for example, would tend to fail at last boss if tank didn’t know what they’re doing. Now pugging graven deep is fine. I think it’s about how many pugs know mechanics.

That said, I think Treeshka’s right that these dungeons may have been balanced with subclassing in mind. They might also just be harder to try and fill in progression gaps.

If you’re on PC/NA, I would suggest Hard Dungeoneers if you want a dungeon guild. I can send a link to the discord or the in-game guild if you’d like since it’s hard to use the guild finder.

I am the current GM, so feel free to take the suggestion with some salt, but we have had a handful of members come in lately in the same boat as you. We also have members who like helping people out, even if it is just for a vet clear. People who have established themselves in friend groups might make it look a bit clique-y but in my experience, it isn’t too difficult to get connected to people, just takes a bit of determination depending on whose active at the time. Personally, I joined the guild after realizing that pugging Fang Lair over and over and over again is never going to get me the worm cult personality and thanks to the guild I’m down to just needing 1 more trifecta then I’ll have them all.

This is fantastic to read. I'm an officer in a similar guild on psna. While not dungeon specific, we make weekly rosters for dungeon and trial training for vet. It's always nice to get people their first clears or help them with a build.

twisttop138 wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

AzuraFan wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

That said, I think Treeshka’s right that these dungeons may have been balanced with subclassing in mind. They might also just be harder to try and fill in progression gaps.

I hate Naj-Caldeesh for that reason. I do dungeons with pugs 99% of the time, and I'd say there's a 50% wipe rate (on normal!). Unfortunately, when that happens, just about all the time someone immediately drops group, which makes the dungeon a pain to complete. At least some of the time, we give up eventually and that means a whole whack of time wasted. When I queue for specific dungeons for the sticker book, I'll often uncheck this one. It's just not worth the trouble.

I am curious— what seems to be causing pugs to wipe? Is it in the realm of not knowing mechanics (ignoring totems, standing in tethers, not standing in the yellow AoEs), too low of damage output (add overwhelm), or too much damage taken (healers underprepared, dps standing in AoEs)?

I think, unfortunately, that with the current power creep many players get into this mindset that you can brute force everything in the game. Then they get into something that actually requires something different and they're not equipped to handle it.

I've been in pugs that tried this, we wipe a couple times and instead of trying to help, someone just drops. Which is fine but I like to take a couple minutes and explain what to do. How to do it. The endgame community is small already. If we're taking a few to explain and help, there's another person that potentially will join us. If we're not replacing the folks that leave the game, we wither and die.

Also I think many folks that want to brute force everything actually don't have the DPS to force mechanic skips in a lot of content.

I see, yeah, that tracks, especially on normal or by people who run older dlcs/nondlcs mostly. I remember when shipwrights regret was new and people tried skipping killing the drowned on last boss (on vet or HM, don’t recall). It did not work. No matter how many times it was attempted haha.

Soarora wrote: »

I am curious— what seems to be causing pugs to wipe? Is it in the realm of not knowing mechanics (ignoring totems, standing in tethers, not standing in the yellow AoEs), too low of damage output (add overwhelm), or too much damage taken (healers underprepared, dps standing in AoEs)?

I'd say it depends on the group. Personally, I think DPS doesn't matter as much. If you know the mechanics, you'll still win most of the time. The problem for me, and perhaps for others, is that I often don't know the mechanics. And neither does anyone else in the group. I don't mind asking, if we're having problems, "Does anyone know the mechanics?" If someone does, then that's great and I know for next time (or when we try again, depending). But often, nobody knows. And because you're in a pug, people aren't willing to try again and work them out. Or you just can't work them out. This game is really annoying in that when you're in the middle of combat, you have some NPC shouting things at you, and you're supposed to just magically know what they want you to do. Sometimes it's clear. Other times it's not.

Or there isn't really a clue about what you're supposed to do, and there's no time to figure it out. When you're pugging, you get one chance. Now sure, after I do a dungeon and we fail, I could go to a site and read the mechanics, but to me, a game that makes you go outside to read mechanics has already failed. I've played some really hard games in my time (been gaming for 40+ years) and I've never had to "do homework" to figure it out. I was playing games when there was no internet to check, so you had to figure stuff out yourself, but the games either taught you, or the mechanics made sense and you could figure them out. Not here most of the time, IMO, which is why they have NPCs yelling at you while you're in the middle of dodging all the AoEs and trying not to die. It's stupid, frankly. By mechanics, I don't mean the basics like stay out of stupid. I mean each boss's unique mechanics.

For some dungeons, I do them enough times and I pick up on the mechanics by watching what others are doing. But again, in pugs, it's hit and miss. Sometimes the only time I learn the mechanics is if we're having problems, because other times the bosses just get burned down too quickly to see anything, and it's worse now with the almighty beam. Bosses sometimes barely have time to go through their phases (which I don't mind. Some of the boss fights in this game are tedious and artificially drawn out). Just last week I was doing a dungeon that I've done at least 10x before. We were having problems, and I asked for the mechanics because I had no clue. The other 10x, that particular boss had been burned down so quickly that they didn't matter. So in that sense, perhaps low DPS can contribute, but it's not the root problem, if you know what I mean.

And for one of the later dungeons, perhaps Naj, not sure, there's so much AoE going on that someone died once and I couldn't find them to rez them. It was ridiculous. I'm running around trying to figure out where they are, but the entire freaking floor was covered in AoEs. It does sometimes feel like the designer(s) have no clue, so they just have the bosses throwing out AoEs everywhere.

Anyhow, I'd say mechanics are more of a problem than DPS. You can slowly kill anything as long as you can stay alive.

(if you couldn't tell, I'm not a fan of dungeon boss design in this game.)

I personally think it's two reasons. One, IIRC, a long time ago they had wanted normal dungeons to better prepare people for the vet version. And two, as the playerbase has gotten stronger, the content has scaled up in difficulty to match the players.

AzuraFan wrote: »

Soarora wrote: »

I am curious— what seems to be causing pugs to wipe? Is it in the realm of not knowing mechanics (ignoring totems, standing in tethers, not standing in the yellow AoEs), too low of damage output (add overwhelm), or too much damage taken (healers underprepared, dps standing in AoEs)?

I'd say it depends on the group. Personally, I think DPS doesn't matter as much. If you know the mechanics, you'll still win most of the time. The problem for me, and perhaps for others, is that I often don't know the mechanics. And neither does anyone else in the group. I don't mind asking, if we're having problems, "Does anyone know the mechanics?" If someone does, then that's great and I know for next time (or when we try again, depending). But often, nobody knows. And because you're in a pug, people aren't willing to try again and work them out. Or you just can't work them out. This game is really annoying in that when you're in the middle of combat, you have some NPC shouting things at you, and you're supposed to just magically know what they want you to do. Sometimes it's clear. Other times it's not.

Or there isn't really a clue about what you're supposed to do, and there's no time to figure it out. When you're pugging, you get one chance. Now sure, after I do a dungeon and we fail, I could go to a site and read the mechanics, but to me, a game that makes you go outside to read mechanics has already failed. I've played some really hard games in my time (been gaming for 40+ years) and I've never had to "do homework" to figure it out. I was playing games when there was no internet to check, so you had to figure stuff out yourself, but the games either taught you, or the mechanics made sense and you could figure them out. Not here most of the time, IMO, which is why they have NPCs yelling at you while you're in the middle of dodging all the AoEs and trying not to die. It's stupid, frankly. By mechanics, I don't mean the basics like stay out of stupid. I mean each boss's unique mechanics.

For some dungeons, I do them enough times and I pick up on the mechanics by watching what others are doing. But again, in pugs, it's hit and miss. Sometimes the only time I learn the mechanics is if we're having problems, because other times the bosses just get burned down too quickly to see anything, and it's worse now with the almighty beam. Bosses sometimes barely have time to go through their phases (which I don't mind. Some of the boss fights in this game are tedious and artificially drawn out). Just last week I was doing a dungeon that I've done at least 10x before. We were having problems, and I asked for the mechanics because I had no clue. The other 10x, that particular boss had been burned down so quickly that they didn't matter. So in that sense, perhaps low DPS can contribute, but it's not the root problem, if you know what I mean.

And for one of the later dungeons, perhaps Naj, not sure, there's so much AoE going on that someone died once and I couldn't find them to rez them. It was ridiculous. I'm running around trying to figure out where they are, but the entire freaking floor was covered in AoEs. It does sometimes feel like the designer(s) have no clue, so they just have the bosses throwing out AoEs everywhere.

Anyhow, I'd say mechanics are more of a problem than DPS. You can slowly kill anything as long as you can stay alive.

(if you couldn't tell, I'm not a fan of dungeon boss design in this game.)

Gave you an awesome cos you reply deserves it thznk you.

Hapexamendios wrote: »

To give healers something to do.

As a healer I would appreciate more of it. It's quite tiring to see the 3 DDs being superb comp everywhere.