Baelsar's Wall might need rebalancing...

[The_Last_Dragoon]

So when the expansion finally did drop and while everyone was held up with instancing problems for the MSQ my friend (a returning ARR player) had been able to get his item level above 230 due to the reduced cost of i260 gear in Idyllshire. Since I was helping him blast his way through the story I queued up as geared tank for Baelsar's Wall. While the initial pulling and the managing of aggro was a bit weird at first, it wasn't too hard to do, and I imagine that anyone who has had to play 30 levels of it won't be so bent out of shape. For the most part, despite the party being made up of myself and 3 new players, we made it to the second boss with few setbacks.

The Armored Weapon is where everything went down the drain. Two major mechanics seem to have been changed drastically for the worse. First, at the start of Phase 2 when a ton of adds are summoned, I noticed a severe amount of damage coming at me despite my cooldowns. Literally a single volley from all of them brought me to just over half my HP, meaning a tank at around the minimum ilevel would be screwed if the adds existed for more than 5 or 6 seconds. Secondly, when he casts Dynamic Sensory Jammer and then puts an AoE underneath a player there's normally plenty of time to get out of the circle, but the time between him setting up the AoE and it executing seems to have shortened because that time frame doesn't exist anymore.

Our first time through with me as a Tank ended in failure because we spent over 30 minutes flailing at that boss and couldn't get past it due to 3/4 players being around minimum item level. When I went through a second time as heals (specifically Scholar, which is the same type of healer we had before), I noticed that the patch hurt our maximum MP pretty severely, and unlike my tank, my healer was only around the high 240s in terms of item level. Aetherflow was only restoring a minimal amount of MP, meaning that you have to take Lucid Dreaming if you plan on doing any sort of damage during a fight that could be mildly heal intensive. I'll be honest, pre-4.0 it was insanely easy to heal, but they may have restricted what they can do a little too much.

When we finally caught back up to the Armored Weapon I thought it would be a piece of cake since the tank we had was just as geared (PLD) as I was and this time I was able to heal. While doing the fight I noticed that I was very quickly running out of MP when I tried to help with damage. Oddly enough too, when the adds spawned he took insane amounts of damage equal to the amount I had taken earlier. When I asked him about he said that even Hallowed Ground wasn't stopping the damage output from the buggers. It makes me think that just maybe these adds weren't balanced with the consideration of very small MP pools for heals and for the loss of Parry which would help with large pulls.

[dragonseth07]

that a severe lack of parry.

That was pretty funny.

On topic, I've also noticed that I seem to be taking more damage across the board on my PLD. Massive pulls that were no problem before are suddenly difficult. Healing, too, is harder. I've never let someone die in Brayflox NM before, but now I can check that box.

I don't know why it seems this way. I really haven't the foggiest.

[Leigaon]

They've re-designed things. On my WAR doing HW dungeons I'm getting hit pretty hard, and it's noticeable that the healer has to take care of me more.

But I'm also having to use Cooldowns more. I can't say for sure but to me it seems they've upped the dmg so tanks take more and healers have to heal more and DPS are having to carry the heavy load.

Right now what's coming from all this is everyone is learning their ROLES and not just mind-numbing running through things like a zombie as much. I have to use Rampart in pulls, DPS need to reduce agro via abilities. I've seen SCH's heal me and run out of MP while doing Damage. From looking at this and all over, it seems they've made things a bit "tougher" because we're all connected by the same chain of events.

What the learning curve is now is using the abilities you didn't think you would ever have to. For example, melee have access to some sort of TP regen. A warrior may need to over power a bit more and they will need to call on a Goad.

I am currently seeing the need for support from my party, though we're so use to not asking for it that it's a new thing.

Peoples (not singling out this thread at all I mean if you look at any forum subject) initial reaction is to think something is wrong. Well there might be, but not so much with the game but with us. We have gotten so use to the lack of synergy and co-op gameplay that now that it's becoming something more major, we don't know what to do. Myself included!

[The_Last_Dragoon]

That was pretty funny.

Honestly, I was falling asleep when I posted this and I felt the need to submit it before I started losing my train of thought. I'll correct it though, XD

snip

I was mostly pointing at a mechanic for the second boss in Baelsar's Wall that is required for the HW MSQ being much harder than it should be because of the loss of Parry and Piety. The fact that an overgeared tank or healer would have trouble with it is reason for rebalancing because in the situation where all the players are at or near the minimum item level of 230, the fight becomes insanely demanding of the players.

[Keldon]

I feel I should point out that parry does still exist, we only lost parry as a stat on gear (and you should have been avoiding that like the plague anyway, so no "real" loss of parry%). If I had to guess (I haven't run these dungeons again since SB) the tank was probably trying to spend as much time in dps stance as possible, which is much harder to do now in SB.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

snip

Parry seems to occur much less than it used to, and I believe it's because it is a flat % chance instead of something that was boosted by gear. This is somewhat supported when you consider that when Piety was dropped from the main stats it also suffered a major reduction in total MP for a healer.

Additionally, not only was I the tank the first go around in attempting the dungeon, but I am sure that the Paladin did not drop Shield Oath during the fight in question that I believe needs rebalancing.

[TaleraRistain]

What the learning curve is now is using the abilities you didn't think you would ever have to.

I found myself contemplating using Repose on Bardam's Mettle because even with Divine Benison readily available the tank was taking a lot of damage. This was funny for me because I remember when using it or Sleep on the second boss in Brayflox was the thing to do.

[Darty123]

All fights are balaned around min i level sync settings ? Did you run the duty on that setting ? IF not then there is no balancing issue to discuss

[RitsukoSonoda]

I did this the other day off a roulette. I noticed on PLD I was taking more damage than usual. Then I realized I had no oath on when we got to the first boss XD

I also ended up with the other duty added at that time with the volcano diremite end boss and not realizing shield oath was off till we got to the second boss. Wish lvl sync would stop turning it off if I'm still at a lvl where its available. >.<

[OcieKo]

Mobs have direct hit for one, and not at an uncommon rate. You do get. 60s CD parry chance in role actions. But in general incoming damage has gone up. Gotta be a bit choosier with your defensive CDs and healers are spending more GCDs being healers (some find this to be horrible for some reason, dont ask me).