Why do you fail at Hashmal?

[MoroMurasaki]

Can't be too careful. I doubt many forum players even do savage so they might not be aware of the harder hitting things in the game and basing their experiences only on the faceroll content.

Fair. I suppose I have more context because I know Tridus. That being said I am sure the suggestion isn't to make faceroll more challenging at the expense of Savage raiders even though from what I understand about Savage this tier some people might actually prefer a difficulty bump xD

[Zojha]

You realise that would make some Savage encounters near impossible right?

It would - To be more precise, it would make every healing check that is based on the current strength of healers impossible, because the strength it's based on is gone. That's like having a fight that requires a silence and then removing silence from the game.

No big issue if it's just "one" fight, but the entire game is plagued by that.

Still no big issue for a vertical progression game like this, because you can fix that going forward without touching old content - You simply ramp up the health/VIT scaling. 20k healing on 20k HP is a full heal, 20k healing on 200k HP is only 10%, 40k damage on 20k HP overkill and 40k on 200k only 20%. It's uglier than going for a one-whole approach, but it's quite doable.

[AxlStream]

It would - To be more precise, it would make every healing check that is based on the current strength of healers impossible, because the strength it's based on is gone. That's like having a fight that requires a silence and then removing silence from the game.

No big issue if it's just "one" fight, but the entire game is plagued by that.

Still no big issue for a vertical progression game like this, because you can fix that going forward without touching old content - You simply ramp up the health/VIT scaling. 20k healing on 20k HP is a full heal, 20k healing on 200k HP is only 10%, 40k damage on 20k HP overkill and 40k on 200k only 20%. It's uglier than going for a one-whole approach, but it's quite doable.

But then you mess with the HP checks and tankbusters we have as well. No point fearing Halicarnassus's Critical Hit if I have 200K HP as it'll hardly hit me for more than 70K already without cooldowns.

The best solution is what Ameela said, make every other content turn up the damage a notch.

[Zojha]

But then you mess with the HP checks and tankbusters we have as well.

You're messing with it, sure - But you're messing with it every single time you upgrade a piece of gear, every even patch when the iLvL gets raised, every expansion when unsynced comes along.

I see no issues "messing" with old content so long as it doesn't make it impossible to clear, it's old content. And if you go min-iLvL for the challenge? Well, you'll get your old HP values and properly fear that mechanic again.

In case you misunderstood: Ramping up the health scaling means newly introduced items get relatively more VIT to gradually increase the gap, not that you suddenly give every item thrice as much VIT overnight. New items already give you more VIT, they already make old mechanics lose their sting, go back into O1-4 at the end of SB and you'll have an easy time seeing as much (or just run some unsynced coil for the lulz). You simply accelerate that process until healing is relatively weaker.

[Tridus]

You realise that would make some Savage encounters near impossible right? I wouldn't want to do Neo Exdeath's Almagest where everything is spent while our healers are nerfed because the content for the casuals is too easy.

Yes. You'd need to rebalance most of the encounters in the game. But the point is to give more options than "do damage that isn't threatening at all", "do continuous damage fast enough that it's threatening", and "one shot people". Burst healing is so strong that the kind of periodic damage you see in experts is no threat whatsoever for a healer that's awake. Take Zenos. He likes to sit there if the fight goes long and spam Concentravity. Which is nice and all, except it's absolutely no threat whatsoever because it's extremely easy for the healers in this game to heal you back to full when he does it. So even he casts another one two seconds later, who cares?

WoW had this same problem back in the Wrath of the Lich King era, and they responded to it in Cataclysm* by dramatically increasing HP pools while not increasing HPS, effectively making it harder and slower to heal someone to full. That opens up options for fights where damage might not be lethal the instant it hits you, but because it takes more than three seconds to get your HP back up, the hits coming later may prove problematic.

Rabanastre is plagued by this, where you have damage that either one shots people (Hashmal) or damage that doesn't one shot people (both bosses after Hashmal), and on the latter ones people tend to not die as often simply because healers can get you fully recovered from any survivable hit before the next one.

*There was some pushback on it in Cataclym because lots of people didn't like the change, but I tend to think it worked better than what came before it.

[Ameela]

Why not simply adjust the damage output of casual content to be higher instead of nerfing numbers people are used to already?

[Tridus]

Why not simply adjust the damage output of casual content to be higher instead of nerfing numbers people are used to already?

The solution to "too many things one shot people because that's the only way it's dangerous" is not "make more stuff one shot people".

I mean, if everything is "dodge" or "one shot", you don't need healers at all. At that point you just have red DPS and green DPS. The root of the problem is that burst healing is too strong relative to HP pool size, and you can't fix that by adding more damage.

[AphraelAmarantha]

Lol, nerfing healing would make runs in Expert pretty impossible for me since I have a hard enough time keeping tanks alive since things hit there incredibly hard and fast in those dungeons (only one that really doesn't is Temple of the Fist and even then you still need to pay attention or dead Tank).

But uhm, the red circle pools that chase you are what kill me the most, usually because I don't see them until it's too late because I am looking at hp bars making sure people aren't dead. I use raise a lot in Hashmal lol. And even if I do see them, if I'm not fast enough to move, I usually either get one shotted or get hit by two at once because they are all stacked on top each other x_x. Everything else Hashmal does I don't die to, just those dumb red circles and it annoys me to no end that I cant dodge those unless they far away.

[Claviusnex]

I think one of the things that add to the difficulty and affects many players is the lack of visibility. In many fights you can see the full area so you have a better idea where stuff is and where not to go. With Hashmal you can't really get a full view of the field and the various towers, bells and such block an awfully lot of what can be seen. I know I spend probably as much time to reposition my view to avoid mechanics as I do focusing on targets.

[Minako_Nightsong]

I think one of the things that add to the difficulty and affects many players is the lack of visibility. In many fights, you can see the full area so you have a better idea where stuff is and where not to go. With Hashmal you can't really get a full view of the field and the various towers, bells and such block an awfully lot of what can be seen. I know I spend probably as much time to reposition my view to avoid mechanics as I do focusing on targets.

I die to his flaming fist mechanic almost every time and a lot of what you said is the cause of it. As soon as a notice he jumps and I start towards the middle whipping my camera around to find him. I see him and start my run away from his fist side and bam, too late! This is the only fight in the game I pull my camera all the way out and it still gets me. I don't die to the other boss's stuff at all or any of Hash's other mechanics.

I also do not understand how you can see the fight every single second. Even on a red mage, I need to look at my bar to see procs and cooldowns and stuff. When I am a white mage I need to keep my eye on the party and alliance bars. Even if I put this bar literally in the middle of the screen I still need to look at it for a second.