Thread: state of the dungeons in 4.0

Mobs are definitely hitting harder. I thought DPSing was going to be a cake walk without the Stance Dance. There were several dungeons where I really had to focus on keeping the tank up, and I could barely pull out cards let alone DPS.

And then you admit to purposely failing mechanics, wow. Gotta wonder if I ever ended up in a Duty Roulette with you.

Does difficult imply fun though? It really depends on your perspective, for instance, Ultima was often considered an easy but fun fight. However, as a tank I've seen both the good and the bad from parties when it comes to the dungeons. You'll see some groups destroy it, and others struggle on basic mechanics. Personally I like them, they're difficult enough, especially the very last instance you do in the story. Encounters need to be designed with fun in mind first before difficulty.

That being said, I think they should make a challenge mode that does not provide gear rewards, some other form (to make it not feel like it's necessary or to devalue experts) should be there like vanity weapons/mounts/minions etc. It would be interesting to see dungeons tuned for max gear, or even pull a PotD and have no gear at all.

Originally Posted by usalia

i was purposely failing on mechanics and was never killed as a tank.

You had a decently good healer then, that's why. And honestly, they're a saint for putting up with that crap because its stressful and annoying, especially if they're unfamiliar with the content or newer at healing and are trying not to panic because their tank wants to eat every mechanic under the sun.

Dungeons don't need to be difficult to be fun. I'm honestly tired of this mentality of wanting to go back to 2.0/2.1 versions of dungeons like Pharos Sirius and Amdapor Keep. They don't do challenging dungeons because people don't want to RUN THEM when they're too hard. If they want to make an "Extreme" version specifically for challenge or whatever, then that's one thing but I don't want to see the content we're supposed to farm for currency be made difficult and therefore watch Roulette queues all but dry up because no one wants to put up with a 45-55 minute Expert Dungeon. I don't know if you were around, but this happened with Pharos Sirius in 2.1 - back when it was hard. People either outright refused to unlock it and therefore never had to run it in their High Level dungeon roulette, or they just would queue and then instantly leave if they got Pharos Sirius. And since the penalty for withdrawing had yet to be implemented, it was rampant.

So no, I don't particularly want to go back to that.

I agree. Way too easy.

I’m one of those tanks who firmly believes that the team did redesign encounters within these dungeons and made them harder then the dungeons we had in f.e. Heavensward. The “trash” packs hit harder than they did before and it really is noticeable. Next to that, they changed the placements of several packs and have some even roam around a certain area.

There have been several occasions where an additional packs appears out of nowhere in the middle of a fight, which have caught me off guard.

Boss battles have more mechanics they perform at the same time or within immediate succession from each other, keeping the party on their toes and I think that’s a good thing. It makes the encounters feel more alive, but the party has to be prepared to handle them.

I can’t relax for a second during a dungeon, because i have to be on the lookout for additional enemies appearing out of nowhere, using my buffs at the right time, while keeping my hate in check on each individual target. While i’m doing fine on that during boss battles, i still haven’t figured out how to properly use my entire tanking kit while doing it.

Maintaining hate on trash packs however, is a very daunting task when trying to maximize your damage output. Most of the time, i end up resorting to just spamming Flash, Circle of Scorn and my hate combo, just to keep hate. On top of that, there are multiple occasions where the damage i take (with buffs active) is so high that the healer is having problems keeping me alive. During those time, i help the healer out by using Clemency to heal myself (or others).

It’s a very stressful process, but a good kind of stress.

The only thing i don’t like, is when adds pop on the opposite ends of the encounter and each of the DPS focus on a different add, making it extremely difficult to take over hate. Especially if you have a heavy hitter like a Samurai or a Red Mage. They can generate a lot of hate out of nowhere, which is tough to deal with.

Now, i guess that there are more than enough tanks who don’t have a problem with it and i’ll be the last person to boast my skills, saying that i’m a great tank. It could be that it’s a matter of not being geared well enough, or not fully grasping my new toolkit. We’ll have to see in the days to come, when i get more Verity gear and more experience with my new toolkit.

However, i do believe that the team made these changes to make the dungeons more challenging for most of the playerbase and make it harder for them to mass pull everything up to the next barrier. This will hold true for a large portion of the DF runs you do with random people. Once you run it with pre-made groups, who know each other’s skill level, the runs will become easier for sure. The difficulty is currently in the right place.

Just… Don’t look down on others who are trying to do their best at clearing content. Not everyone is sitting on the same skill level as the top 5%, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad or not trying.

I've been having a lot of fun with the new dungeons. They keep me on my toes and generally seem to go faster than HW dungeons. My favorite has been the boss at the end of the 69 dungeon and the healer check DoT. I've been having fun timing cool downs for that.