Thread: Patch 3.26 Discussion

I agree with the changes. Been stuck on this fight a since it came out. I have several LS of people I talk to most of them are stuck on A6S as well. This basically is the fight that most groups can not beat, it is similar to A3S when most average groups got stuck on. Everyone was calling this fight the new A3S which isn't a good thing.

The biggest problems with the fight is that its basically 4 separate fights with their own mechanics and they do not build on each other making the learning process hard. Given that some people have problems dodging mirages means his clear rate is somewhere around ~50% or so. So you spend a lot of time wiping to the first boss then you get to brawler who is even harder. The biggest issue I seen with Brawler is the add phase is extremely difficult and the alpha balls tend to hit a lot which causes the most wipes because DPS aren't fast enough taking them down. That was the one thing I would of liked to see nerfed was number of alphas or lower their HP its a huge block to a lot of people. Surprised that wasn't changed as it seemed to me caused the most wipes.

I am glad SE is trying to fix this fight now before it turned into another A3S and caused a bunch of people to leave the game.

Originally Posted by Rivaille

Argue with me if that’s not true – but I doubt you can give an actual proper explanation without the reasons above.

Okay, I honestly disagree with the degree to which this fight was nerfed, but your arguments have so many holes that I can't not take this chance. First let's get this out of the way. As someone who cleared A4S before 3.1 came out, you are in a very different demographic than the people these nerfs were intended for. The skill level of your group was such that the problems most groups experienced on this fight would seem far less troublesome, and as such you're in a spot where you can't understand the nerfs properly. So now let's look at the individual nerfs, which we can do very thoroughly since people have gone and done the fight and reported on the exact values of the changes.

Blaster:
Mines: This is a tough one to argue against as someone who agrees the change wasn't necessary, but your claim that no one should find it difficult is blind. Controlling the bounces, popping cooldowns and healing to get through those mines was indeed a challenge. While with practice you can easily get it down as long as you don't get an extremely BS formation, but that doesn't make it so easy that it can be done by anyone without issue.

Supercharges: This, I remain sure, was the one nerf that was 100% deserved. Due to the random elements which can only be mitigated so far due to how the mines placement used to play into this in combination with that it's very difficult to tell the exact angle one of those mirages is facing to know if you're just barely safe or right in its path, it was too dangerous for one of the very first mechanics in the fight. With the mine nerf, it's less necessary, but had the mine nerf not happened this change would have been absolutely necessary going forward to bring this fight in line with where its difficulty should be.

Brawler:
You just straight up misinterpreted this nerf. The nerf was to the big orbs that are guaranteed to make it to the middle and deal raidwide damage, and that damage was nerfed to 12k from 15k. Now, I don't think this nerf is anything to cry over. All it does is make it so that healers don't have to worry about spamming AoE heals and hoping everyone is in range, which they may or may not be depending on Alpha placement, and can instead spot heal people who are further away after the first couple AoE heals to make sure everyone survives. Really it's more a quality of life change than a nerf as far as I'm concerned, specifically it helps AST healers since their range isn't as good on their AoE heals as WHM's.

Swindler:
This is one of the cases where your group's skill is hindering your ability to understand the nerf. While I agree it wasn't really necessary with the gear people should have now, specifically i230 weapons, it wasn't so easy that every group could reliably get only the first round of shots without healer dps before weapons, and since the fight isn't supposed to be tuned around i230 weapons, that was a problem. Again, I still think this change didn't really need to happen, but if you think about it you can understand why it did.

Vortexer:
HP nerf: Yeah, 200k off Vortexer's HP alongside the other uptime increasing nerfs on the previous bots is too much. You're probably saving anywhere between 10 and 30 seconds due to the mine change and the Gunner change before this, which for most groups should be more than enough to make the enrage a non-factor. So adding on top of that a nerf that makes the enrage even less of a factor, possibly to A5 levels of not being a factor? A nerf that will make it so no group on a clean run should ever see a second Ultra Flash? That's too much. Now, your example of your group isn't the norm. Most groups didn't get their first clears with a minute left on the enrage in that little gear. Most groups with that little gear will pre-nerf be cutting it very close to the enrage in straight i220. And the nerf isn't so much that you're going to see an entire rotation less. Again, with the gear people have access to now the enrage should be a non-factor anyway, but considering that it's not tuned for the gear people have now it's understandable that they wanted to lessen the effect of the enrage. All the dps boosting adjustments together are a bit much, but having one or even two of them alone isn't bad for he fight.

Crashing Wave/Thunder: So first to clarify on what the exact changes are, Crashing wave now hits for a total of around 42k split between however many people are stacked. This means a 3 stack is doable, a 2 stack probably isn't unless both people have VIT melds and an adlo. Crashing Thunder now hits for 9-10k in a 2 stack, haven't seen any info on a 3 stack but I'd imagine with just VIT melds and a good healer a 3-stack can be survived, and a 4 stack probably can't. Failing them will still wipe you, but they are now more difficult to fail and the healing they require is less harsh. Honestly, the more I think about this one the more I'm okay with it. Playing it the same way we did pre-nerf will now guarantee success without stressing out the healer, and there are so many other things that can instantly wipe you in here like a misplaced fire stream or ice puddle that I don't think it detracts from the mechanical difficulty. The only issue I have with it is it is yet another subtle weakening of the dps check. By allowing one less person in water and one more person in thunder, a melee can reliably stay within range to keep attacking rather than moving out of thunder passes allowing for yet another overall dps increase to even further remove the enrage as a factor.

A6S vs A7S
Groups won't be stonewalled by A7S like they have been by A6S. The gear check is not so strong that groups won't be able to get through it. I can understand the concern due to all the smaller dps check adjustments meaning that the A6S overall dps check will now be doable for even much lesser skilled players, but I don't think that there are many groups, if there are any at all, that are doing savage that will only be scraping by the enrage in A6S now on clean runs after the nerf. For such groups there might be an argument that A7S will stonewall them, but the number of groups that are like that are so low that it's not something I'd be concerned with. And no, you're straight wrong on A7S not being easier than pre-nerf A6S. The only thing more difficult about A7S is how it punishes you for deaths. If you look at the data available, from the world first to the midcore, groups on average spend at minimum the amount of time in pre-nerf A6S that they end up spending in A7S, and it was very common for groups to spend far more time in A6S than A7S. And when comparing these things between the exact same groups, the ONLY conclusion there is to come to is that A7S was easier than A6S was pre-nerf. And balls are far better telegraphed than mirage dashes, so it's not fair to say that groups will struggle with balls just as much as they did with dashes.

"So when you didn’t nerf in A3S for so long, why are you nerfing A6S now? I simply don’t get it."
The answer is simple. They don't want to repeat the very clear mistake that A3S was. At the time they were adamant about not nerfing 3S while it was relevant, being convinced that with more people would get through it. They didn't, so now SE understands that when difficulty curve problems like that appear, they can't afford to just say "it'll be made easier with gear, so we can just leave it." While it was to a lesser extent, it's an undeniable fact that A6S was proving to be a similar type of wall to what A3S was. So, since they learned from the mistake that was A3S, they nerfed it while it was relevant to mitigate the effect on the overall raid scene. Nerfs of some kind NEEDED TO HAPPEN WHILE THIS FIGHT WAS RELEVANT. Did the nerfs it got take that too far? In my opinion they very much did. However, the appropriate amount of nerfs would have at most made the fight on par with A7S in difficulty, and the devs clearly wanted to correct the difficulty curve entirely and have A6S undeniably be less difficult than A7S. I understand that the nerfs, and nerfs of any kind to a relevant fight, feel like a slap in the face to groups progressing on that fight who will now feel as though they wasted time progressing through the harder version of the fight. It will cheapen the kill for them. But that's a small price to pay for avoiding the second coming of A3S, which is where this fight was headed if it saw no changes.