Long Holding Times for Delve NMs

[Eyrhika]

Hint: None of them actually play the game.

Seeing as how they expect us to beat these monsters in 20 mins it would seem they don't. Kinda sad they expect other people to think these NM fights are enjoyable..

Also lolled pretty hard at the "make a video of you guys fighting it" comment, all we need is for them to zoom in on the game clock and it will be AV all over again.

[Demonmaniac]

Our Linkshell (Reborn) has had the opportunity to attempt all of the delve zones (which I'm sure most have). However, we have had a difficult time with even getting to the boss. We have farmed the hardest of the five DNM's outside of the Veil. Even with this significant bonus to time (killing each NM in 10-15minutes), we still had to search for the boss, which took another 5minutes, leaving us with max 20minutes left. If you honestly think anyone can kill these ridiculous WK+1 NM's, you are sadly mistaken. We do have a couple pieces of gear, and augmented decently. We even have a couple augmented weapons. However, this content is absolutely ridiculous. I wouldn't be posting if I didn't think it was possible. The fact is, it's not. We dropped the shark down 3% on 15minutes. With the aura up, it near-spams Marine Mayhem, and it unstunnable. With the aura down, its attacks do upwards of 1k, forcing us into DT gear, flooring out ACC and ATK even more. Now, we do not have a problem with wildskeeper reive. We do not have a problem with Skirmish. We don't have problems with Legion. We don't even have problems with the T1-5 NM's (excluding the butterflies and chapuli). How can you say that the new gear will help? Our damage still sucks, acc parsed 30-40% with rank3-5 acc path when not in DT gear. Our WHM's are awesome, so that's not the problem. We have 8 BRD rolls, 4 COR rolls, boost dex, pizza+1/sushi+1...what else can you get? If there is some sort of weakness (doubt it on the bosses), we haven't found it, and it will be ages before we do since we die too quickly. Please, correct me if I'm wrong, but given FORTY-FIVE MINUTES to kill these NM's, I say it is impossible at this point.

[Fynlar]

My opinion:

If you absolutely have to have a time limit on these fights, make the fights more like Voidwatch. 30 minutes, but no rage. Give people more of a chance to actually fight these things at their normal stats before forcing them to resort to PLD and SAM/THF and SMN abuse, or whatever it is that people are beating the raged NMs with.

Rage was originally intended and implemented as a mechanism for preventing people from holding mobs on purpose to grief other players or stall out ToDs, not as a means of artificially time-restricting a fight. Honestly, these mobs don't need to be capable of raging; I think they are powerful enough as is, and 15 minutes is way too strict for it anyway.

IMO, outside the fractures should be more of a "trial" version of the NM fights anyway, where you have more of a chance to figure out how they work. Inside the fractures you already are on a time limit, so in there you already have to know how to fight them "properly" if you want to win anyway. Either way, I view rage as unnecessary.

[Cybermario]

Dont think counter congestion measures are needed, at elast not right now.

[Teakwood]

I think option 3 is the best one by far. Also, you might want to consider rewarding players with hints towards fighting certain NMs, possibly within Adoulin quests or as the result of the progress of various Coalitions.

The fights -don't work- as zerg fights; you're not going to be able to just zerg them down in 15 minutes if they update it just like you can't do that right now. If you can't beat the fight in 20 minutes you're not doing it the right way, and I think it's -really- insulting to the players to have monsters that go into rage mode in 15 minutes and become unkillable knowing players won't want to give up and will just leave the monsters up for a long time and wind up feeling miserable.

I'm definitely staying away from Delve content for a few months until updates sort themselves out (and I get my THF sub leveled, which is a thing I guess I have to do now) but this would be a good place to start.

[Asymptotic]

I think option 3 is the best one by far. Also, you might want to consider rewarding players with hints towards fighting certain NMs, possibly within Adoulin quests or as the result of the progress of various Coalitions.

The fights -don't work- as zerg fights; you're not going to be able to just zerg them down in 15 minutes if they update it just like you can't do that right now. If you can't beat the fight in 20 minutes you're not doing it the right way, and I think it's -really- insulting to the players to have monsters that go into rage mode in 15 minutes and become unkillable knowing players won't want to give up and will just leave the monsters up for a long time and wind up feeling miserable.

I'm definitely staying away from Delve content for a few months until updates sort themselves out (and I get my THF sub leveled, which is a thing I guess I have to do now) but this would be a good place to start.

To Bold: Soul Voice + Embrava zerg works for pretty much all of the NMs once you have figured out whatever "trick" is required to weaken the NM. I have our group use SV March + Scherzo + Madrigal + Madrigal + Minuet if we decide that a SV "zerg" is the way to go, although really Delve NMs have very average defense so Minuet is not necessary (I say "zerg" because it doesn't really feel like a zerg when the fight still takes 10 minutes, but things generally die shortly after the second application of songs + rolls and my rolls last 7 minutes - otherwise though it's basically treating the fight as a high zerg). 4 songs (two regular bards or one super bard) would be sufficient (March March Madrigal Madrigal) outside of Soul Voice, most likely, and you could toss in a GEO for Indi-Frailty in the mage party and be fine on just about everything. Some of the NMs require Magic damage so this strategy isn't going to necessarily work there - but largely, they are "zerg friendly." (It's just not a "Fast" zerg - but you're executing the same strategy). If you're having TOO much trouble with these NMs you need to look up the "tricks" and consider using Scherzo and/or Earthen Armor, because dead DDs don't do anything to kill NMs.

To underlined: Related to the above, the /THF craze will last another two weeks at best. The only reason to /THF these NMs is if you're trying to kill them raged or you are for some reason not running with DDs who have BRD + COR buffs. Just like Voidwatch, WHM BRD COR PLD DD DD + WHM BRD COR DD DD DD + 6 pack of mages, assorted flavors - should be able to handle pretty much any Delve content.

[sweetidealism]

Option 2 gets my vote. I like the idea of a 45 minute timer. Make it so that Skirmish and other progression is actually necessary, instead of having people be able to just throw themselves at these new NMs for 4 hours.

That said, if you do go that route, then you ALSO need to increase the drop rate on Skirmish items. They're nearly impossible to find, to the point where the event is largely inaccessible.

[Caligamy]

..........

[Mizuharu]

So if we need the best players, that obviously means people with 99 R/M/E! Oh wait, they all unsub'd this update.

Also, I like this bit.

Currently, we are aware that even after these monsters have become enraged, they are being defeated by battling with them for very long periods of time. This means that the feature for countering congestion is not working properly, and as such we would like to make adjustments to this aspect. I understand that players who were unable to defeat these monsters within the set time but were able to defeat them over the course of a long period of time will no longer be able to do this. Due to the fact that this adjustment could make conditions poor for players who challenge this content later, I would like to hear everyone's opinion and base the decision off of that.

So because people spent an hour+ trying to beat a stupidly evasive raged monster and succeeding but taking so long you're going with, "Oh, they beat it after two hours? Let's set a time limit of 20mins! Because that is the most logical thing to do!"

... Just either lower the non-raged def/eva of monsters and still have them rage in 15mins, or give everyone Murasamemaru and Ochains and tell them to pldx2 corx2 brdx3 whmx3 sam/thfx8.

[SpankWustler]

Just leave it as it is now.

If people want to kite a giant enraged turtle around a lake for an hour after it enters hyper-mode, that should be a viable strategy. If people hate themselves enough to fight a matamata or uraganite for two hours and not kill it, that particularly cruel method of self-punishment should be available to them. Implementing a timer would just homogenize all the fights and possibly even force certain monsters to be adjusted to conform to the new timer.