2022 Boss Gauntlet Feedback & Suggestions

[ProfessorCat]

Boss Gauntlet Feedback and Suggestions:
First off, I’d like to thank the Devs for the addition of the Boss Gauntlet. It has sparked excitement for many long-term players, me included. Let this sentence serve as a spoiler warning if you have not yet attempted or completed the Boss Gauntlet and want it to remain surprise. This is an entirely subjective write-up, and a reflection of my own opinions based off my own experiences from the groups I have been a part of. At the time of this post, I have 25 completed runs. I encourage anyone who’s had similar or varying experiences to share their own thoughts about the Boss Gauntlet. (Humor, and especially sarcasm are easily lost in written dialogue. Nothing written here is intended to be hurtful)

Boss Feedback:

Room One - Ciervos and Maronesa: I think this is the best battle of the whole gauntlet. The bosses themselves are not terribly challenging or difficult, but it requires team strategy. I have nothing to suggest about this battle, its great! Thanks for the cow fairy! Would it be possible for this fairy to offer Deer as well? Not everyone plays druid for the free swap.

Room Two – Tidal and Tremor: This battle is much easier than the previous battle. The bosses are perhaps the most trivial of the whole Gauntlet. It would be nice to see it stepped up to slightly more challenging than the first battle. Suggestion: Tidal currently spawns tornados that have 200 hp. Make these a bigger problem! I also think it’s a bit more fun to separate the bosses from the same dungeon. This happens a few more times in the dungeon. Tidal with Chief Science Officer would be tornado alley. (maybe add The Fog?)

Room Three – Beakhorse and the Forgotten Loading Golem: This battle goes back to being on par with where the gauntlet started. It is more difficult than the first two rooms and requires some team tactics to avoid becoming stun-locked from the golem. I have nothing to suggest on difficulty! It’s a great battle.

Room Four – Asterion, Hapis, and Mother Snail: This battle can be a lot safer and a lot more predictable than the previous room. It FEELS easier. Hapis can give a nasty group stun-lock, but the only time it seems to be an issue is if you get an unwanted basilisk or some little golems joining the fight. (Mandatory line about Asterion sending you to Labyrinth, LMAO!) Suggestion: Have Hapis come out earlier, perhaps once Asterion has had ¼ of his life depleted. It would make the fight a bigger challenge.

Room Five: The Snake Master and Buttercup: I’m having trouble ranking this battle on the difficulty scale. It’s a DPS check. It sets a threshold that if you cannot survive the poison from these mobs before you kill them, you will not do well with what’s to come. The battle is not particularly interesting, or full of strategy. The big snake sprite is awesome. Suggestion: Keep one of the poison mobs, but make them have more HP & Armor. And maybe mix up the other boss with another room.

Room Six – Sherzat and The Shower Slime: This battle seems easier than every other battle except the Tidal/Tremor room. Sherzat and the Slime together are less of a challenge than fighting Imarak with his adds on the way to the gauntlet. Suggestion: Make this battle more challenging. The slimes spawned seem to be the same level 70 slimes from the original boss. Tuning up the slimes to sort of “endlessly” spawn would be fun.

Room Seven – Zukelmux and The Ancient Nature Elemental: This is the hardest encounter in the dungeon, and where the most groups wipe. It’s because of the scorpion adds, and not at all the bosses themselves. I want to repeat: The Adds are stronger than the bosses. I want to say that I am 100% for the difficulty this battle brings, but it really should be the last battle. Big bad Zukelmux looks like a toy compared to the size of the nature elemental when they stand next to each other. The only other suggestion is that this battle is too hard for being the 3 rd from last room, and everything after it is a step down in difficulty.

Room Eight – Chief Science Officer, Security Officer, Captain Evergloam: This is the exact same line-up as the vanilla Evergloam room in Wintertide. The tornados got tuned up, and are nasty if you don’t take the Science officer out first. It’s a DPS check to keep too many tornados from spawning, but It’s almost funny compared to the previous battle’s difficulty. Suggestion: Increase the length of time that this battle takes. The tornados are nasty, and hit hard enough, but the other bosses seem to go down way too quick. Increasing the HP & Armor of Evergloam is an option.

Room Nine – Dalvos’s Astral Projection and Empusa: This is the second hardest battle in the Gauntlet, but still a huge step down in difficulty compared to the Zuke/Elemental battle. It requires strategy and specific elemental damage, both of which are great hurdles. If you take out Empusa first, and have an element to kill Dalvos, the only challenge is when the manticores come out, and it seems like a cheaper version of the scorpions from the zuke fight. Suggestion: If this battle is going to be the big end battle, it should be the hardest. There are a lot of ways to make this harder.

Other Boss Gauntlet Feedback:

The non-boss mobs: There’s a bigger chance of an entire group wiping to a single beetle than half of the boss fights in the gauntlet. Accidently adding or having a beetle spawn during a boss fight can end the entire run. As a player, I would rather take away the difficulty of the beetles, and apply it to the bosses themselves. It’s more fun to celebrate a victory over a curse boss than the “adds”. Suggestion: Rename the “Boss Gauntlet” to “Scorpion and Beetle Gauntlet”

The Hidden Pit: It’s not good, but not because of its intention. Falling into the pit yourself is the only thing the pit does right. The bigger issue with the pit is mobs falling into it. Every gauntlet run I have been a part of, we have a small golem that ends up in the pit all on its own. This locks the entire group out of changing loadouts or putting abilities on their side bar. It’s the age-old frustration of being stuck in combat when you should not be. What’s worse is that bosses can be kited down into the pit, ruining an entire run. The only way out of that is to not finish the gauntlet, wait for the boss to despawn and respawn (effectively forcing you to start over), or perching the target from the top of the pit where it cannot reach you. I’m pretty sure that’s not how any of the bosses were supposed to be fought. The last thing I will say about the pit is that it is possible to put mobs in the pit just to get them out of the way. Suggestion: Stopping the bosses from entering the hallway would likely be the best solution to this. Make the entire hallway an elevated platform so only players can get stuck inside the pit.

The Button at the end: Currently when the button is pressed after completing all 20 bosses, it blasts a server announcement for the person clicking it. For someone who completes the gauntlet, it’s satisfying. I’m sure it’s asking for too much, but Something fun should spawn like a loot pig, or a scape goat. Or you could keep in with the theme of the current gauntlet and just have it spawn another couple beetles.

Tank/Healer Tactics: To complete the Boss Gauntlet, it is imperative to have a very good tank and a very good healer. No suggestion for this, but there have been discussions in the past about the roles that Tanks and Healers have, shoeing us into the holy trinity for End Game Content. I have a question if this is the projected design that we will need for level 90-100.

The Best Parts of the Boss Gauntlet: I want to express again that I love this new content. There are many things the gauntlet has done right.

Hands down the most fun that has come from the gauntlet is playing it with friends. Having team tactics take front stage is more fun to me than getting a bunch of solo builds together for an AM daily. The opportunity to get some unique items at level 85 is great. It’s a poor man’s way to daydream about items from a MEGA Raffle and breathes life into a lot of build possibilities. It feels rewarding for what you go through between the loot and the coin sacks. The titles are a great way to grow excitement for repeating the same content many times. Tanks and Healers have never been more important than in this dungeon. A lot of players are shaking up their old builds or rolling new builds altogether. I wanted to write about suggestions for future gauntlets, but I don’t want to take away from what we have right now. I’m sure a lot of people have ideas for what they would like to see “next time”. For now, I will only say that I am looking forward to more Gauntlets.

(Thanks to Celerity, Lyramis, and Ranperre for giving me feedback before posting this!)

[Belize]

Think you are pretty much spot on for most of this, the gauntlet is great content.

But for future versions they should probably be even harder, one reason is the server annoucement. First time i completed it felt great and i think it is really cool to see annoucement for first time completions each time i sew a new one.

However, beyond that, it's a bit much in my opinon. Server announcements splay red all over the screen and are very intrusive, it's just not a chat post and should be reserved special cases or important information. The gauntlet is hard sure, but is it really hard enough to deserve that? I dont think so.
Now i know i still click the silly button myself too so i am a little two faced about it i guess but still feel that way.

Love the fact that tanks and healers are 100% needed, specially healers. Never really been the case in gorgon before, sure healers have always been nice to have around and has been wanted in the highest content but never felt like there has been much real need for FULL healer builds before.
Something i could quite enjoy playing myself. Always been useful but a couple supportive dps builds have generally been able to fill the same function before this point.

Some gorgon players feel like the trinity isn't something that fits this game and miss the old days when it was more free form.

But to me, personally. It's more boring when everyone is some kind of dps, earlier years this game felt much that way to me(not that i ever found the game boring, best mmo!). I like the trinity and hope the content is designed more around it going on.

In the gauntlet CC is huge, this is another part i really like. And hard CC is something i have never seen much used in gorgon either, though skills do exist. Being forced to use CC and then win feels good.

Even in the gauntlet though, a lot of groups are still able to just aoe away. A bit more carefully than usual sure but it still happens.

Aoe mania is kind of boring and not very interesting, hope the game will move away from that a bit in dungeons when we reach the true high level at 100+.

Overall i am very happy with the gauntlet and think it is a step in the right direction for group content at the highest levels.

And yey, finally made a forum account:P

[Mikhaila]

Very spot on summary.

I don't see the need for healers and tanks as a problem. Not needing healers and tanks was the actual problem. Why build a healer if not needed ever? Why make a tank if not needed? And why learn how to run them if not appreciated. DPS will always have a need, no one is losing out by having a need in the hardest dungeon for more roles.

Having more niches in the game means different builds. I was working on Druid/Archery when the Gauntlet went live. I dropped AOE and went with high single target dps, debuffs, and increasing poison/fire vulnerability. There was no use for this build before, because fights just didn't last long enough to matter. (Sure, World bosses do, but they just take throwing enough people at the encounter.) Next up I'm thinking of a good healing combo, again, something I would have never bothered with before. I like having more ways to play the game.

I would love to see another gauntlet at 90, 95, or 100

[Ranperre]

On the gauntlet:

Flip manticores and scorpions. If there's any way you could randomize encounters, that would be awesome.


On tanking:

I believe the single biggest issue with struggling groups right now is the tank. In an era where the litmus test was WT, staff/shield had no mitigation holes. Meanwhile, cow had fewer tools than staff/shield to deal with the constant stunning and darkness/elemental damage. Even after the staff/shield nerfs and potentially overdone cow/unarmed buffs, staff/shield remains king in WT.

With the introduction of the gauntlet, things have changed. Staff/shield has a really tough time dealing with poison damage, and to a much lesser extent, trauma/nature. Cow has to press one button every 30 second to obviate these damage types, while staff/shield needs to either kite or put a ton of effort into the ordeal with a proficient healer. Cow also benefits significantly more from evasion boosts, which make the scorpion fight consistent for staff/shield and a relative cakewalk for cow/unarmed. Further, cow/unarmed has better kiting tools than staff/shield -- and certain mobs/fights SHOULD be kited, even if it's not strictly necessary. The fact of the matter is that there has been no reason for anyone to learn cow/unarmed over the past two years, so there will be an adjustment period while people get these tanks up and going.


On healing:

Healing is almost as important as your tank. My reasoning for this pecking order (1. tank, 2. healer vs 1. healer) is that it's easier for a good/meta tank to make up for a bad/non-meta healer than a good healer making up for a bad tank. Important to note that people I respect disagree with this and I will admit that the difference between 1. tank and 2. healer isn't too significant. Pig aoe damage shield is particularly important in the gauntlet with the prevalence of damage reflection - it allows you to get off attacks that you might not otherwise be able to when all the armor has been stripped. I'm not elaborating more because healing isn't my thing (dps/tank), I'll leave that to someone else.


On non-named elites:

These things are way too beefy. I just don't see how we went from WT's 30k (which was already a lot for many) to reflective mobs with triple that in the gauntlet. Yeah, certain groups can finish it in 25m, but others (the majority) are taking well over an hour and running into respawn issues.


What should be done at 90 and beyond:

If you're able to make adjustments and take a minute off of a 3-4m zuke fight... that might make the difference for a lot of groups. I mean seriously, six 90k|30k scorpions and two 130-140k|40k bosses? There's only one way to take them down in a reasonable amount of time to limit human error and those builds definitely aren't made by anyone that's a part of the "Anything Can Work" crowd. I entirely understand that going skill by skill and retuning literally everything can't happen here, so I want to suggest two things that MIGHT slow down the upper end and improve some stragglers' chances:

First, decrease ehp and increase damage of mobs. What making these changes will do is twofold: A. Allow unoptimized groups pulling 1-2 at a time to kill faster and B. Discourage optimized groups from killing 20 at a time. The ability to tank 15+ mobs at once (or entire hallways in the gauntlet, 4-6 mobs) is the origin of huge DPS inequality right now, not any one or two skills in particular.

Second, universally increase single target damage (direct and indirect) and decrease aoe damage by something akin to 10-20% each. Single target builds are mostly dead, and the ones that work have at least one aoe attack doing a plurality of their damage. What this will really help is newbies fitting into pickup GK/WT groups. Further, it will probably just slow down optimized groups... who will still use aoe.

Third... I know I said two... but this one is important. Consider changing the damage reflection % for higher level mobs. Mob HP is doubling/quintupling and mobs are still reflecting the same amount? Damage reflection is a chore that we tolerate in certain situations, it isn't exactly a fun mechanic, especially in its current incarnation.

[Mikhaila]

A thought as we discuss all these skills/dps etc.

Can we change some of the dummies in Serb, or add another set? They die too quickly to actually be able to test anything. It would be nice to see what sort of attack damage you are doing once all the buffs/debuffs are added to a target. Several ways to do it. One would be a 100k dummie that gave the amount of time it took to kill it. Or a 100k dummy that only lasted 1 minute and then gave the damage.

[Melkhiresa]

Overall in regards to the Gauntlet itself everything that has been said above is pretty spot on in regards to bosses and which ones need to become more of a threat and the issues they and the adds have or cause. Many damage types sway from useful to not within the Gauntlet so it does a pretty decent job of promoting most damage types in regards to having success and issues fairly. Some might have it easier than others but tis nothing too crazy as far as I've noticed.


On the topic of tanks and specifically tanking skills and combos I find it a bit counterproductive to ask for more elite damage to slow 'optimized' groups down. Especially when the problem is how certain damage is done, over the top Skills in terms of DPS/Scaling and how beefy certain tanking skills have recently become. Most of these elites already shred anyone who is not a Cow or Staff Shield tank so perhaps taking away some of the possibly over the top mitigation these specific skills have would be a better first step and make it easier to actually include other skills/combos in the tanking roster with a few tweaks here and there. On top of this unoptimized groups involve possibly 'unoptimized' tanks and healers which are less capable of handling the damage spike regardless of how quickly the things being tanked might die. A single add at that point could cause a wipe where as before it may have not. Overall It's a bit of a bummer that all the tank balancing did was basically make Staff/Shield mostly the same and overbuff an already effective combo in Cow. It's fine that a certain tanking skill or combo might be better for what this particular Gauntlet brings or another dungeon but pulling 20 elites at once is probably not a good mark to keep. Keep in mind Cow needed some of the quality of life and damage type coverage buffs it received in my opinion but the buff stick went a bit too far in way too many aspects.


I know I've brought it up before but regardless of whether Cow is a better tank or not than Staff/Shield why does it get to be on that level while sacrificing almost nothing? Instead you get that level of tankiness with an insane level of damage over it's counterpart. Even if you don't run the stacking Stampede damage mods to get those silly 12k+ basics it's still miles ahead. That aside perhaps It's a design issue of Bulwark but the disparity is rather large. Even more so when Cow can get away running Cow/Warden for a lot of things due to their high levels of mitigation across the board packed in to the singular skill. Thus taking it a step even further. Albeit mostly from a damage shield and Indirect AoE issue in this case. I love that indirect and thus damage shields now cause threat but they are somewhat poorly balanced across the board in terms of which ones do how much damage, what they reflect on ect. Plenty of ways to go about tackling these issues but for now it ends up being a problem and a reason why Warden and doubly so Warden/Cow has become such a popular combo.


As to buffing single target and nerfing burst doing so at a base level across the board seems like the wrong direction in my mind. It over simplifies some of the damage problems we have without an even buff/nerf across the board. 20% reduction in BC AoE's which are already pretty terrible with longer cooldowns is rather drastic as it's their entire damage kit where as 20% to Bat or Warden's AoE does a lot less as it does not effect the Indirect which is the root of the problem with these large pulls and the damage being inflicted. Not to mention both skills also provide plenty of damage elsewhere that would just end up being even more buffed by said suggestion. If Indirect that is applied by AoE Burst abilities had the same diminishing effects normal AoE attacks did vs 4+ mobs it would be a great step in not only balancing damage types across the board but some of these crazy pulls and how easy it is to kill them efficiently. After that you can specifically target skills if the need is felt in terms of reducing perhaps the scaling or numbers of these. Considering the myriad of amazing benefits indirect damage currently has over other types losing this one is hardly going to cripple it.


Specifically on the increasing direct/indirect portion if you buffed Fire/priest or Lycan's(Lycan/bat) Single target direct/Indirect or plenty of other top combos It would bring something that is at the extreme top even further all for the sake of barely buffing the lesser potential skills as 20% to bad is still bad.


No matter which way you slice it every version of trying to balance by generalization just adds to the problem and still leaves you with having to specifically look at synergies and the mods themselves per skill. Possibly to a lesser extent gear as well but mostly Spring fairy in this equation although I have a feeling that's already looking at an adjustment in the near future. I've seen it mentioned that lowering the amount of mods per armor being a possible future fix to the ever growing damage but all that does is lower player options and can utterly destroy plenty of builds out there while barely effecting others based on mod placement. Which would then require a fine tuning of mods per skill so you are back to square one.


To further iterate on Ranperre's comment on the reflect issues possibly doing it as a % of your max HP per attack would feel less abysmal as plenty of builds can one shot themselves no matter how tanky you are. Something like 25-35% of max hp per attack. This would allow you to get 2-3 attacks in depending on other sources of incoming damage while still leaving the chance to kill yourself if you are not paying attention or a spike of incoming damage happens. It also still leaves healers as being needed for it without either trivializing the incoming damage or having it as overly dramatic as it is now. Outside of that perhaps making it a timer based thing where reflect mobs go through phases of the reflect we have now and small downtimes of non reflect? Pay attention and profit or don't and die. Anything is almost better than the slog it is now. On an added note it could also just be a scaling reflect that maxes out at said % of your max HP. Thus a 700 damage attack is treated differently than a 7k.



All the above aside I just wanted to say I really do enjoy the Gauntlet in concept and look forward to future ones and whatever crazy things they hold. While I'm not entirely the biggest fan of running FF every single Gauntlet it's honestly probably needed just due to the multiple groups and no instancing. It's already annoying enough waiting on weird spawning in the Gauntlet.