For Implementation Bossing CWKPQ Improvements for Archers

tl;dr: CWKPQ is miserable for Archers, especially Marksman. In order of priority, I'm suggesting the following changes:

1. Remove dispel from Pirate boss. Please do at least this if nothing else!
2. Lower Pirate boss HP. Maybe raise Mage HP.
3. Drop crimson hearts in archer room.
4. Make Dragon's Breath/PKB work on CWKPQ bosses.

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Why?

Have you seen the smegas that repeat every 5 mins looking for an SE for cwkpq that never seem to find one? I watch those smegas go by as a Marksman, perfectly capable of joining them, and I ask myself "do I want to suffer through another 2 hours of cwkpq hell as an MM?". And I find that the answer is a resounding no, I'd rather do pretty much anything else instead. So tough luck to them.

As archers we have to deal with the two hardest parts of the PQ: The Archer Room, and The Pirate Boss.

1. The Archer Room:
We have to dish out 50m damage in under 15mins. This is not really a problem for most people. I actually like how this is, because it discourages bringing in poorly geared SE mules (though it does still happen). The problem is that weaker/lower lvl archers may have to use an apple to get through this part, meaning they pay an extra cost no one else has to pay. To add insult to injury, the crimson guardians in other rooms drop crimson hearts, but for whatever reason the ones in our room don't. This is unfair. If anyone should be getting crimson hearts, it should be us (especially to offset the potential extra attack potions used). Honestly, we should even sweeten the deal further. Make archer room have a much, much higher drop rate for the hearts so that we pretty much always reliably get a bunch of them. It's the hardest room so I feel it's deserved and might help just a little bit more to encourage more SEs to sign up.

2. The Dreaded Pirate Boss:
We have to solo one of the most obnoxious enemies in the entire game. Especially painful for MM, where he exposes a lot of our weaknesses as a class.

First, the dispel:
The dispel is devastating for MMs, because it means we constantly risk losing SI, which we won't get again for a while. The most typical party setup is to have NL and SE take the top bosses and have buccaneer and warrior do bottom bosses in one of the far corners. Meaning the bucc will only come by to trade SI for SE when it runs out. If we lose SI before then, we can't reasonably keep bothering them to walk all the way over to rebuff, so that's it - no more SI. The issue is that it's very easy to get dispelled while attempting to plant another puppet down after it runs out. Fighting this boss without SI means we do -15% dps (and we already have the lowest single-target dps in the game). It is also harder for us to repin the boss without SI, and to make matters worse, dispel also removes xbow booster. So getting dispelled puts us in a really bad spot, especially if he's already started walking over to the left a bit. Now we attack so slow we can't even pin him at all anymore until we rebuff booster. But during the time it takes to rebuff booster and start attacking again, he'll have moved up even closer, pushed us back further with sharks, and probably is about to dispel us yet again (and maybe the NL now too). So now we have to keep alternating between booster and attacking him to push him back a millimeter at a time, while also having to keep repositioning forward because he keeps knocking us back with the sharks. It's this dumb game of tug-of-war we have to play to try to get him back in the corner. The whole time the NL is probably getting annoyed with us because we're letting the sharks hit them for over a minute and we're ignoring them as they spam "SE plz". It's an absolute mess. It's far too unforgiving.

Removing dispel from this boss largely fixes this. He really doesn't need it. He's annoying enough as is even without dispel. Another thing that would help (especially for MM) is to allow Dragon's Breath or Power Knockback to knock him back. We could use that as an emergency tool to quickly repin if he manages to wander too much, since our slow attack speed takes far too long to repin.

Next, Puppet is sometimes unreliable?
There's also something strange about how puppet works in general. Sometimes he just flat out ignores it and it take several retries to get it working again. I always try to attack him for a bit before planting another puppet down to make sure that I'm keeping aggro but even still it seems to have a random chance of not working. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanics are behind why this happens, or if it can or should be fixed, or if it's even just something I'm doing wrong personally but just wanted to point it out as another pain point I experience here that makes this fight more annoying than it should be.

Lastly, he has too much HP:
With the current meta of how this PQ is run, the Night Lord, the strongest DPS class, gets to fight the Mage boss which is the easiest boss with the lowest HP out of all the bosses. Meanwhile the Archer, with some of the weakest DPS, gets the toughest boss. Typically the NL will finish up the Mage first while I still have like 30-40% of the HP bar left on the pirate boss. That's such a massive difference. I can't even come close to matching them. That just feels really demoralizing. Obviously there's other factors at play: their boss has less HP, and I waste a lot of time having to repuppet the boss over and over. But still, it tricks me (and maybe the rest of the party that's watching me get ratio'd) into thinking my damage is trash and they're just that much better than me. Especially if the bottom attackers also finish up and now everyone is helping the pathetic weak little archer with the last remaining boss they couldn't handle themselves. I know it's probably not originally intended for archers to be fighting this boss (and definitely not intended for us to SOLO this boss), but that's how the meta on our server has evolved and that's probably what we're stuck with. Trying to do it any other way means two people dealing with the shark barrage which is far worse. If archers are going to be the ones always fighting the pirate, and there's no damage buffs on the horizon for us, then the boss should be adjusted to suit our inferior dps. Perhaps give the mage boss an HP buff in return to make sure top attackers don't finish too quick. If it doesn't make sense lore-wise for the mage boss to have higher HP we can just pretend they're using magic guard or something

Sorry for the long post. I just think this is a very important issue for both BM/MMs as well as the other classes that can't convince an SE to join their runs, so wanted to really explain in depth about what makes it such a bad experience for us and what I think would help make it more bearable. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

BM here, no issues whatsoever at cwkpq, keep it as it is.

Max Hamstring easy pirate control.

 

I would suggest MMs to convince the NL to take over the pirate boss, on the other hand BM is S-tier to attack pirate because of hamstring.

 

MM main here. You've just gotta learn to time your puppet with his dispel/attacks and choose a puppet placement option that works best for you. Also do NOT swap with the NL, fighting knockback from sharks is way more annoying



You have 3 options:
1. Use the portal, place puppet and get back up. Most consistent way to maintain aggro however SI is essential to push pirate back to the edge. Also when the warriors come back for a rebuff, you have to cast puppet again so he goes back to casting sharks at you because if you SE or MW, pirate will be on your face and dispelling you before you can react.
2. Green asterisk, the BM preferred spot. I find this to be the most annoying, inconsistent spot due to his janky aggro. Use at your own risk.
3. Blue asterisk, the preferred MM strat. Time your i-frames, cast puppet while standing near the edge and the puppet will spawn on the platform behind him. He will shoot sharks to the right, sometimes jump around but he will not be annoying to you. This is the most consistent strat however it isn't the best DPS since his hitbox will go into the air with him so you will have some downtime.

Keep working at it, figure out which one of these strats works best for you. A suggestion that I would definitely push for is fix his god damn aggro.

 

Hmm. Forgot about Hamstring. That would help a lot. I'll admit I've never played BM (and never get to be in parties with them as an SE myself), so I guess I probably shouldn't speak on their behalf. I have just heard people joke about how SEs hate CWKPQ so I assumed they were in the same boat as us MM. I guess these are mainly just MM issues then

I don't think swapping with the NL really is any better. I tried this once and it was even worse. Then we both get hit with sharks all day. Sure, NL would dodge a good percentage of them, but MM doesn't. We get pushed into Mage boss over and over and have to reposition every couple of seconds which is annoying and tanks our dps. I'm sure the NL didn't like it as much either. We might as well swap with the mage instead then and stand at the bottom while the NL fights both of them.

I think however you try to run this with a MM, it's pretty frustrating. And that's not a good thing, because we need more SE that want to run this content, even if the MM population is small (and maybe the MM population is small *because* we have so many issues like this). And I personally want to run this content and not be annoyed by it. Hence my suggestions.

 

In my opinion the most fun thing about playing MM is developing your own strategies to fight annoying bosses like this because you don't get to hold a button and watch youtube like every other class

 

Hi its me, captain of the I main Marksmain and hate CWK club.

Hamstring and Hurri RoF is great to pin Pirate.

Yes, its true, I suck at puppeting, however, it still feels inexcusable that we need si to pin pirate, we otherwise dont shoot fast enough. A lot of times the Bucc will be a mule/duo attacker with the warrior and have no time to SI you.

Otherwise, I love watching the party play omok/cards while SE soloes SE room.

Everything about CWK just stinks for SE. Even with puppet strat you’d much rather have LUK avoid and Shadow Shifter as your defensive tools.

But afk story or not, MM is so reliant on SI to stick on pirate its a bit unfair. NLs get big big dps for being reliant on SE while MM get the baseline to not get dped every 5 seconds.

 

I think I've tried all of these options except the third one and as you mention, they all have some drawbacks.

I've also tried putting the puppet directly on top of him, which makes him melee only so it's basically the same as option 3 with the benefit of less walking towards him (less chance of dispel) and the downside of the puppet dying sooner and more of your attacks missing because more jump attacks.

I guess I'll try third option next time and see how it is. If it helps be more reliable with pulling aggro that would be nice, but wouldn't this lead to being dispelled a lot more? How do you get to him and back without getting clipped with a random dispel? It's a lot of ground to cover. If there's a chance you can get dispelled even with perfect timing just due to bad luck it's not a great solution imo.

This is why I was requesting the dispel be removed if possible. I also like playing this class because it's not a "hold a button and watch youtube" class. I knew what I was signing up for when I went down this path. But a random chance of your puppet not working if you use it in one spot, and a random chance of losing your SI if you put it in another spot seems like a lose-lose and not really skill but rather luck. Unless there truly is a way to make either of these work reliably 100% of the time through skill? Please let me know if so. But if it's really hard to pull the timing off consistently especially during a gruelling back-to-back 30+ minute solo boss fight, even then I'm still not sure that's really "fair" to us as a class to have to deal with that, given the consequences of a mistake are so punishing. It's not like we're Corsairs where skillful play rewards us with S tier damage. It's more like skillful play rewards us with being just passable here and poor play means everyone gets sharks in the face all day :/

 

When will MM get a "Flame Sword" equivalent crossbow? I could make a MM happily if so

 

Wait for him to dispel before running in to try the 3rd option. You might have to deal with a few sharks and it will take some practice but you can avoid getting dp pretty consistently this way

Also if you have some ideas for class balancing which I feel thats where the rest of your comment was pointing towards, feel free to make a detailed comment on the class balancing thread

 

Some classes are better in different areas and bosses, MMs shine at LHC content for example while BMs don't, that's just how it is, and you should take that into account when making a char and chose accordingly. Regarding dispel and pirate boss hp, that's how it was meant to be, annoying, and its hp if its too much just get more people to cwkpq with, it was designed for 2 of each class anyway, not every content should be easy to trio/quad.

 

I think cwk for archers is okay..tiring but okay.

But the problem is other classes have it MUCH easier than archers at cwk. Not that its a bad thing, just stating facts.

Which is why everyone is having trouble finding se for cwk. No one wants to do it. Why should they when they can just come on a NL and spend 50% less energy getting the same rewards.

Writing this solely for analogy purposes, dont take it so seriously
1)mage boss has 400m hp less than pirate boss
2)hold button for NL while se has to re-summon puppet 15-20 times for early-mid game archers
3)cwk rooms not as tedious compared to archer room
4)NL apple lasts longer so less stoppers needed after apple runs out

I already asked for 2min duration puppets at class balancing thread so hopefully one day, we will get it. Till then, we just have to practice more and buff ourselves in other ways like upgrading gear or practicing efficient ways to re-summon puppet because we probably wont get class-buffed.

 

I think most points brought up have some sort of workaround, except for the archer room. The sheer bottonneck in the timing doesn't make much sense design wise. I think it's very clear cut that the archer room takes the longest time to clear whilst everyone sits idly twiddling their thumbs outside for the archer (there's literally nothing they can do to help).

To counteract this, the options we have ingame right now are:
1. Simply tell your archer to gitgud by means of gearing up or using stronger atk pots, or a combination of both
2. Bringing more archers

Both don't seem very attractive tbh.

Changes that could be done include:
1. Allow any class to support the archer room (maple pq style) < most ideal but goes against the design of the pq, seemingly bypassing the need of the archer in the first place.
2. Tweak the mobs hp
3. Change the whole design of the room, eg make it mandatory to use archer skills to reach certain mobs due to their superior range vs any other class.

More on the /s side,
Make thieves do the archer room instead.

 

heh ty sir

 

I understand some classes are meant to be better at some things then others, and I think that's a good thing. But CWKPQ is a special case, and I don't think that argument should apply here. In my mind, this is a PQ specifically designed for all classes. You literally can't start the PQ without one of each. So you can't say this content is "not for you". This particular content is for everyone. Teamwork amongst different classes is ingrained in the design of the PQ. I'm not asking to *shine* at it, no class should. They are all meant to have their role to fill here. Each class has their own room to clear. Each has their own boss to fight. So in my opinion, the bosses and rooms should be adjusted to suit the classes tackling them if they are not already. And I pointed out a few ways that I think they are not, so that's why I made the suggestions that I did. I'm trying not to have this thread be about "buffing" or balancing the classes themselves, it's more focused on this one particular PQ and making sure all classes can run this PQ without anyone overly struggling and having a bad time. Why would we ever intentionally want this PQ to be annoying for any class? Especially not an archer class which are already hard enough to recruit for this PQ. Making it better for MM = more MM want to run it = more parties can find their SE. Win win for all, no?