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Feedback on increased edemo difficulty
newnickunregistered
Member Posts: 106 Arc User
You might want to tone that increase down, especially to Demogorgon attacks, since all I see in those runs are the vast majority of tanks dying like flies, even with constant heals.
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When I tank Demo I literally stand around with my shield up for the whole first phase. As long as I don't pick up too many adds I can survive pretty much the whole 5 mins.
If I get extra mobs swarming me as I "didn't get Demo clean" then I will die a lot.
I have met so many *Tanks* in random queues that can barely match even the hit points on my Heal or DPS characters ( i'm not even going to go into defensive stats ), the majority of them can't even break 300k HP in scaled content which is damn near entry level gear for a well configured tank character.
You can't expect *Tanks* like that to tank anything effectively.
And heck yes I agree I pretty much bring nothing much to the party other than a shield held up to try and protect people, and to try and hold aggro as much as I can. So for RDQ and RSQ the healer/tank are waste of time.
For trials you need tanks to at least try and tank otherwise they are a wasted DPS slot.
For epic dungeons you really need a tanky tank.
Also, for that "enough to keep shield up" approach, you do reckon the shield mechs was changed in mod 16 and just standing with the shield up not gonna take any tank far, since stamina depletes fast as opposed to its recovery rate?
1. You don't need to ever set foot inside Demo to complete Underdark.
2. Standing in one place holding your Shift button is not tanking.
3. Tanks have this thing called skills / features that help regenerate stamina. Also damage resistance is a thing you might find in tank kits.
4. How about those players gear up and get better so they can do their job instead of topics like this wasting our time and shifting the *fault* for failing somewhere else?
to your points:
1. No, you do not have to - but you are sent there and it is one of the core points of that campaign.
2. That is true, so nobody should salute here to the claims here which suggested it is easy to tank demo just like that.
3. True, but thanks to the difficulty and the trial mechanics neither can save a low level tank - especially when healers come to conclusion that it is not necessary to care about that sacrificial lamb.
4. Here you are completely delusional. Demo is one of those things you are supposed to play when trying to gear up.
And finally, to your opening sarcasm: that is nonsense. The contend should be tailored to the target audience, that is, in this case, 14k levelling guys that just got to the Underdark. 16k should then be able to participate quite fine, but I doubt that is the reality.
If low gear guys - that play content appropriate to the progress of their character - struggle, it is OK. If they struggle to the point it is unplayable, it is wrong.
Half a year ago the game was butchered to introduce scaling. I would expect the devs have some clue how to work with such tool now, so I would conclude that the changes to demo should have not increased the base difficulty, but bring harsher scaling instead.
The whole change was made as such that players get catch up gear, and practically skip the need to do the older stuff. Which is now called legacy campaigns.
Any gear from Vistani to Underdark will shoot the player up to much higher than 14k.
Tanking demo takes only pressing shift an some semi not random intervals, and yet most of the time what I've seen on tanks with issue there, is a tank running around like a headless chicken or with half health or both, but with full stamina.
Now, I'm not a tanking expert, but wouldn't having full stamina and not pressing that button that uses stamina instead of HP is kinda counter productive to a tank?!
I'm not wasting full divinity in scaled content where heals are scaled to babysit this, rather just smite stuff to oblivion to end it faster.
There are no wipes there, die, release, go back in. So how the hell content from years ago, which is trivial as is, that you can go back inside as many times as you want, need to be made easier!?
Lets call it learning opportunity for a tank to tank properly. Hold aggro, pull the boss where needed, and not die to something a dps can facetank. And if they fail, no penalty, just try again.
Fact is, that the recent changes (mod 16) have discouraged many long term players, due to many factors such as
- combat slow paced (compared to pre mod 16)
- character progression nullified (by downscaling, but also because companions, mounts, weapon enchants, etc. provide very different benefits than pre-mod 16, and have to be replaced by for many classes)
- character diversity (intelligent choice of feats, powers, etc.) tuned down dramatically
- classes that were on the top of the food chain are now at the bottom (barbarian)
etc etc.
This means, we have far less experienced players coming to the random queues.
For this reason, many tanks (but also healers and dps) are mediocre (from the perspective of a long term player with near bis gear, companions, mounts etc.)
Is this the fault of the "new" players? Should they be punished to keep the smaller and smaller percentage of "old" players happy?
Furthermore, there is a serious problem with scaled content, that makes it very difficult for new players to reach the caps in scaled content. Effectively, you need the right mounts (purple or legendary), five of them, which are very expensive to get
You need the right companions (again the correct combination of five purple or legendary), again very expensive.
You need legendary insignias on your mounts (in some cases purple will do).
Many new players might have the gear from mod 16 and 17, but they lack what I described above.
Without legendary mounts, insignias and companions it is very very difficult to cap you stats in scaled content.
Curiously, the situation is worse for the "easy" dungeons (with low IL), which are more heavily scaled than the more difficult ones. If you lack the mounts, companions and insignias, you are better off (stat-wise) to queue for the harder content (trials, epic dungeons), because you will get closer to the caps in an instance rated at 17k IL than in an instance rated at 11k.
Of course, from the points of view of a player who has a huge selection of epic (and a couple of legendary) mounts, a huge selection of epic and legendary companions, a huge selection of legendary insignias to chose from, it seems rather easy to cap your stats in scaled content. It also *appears* to be easy for new players, because the normal enchants are capped at rank 9 or 10. But even if you have the right rank 10 enchants in every slot, you will be far from the caps in scaled content, without at leat five purple mounts, companions, r15 bondings and purple insignias.
For new players the cost of this stuff is out of the question. They are working to get that stuff, but this will take a lot of time and - most importantly - hundreds of random queue runs. This is the reason why you are seeing so many "mediocre" players in these runs. Shut them out, and you might be able to enjoy these queues with the other near bis players after a wait time of 1+ hour. The game will die quickly, because when the new players realize, that they need to run randoms in order to get the gear they need to run them, but are barred from running them in the first place because they don't yet have the gear, what do you think will happen? Very few players might open their wallets to get the 20 million AD required. Most new players will leave.
The game needs a healthy distribution between experienced and new players.
Mod 16 had a very bad impact on that healthy distribution (too many experienced players left in frustration)
We can only hope, that the new players will fill up the empty spots left at the top quickly.
Your suggestions rather have the opposite effect: It will take longer.
Just my two cents.
I think the difficulty of eDemo is fine, as it is now.
There is a (moderate) challenge, you have to work for the run to succeed.
But so far I only experienced a single failed run (in 20 or so).
Yes, the tank often dies (mostly in phase 1), because:
- the average tank has not enough self-healing against the damage,
- healers fail to realize that the tank needs occasional heals ("bad" tanks need constant heals, but then the "bad" tank will likely die anyway, no matter how the healer works on him)
- healers are too much occupied healing a widely scattered group (because someone opens all tears)
Sometimes it is the tank's fault, sometimes the healer, often a combination of both, sometimes a bad group that cannot kill the mobs fast enough (with or without the "help" of some guy, who is on a mission to open every tear)
But mostly a bad performance in phase 1 can be mitigated in the other two phases.
You wont get gold, but silver or bronze is still very likely.
The only time the run failed was, when the dps were so bad, that they could not kill Demo (and the increasing number of mobs spawned) during phase 3 within the time limit. Even with bad dps, a decent tank who knows to keep Demo and his accompanying mobs out of the blue circles (and maybe pulls him to the entrance, in case of dps dying too often) can turn the run into a win (bronze, Demo killed just before the timer runs out)
EDIT: Another source of failure (or near failure), far worse than mediocre tanks, healers or dps are afk farmers. Often people queue with two or three accounts (one decently geared main, one or two farm accounts very badly geared). The person plays his main (and occasionally moves his other toons, so that his multiple account thingy is not too obvious). Mostly the afk toons are dps, but they (quite obviously) do not contribute. Dps is lower than it should be. The run fails, not because of the tank, or the healer, but because of lack of dps. I wish they had an easy report function (via a right click) for multiple account farmers.
IMO, its set perfectly. An end game player could almost solo it.
Screenshots or it didn't happen...
Oh, and don't forget to include Boons, Companions, and Mounts...
Your comments are worthless troll bait but since i was bored while waiting for maintenance, i recorded a run:
This is me on my alt Paladin Tank, a spec and character i have not played ONCE in group content up to like an hour ago. Not optimised build and no experience playing it what so ever, took a few runs of random pugging to record a tanking run with very little help that was almost flawless ( all runs were with similar / worse gear and 1-2 deaths each to boss crits while figuring out how to counter Phase 1 ). Blocked almost all damage using stamina alone, the one time i took a big hit at the end was when i was too lazy to hold my Shift button.
16.5k Item level ( 16k is entry level gear ) - no Mounts, no Insignias or Artifacts, no Armour or Weapon Enchant, no Consumables used, no Guild Boons.
One Purple Companion ( 26k AD Energon ), Rank 8 Bondings ( 5k AD Total ), 2 random Pieces of green gear i bought off AH ( 3k AD total ). A few Empowered and Tactical Rank 8s that did nothing but boost my IL a bit, Rank 8 Radiants in each slot i could find ( 11x for about 55k AD Total, you can get away with using 6 or 7 in defence slots only ), random Green Augment pet i had ( Green augments are 22k in the AH atm ).
Items - full Seal or ME drop gear, all free. Artifact Belt and Neck that cost 10k AD total ( completely unrefined you lose ~15k HP total, no difference in performance ), fully refined Alabaster Set ( free, only gave me slightly better aggro management when compared to IL 860 to 900 blue / purple ME drops ).
Play style - block Demo auto attacks with your stamina, use Binding Oath after stamina is down to recover it quickly, keep hitting boss for Divinity and Stamina restoration, attempt to block as much damage as possible while having extra mitigation from daily or Absolution, don't waste stamina on hits that can be tanked safely or side stepped ( a.k.a boss frontal or back cone AoE ).
Overall a build that has barely a days worth of AD invested ( little over 100k ), with fresh level 80+ 10% on top level gear and not my main role ( i play Healer, DPS and Tank in that order ). I'm sure whining on the forums about difficulty after i got almost instantly killed in 2 hits the first run when i was a little too optimistic would have been better than actually practising this and thinking about what skills to use and when.
Pally tanks are pretty good. Barb tanks not quite so.
Anyway, nice run and without external heals, does not happen very often though ...
1.) eDemo difficulty level is fine
2.) runs seldom fail, and mostly because of lack of dps (good dps: tank not needed; bad dps: tank can make a difference)
3.) information for tanks: You can tank Demo in a self-sufficient way with a rather moderate investment into your character, see the vid posted by @oldtimer (I would not have thought, that it is that easy to build a tank character, thanks for the very instructive video - gonna try it out on one of my so far unplayed pally alt)
Thanks for the great post. It was fun to watch.
I'm just waiting to be blamed for the lack of capability of opening a site, or google, or basic reading skills. I'm sure it will come soon enough.
Makes me want to contribute more.
/s
" I don't see how edemo is part of the leveling process.
The whole change was made as such that players get catch up gear, and practically skip the need to do the older stuff. Which is now called legacy campaigns.
Any gear from Vistani to Underdark will shoot the player up to much higher than 14k.
Tanking demo takes only pressing shift an some semi not random intervals, and yet most of the time what I've seen on tanks with issue there, is a tank running around like a headless chicken or with half health or both, but with full stamina.
Now, I'm not a tanking expert, but wouldn't having full stamina and not pressing that button that uses stamina instead of HP is kinda counter productive to a tank?!
I'm not wasting full divinity in scaled content where heals are scaled to babysit this, rather just smite stuff to oblivion to end it faster.
There are no wipes there, die, release, go back in. So how the hell content from years ago, which is trivial as is, that you can go back inside as many times as you want, need to be made easier!?
Lets call it learning opportunity for a tank to tank properly. Hold aggro, pull the boss where needed, and not die to something a dps can facetank. And if they fail, no penalty, just try again. "
Other than the "git gud", it would be hard to contribute less... You'd actually have to work at it. No links. No vids. No actual advice on where to go to actually LEARN the skills you're talking about. Just "try not to suck so much, please." Is it any wonder that no newbs actually want your advice? With that attitude, I don't even like using your guides. No matter how well written they are.
This is an observation, about people not pressing shift. And an argument that the minimal gear available.
Don't use my guides, except 1400 post of blaming others, what you contributed? Where are your guides? Videos?
" Is it any wonder that no newbs actually want your advice?"
Actually I get messages how people find it useful (reddit, game, discord), and I spend more time than you playing helping others. But I hope that the likes of you will stay away. As I've said, makes all warm and fuzzy, not matter how many guides, video or whatever a person does, someone ungrateful keyboard warrior will find a way to not read one but demand another one. More interestingly in a forum thread not about help (and lets be honest no one on the forums ask for help of that soer) but about request to nerf.
Now, as to the dig @ my posts...Most of that 1,400 are jokes. I don't take many things too seriously. Life is too short. And getting shorter every day. Can you say that more than half of YOUR 2,800 posts have left a smile on somebody's face?
Do I need to attach a guide to every post I make? A video? WTF?! The post isn't made by a tank. It's not a cry for help. It's a complaint about others dying, it's a choice not to look why they are dying and how they can not die. Instead of asking how to improve, it's a request to adjust the environment. To reduce the fail rate.
I'm sorry to say, but the counter argument for this is an explanation that the problem is not the environment and it fits some targeted challenge, and in the cases described the fault is on specific misuse. But oh no, how dare I say that there can be actual fault in someone not using something correctly?
Have you ever saw me say to anyone in-game "noob git good" or in that spirit, or make fun of anyone? Or not help anyone who actually asked for help. So please save the moral high ground to someone else.
And now crumbs and cake, how much in your claim I should do, that you will be satisfied? I probably shouldn't login at all into the game, and spend all the time answering question? That will be good enough for you? But then how dare I not to spend time in game helping new player?
Do you read what you write? Crumbs of a cake? What cake exactly I have that I didn't put a lot of time and effort to achieve? And what crumbs?
You don't think that you can take the horse to the water so far.. and at some point it needs to drink?
And yes, you are biased due to your perception above, but actually a lot of my posts are indeed funny or at least put a smile on someone face. Though probably much less so in the last few mods and even less so when I need to deal with HAMSTER.
But you know on second thought, I don't want people to feel that they are offered only crumbs, I will remove the site and everything I'm involved in, redddit, facebook, discords, when the hosting I payed runs out. I've been burning my time and money I don't have for this? HAMSTER this all. And HAMSTER this "community".
There is also a perception that edemo is too hard because it isn't the rompstomp it used to be. Most runs don't even get silver in any of the phases. And the run can be painful if there isn't a well geared DPS. Too many mobs and even well-geared tanks are running for their lives.
So... No.
My pov in general:
Edemo is only a problem if you are running your alts with complete noobs. Then it can be, I reckon.
I even had failed runs like this, too. But that's not edemo at fault, the fault is throwing everything at new players and expecting that this is the way they get to learn stuff. It can't work with ppl that try to run edemo for the first time and don't even try to follow more exp players or read the chat (every edemo I pug nowadays is full of "only purple portals" or "don't drag the mobs to tank") but they don't listen.
Edemo is good as it is. Don't make the game easier or the gap will just increase. If you don't learn what a red area is in edemo, how will you ever run something else?
I have a nice tank friend that literally hit me with this when I tried out tanking, because I'm an idiot.
"You know, you would have a nicer time if you just... pressed shift?"
"After all, I am a casual player"
ya 1400+ forum posts that sounds like pretty casual involvement to me
> @wintersmoke said
>
> "After all, I am a casual player"
>
> ya 1400+ forum posts that sounds like pretty casual involvement to me
Maybe he defines casual differently. E.g. he doesnt want to be bothered with looking up anything, putting effort into his character or learning how u can play efficent in a group.
He just casually does some quests each day, nothing that would be proof any kind of challenge