Dread Guards Nightmare overtuned

[Aurojiin]

I understand where you are coming from - Our original healer is playing from AUS and had unfortunate connection errors

From my point of view I was looking for a real test of a fight, I wanted the fight to be a 'Nightmare' which is why I feel the fight is fine.

I agree that there could be an option to reduce the difficulty but I would want to always be able to attempt this fight at that level of difficult for the challenge.

It's very subjective, I suppose. The latency isn't such a big deal for healing or tanking, but it puts a not-insignificant hurt on DPS. Certainly a pretty serious factor for this fight.

 

In a perfect world of class balance and flawless connections I'd like to see fights tuned for the 99th percentile of player skill. But in the real world, doing so means that raid teams on overseas connections simply can't complete the fights (at a prescribed gear level), nor can teams with significantly underpowered compositions.

 

There's also the fact it's clearly out of line with the rest of the instance. I don't think it's really practical to expect multiple levels of Nightmare difficulty, so I think a bit of down-tuning is inevitable, and required.

[Aerro]

That's not really fair or realistic. Let's say your ops group is a couple of Jugg tanks, two Commando healers, and maybe some Sage/Shadow DPS. Or, let's imagine you're not fortunate enough to be local to your servers, and with foreign latency you're losing (at least) a couple of hundred DPS per person across the board.

 

Still "just a hard fight"?

 

Yeah, and? So you want to kill a fight with a FAR from optimal group?

 

Its the hardest content. You don't take a bunch of terrible classes in the hardest content in other MMOs and expect to clear content. You bring what helps defeat the encounter. Its supposed to be the hardest. Bringing a ragtag group means you will wipe and most likely not have the kill.

 

Again, if anyone wants to bring a less than optimal group and say "this is unfair- its impossible." Well, you're kind of doing that to yourself.

[gultark]

I think the vast majority of people are not against bosses of this difficulty in the right place and time.

 

mostly the issues seem to be it is both massively inconsistent with the difficulty of the rest of TFB Nim and also fairly early on in the instance, effectively warping the difficulty curve.

 

I'd wager if the block was TFB this thread would have a 10th of the views and the difficulty would be praised for being a truly challenging and memorable end to the final send off for a great operation.

 

Here's hoping Bioware continue to make fights of this difficulty in the future 55 Nims, especially seeing how they inspire good players to really bring their A game with complete dedication in a way that hasn't really been seen in TOR before.

 

However I believe for that to be accepted by the community, S&V Nim progression onwards does need to be at a more consistent curve at what ever difficulty choose. ( Puzzle bosses and certain harder to manage mechanics will inevitably skew this somewhat )

Which will not only help pacing and build up to those truly challenging fights but also help the community at large not feel short changed by what is viewed as a "**** block" of sorts so early in the operation.

 

Just my few cents on the matter

 

* edited for my horrible late night grammar

Edited June 17, 2013 by gultark

[Aerro]

Its understandable that everything else is easy compared to the dread guards, but that doesn't mean DG should just be nerfed. If anything, the rest of the content should be buffed. Everything else was killed within 2-3 attempts, sometimes a one shot. Just because those are easy doesn't mean the entire place should be.

 

I do understand that the skill cap of DG is out of place, but at least we get 1 boss that is challenging because we all know the rest are a joke and require little to none in terms of cooperation and adjusting. Having to do more DPS and healing isn't "adjusting".

[grallmate]

Yeah, and? So you want to kill a fight with a FAR from optimal group?

 

Its the hardest content. You don't take a bunch of terrible classes in the hardest content in other MMOs and expect to clear content. You bring what helps defeat the encounter. Its supposed to be the hardest. Bringing a ragtag group means you will wipe and most likely not have the kill.

 

Again, if anyone wants to bring a less than optimal group and say "this is unfair- its impossible." Well, you're kind of doing that to yourself.

 

As someone in the same situation as Aurojin, who has just been forced off our lovely 30ms ping servers to ones on the opposite side of the world with 200+ms ping, if a fight requires such tight DPS that our loss in DPS due to latency prevents us from clearing it then it should be reduced. That said, I've only noticed the latency have an effect during Zen on my Combat Sentinel (where latency is 25% of the GCD) and when popping sequential CDs like Zen -> Valorous Call -> Inspiration, the rest of the time it seems negligible. Hell, I didn't notice any loss of DPS on my Vanguard but that's not a 'high' DPS class anymore.

 

Also, while I'm all for nightmare being stupidly hard, I'd like it to be possible with any combination of classes. Unfortunately with current class balance that means that anyone using Gunslingers and Sentinels as DPS with Shadow tanks is going to have a much easier time enrage wise.

 

EDIT: just to be clear, I'm not saying nerf it. I'm just saying I can see where Aurojin is coming from.

Edited June 17, 2013 by grallmate

[Afieri]

Yeah, and? So you want to kill a fight with a FAR from optimal group?

 

Its the hardest content. You don't take a bunch of terrible classes in the hardest content in other MMOs and expect to clear content. You bring what helps defeat the encounter. Its supposed to be the hardest. Bringing a ragtag group means you will wipe and most likely not have the kill.

 

Again, if anyone wants to bring a less than optimal group and say "this is unfair- its impossible." Well, you're kind of doing that to yourself.

 

I really enjoy playing my supposedly underpowered class, but I'm not allowed to play them in a NiM Op because they don't do enough for the team. I summarised for you, and that is one of the most broken ideas that has ever graced a developer. It forces you to play a certain class that can pull it's weight with a certain amount of skill, or play a less powerful class with a skill level that makes open heart surgery look easy. Aurojin raises a very valid point in that there are so many potential disadvantages in this game that even the "Nightmare Operations that are truly a nightmare" should be designed with these disadvantages in mind.

[gultark]

In terms of effort for Bioware rebalancing one boss will be must easier than 4 others, is that the right call? Personally in terms of the challenge I'd go with not, but I'd imagine that will be what happens with it being the outlier.

 

however I'd also rather they spent less time rebalancing this content and more development time fine tuning the upcoming raids to be this true nightmare level of difficulty across the board.

[Aerro]

I am in favor of adjustments to benefit those on high latency servers, since that is nothing to do on your end and is definitely at the fault of Biowares.

 

 

However, adjusting the only boss in the instance to be easier when the instance takes no more than 8 attempts to clear would put the nail in the coffin for a lot of players that wish for harder content. DG is refreshing because it requires fine tuning everything. That IS progression. Tuning every aspect of your raid. If you get the kill, you will be a group of better players afterwards. You don't get better doing content that doesn't push you past your limit. I know I've personally became worse over the course of SWTOR because content is so mindnumbing easy. I went back to WoW and felt myself behind people I was generally always ahead of.

[Afieri]

I am in favor of adjustments to benefit those on high latency servers, since that is nothing to do on your end and is definitely at the fault of Biowares.

 

 

However, adjusting the only boss in the instance to be easier when the instance takes no more than 8 attempts to clear would put the nail in the coffin for a lot of players that wish for harder content. DG is refreshing because it requires fine tuning everything. That IS progression. Tuning every aspect of your raid. If you get the kill, you will be a group of better players afterwards. You don't get better doing content that doesn't push you past your limit. I know I've personally became worse over the course of SWTOR because content is so mindnumbing easy. I went back to WoW and felt myself behind people I was generally always ahead of.

 

If BW were to stop putting a massive emphasis on enrage timers and instead implement core mechanics that didn't require you break your fingers on your keyboard because you need to squeeze every last drop of dps that you could muster, but required you to coordinate your entire raid group, similar to Op IX but on a larger scale, then the latency issues would be largely removed and the class imbalance would also be largely removed.

 

As it stands, if I play a class that I really enjoy ( for me it's a TK sage) then I should welcome in any raid team based on my ability to play the class, not on the class itself.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Afieri

[Aerro]

If you are excellent at your class- you can still push out the required DPS. We have a mix of DPS in our group and everyone performs at a high level.

 

For 16man, its more about the mechanics and less about the enrage (for us). Red Circles go out way too often and too much for us. Within 30sec we have a room filled with red circles. Positioning of that is key. I know for 8man its the other way around, and honestly if the enrage were increased then 8man would be nerfed too harshly in my opinion.

[Afieri]

If you are excellent at your class- you can still push out the required DPS. We have a mix of DPS in our group and everyone performs at a high level.

 

For 16man, its more about the mechanics and less about the enrage (for us). Red Circles go out way too often and too much for us. Within 30sec we have a room filled with red circles. Positioning of that is key. I know for 8man its the other way around, and honestly if the enrage were increased then 8man would be nerfed too harshly in my opinion.

 

I beg to differ, take a dps team comprised of infiltration shadows and balance sages and tell me just how far you get into the fight before you enrage, regardless of how well you play your class. You may say "why on earth would you do that? That is just idiotic for you to not take a sentinel or a gunslinger at the very least" but if you were to say that then it would prove my point even further because I may have 4 people in the team who are the best in the game at playing their respective classes and they really enjoy playing those classes but those classes just don't put out the same dps as sentinels/gunslingers and so regardless of their skill level, at the present point in time they would not have a snowball'a chance in hell of clearing DG.

 

If you are experiencing mechanical difficulties in 16 man, then that is good.

[Aerro]

Well yeah, I can give you a totally bad scenario too. Just use nothing but merc healers and run with all jugs. That isn't anywhere near optimal or partially optimal. If you want to clear stuff with a less than average group, then by all means focus on Story Mode. Nightmare is for fine tuning everything. Running all Sorcs is no where near viable, etc.

 

Thats a terrible example as to why content should be nerfed.

[Afieri]

Well yeah, I can give you a totally bad scenario too. Just use nothing but merc healers and run with all jugs. That isn't anywhere near optimal or partially optimal. If you want to clear stuff with a less than average group, then by all means focus on Story Mode. Nightmare is for fine tuning everything. Running all Sorcs is no where near viable, etc.

 

Thats a terrible example as to why content should be nerfed.

 

But that is the point, there is an optimal group to take into an operation, and anything else is sub-optimal. There shouldn't be an optimal group. You and I are arguing two entirely different things here. I am arguing that classes need to be balanced the developers are going to make content like this, and you are arguing that everything should be left how it is.

[Aerro]

But that is the point, there is an optimal group to take into an operation, and anything else is sub-optimal. There shouldn't be an optimal group. You and I are arguing two entirely different things here. I am arguing that classes need to be balanced the developers are going to make content like this, and you are arguing that everything should be left how it is.

 

The group that got it wasn't 100% optimal. That right there shows you don't need a crazy optimal group.

 

Now bringing in a bunch of terrible performing specs, well, either respec or recruit people that are willing to. Its progression in the hardest content. Doing 'what you like' and ignoring what is best is not for the hardest content.

[Ansalem]

honestly I would rather have enrage timers completely removed from game. It never made much sense to me that you beat on someone to the point where they are near death and suddenly they decide to hit twice as hard and sprint around with 1 shots. I would actually prefer if BW would remove enrages and instead for this fight at least make the red circles come out faster and act as your enrage timer. If you cant kill the adds and kel before the entire room is filled and you are dying to dots then you lose.

[Afieri]

The group that got it wasn't 100% optimal. That right there shows you don't need a crazy optimal group.

 

Now bringing in a bunch of terrible performing specs, well, either respec or recruit people that are willing to. Its progression in the hardest content. Doing 'what you like' and ignoring what is best is not for the hardest content.

 

You're still missing my point. There shouldn't be an optimal group. As long as you have the generally accepted raid group of 2x Tanks, 2x Healers, 2x Melee DPS & 2x Ranged DPS, it should not matter what spec/class those players are. Regardless of the level of the content.

[Aurojiin]

Well yeah, I can give you a totally bad scenario too. Just use nothing but merc healers and run with all jugs. That isn't anywhere near optimal or partially optimal. If you want to clear stuff with a less than average group, then by all means focus on Story Mode. Nightmare is for fine tuning everything. Running all Sorcs is no where near viable, etc.

 

Thats a terrible example as to why content should be nerfed.

It's only a poor reason for content to be nerfed because the option exists to balance the relative efficacy of classes.

 

That being said, your general attitude is a little disturbing. There should only be one reason for an inability to clear Nightmare mode with properly geared toons: a lack of player skill or raid coordination. We shouldn't be blithely accepting of class disparity as it stands. We all agree that MMOs are never perfectly balanced in practice, but I've played much more complex competitive games with better balance than this. However, if Bioware isn't willing to address class balance more pro-actively then content needs to be adjusted, because it is unfair and patently wrong that the world's best SWTOR player might well be unwanted because he's playing an Infil Shadow.

 

I guess if mercs get nerfed in the next major patch you'll be one of the leading mercenaries in story mode raiding.

 

honestly I would rather have enrage timers completely removed from game. It never made much sense to me that you beat on someone to the point where they are near death and suddenly they decide to hit twice as hard and sprint around with 1 shots. I would actually prefer if BW would remove enrages and instead for this fight at least make the red circles come out faster and act as your enrage timer. If you cant kill the adds and kel before the entire room is filled and you are dying to dots then you lose.

I can't agree with this enough. Progressive soft enrages >>>>>>>>>>>> hard enrages.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Aurojiin

[Ansalem]

I would like to point out that one of the healers in the 1 group that has downed DG was a merc healer and he was amazing. Not to knock on the sorc but it looked like that merc healer was dominating there. If I had to venture a guess that merc healer was probably accountable for about 65% hell maybe even 70% of all the healing. The sorc heals looked like he had plenty of time to assist with dps and raid heals. In fact the one group that cleared this fight had a composition that isnt considered ideal and was lacking BIS UW gear at the time.

[Aerro]

honestly I would rather have enrage timers completely removed from game. It never made much sense to me that you beat on someone to the point where they are near death and suddenly they decide to hit twice as hard and sprint around with 1 shots. I would actually prefer if BW would remove enrages and instead for this fight at least make the red circles come out faster and act as your enrage timer. If you cant kill the adds and kel before the entire room is filled and you are dying to dots then you lose.

 

Well, if enrage was removed... you can literally take your time throughout every fight and it would put no pressure on anyone to rush. It would make any content trivial...

 

NiM Kephess? A joke.

 

NiM Tanks? A joke.

 

NiM anything? A joke.

 

Edit: Mostly because resources are pretty much infinite if managed properly. We don't have to worry about running out of mana or anything.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Aerro

[Ansalem]

Well, if enrage was removed... you can literally take your time throughout every fight and it would put no pressure on anyone to rush. It would make any content trivial...

 

NiM Kephess? A joke.

 

NiM Tanks? A joke.

 

NiM anything? A joke.

 

you didn't listen to my complete statement. Replace the enrage with a mechanic that acts as your enrage instead of making the boss actually enrage. Fill the room with poison, slap down red circles at twice the speed to fill room, have parts of the floor fall away the longer you fight...have the ceiling cave in occassionally until the entire thing falls in crushing the raid...stuff like that. It doesnt always have to be a boss growing twice its size or glowing red and suddenly 1 shotting people. Make mechanics that cause wipes not timers.

[Aerro]

If they added mechanics like that, there would still be an 'enrage timer' that people would just slap a time on. Unless the mechanic was completely random and not on any sort of timer, you could pretty much estimate how much time it would take for a room to fill up (such as Putricide). That would be no different than how it is now. Right now we have a fixed time for a boss to one shot people.

 

A room filling up would have a fixed time to one shot people.

[izmirtheastarach]

Dilih did down down that boss because they had the "ideal" group composition. They downed it because they are great players, they put in the time and effort, and they figured out how to do it. They pushed through and accomplished something.

 

While I agree 100% that Bioware has made a mistake, what that mistake was is up for debate. For my ops group, the number one thing that would have solved all this griping is if Nightmare was on a separate lockout. That way none of us would have any alternative but to work on it till we get it down.

Edited June 17, 2013 by izmirtheastarach

[Ansalem]

If they added mechanics like that, there would still be an 'enrage timer' that people would just slap a time on. Unless the mechanic was completely random and not on any sort of timer, you could pretty much estimate how much time it would take for a room to fill up (such as Putricide). That would be no different than how it is now. Right now we have a fixed time for a boss to one shot people.

 

A room filling up would have a fixed time to one shot people.

 

they could always heal through the poison pop cds try to sruvive through it. Also mechanics like celing and floor could be done with adds running out to break stuff or tents smashing walls if they arent killed fast enough etc. Can change it up

[ErosGyne]

Aerro, so basically you are saying that is more important the class that the skill of the players.

Because for many a skill player is the one that pick a class they enjoy, even if is not as good that the FoTM, and still can clear all contend,

Because picking a FoTM class and clear contend for me doesnt mean that this player has skill, on the contrary, is the class that those the job, not the player

So this mean that every time BW "balance" the classes and creates a new FoTM and puts out a new op we all have to reroll to have a shot to clear it.

sincerely, if no one had clear it for months,( but still doable) you all that defende that the fight should stay the same, possibly were the same in this forum crying for a "nerf" like many already did.

And you guys that kill the boss, are going to wipe 100 times more until you kill the DG again?Just because you kill it once, doesnt mean from now on you can 1shot this guys, and for what!! a relic that gives you 2 more dps(can always skip it, but defeats the purpose of progression)

And you think BW just puts out a op that just 1 guild or 2 can clear it?

i realy want harder fights, but i dont want to be force to leave my class to reroll the next FoTM that i dont enjoy just because i want a challenge

[Aurojiin]

If they added mechanics like that, there would still be an 'enrage timer' that people would just slap a time on. Unless the mechanic was completely random and not on any sort of timer, you could pretty much estimate how much time it would take for a room to fill up (such as Putricide). That would be no different than how it is now. Right now we have a fixed time for a boss to one shot people.

 

A room filling up would have a fixed time to one shot people.

Is it really that difficult to understand that it's possible to design mechanics with progressively higher requirements (whether it be healing output, tank interactions, raid coordination, burst dps, etc) that can replace hard enrages?

 

I'm particularly disinclined towards hard enrages as a healer, because once they happen my skill level basically ceases to matter. Even simple stacking raid damage mechanisms are better, because they can let the group with 99th percentile healers and 95th percentile DPS have a fair shot along with the 95th percentile healer and 99th percentile DPS group.

Edited June 17, 2013 by Aurojiin