More Dynamic Raid Battles?

Both these actually have a simple enough solution, but it takes really long to explain it.

Making it more like Monster Hunter wouldn't help, and I say this as a serious MHW player. The complexity of Monster Hunter comes from something else, which isn't reproducible in Ashes without destroying a core gameplay point.

The short version is that you can balance this sort of thing and make PvPvE more skilled by making a large portion of damage come from 'rotated skills' and a large amount of 'different non stacking DoT' (i.e. two different Cleric abilities with two different DoT, but you can't just put 4 instances of the same DoT using 4 Clerics)

The skill then becomes 'making sure your various DoT sources don't die, and have time to reapply it before the enemy group can apply the same DoT'.

Rogues would then focus on killing the enemy DoT sources, Tanks could tank and control mainly, Fighters and Rangers smack people and occasionally get to actually hit the thing.

Enemies that have 'high resistances to physical damage under most conditions', resistances or 'dangerous things that happen when too many people are hitting them in melee', but aren't damage sponges (HP wise) and can die to unstackable DoT.are the easiest way to make PvPvE without it being a numbers game or damage race.

The Poison Dragon in Siege already has this design, and the two Corrupted Ancients Servants(?) from that raid footage we saw before have quite a bit of it.

So the skill ceiling in terms of 'overall danger' can actually be really high, the Poison Dragon's design indicates a probable path forward.

Right, that's what the Poison Dragon does. If you haven't watched it yet, there's a good bit of footage of it on the Ashes of Creation Youtube, the April Development Update.

A lot of the things most people who want to play Ashes, see as problems in other games, are actually already solved. They're not hard to solve design wise, not at all.

The friction comes when you make a game that does not have Ashes' design philosophy, you aren't 'allowed' to use the solutions, because you are making a carnival ride experience and not a rodeo.

A Carnival Ride game minimizes the amount of time a person spends preparing to do something, either by collecting resources, allies, or strategizing. Games that push further toward this end try to make sure that you don't even need a cohesive party, actual community, or even consumables.

A Rodeo style game, you spend a lot of time preparing and considering how to use your preparations optimally, and what happens as your skill increases is not 'this boss has become mechanically easier because I have more gear' but 'this boss has become easier because I have more skill, so I can spend less time and resources on preparation, making the boss more profitable to fight'.

This is good because it means that with enough preparation, nearly anyone gets to have the experience. Make sure you have the right food buffs, builds, a really tightly tuned party, potions, plans for emergency situations, gear that is outside of your normal but is tuned toward countering the boss' mechanics even if you have to give up some of your damage or usual combat style, etc.

It might take a small group a month to prep to run the fight. They might still even lose. But 'overwhelming a boss with resources' is always an acceptable style because it means the economy grinds along, but more skilled players can define their skill as 'I don't need all that stuff to do this'.

In PvP open world raiding, the more prepared group has an advantage for multiple reasons. The unprepared might be able to beat the boss, but they can't endure the boss under the pressure of PvP. The prepared, especially given how MMOs work, often can endure the boss and at least outlast their opponents, it's just even more costly.

In absolute open world 'fortunate spawn' type scenarios, we might still even see Corruption. I've seen no indication that it won't exist. That means that the person who comes to 'steal the boss' and kills off three people who don't fight back, now become the optimal target. Now they can drop gear.

Cooperation would be better in that case, up to a point.

tl;dr this is already solved by Ashes' design philosopies, they just need things like Tavern Buffs, Guild Buffs and other consumables to have 20-25% impact on your effectiveness in boss fights.

So I take your point as...

"Corruption needs to incorporate more accountability for the resultant death, than just last hit, if bosses are to be more difficult."

Agreed. I feel that if Corruption continues to be 'only if I personally last-hit you', then that system itself is flawed in many ways, so I just assumed, however prematurely, that it wouldn't work like that.