Guild Wars 2

Marriner’s Compass is no longer a purchasable ring, it was one of the stat combos that gave Magic Find back before it was removed from gear. When they removed %MF, they made the ascended rings one-time stat-selectable.

ANet’s already fixed the older rings that are still in the game (I had an old Red Ring of Death that initially wouldn’t go into the forge, but it was able to after whichever patch).

I don’t know if they’re willing to support legacy items like this that are no longer obtainable. It might be a situation of “if you want to upgrade, you have to update to upgradable items.” Ascended rings are pretty easy to come by as is.

Anyone who’s participated in fractals since HoT landed has experienced this bug: Upon starting the fractal, one or two players may be booted back to Lion’s Arch from the lobby instead of joining the fractal, and rejoining greets them with “The world you are trying to join is full” as an error message. “Fixes” to get back in usually involved dropping party, relogging or changing zones multiple times.

I’ve found one way to reproduce this bug consistently:

1. Enter the lobby with a less than full party (tested with 3/5 and 4/5 parties)

2. Initiate the ready-check or travel-vote (whatever you want to call it) but don’t complete it.

3. Have the remaining party members join the party and enter the lobby. This usually happens when an LFG listing fills the party up.

4. Finish the travel-vote. The new party member(s) that joined will not be part of the vote since they joined after the game did the count for “players in the instance.”

5. The player(s) that joined late will be booted back to Lion’s Arch and get a “The world you are trying to join is full” error message.

6. If players join after the travel-vote, but do not enter the lobby (stay in Lion’s Arch), then enter once the fractal is loaded, they don’t encounter the bug.

100% reproduction the six times we tested it. I would expect the instance size for fractals to be fixed at 5 and for players to be able to join at any point without error. Seems like there’s a bug with allocating the size of the instance based upon something in the lobby, be it the vote numbers, number of players or something else. We certainly weren’t exhaustive with our tests, so there may be other issues, but hopefully this helps work towards a fix for this disruptive bug.

STEPS TO AVOID THE BUG:

• If you start a fractal, don’t initiate the ready vote until you’re either full, or sure that there won’t be any new party members for half a minute (could take yourself off of the LFG temporarily).

• If you join a fractal, ask the party if they have started the vote. If they haven’t, enter the lobby with them. If they have, wait for them to enter the fractal before joining.

Traits: I took Reaper/Spite/Soul Reaping.

Overall I feel like there are too many enemy health thresholds that must be met for the traits to function. Soul Reaping is by far the best in this sense, as it is only really concerned with your health/life force thresholds. I took 3/2/2 in Soul Reaping to maximize my Life Force generation and Shroud uptime. The health threshold complaints really come into effect in Spite and Reaper. I took 3/2/2 in Spite, but there’s plenty of room for variation. Two of the Minor traits and one good trait in both Master and Grandmaster only work below health thresholds. That means that on top of Gravedigger being balanced for the massive damage it deals under 50%, a lot of good traits only function below 50%. This makes the effort of getting through the 100-50 zone a lot more difficult.

Now on to the Reaper traits themselves:

• Minor traits seem to be designed to push the Reaper into that “horror villain” style that the devs spoke of, but they’re also a little bit diffused imo. Shivers of Dread is just necessary for Necro to not have to deal with giving enemies a free escape when they’re feared. Cold Shoulder comes in to give a damage reduction against all chilled foes, as well as increasing chill duration (that aggravating 1/4 second that Reapers get in so many places). I’d really like it if Cold Shoulder were more focused, either giving 15% damage reduction vs Chilled foes, or 25% increased Chill duration, exclusive of eachother. Right now with it giving both 10% buffs it just feels negligible. I also feel like the Chill durations of a lot of skills were artificially lowered because of this trait’s existence. As a whole, Reaper puts out a lot of Chill that barely lasts until he finishes a skill cast.

• Adept traits: Recharge duration on shouts being dependent upon how many foes you hit is a little annoying. I would like it for 10% recharge to be baseline, and 5% additional reduction for each foe hit. They could still have the 35% reduction when 5 people are hit, but missing your 600 range, 1 second cast time shout and getting zero recharge time is… bad. Traits on other classes are largely net benefits, but Necro gets quite a few that do nothing in many circumstances. Chilling Nova looks good for a Condi-Reaper, but the 15 second ICD is painful for the measly 2 seconds of Chill that explode. This trait needs increased range, longer chill duration or lower ICD. As it is now, it seems like a throwaway trait slot for a PvE Condi-Reaper that doesn’t need the other Adepts. Relentless Pursuit is another horror villain trope, and it feels okay as it is. 40/80% reduction would be nice since Necros are relatively immobile.

• Master traits are where Reaper can really shine. Chilling Victory grants might and lifeforce once per second per foe when striking a chilled foe. This is where some of the Reaper Shroud might comes from, as well as sustaining lifeforce. This feels like a pretty balanced trait. The might duration could be a little longer baseline, but that’s probably unnecessary. Decimate Defenses is probably going to be the meta for PvE-Reapers, as the 50% crit chance against 25vuln foes can bring you up to 100% crit chance in Shroud, with zero Precision. Then we have Soul Eater which looks pretty dull compared to the other Master traits. The siphon is lackluster because GS attacks hit so rarely; only #3 and #4 hit multiple times. The value for the siphon needs to be buffed considerably as it looks like it was simply copied from the minor Vampirism trait, even though GS hits much slower than other weapons. The 3% reduction on cooldowns when landing Gravedigger is also pretty unnoticeable. 3% of the longest cooldown of 30 seconds isn’t even 1 second. For how slowly Gravedigger casts, you’re not gaining anything by using this trait. It really just suffers from under-tuning IMO, and (large) number increases could make it attractive for Reapers.

• Grandmaster traits on the otherhand look pretty cut and dry. If you are a Condi-Reaper, you’re going to take Deathly Chill for some minor damage on the Chill condition (hey look, another health threshold). Blighter’s Boon is a defense/sustain focused trait, which will likely see use in WvW or PvP only. The life force gain is pretty minor while the heal does double Altruistic Healing. I think this may need tuning to increase the life force portion, as it’s underwhelming for a Grandmaster. Reaper’s Onslaught is the go-to for power based Reapers. The increased attack speed in Shroud means more might and vuln as well, making this a clear choice.

TL;DR: It’s a beta, feedback is being given! Greatsword feels a little slow or a little too meek, some of the shouts look like great additions to the Necro while others look very… situational, and the Shroud looks and feels amazing!

Shroud Skills: I’m pretty blown away by every aspect of the shroud skills. The animations are great, the damage is pretty good, the utility is quite strong, and it even offers good Condi application. I was running Strength runes which turned out to be complete overkill; the Shroud autos with the might traits and Strength runes had me at 25 stacks easily. I found life-force generation to be pretty reasonable, allowing me at least 50% Shroud uptime.

• Auto-attack feels great with the trait to speed it up, generates TONS of might and vuln (from the traits). Can burst down foes once they drop below the health thresholds for all of the traits to activate.

• Death’s Charge #2 adds a nice bit of mobility to the Necro’s kit, but it’s not amazing. The distance is not very long (maybe shorter than Warrior GS3) and the blind application seems unreliable. I also killed myself a dozen times in Verdant Brink dashing off of cliffs, because unlike nearly every other dash in the game, this does not stop at your target. You will always dash the same distance until you hit a wall. This might be intended to allow the Necro to catch foes more easily (get in front of them instead of stopping behind them) but it’s a little off-putting. Probably requires more practice for proper use.

• Infusing Terror #3 is a pretty amazing substitute for the targeted fear in normal Shroud. It pulses Stability on to you for a duration, and can be re-activated for an AoE Fear. Keep in mind that all Reapers will Chill foes that they Fear, so it isn’t a free escape for an enemy. This skill feels great, maybe even overpowered, but then again Necros do lack stability. AoE Fear is the icing on the cake.

• Soul Spiral #4 is a massive AoE, applying 12 stacks of poison for 4 seconds and moderate damage. It is pretty scary to see another player use this in PvE, let alone PvP; great job on the animations. This skill is a great followup to activating #3 so you can’t be interrupted during the spin. Could be a potential staple of Condi-Reaper, although I haven’t tried that yet. I’m happy with the numbers on this skill, again it almost feels like they may have put too much strength into the Shroud that could have been in Greatsword or the Shouts.

• Executioner’s Scythe #5 also feels pretty good. It’s got a pretty sizeable cast-time at 1 1/4 seconds, but it stuns for that same duration with a short Chill and Ice Combo Field. The best part is that it has great damage, scaling up at 25% increments as the enemy loses life. Unfortunately it only hits one foe, which is considerably at odds with the rest of the Reaper skills. I’d be willing to trade the majority of the Stun duration for the potential to hit more targets with the damage. I’d also be willing to trade damage for reduced cast times, as this skill could be a great finisher for leaving Shroud and starting up the Gravedigger train.

Shouts: The shouts as a whole aren’t amazing, largely due to the sometimes ridiculous cast times, but a couple of them give the Necro new utility and offer reasonable effects. The damage on them feels pointless, outside of the elite. ANet pls use title capitalization for shouts!

• You Are All Weaklings! has a large suite of effects, all of which are pretty nice. The 3/4 second cast time feels a little sluggish, perhaps a shave down to 1/2 second and this skill would be quite strong. If the damage was removed and the cast time shaved this would be perfect.

• Suffer! is a somewhat novel way to cleanse conditions, shedding one to five and chilling on top. The damage is completely unnoticeable and again, I would love to have it removed in exchange for shaving the oppressive cast time on this shout. The chill duration also feels really lacking. 2 seconds (yes, I’m ignoring that 1/4 second) of chill after effectively silencing yourself for a 1 second cast time seems counter-intuitive. I would never take this skill over Plague Signet which is instant, double the range, reliably transfers five conditions every time and breaks stun on the same cooldown. This skill needs a massive reduction in cast time, or it needs to apply stability before it starts casting, along with longer chill duration. The chill is the unique part of this spell, but right now it’s barely there.

• Rise! offers mediocre damage and a few paper bags that join your party before swiftly departing. Jagged Horrors are useless; they will die before they complete their summoning animation. Might see fringe use in Minionmancer builds; I can’t think of any way that numbers could make it useful, it needs rework.

• Nothing Can Save You! is a great shout. This should be the benchmark that the other shouts are compared to. The 1/2 second cast time isn’t too bad while still… existing. The potential 10 vuln application and signature Necromancer boon stripping are great, and 5-9 seconds of Unblockable will make this skill very useful in PvP. The cooldown even feels perfect at 35 seconds base.

• Chilled to the Bone! actually works kind of well. I was scared of the 2 second cast time, but it does offer some stability to help mitigate all of the interrupts that will be flying your way. The damage is capital-G Good, the chill duration is acceptable for an elite spell, and the stun can be potentially fight-swaying in any game mode. My only complaint with it is the cooldown; at 120s it feels like it should have a longer range (currently 600). Having this interrupted would make me feel awful. There’s room to shave numbers though, either by increasing the range to 750-900, reducing the cast time to 1.25-1.5 seconds (again, self-silencing for 2 seconds for a 2 second stun is kinda backwards, at least it chills for longer than the cast time), or decreasing the cooldown to at least under 2 minutes…

Overall Impressions: I love how Shroud works for Reaper, it’s got amazing animations, great damage and powerful utility. Greatsword feels sluggish and has some minor usability issues, but the resetting mechanic and the pulsing blind are strong. Animation for some of the GS abilities is lacking. Shouts have decent utility but some of them come out a little slowly for the benefits they provide. Traits have a bit of wonky numbers, but I’ve not spent much time with the class to tell for sure. I see potential for Reaper to be a burst-finisher in PvP, as Necro has access to tons of buffs when foes are below 50% (still lacking on mobility to burst a mobile foe though, and this is just theorycrafting after a few hours).

I played with Berserker stats, focusing on might-generation with some control. I know that I didn’t min/max my stats with my traits (over 100% crit chance sometimes) but whatever!

Greatsword: Feels slow, but that’s apparently by design. Is it good design? The reset mechanic for Gravedigger feels good, and the 3/4/5 have good utility, but it’s lacking in damage (outside of Gravedigger) for the sluggishness of the casting. Feels pretty unresponsive and it’s hard to land skills against mobile enemies. Could really do with a leap or short dash, maybe even as part of the auto-chain. That is certainly in line with a horror villain lunging at you.

• The autoattack chain feels sluggish and does poor damage for the speed it works at. I’d appreciate a quicker first and second hit with the current speed on the final hit (chilling hit). An increase in the number of cleaved enemies might be nice as well (the horror villain carving down foes in swaths).

• Gravedigger #2 seems to be the bread and butter of the weapon. I really like the reset mechanic, but boy is this skill slow. Shaving it down to 1s or 3/4s would make me happy, preferably by removing the after-cast spin (horror villain’s aren’t known for their flourishes… or are they?). The range and damage are in a good place as far as I’m concerned, consecutive 10k crits (in Zerker) every 2 seconds in a full circle is nice, but getting below 50% on bosses to enable that mechanic can be a trial. Perhaps change it to “Gravedigger’s cooldown is reset by 80% when it lands on a foe with Chill. Can only reset once per application of Chill.” This would allow you to reset at any time with careful application of Chill, while removing the monotony of “2 > 2 > 2 > 2” below 50%.

• Death Spiral #3 has pretty devastating vuln application, but the range/AoE feel lacking. It could also be that the animation is just poorly describing where the skill hits, but I found myself missing this skill sometimes. The vuln/damage could be spread out over the animation instead of all happening at the end, because the cast time is pretty long. The cast time is probably balanced where it is now, but I really want it spread throughout the skill’s animation instead of being so easily interruptable/missable. I like the idea of the AoE being in a line, but it could use a little buff to the range (since it is a lunge).

• Nightfall #4 is a very strong skill for a weapon. Damage, blind and cripple pulsing over a duration is a lot of strength for a skill. I did find myself missing this ability a lot on even mildly mobile enemies though. The small radius (starts at ~200 or lower to a max 300 at the end) being centred on the character feels shorter than the autoattack range, which makes this skill more defensive than offensive (can’t be used to chase someone, only to disengage/bunker). If this ability had 150 range and was centred on the enemy it was cast upon, it would be much more intuitive. That or increase the radius to 300 for the full duration so it at least matches a Mark.

• Grasping Darkness #5 I also found myself missing quite often. The cast time on top of the short travel time for the claws means that enemies can either out-range the skill (only 600 range) or sidestep it. It is quite a narrow grab, especially if you are trying to land it on multiple enemies. If you try to cast this on someone dashing laterally, it will miss if you target them (have to cast it in anticipation of their path for it to hit). Compared to the Guardian GS5 skill this is sorely lacking, despite being faster. If this skill applied no condis or damage but had 40 degrees more arc to the cone and maybe 150 more range, it would be amazing. It feels like ANet is being really conservative with the strength of this skill, and that’s kind of disappointing since it’s one of the few gap-closing abilities Necro has.

CONTINUED

• Underground Facility features a satisfactory number of objectives for a Tier 3 Fractal, however the trash mobs and respawning enemies make getting to those objectives too drawn out. This Fractal also suffers from the overpowering nature of Dredge as an enemy. They start by completely negating one of the players methods of control in their immunity to blindness. Guardians and thieves lose an incredible amount of defensive capability that they would normally have just “because Dredge”. Dredge are also some of the most CC (crowd-control) heavy enemies, where nearly every type has a Daze, Stun, Knockdown or Knockback. This might not be terrible for players if they could kill the enemies while Stability lasted, however the Disaggregators also give all nearby Dredge Protection and other boons. Not only do they give Protection, but it is of a short duration that is constantly refreshed. This means that any attempts to steal/convert/corrupt the boons is meaningless (they are instantly reapplied on the Dredge). The “Clown Car” serves as both the best and worst part of the instance, since the hordes of enemies at least have loot tables, but is by far the least exciting and most arduous part of the instance. I frequently find myself waking up from a fugue thinking “Oh we must nearly be done with this” only to see that 75% of the Dredge reinforcements remain… The final boss in Underground Facility is fun (outside of the occasional AI/aggro glitch) and shouldn’t be changed.

Proposal Functionality

• Uncategorized: Make Uncategorized Fractal exist only in Tier 2. The mechanics, trash mobs and boss are all well balanced, just not for Tier 1.

• Cliffside: Outside of the third objective (arm seals) this Fractal is relatively well balanced; perhaps lower the damage scaling on the Cultists so that when 8 of them look at you, you can survive. Improving the player’s ability to identify the spells/projectiles that the Cultists fire could also help (consider lowering their speed). For the arm seals, either reduce the number of spawns, or remove the veteran spawns.

1. Move Cliffside to Tier 3 only, possibly while making Aetherblade available in Tier 2&3.
2. Change the way the initial miniboss fight functions and keep Cliffside in Tier 2&3. Perhaps a dying guardian/rebel cultist/benevolent spirit gives the players a Hammer of Retribution that they can use to complete the three objectives, instead of having to fight the cultist leader. Tie the Colossus’ baby toe to a stick and let us beat people with it. This would also help explain to new players why the hammer that has worked so far can’t be used at the final boss (it still doesn’t make any sense to me) as well as slightly shorten the instance to be more in line with Tier 2.

• Underground Facility:

1. Completely remove Disaggregators from every place they spawn, or radically change how their boons function (entire duration is applied after 5 second channel, boons are only applied within a VERY small radius, boons are only applied to one unit, etc.). If the Disaggregators are going to stay, change all Veteran spawns to normal, and give the players some way to counter them.
2. Either remove respawns, or greatly increase the time and decrease the number of spawns. If respawning enemies are to stay, make the first wave drop loot at normal rates while the respawns drop nothing, instead of none of the mobs dropping loot.
3. Remove the Clown Car. If you want to keep the loot reward for the Clown Car, move it to the mobs that spawn in the Bomb/Laser room.
4. Rebalance the number of Dredge that have CC, either by removing skills, or replacing the mobs with different ones. Extending the cooldown on their CC will not help since there are so many of them that players have no ability to dodge/block/stability through the spam. Improve the player’s ability to identify the “ground waves” that so many Dredge shoot out; brown on brown is very hard to see, and it is impossible to pick out which “wave” is a knockdown, which is damage, whether it is two waves or ten coming at you.

Associated Risks
The risk of making Uncategorized Tier-2-only and Cliffside Tier-3-only may be that players could feel like there is less variety/randomness in the Fractal system. This could possibly make Fractals less interesting to some people.

No risks to rebalancing Underground Facility. It is the sole reason for many people that do not participate in Fractals.

Proposal Overview
Normalization or Rebalancing of Fractal length/difficulty. Both the perceived and actual difficulty of Fractals were partially addressed with the Fractured update, however there are still outliers that players dread due to the length of time required to complete them, or the difficulty in doing so relative to the tier they are in.

Goal of Proposal
In the Fractured update, you identified easy, medium and hard instances and separated them out so that players couldn’t get a “bad roll” and end up with the three hardest Fractals. This went a long way in improving player experience, however there are outliers within those tiers:

Tier 1:
Swamp (2): puzzle > boss.
Aquatic (3): trash mob area > puzzle > boss.
Urban Battlefield (5): trash mobs > miniboss > large trash mob area > trash mobs supported by deadly siege > boss
Uncategorized (6): trash mob area > double miniboss > puzzle > miniboss > trash mob area > boss

Tier 2:
Urban Battlefield (5): trash mobs > miniboss > trash mob area > trash mobs supported by deadly siege > boss
Uncategorized (6): trash mob area > double miniboss > puzzle > miniboss > trash mob area > boss
Molten Facility (5): trash mobs > trash mobs > trash mobs > puzzle > boss
Snowblind (6): trash mobs+puzzle > miniboss+trash mobs > trash mobs (usually ignored due to difficulty/numbers) > boss
Cliffside (8): miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > boss

Tier 3:
Cliffside (8): miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > trash mobs > puzzle/run > boss
Volcanic (7): trash mobs > run > puzzle > miniboss > puzzle/run > difficult boss (counted boss as 2)
Aetherblade (6): trash mobs > puzzle > puzzle > trash mobs > trash mobs > boss
Thaumanova (7): trash mobs > miniboss > trash mobs > puzzle > puzzle > puzzle > boss
Underground Facility (~58): trash mobs > trash mobs during puzzle part 1 > respawning mobs during puzzle part 2 > trash mobs > many respawning mobs during puzzle > miniboss > Clown Car (read: trash mobs about fifty times) > trash mobs > boss

• Urban Battlefield is a long instance for Tier 1, however you do get the assistance of the very strong NPC Charr to help speed it up a little. Probably fine where it is.

• Uncategorized is longer than the other Tier 1 fractals because it contains two champion fights. While they are not particularly long fights, they add a significant amount of time to the instance. The trash clears are also made significantly more difficult due to the aerial nature of the walkways.

• Cliffside is much longer and more difficult than any of the other Tier 2 Fractals. It features one miniboss and three objective areas on top of the final boss. The third objective area (arm seals) is particularly difficult due to the regeneration of the seals. Players almost always rely on the fact that mobs will not spawn if one of the initial Chanters is left alone to complete this objective. It becomes incredibly difficult to make progress/survive if they die since the seals regenerate much faster than players can destroy them, and the group can not split up due to the massive damage, bouncing projectiles and Vulnerability from the Chanters. (Splitting up is only viable on low level Fractals where the mob damage is not very high).

• Aetherblade is pretty short, simple and fun. I think it would work well to make it available in Tier 2 as well as Tier 3, if only for more people to experience it.

SEE NEXT POST

In my opinion, the major problem with the Dredge Fractal is the dredge.

Every mob is immune to blind. Every mob negates that one method of control within the game. Guardians or thieves are almost necessary for projectile blocking skills, but a major form of CC that they can apply is just useless.

Almost every mob has massive, multi-hit AoE:

• Oscillators shoot a fork of sliding AoE that can wipe parties.
• Resonators’ AoE is at least a single line of multi-hit AoE, so you can side step it. That is, if you could see one of the attacks among the twelve rolling towards you because there are always a horde of enemies.
• Excavators not only evade during tunneling (so that you can’t interrupt them, nice counterplay there), they have a delayed AoE knockdown when they surface. Again, not an issue with one, but unavoidable when you have to dodge through every other attack.
• Bombers throw bombs on you. Not on a cooldown mind you, they just throw bombs on you as their autoattack.

This is the most kitten ing factor of the dredge in my opinion, as there is almost no counter to it. If the AoEs only hit you once, it would be fine, but they are the “shockwaves” that can hit you multiple times depending on how you are moving. If you don’t dodge toward the enemies you will usually take at least one hit from the wave. You can’t effectively build tanky in Fractals, so this AoE spam (that isn’t evident in other fractals from trash pulls) will repeatedly wipe parties. This either results in parties just running through mobs (a sure sign of poor dungeon design) or having to slowly, repeatedly pull small groups away. That’s assuming they aren’t some of the mobs that respawn…

Mobs have multiple forms of CC and conditions:

• As sad before, Excavators AoE knockdown as well as bleeding (not that bad) and vulnerability (stacks quickly and painfully).
• Oscillators knockback, because getting to them through the fields of AoE wasn’t difficult enough.
• Disaggregators daze for a very long time, and there are multiples of them in every pull.
• Resonators have a knockdown.
• Reverberants bleed and stack a large amount of vulnerability.
• Strazars have a knockdown (noticing a theme of hard CC?).

The repeated CC makes it impossible to dodge everything, so you will invariably be disabled in some way, setting you up for some of that lovely incoming damage.

AoE boon stacking:

• Disaggregators are the only offenders here, but the fractal abuses them so much that they provide major issues. When they play their gong, they give Protection, Might and Swiftness to all nearby dredge. So now the party’s damage is 33% less effective, and the enemies all deal even more damage (because that was necessary). Not only are these boons applied, they are continuously applied. You can’t even steal/destroy/convert the boons because they will be reapplied in 0.25 seconds.

If your party has adequate reflects/blocks and stability, you can get around most of the damage and CC… For as long as those skills last, which isn’t long. Guess what, the dredge are not only masters of DPS and control, they’re also all tanks! Having to constantly cycle defensive abilities among party members just to stay alive to even get to the bosses is ridiculous.

Infinite spawning compounds the issues with the trash mobs, and the sheer number of them that are in the Fractal makes little sense. Why do we get a dozen beefy NPCs in Ascalonian and nothing to help in Dredge where there are even more mobs? DO NOT REMOVE THE NPCS FROM ASCALONIAN!

The button puzzle, bomb ferrying, laser rush and clown car would be leagues easier, even with the absurd number of mobs, if those mobs weren’t AoE CC machines with boons always stacked on them.

That being said, respawning is still a damaging issue, but it could be dealt with if the numbers were simply toned down. The mob density and length of space you have to walk is just needless padding that I can’t understand why it hasn’t been removed or toned down. Thaumanova has mobs spawn in groups of 6 at the most; why does Dredge spawn dozens?

Dredge are annoying enough to face in small numbers, when players have to trudge through unending hordes of them, waiting for them to exit the bus before we can get through a door, it becomes the least enjoyable, most dodged and most difficult experience possible.