After the clerics have spawned, who need defending, there is no way to get dragon souls to defend from the dragon big attacks.
It is unfair to those who join a half-finished tiamat trial, with little-to-no hope of success. It frustrates and wastes the time of the players.
I recommend disabling the ability to request reinforcements, preferably only after the dragon souls have despawned, but if that is not possible then disable it completely for this trial.
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The solution would be an opportunity for a newcomer to get a gem - but that is probably over the dev capacity, so disabling the reinforcement is a solution.
I agree a way to pick up the gems mid run is needed if you are going to replace members who disconnect.
In 50% of the cases the event completed successfully.
Therefore disabling reinforcements does not seem a good idea.
In fact, it is likely that more Tiamats can be completed successfully BECAUSE of reinforcements.
I agree however, that it would be nice to have an option to pick up a gem for the characters that enter late.
Having said that, the main reason for failure is NOT lack of gems. It is lack of dps.
If you have good dps, you only need two green gems to complete the event rather smoothly.
With excellent dps you not even need green gems, you just kill the green head after the green AoE is gone.
- white gems are not needed at all: If the tank (or the person with aggro) moves to side shortly before the breath attack hits, the AoE will be "off-center" and all can attack from one side
- other breath attacks (except the green AoE) can be blocked by the tank or healed through by a decent healer.
- even the green AoE can be healed through by a good healer (provided dps have a decent amount of HP)
Of course, if you have bad dps, gems become more important. In a group with bad dps (and bad tactics) you might loose 1-2 minutes at the white head, and another 1-2 minutes at the green head, without any gems. The 2-4 minutes lost could make the difference between failure when the hard limit of 25 minutes is exceed and "efficient" completion at 24,99 minutes ...
What you're saying is if your entire group consists of players that are all perfectly geared and have no reason to do tiamat, you can do tiamat.
Sadly, most random pug groups only have 1 or 2 decent dps, you're lucky to get a decent healer, and mostly tanks that can't handle the white head.
Leaving the reinforcements open because of the 0.5% chance of getting decent enough players filling it, leaves the other 99.5% stuck in a doomed instance until they can abandon.
That's pure logic fail.
I always pug, I am not top dps (usually queue as tank) and my average success rate for tiamat is around 80% for all runs (50% when filling in the spot of a player that abandoned)
I have never been in a group of players "all perfectly geared".
Usually one or two hdps, rarely more than that.
So, same conditions as you are facing, apparently.
Yet I have seen many tiamat runs complete despite of abandoning (and reinforcements).
Lets just say, that our personal experiences differ, for whatever reason.
Logic fail is something quite different...
There are numerous problems still that are unique and new ones could arise if we put time limits on reinforcement:
* I once spent 35 minutes waiting on a random dungeon queue. Finally it loaded me in to Arcturia's chamber of LoMM. I spent 30 seconds swapping gear so I could help the team get through it. As I finished, a vote popped up to abandon instance. A second later it put me back in Protectors Enclave. Now I had to change all my gear back and get back in a queue.
* I have been loaded into 'failed' CODG runs, when the team returned to the top and players began bailing out. I was selected out of queue to reinforce a "non-starter". Disabling reinforcement until the trial begins might eliminate this.
* I have been loaded into Tiamat with a few minutes left, where most of the players already gave up. Not enough time left to win. The "OP" idea might fix this, but if applied to other trials and dungeons could be terrible. It would be nice to get a reinforcement in LoMM at final boss if one random player bails or loses connection permanently. Setting a time limit after which no reinforcements can be requested would probably turn such a mission into a fail.
First, ambiguous wording, hardly compatible with a practitioner of pure logic: "leaves the other 99.5% stuck ..."
Likely means "in 99.5% of the scenarios players are stuck ..."
Now the logic:
The sentence suggests, that
i) if a player abandons, and
ii) reinforcements are called because of i) that,
iii) players are "stuck in a doomed instance until they can abandon".
Players are not stuck (independent of the question, whether the instance is doomed or not), because:
- once a player abandons,
- every other player can abandon as well, without any penalty.
You just have to abandon before someone else calls in reinforcements, which usually takes quite long.
But even if you failed to abandon quickly, and are "stuck" because you already got a reinforcement, you can always initiate a vote for abandon after 15 min.
If that fails, you can always take the 30 min leaver penalty.
Or you can wait for a second player to abandon (which is likely, if the instance is doomed, as you say) and kust react a little bit faster.
In no scenario are you "stuck until you can abandon"
You can always abandon WITHOUT PENALTY as soon as another player abandons.
So, where is the problem and what has it to do with your suggestion to disable reinforcements?
Not that I expect a logical answer ...
I'm not thinking selfishly here. I don't want ANY player to have to experience it. It's an unneccesary sour experience, and gaming shouldn't be about that, and I'd expect Cryptic to agree with me on that.