Bozja's balance makes it brutal to rank from 8-10

[OvernightSiren]

Now that Bozja has been out for a few weeks I think more cracks in its inbalanced structure are beginning to appear.

I haven't been able to fully dedicate myself to Bozja, but I'm shocked that, merely two weeks after release, I'm having so much difficulty finding groups for fates in there. I'm rank 9 and it seems like there's little-to-no incentive for people rank 10+ to do fates anymore, and since most people *are* over rank 10 now, it makes it much harder to reach that rank myself as I find myself doing fates mostly alone. I've been in one instance now for over an hour sending /shouts that I'm looking for a group and I get back crickets. My only options then are to do the fates in the top part of the map solo (and risk dying and then losing mettle) OR to do fats in the lower rank areas and take much longer since they give less mettle. This is not good balance.

I think it comes down to the poor rewards structure. The lockbox rewards aren't as plentiful and the more desirable ones (the mount) are so common that the price is already down to just 1 million on my server. Combine that with the fact that you only get 2 lockboxes and only from Critical Engagements it makes people have very little incentive to even bother.

Compare that with Eureka, where most players will drop what they're doing and do literally any NM that pops, even the low leveled ones because they give crystals, logograms and a decent chunk of lockboxes and also where the more desirable lockbox rewards were much rarer than the lockbox rewards from Bozja.

It's not like "getting your relic" is even an incentive to do the fates, since they're SO much faster to do in HW fates.

Eureka's balance system for their fates creates an environment where low levels players don't feel like they're doing it solo, because there are always people around to do a fate with you whether they're in your party or not.

So what fixes can SE implement to fix this inbalance in the next part of Bozja? More lockbox drops with better lockbox rewards and make the more desirable rewards (mounts) be rarer. Have fates that drop specific things (like Cassie in Pagos). Make the relic as efficient to get from Bozja as it is from the otuside world (or MORE efficient in Bozja).

This is just...really bad.

[Driavna]

...

Are you using actions, essences and potions?

[Stepjam]

Every instance I've been to in the past few days has had people running around doing skirmishes.

Also yeah, do make use of the lost actions and essences you should be building up over time. Platebearer/Veteran is good for defense on non-taking classes. Beast is good for DPS classes that put out a lot of attacks quickly (so something like samurai or monk benefit from it a lot, but Summoner less so.) And then Lost Cure 1 or 2 is a solid choice for healing (ignore 3, it's just an AoE version of 1 with limited charges)

[Driavna]

Every instance I've been to in the past few days has had people running around doing skirmishes.

Also yeah, do make use of the lost actions and essences you should be building up over time. Platebearer/Veteran is good for defense on non-taking classes. Beast is good for DPS classes that put out a lot of attacks quickly (so something like samurai or monk benefit from it a lot, but Summoner less so.) And then Lost Cure 1 or 2 is a solid choice for healing (ignore 3, it's just an AoE version of 1 with limited charges)

Potions are much better than lost cure IMO. They also free one skill slot for something better.

[MPK]

wait till you get to do 10-15!

[Silica-chan]

I did the whole level process solo without joining a party (outside of people inviting me in a CE, which I left after the CE was completed) and I never really used anything outside of the healing actions.

I think Bozja is pretty solo friendly, and it still felt shorter than getting to max level compared to Eureka. But that's just my opinion

[OvernightSiren]

wait till you get to do 10-15!

So that's literally the point of my post--getting there is difficult because they've made almost no incentive for anyone over level 10 to actually do the higher rank fates.

[Liam_Harper]

From my experience most people are doing FATES, it's the Cluster farm parties that are hard to find and Castrum is slowly starting to decline in activity. To get a party, the way it seems to work is you do FATEs solo until a CE pops. When you get into the CE, you put "lfg" into chat and usually get a party quite fast. Most of these groups stick around and continue farming FATEs until the next CE.

A tank with Martialist is my personal favorite for Bozja, since you get tank cd's/immunes, decent damage and can take Arise for party support. Good mix of useful and unkillable.

[LaylaTsarra]

i have my second toon 45k away from 15. Seriously leveling isn't that hard especially if you're doing one character. Hope they don't nerf that for awhile. They do need to clarify the importance of gear upgrades in my view given the purchase amount for those is simply silly and anything important for future raids there shouldn't be based on rng drop in Castrum.

[M0rrigan]

I think Bozja skirmishes scale with people in the instance instead of people participating in the fates. So if your instance has people afk waiting for criticals, people farming clusters and fragments and waiting for Castrum, they're scaling up the fates for the rest and that's kinda unfair, because they have no incentive to do fates and that's understandable.