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.
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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.
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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.
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Where does it say E5 mechanics are moved to E11 in the patch notes?
“Third tier (aka “Nightmare”) mechanics now start in the Elite 11 - 13 tier.”
In the Dungeons section, 6th bullet.
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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.
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Nightmare. There is Story (e0 I guess), Normal (e1-4), Elite (e5-10), so Nightmare (e11+) naturally starts at 11. What exactly is the problem?
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.)
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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.
Yes, there’s actual E1 mechanics upto E10 now.
For dungeons on Live, e5 mechanics are the same as e10 mechanics. There is nothing new added at e10, it’s just more damage.
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.
The nightmare changes are already tank stuff though… the most it does to dps is someone ends up having to slot tank abilities (group barrier in hr4 for example, handful of impair/purges in polaris) cause 6 abilities isn’t enough for just the tank to do that role. so now e11 tanks have twice as many new things and dps are gonna be going “why are there no tank/healers” as usual. It doesn’t matter if there’s nothing new for dps if the tanks are the ones not queuing.
I know on the e4-5 step there were a lot of people sticking to E4 cause you get near-identical loot and can actually finish the dungeons with an e4 geared tank
This is the only new thing, and as AWOL said, completely ignorable if glyphed as intended. At worst you notice the non interruptible cast bar of Overreaching Strike… and ignore it. The only purpose of both mechanics, is for you to use defensive glyphs. They in No way complicate the fight as it is happening.
I haven’t seen any description of Overreaching Strike… if you can just ignore it, what does it do that involves glyphs? (and presumably E11 is tuned for 5 yellow 20 glyphs… just like E10 only needs a red 20 hit glyph)
It just hurts you really bad if you don’t have enough tank stats. It oneshots the tank if the tank has 0 tank stats from glyphs.