So I decided to make a video with one of my Draco kills. The reason is not for getting popularity, views or anything of such nature, cannot care less about such stuff.
The reason I went through the trouble of frapsing/uploading this is solely to show (hopefully to the devs) the challenges presented by this fight and how out of balance it is when we take into consideration the 9200 GS requirement, which is a bad joke.
It is a good opportunity to see the "weak boss, more adds, more red" encounter type working at its "best".
The team had 13-15K GS artifacts companions etc. CWs with perfect vorpal, TR greater (I believe).
Strategy: get as tanky as possible (I used PvP rings, Shield on Mastery for me just to be sure), sing on boss, AoE all down, survive. This is the 3rd try after 2 wipes.
For the price of the item, which will be split 5 ways, the time we needed to run this make CN no longer a good place to farm.
Keep in mind: this is an "outdated", old dungeon, 2 modules have passed and 2 newer dungeons are allegedly harder. Keeping with the MMO model, for a M2 geared player at 13K GS+ /w Perfects this encounter should be a walk in the park.
If you actually like the video and it helps you fight Draco more efficiently, it's even better.
http://youtu.be/kK4a3NPfPkk
Comments
/char
9.2k gs is not what is required to kill it, but to enter the dungeon.
Also, why would you sing the adds away from the boss? just makes the fight last alot longer then needed, when you can AoE everything together.
Why do you enter the dungeon? To look at the walls?
No.
To kill the bosses.
There should be REALISTIC requirements, not some lame generic 9200 GS.
I am kinda able to see through your words: you're an experienced player, able to still do it, you hope prices will rise so you can rip off newbies. Let's be honest here.
However, I am not thinking of myself&friends here, I'm thinking about the newbies and how they have it progressively harder while we had it EASY for months. It is extremely unfair to each new (free to play) player.
(I said in the first post "sing on boss". Whatever sing away from the boss you might have noticed was for one of 2 reasons: heat of the battle mistake or to catch mobs that spawned too far to be caught in a sing on top of draco. Keep in mind we are 3 CWs, we can almost chain sing.)
Well you are right, the gap between new players and exp players is increasing alot, and i think it will demotivate alot of the new ones.
This is the main reason why I post. An MMO needs a steady influx of new blood. NWO makes a terrible job at keeping veterans (no PvP ladders, no raids, no true challenges) and now it also poses issues for new players, making them unlikely to stay after they start to experience the unfairness of mentioned gap.
I basically just want things to be fair. I know they cannot be 100% fair, I just want realistic and sizable changes towards this direction - instead of making the split even larger.
Edit: Persephone I hope we can go get Draco at some point!
1. There were more heroes.
2. Smaug is a Red Dragon.
3. The battle against Smaug will take less time.
Secondly, overall, it is better to have incremental access to content than have significant gates or landmarks around just gearing. Hence, the current system helps progression of new players by at least them being able to tackle individual bosses at their leisure. This can be seen by often many groups forming for 1/4, 2/4 bosses, etc of a dungeon. Like you said, at the end of the day, if you enter a dungeon, you're there to kill bosses. The current system does that. Why introduce a gate that prevents that entirely until you have the Gear Score to complete the dungeon?
Thirdly, even though CN is an extreme example within extremes, this difference between the difficulty or accessibility of dungeon content and the final endboss is common across the endgame of Neverwinter.
That said, on the specific issue of Castle Never, I find it appalling the way the entire design of the endboss encounter has been radically changed since the game was released. I am not talking about fixing exploits or glitches, I am talking about fundamental redesign with literally zero communication to the playerbase. I have never seen any other MMO company do such a thing on a released product. At several points it felt like CN changed on a fortnightly basis...
Particularly lamentable is that previous incarnations of the whole CN experience were very enjoyable for a range of legit players - I cannot be the only one that felt that. Now the pure aoe spam fest that pervades every aspect of the PvE game shines like a beacon in this dungeon.
If their intention was to retire or make highly exclusive the old content, then they will probably succeed at this rate, ironically probably by partly you getting your wish on GS threshold.
SUMMARY
It is better to fix the content, than to gate it, i.e. if your intention was to make the content more accessible to the playerbase, then you may regret having your wish...
- I have to focus on something, so I chose GS as a representative of overall power. I know experienced guys like you understand what I meant
- incremental content is OK, but it needs to be made clear, i.e. "minimum" and "recommended" should be present, no need to add a pure threshold, just mentioning what is to be expected, so the difficulty is clear from the start
Yeah. My intention is to try and advocate for the lessening of the gap that grows between player veterans and newbies. We had things much easier and we were able to gear up at a certain pace, now new players not only start at a big disadvantage, but their job is way harder, and it's reasonable to say they might never catch up with the veterans without coughing up some serious amounts of money.
Did I mention EVER? Yeah, that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCYwCPHPsc
^ looks easy right? Don't punch my face please /cry
PvP GWF - BizzyBedBug
PvE GF (salvaged)
PvE TR (salvaged)
GWF PvP/CW PvE @ http://www.twitch.tv/bizzyplusplus/
haha bizzy that was siiiick
I noticed you were jumping around a lot. Was this just a way to dodge without using stamina?
Nah, it's just bunnyhopping with some slight (imaginary?) advantages. One of them is seeing more of the battlefield during the jump and using the camera a bit more efficiently (personal opinion). Stamina/dodges remain the same. Also maybe if you jump from a red zone as it becomes active you might be saved from the damage? Can't truly tell but I'm used to it already. Some forum topics already asked for "nerfing" the jumping as it would give some unfair advantage of sorts )
In the end, it is what it is, bunnyhopping
At least I am not busy today. ^^
Hey J Thanks for dropping by :P
Yeah SF is now very important since there are so many opportunities to die in this fight, and not only. I never said perfects/rank 8s are necessary, I only mentioned what our gear was AND the fact that we still wiped twice, after playing together for what? approx 2 months? to let people understand how challenging the fight is and how far removed from reality is what devs think is necessary for CN.
I think that if you try long&hard enough, like for a whole day of wipes, even lessers and r6s should do, because in the end you will just get that lucky run where things fall in place.
However the efficiency of running this thing for AD has decreased A LOT, and this hurts most. If only there will be something else in place of it, but new dungeon is meh and you cannot sell ANYTHING from it due to reasons we all know.
But nicely done
Don't underestimate the single target damage TRs can do. They can speed up fights considerably when they are on the boss and know what to do. Sadly most TRs and GWFs you meet these days are full PvP builds which do little PvE damage and are pretty much useful as "runners" only, which by now it should be a dying art (yet it's not lol).
As for going in with 4 CWs... to be honest... I never tried it. Because the AoE and perma mob CC at Draco are so useful, I can see how this would be a very good setup. But in the end, it's still efficient enough with 3 CWs, and I like to play with other classes, regardless of suboptimal setups. I hate it that there's so little balance in the game in this aspect and I feel for the guys that complain they find no room for their chars in dungeons. I hope Cryptic manages to make classes equally useful.
I did this fight as:
- 1-3 CWs/TR/DC. This included 4 mans and 3 mans before M2 with 1-2 CWs+DC.
- GWF/CWx3/DC
- GWFx2/CWx2/DC
- GF/3xCW/DC
- GF/TR/CWx2/DC
- GF/GWF/CWx2/DC
GFs work just fine IMO. There are just extremely few around that do CN regularly, cause many people are quite stupid and would not take their class.
You don't need that much. CN is perfectly doable with just rank 4. Vorpal and so on is just to speed up things. I could have done it without Soulforged as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWVOnZnuI4s (special guest, our beloved GF)
Guild <Killing is My Business>
Mospeda Guardian Fighter 21k
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
They make Draco stand still and no rotation as with some inexperienced Gwfs.
And skilled HRs are also good at Draco if he can tank it somewhat.