6man/12man changes

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Xoranath

Dalayan Elder
As with the current balancing discussion on 18man Tier9-12 raids I know the 6man/12man stuff was not being discussed. I can understand keeping it separate to a point since it is not necessarily a "guild" issue. I however believe that 6man/12man stuff is just as, if not more, important than the 18man raids. With the state of most guilds either barely, or not, having enough on tier dedicated people to raid multiple times a week without out boxing, or boxing much, the 6/12 man gear can be the difference maker in a guilds progression with in the 18man raid structure. With this being said, I have no clue why the mobs in Abyss, except for Slumbering Murkflower, should have been "buffed" or whatever you want to call it. Some specific examples are the Hellhound and Overgrown Szithri. Before this latest change we could dps the Hellhound down about 17% between growls. Now it's like 10%, maybe. That is a crazy amount of hit point increase for a mob that was not easy for us until we had geared a lot in Abyss, Generals, Yclist AND learned the strat. That 10% even included two murkling pets which are crazy dps. Nothing was wrong with this fight before hand in most every player's opinion who is breaking in to T10 or is T10/11 that I have heard. And the hit point increase to Overgrown Szithri is insane as well. It took a while for us to be able to defeat that mob and even after figuring it out was not an easy fight and would have multiple wipes at times. Now we are lucky if our 12 absolute best toons in the best setup can kill this. I just don't understand the reason behind the changes since it is making an even bigger bottleneck in the T9-10 raid range. That's my two cents again so I'm up to four,

Xoranath, Companions T10

PS thank you Tao for the input. I hope I took it down a notch. :)
 
I don't mean to be crappy at all, especially since I agree with a lot to most of this, but I could've sworn Hellhound has never, or at least I guess not in the last year and a half or more that I've been killing it, been a timed thing, but rather did the growl on every 10% mark. I've killed that thing a lot, and I don't remember it ever being different. Maybe I'm nuts.

edit: not saying it hasn't been buffed, idk, but I just didn't think that mechanic was different.
 
Ya Hellhound's hp was increased quite a bit (so was OGs). Using two enchanter pets is a neat solution to power through at a lower gear check level than was probably intended. I would recommend reverting the hp, at least part way, and preventing the use of two enchanter pets somehow.
 
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Having ventured into the Abyss after not being there for a long period of time, I was left saddened and bereft by the state of The Murkwater. What was originally a super tuned, tear jerking, int caster destroying octojuggernaut of doom has thanks to the resist and spell ward changes become something that if it was in a manga would not even interest an 11 year old japanese girl. This mob was so hated and feared that simply mentioning its name while clearing to Sorrow would have people scrambling to find someone to replace them. The world is a slightly darker place for everyone that has been denied the experience of this extremely simple yet frequently soul crushing encounter.

I can't say that I remember thinking HH or OG needed to be buffed on tier. The only thing that comes to mind is as Raxton mentioned - the changes to lost charm aggro having made that method so much more viable and less of a hassle (wiping on a sudden charm break and not just killing the enc) that a good enc or two makes the place look dumb easy. HH was a nail biter but seemed well mathed out for its tier. I figured OG was mostly mathed around needing a fairly on tier raid to be able to out dps the siphon before everyone oom's, depending on composition even on tier raids could either have a very hard or very easy time.

Maybe we're looking at a case of a class having a fun thing, finding a use for it, then content being redone to spite it? Or maybe nothing was actually changed and people just got bad, should be pretty easy for a gm to see if hp was changed.


Something that I haven't seen noted, for those just breaking into this range to keep in mind - The Abyss originally required a drop from Yclist as part of gaining entrance.
 
This applies more to 6man content than Abyss, but I guess this thread covers it. 6man content as it exists at the higher end will only ever be balanced if all classes are balanced. This was true when Emberflow was the 6man endgame and it's even more true now. It was somewhat mitigated in EF because of the clears... classes that were lacking in power on boss fights could sometimes make the clears easier and still be carried on the bosses. But most of the higher 6man content is different now. Forest Gloom, Rohk, 4.3, Curator... There's essentially just the boss fight itself, and 4.3 and Curator are tuned so tightly that bringing a sub-par class means you're wasting your time. You've got rogues doing substantially less dps because of the bane revamp, so instead of matching the casters and rangers they're hundreds of dps behind. Monks are the same but worse. Even classes like beastlords, who are generally a very good class, miss out because you can just park a bst buffbot outside to Cunning the group, and now you can bring a 1500 dps class with burst capabilities instead of a 1100 dps class.

So to balance 6man content, you either need all of the classes to be pretty well balanced (as in contributing comparable dps on actual boss fights themselves or by boosting group dps in such a way that a buffbot can't do it instead, like bard songs), or you need fights that are about more than doing balls-to-the-wall DPS to win so classes that are lacking can still be part of successful on-tier groups.
 
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I completely agree with Susvain. Emberflow had been mitigated some with being able to overtier some of it, however with the resist changes you still need a pretty ideal group for mistborn.

4.3, curator, forest gloom, and rohk however are tuned to needing balls out dps. Forest gloom you may get around bringing a sub par dps class, but the others you pretty much need the best of the best and people that won't mess up. This includes vah backs, dps clickies, etc. since fwf has stopped curator and 4.3 have not been killed, an I do not see them getting killed by anyone other than fwf in the current form. Rohk has been killed a few times but with the drop down change wipe recovery is just terrible.

Again, like Susvain has mentioned monk/bl/rogue dps needs to be brought back up somehow or these fights need to be adjusted. For starters I would reduce the overall hps of 4.3 and change back the kiting phase in phase 1 to 20% from 40% or w/e it was changed to. There are very few toons that can match the dps of even a 'lesser' fwf 4.3 group.
 
Not sure exactly when the flagging requirement went away on abyss, but it was about the same time I bothered doing the quest. Have not tried flower since the buffing, but Hellhound and OG are just stupid on their hps now. I could see HH gaining a few hps, but not the absurd amount he has now.

OG I think we lucked out on killing because everyone was on fumes, cotb blown, vah backs, etc and like 1/2 of us dead.

Don't think Murkwater was changed *recently*, but a few months ago someone decided that our method of having at least 420 mr and being beneath him to resist the knockback was not ok and having to resort to SB's method to kill him.
 
Moraelintz said:
Again, like Susvain has mentioned monk/bl/rogue dps needs to be brought back up somehow or these fights need to be adjusted. For starters I would reduce the overall hps of 4.3 and change back the kiting phase in phase 1 to 20% from 40% or w/e it was changed to. There are very few toons that can match the dps of even a 'lesser' fwf 4.3 group.
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Reducing the HPs of 4.3 I guess makes sense with the DPS changes, but I don't agree with changing any of the mechanics of the fight as that is what makes it unique. Also keep in mind that every guild *since* FWF that attempts this fight has been approaching it the wrong way. Only bringing 1 healer when you are learning/on tier for 4.3 is one of the more idiotic things I have seen in the game.

Edit: As for Rohk, considering the rewards for doing this, and the simplicity of the strat, I think he is fine as is (maybe reduce HPs a little for the very last phase). I didn't care for the wipe recovery thing as it dumbed down an already simple encounter.
 
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I did not say to change any of the mechanics just reduce the 'kiting' phase back to its 'original' form and possibly reduce the hps to reflect the dps changes.
 
From rough parses I think we had decided that hellhound and OG were both approximately doubled in HP. I haven't personally attempted OG since then, but have plenty of experience with HH. Even with 2 enchanter pets it's near impossible to kill him with on tier DPS. The fight lasts long enough to use three mod rods, two mind hungers, and paragon, and healers are still running on fumes. Not to mention the fact that he's undead so without a paladin all your melee DPSers are heavily nerfed.
 
ThomasTheTrain said:
Having ventured into the Abyss after not being there for a long period of time, I was left saddened and bereft by the state of The Murkwater. What was originally a super tuned, tear jerking, int caster destroying octojuggernaut of doom has thanks to the resist and spell ward changes become something that if it was in a manga would not even interest an 11 year old japanese girl. This mob was so hated and feared that simply mentioning its name while clearing to Sorrow would have people scrambling to find someone to replace them. The world is a slightly darker place for everyone that has been denied the experience of this extremely simple yet frequently soul crushing encounter.
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Yes, most of the groups that used to get destroyed by Murkwater were way overtier for the zone. It was clearly not a very well balanced fight before. When we first did Murkwater as he is now in Goon Squad a year to a year and a half ago for the first time, we were often barely winning using a raid with that even had a couple overtiered (gear, tomes, charm) healers and dps, as the constant phantom strikes tend to eat up on and slightly below tier players as well as the healer mana.

The only thing that was really broken (and did need fixing) in Abyss was Murkflower, but that got fixed when the HP got bumped and you had to actually do something other than full burn it for 30 seconds to collect loot. Buffing up Hellhound and Overgrown Szithri if true is really obscene as those fights were already really rough for a raid going in on-tier before.

Also, there is a super secret monster not in Yclist that also drops the dagger used for the now unneeded Abyss key quest so even a guild that is not really able to go far in Yclist because they lack a full 18 of geared/tomed characters to do that (in my opinion not very well tuned to the intended tier as the zone was tested by people in early Sanctum gear) zone could do Abyss.
 
As for 6mans, Curator in Overgrowth was always just plain broken and required stacking a certain amount of the best dps classes and characters in the game along with the best tanks and healers in the game to even think about winning. She probably also now requires a paladin because of the bodytype change.

The DPS nerfs recently can't have been good for any of the 6mans above Forest Gloom (who I think I would have helped kill recently but the zone crashed twice in a row--cool.) I don't see any group that currently plays the game being able to beat 4.3 with things as they are as they just don't have either the gear/tomes or the group comp, although the people who've been through it and have plenty of t12-13 gear already could login and still be able to kill it if they really wanted I am sure. Rohk is another thing is awkward because if you can't one-shot it, the clear back is brutal. While the fight is much simpler in execution than similar tier 6mans, after the removal of the pool to port back I don't think anyone else really killed it but us.
 
On Rohk we killed it a few times post-pool, but we had to have a pretty specific group of people, one of which having to be Zorr and it had to be real Zorr playing himself, and any time we varied that by a person or two we always lost. And without the pool, even towards the beginning of the fight, if we had any sense the fight wasn't going good in the slightest bit I usually had to run out and flop so we could wipe it up and try again. When we'd wipe fully we'd usually have one or two give up, and that was enough to hose us.

Was there ever a reason given for removing the key to abyss?
 
huey said:
Was there ever a reason given for removing the key to abyss?
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I don't remember hearing one, but the dev team doesn't answer to me, so I never asked. It did happen at around the same time as the culmination of the changes to the raid rules that is now the "Raid Content with Prerequisite Content" section, though. Hence, I suspect it was either in response to those policy changes or something that they were considering for a while and thought the change made for a good time to do so. After all, we did say that keyed/gated/prerequisite'd content had to be re-evaluated due to that policy.

I hope you agree that it was a good change.
 
After going back and rereading that post and the related posts, <in general> I think I do agree. I have exceptions, but tbh with all the changes many would perceive as negative, I'd rather just keep that kinda stuff to myself and keep attention on the more positive stuff (like what you're looking at in spires). I was basically still just curious (as I had been kinda proud of getting the key back when I had gotten it, heh). Thanks for the response.
 
Obscenitor said:
Reducing the HPs of 4.3 I guess makes sense with the DPS changes, but I don't agree with changing any of the mechanics of the fight as that is what makes it unique. Also keep in mind that every guild *since* FWF that attempts this fight has been approaching it the wrong way. Only bringing 1 healer when you are learning/on tier for 4.3 is one of the more idiotic things I have seen in the game.

Edit: As for Rohk, considering the rewards for doing this, and the simplicity of the strat, I think he is fine as is (maybe reduce HPs a little for the very last phase). I didn't care for the wipe recovery thing as it dumbed down an already simple encounter.
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Being the first person who played the cleric and solo healed this fight for CW I disagree. We have done the fight using multiple different setup ups of our best toons, and it is still just as easy to take 1 healer and a paladin as it is to take 2 with a warrior or SK (We tried a paladin with 2, but honestly the DPS was ridiculously light, because of the dps bane changes) Also the first time, I solo healed it healing Septima.

HOWEVER, I DO NOT think the fight should be made easier. I think that rogue/monk dps should be made better... It just just unfortunate for CW that they do not have the level of wizard / mage / necro / or whatever that compares to our melee dps. I do agree with shimone though, that the first phase change that was made, should be reverted to 20% instead of 30%. That is undoubtably one of the hardest parts of the fight now, and unless everything goes almost perfect (on tier) your likely going to lose a member of your group to some stupid bullshit.
 
huey said:
Was there ever a reason given for removing the key to abyss?
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In a nutshell, when raid policy was changed, Zaela decided that she didn't want her zone to require any form of flagging any more.
 
Zapple said:
Rohk is now a construct which makes DPS sketchy on him, may require HP reduction.
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Or make him a bodytype that doesn't make half the DPS classes in the game take a substantial DPS reduction. Same thing with Curator being undead. There's a reason all the high tier 6man targets were humanoid regardless of their appearance.
 
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