“Third tier (aka “Nightmare”) mechanics now start in the Elite 11 - 13 tier.”
I like most of the things I’ve seen in this patch, but not this one.
New people are already asking in their first E1 dungeons, “what’s new compared to story mode?” Well, nothing really but bigger numbers. In E2 again the same question, and we’ve needed to explain that they’d need to wait all the way to E5 to see new mechanics. And now they’ll need to wait to E11 to see anything actually new? That’s a pretty long wait.
As it is in beta now, you can still tank and heal in what ever gear until E10, so in E11 there’s already that one big change coming: you need to have the gear for the role (at least for a tank). Also there’s the whole new Penthouse.
To me it sadly looks like there wasn’t enough resources or interest to add a couple new attacks in E11+ dungeons, so moving the E5 mechanics there makes it look like there’s umm… new mechanics there? It isn’t very convincing.
I’d rather see the “third tier” mechanics staying in E5, so there’d be one more milestone on the way to end game, and people could practice those mechanics while gearing for their role.
I don’t like that end game focused patch makes the lower level content less interesting, and I’d really like to hear the reasoning behind it, because i can’t see anyone benefiting from this decision. Especially when most of the people in beta are end game players, and feedback from lower level players seems to be very limited.
Any thoughts?
If there’s already been discussion about this on some forum, I’d appreciate a link.
I didn’t see anything really addressing this, so no links.
I feel similarly. E1-E4 is plenty enough time to learn the fights before getting standard “nightmare” mechanics, and not having any way to practice them all the way until players are basically fully geared in legendary items seems like too long a wait. It would also give players who have a set of crit gear, but are working on tank gear the ability to learn how to deal with mechanics without having to get their second set all the way to legendary first.
@Studmonger I think it’s cool to have something completely new that you’ve never tried before in the last tier. Kind of like NYRE10 now. It gives you something new to look forward to, and you have to keep trying until you finally get it right. A challenge. Endgame stuffs.
I agree with the OP. E11+ should rather have additional mechanics. Group healing that they introduced in NY E17 seemed to make healers quite happy to actually for once have real stuff to do, so this, hopefully, was a first proof of concept that they’ll expand on later.
By the “third tier” I’m just referring the patch notes that said “Third tier (aka “Nightmare”) mechanics now start in the Elite 11 - 13 tier.” and seeing the old E5 mechanics moved to E11->.
I’d be happy to get informed better.
I’d guess that it’s aimed at making the dungeons easier (and faster) to complete. The changes to the queue shows that they’re looking to increase the number of people running dungeons, with better rewards being given for lower difficulty, (you get rewards from the top of the bracket, but the difficulty is set to the bottom of the bracket).
The introduction of more e11+ content changes the focus of the gear grind. It was to get to e10, and then any extra is just a bonus - faction missions and DA being the exceptions, introduced at a later date. Now, the grind to legendary is just the first step, so it’d make sense to make it more appealing, and lets face it, grinding up your first set of reds has been a long grind for a lot of people.
Making it easier to get through the dungeons is good for fast progression. It’s not so great for people who enjoy being challenged, and there are going to be a good chunk of people who are used to the extra mechanics then going back to waiting for more gear before they encounter them again.
It’d be nice to have new mechanics for e11+, but even if it was just adding one new ability per boss, that’d seem to potentially be the same amount of effort as designing a whole new collection of bosses for a dungeon.
Nirvelle & team are very good at making those very fast these days though.
Here are some ideas that i had for such mechanics at E11+:
Hell Raised: expand on the Lifeburn theme of the dungeon and make all bosses put lifeburn on the group & make it more frequent, so cleansing only isn’t enough and cleansing only becomes necessary after too many Lifeburn stacks are present. Good exercise for healers.
Ankh: make some (or all) bosses randomly spawn a mote that attaches to someone. No need of making the mote have too much HP, make it killable in like 1 basic or 2. This will make people practice some target switching or stacking on top of each other in Crystallized Blazes, etc…
Hell Eternal: expand on the Lens theme of the dungeon and make all bosses shield themselves with it, increase the reflected damage of Lenses. Gives healer some challenge, and potentially makes DPS become more aware and makes them stop hitting the boss when they get too low (a bit like in TSW really, that’s not even a new mechanic, it’s more a matter of TSW NM mechanics being harder overall).
Darkness Wars: the theme of this dungeon is adds, however, spawning too many adds usually brings FPS problems with it. With that said, introducing something new could also be cool. I’m mainly thinking about something similar to the raid damage in NY E17.
Polaris : in TSW, one of the “themes” of Polaris was more penetration rating on bosses, and spiky damage as a result. Make bosses in Polaris able to critically hit (and increase the crit damage), so that Polaris becomes more of a “tank check” than other dungeons.
Nice ideas!
For DW it might also be relatively easy to make the blood puddles (left by dying adds) and filth (bosses 2 and 6) persist to the end of the fight.
The problem is that there won’t be “Elite” E5-10 mechanics anymore.
The mechanics are the same from E1 to E10. (Or possibly from story mode to E10, I can’t remember much difference between SM and E1 dungeons mechanics.)
I think it’s a throwback to the TSW dungeon mechanic system, where we had story, elite and nightmare mechanics.
Mechanics wise, Story and e1-4 dungeons on live are the same. The amount of damage the mechanics do is different ofc, but the abilities themselves are the same.
Before arguing on text, did you check it in dungeons themselves? Wording is slightly ambiguous so it can mean moving former E10 mechanics to E11 or can mean moving E5 mechanics to E11.
Been a while since I ran TSW story at-level obviously, I thought it was some changes in what’s optional/required interrupts, possibly by a big damage bump (like, 200 damage -> 5000 damage). Most of the major strategy differences were in fights we don’t have anymore though like SH boss 2, and HF boss 6 going from 1 to 3 dudes.
I don’t like this change, E11+ already has enough new mechanics, add the nightmare stuff before then. It’s just gonna push everyone into playing E10s cause they’re massively simpler and give nearly identical loot.
For dps there are no new mechanics at e11, other than the previous e5 changes.
The overreaching strike and savage mechanics are totally passive, you can ignore them if you’ve got the tanking glyphs. If you don’t have them, it’ll kill you. There’s nothing to get used to that we aren’t already doing at e5+ on live.
In terms of loot, the e11-13 bracket will give e13 loot, which will be significantly better than e10s.
well, on the flip side, perhaps nightmare mechanics aren’t easy/boring for most folks? considering the low percentage of the population that becomes tanks, let alone tank e10 consistently? given how long it takes to get to e17 IP, FC may want to make it easier/faster to grind up. remember that the game has to cater to many people.