Cataclysm weapons: SEVEN WEEKS!?

[Fynlar]

Nonsense, if you don't raid savage, you are going to use this weapon for 4 months (you upgrade it's item level down the line).
7 Weeks acquisition time is completely justified.

Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

If you don't raid savage, you don't need this weapon anyway. Content you do is already trivial in difficulty.

These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

[Mavrias]

Well, I don't agree there. An item that has nearly a whole third of its shelf life consumed by the time it takes to acquire a single one of them (because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way) is a ridiculous practice.

These arguments always sucked, BTW.

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG. How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

Usually those ultimate weapons/ equipment came from either a large time investment or beating a superboss, so I'm not sure what kind of point you're making here.

[Akiudo]

Raider or not, everyone still wants to get more powerful in an RPG.

I've got great news than, you can buy yourself 2-5 items depending on slot before grinding away for your weapon in week 7 so you are totally free to get more powerfull even before you can grab a weapon stone doing normals

[Granyala]

(because there's no way people play multiple roles/classes in this game, by the way)

Generally it is intended for these games that you specialize in one role/class and that the equipment status reflects that.
As for the shelf life: don't care that it's 1/3rd. 10 item levels is nothing in this game, it's not as if your char suddenly can't do the content because you don'd have the weapon.

Trust me: if the tome gear would not exist and people would have to kill E8s for a similar weapon, it's useful life would be much MUCH shorter to nonexistent for most folks. Most raiders progress for months to even be able to pull the last boss, not to mention to kill it.

How often have you chased after ultimate weapons/equipment in games where you absolutely didn't need them to be able to win?

You mean in single player games? Never, because I don't like pointless grinds.
I am not a stats person. Even when raiding savage/mythic I never really cared about the gear. It was merely a tool I needed in order to be able to tackle the next challenge.

Unless the gear looks pretty. Then all bets are off.

Really? I thought Hades was the most unfairly-designed DPS check I've ever seen in the game.

o_O
You're joking, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me that the above is a jest. B/c the enrages of ex trials have always been a very lenient one compared to savage.

Still, don't you think that 7 weeks of normal raid and 3 weeks worth of tomes is a bit much for an item?

No I don't. As I said: most raid groups will take far longer than 7 weeks in order to get their weapon.
Sure, really good raiders blitz through in a week or two but that isn't the norm.

[BluexBird]

o_O
You're joking, right?

RIGHT?

Please tell me that the above is a jest. B/c the enrages of ex trials have always been a very lenient one compared to savage.

That's exactly it. I'm used to trials not being so demanding. The fact that farm party after farm party only barely managed to kill it before enrage, makes me think the fight was poorly-tuned. Allow me to explain:

First there's phase 1, which is alright. If you have good damage, you're allowed to skip the last tank buster. This is the only easy phase.

Then phase 2 comes. You mess up tethers, you wipe the party. Fail to do enough damage? Wipe.

Then comes the Ascian phase. Tethers, tank swaps, DPS checks, a bunch of healing. Either tank dies? It's over.

THEN there's Mr. Big Ascian. Fairly easy compared to what came before, but you can still fuck this up if you aren't careful.

THEEEN there's fight against final form Ascian. A bunch of simple mechanics, but still there's a possibility of fucking up and going back to the start.

AND FINALLY, AFTER YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT, you get the final phase of the fight. And you still can't kill him fast enough before the last enrage spell starts casting? Like really, I had to do it all 4 times to get my axe, with different parties, and not a single one was able to kill him before that. That's not exactly what I call lenient. Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

This isn't an ordinary trial. But the game treats Ruby Weapon (Extreme) as if it's on a similar level. It's not. Ruby Weapon is a joke compared to Hades, even if you DID have to redo phase 1 upon death.

[Granyala]

Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

Working as intended.

A proper encounter should enforce the mechanics.
We killed Hades... with problems, yes. Enrage timer was not one of them. As soon as the mechanics fell into place -> down he went.
Imho the various Ascian phases are the hardest part of the encounter. What comes after is pretty straight forward and the last phase is basically a freeloot Duke Nuke'em phase.

Yes, he has a lot of phases, I agree. Also, he places a lot of responsibility onto individual players and gives very little room for recovery in these cases (tanks failing meteors, people failing tethers = wipe). Mechanically, he might be a bit annoying for random groups.

We weren't talking about mechanics though. We were talking about the enrage timer. That is as lenient as ever.

[Mavrias]

That's exactly it. I'm used to trials not being so demanding. The fact that farm party after farm party only barely managed to kill it before enrage, makes me think the fight was poorly-tuned. Allow me to explain:

First there's phase 1, which is alright. If you have good damage, you're allowed to skip the last tank buster. This is the only easy phase.

Then phase 2 comes. You mess up tethers, you wipe the party. Fail to do enough damage? Wipe.

Then comes the Ascian phase. Tethers, tank swaps, DPS checks, a bunch of healing. Either tank dies? It's over.

THEN there's Mr. Big Ascian. Fairly easy compared to what came before, but you can still fuck this up if you aren't careful.

THEEEN there's fight against final form Ascian. A bunch of simple mechanics, but still there's a possibility of fucking up and going back to the start.

AND FINALLY, AFTER YOU WENT THROUGH ALL THAT, you get the final phase of the fight. And you still can't kill him fast enough before the last enrage spell starts casting? Like really, I had to do it all 4 times to get my axe, with different parties, and not a single one was able to kill him before that. That's not exactly what I call lenient. Not to mention if you fuck up, you go back to the start.

This isn't an ordinary trial. But the game treats Ruby Weapon (Extreme) as if it's on a similar level. It's not. Ruby Weapon is a joke compared to Hades, even if you DID have to redo phase 1 upon death.

If you were seeing any of hades phases enrage after maybe week one your group's dps was just hilariously bad. None of his checks were particularly tight, and once you got his mechanics down, they were also a joke. None of his mechanics were even particularly new either. Attacking the right aspected adds, getting hit with the appropriate elemental attacks, doom, reverse-doom, knockbacks, stacks, and exaflares? All seen in previous fights, whether they were extremes, savages, or even normal modes.

[BluexBird]

If you were seeing any of hades phases enrage after maybe week one your group's dps was just hilariously bad. None of his checks were particularly tight, and once you got his mechanics down, they were also a joke. None of his mechanics were even particularly new either. Attacking the right aspected adds, getting hit with the appropriate elemental attacks, doom, reverse-doom, knockbacks, stacks, and exaflares? All seen in previous fights, whether they were extremes, savages, or even normal modes.

Haha it was even worse! I started playing again 3 weeks before the last patch came out. And it was still a huge struggle to get my weapon. I think I had an easier time farming Titan than I did Hades, even though I had to do it 8 times because the game hates me. If you say the DPS check wasn't so bad, then I'm honestly confused with how none of the farm parties I joined couldn't kill it until just before the enrage cast ended.

Also, it doesn't matter if the mechanics become easy once you practice. When you're up joining parties in PF, you never know the type of players you're gonna get. Mistakes happen, and they're extra frustrating considering you have to redo the whole fight.

[Vidu]

Haha it was even worse! I started playing again 3 weeks before the last patch came out. And it was still a huge struggle to get my weapon. I think I had an easier time farming Titan than I did Hades, even though I had to do it 8 times because the game hates me. If you say the DPS check wasn't so bad, then I'm honestly confused with how none of the farm parties I joined couldn't kill it until just before the enrage cast ended.

Also, it doesn't matter if the mechanics become easy once you practice. When you're up joining parties in PF, you never know the type of players you're gonna get. Mistakes happen, and they're extra frustrating considering you have to redo the whole fight.

My guess here would be that part of your struggle is because you came back so "late": Most of the skilled and well geared people were already done with Hades when you returned and started farming him - this is why its important that they keep content relevant through artificial means like time-gates and the like. Because if they dont everyone who doesnt get their clears done within the first 3-4 weeks after release struggles with finding parties that are able to clear/farm the content or finding parties at all (til waaaay later when everyone outgears the fight by miles).

When I first started farming Hades after release the dps-checks were something you didnt really notice - wipes only happend when tanks missed their meteors. During the last weeks before the new patch I was very glad that I had farmed my 99 tokens already, because the party-quality went down quite a bit - and thats no surprise: E4 was farmable at this point and everyone able to beat that went there for extra weapons. Which left the less... skilled and geared people in Hades parties - I had the pleasure of seeing dps with Titania weapons who must have missed the whole crafted and deepshadow options or thought that Hades would offer them an easy upgrade.
And thats not the first time I've experienced something like this - I've basically made a rule for myself to either farm a primal straight away OR wait 1-2 years til its so easy that it doesnt even matter anymore that your party memembers dont know how to press more than two buttons.
Right now - or right before the patch - we were in an unfortunate spot for Hades.

[Granyala]

If you say the DPS check wasn't so bad, then I'm honestly confused with how none of the farm parties I joined couldn't kill it until just before the enrage cast ended.

Because 90% of the community is simply put: incompetent.
A harsh thing to say, I know but even in expert dungeons, it is so rare to get a group that plays at a reasonable level compared to what the classes are capable of.


SE knows this and it is the reason why Normal mode encounters have no enrage timers.