[Feedback Request] Cyclops Combat Preview Shown in May Livestream

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I think this depends more on the devs and their overall class design, rather than even combat/encounter design or players' inventiveness.

L2 had static buffers that you had to have in your party if you wanted to be optimal, static main healer that you'd only change if you had chonky members (though even then it'd be debatable), static party setup due to specific class abilities.

Intrepid have stated that they want to have "one of each" as a "default" composition. To me that implies that archetypes will have some abilities that can't really be replaced by another archetype and that are important in a lot of gameplay cases.

If that is not the case then we'll have ourselves the classic "everyone's a mage and/or archer and wants DA BEEG DEEPS". If a full raid can do with a single tank - most tanks will be useless, so people will reroll. If the raid can do with 1-2 healers instead of 4 - the same situation. If majority of bosses have only one resistance (melee or range or magic) - raids will just get a ton of non-resisted dps to bring down the boss instead of coming up with some proper setup.

And as Noaani said, any raiding guild will try getting players that will be needed for the best endgame content, which means that any unneeded archetypes will be shit out of luck in their leveling process, which then creates a snowball effect of everyone rolling into mages/archers or smth similar.

Yes, there can be bosses that are stronger resisted against one type of damage, but I think that those bosses should have mechanics/adds that require the resisted archetypes, so that those people also have something to do. This way players can create their own small families that stick together for much longer and where each player knows their own archetype like the back of their hand, instead of having a revolving door of alts and substitutions "because this boss doesn't need any fighters so you either become a mage or get fucked".

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I shoulda used this word before here, but I think that we should add "complexity" as a valuable term for these kinds of discussions. Difficulty is too broad and vague.

I'd rather have a slightly more complex boss than a "difficult one". Difficulty usually comes from incoming dmg and pace of the fight. If the fight is fast-paced and the damage per hit is high - the fight is really difficult. It can be super simple in terms of complexity of the combat and actions though.

And I think that the Cyclops is an example of that. He moves a lot, strikes relatively often and then has a fairly high dps aoe that killed a few raiders and held the majority of the raid below half hp. That's kinda difficult to manage. But in terms of his complexity and the variety of players responses to it - there was barely anything there.

Melees ran for him, ranges dpsed him, tank was doing god knows what and cleric healed. And this didn't really change at all during the fight. The only thing that changed was the targeting that went from the boss to the adds to the tree to the boss (I don't think wolves were even targeted).

What would, imo, be a better boss is something that has you do a few more different actions, but has slower pace and/or lower dmg. So the fight might not be as frantic and thrilling (though these were debatable during the showcase), but it'd be fun and interesting. And it would also show newcomers what they might expect later on in the game, when Intrepid would in fact speed up the pace and ramp up the damage, while keeping (or even adding) mechanic complexity.

And I think Azherae's post showed several nice mechanics that wouldn't really overwhelm players, as long as the boss itself wasn't killing them in 1.5 aoes.

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In a few months. So if you want to upgrade or buy the bundle - better start saving now.