Alright… I just soloed 33 Cliffside on my Nec and… Idk. I really don’t know. It was something I always dreaded to do, even on lower scales, simply because of the mechanics there.
First off, I know, yeah, 33 isn’t exactly a high scale but if you put it in relation, pre-patch that meant you ran over 100 islands, now it means you’re done with 1/3rd of the scales, so you would expect some degree of difficulty. I also usually don’t mention this either because I see no reason to, but I have dyspraxia, which means I have terrible timing and often mess up key-presses by simply pressing the wrong key or doing even more kittened things. And I have to say, the biggest threat during the whole fractal was… my own stupidity. I haven’t really felt at danger from the mobs once (Though I admit, Archdiviner would’ve probably caused more trouble without minions. His Leap still only hits for roughly 6k on this scale, though. lol) and my total of four deaths didn’t happen because the enemies were particularly threatening, but because I went with the wrong approach once, managed to Death’s Charge myself down the platform, I dropped the hammer too late and because thinking you can just walk through the fire at the chest seal is a dumb idea.
Yet, I was able to solo the fractal without really struggling a lot overall. Before someone goes ahead and says “yeah go do higher scales”, I did various fractals (or at least part of them) between 50 and 80 solo. I can’t say I often felt actually threatened, though there were some scales that actually proven to be pretty difficult solo, for example 64 Thaumanova, basically every Aetherblade Retreat because kitten those Thugs and the beginning of Molten Facility (those Dredge hurt like mad idk how they do that). The main reason for them being so threatening (solo) is actually the damage and HP they have; they’re killable but they don’t blow up immediately and if you don’t watch out, they do hurt. I liked that.
Imo, such balance should be achieved throughout the whole fractals. Enemies, bosses in particular, that don’t die immediately but also don’t take 10 minutes to kill (not that this is a bad thing in general, but most bosses in fractals have mechanics that get tedious and boring if you’re forced to do them for such an amount of time in one go)
There’s also some point around 50 where the game seems to just flip a switch for bosses, at least it felt like to me. Enemies in 41-50 survived some time because of the instability, but looking past those levels it quickly feels like their Atk-Stats started to get a bit lower again/stop rising while they get toughness for breakfast every day, whereas before you look at them and they die. It would be better if it starts scaling faster or at least more constantly.
Now, I know I can’t back this last part up since I don’t have any numbers, but from my observations it really feels like this.
