I have been running this dungeon at least three times daily for the last couple of weeks and even with the last patch I feel like the last boss needs a rework. It doesn’t feel like I’m fighting the tree, just the gimmick of the path and there is a still a large element of auto-attacking or near AFK stuff going on.
The Up path can still be done AFK by climbing up on the root/vine at the entrance. The tree’s AoE root skill won’t reach you up there and neither will the mortar’s. I’m sick of two people not brining max range weapons and this fight taking a long time to complete because only three people are hitting it, two are auto-attacking and I’m the only one putting any effort in. For as long as this encounter is designed this way, PuGs will use this strategy despite another one potentially being faster. This fight is still a joke.
The F/F path isn’t too bad.The oak hearts are challenging enough to wipe some groups and at least people can melee it and use more than auto attack. This has the potential to be the fastest fight because players are more active but it can also be longest because of the chance of a wipe. It still just feels like I’m circle strafing an object while I avoid three oak hearts – not really a boss encounter.
The F/U path is probably in the best place but could still do with some work. The boss has a tonne of health and once you’ve cleared the spiders that attack you at the beginning, all you have to do is spread out and dodge the sacks it drops. No-one is allowed to use pets or AoEs and most people just auto-attack it. This means it takes forever and often a couple people simply won’t contribute because they don’t have max range. No more spiders spawn and attack you, the boss has no interesting mechanics aside from an egg drop and the only PuG strategy used atm is max range auto-attack.
I see two problems with this. The first is I don’t feel like I’m fighting the tree, I’m either dealing with a gimmick (spiders, mortars or oak hearts) or I’m DPSing what could essentially be an object for all it matters. The tree itself rarely has interesting mechanics (and when it does, they are the secondary mechanics of the encounter). Please give the tree itself more mechanics to make it feel like it’s an important presence in the fight, not just an object I’m shooting.
The second problem is that U and F/U are both auto-attack fights. The gimmick in these encounters can be avoided by staying at max range and shooting the boss to death. For as long as that’s the path of least resistance, PuGs will always do that and lazy warriors won’t even bother to dodge the egg sacks because they can take the hit and regen the life lost. Most of the skills on weapon sets won’t be used because they aren’t single target max range skills (required to hit the tree while avoiding aggro on the mobs in the room) and pets will be essentially useless because they draw aggro or die to mortars which no-one has to deal with because they are out of range of them.
A fight which I find enjoyable but not difficult (but not too easy either) is Malrona. If you do it right you can fight her without being downed. If you snare her and try not to be in front of her, or be ready to dodge if you are, she isn’t difficult to beat. She’s also a lot more engaging than the Nightmare Tree. My point here is that a boss fight can be engaging and more active without necessarily being hard. I’d like to see this fight become more engaging, or at the very least counter the max range auto-attack garbage that is going on.
