First of all, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to the Devs for Ember Bay; it is a fantastic map! It has a varied amount of creatures, loads of side stories and lore to cover, and a vivid theme that promulgates throughout the map; the skulls plastered through out mountains reminds me of Brutal Legend and the lava rivers and falls emphasizes its uniqueness from Mount Maelstrom.
One of my favorite additions are the Clams located at the Osprey Pillars. I just find it so satisfying to see my Crowd Control skills diminish its defiance bar. Subsequently, for the longest time, I’ve questioned if any of the “Soft” Crowd control skills (e.g. blind, cripple, immobilize, chill etc) did any damage to defiance bars; but after using these conditions on these clams, I can at last confidently use these against larger bosses.
Now, crowd control is a very important mechanic that I think is not properly explained nor demonstrated in game. Every zerg fighting bosses always shout “CC!” but more often than not, it’s not after I shout out my copy-pasted text about the list of CCs that I usually see defiance bars break. This leads me to believe that not many people know what CC is or do not know all the CC skills of their class to maximize their defiance bar breaking potential, and worst case scenario, extinguish all their burst damage skills BEFORE breaking the defiance bar.
In retrospect, it’s hard to see if your CC are actually contributing any damage against large bosses. Mainly because there are no damage indicators for crowd control on defiance bars unlike Condition damage and Direct damage. Therefore, I believe most players just believe the CC bar magically reduces by spamming all their skills.
I would like to point out that there is a dodge roll mechanic tutorial on beginner maps and I understand that at the early levels, there is no access to CC skills for most classes. Thus, I would recommend placing these type of monsters on the 60-80 maps would be helpful.
The advantage of having monsters similar to Clams in Core Tyria is that players will be allowed to individually discover for themselves which skills damage the Defiance Bar without an angry player pressuring them and be able to confidently use that knowledge for bigger bosses.
Thank you for your time reading this!
