Wintertide

[Sprurvur]

Is the Wintertide quality the sort of what's planned for the current and future dungeons to become? Since as i've understood it alot of graphics ingame is currently placeholder for a good reason, prioritization of funding.

Character models shadows not connecting to floor: is that a technical difficulty of lesser importance or is it quite hard to do?_?

[Mikhaila]

Wintertide is certainly cool. It was quite a shock the first time we went in there and saw it. The overall effect is quite different from everything else. Scary as shit to contemplate the Wintercourt having inter-realm technomagic ships.

[Ivini]

I just hope the spawns are... slowed down, for the place. Given the changes in december to health totals. It has made single-group runs really... really difficult. Considering it's meant to be a DAILY zone. I'm all for PITA bosses in side rooms; but the core dungeon needs a little tweaking.

[Mikhaila]

I like it where it is. I've run it with many different groups, and results very based on gear, levels, and teamwork. A top end group is pulling upwards of 6-10 mobs at a time consistently and doing the entire ship. Its not trivial, but not really difficult either. WT is currently the most difficult zone, so it should be difficult for under leveled or undergeared groups.

I think part of the problem is considering it a "daily". The regular set of dailies are fairly easy. The Aurest missions are much tougher either in number of mobs to kill or how tough the mobs are to kill. WT is at the top. Both in difficult, and in the gear that drops.

[Celerity]

The one place I think there is a real issue with respawns in Wintertide is the engine area. I submitted this as an in game suggestion too, but essentially, because you have to double back on yourself after killing hotfeather to get the chests, respawns can be a real issue there.

For top tier groups it's not a concern since you'll be faster than the repop, and even if it does happen, say because you stopped for a phlog break, you can handle it. But for the average group, it's timed exactly wrongly to be running back just as they all repop. Even if you wait or you're in a slow group, due to the way the mobs path in that area, if you're fighting in the corridor leading out of hotfeather's room, it's essentially pure chance whether you'll get an extra droach or phoenix pathing in or not. I suppose you could pull the mobs all the way back to hotfeather's room before fighting them, but that feels tiresome and in some slow groups you might actually get hotfeather respawn on you. I've also noticed that you'll get 1 set of respawns, then while you're engaging them there can be a second set of respawns that then screw you up. In that case, it wouldn't matter even if you did very careful pulling all the way back to a safe area.

The issue is that even 1 extra mob, especially a droach, can just mean death to your party members by aoe, even if the tank has aggro and is perfectly fine. This is not true anywhere else in the dungeon and an add just means the tank has to be alert enough to see it and taunt it before it kills someone. Pulling there, without a dedicated support, battle chemistry player for extra skin or very high dps I'm basically limited to only pulling 1 mob at a time, because although most groups can handle at least 2, if I pull 2 then a 3rd paths in, it's a wipe without the things mentioned earlier. Meanwhile other parts of the dungeon with the exact same group I can pull easily 5+ mobs no issue. Rather than see this get changed though, I would just like to see the respawn timer increased just a bit.

I would also just like to say making Wintertide a daily is a bit of a double-edged sword, it can make finding groups easier, but at the same time I've seen people come to Wintertide with lvl 30 gear, levelling a new skill or not even knowing what augmentation or transmutation are. I know it's not going to be the endgame in the final version of the game, but I still have the belief that the current endgame content should be relatively difficult. I remember when gk was a snoozefest and I have to say I was very glad that got changed. The content can always be made easier in the future to account for the fact that people won't be making a full yellow max-enchanted set for lvl 70 or 80 when 100 is the max. I do think having it as a daily is fine overall though, I think people's perceptions just need to change a bit.

[Mbaums]

I know repop isnt simple X dies, comes back in Y time, but could we get an explanation of how it works exactly? I have theories and people I group with have different theories but there is a good chance neither of us are correct, and I'm curious. Plus, it'll help us give better feedback!