Even with a very good group going max trash into every boss we could take trash into this timer was incredibly tight. It’s an absolute pug breaker of a key. But lets say that you have a very good team and you’re doing these type of pulls I’m describing, like we did. The last boss aoe one shots the party w/o a defensive and then within 2 seconds of that one shot is the most insane soak I’ve ever participated in.
Streets was hard because the timer was too absurd and the last mini boss was way over tuned in terms of mines. But halls has much the same issue where the timer can feel very tight. And the last mini might as well be a boss in of itself. That guy is insane and I don’t imagine blizzard wants to force a specific team comp in m+ but he basically requires a rogue for their heal reduc poison once you’re doing Halls at the KSL level (14-15) as well as some aoe spam slow like frost mage for the ads as they funnel in from the pews.
Now look I’m sure that we might out gear this in a few weeks and I know we will when turbo boost comes but the frequency of the one shot and soak late in the fight with last boss, and the bubbles tier mini boss at the end of halls is really something I just wanted to comment on. That one shot aoe happens more frequently than some classes have defensives, and then what is the plan for the soak that comes after when the defensive falls off during the soak?
Another thing is that the damage from that aoe isn’t even applied until seconds after the ability happens, so you might think you passed the mechanic only to die while repositioning to the echo (echo echo echo) of that ability.
Like wise the swirlies from Shard of Halkias swirlies disappear when they’re exploding giving some dps a false sense of security or making it hard near the end of their exploding to detect the edge of them.
I also personally feel that the % of the mobs in the dungeons is too low and contributes the most to the timer being slow. if you have a bunch of ads worth 1% or less than 1% you have to kill at least 100 ads. The bigger elites are like 2-2.5% and this doesn’t feel proportional to their actual difficulty relative to the 1% or <1% mobs. This means even in mid keys like 13-14 you would consider taking trash into bosses whether or not it makes sense cool down wise, simply because you have to in order to make the timer and count in my experience.
I’ve been in a few groups with some absolutely cracked dps that even when confronted with the last mini the mini took longer than the boss before it. I can’t stress enough that this mini feels like a boss in of itself because of its lethality, group damage, and length of time to kill.
I think the major problem for me is the damned Wicked Bolts. Those things hit like a truck on 12-13s and they’re a basic spam cast. Not only it is already a tough job to interrupt a pack of mobs that spam that much but also as a healer it’s a bit rough with the dots they leave on people. You have to make sure you’re spending a GCD dispelling, but also watch for healing Thrash from the Shards of Haikas, but also help interrupt wicked bolt because that’s damage avoided, but then if your tank is bad you need to dispel the magic dot they put on them that gives damage taken increase.
Not to mention the innate vomit inducing experience that are open dungeons with patrols and things X class can accidentally pull, the dungeon itself has become one of my least favorite ones.
Too much spell spamming, too much trash count, too tight of a timer. HOA was decent back in SL, but as expected of blizzard, they will just screw up thing that r working fine.
HoA is the last outlier after Streets was wacked back into place. Slashers and Reavers don’t give anywhere near enough % for the effort it takes to kill them, the Shard mini bosses too. 721 million hp on an 14 for 2.9% is absurd and there’s 3 of them, even on a 10 it’s 500 million, 1/3 of the first bosses health.
Timer is fine, the amount you need to kill is far from okay.
Bro, you gotta pull 6 slashers + 3 reavers and I am not even memeing. Slashers and reavers are very inefficient but we have to pull those stoneborn mobs. Many players gave feedback on HoA: it’s a skull dragging, especially too many dispels and quite miserable without DK.
It does feel like you need to kill way more trash than you did in the old version. We used to invis straight from 1st to 2nd boss, now you need to pull like 5 packs between them.
Just buff count on slasher and reaver or nerf their HP, they are much worse than miniboss (you can skip it) in streets on total % count. You can’t do nelf tech and skip any in HoA because you need 6 slashers and 3 reavers. You used to MC or destroy slasher in SL HoA but they don’t give any compensate without MC or destroy
There’s more to the story than what the highest timed level of any given key is though. Halls of Atonement is timed on a 17, but only with Prot Pal Tanks, Vengeance DH, and Protection Warriors. This makes sense because every single pack in the key has a caster that spams repeated half HP damage wicked bolts. The half of the tank roster without these things (unless you count blood, which requires a massive talent point cost to gain the bugged GFG silence) is seemingly incapable of doing the same. Keep in mind, this is in a key that is already not timed on an 18 like some of its colleagues.
It’s also just a really poorly designed dungeon for pug groups. Mass stops are needed for the spam casters, which reduces the amount available for the groundskeepers, which easily leads into a situation of pulling extra mobs while already being tapped on resources from the danger of each pack.
Just because a key can be timed at a high level does not mean that it is well designed. I think most people agree with this concept. I’ve yet to meet a single person that actually likes Halls of Atonement or thinks it’s well designed on an actual mechanical level. Which is a shame because I actually enjoy every other dungeon in the rotation, this one is just such a drag
I don’t think “perfectly balanced” is a reasonable label for anything, so false argument to start with, but what about fun?
I haven’t heard a single person say that HoA is better than it was, precisely the opposite, it’s been “they took a really well-liked dungeon and made a slog of it.”
Every time you respond to players complaining about enjoyment, your limited ability to decode their comments directs you to immediately correlate that to a desire for free success.
I’m no psychologist, but I think I can translate for you:
“I’m having fun in X dungeons, but this one isn’t fun. I want to have fun in this dungeon too.”
Now I understand that fun is subjective and it wouldn’t be easy to ensure parity. But they’re telling you what would make it more fun and you’re being your same old obtuse, socially inept self again and totally missing the point and replacing it with some casual agenda conspiracy to redesign the game out from under you.
Your ability to hear through the noise is gravely lacking. Human beings can be poor communicators, but when they speak to bad listeners it’s much, much worse.
Of course you do. And you think as a result that everyone else’s is opinion is invalid. Because you haven’t developed the emotional intelligence to incorporate others into your world view.
Honestly, I don’t know who’s wrong or right. We can all only know how it feels to ourselves, but all I can say is that last season some dungeons felt harder than the rest, but they didn’t feel the way Halls feels. It feels cruder, spikier in an unfriendly way. Where Floodgate had some rough sections, the trash felt fair when it was hard.
Halls feels like it was re-designed in the style of hostile architecture. It feels like they wanted to subvert player tendencies, essentially designing against our preferred behaviors.
It’s not an awful dungeon, or even that far off, but it only stands out for being unfun. The only fun boss is the gargoyle and the rest are just hp sinks with vaguely obnoxious mechanics.
It’s entirely fair if you enjoy it. I get little pleasure from fighting two reavers and a gargoyle for a full minute while we chew through their combined 1+ billion health pool.
It does feel good to get through the shards when you combine big pulls, but so much of everything in between is clearly intentional filler and obnoxiously so. It’s cramped, filled with patrols and the count feels like is was done in excel with no appreciation for how the pulls would affect the average group. I’m sure it wasn’t but that’s how it feels.
Halls was designed to punish the behavior of the game’s best players. As is typically the case, those attempts to curb the most egregious offenders, such as adding more casters or fleeing mobs to discourage massive pulls, only push the best to adapt, and000 end up as a tax on the average m+ group.
I’m sure it’s a delicate balance, but I think Halls needs some tinkering. In the way that Cinderbrew and Floodgate have been massaged into masterpieces of hard but fair content, I think think some tlc could make HoA a well liked dungeon again.