Ran a new player through AC story mode last night for the first time. Actually it was two new players (lvl 30 and 35) and three level 80s.
Now this dungeon typically takes about 40-45 minutes. A few people might go down on the first chest boss, especially lower level new players, and a few people usually go down and get brought up a few times on the lovers (mostly because of confusion is my guess. No one ever suspects confusion). Nente and Kasha have always been push-overs.
This last time it took less than 30 and there wasn’t a single death:
- we burnt down the commander in less than a minute and he never dropped a single party member below 80% health. Including the lvl 30 warrior in lvl 20 gear.
- Nente brought it"face to face" one time and was killed about five seconds after he decided to “put some distance” back between us. It took as long to drop him as it did to destroy graveling burrows. Only one of his pets spawned with him when he moved.
- Kasha never summoned minions, and never did the purple laser thing (even though I’ve never been quite sure what that does, it at least re-focused the fight for a minute).
- The Lovers were probably the biggest let down. Vassar couldn’t be knocked out of the immediate center area. Usually we push him up the stairs or by the trees. Ralena didn’t move. She couldn’t be moved with rocks. She couldn’t be kited. So for the entire fight they were near each-other, but it didn’t make any difference. I remember when them being close enough to hold hands was panic inspiring. Now it’s just “meh. Rush em down and beat em like they owe you money.”
Adelburn, thankfully, still had his kittens intact. The foefire still hurt and couldn’t be ignored like every other attack in the dungeon, and he was still doing his vortex move, except he wasn’t directly following it up with attacks or AOE any more. He just pulled everyone in and then…sat there until you all got up and moved back.
I know we are good. But I wouldn’t say with 100% certainty that we are “perfect run of story mode, escorting two lowbie new players through their first dungeon in under half an hour” good.
I havent seen and explicit patch notes about it. Does anyone else feel like there was a discrete number or mechanic tweaking going on with this dungeon?