I don’t think most of us want DoTs to be removed, but want them to be part of, not the meta of solutions when fighting…both bosses and pvp. Most damage I do on bosses is DoT and thrall. My main goal is to jump 8n and refresh stacks. With the bleed weapons, the thrall took care of even that.
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Fights of all kinds should sometimes be a combination of many solutions and not using some of those mechanics or weapons should allow for more challenge or tactics to succeed no matter the content one wants to complete or experiment with.
When you have one surefire way many will always use it. In pve this can have consequences on solo or team fun on and against npcs though fortunately npcs don’t care one way or another. Pvp is more tricky in that players are always looking for an edge no matter the angle and as long as it is not a cheat or exploit of some kind this usually is fine and even encouraged.
The issue is unlike npcs, players do care if they are dispatched or defeated the same way every time and this way can not be over come with similar effort by other means or tactics. If there is one way to win the win feels cheap and quickly gets stale and boring. If this happens people will leave to get their entertainment elsewhere.
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Any PVE player who complains that bleeding trivializes boss battles – and I’ve yet to meet one – is missing the point. What trivializes boss battles is the AI.
The vast majority of bosses are simply damage sponges with mediocre AI. They have a handful of attacks, most of them telegraphed to a certain degree, and they choose randomly between them, and that’s all there is to them.
Bleeding does not make boss battles less challenging, it just makes them shorter. Removing the utility of bleed from the boss battles where it can be used is just going to make people rely on thralls more heavily in those battles. And guess what? Thralls do make boss battles less challenging.
My preferred way of soloing a flesh-and-blood boss is to stack bleed with daggers and then keep it going with an axe. I don’t have TestLive to confirm whether it’s still a viable strategy, but I doubt it: when you take the typical time it takes from one window of opportunity to another in a boss battle and then sum it with the time you need until you get to the 3rd axe combo attack, it’s most likely going to take more than 8 seconds.
So yeah, this change is probably going to make boss battles even less fun, because I’ll have to stick with one weapon. But it’s okay, I guess, because PVE is simple, so who gives a shіt, right?
So you are saying it’s good game design to be able to cheese a boss with stone daggers? Because that was the question I asked which you responded too
I’ve certainly never said anything along these lines:
“But it’s okay, I guess, because PVE is simple, so who gives a shіt, right?”
I constantly stick up for players right to express their opinion REGARDLESS of their chosen game type. I’m never going to buy into this us vs them PvP vs PvE mentality that is so popular on this forum
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I don’t know if “cheese” is correct. If you mean a player arrives on a server and with stone daggers simply kills bosses until he has chests full of weps, then I guess so. But a dude was recently upon us who did it this way and no lie…
My teammate @Cauthey rode up, offered pots, they said they were aight
Cauthey rides home, bunks up and logs out.
Five minutes later, Choad #1 says “he dead” in Global, having killed the boss.
If that’s cheesing, call me Kraft Dinner. Because that sounds unfun.
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Most forms of cheesing are pretty unfun in my opinion. I absolutely never stand back and let my thrall fight the boss or hide on a rock and kill it with arrows because I find those activities to be mind numbing
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Maybe my definition of “cheesing” is different from yours, but I honestly don’t see how you can apply that word to what I talked about.
I study the boss AI, such as it is, I learn its attack patterns, I move according to the attacks so they’ll miss me and run in close to apply bleeds with daggers, then when the bleed stack is full I switch to an axe and do the same (i.e. close the distance after the attack misses me and execute a 3- or 4- hit combo to keep the bleed going). Where is the cheesing in that?
And by the way, I’ve done what you mention twice, with stone daggers, without a thrall, and without epic armor. One time it was with the reaper queen, the other time it was with the giant spider. The first time it was because I wanted to see if it’s doable at all, the second time it was because I wanted to measure how long it would take (I think it was 40 minutes, I forgot). It was mind-numbingly boring both times and there’s absolutely no reason why anyone should do it, but it’s still not cheesing.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not cheesing, at least not according to any definition of cheesing that I’ve ever seen: it’s simply easy AI. If I wanted to cheese the boss, I would go sit on a rock and sic my thrall on it, while I shoot it with arrows (or eat a sandwich or watch YouTube or post on these forums).
I’m already taking all the reasonable measures to turn easy AI battles into something that isn’t mind-numbingly boring: taking risks by actually fighting the boss, not taking a thrall with me, trying to vary the weapons I use so it feels like a tactical decision.
If the daggers + axe strategy stops being viable, I’ll switch to daggers only, because why should I drag out the battle artificially? The bosses are already slot machines that I have to keep visiting endlessly to get what I want. By not bringing a thrall, I’m already sacrificing efficiency to obtain some fun, but it’s just not reasonable to take that approach to extremes.
I’m glad and grateful for that. Sorry for the comment I made – it wasn’t aimed directly at you, but rather at the majority of the PVP community. I’ve been on these forums for a loooooooong time, and by now I’m downright salty about that attitude.
You know I respect you, @Barnes, so please don’t take this as an attack: I am extremely skeptical of the claim that someone used stone daggers to kill a world boss in five minutes.
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I was tabbing and hit reply way too early on the post so what you see there is a repair on a self-raid.
What I mean is Cauthey rode home, got in the hot tub, ate a burrito, logged out, and barely within the respawn window we got the “he dead.” Seems like a bad use of beautiful scenery.
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Off topic, but I would like to see more attacks from bosses to spice things up and maybe more things going on during the fight like some bosses summoning other minions or switching weapons and attacking in different ways.
Though lowering their HP, but maybe up their damage could keep the boss fights fresh and risky. PvE and PvP combination is very important and one of the things that makes this game fun and I would not want to sacrifice one or the other as this damage that fun and enjoyment I presently have . I do think there is room to adjust variables or add some to replace the unfun ones.
I didn’t mean your technique of mixing the war axe with the daggers was cheesing, and if I had my choice bleed would’ve been changed in a different manner. In the circles I’ve been in cheesing is just exploiting bad design, with an emphasis on the AI. It’s doing something that is allowed but I doubt any developer would say it’s how they want players to play.
Specifically how I would have addressed bleed: I would limit the stacks of bleed on lower tier weapons, so stone daggers couldn’t stack bleed as effectively as hardened steel daggers. Each tier could be a bit more effective at stacking with anything beyond steel having the full effect like bleed does now.
I do admit this wouldn’t help solve the PvP bleed issues. I like the idea of an armor modification piece that limits but doesn’t eliminate bleeding. That’s a lot of weight you could be getting rid of with armor reduction or a lot of extra armor with platings so it adds a compelling choice when modifying my armor
I understand getting frustrated by people who say PvE is easy, especially because it’s not actually an easy game, there are just lots of easy ways to take advantage of various problems with the system.
I wouldn’t say it’s super hard, but it’s built with a much less forgiving philosophy than most games.
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If they want more balancing to armor they could add more debuffs or do more with concussive effects. Another thing that hasn’t been addressed about poison is that some poisons can be negated by building up immunity over time to them with small exposures over time. I would like to keep it so lower levels can still be a threat to higher or max level players with the weapons, armor, and items available to them at any level given time, patience, and skill.
I loved the idea of the acid arrows as a way to combat armor, but have not seen much more done with that mechanic. Acid spit doing more damage to gear and acid orbs being a thing. I would also see more done with heat and cold weaponized effectively more on items and npcs. All these could be added to bring more spice to PvE as well as PvP. Which I love both and sorely miss either one.
Let me start by saying there’s nothing wrong with this idea and I like it, because it adds meaning to the progression. I like things like that a lot, and it was what I liked the most about Siptah before they added NPC camps.
That said, it’s not really necessary to “fix” that aspect of boss battles. I mean, you’re already penalized for killing the boss with stone daggers, because it takes a really long time and it’s not fun at all. Anyone who is happy to do it that way on a regular basis is not someone who’s going to be inconvenienced by making it even longer and less fun, because they clearly don’t have the same priorities we do 
I like that, too. That’s good game design: adds tradeoffs and meaningful choices. I don’t know if it would solve PVP problems, because I’m not into PVP a lot. I’ll defer to others when it comes to that 
I’m not frustrated by people who say PVE (combat) is easy. It’s not really hard. There’s not a lot of complexity and nuance in it, and there’s not a tremendous amount of skill involved. So people who say it’s easy or simple are not wrong.
What frustrates me is when people say that the impact of PVP-related changes on PVE doesn’t matter, because PVE is easy. Sure, it’s easy, but we care more about whether it’s fun.
Sure, fun is subjective, but anything that removes variety is likely to make things less fun for a bunch of people and is unlikely to make it more fun for anyone. This upcoming change is likely to force me to choose between the artificial challenge of a single-weapon fight and the efficiency of letting myself be my thrall’s sidekick. The option of being reasonably efficient by switching between two weapons in a tactical way is most likely going to disappear.
And it’s not just about bleeding and poison – look at other nerf requests. I don’t use bow in PVE combat, but I’ve seen other PVE players who play as archers. I don’t want their fun to be ruined just because half of the PVP players aren’t prepared to adapt to bows being viable from distance and the other half aren’t prepared to adapt to archers having a decent chance at surviving in close-range combat.
I get that PVP combat is not balanced, but the incessant insistence on nerfing things – instead of trying to look for ways to add choices and tradeoffs – is what keeps ruining the fun for the PVE community without actually making the PVP community satisfied.
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I really think player flags would help a lot, as it could allow capping damage against players without effecting damage against NPCs. You could even open it up for private server admins so they could customize PvP and PvE damage scales
I mean ideally we could have good AI and then bosses and thralls could both be brought down to less grindy levels of HP, but I think that’s not likely to happen at this stage in development
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I would hope from a pvp stand point to make as much as possible a meta game extremely difficult to maintain for any length of time. The rush to define the “meta” is what usually polarizes the battlefield and points out glaring points of imbalance.
In battle what you can bring to the fight needs to be as varied as possible while still being effective. I do not, however enjoy “rock, paper, scissors” fighting systems as they again are ridged to only 3 possible styles of play and this can be true for pvp and/or pve. We can look to history for some examples of weapons and armor uses, limitations, and strengths.
The good thing is and something I hope is not lost is this game has the added benefit of Alchemy and Magic mixed and that can be added to the mix keep the choices ever changing so a meta never solidifies .
Are you joking? You can cheese every fight in this game if you so choose, and you’ve been able to do so since the game was released.
Quite frankly, this cycle of adding weapons and then applying nerfs to make them less useful drives players away. We get gear that actually makes the player feel powerful then low and behold, here’s a nerf. And make no mistake, grey ones weapons will be useless outside of their base damage if this goes live. Thralls struggle to stack up to 20 with the current duration, cutting that by more than half, not a chance.
PvE wise I have killed everything on Siptah countless times. Quite frankly, I have no desire to see changes that prolong my grinding/farming.
Alas, the whiners will revisit this issue quite soon should this go live. Because a player in PvP can and will pressure you to stack bleed and you will have no convenient way to cure it.
Yes I am serious. I’m not sure why a thing having been broken means it must stay broken? Does the fact that you’ve always been able to cheese mean you should always be able to in the future?I don’t agree with that idea in the slightest.
I’m not sure why you’re going on about “the whiners” when that is quite literally what you are doing. Complaining on a forum doesn’t actually make nerfs happen, and there are just as many people on every thread asking for change who are “whining” for it not to happen
I didn’t ask for a nerf, the only reason I even got involved in this thread was some people were needlessly attacking other players game preference and deciding they could speak for entire segments of the community
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Arrows have a very fine blade. That is to say the head of the arrow is rather thin, it allows the arrow to penetrate the armor.
In history, this is why armors were upgraded to heavy metal suits. This led to arrows tips that were less wide, allowing the tip to penetrate the heavier armors. That cycle continued until gunpowder was common…
And there were ways to counteract the arrow …it …was…called…a …shield. And you are right arrows could get through armor. Longbows and crossbows are what they used . Crossbows had relatively low range and accuracy beyond that range. Longbows took a hard draw and strong arm. Mail also afterwards provided protection in the form of mobility.
We are talking again about Poison and Bleed debuffs on a weapon. No all hits with the edge on heavy armor would penetrate this was also true with most arrow heads. And gunpowder is not in Conan atleast not for firearms (guns).
Arrows CAN go through armor, but their ability to do so may be a bit exaggerated here. After all Samurai wore silly puffy silk back capes to stop arrows
More than a bit on many weapons so far actually.