There's a trending problem that started in DoF, and I forsee it getting worse and worse as expansions release. AOE's generally hit too hard. In DoF, this started with the contested Pillars of Flame dragons having interruptible aoes that would one shot the raid if not interrupted and Godking and his adds having aoes that would one shot the raid or tank if not interrupted. Generally, I think most of the community let these slide because they are interruptible, so it just added a new mechanic to the game. A lot of classes have interrupts, so this was "fine" to a lot of people. In Kingdom of Sky, this has become more evident. Here's some examples: - Corsolander - War Stomp will one shot most people unless you rotate blockers and porcupines. - Vyemm - Scream of Death (this has been reduced over time), but this mob has dual tanking, dual debuffing, and some other mechanics, and if you don't use blockers and porcupine for this AoE, it really can make things unstable. - Talendor - Breath of Fire falls into the "DoF one-shot aoes" boat, because it is interruptible. If not, it will one shot a large majority of the raid. - Hurricanus - Hurricane Winds will likely one shot a number of people in the raid, even with porcupine up. Fallen Dynasty: - Xux'laio Master of the Fluttering Wing in x2 - The Fluttering Wind will one shot your group even through porcupine. It is possible to range to 25m, but it still most likely will kill a number of people in the raid. - Heroic Mobs: -- Nizara - Firestorm on Khazid - one shots for focus damage -- Kudzua the Tormentor - Rain of Thistles - hits for over 20k and one shots most of the group - The Direvine Matron - Rain of Thistles - one shots anyone who doesn't have aoe blockers I will say that a lot of the mobs above are recoverable and the mobs are beatable for sure, but I don't agree that this is good design. Good AOE design: - AOE has a range - A lot of aoes are like this, specifically melee aoes. If you joust properly, you receive reduced damage or avoid the aoe entirely. - AOE needs to be cured - AOE puts a dot on you that needs to be cured immediately, and if it ticks, it will kill your group, but if it's cured, it will not. - You must be "topped off" for the AOE - If you are in the orange and the AOE goes off, you die. If you are green, it may take you down to 20% hp, but you can heal back up in preparation for the next one. The way that AOEs are currently built really shoe horns you into specific raid compositions to kill a number of mobs. I don't advocate that any raid comp can beat any raid mob, but currently, you must be running 2 furies to clear a lot of content, and you have to be running 4+ druids to kill specific mobs as well. This caters to a VERY SMALL amount of raid comps and more hardcore raiding guilds. This also trends towards being exacerbated as expansions go on. Mechanics become a bit more complicated, and if every mob can one shot your raid with their AOEs on top of more complex mechanics, it will be rough on a lot of guilds and potentially frustrate people into quitting. Also, on Varsoon, mobs tend to have much higher HP than other TLEs, thus putting even more pressure on having specific blocker/porcupine rotations to be AOE immune for LONG periods of time. TDLR: AOEs generally do far too much damage on Varsoon and creates a bad meta for raids and frustrating experience for a lot of casual or even midrange guilds on the server.
Also why do these NEED to do Focus damage in the first place? I used to be able to use Stone Deaf on bruiser to grant some magical stoneskin - but that doesn't work with Focus Damage attacks. Seems like a big screw over to bruisers for no reason. But yeah, AEs are out of control. AE Blockers should be more of a luxury than a necessity.
Nothing should have went from non-focus damage to focus damage in terms of boss spells. If that is the case please let me know which AEs specifically did that so I can look into why it happened and get it corrected.
Will say the same thing here, for posterity's sake: It is dumb if you can't survive AOEs without blockers. However, the vast majority of aoes that are killing "some people" could be survived by "all people" if "all people" had any consideration whatsoever for personal survivability. HP pots instead of crit pots when needed, a few pieces of max health or resist gear, personal blockers and/or mit signets, max health food/drink.. tank intercepts, death prevents for people at high risk.. The entire "Glass cannon or go home" mindset is fine, but it can't be an excuse for tuning down the damage. I like your suggestions, but when your TLDR is "AOEs do far too much damage", it can't help but simply sound like "AOEs need to do less damage".. which in most cases, they do not, and isn't the point of your post. In theory. I'm sure going forward the problem will keep spiraling out of control if unchecked, if some of the Fallen Dynasty tuning is carried forward. Though, these mobs have significantly less potency, which means debuffs will be a larger impact on reducing the mobs' damage. Especially with Claymore procs. The better urge is for Devs to be willing to adjust mobs that are initially and wildly overtuned, and that can't be geared or gamed around. Quickly, carefully, and vocally.
Honestly this is going to be hard for me to answer in depth - because it's been like 12 years since I used to main on a bruiser. What I CAN tell you is that in addition to Bruiser once being a viable class, is that Stone Deaf would routinely keep me alive for AEs - it allowed me to almost never joust AEs on Live years ago - and I would routinely use it to save a friend with intercede as well. I don't recall which AE's did which type of damage... but now almost every AE in the game is either physical or focus.... rendering Stone Deaf useless. The only mob it has had any value on has been the city versions of Barakah and Siyamak in DoF - and those are easy enough mobs that it doesn't really matter anyway. If Stone Deaf were enabled to include focus damage, that would help - or if it simply gave regular stoneskins instead of ONLY magical... that would help too. Worst case scenario, you end up making bruiser SLIGHTLY of a joke. Granted that won't fix the larger issue here, which is related to AE's as a whole.... but it'd be a welcome fix to a class that needs some major love.
Did it do focus damage prior to this TLE? Looking back at the change history on it, it looks to have been that way for a very long while.
I used to one-shot us back when it came out. That fight is functionally identical to how it has always been. And there's nothing wrong with a single fight having focus damage IMO.
Rain of Thistles has been adjusted a bit but it will still hit hard on folks standing right next to the caster of it.
I agree with some of the AoE's being dumb, but the Khazid fight isn't one of them. It has been like that since Mara was launched. You have to position well and use all abilities and things at your disposal. We did it in a group last night that didn't have any blockers and after figuring it out, did fine. We felt after completing the zone that it was a good/proper dungeon crawl. The Corsolander is UnFun, I agree with that and the rest totally.
Yeah, some of them are fine. I just wanted to give as many examples as I could since it seems to be trending in this direction. Happy they changed Rain of Thistles. Curious to see how hard it hits for now. But I do think in general, these need to be looked at before each expansion releases.
Hi, we killed this again today. I believe Rain of Thistles still hits too hard. Stacking nine healers, guardian, sk, paladin (the tankiest raid wide buffs), troub resist song, porcupine, all while standing at 15m; we still cannot live through this aoe without a blocker. It would be a better fight if the AOE was lowered by about 30-40% of what it is at now if you're >15meters, and the HP was buffed on the adds as a trade off. As far as the rest of the content in this release, the crab Bonesnapper's aoe seems a bit too high. With full debuffs from two rogues and two seperate bard types the mob can still one shot a guardian with bolster and wards on. The remainder of the raid survives assuming they're jousted. I'd suggest adding the same "if tank" note you added on Matron. It would be nice if Xuxlaio's was tuned down in hit points. This mob has only been cleared by 2 guilds. I believe chel'drak is too difficult for anyone but 2-3 guilds. If only 1-3 guilds are able to clear this, essentially this entire release offers nothing to x4 raiding guilds who have only been running 2 zones for 8 weeks due to itemization. Thanks
Agreed, Rain of Thistles was never intended to 1 shot if you jousted out 15+ (assuming debuffs, porc, resist buffs etc.) Even with a Shaman + Immunities you still get 1 shot at 15, Bonesnapper is fine, we have killed it several times using 3 different solo tanks including a SK. 2 druids 2 bards 1 shaman. Xuxlaio's is also fine, the HP could be reduced just a little. Just kill him before the x4 adds. ~4.5 minutes. I haven't been in Chel'Drak with the rest of my guild, but from what I was seeing, just reduce the Fighter / Priest add HP a little more.
Agree on all these points. Bonesnapper is doable, but the AoE one does one shot tanks, while you can work around it with Jcapping ToS and having it up for every AoE, still not "fun". We've killed it multiple times, but while I think using the ToS strat is fine, or Stone Deaf for Bruiser, etc., I'm afraid more AoEs will continue this way unless we bring em up. Xuxlaio, I agree with a HP nerf. I haven't done this mob since live, but I remember if you were able to kill the big stone trembler with the small one, those adds would loop over and over, so the DPS check wasn't really on the named, it was on the adds. Maybe I just misremember this. If it's going to stay the same, I'd recommend reducing the hit points on the named, so people can just burn it down. The AOE on this mob still kills people through porcupine as well -- NOT ALWAYS - but most of the time, especially if stun aoe hits like 2 seconds before it. So, if you want to make it a "burn" mob, reduce hit points a bit, and if you want to make it an attrition fight, change it to what I remember where the adds looped if you killed in time, and reduce the AOE to be more manageable. Rain of Thistles, from observing other pulls, still hits too hard, and I think this will carry over to the mob in Emerald Halls in EoF, so we should further reduce and fix this for Matron and for the future mob.
