Matoya’s Relict Critique

[Noitems]

Pro's:
-Aesthetic is fun, and is a nice return to HW architecture which I've missed since Gubal Hard mode.
-Mobs die in just a matter of seconds. If you have a good comp with people who know what they are doing everything in this dungeon can die in a matter of seconds.
-First boss' mechanic is cool but janky. I've found as a melee I gotta stand with the tank to get my ball in the hole otherwise it goes at some weird angle or just barely misses the mark. Makes it more fun, but it's a minor issue.
-The second boss is the perfect mix of an adorable yet unique fight. A four way tankbuster is a very cool concept and I hope we see it in a future EX-Savage fight.
- The last area with the glowy fire is very cool. A static mate of mine called it "Hell's Lid on acid".
-The last boss has some cool ideas, mainly the checking your axis to get knocked into the right spot.
-The music is so Banjo-Kazooie I got Gruntilda's Lair vibes the whole way through.

Cons:
-Waaaay too much waiting between mob pulls. Mainly because the Poroggo is guiding us we have to wait for them to do the animation, then the thing happens, then we can move. It kills the flow of the dungeon while Hero's Gauntlet didn't really have it be THIS bad.
-The last pull before the second boss. I would love to meet the person who thought this was a good idea. I get the concept is learning to use the water to bounce upwards, but like to put such a small trash mob there after a big pull can get like 11 mobs seems just dumb. I'd rather have like 8 mobs there in two split groups so you can keep momentum going.
-The bosses die waaaaay too quickly. The second boss can be brought to 40% before going into the Cloud phase, and it just shocks me. The final boss can be brought to near 70% before the sucking aoe dodging. Add in the last boss doesn't have too many gotchas like Hero's Gauntlet Berseker and it just feels flat.

The aesthetic and everything for this dungeon are great, I just wish those cons could be fixed to make it more fun and varied. Like imagining if you could fight the 1st and 2nd bosses in a different order each time for variety would add some value to getting it in the roulette.

[Thmas]

Agree with gilmorej wiped in trusts a few times, but the aha moment was great, and watching the water wipe bubble from up top, worthy smile.

[Vahlnir]

I thought the dungeon was pretty well designed and that the bosses were fun. Even threw in a couple mechanics we hadn't seen before but were relatively quick to learn.

[ReynTime]

Oh boy...

When we get introduced to the dungeon and Matoya goes on about us having to listen well to the instructions I assumed it would be played out somehow. But it was just to add flair to the story context...
Likewise going back to the entrance all the time to move to the next portal didn't add anything either. I can understand that in alliance raids like LotA, but this is a light party duty, and if we were going back to the entrance every time, might as well just have allowed the party to pick which frog to go with first. It's a small detail that would go a long way (IMO) into not being another anti-choice 1-2-3 typical Shadowbringers dungeon.

And then there's the last boss... On one hand I like that it introduces new mechanics, on the other those mechanics are constantly interrupting the pace of the combat with rather long periods when you can't target the boss. This is an expert roulette dungeon, if they simplified dungeons to make the "chore" more swift to do every day, they should at least be consistent with that mentality when designing the bosses as well.

If anything this dungeon really makes me wish they'd design extra light party dungeons NOT to be part of expert roulette so they can offer a bit more in terms of execution... They're clearly not going back to that otherwise.

[Besame]

Agree with gilmorej wiped in trusts a few times, but the aha moment was great, and watching the water wipe bubble from up top, worthy smile.

I wish they didn't try out their new fangled moves on MSQ. Tried on trust then went to real group and someone had done it already and called out attention to it after they kept dying hehe
.

[Tlamila]

t's not bad, certainly much better than the Gauntlet (my most hated 80s dungeon, even more than Cosmos). I love the music and in general the "Fantasia" theme. And I do hope they give us some of the furniture from the entrance, the style is really cool.

But some things really bug me:

- the pulls, as said by others. Way too small, it's ridicolous. Especially after the huge fun that was Anamnesis last pull, now they keep giving us dungeons with forced tiny pulls. Why??? Trash is generally unfun, small pulls just make it so much worse. I haven't healed it yet but as tank I barely need to use any mitigation at all in that dungeon;

- recycled assets. While the dungeon manages to look great in general, 2/3 of it are recyled. The first corridor is basically Antitower, and the third is Hell's Lid (Hard), as others said. The second has some Ivalice raids feel but I'm glad it's not recycled per se. And after Gauntlet which was basically built off existing open world areas...we are getting half the dungeons per patch and they even stopped giving them unique designs? Man, do I miss SB;

- porxies. I'm so tired of them. I hoped we had left them behind with the first but nope. But then I have more the MSQ itself to blame for that than the dungeon. But the skill names they gave to the boss, they're not even fun, just stupid and annoying.

And at this point I basically do 80s roulette in addition to Expert just for the sake of variety, since just two dungeons in Expert forever gets old fast.
At least we have a deep dung - oh wait we don't.
At least Bozja is fun and rewarding - oh wait it's not.

[Kuroka]

It's a small detail that would go a long way (IMO) into not being another anti-choice 1-2-3 typical Shadowbringers dungeon.

Technically yes, but not here as we first needed the earth, then the water and finally the fire to burn it - cant expect old matoya to stay and wait till we're done lol


Also the fire part is sohm al hard, not hells lid...

[Vyrerus]

I never have understood why that portrait painting is such a big deal.

Basically it was in French royalty's art collection, they loved it, and added got it sent along a path that eventually put in the Louvre, where it came to be a landmark in art history. The perspective the woman is drawn in is said to be a novel concept for portraits at the time, but there were obviously other artworks that used it.

So simply put, it had an in road to get famous because of being a possession of royalty, and this leg-up lead to it being in a feedback loop of, "It's famous, because it's famous."

[Jirah]

Reading these responses and seeing the starred comments shocked me abit, the debacle of dungeons is much more divided than I thought.

I wanna know what is lost to make a dungeon even a fraction more complex? More so if we are givin just one per patch

[OrpheusKappa]

Nice points you have there OP , let me add some recent feedback I got from DF people(which is close to my own feelings about this dungeon too) after doing this dungeon on a daily basis in expert roulette: this dungeon seems undertuned in general not ony in bosses not having many mechanics but trash pulls also seem to melt faster than usual pulls in lvl 80 dungeons and definitely faster than heroes gauntlet.