Dev Discussion Episode 33: Crown of Thorns (Raid)

Some of this raid looks really nice visually, however besides throwing armies of adds at you there's not much else to say really. By far the weakest content in the episode in terms of mechanics.

I didn't realise how long and tedious the golem parts of the raid are. I get they all have 3 loot drops but there's no difference between the three "defend the golems" phases. It took a first time group (with good DPS I might add) 38 minutes to finish this raid on normal, with most of that time dedicated to the golems. I feel like at least if you're going to have 3 of essentially the same boss fight back to back, maybe have slightly different mechanics between the rooms. Even if one room normal adds, the second room get an Atlantean Archer or two in the mix, and the third room get some Shade Punisher style adds just to keep players on their toes (besides the current trying to throw you into the wall). The golem phases are going to get old and extremely tedious very quickly otherwise. Or even just have 2 golems rather than 3.

The Murk fight is (intentionally or unintentionally) the hardest boss fight in the episode. Again, most of that is due to swarms of adds which tend to make it tricky to see when Murk is doing his skull attacks. I'd rather have a harder time trying to fight a giant sea monster than a lieutenant Atlantean who just as well could have been a sub boss in a solo or duo. I'm guessing its intended for 2 tanks in this boss fight, even in normal.

Difficulty wise this raid is fine in normal but again due to throwing lots and lots and lots of adds at you. Not much in mechanics otherwise.

P.S. I wish the whirlpools in the King Shark fight were more dangerous in both normal and elite.

This raid was pretty and fun !

Small complaint: When being successful on the golems the loot window pops up. Practically everyone was choosing their loot but there was still a ton of adds and a few people died while in their menus. Not sure if a suggestion here but I was in the Event version, can’t even imagine Elite lol

I will second Little Sister. Would be nice to have the Loot Picker pop up after the adds or Drop a chest in the room that will allow us to interact with it once the Adds are done and then we can make our loot choices.

Managed to run the elite raid last night.

The first boss is a little easy. I don't know if King Shark could be doing skull attacks more often, or if there should be more adds in the fight. Maybe more whirlpools which hit harder than they do currently, or make the whirlpools larger in elite. This fight is nearly as easy as the normal version just with the one-time rally.

The second boss. Maybe more spiky environment stuff in the middle of the room rather than just the edges? That way players would have to be careful where they go when the currents come in. I would have liked to have seen more Coral Golems and Coralmancers here to add some danger to the fight further. Players would have to watch out for Skulls, as well as keep the Coral adds away from the constructed Thorn Golem. Again takes a while but fairly easy.

Last boss. A somewhat challenging boss fight. I would have liked for the War Magus to do more with his skulls for the group, I didn't find the War Magus especially dangerous at all (when aggro'd by tank I mean), but then I'm not sure how he could be improved/buffed - may need to run this further to study what War Magus does a little more. The Coralmancer's skulls you do have to watch out for which I like. Sometimes Murk's charges can hit for a wider radius than expected, which can cause deaths where players might think they've got out of the way in time. Patience and strategy is key to this fight.

Overall a fairly decent elite raid for farming, but I do wish the first two bosses especially were more dangerous for the group, at the moment they're a little too easy.

Again just my two cents on the *elite* version of this raid.

For the second boss in elite, maybe some whirlpools could appear, which again the positioning of the players would be crucial especially during the current phase. I also think in both normal and elite (more so elite) there should be a difficulty progression and/or slightly different mechanics should occur in each room with the thorn golems. For example:

Room 1: A few whirlpools. Some painful spiky sea flora in some middle areas of the room.

Room 2: Several whirlpools that move around the room. More spiky sea flora. More coral adds. One or two Commander Zoltar adds (the boss from the solo) that may do weapon attacks or a reflective shield - would be like a Fanatical Smith type add like from HoH 2nd boss.

Room 3. More whirlpools. Some adds that the troll would have to stun - these adds would try to stop players doing the boulders to construct the golem, and may even try to pick up the boulder if left (like some of the adds with the oxygen in SS 2nd boss).

These are just example ideas, would be happy to brainstorm other ideas.

I do think the thorn golems could have more variety between each room mechanics wise so its not the same thing copy pasted three times.

What artifacts were people running? Was everyone covered in shield supercharge the whole fight?

I'm curious as to the effect shield supercharges are having in content and whether they're too OP (as far as the amount of damage absorbed is concerned, and now paired with an artifact that reduces the water's entire healing rotation by 10% and another that basically allows for constant spamming of shield-based SCs). Or do you mean that the entire group basically takes no damage even without shield supercharges?

One of the biggest things I dislike about this raid is the fact that flight or "swimming" was added to this whole instance. I'd really suggest leaving the gimmicks out of instances. I don't want to be flight. There's a reason I'm not that movement mode. I don't like it. But yet we're forced into it because of the raid. I shouldn't have to rely on using a form trinket to get out of it.

Please, for future raids or actually just all instances, leave the gimmicks out of it, or at least give us a choice.

You can tell these guys that the loot window remains for at least 90seconds if I'm not mistaken. Besides, first two rooms don't give you options so everyone can just run them out. On the last room, none of the adds live for the whole duration. Communicate

In the elite version of this raid on last boss the adds hit to hard for the amount of them and the amount of bosses in the room, each ADD hits for an average of 15k, its to stressful for tanks to survive, u can count the tanks on one hand who manage to do that and most of them dislike doing it.

Four in Row Feat..
just tell is it pure luck or not??
if not I will figure how to do it...
if pure luck..no point me wasting time..

Would it be possible to not be in combat for the first half of the cutscene at the end of the raid? I'd like to not be dead at the end of it b/c I rage crashed and then my manacles proc'd Thanks

Hello Developers,

Just giving a heads up if possible can you guys take a look at Kings Sharks Feeding Frenzy move, something seems off. Ran Cot(e) and noticed his chomp move taking my whole health in one attack not chomps over time to allow for a lunge or anything. Its' range is pretty huge too when rolling away he still manages to kill you. I also have both my adaptive augments maxed so the benefit effect should be 15% x 2 = 30% damage reduction from his frenzy move but if that move can now kill in one hit/chomp then that effect is now pointless.

Something just doesn't seem right. I don't remember this happening before but now it seems consistent. Can this please be looked into. Thank you for your time and dedication.

Sincerely: Brav

Not really game breaking but annoying, so I thought I report it here as well:

Coralmancer can't lunge for some reason. Everytime he tries, he just stays in place, doing the staff-lunge animation and doing one spin, instead of lunging at the one with the aggro and doing a whole combo. He has the feint-animation and just won't move. It's kinda annoying when one wants to split the bosses in Elite.

Also Murk seens to randomly deceide to go out of his way while charing and interruping his four-charges-plan with feint attacks on someone, random tackles (that aren't supposed to happen before the last charge) and sometimes even just lunges back at the tank, doing some combos, doing his skull attack and then resuming to charge one or two more times.

The last one could be intended so that Murk isn't as predictable as he would be otherwise, but the first one sounds like a bug to me. When we wanted to single out Coralmancer on the last few runs, he just wouldn't come out of the add group and was just standing there doing melee attacks hitting air.

The lunge bug also happens with Aquamancer,I notice it at least once per run.And yes if you dont spam those pulls coralmancer can instatly focus on the other tank,not because tank pulled him or was too close.Better option is for the other tank to keep coralmancer close to your side and as soon Murk spawns lunge at coral.

Ive also noticed Murk's random charge swaps to weapon combos to skull attack back to charges.I believe if raids were difficult enough so that those anomalies would prevent groups from completing the bossfight,they would have been fixed on the first week.

So just because og mentor and his flunkies got elite gear from it being easy means that everyone else is screwed from getting it as easy as they did? Pathetic

Huh?