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Adult Dragon Hunt Queue Requirements
benyr
Member Posts: 238 Arc User
This might seem like an odd thing to complain about given the common consensus is that there are not enough Tanks and Healers running the content to make the random queues viable. However laving already levelled up my Rogue to be able to Hunt Ancient Dragons, I decided it would be sensible to level up my Paladin as well, as a Tank / Healer is always in demand. This has proved unexpectedly more troublesome than I'd hoped.
The first thing that became apparent was that solo hunting Young Dragons was a pain in the neck, My Rogue could probably carry out all 5 young Dragon hunts in the time it took my Paladin to do 1, a common complaint on the forums with frequent posts about how painfully slow it is to grind on a Paladin.
I got around this by ditching Young Dragon Hunts as soon as I was allowed to, and jumping straight into Adult hunts, However this really hasn't gone smoothly. With my Rogue it really didn't matter what roles ended up forming the 3 person party, 3 DPS, 1 DPS 2 tanks, 1 DPS 2 Healers any kind of set up no problem the Hunts were pretty straight forward. However on my Paladin so far this morning I have landed in Groups as follows:
Paladin tank and 2 Wizards - Great, really easy run
2 Paladin Tanks and a Fighter Tank - Nightmare took forever
2 Paladin Tanks and Bard Healer - Nightmare took forever, and the Healer (no fault of theirs) was pointless as Adult Dragons cant really hurt a half decent Tank.
2 Paladin Tanks and a Cleric Healer - See Above, Nightmare.
1 Paladin, 1 Fighter 1 Barbarian, all tanks - Nightmare took forever
1 Paladin Tank, 1 Cleric Healer, 1 Bard Healer - Worst of the lot, couldn't even share the aggro, took forever to kill the thing.
2 Paladin Tanks and a Rogue - Easy Win
My conclusions from this albeit small sample size is that either there are way more support class players than I thought, or more likely DPS players are so fed up of PUG wait times they wont even PUG queue for content like this that pops quickly.
The no class requirement 3 person queue is a great idea to get queues to pop quickly, but its an absolute waste of time if there isn't enough DPS players in it, because as always with this game DPS players can get though most content without support help (there is a you tube vide of 5 DPS players absolutely burning an Ancient White Dragon) but support players either cant complete content, or have to spend unrealistic amounts of time on content unless they have DPS help.
I know class balance is being looked into, and its welcome - but I still feel the overriding feeling in this game is that from a game design perspective support players are 2nd class citizens having to labour through content designed with DPS players in mind. And its so expensive to fit out multiple loadouts, that almost all the support players i ran with above couldn't switch to a DPS load out as they didn't have one, either because they were new and focussing on a support build or because the had a main DPS Toon and they run support on an Alt.
Long term you have to find away to make non dungeon or trial content as easy to run on a Tank or Healer as it is on a DPS. Short term, can you not change the 3 man queues so at least 1 DPS is required?
The first thing that became apparent was that solo hunting Young Dragons was a pain in the neck, My Rogue could probably carry out all 5 young Dragon hunts in the time it took my Paladin to do 1, a common complaint on the forums with frequent posts about how painfully slow it is to grind on a Paladin.
I got around this by ditching Young Dragon Hunts as soon as I was allowed to, and jumping straight into Adult hunts, However this really hasn't gone smoothly. With my Rogue it really didn't matter what roles ended up forming the 3 person party, 3 DPS, 1 DPS 2 tanks, 1 DPS 2 Healers any kind of set up no problem the Hunts were pretty straight forward. However on my Paladin so far this morning I have landed in Groups as follows:
Paladin tank and 2 Wizards - Great, really easy run
2 Paladin Tanks and a Fighter Tank - Nightmare took forever
2 Paladin Tanks and Bard Healer - Nightmare took forever, and the Healer (no fault of theirs) was pointless as Adult Dragons cant really hurt a half decent Tank.
2 Paladin Tanks and a Cleric Healer - See Above, Nightmare.
1 Paladin, 1 Fighter 1 Barbarian, all tanks - Nightmare took forever
1 Paladin Tank, 1 Cleric Healer, 1 Bard Healer - Worst of the lot, couldn't even share the aggro, took forever to kill the thing.
2 Paladin Tanks and a Rogue - Easy Win
My conclusions from this albeit small sample size is that either there are way more support class players than I thought, or more likely DPS players are so fed up of PUG wait times they wont even PUG queue for content like this that pops quickly.
The no class requirement 3 person queue is a great idea to get queues to pop quickly, but its an absolute waste of time if there isn't enough DPS players in it, because as always with this game DPS players can get though most content without support help (there is a you tube vide of 5 DPS players absolutely burning an Ancient White Dragon) but support players either cant complete content, or have to spend unrealistic amounts of time on content unless they have DPS help.
I know class balance is being looked into, and its welcome - but I still feel the overriding feeling in this game is that from a game design perspective support players are 2nd class citizens having to labour through content designed with DPS players in mind. And its so expensive to fit out multiple loadouts, that almost all the support players i ran with above couldn't switch to a DPS load out as they didn't have one, either because they were new and focussing on a support build or because the had a main DPS Toon and they run support on an Alt.
Long term you have to find away to make non dungeon or trial content as easy to run on a Tank or Healer as it is on a DPS. Short term, can you not change the 3 man queues so at least 1 DPS is required?
1
Comments
Id like a DPS path on a Paladin or a feat which increases damage exponentially, but only if the game could be rigged so that you can't enter group content as a DPS Paladin, so its only there to speed up solo play otherwise I agree you'd either have to loose one of the Tank or Heal paths or give all other classes access to all 3 paragons, which I also would not want at all.
For me its a design flaw in the game not individual classes, with Mod 16 came the decision to enforce the three role system. I understand why as the Party Buff for 1 DPS had got out of hand, however enforcing the 3 roles was ill thought through and to be blunt failed.
It failed firstly because we keep seeing evidence that high quality groups can largely ignore or reduce the number of support roles, completing ancient dragons with 5 DPS, running end game trials with only 1 Tank not 2 etc because ultimately the ability to kill faster trumps the extra survivability. Essentially the state of the game at the top end is no different now to how it was pre mod 16 with certain classes excluded as the meta is to bulk up on DPS.
It failed 2ndly because all solo content is designed with DPS players in mind. Take the Dragon Hunts, a Young Dragon is designed so that an average DPS player can survive it and kill the Dragon in what the Devs deem a reasonable timescale. The same with the adult Dragon, designed so that 3 DPS can survive it and kill in a reasonable timescale. And designed or otherwise, the same is happening in Ancient Dragons for high end groups. So what happens when support classes run that content? For a Tank or 3 Tanks it means survivability is no issue, but its painfully slow to kill anything. Imagine if they were designed with Tanks in mind, so the Dragon could deal horrific damage, enough to make a Tank really work to survive, but had either few enough Hit points or defence stats for a Tank to kill in a reasonable time, a Glass Cannon basically. Imagine the complaints from the DPS players (and id be one of them on my Rogue) if it was taking them forever to complete content because the Dragon kept one shotting them.
Its not just Dragons, it was the same with Bel, with all the tier 1 Avernus hunts and basically all solo campaign content. All designed with a DPS' survivability and damage capabilities in mind, with the support classes left either needing DPS help or taking forever to get the job done. From the very moment you start to play this game a Support class takes significantly longer to progress, longer to level, longer to grind gear and to rub it in they then need to double the grind for two sets of gear if they want to run both paragons.
This would not have happened pre Mod 16 to tanks where Paladins and fighters Tanked by doing damage. Admittedly it wasn't great for Anointed champion Clerics, but the introduction of load outs made it viable on the Devoted Paragon. So essentially to fix player driven behaviour by running a meta of 1 DPS and 4 support there is now a game enforced system that punishes support classes, and leaves a Meta preferring additional DPS over support. This seems backwards to me, previously no one truly struggled to complete content, it was simply player preference making it hard to find groups for certain classes. Now two thirds of the roles in the game are penalised by the game design in all solo content unless they also have a DPS spec, and the only reason support players aren't struggling to find groups in the new Meta is that there are so few of them left that one Tank Per trial more than satisfies demand.
Essentially to try a fix a problem they had created in group content with all the buffing powers they'd built in, they broke solo content and didn't really improve group content, and I guess what I am asking for, but resigned to never getting is that someone actually sits down thoroughly thinks about it and comes up with a system whereby all classes are comparable in all content, regardless of whether that entails a change to the content or the classes or the combat system.
Sadly its a trend that seems to have continued since I posted this, so regretfully I no longer random Queue for Adults, I've just become another player who only runs Dragons within my Alliance. Just seems a shame when all I'm trying to do is keep queues moving when I have the time to help players who have to Pug.
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