DISCLAIMER : This is not about speedrun. Please do not post any comment about that.
So Adampor has been redesigned with the following :
1. Checkpoints packs of monster that needs to be killed to unlock doors (on all 3 boss)
2. Added Multiple packs of monster
3. Increased damage dealt by monster
4. Increased speed of monsters
5. Increased Gil drop in chest
First I am going to go over each point and details if this good or if there is a problem.
1. This is probably the most suited change. It does make sense to reach a boss you need to kill monster.
2. This is in no way a suitable change. This add even more time for a dungeon run and those added monster do not drop anything and do not increase challenge.
3. The damage increase is not suited for this instance. A fully DL gear party will now encounters some difficulty on trash (nothing hard but no face rolling either). So players without gear are going to get a much harder time to clear this dungeon. This means increased time for completion and possible deaths.
But the problem is that to clear that dungeons, you need items drop from that very same dungeon or farm WP to buy DL. This means that iLevel 60 drops from AK has become completely obsolete. (well I have gear so this does not affect me and I cannot prove it but I can clearly sense it)
4. Speed of monsters is rather huge problem for melee. It has become even more difficult to hit moving targets. This especially bad for EU players.
5. This is nice along with repair cost reduced BUT a full run now cost about 15% of durability on a smooth run. So the increase in gil and reduce cost barely compensate the increase of durability loss.
AK runs with a full DL gear group takes around 40 minutes. I expect it will take around 60 minutes for a normal group. Also having a BLM for mez might become mandatory.
Now what will this lead into ?
Non-premade group will likely disappear of be composed only of fresh level 50. This system encourage having highly geared group.
Highly geared players will only run AK 8 times a week. So it will take a high number of player off the waiting list on AK increasing difficulty to make group.
For casual players, this a terrible consequence, they will have to spend they ENTIRE week in AK (with time to find groups and all the wipes)
Castrum will be the new "AK speedrun" so problem has not changed one bit.
What needs to be changed :
- Add BoE rare drop either on trash or boss to make the dungeon worthwile after caping weekly tomestones
- Make trash drop sellable items to make gils
- Remove speed increase. This serve no purpose
- Remove damage increase or increase loot level reward to match dungeon difficulty