Noone wants to do Honor of the Waves Story...
I think it’s definitely the underrated dungeon.
Yeah, by the time you get to do HotW, you’re probably already in Orr, prepped to face Zhaitan.
Not to mention the story naturally leads south towards Orr, completely away from Frostgorge. It seems a fair number of players let the story dictate their world movement so going to Frostgorge is kinda like a bonus zone. The other people are there to farm snow trolls/drakes/the few orichalc and elder wood nodes it has.
It’s a pain to do really. The circles on the ground DoT boss (#2 iirc) is fairly punishing, especially if you’re doing it when it first becomes available.
The ice turret hallway boss is similarly really really annoying. It degenerates into a pillar humpfest and takes a long time.
The final boss just throws his wtfbirdsaids on you and you have to be super good about reviving or he’s also brutal.
Additionally, there’s no real reason to repeat storymode anymore, so even the people doing Exp HotW aren’t interested.
Then there’s the lack of excitement about Exp HotW. Path 1 (Butcher) is farm city with an annoyingly long fight at the end. The other paths have randomly huge damage spike potential (really frustrating), and a few super annoying bosses. Mainly, the absurd levels of health (Zealot boss has taken me 20 minutes before…) on fights with static mechanics makes it:
1. Frustrating
2. Boring
3. Inefficient
I think SM in particular should have its difficulty addressed, while EXP mode should have its difficulty preserved, but boss health nerfs to the tune of 33-50% depending on the boss. (Especially the underwater fights). If they want to balance the health nerfs by making the fights harder in some way, I’d be happy with that too.