I’ll start off by saying the re-tuning of CoF’s Magg path was needed, but improperly handled and that they had the resources to make it more challenging without spending more time reworking their existing content. This is how I would have handled it and why I think they needed to do something… just not what they did.
The issues I have with how it was handled:
1. Events leading up to the Kaboomium Arming are still trivial in difficulty.
Effect: Gives players wrong impression about difficulty of explorable dungeons. This causes players to rage at a specific event instead of having the entire dungeon foster overall skill improvement.
2. The Kaboomium Arming event is already “solved” with a similar strategy that most would consider toxic but will be used by PUGs.
Effect: Players lining up to be sacrificed one by one is not a desirable evolution of this event. You want PUGs to exist, this is a fact, and they will organize only as much as you force them to. If a strategy that involves next to no thinking or communication is developed, it will be widely used. The issue is that its not entertaining or satisfying and seemingly places success in the hands of luck.
3. Rewards were fine, difficulty was the issue.
Effect: Players expect some tangible reward after a difficult encounter. If they had decided to keep the encounter easy as it was before, then the reward nerf would have been warranted.
Solutions I believe could have been implemented with little to no developer work:
1. Warden Event needed a face lift. Make massive destroyer spawn at start of battle.
Effect: The encounter becomes dynamic before the boss has 10~% HP. As it stands the Warden deals next to no damage to a single target and his spawns are easily ignored as they die to random AOE spells cast on him. This would be fine if the added layer of having to mitigate the massive destroyer was added.
2. Maggs should be made immune to all magma and fire but only cross when 3 players have made it to the other side.
Effect: No more glitched Maggs and more then 1 player had to complete your event. This way players will be inclined to actually use the extinguisher and do the event properly. It might even become appealing to clear some mobs on the way there just so nobody dies and to speed up the process.
3. If we are expected to kill the spawns of the Kaboomium Arming event then it needed a wave system similar to the many town attack events. If we aren’t expected to kill the spawns then this event could have been left alone since it already was a “challenge” to stay alive until the end.
Effect: Players are forced to handle waves of 3 silver mobs at a time, similar to the first event which was tuned properly.
4. Gaheron should reset not be able to leave the ritual chamber.
Effect: Gaheron will actually use his fire shield and disrupt the party which he is intended to do. This will make the event slightly more challenging and add a sense of urgency, which is currently lacking.
PS: I have no issue with them springing a fix on us. It was widely expected and it was known that this explorable path was not up to par difficulty-wise with the others. Change was to be expected, I just wish it would have been better implemented.