Patch 6.10: Hard Mode Raids

Summary
We had a total blast pushing our way through the increased difficulty! We didn’t run into any critical blocking bugs or issues, but many of the persistent client issues make performing hard content an exercise in hoping that no one has a client problem for the length of the fight. There are a number of potential balance issues/questions, particularly on the first few bosses, as well as potential exploit cases mostly on the third. The 5th boss has a significant number of issues related to the hell dimension mechanic, but the worst ones were largely addressed when playing through normal.

As always, please let us know if we can provide any additional information on any listed issues, and all feedback is given in the spirit of wanting to support the game as much as possible.

Issues Observed!

General

  • We had a fairly significant number of desynchs, crashes, and spontaneous load screens throughout the night. This happens on all content, but it’s extra problematic with hard mode raids where everything is balanced within extremely tiny success tolerances. (There is also a relatively new type of desynch, where others see you moving around, but you can’t be healed and abilities seem to misfire until you relog)
  • We had a number of client objects be invisible, including acid pools and AE telegraphs. This always rarely happens, and relogging usually helps stave it off for a while, but again, long form content with minimal leeway exacerbates the impact of this
  • The longer a fight goes, the more graphical lag will begin to pile up (as mentioned in another thread). This always happens, but as it’s an escalating issue, is greatly exacerbated on 10 minute long raid fights
  • Ambient audio largely doesn’t work but will occasionally be faintly heard or suddenly loudly heard for brief moments (extra noticeable with unique crypt audio). This also seems to be associated with relogging.
  • Often times hitting Go To Graveyard will not successfully clear aggro, and the boss will stay aggressive on your corpse or just in general, which prevents everyone else from respawning. Our approach to this is to have everyone repeatedly hit Go To Graveyard until it finally works.

Raid Specific

Boss 1

  • We were able to heal through the blizzard effects without using the campfire (Possibly intended?)

Boss 2

  • The damage from add death was pretty manageable, similar to normal mode (Possibly intended, due to additional vindictive mechanic?)

Boss 3

  • As mentioned in a separate thread, boss 3’s primary mechanic can be trivialized by teleporting at a specific time (We did not take advantage of this)
  • Boss 3’s jump impact damage can individually crit, which has a disproportionate impact on low health classes
  • Quickly pulling Boss 3 to the alternate tier of floor than where the room-wide AE is hitting can cause the room-wide AE to do no damage (We did not take advantage of this)

Boss 4

  • I believe this was related to the escalating lag mentioned above, but we had a handful of times where spells went right through the bells without registering. (~3 times out of the entire fight, so it was rare, but it can have a significant impact). The escalating lag was particularly rough on this fight for whatever reason, but it was present on others, such as the 5th.
  • On boss 4 the tankbuster animation can be interrupted or not play at all if the boss is moving. This can lead to a tank buster with no indication it’s coming surprising a tank.
  • The super long corridor AE (happens on both boss 4 and 5) will do no damage if someone is at high/near-max distance from the boss when it hits

Boss 5

  • Boss 5’s acid pools can individually crit each tick (may be deliberate?)
  • Demon in personal hell can sometimes not spawn at all, not spawn right away, not aggro, get bugged out if it triggers unbending on a target with it’s finishing move (Mentioned in separate thread)
  • Players can get hit by AE in hell if timing is just right/wrong
  • Players can get stuck in hell after boss resets if timing is just right/wrong (There is a theory that this only happens if a player unbends to demon finishing move and resets)
  • Rarely, players can get sent to hell (with no demon visible) but everyone will still see you in the main room. Then you get teleport shifted in hell when someone else gets sent to yours
  • On normal mode, we consistently (for the ~4 times we did it) had about 4 out of 10 of our members receive capes on defeating the final boss each time. This time 0 of 10 of our raiders did. It could be RNG, but that seems like a pretty significant variance for bad luck. (Mentioned above)

Yes it is comparable in terms of difficulty. In fact, coordinating the entire group to jump so you dont overlap or have anyone land in the AOE is a challenge by itself and way harder to deal with than a basic gear check for dmg+healing. Not to mention you can avoid the AOE anyway when you see him port. There’s a point that you can still jump before the AOE even goes off after he has jumped. It goes room AOE, jump, delay, local AOE. you can still avoid that damage, and that’s a legitimate strategy too (more risky IMHO).

I think we may need to just agree to disagree.

In my opinion, the mechanical behavior of the jump (distributing damage across all targets within the impact site followed by a quick short range AE), is clearly meant to drive players to clump up defensively, followed by jumping out and away, causing a cycling gameplay loop of Clump->Move->DPS-Repeat. Additionally as mentioned before, the fact that Hard mode significantly increased the jump impact damage to be distributed indicates that it’s meant to be managed rather than avoided. Anyway, the ultimate call is up to the developers, but it feels like some people are arguing to keep an unintended bug in place because they like it.

5 Likes

I’d agree, if it was a game breaking “bug”. But it’s really not.

Those invisible/non-rendering poison pools on Boss 5 killed me around 4 times, they start rendering after they tick you with damage, If you’re teleporting out of a poison pool that spawned under you, the ticks of damage from the hidden one can kill extremely quickly, especially if any of the ticks are a crit.

The jump mechanic is not a bug, try coordinating 10 people to not mess it up for a couple hours and call it easy lol.

All in all, I have to say hard mode is at a minimum harder from testing so far.

Looks like it’s a bug.

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It’s entirely fair to call a dev-stated unintended way to avoid the intended mechanic a bug. But I likewise agree that if it’s a similarly challenging way to combat the mechanic, there’s not necessarily a dire need to remove it and constrain strategy options.

I guess my main issue is, I don’t think there should only be one way to kill a boss, so if there is another way that is similarly difficult that wasn’t expected then it doesn’t mean it has to be gotten rid of.

Obviously devs can, and will do what they feel is best, but just because something feels easy to one of us doesn’t mean it is easy for everyone else, or a bad thing.

The fact that there are so many valid strategies in boss fights makes it a more engaging and interesting game in my opinion. It’s not my place to say what is and is not a bug in this case, but I do not think it detracts from the dungeon at all.

I will say I am curious to know if Boss 1 occasionally shooting away from the fire randomly is an intended mechanic, but at this point I am not sure if it’s just a change to keep us on our toes. Anyone else seeing that?

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Not sure where you say the coordination comes from. Everyone could spread out, so only 1 person is in possible danger each time. And if everyone runs unbending, that means said person could unbend and have a 1/9 chance of getting jumped again. And if they die, they get rezzed by a healer. Makes the fight a cake walk.

Out of curiosity, have you even done the 3rd boss on hard mode yet or are you guessing that it is easier? The fight can be quite difficult.

Have you done the jump strat or are you assuming it’s easier? Because I can tell you, it is not.

I’ve been in a group that used the offset floor and jump strats and you basically just negate all of his mechanics other than poison pools. It was notably easier.

Yes on normal mode. It was really easy. We figured it wasn’t intended and made a post about it. We decided not to use it on Hard mode, b/c we figured it was a bug that didn’t get addressed and wanted to beat the boss with the intended mechanics. So I’m guessing by your answer, you have not attempted hard mode boss 3 yet. I would try it with the intended mechanics before you make any more assumptions. Then after you have tried it, I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

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Mist be nice to have a group that coordinated. If you are not, it is a heck of a time to get 7-8 people to jump away from each other. Doesn’t matter if they’re grouped up or not. If you dont coordinate the jump, everyone goes whichever way they want. You can have people land in the spot near where other players start and where the boss lands. Therefore after that they get killed by the AOE. As there isnt enough energy for them to jump away. If you group up and time the jumps together, then you have the risk of someone jumping too late and dying. If someone jumps too early, and the boss ports to them, the whole raid is wiped. It requires precise timing of 7-8 players, and requires way more skill to pull off versus shield orb and jump.

IMO, it’s way more rewarding of a kill if you do the jump strat. @Riley_D , please allow the high risk/reward strat to stay in place. There doesn’t need to be a single way to skin the cat that is boss 3.

Nope, haven’t tried it in hardmode yet. Wont get to try it until next week. I’m open to changing things if they need it but everything you have said hasn’t convinced me that it’s a bug that makes it easier to complete given the risk involved with the jump strat.

Maybe you missed Riley’s quote.

Didn’t miss it. I’m rightfully debating the merits of changing things.

The damage on hardmode is a lot higher, we found that it’s best to just stack and shield and stick as a group, once you try the fight on hardmode I think you will most likely change your mind about being about to jump out before taking the damage as each death will make the fight take longer and give more chance for the rest of the group to also mess up and you’ll find it’s not worth the risk, but you should really try the fight before arguing on the forums about a mechanic you haven’t experienced at that level. End of the day it’s up to the devs if it gets changed or left so just wait till Tuesday and see what happens

We have not experienced this issue of invisible pools suddenly starting throughout the fight but a quick relog before the encounter has always removed the chance of that happening for us (similar to invisible pools we have observed at squiddie).

We had a weird one (not quite as painful) where pool debuffs would not visibly appear on the debuff bar and then the pool drops (could be caused by server latency).

Would love to try the fight. But I haven’t been able to due to being at a family event and traveling. My point is that even in normal mode the risk of the jump strat is high. As you stated, each players death makes the fight a lot longer.