I guess SE, should make 5 game modes:
Bacteria
Im alive because air is free
Demented
Normal
Hardcore.
That would pretty much fit some players..
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I don't think it's too hard. However, with the state of the game as it is, it's hard to find people that adapt the strategy to the actual party components, not to mention having a backup plan in case things go wrong. I'm 0/12 on this, and while I do have a general feel for the fight, the fact that I never have the chance to redo it with the same people is hurting quite a bit.
The fight is not hard.
The challenge is ensuring that everyone in the party is willing to work together and use the same strategy that is actually applicable to the people that compose that party.
The battle is not hard. It's the adventurers that are making it seem that way.
This has been my biggest issue and I think it's why I haven't been to win yet. Most parties I've been into try the "winning formula" and nothing else. Not meaning they're wrong in trying the way it works, but I think the application has been too rigid. Then of course people makes mistakes, especially since, for example, in the last four tries I got four different strategies... But again that's the "price" someone pays for going with pickups, so that's to be expected to have less flexibility than people that know each other.
Did it a few days ago with my Linkshell. Went in knowing next to nothing about the fight and beat it third try. We had one guy who beat it before give us a ultra quick low-down and we got murdered by his AOE spam before mega-flare by mistake.
But really once you get it down it's a mechanics fight more than anything. No punishing AOEs that are hard to avoid and doable even twinked in just AF gear.
The fight is easy as long as your mages aren't gimp. The problem is most mages are used to face-rolling something in a safe spot and thus can't pay attention to the battle-log if their life depended on it. This battle is neat because it actually forces them to move around and actually you know, pay attention.
This is also why most still have issues with Garuda.
This isn't really challenging content if your group is communicating with each other and discussing strategy and not playing the blame game which many PUGS do. Gear doesn't really play a huge part here though NVD does have a pretty high evasion rate so make sure you bring some accuracy and magic accuracy gear.
I'm glad SE added some challenge to this fight and didn't make it a straight blitzkrieg. It just takes solid teamwork as any proper game should. Latency isn't really a issue in this fight either which is great. I'm sure hardmode will have attacks that hit harder and will be prone to lag issues but I'm happy SE didn't rely on fake difficulty for the Easy mode fight which is a huge plus. It promotes active game design that doesn't rely on latency to make the fight difficult.
I liked this fight greatly. We need more fights like this.
SE should add a "CS mode" for those Casual LOLplayer.
uhh given that i'm a casual, no.
I'm just saying in THIS SPECIFIC GAME there are a lot of people who are -very- casual. Meaning they don't want to play it until 2.0, but still want to finish the story and see the new content. These are the people who just return at patches for 2 or 3 days and then go back to SWTOR or WoW or another game.
For -those- people, this fight is too much of a hassle. They want to come back, do the new stuff in a day or two, and leave. And when you have no ls, pickup parties are difficult for this fight since it takes a few runs for people to get the hang of things. And many pickups break after an hour or 2.
So for -those- people who want to rush the content and don't normally play (meaning they aren't as skilled with controls, have less-amazing gear, and may not know all the moves), this fight is a turn-off.
For 2.0 I think every fight should be like this, and the boss fight should be even harder. FF11 had a good difficulty level for their stuff. And since there is no death, i think difficulty should be even higher.