Please scale the difficulty of Royal Menagerie

[bounddreamer]

Just responding to the person who mentioned that newbies get hit by a Mack truck and never recover... not that I've done this TOO many times in DF, but the very few failures I've had, one of them was both healers in dungeon gear below i290.

Which means neither of them did their level 70 job quest. They didn't have their final ability, nor were they wearing what would be a minimum acceptable level of gear for the instance.

Dps can skirt by, sometimes, if 3/4 are geared and minimally competent. But both heals being undergeared and unprepared is a recipe for bad things.

[TaleraRistain]

Just responding to the person who mentioned that newbies get hit by a Mack truck and never recover... not that I've done this TOO many times in DF, but the very few failures I've had, one of them was both healers in dungeon gear below i290.

Which means neither of them did their level 70 job quest. They didn't have their final ability, nor were they wearing what would be a minimum acceptable level of gear for the instance.

Dps can skirt by, sometimes, if 3/4 are geared and minimally competent. But both heals being undergeared and unprepared is a recipe for bad things.

That was me and even in class gear when this first dropped it hit pretty hard. I'm only up to 318 but already seeing a significant difference on the rare occasions I get sniped by something.

Zhamkyong I do try to read most of what is posted, but that gets more difficult when a thread gets this long. I can only speak on my experiences from more than once guiding parties that were over half new through this process. We often would need to go step by step through each mechanic and one pattern I noticed was that if they could just survive a little longer they could be assisted with the timing to avoid the next mechanic. However, they have a hard limit on just how strong their gear and thus their survival level can get, since both tomes and dungeons with higher level gear are locked behind this trial. If SE wants to keep it this way, then I think adjusting the damage output to dial it back and make mistakes a bit more forgivable would go a long way towards fixing the problem.

Like someone else said, new players don't want to get carried. They want to participate. They don't want to lie dead while everyone who has overgeared it clears it for them. Plus they learn nothing that way. I can count on one hand in the nearly four years I've been playing this game when I encountered the "you don't pay my sub" crowd. I have encountered people who have trouble with mechanics, and help them to the best of my ability. I'm run a small FC so I pug a lot. I've purposefully chosen this trial many times since I cleared it to refine my understanding and provide groups a strong healer to help clear people through. Through my experiences, I see something in this trial that creates an imbalance in the ability of the playerbase to clear it and so I fall into the camp that feels there is some adjustment to be made. Nothing says you have to agree with it.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Happy to. The main problems I see when I lead new players through this is that mechanics hit hard and fast and back to back and don't allow room for mistakes. The poor new person is dead on the floor before they can get the license of the Mack truck that hit them. If they dialed back the damage, then I think new players would have more chance to recover and a better chance of being able to react properly to the next mechanic. When I talk to new players I have helped guide they say there is just so much going on and they're dead before they know it.

You mean like with Thordan where the mechanics were so trivial any decent player ignored half of them? I've literally stood in his cleaves and it barely tickles. Fights with little to no consequence only instill further bad habits because your mistakes aren't punished. Royal Menagerie is an easy enough fight, it just demands you actually pay attention and do its mechanics instead of playing a game of "how long can I go without healing the tank?"

[Ilan]

"SE we have something that is slightly challenging NERF IT!!!"

It was the same with Steps before and it always will be with stuff that needs more than just pressing 1,2,3.

[MoroMurasaki]

That was me and even in class gear when this first dropped it hit pretty hard. I'm only up to 318 but already seeing a significant difference on the rare occasions I get sniped by something.

Zhamkyong I do try to read most of what is posted, but that gets more difficult when a thread gets this long. I can only speak on my experiences from more than once guiding parties that were over half new through this process. We often would need to go step by step through each mechanic and one pattern I noticed was that if they could just survive a little longer they could be assisted with the timing to avoid the next mechanic. However, they have a hard limit on just how strong their gear and thus their survival level can get, since both tomes and dungeons with higher level gear are locked behind this trial. If SE wants to keep it this way, then I think adjusting the damage output to dial it back and make mistakes a bit more forgivable would go a long way towards fixing the problem.

Like someone else said, new players don't want to get carried. They want to participate. They don't want to lie dead while everyone who has overgeared it clears it for them. Plus they learn nothing that way. I can count on one hand in the nearly four years I've been playing this game when I encountered the "you don't pay my sub" crowd. I have encountered people who have trouble with mechanics, and help them to the best of my ability. I'm run a small FC so I pug a lot. I've purposefully chosen this trial many times since I cleared it to refine my understanding and provide groups a strong healer to help clear people through. Through my experiences, I see something in this trial that creates an imbalance in the ability of the playerbase to clear it and so I fall into the camp that feels there is some adjustment to be made. Nothing says you have to agree with it.

I feel like you and I are both coming from the same place more or less - we feel that we know this fight well and fairly often guide new or inexperienced players through it while playing healer so that we can provide a strong safety net.

What I don't understand is how we come to two polar opposite conclusions.

As I've said earlier in this thread I am by no means some sort of amazing healer god (not saying you aren't, as I do not know you) but I feel like I am just... proficent I guess? I in no way represent the 99% WHM DPS folks or anything. If I can walk a group comprised of mostly new players through this and clear it at a very reliable rate (two or three disbands since launch) then why does it need to be touched? Last night my boyfriend got it in Trial Roulette and one healer "mysteriously DC'd" so I joined once a spot was open, a BRD was the only other person in that group with a clear. We wiped once, clarified a few mechanics and breezed through the second time where the only issue was melee didn't LB3 so our BRD friend did.

This is pretty normal - it doesn't take a lot of experienced players to clear this. The cotank wasn't stacking on my BF for Ahk Morns so I did, people kept getting pushed off by the big sweeping attack so I had them stack on me and accept the vuln up stacks, melee didn't LB so our BRD did... none of these things are optimal, none are the way I would play this if I ran with my FC or something, but you can get by just fine in this fight playing suboptimally just like any other part of MSQ.

Nerfing it into some kind of completely trivial button spam just ensures people will complain about the next content they need to wipe a few times on and while you are correct in saying we don't have to agree with you I enjoy this fight as it is as do many others. We aren't disagreeing with you to troll you or make your day bad we are doing it because we don't want to see some enjoyable content get neutered.

Royal Menagerie is an easy enough fight, it just demands you actually pay attention and do its mechanics instead of playing a game of "how long can I go without healing the tank?"

This is my favorite game in any content.

[Rokke]

However, they have a hard limit on just how strong their gear and thus their survival level can get, since both tomes and dungeons with higher level gear are locked behind this trial. If SE wants to keep it this way, then I think adjusting the damage output to dial it back and make mistakes a bit more forgivable would go a long way towards fixing the problem.

The hard ilv cap for someone who hasn’t cleared RM is (assuming they don't just buy the crafted gear) i299ish, which would be all i300s from Ala Mhigo minus one ring. Assuming the fight was designed around fairly fresh 70's, a full ala mhigo set would already be almost 10 ilvs ahead of what you "need". That said, all of shinryu's attacks have visual tells and/or cast bars. If a player hasn't learned to notice either by the time they hit RM, gear is the least of their problems.

[Felis]

All I know is, whenever it showed up in my roulette, it almost always ended up in wipes, vote abandons, or both -- all in all, a bunch of wasted time. Much like Royal Menagerie. And yes, the fact that it gated the expansion meant its nerfing was inevitable. People were not going to stand behind an expansion they didn't even get to play.

The thing with Step of Faith is that there is no wipe until the dragon reach the end of the bridge. Even if all die, the dragon move still foreward. Even if it is clear that there was not enough damage to kill the dragon before it reach the end of the bridge, there is no way to reset it except to wait.

Final Step of Faith is much harder, and was never nerfed.

[TaleraRistain]

I feel like you and I are both coming from the same place more or less - we feel that we know this fight well and fairly often guide new or inexperienced players through it while playing healer so that we can provide a strong safety net.

What I don't understand is how we come to two polar opposite conclusions.

I'm no amazing healer god either. I'm just someone with the desire and patience to help players who are having trouble. We are a rare breed, I am afraid. Many are content to just let the new person lie on the floor dead because "we can do this with 4 people". I've been berated by co-healers for daring to raise them. Quite often I do not get the chance to try to help until we have wiped once or twice and the impatient players have left in disgust. Or enough vote abandon so there is another denial of the clear for the new people. Asking for adjustment on damage also doesn't mean asking for it to be nerfed into some trivial button spam. It's simply asking that the mechanics be a little more survivable so we can recover from an oops and move on to the next phase in fewer wipes. It means a greater chance of experienced players sticking around and with a pug that can be the difference between clearing or wiping.

[AlexRaines]

I just cleared it for story mode, three minutes ago. I just spent an hour trying to clear it with an underperforming group, and then lucked into a more competent one on my next attempt. I was bad during the first attempt. I kept getting knocked off the platform, I didn't stack during ank mourne, and I was paying more attention to my fell cleaves than the ground. But that hour I spent sucking hardened me up (oh god, PHRASING), and with the second group, I played like a different, smarter person, and I got the clear and a few comms. I understand the frustration of failing at something you want to succeed at, but the failures make the victory so much sweeter. I wouldn't feel this good right now if it hadn't been a good fight where I KNOW I carried my weight.

THIS. This right here is the point I was trying to make. Victory through perseverance is so sweet. Congratulations mate.

[New_Game_Plus]

Honestly. I don't think the fight should be nerfed. It's the perfect level of difficulty- especially considering the final boss whipped the floor with you on two separate occassions. If he was a pushover and it was stupidly easy it wouldn't feel so rewarding.

In a group of all randoms, 7 of us new, we managed to complete it with less than 15 minutes left on the clock. Each and every single one of us had to carry our own weight. Hell the run we managed to complete it on, we did most of the fight with one tank since the other had his mouse batteries die.