Hello,
After doing several runs of each path in AC Explorable I wanted to share my opinion on what needs to be fixed/adjusted in that dungeon.
[General Issues]
1) This dungeon gets less challenging if entire party has lvl 80 and exotic gear. Yet, the rewards are lvl 80 exotic weapons and armor. In my opinion downscaling system needs more work to prevent groups from fast farming this easy dungeon and bypass the dungeon mechanics by dealing insane amounts of damage.
2) To be honest, I expected more variety in dungeons. Just like Dynamic Events in outer zones, I expected Dynamic Events inside dungeons so that each and every dungeon run was somewhat special and unique.
3) I think it is extremally not well thought, that when person dies, and resurrects near waypoint, the person is allowed to return to combat. Because of this, 1 person can kite the bosses until the rest comes back without resetting the encounter. Encounters should be beaten in 1 go. Not with trains of ppl running from waypoint to the boss and creating queues. It is possible to rez someone during the fight, so please not let the ppl go to waypoints until the entire team is wiped or the fight is re-set.
[Common Encounters]
[Spider Queen]
Bonus event, for which you get no meaningfull reward, that occurs every single time on every path. So what is “bonus” about it?
issues
- You can bypass the dungeon mechanics, by jumping on the column and shooting from afar the dragon heads. You can also safely destroy the small spiders. By doing this entire party avoids the flaming traps, most of the spiders and makes the encounter extremally easy.
- Spider Queen has only 2 attacks. The melee one is often bugged and not executed and has very long delay.
[Troll]
Boring. Simple to avoid but has a lot of HP.
issues
- It is used to kill Leutenant Kohler. Although I haven’t seen the troll for quite some time, so maybe that issue was fixed by removing the troll.
[Leutenant Kohler]
The boss has great moves that encourage to use the strategy on him. This is good. (Immobilize, chill, cripple, evade, stability, aegis)
issues
- The 2 ghosts that guard him -> when killed they stay killed even if boss re-sets. This means that weak party can kill 1 ghost, wipe, kill 2 ghost, wipe, then kill Kohler. We did this on our first attempt and that was lame. We felt like the victory was not earned.
- You can lure the Kohler and his 2 ghosts will fall back leaving him alone. This should also be fixed.
- Sometimes Kohler bugs and stands still doing nothing.
- Look at issue nr 3.
[Hodgins’ Route]
[Encounter 1 – burrows]
My personal favourite for this dungeon. It is very hard to do by just pure DPS. You need to discover what to do and how the burrows spawns work and come out with proper order. It involves splitting your team.
issues
- Mob AI is problematic. They chase one person around instead of killing the NPC. 4-1 split shouldn’t be possible. Right now, one person can just run around the table without using any skills (well, it just needs swiftness).
- I think it would be great if mobs needed to be crowd controlled to protect the NPC. Right now they just target players.
[Encounter 2 – Artifact Recovery]
The most broken encounter in the entire AC.
issues
- You can run and collect parts. Even if you die couple times it is still faster than killing mobs especially with weaker groups.
- Not mentioning stealth where it gets really really easy.
- If that was intended, I don’t see fun in it. At least leave SOME parts as a drop from certain mobs, so that thief can speed up this part but not solved it solo. Also not stealthed person should die instantly by trying to do this alone.
[Howling King]
Graveling boss that has 3 moves. Cone instant kill attack extremally easy to avoid. Second one is spitting trash mobs that die due to AoE. Third one is to hide and appear causing aoe damage. Also easy to avoid.
[i]issues[\i]
- Boss looks just like 2 other bosses from different paths.
- Boss shares some moves with other bosses from different paths.
- Really easy even with party that deals no damage and generally does nothing. Even when 2 party members are constantly running back from waypoint due to not being able to avoid his SLOW attacks.
- The big room behind the boss with jumping puzzle in it…. What is it for?
… To be continued