Ever since the Hotfix on the 22nd that changed the encounters in the Caverns and the Reach to despawn after 15 mins, the whole thing has been riddled with apparent flaws and it’s overall been a disasterous experience for people just now jumping in to farm or pick up the last few things they’re after. There are reports from several people that despite people being in the vicinity or even engaged with the rares, they will still despawn.
There are also reports of rare elites outside of the Caverns and Reach behaving this way as well. One report came from someone killing a rare elite at the Obsidian Citadel. The encounter completely despawned while they were engaged with it.
Another issue which might be the culprit is people are being pushed out of shards while at or engaged with a rare. It was my understanding that being engaged/active with a mob/boss/event would prevent you from being pushed out of the shard you’re in. Similar issues have apparently been happening with Superbloom with players who are actively participating.
Whatever the case may be, the community as a whole, not just those of us on the council do want the change reverted that began on Nov 22nd and to go instead with what we proposed when you asked for feedback. Lower the health, damage and defense of the rares to make them reasonably soloable and add a scaling mechanic that boosts their HP, defense and attack the more people hit it.
The only reason the Reach was successful with this “Murderball” rhetoric was because the rotation of encounters spawning was almost near constant and I don’t believe there was a daily loot lock out on them; providing people the opportunity to train the encounters as much and as long as they wanted. They also had a chance to drop the keys for the multi-room vault which was a fun little side thing that the Caverns lacked (Digs were not a feasible replacement).
With the Caverns the were less rares up at a time and they also had very long respawn times compared to the Reach. They also used to have a daily loot lock out as well making them a non-viable form of keeping us busy. I’d like to reiterate as well that the initial change in May after the Caverns were released was what made grouping for rares harder as the loot reset bi-weekly making it difficult to find groups or people who hadn’t already killed their rares for that period of time. People lost interest and in some cases, hope, that they would be able to join a group for a specific rare that dropped a custom they were after and had given up on the zone. This is why the numbers down there became non-existent on top of the rares being unsoloable except for the few classes with mitigation and heavy heals, but even soloing seems to be impossible with reports of these rares despawning mid combat.
I’m asking you, along with the entire community, to please revert the changes made to Zaralek Caverns and Forbidden Reach and make these encounters solo friendly while scaling per person hitting them.