While I have no idea about any of this, because I’m in no rush to try this challenge (we’ve got all season), I’m willing to bet a lvl 60 Brann won’t die in 30 seconds and his dmg will be on Par with what it was prior.
Im just spitballing, but pre-nerf Brann was OP. Even at 18 he was tanking t8 bosses and was doing damage at or above a lot of classes/specs. That didn’t seem right.
Between being ilvl 616 (the Heroic Vault rewards) and having Brann at 60 with 4/4 Curios, that challenge might just be possible for most specs.
Idk though. Think it’s a bit too soon to tell given no one has a 60 Brann and no one is rocking full heroic gear. (That I’m aware of)
The boss in Tak-Rethan Abyss feels super easy. Did it on an 11 as Prot but the boss spent so much of its time in some form of channel where it wasn’t doing unavoidable damage and just required some dodging - but you could keep wailing on it and just maneuver your toon around the time-delayed ground aoe. Definitely going to be more of a frustration for caster that have 1-2 second cast times, though.
It’s not, but the balance of his damage and health values are still at the spot where his contributions are supposed to be greatly factored in.
I run him healer as well, usually. And I have cleared 9/10, just didn’t want to slog through 11 in the current state of things. But, they have yet to actually adjust Zekvir himself to make up for the fact that you are now down an ally entirely both in the damage and health value department.
He can no longer tank even a single hit for you to breathe, nor is he healing enough with his entire kit to out-pace the damage Zekvir does, including with potions and defensives being used to offset it all.
Zekvir does too much damage on average. Full stop. The one shot mechanics are fine, I don’t mind a positioning fight/punish. But auto attacks should not be 1-2 shotting and the slow shouldn’t be killing people 100-0 in 3 ticks.
Knowing Blizz, time gating to time gate. (I’m not saying I agree with it, but it’s either that or they screwed subverting up and dint realise/plan on changing it Tuesday)
I got him down to 5% multiple times on my WW monk at 596 prior to the hotfix. Since the hotfix, Brann is now taking almost all of his health per hit from the boss and struggles to hold aggro and I certainly can’t take the hit. This is with me coming back at 605 and Brann almost 15 levels higher than he was when I attempted the first time.
Also, I’ve got 4/4 curious on both slots and multiple heroic ilvl pieces already. I can confirm that it isn’t easier with 20 extra ilvls of gear.
They have a modifier on Brann’s damage specifically for Zekvir post patch. As well as they removed his damage resistances specifically when fighting him. He’s doing something like 70 or 80% reduced damage. The actual scaling difference between 38 and 60 is going to be an additional 78% or so.
Doing the math, with the damage nerf on that boss, he’s getting a whopping maybe 15-20% extra damage. Lemme tell you, zero plus 20% is still zero.
Yeah, it’s just an insane shift. I’m very frustrated I didn’t switch to alts to farm for the aimed shot upgrade and just do it on Thursday, going from 10% pulls to this is just a mess.
You won’t be getting the 40% was the point I was making here.
And the egg isn’t something his damage modifier is touching. It’s quite literally only Zekvir himself. And the extra damage he’d see is 15% extra, from the 70-80% nerf. He’s not even 1/2 as strong at max level as he was pre-patch at level 20 as far as his damage against the boss goes.
Not that I care about that part, I care that redirecting damage to him results in a 1 shot. So, if I need to take 2 seconds to vanish for a DPS window for the egg, or to pop Vial, Brann is hit 100-0.
I could absolutely get this done as is if he wasn’t suddenly tissue paper.
The main issue I have is after Thursdays hotfix, Brann now dies within the first few seconds of the Zekvir fight on Tier??. Before Thursday, he used to actually tank and be useful. The dps check on the eggs was tight but not impossible. More gear isnt gonna solve how useful Brann is. Nor is more gear gonna solve you being auto-attacked for 2 mil damage on every auto. Before Thursday, Zekvir used to auto me for 500k-700k. Which hurt but was doable. Now I get auto’d for 1.7 million damage. Between that and Brann being near useless now, the fight feels near impossible. Just another example of “shouldve done it earlier before they hotfixed it.”
If it was this like on release, I wouldve accepted it and came back after a few weeks of grinding gear. But it wasnt. It was wayyy easier the first 3 days of release.
I haven’t even tried it yet. I watched Xaryu beat it on ?? as Arcane Mage in ilvl 593 and it took him forever and he just barely got it in a basically flawless go, and still died but after the boss died so he got credit. lol
And that’s one of the best players in the WORLD playing a class he probably has 1,500-2,000 days /played on.
I think the solution is Blizzard shouldn’t be making this type of content unless they’re willing to do a full send on having internal play testers play the content and get this designed and balanced for every spec.
Seems like they keep going for one size fits all solution with inadequate bandaids like Bran, which I assume was an attempt to make it work for all roles.