amonre Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Disclaimer: There may be spoilers in this, so read at your own risk. I'm starting to understand what all the long-term testers meant at the end of beta when they were laughing and saying how bad the end-game content was due to lack of testing. I got the chance this weekend to attempt a few Hard Modes. First, there isn't a really clear PvE progression path (in past games you'd run high level normals and then their harder equivalents; however, in SW:TOR, the bosses on normal modes drop greens or blues that are worse than some of the green crafted stuff I can make, implying there is no progression or that I should be ready for hard modes). Second, well, that's the rest of the post. Whose idea was it to use an enrage mechanic as a normal part of every HM boss encounter? And I don't mean, bring two tanks and two healers and try to just cheese him down enrage. There are bosses where even if you go all out and have the healer also trying to DPS they still enrage before you can kill them (2-3 minutes). This is ridiculous. I'm all for a DPS check here and there and an enrage to prevent exploitation, but there are so many bosses that we just got lucky on and during one of their enrages finally managed to kill them before I (tank) was able to Defend 1 or 2 attacks in a row. I'd be interested in knowing just how much testing was done on the HM FPs. There are the occasional "boss" (in quotes because most "bosses" don't drop any loot except for crystals, which are borked and I'll explain later) that you don't even realize is a boss until the end. No mechanic, doesn't hit hard, if there is an enrage you don't ever realize it (third boss in Battle of Ilum, big robot with a gold robot add). Many of them are just broken. The pair of bosses you kill in Battle of Ilum (second) is an example. One of them is a melee lightsaber wielder (Sith?) that jumps all over the place, constantly, and seems like he does an aggro dump every time. You can't tank him so he's routinely running up to the healer and two shotting them. How about the later phase where turrets spawn? If you don't destroy the first batch a second batch will spawn right on top of them. The last boss in Esseles drops a purple ring you have to move out of. Except that on multiple occasions I've seen a group member die seconds after they ran out of it by the lightning following them. Or him targeting the same person (i.e. healer) twice with his Double Light Saber Throw and instantly killing them. I'm all for a little bit of luck in these encounters, but so far, they seem to be a lot of luck. They are far from enjoyable. And then the broken currency system/loot. Out of the bosses that did drop loot (not many), more often than not we'd get loot no one in the group could use. We had two smugglers, a JK and a sage. And got almost all Trooper loot. You really should have something in place to figure out what classes are in the group and drop appropriate loot. Then you get Commendations and Crystals. In one run of Esseles I got ~12 crystals and 3 commendations, but I think 1 or 2 of those commendations were from completing the Daily quest. To buy any of the PvE gear, though, requires more like a 1:2 ratio of Commendation:Crystal, making most of the crystals you got useless. Oh, and there is no way to buy Commendations with your extra Crystals. So, after running about 20 HM FPs you can afford one piece of gear (the cost of a single piece of gear is 39 or so Commendations). And then there are all the bugs in normal FPs (high level ones). But I'm done ranting for now. TL;DR: BioWare needs to tune their Hard Mode FPs. Not make them "Easy," but doable without trying 20x and then being lucky enough to have the stars align. And they need to fix the loot/PvE progression path. Not all of us want to PvE in PvP gear, since that seems to have the only real progression path that is easily recognizable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kabloosh Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 I've yet to attempt a 4 man HM FP but I did the raid saturday and that was pretty easy and I got 4 pieces of gear. Everyone in my guild said that normal mode raiding is so much easier, gives you more loot that is the same and that it seems silly to do hard mode flash points at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tzian Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 before the game launched i remember reading something that said that the first difficulty of the raids was tuned so that it was doable with what you would be dinging 50 with from quest rewards and crafting gear. therefore, you were not required to grind any flashpoints to attend the first raid. the flashpoints were for gearing up for the harder difficulty levels of raids dunno if that is true but might make what your saying make sence if thats how the progression goes questing to 50 > first tier of raid > hard mode flashpoints > hard mode raid > nightmare raid dunno perhaps someone else read something different would be good to know for sure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thyax Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 hardmodes arent that hard at all, except for the fals imperator - the robot (hk-33?) often gives us a hard time. otherwise try to gear up a bit. normal endbosses often dropped useful items for me plus you get corellia marks, which you can use to purchase level 50 uniques. just keep trying - hm instances aint to hard after all. you could also try to run taral v, mahlstrom and esseles first. they are imo easier than battle of illum and false imperator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amonre Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 before the game launched i remember reading something that said that the first difficulty of the raids was tuned so that it was doable with what you would be dinging 50 with from quest rewards and crafting gear. therefore, you were not required to grind any flashpoints to attend the first raid. the flashpoints were for gearing up for the harder difficulty levels of raids dunno if that is true but might make what your saying make sence if thats how the progression goes questing to 50 > first tier of raid > hard mode flashpoints > hard mode raid > nightmare raid dunno perhaps someone else read something different would be good to know for sure That seems a bit odd, though, if the progression is 50 -> Ops -> FPs. My guild doesn't really have 8 50s yet on regularly to raid. Four, though, is manageable. Definitely confusing if that is the intended progression path. In regards to keep trying, we did. Easily 20+ wipes on some bosses until we just got lucky enough to kill the boss. That seems a bit excessive, though, to rely on such luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DJShef Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 The hard mode is, *GASP*, hard? And the cry for nerfs begin already Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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