Throne of the Dead is un PUGable

It's not fun or rewarding but you can pug it now.

It's kind of interesting because considering that the developers leave the testing to us and us only, if we weren't "complaining" or "crying" we would never get anything tweaked or fixed. I don't see any of the complaints in this thread as ridiculous or unreasonable, especially since most pertain to the Event and Regular version of the Raid.

We can't force and shouldn't expect people to get on mic and communicate for event stuff.

Throne of the Dead was never high on my fun factor.

Yea for regular there were a few suggestions to make the fight easyier (essence) no changes were made sadly during Test but what i also need to say is that the issues in elite are completly different then the one on regular.

During elite if your group no matter how skilled they are do not have enough single target damage the fight takes forever making a buff troll a must have and meta power/s a must for DPS,this is not skill.

I hope to not see such a elite raid design again where your Meta chasing DPS and buff trollers carry you.

so when I go back to do it with anyone else, it will be easier than it was yesterday. Got it.

I low-key adore this Raid for Reasons; one of those reasons was the mechanics, though now that I'm the one Tanking it I have a little more control over it - still the biggest difference on a "Then and Now" scale is pretty much ENTIRELY the fact that I used to have to stop for five minutes and explain the mechanics of the Ares fight and THIS TIME AROUND... someone else did it for me...

So I guess the more things change the more they stay the same, but still. Okaythen.

I believe if you look in the test discussion, you can thank that 8 player wannabe group for buffing the phuuck out of elite. Apparently it was too cheesy for them which somehow in some universe it means it will be easy for everyone else.

You can nerf this to the ground as I will not be playing this at all. Good luck to you all!!!

We did. 7 years ago. And I'm sure you did as well.

The raid doesn't need a fix. It's this community's lack of communication with each other is what's the problem. Y'all haven't been able to agree with anything ever since AM was born.

I did but The game was not the same then it is now.

You cannot compare dcuo now to then even with things being scaled up plus HP added to ares on top of it because meta artifacts play such a massive roll in this as i said do it without these things then come and see how it is for most of the players.

Most players dont have a buff troller with meta artifacts or gadget dps or eog spammers.

Skill is about mechanic not about whos group deals more damage!

Yall are making it easy for yourselfs with your meta things your groups are using and then wanna come and say its a lack of communication lol didnt know communication increased damage dealt by x times more then other groups.

The first boss isnt difficult but it takes TOO long to defeat areas if you dont have the meta things thats my point. And im all in for high difficulty on Elite raids but this is not high difficulty it just benefits the meta cheesing groups.

That situation is the highlight of my day on the forums. I wonder what else was changed and tweaked in the past based on the experience of such a small group of players. That **** is completely ridiculous, lol.

I know alot! Wherever thats making a raid harder or easyier Because many of the testers if not most are secretly giving their feedback to the devs imo this needs to change! All feedback given for Elite Raid content on test have to be made public some groups are giving feedback for their own benefits,make it public so others can discuss about it the same way when i give feedback and have people come and respond to them and i dont secretly message a dev.

Luke couldve made it secret but he wrote it public which i respect actually all he did was made ares HP higher. The mechanics of the raid were already existing and even made it easyier to see skulls on second boss.

The first boss isnt difficult it just takes too long to kill ares without the meta things some people here think that we complain about the difficulty but its NOT about difficulty its purely that most groups dont have that much damage like top endgame league/groups with a buff troller,no issue with essence or so either.

The gap is too large when it comes to the damage output of groups that use meta things vs those that dont.

This is false, we are only testing the last maybe 10% of the final product. They have QA teams that work on it regularly. The only time we had a bigger part was stats revamp, but that really required more than just testing content.

The test server is more to get feedback about how the players react if anything.

There was only one team testing elite, it got buffed too much based on their feedback. I wonder how it would have been if it went live without the buff.

Thanks Charon for hearing us on this. Obviously Elite content should be challenging that's a given and I'd never want to suggest otherwise. But that Essence of War with new players and toons in Event and Normal content, man what a boss lol.

The biggest issue was getting 3 Tanks to hop into your TodE group. With the Update you only need 2 decent Tanks wich helps severely.
(25% dmg buff unless you had a battle tank for the essence before, wich damaged Ares too)

Difficulty isnt affected and its a fun challenge.

To anyone complaining: Why are you complaining now? You had 2 easy Elite raids and a ton of Elite solo/duo alerts to get renown. There is no reason to go into this raid other than wanting a challenge.

To anyone complaining that you need the meta in terms of dps, i gotta tell you youre wrong. Sometimes you should think out of the box. With the meta, you can plow through ares without killing any adds. Without the meta you may have to kill some of the buffed adds or those that are a big risk, like the Bowmaster or Punisher.

@Charon Im pretty sure back then the adds had specific names. Although its still possible to determine who is who just by the looks, it would be much better if they had their specific names back.
For the second boss, the "eggs" that get spawned beneath you could use a little bit more visibility. They're transparent and quite hard to see since they're purple and the floor is dark blue.

Why I complained: Oneshots everywhere in second fight

Then do it without gadget dps and buff troller and eog spamm but you wont and you are sugarcoating the issue since your groups have x times more DPS then other groups mainly due to using gadgets and the other said above things if they arent imporant why are you always using these things? Its really hypocrite behaviour if we want difficulty then everyone should be in somewhat equal position but the ares fight clearly benefits directly the meta chasing groups this is not skill.

Im tired of DPS/buff trolling centric designs and DPS checks where your succes is determined by how quickly you kill the Boss! i hope they will avoid making such boss designs in future episode where the main goal is to pump out as much damage as possible!

Back then when this elite raid was new nobody had a buff troller or eog spamm so the gap wasnt that large between groups and it was more so about skill and more equal if you want actual difficulty you shouldnt be allowed to be 10 steps above other groups and if im correct there wasnt also a power that overperformed damage wise like gadget precision does atm.

So If your group kills the boss 3times quicker you do not experience the fight the same way other groups do thats where the issue is to me you bypass the difficulty by having insane amount of damage.

I can see your frustration but, if everyone should be equal gear should be removed from the game. Aswell as Skill points etc.
Artifacts are just another part of your gear and enhance certain playstyles.

What you are suggesting is increasing difficulty for players that earned those items and worked towards them for a long time to have superior group synergies opposed to egoistic self centered playstyles.

Also, i did it without gadget dps and without support role spamming eog.
We had a buff troll tho, since thats what a troll is for nowadays.

Ofc it was much more struggle during 2nd boss but thats mainly due to bad balance when it comes to gadget.

If you take eog spamming into account, electricity benefits much more from it. Just like rage (rage not as much since bosses have proximity aggro in ToD).

I have max arts aswell but if my group or most others who dont have acces to a buff troller with meta artifacts the entire group will have a increase in difficulty because the fight (in any elite raid) will take longer and not because of skill not because of experience purely because the artifacts aka the meta and this is not healthy,if elite raids are supposed to be a challenge and skill then the devs need to design it where you dont need a buff troller or other meta things to by pass difficulty and so on,it needs to be as equal as possible then i also have no issue with it.

A example would be that a boss/any enemy would do a mechanic/phase etc only based on his % HP and not based on a timer.

So out of those 3 things buff trolling is the worst since it increases the damage dealt by everyone in the group where as gadget dps only makes himself do more damage. But both of these things disturb and influence our difficulty way too much if a group uses them as i said the gap is so large between the meta artifacts/power vs what most use it has become harder to find groups simply for this reason and only the same type of people benefit from this.

Makes sense.

Unfortunately there is no way the devs can/will restrict artifacts from elite since many players paid for them for that single reason. The only way would be to implement something like rental artifacts that cost in game currency that allow you to use certain artifacts for a certain period of time and thats is highly unlikely to happen.

We also shouldnt forget that this is a mmorpg and its nature is time investment for reward. Any mmorpg is like that and that simply determines that a new player wont be an elite player unless he/she heavily invest. Wich is unhealthy - i agree on that.

Some of the one shots are mechanics to be worked around.

If you get eggs, move away from everyone else and keep moving until the eggs stop tracking you.

If a judge stomps on floor block.

Admittedly the other attack can be kinda random but spreading out helps with that.

The community just isn't used to 'do this mechanic or you die' style mechanics because of aforementioned artifact metas, shields from Atomic and Water, and perceivably less difficult content design in more recent years. A classic elite raid like Throne of the Dead (probably harder than FGSe especially if you are going for a no death run) is going to be a shock to the system.