The bloodbath that is Blood Hunt

[WhiteKing]

No way your average pug pulls 5.2k dps. I am fairly decent at this game and I can't pull that much dps (did slightly under that in the HM BH last week). In the age of Force Lightning spamming Lightning sorcs (ironic, isn't it?), just no. Also, do people realize that someone who just installed the game and ate their insta-60 token can queue for HM FPs right off the bat? Had a guy with 50 minute old "lvl 10 - 20 - 30 - 40 " and "Lvl 50 - lvl 55 - lvl 60 class" chievos in HM Red Reaper once. Queued as wrong spec, of course. 0% skill, 100% attitude.

But I agree that BH is beatable, 2k+4k+4k+500 shouldn't be a problem. Key word being "shouldn't".

 

As to the NiM numbers, I just went with what someone posted in another thread, parses from NiM DP, Tyrans has 5k-something to 6k-something spread and they most likely had 220/224 mainhands and 220+ full sets. Gotta say, 4.5k is most likely overestimating the average player with 208 gear, imo. Augmented 216, maybe. Stock 208 unlikely.

 

I remember the time of "Tier 2" FPs, the problem with it was that nothing prevented the riff-raff from queueing for them. Lost Island at that time was pretty much today's BH (except for loot on last boss, which was one tier higher). It was puggable...when stars aligned. Most people capable of doing it knew better than to pug it.

 

My point: It's 100% doable, but developers never made themselves clear about INTENDED difficulty of different parts of content. I've even watched some streams, but we never ever got answers about why boss X is far more difficult than boss Y and is placed in the same tier. Riddle me this - why are KP and EV considered hardmodes just like, say, Ravagers? Compare Fabricator and M&B - all the droids are placed as 4th boss of HM ops, and what do we get there?

 

I like BH HM as it is, but I'm by no means a target audience of this content, if I might put it that way. But having it on random in groupfinder is wrong, on that I agree.

 

Yes, well...I have my doubts they know now, even if they knew before.

 

The scaling to 65 messed things up. BH back when it got released was pretty much pure murder. Chances of getting it done with a pug were somewhere between fat and slim. Then it got toned down and I finished it over 20 times with whatever GF spat out. Mind you that was when everyone had to be 60 to get it.

 

Fast forward to lvl cap increase and massive déja vu happens. There was zero design, just numbers inflation based on god knows what, and probably brute force at that (one-size-fits-all kind of approach). I would pay unspecified amount of money to see the mythological beasts of the QA department run some content (let's say Furball from BH, Walker from RIshi, last boss of Tython, whole Manaan + bonus for that matter) as bolstered 50s so I could uninstall in shame of how much I suck at this game.

[Lodinn]

No way your average pug pulls 5.2k dps. I am fairly decent at this game and I can't pull that much dps (did slightly under that in the HM BH last week).

Gah, now I'm soooo tempted to queue on my 186 set sorc with comm 216 rest...

But then again, that would take ages. If someone's playing on TRE and wanna try a masochistic run to determine gear/skill threshold, poke me, I can queue on any role and have a couple of fairly crap dps classes. 5.2 is not for badly geared sorcs, I agree completely. Might pull around that on my main in 216 or something but if to expect 208 non-augged even that might be a pain to get.

But I agree that BH is beatable, 2k+4k+4k+500 shouldn't be a problem. Key word being "shouldn't".

Something's really wrong with my numbers. I expected tanky to be ~2.5 since some aoe is boosting damage but it just must be my constant gear overestimations. Too used to have a dps scale tuned by ops *shrug*. Healer's 500 although seem tad high for the average pug as well. Also, what if you get an operative heal?

 

 

As to the NiM numbers, I just went with what someone posted in another thread, parses from NiM DP, Tyrans has 5k-something to 6k-something spread and they most likely had 220/224 mainhands and 220+ full sets. Gotta say, 4.5k is most likely overestimating the average player with 208 gear, imo. Augmented 216, maybe. Stock 208 unlikely.

DP is a bad place for taking dps measurements, lot of randomness affecting downtime.

Just wondering, what would you estimate 'average player in 208 unaugged' dummy parse to be?

Spread is insane now even for BiS guys, some classes have it at 7.5, for some 6.5 is good (and 6.5 cap is not the worst example, rather, arsenal is strong now).

 

I remember the time of "Tier 2" FPs, the problem with it was that nothing prevented the riff-raff from queueing for them. Lost Island at that time was pretty much today's BH (except for loot on last boss, which was one tier higher). It was puggable...when stars aligned. Most people capable of doing it knew better than to pug it.

I still love LI more than many flashpoints, both trash and bosses are entertaining. But they say it was nerfed, never had a chance to witness myself how it was at release.

 

Fast forward to lvl cap increase and massive déja vu happens. There was zero design, just numbers inflation based on god knows what, and probably brute force at that (one-size-fits-all kind of approach). I would pay unspecified amount of money to see the mythological beasts of the QA department run some content (let's say Furball from BH, Walker from RIshi, last boss of Tython, whole Manaan + bonus for that matter) as bolstered 50s so I could uninstall in shame of how much I suck at this game.

Rishi walker resetting camera angle? Yeah, that's retarded. Tython? What about it? Can't remember. Raid-wide aoe killing people unless topped? In 3.x even weak healers made it. Or is that datacron boss?

 

Bonus Rishi is better than bonus Manaan tho.

 

Also, WTB secret footage of devs team on M&B HM in 4.0 trying to survive more than 20 seconds of the Master phase. Or even devs in 216 on Raptus, not sure they can handle even that.From what I've heard, combat testing in BW is done as such: All the numbers are upscaled 2-3x so no one dies to damage or enrage and they just do mechanics. Then they look at the result and tune numbers, somehow. In one hand, reasonable. In another... Someone could use Math 101 for sure.

[VegasTheLost]

Or even devs in 216 on Raptus

 

I guess you talking about HM, regarding 216 gear. However I'm a bit lost regarding Raptus. Quite a few people says that he is tough even on HM and he hits hard, but one of our first kill was, me solotanking the second half(or maybe the whole) of 3rd phase and I'm honestly maybe a decent tank. Anyway we're not on NiM yet so I don't know about that. So what's up with Raptus on HM? To be clear I'm not trying to play down Raptus or to shine myself I just don't know what's up with him.

[BobFredJohn]

About the "the guy has 224 so clearly knew how to play comment."

 

One of my characters is a sentinel. 8 of its 14 pieces of gear are 224 pieces. I have only ever done TFB, KP and a little bit of DP or DF (whichever one is the one where first 4 bosses are council members and last is council).

 

I have tried HM's in other ops and simply cannot cut it. If somebody like me (struggles with HM op's) can get 224 gear then clearly 224 is not necessarily a sign of competence, having said that I have done HM BH and found that fp easier than most HM op's bosses.

 

What I am saying is just because they have 224 doesn't mean they know the class, my sent often gets out parsed by other sents of the same discipline. I try to retain some credit by telling myself I do other useful stuff (pacifying tough trash pulls and correctly using DCD's if I rip aggro) but at some point it has to be admitted that, thanks to highlighted ops 224 is no longer a sign of competence.

 

Riiight, I'm sure someone that completely sucks at his class always gets carried in warzones and somehow, even when being a dead weight, gets to valor 80.

 

I have recently started pvp and I can honestly say competence in pvp is entirely different from competence in pve. I often play pvp in a tactical way, I have noticed some players will do things like "theres 7 enemies at mid, come defend mid" whereas I have a "theres 7 enemies at mid, go attack their node as it only has 1 defender" attitude. I notice my attitude towards 3-node games works better.

 

How does that apply to avoiding aoe circles and fast burn of adds (which is whats required for 1st boss in BH).

Edited April 13, 2016 by BobFredJohn

[Jerba]

I guess you talking about HM, regarding 216 gear. However I'm a bit lost regarding Raptus. Quite a few people says that he is tough even on HM and he hits hard, but one of our first kill was, me solotanking the second half(or maybe the whole) of 3rd phase and I'm honestly maybe a decent tank. Anyway we're not on NiM yet so I don't know about that. So what's up with Raptus on HM? To be clear I'm not trying to play down Raptus or to shine myself I just don't know what's up with him.

A lot of that comes down to RNG. You can fully absorb 90% of the hits and then you get the occasional 80k hit.

The healers just need to be prepared to do some quick burst healing if your shield misses, and make sure you are always topped off, even healing when you are at full health.

But I believe it also comes down the class, some tanks are squishier on this boss than others.

Edited April 13, 2016 by Jerba

[WhiteKing]

Gah, now I'm soooo tempted to queue on my 186 set sorc with comm 216 rest...

But then again, that would take ages. If someone's playing on TRE and wanna try a masochistic run to determine gear/skill threshold, poke me, I can queue on any role and have a couple of fairly crap dps classes. 5.2 is not for badly geared sorcs, I agree completely. Might pull around that on my main in 216 or something but if to expect 208 non-augged even that might be a pain to get.

 

As a matter of fact, I keep all my stuff on TRE.

 

Something's really wrong with my numbers. I expected tanky to be ~2.5 since some aoe is boosting damage but it just must be my constant gear overestimations. Too used to have a dps scale tuned by ops *shrug*. Healer's 500 although seem tad high for the average pug as well. Also, what if you get an operative heal?

 

Those tank & healer numbers are just split of whatever was left after having dps provide 4k each, don't read too much into it. Hitting both adds + boss with guardian slash helps immensely, plus you can saber reflect every other add wave.

 

Op heals have it easy, keeping a DoT up the whole fight after some extra dakka at the start should be enough.

 

DP is a bad place for taking dps measurements, lot of randomness affecting downtime.

Just wondering, what would you estimate 'average player in 208 unaugged' dummy parse to be?

Spread is insane now even for BiS guys, some classes have it at 7.5, for some 6.5 is good (and 6.5 cap is not the worst example, rather, arsenal is strong now).

 

Haven't raided in a meaningful capacity in quite a while, had to use some comparison. There is a decent amount of randomness affecting downtime during the furball fight, seemed close enough. I have absolutely no idea about dummy parses. After I tried my lazy virulence rotation and got just 4.5k I assumed there was something wrong with me . Crafted 216 gun, comm gear with low endurance enhancements, old 186 relics I cba to replace yet. Figured 4k shouldn't be so hard to get for someone in comparable gear with basic understanding of how their spec works. Cue lightning spamming sorcs hardcasting chain lightning and suspicious 2s crushing darknesses...

 

I still love LI more than many flashpoints, both trash and bosses are entertaining. But they say it was nerfed, never had a chance to witness myself how it was at release.

 

On droid boss there were no white circles, the bubbles just appeared and you had to deal with them. Also pretty sure incinerate debuff was not cleansable, so interrupt or burn. And Lorrick turned when he was throwing satchels, now you just step out of it. Possibly some numbers tuning, but mechanically that was about it.

 

Rishi walker resetting camera angle? Yeah, that's retarded. Tython? What about it? Can't remember. Raid-wide aoe killing people unless topped? In 3.x even weak healers made it. Or is that datacron boss?

 

Bonus Rishi is better than bonus Manaan tho.

 

I slightly understand the camera thing on the walker, it happens when adds come. I may or may not be imagining this, but I think it tries to point you to the side the adds appear on.

Tython datacron boss, quite a lot of damage nowadays and not many people know how to handle the TK wave/chain lightning, so extra points for dps having to tank.

 

No idea how rishi bonus is now damage-wise, all I know is dulfy's guide was not correct and I had to get creative. Turned out to be almost purely healer's fight after getting people to stand where they needed to. Wouldn't try it with pugs, though.

Last time I tried Manaan bonus, the probes blew up for ridiculous amount of damage. Like 60k. Good luck lvl 50s.

 

 

Meanwhile, in the original topic. BH too hard for pugs, remove from pool of FPs! Or nerf, whatever

 

Wonder how the idea of "trials" for HM FP access would go. Marvel Heroes done it for certain type of endgame content, the reaction were mixed at best, especially since it was on per-character basis.

[VegasTheLost]

Wonder how the idea of "trials" for HM FP access would go. Marvel Heroes done it for certain type of endgame content, the reaction were mixed at best, especially since it was on per-character basis.

 

If you refering to The Ethernal Championship my guess is that for non casual raiders or to those who are generally familliar with their classes it won't be much hussle, but for others.... I guess we'll see a lot of nerf cries.

 

To be on topic. I'm not sure what to do with HM BH. It's good that GF have a challenging FP in it but I can also understand that it's not worth doing it for the rewards and truly it's not an average PUG friendly. But my main problem is that HM FP has bolster. I mean why? What's the logic in that? Why can a level 50 enter to an FP that was designed for level 60? And really? Bolster in a HM FP? I just don't get it...

[WhiteKing]

If you refering to The Ethernal Championship my guess is that for non casual raiders or to those who are generally familliar with their classes it won't be much hussle, but for others.... I guess we'll see a lot of nerf cries.

 

To be on topic. I'm not sure what to do with HM BH. It's good that GF have a challenging FP in it but I can also understand that it's not worth doing it for the rewards and truly it's not an average PUG friendly. But my main problem is that HM FP has bolster. I mean why? What's the logic in that? Why can a level 50 enter to an FP that was designed for level 60? And really? Bolster in a HM FP? I just don't get it...

 

Haven't checked EChamp yet, so can't really say. The Marvel Heroes version is a timed instance with some group and boss fights that tests your dps output and ability to deal with various telegraphed attacks so that you are not a drag in harder endgame content.

 

I disagree with having a "challenging FP" mixed in the pool of "lesser FPs", especially if the FP in question is beyond challenging for majority of the target clientele AND there is no entry barrier. As of now, random person buys a sub, gets an insta-60, loads into HM BH and hits a furry wall. Can't imagine they would be too happy about their purchase.

 

The 50-65 FP bracket is somewhat understandable. Back when cap was 55, you could queue for ops in the 50-54 bracket and people could get screwed over if someone left due to rather small pool of potential replacements. In theory it would benefit queue times overall. I say in theory, because I haven't noticed a difference in queue times when this got introduced. What I have seen is people declining pops if they see lower level player in there and also caught some flack myself when I got into HM Hammer Station as a 55 tank in old Yavin companion gear. All they saw was lvl 55 tank. The fact that some "overclocked dps" told the healer not to cleanse on the droid and the healer listened and blamed me for wiping is just symptomatic of the type of people you will run into.

 

Challenging is fine, as long as it is not mandatory to queue for. Having a shark section in the kiddie pool...not so much.

[VegasTheLost]

Challenging is fine, as long as it is not mandatory to queue for. Having a shark section in the kiddie pool...not so much.

 

Yeah probably brackets could work. With huge letters indicating that this bracket is the hardest bracket and it's strongly adviseable to know your class and the general mechanics of the game. However I suppose some would still queue for it, maybe for trolling, maybe for hoping an easy run/carry etc. I don't know, maybe some reasonable pre-requsite could work as well. But what?

[MuskyBoy]

It would be very easy to fix this. Have tier 2 FP's similar to when LI for all SoR FP's give better rewards (unassembled 216 or 220) however you will not be able to skip the bonus bosses. Edited April 13, 2016 by MuskyBoy

[Jerba]

Yeah probably brackets could work. With huge letters indicating that this bracket is the hardest bracket and it's strongly adviseable to know your class and the general mechanics of the game. However I suppose some would still queue for it, maybe for trolling, maybe for hoping an easy run/carry etc. I don't know, maybe some reasonable pre-requsite could work as well. But what?

Sadly, that won't fix the problem. It will only increase queue times because players would only queue for one bracket, and it will only exacerbate the difference in skill. When new players are stuck running the easy flashpoints and excluded from harder flashpoints, I don't see how they will get better. And how do you expect loot to be handled? There's no point dropping gear from the highest bracket since the players running it have no need for gear.

 

The whole endgame in KotFE is a mess because there is no clear progression aside from farming EV/KP HM during Priority week. Ideally, flashpoints should be the stepping stone into 8-man operations content but that'd require a complete overhaul and rebalancing of all the content and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

[LudhaninRolgge]

If you refering to The Ethernal Championship my guess is that for non casual raiders or to those who are generally familliar with their classes it won't be much hussle, but for others.... I guess we'll see a lot of nerf cries.

 

To be on topic. I'm not sure what to do with HM BH. It's good that GF have a challenging FP in it but I can also understand that it's not worth doing it for the rewards and truly it's not an average PUG friendly. But my main problem is that HM FP has bolster. I mean why? What's the logic in that? Why can a level 50 enter to an FP that was designed for level 60? And really? Bolster in a HM FP? I just don't get it...

 

I've been thinking about it for quite some times now and what I think should be best is if they reintroduce SM FP. They can keep tactical if they want, but what that'll mean is that they could rebalance the public each of them are trying to attain.

So we'd have tacticals for leveling. Same as now, no role requirement, some mechanics for you to learn the basics but not too much with.

Then you'd have SM FP for everybody from 50 to 65 with bolster. You'd need a full trinity group for those one, but DPS and HPS requirements, damage output from mobs and mechanics are a bit less than those of HM. Dropping something like 208 or 216 comm gear to start you off.

Then finally HM FP for 65 only. Still a full trinity group required, but DPS and HPS requirement, damage output from mobs and mechanics are closer to HM ops and require you to be at least 216 token and loot a 220 token on a daily (or even weekly) lockout. Of course, most bosses would need to be buffed so they're not faceroll as they are now.

It seems to me that it would be a way to create a new interest for HM FP for raiders. I know I'd do a lot more FP if that was the case.

Anyway, that's just some ideas. If some of you have things you disagree or want to propose other ideas, I'll be happy to create a topic to talk about that.

[Equeliber]

Huh, did Blood Hunt HM yesterday. No wipes at all. We did run with almost a full guild group, so all players knew what they were doing and all had set bonus and 216/220/224 gear... What is stopping you from getting this gear though?

And anyway, I myself healed/tanked it with pugs too. Harder with randoms but still doable if they have at least basic understanding of what they are doing.

[MuskyBoy]

Huh, did Blood Hunt HM yesterday. No wipes at all. We did run with almost a full guild group, so all players knew what they were doing and all had set bonus and 216/220/224 gear... What is stopping you from getting this gear though?

And anyway, I myself healed/tanked it with pugs too. Harder with randoms but still doable if they have at least basic understanding of what they are doing.

 

When you have 4 lvl 50's (which can happen since the level range is 50-65) you

a) Can't get that gear.

b) You are missing abilities

c) Bolster doesn't make up the difference

[Exocor]

We 3-maned it some weeks ago with 220/224 Gearing. We did it with 2 dps an 1 heal. A tank does 2-2.5k dps on the boss, we did not have in our group. I did 6,x with my Tactics Vanguard to the boss only, our other dps did the adds an just had 3.5-4k at the boss. So, you need to do 8-10k "raid-dps" to beat the enrage.

[Lodinn]

We did run with almost a full guild group, so all players knew what they were doing and all had set bonus and 216/220/224 gear... What is stopping you from getting this gear though?

Answer is quite simple: HM FPs were always considered a stepping stone for operations. That means, they are supposed to be hands down EASIER than SM ops.

Therefore, basic point here is that you go and read recommended gear level for any HM FP and... It's not higher than 208 by no means. It always WAS supposed that you do FPs to learn BEFORE you even go to any ops at all. Heck, people are even having problem grouping up so FPs are what they try to do at first when stopping being so shy. In short, HM FP should provide some simple mechanic (a few, 1-3 key mechanics for each boss) challenge and teach you about doing the mechanics and keeping up rotation or whatever so that you can do SM ops after that, when your numbers are halfway decent.

Now, some flashpoint dps checks are harder for people than even many HM ops. This is the nature of problem being discussed. No one stops you from getting it, it's just you're MEANT to have 208's, probably non-augged, when doing this content.

 

I guess you talking about HM, regarding 216 gear. However I'm a bit lost regarding Raptus. Quite a few people says that he is tough even on HM and he hits hard, but one of our first kill was, me solotanking the second half(or maybe the whole) of 3rd phase and I'm honestly maybe a decent tank. Anyway we're not on NiM yet so I don't know about that. So what's up with Raptus on HM? To be clear I'm not trying to play down Raptus or to shine myself I just don't know what's up with him.

No worries, mate, RNG is with him. When doing it in 198's on the first week of 4.0, we found it fairly challenging, requiring 6-8 pulls to kill quite often if tanks lacked coordination. Now, with 220ish gear, he doesn't look like an issue. Still, non-mitigated Force Execution or no tank swap after knocking mt up often results in deaths. Didn't prevent me from maratanking it for a good minute, tho. And here's the problem - popping cooldowns work, tank stats don't really help. Occasionally he loves to hit for 76k or something and if healers don't keep mt above 90% at all time and/or if you're geared in full token gear without high-endurance stuff it just kills too easily.

 

As a matter of fact, I keep all my stuff on TRE.

Cool, I'd gladly do some playtesting of stuff often being discussed (bar some serious ops, those are not exactly supposed to be playtested) so to justify claims about content being too hard. If on imp, PM Ton'itra or Tenebrosa, I'll try to take more breaks from FFXIV and check up stuff in here. If on rep, err... This'is'madness is the only alt I log occasionally.

 

Op heals have it easy, keeping a DoT up the whole fight after some extra dakka at the start should be enough.[/OTHER]

On my list, that woudn't add up for 500 dps :-p

 

On droid boss there were no white circles, the bubbles just appeared and you had to deal with them. Also pretty sure incinerate debuff was not cleansable, so interrupt or burn. And Lorrick turned when he was throwing satchels, now you just step out of it. Possibly some numbers tuning, but mechanically that was about it.

More healing fun, I see. Probably doing this with 3.0 Revanchist healer in premade doesn't help understand healing issues that good. Though she said it was somewhat intensive, but we had tank exactly not running out of satchels, so healable through.

 

I slightly understand the camera thing on the walker, it happens when adds come. I may or may not be imagining this, but I think it tries to point you to the side the adds appear on.

For me, it just drops to ground level and I get insta lost in there. But yes, it happens when adds spawn which doesn't exactly help to kill them in a timely manner.

 

No idea how rishi bonus is now damage-wise, all I know is dulfy's guide was not correct and I had to get creative. Turned out to be almost purely healer's fight after getting people to stand where they needed to. Wouldn't try it with pugs, though.

Huh, weird... From my experience Dulfy's guide was just fine, but we did it in premade of 4 sitting on TS, coordinating stacks. Still required some practice. I've heard it was nerfed since then, however.

 

Last time I tried Manaan bonus, the probes blew up for ridiculous amount of damage. Like 60k. Good luck lvl 50s.

Not really, usually is about 30k unless you have a debuff already and that's why you rotate people on those/have immensely strong defensives up when eating those.

 

Wonder how the idea of "trials" for HM FP access would go. Marvel Heroes done it for certain type of endgame content, the reaction were mixed at best, especially since it was on per-character basis.

In FFXIV, it's kind of on per-character basis, does not bar you access to anywhere but nets very sexy gear from start up to lvl 25 or so (max lvl is 60). But then again, you can only play with 1 character and have all classes on it.

[WhiteKing]

Yeah probably brackets could work. With huge letters indicating that this bracket is the hardest bracket and it's strongly adviseable to know your class and the general mechanics of the game. However I suppose some would still queue for it, maybe for trolling, maybe for hoping an easy run/carry etc. I don't know, maybe some reasonable pre-requsite could work as well. But what?

 

I have a feeling that if you ask your random pug if they know their class, the confidence in their skill might be inversely proportional to their actual ability. After all, there already is a "recommended gear" bit slapped on the weekly (and funnily enough, the gear in question exceeds the level of the mission by 10 levels), yet I've seen people with gear of half that rating in HMs before.

 

Enforcement would be the only way, some sort of quick quest might do the trick? Little tweaking of Raptus' challenges for dps and healers would work, I suppose. Don't stand in stupid, interrupt, have sufficient output.

 

It would be very easy to fix this. Have tier 2 FP's similar to when LI for all SoR FP's give better rewards (unassembled 216 or 220) however you will not be able to skip the bonus bosses.

 

Keep in mind that better rewards mean more motivation to queue for, regardless of whether or not you can pull your weight. LI queues were not the best place for sane people. For that matter, current HM queues are not the best place for sane people. Without some sort of barrier for the riff-raff, it would just mean extra reward for full guild groups, and those already see no issues with GF, as they are not actually exposed to it in the first place.

 

Sadly, that won't fix the problem. It will only increase queue times because players would only queue for one bracket, and it will only exacerbate the difference in skill. When new players are stuck running the easy flashpoints and excluded from harder flashpoints, I don't see how they will get better. And how do you expect loot to be handled? There's no point dropping gear from the highest bracket since the players running it have no need for gear.

 

The whole endgame in KotFE is a mess because there is no clear progression aside from farming EV/KP HM during Priority week. Ideally, flashpoints should be the stepping stone into 8-man operations content but that'd require a complete overhaul and rebalancing of all the content and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

 

They would get better by practicing. As of now, there are a lot of people who don't even understand how their spec works (e.g. my "favourite" FL spamming lightning sorcs), and that only takes reading the bloody tooltips to see how the abilities feed off of each other. Not to mention there are whole guides written. But no, too l33t to r34d, I guess.

 

Once you don't need to think too much about what buttons to press, you can start paying attention to mechanics. And I don't mean the obvious circles, I mean stuff like realizing that Kreshan doesn't turn once he starts spraying his aoe and you can step out of it and prevent all damage. I can explain that. But if I see they are little more than monkey-pressing random buttons, I think Spec 101 is much more suitable course than advanced tactics.

 

I can understand that removing more experienced players from more accessible content may slow down the learning process, I am also slowly but surely losing patience with people who will not admit any shortcomings whatsoever and will blatantly lie that they are totally not healer specced "dps", despite getting combat medic procs on their buff bar. Call me elitist, but liars (and commies) just grind my gears.

 

As to the gear, being able to get unlettered mods from FP would be good enough for me. Then again I am one of those insane people who pug FPs for that handful of comms I just end up stockpiling.

 

KotFE endgame (regardless of your sig ) is a mess because it wasn't rebalanced, only inflated number-wise with a broad brush. It "mostly" works. But when it doesn't, it fails miserably. And yes, you have former 50 ops made to look equivalent to more recent content.

 

I've been thinking about it for quite some times now and what I think should be best is if they reintroduce SM FP. They can keep tactical if they want, but what that'll mean is that they could rebalance the public each of them are trying to attain.

So we'd have tacticals for leveling. Same as now, no role requirement, some mechanics for you to learn the basics but not too much with.

Then you'd have SM FP for everybody from 50 to 65 with bolster. You'd need a full trinity group for those one, but DPS and HPS requirements, damage output from mobs and mechanics are a bit less than those of HM. Dropping something like 208 or 216 comm gear to start you off.

Then finally HM FP for 65 only. Still a full trinity group required, but DPS and HPS requirement, damage output from mobs and mechanics are closer to HM ops and require you to be at least 216 token and loot a 220 token on a daily (or even weekly) lockout. Of course, most bosses would need to be buffed so they're not faceroll as they are now.

It seems to me that it would be a way to create a new interest for HM FP for raiders. I know I'd do a lot more FP if that was the case.

Anyway, that's just some ideas. If some of you have things you disagree or want to propose other ideas, I'll be happy to create a topic to talk about that.

 

I like the idea of non-tactical SM FP, but again, if people could queue for content with better reward, they would most likely do so. Especially the kind that would benefit the most from the learning experience. Without some actual entry barrier (as opposed to suggested gear level), again, sane people would not be too keen to pug those 65 only HMs and guild groups would still see no issues.

 

Having a daily mission that would award some sort of token currency that would be exchangeable for ops quality gear at an unspecified rate might be a good middle ground. Farmable, but only to a point.

 

We 3-maned it some weeks ago with 220/224 Gearing. We did it with 2 dps an 1 heal. A tank does 2-2.5k dps on the boss, we did not have in our group. I did 6,x with my Tactics Vanguard to the boss only, our other dps did the adds an just had 3.5-4k at the boss. So, you need to do 8-10k "raid-dps" to beat the enrage.

 

It's a bit under 10.5k. You also have Revan HM vid in your sig. Surely you are not expecting comparative performance from a random pug, who can very well be playing the game for less time that it took you to clear that op.

[Exocor]

It's a bit under 10.5k. You also have Revan HM vid in your sig. Surely you are not expecting comparative performance from a random pug, who can very well be playing the game for less time that it took you to clear that op.

 

Of course, I dont expect a skillfull perfomance combined with augmented token-gear by a random-player. But these FP's (BoR and BH) were already difficult pre-4.0. They eased the sm-operations down to a ridiculous level. Why should they ease down the hm-fp's now?

 

And there is another important aspect in hm-fp's and sm-operations concerning to the level-50-random-pug with coruscant-gearing we don't want to have in our fp-group for bloodhunt: Compensating 1 or 2 smaller dps, 1 heal and 1 tank in an operation-group with 8 players is much more easier as compensating 2 players in a group of 4 players doing a hardmode-fp. Of course, you can kill Commander Mokan with only 1 heal and 1 dps, but it needs some time.

[masterceil]

I've been thinking about it for quite some times now and what I think should be best is if they reintroduce SM FP. They can keep tactical if they want, but what that'll mean is that they could rebalance the public each of them are trying to attain.

So we'd have tacticals for leveling. Same as now, no role requirement, some mechanics for you to learn the basics but not too much with.

Then you'd have SM FP for everybody from 50 to 65 with bolster. You'd need a full trinity group for those one, but DPS and HPS requirements, damage output from mobs and mechanics are a bit less than those of HM. Dropping something like 208 or 216 comm gear to start you off.

Then finally HM FP for 65 only. Still a full trinity group required, but DPS and HPS requirement, damage output from mobs and mechanics are closer to HM ops and require you to be at least 216 token and loot a 220 token on a daily (or even weekly) lockout. Of course, most bosses would need to be buffed so they're not faceroll as they are now.

It seems to me that it would be a way to create a new interest for HM FP for raiders. I know I'd do a lot more FP if that was the case.

Anyway, that's just some ideas. If some of you have things you disagree or want to propose other ideas, I'll be happy to create a topic to talk about that.

 

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[LudhaninRolgge]

I like your ideas, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter

 

You can subscribe here ^^

[Lodinn]

Aha, glad to say I've finally managed to attempt it as a tank on Harby. There I'm pretty much a model of average casual player gear-wise, got 2 similarly geared dps (216 with few 220 pieces, they both were non-augmented). First pull, 43% enrage. 2nd pull, 23% enrage and called. I must say, 2nd pull looked pretty smooth positioning-wise. I didn't spec vengeance nor did I put up some dps pieces for this experiment to be cleaner.

My dps on first pull was around 2.1k, on the second 2.8. Sadly, couldn't assess group's dps for obvious reasons. I'm pretty sure healer was tasked enough so not to offdps tho.

What else I noted is that at least incoming damage was nerfed, electro net used to hit much harder, so did electro rods.

Assuming I've just met an exemplary average group which is meant to kill this, that is overtuned indeed, but not so hard - it was more about people's frustration of not even hitting the dps requirement ballpark which caused them to cease 'progressing' it any further.

[LudhaninRolgge]

I like the idea of non-tactical SM FP, but again, if people could queue for content with better reward, they would most likely do so. Especially the kind that would benefit the most from the learning experience. Without some actual entry barrier (as opposed to suggested gear level), again, sane people would not be too keen to pug those 65 only HMs and guild groups would still see no issues.

 

That's why I have been a hardly defender of some sort of proving grounds lately. My post was more about the lack of interrest people have for FP nowavays than the obvious average player level becoming lower and lower. That's why I didn't include some sorts of testing mechanic in there.

[nyrkverse]

I think a lot of the difficulty with this one is that people don't have many chances to practice it. In my experience someone (usually a tank) leaves the group immediately after realizing what FP it is and the group falls apart.

 

I still queue for FPs a few times during the week and I think I have completed BH HM like four or five times in total without guildies. People leave without giving it a chance or they get discouraged after the first wipe. You can't pull high dps if you don't know a fight and this is especially true for players who may not be used to more demanding fights just yet.

 

And let's not forget the bonus boss in Rishi, that's another fight people just don't want to deal with it. They really should put BH and Rishi in their own FP category and give higher rewards - a 216 token for completing the fp, another for completing both and guaranteed deco drops from rishi's bonus boss like it used to be. No nerfs, just give people a reason to go out of their comfort zone.

[Renata_Roselli]

We can 2-3 man it very easily. The DPS in your group is just non-existent.

[Lil_Fusion]

I pugged this the first time the other day was the last of the new FP's I hadn't done. I was the healer, the DPS were probably average considering one was a balance sage that wasn't geared well at all, mix of comm 208s and 216s he wasn't even over 70k HP. The other was a sentinel that was in a mix of 220/224. The tank was a level 62 guardian. We hit enrage at 5% but managed to 1 shot it regardless. I dont think it's that hard of a FP just can't have two dps that dunno what the hell they're doing on their class and expect to make it through it. Also as the healer I was trying to DPS as much as I could on down time but that depended on the DPS avoiding stupid. Edited April 20, 2016 by Lil_Fusion