Awaiting Feedback update 95.1 ruined bossing (and mobbing)

Hello, as you might have noticed in threads like these, and also on shoutbox:
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/auf-took-forever-to-summon-1st-clone.244820/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/mob-aggro-changes-since-last-sc.244829/

Bosses behavior changed (for the worse imo) after update 95.1, the reason for this is the following:

Every single boss was affected, here are the ones that I noticed: (feel free to add your own)
*Please note that these effects are felt more the more attackers there are, so experience could differ a bit.

Von Leon:
Watch the VOD here:

Spoiler: vod

- Delayed summons (first garg 47% instead of 50%, first golem 41% instead of 50%).
- Very delayed jail.
- Delayed teleports, sometimes it outlasted the smokes meaning it took the boss over 1 minute and 30 secs to teleport.

CWK Pirate:
Just randomly escapes the pin and starts walking, dispels went from 0 a run to about 6-7.

Scar/Targa:
Same problem, they just start walking around randomly.

Balrog:
Attacks way less than before.
You had to constantly keep walking back to the boss as melee, now you can sometimes just zone out and hold your macro, it stops attacking for over 30 seconds sometimes.

Auf:
Very delayed summons, less attacks in general.

Ranged LHC golems:
Mobs walk around too close to the ranged attackers.

The old fix that prevented bosses from doing nothing was actually good, I think they should be forced to attack and not go afk.
This change was reverted to prevent VL specifically (unknown if this behavior happens in other bosses) from double casting skills, but that didn't work.
Could you please undo this revert from update 95.1? since the fix didn't work and instead just created more issues.

 

In addition to the CWK section - Red Nirg boss is moving around TOO MUCH.

He's very hard to keep in the corner and as I said in a different thread - I had to use rush over 5 times to get him back in the corner (after he left the corner, I mean).
This is a repeated thing that I had to do multiple times within the run.

Also - both relik and Hsalf are very hard to rush, they just don't move.

When they're spawned, it takes over 10 rushes / corkscrews to get them into the corner.

In the first 3-5 rushes they are not even moving, they're either in place or getting rushed slightly to the direction I'm rushing just to "teleport" back to the original place.

Von Leon spawn timers are definitely affected from this change as well, you gave a better accurate insight on this but I can confirm that timers have changed.

In my last VL, mobs spawned less and in random times instead of the usual times.

 

Wait, this still happens?. Only done RG since the last patch( on wich i noticed no difference tbh) but i tought that the "This also fixes issues related to mobs being able to "animation cancel" during mob controller swaps" was to fix that. What does it mean then?

 

no.

it still happens.

i was starting to get mad when they just refused to move.

they're "stuck" even more now than before.

 

to be honest im down to keep the bosses more "hard" to complete. its more fun, gotta do more stuff, pinning, avoiding, etc but double casting on VL is too much lol

 

in my experience, this happens when the mob you're trying to rush has aggro on another character, and is usually solved by moving other characters farther away and continuing to attack on the character trying to rush

i can only think of the "animation cancel" bug mentioned here as it happens in vl, where you have a lot more characters attacking the same mob (in contrast with other bosses), which presumably leads to the mob frequently switching its aggro target

i think these behaviors are related to one another (via the aggro mechanism), but i don't think the first one is a bug. the "animation cancel" definitely is; bucc players know this well, and as we have seen with the recent changes, it can now result in scenarios where characters can die essentially without counterplay

 

Can confirm that its not the case( by having cwkpq bosses on right side, far from any other char that could have the aggro, several solo shao that i did HSless without any other account on map, or simply by killing manons for HT elixir by myself, etc) every mob(and im pretty shure most bosses too) has 2 " standing positions" . One is the real standing wich is the mob/boss doing an animation without an effect( some with human form wink, some with wings flap them, etc) and the other one is the mob/boss doing literally nothing, if u rush the mob/boss on this last one, it will do the "teleport back" animation after moving a little.

 

if you look at @Geto's message, the part you quoted is in reference to rushing the bosses when spawned, and that's what i was commenting on

prior to update 95.1, i've never experienced the other scenarios you described

 

Yes, i know that already, but i wasn't talking about multiple people trying to rush a singular mob.

I was the only one rushing.

It always happened to me, but after 95.1 it happens in a more.. "aggressive" way.

 

Can add to this that Shao is super annoying for ranged attackers now, having to constantly reposition the clones. Just seems straight up unpredictable in their behaviour compared to before. I used to be able to keep the clones to the left of my NL and attack shao uninterrupted, now they randomly decide to walk to the right of my character and blocking my attacks.

Seems this patch was just a huge nerf for ranged attackers in general

Edit: same stuff happens with Royal Guard and Auf where they will walk up to your face a lot more, so you are pretty much required to bring a bucc to auf now without suffering as a ranged attacker

 

many mobs can aggro target any character that is close enough, even if that character hasn't attacked it. we can continue to discuss elsewhere, but i don't want to further derail the thread

it seems like most of the issues @Donn1e described, as well as the cwk bottom bosses escaping, as @Geto described, would suggest that, since update 95.1, these mobs periodically reset to having no aggro target (possibly with some cooldown for choosing a new aggro target)

 

ran into this today trying to kill bf as a corsair, this change makes bf 100% impractical as a sair.

i died 5x in 40% hp to bf walking into me in situations he would normally stop and att for 1dmg.

Unfortunate, bf used to be best xp in the game as a sair, now he is entirely un-usable for xp grinding.

 

@Tim here's the vod you asked for earlier:


You can see it afks much more and doesn't attack often sometimes. Also it skips the flying balrog summon sometimes when the tombs happen.
In comparison, here's the old balrog:

 

Ephenia too, used to be able to solo her with my NL, now she's pretty much untouchable once she spawns enough mobs, they always come towards you and don't keep their range anymore.

 

Not a problem for me since im melee and have decent multiple target attack as a drk but ephinia and chao started walking to me even tho they are in attack range, they used to only come closer if o was out of range, now they want to stand on me it seems, big issue for ranged attackers i believe.

 

Hi again.
This is going be a slightly long essay, please hear me out @Tim @Matt because I put a little bit of effort into it, to try and show you why this change needs to be reverted, and not just left like this until you can find ways to improve it in the future.

I ran Von Leon today and I wanted to truly test how this change affected VL.
I don't know which boss I ran, but it sure is not the VL I know
I'll address the issues one by one:

Animation cancels:
Just to get that out of the way, they still exist.

Spoiler: proof

Delayed teleportation:
Von Leon usualy teleports after 1 minute.
Now it teleports extremely late, often outlasting the smokes, here are just 2 examples from one run.
1 minute and 57 secs teleport:

Spoiler: 1 min 57 secs

2 minutes and 44 secs teleport:

Spoiler: 2 mins 44 secs

Delayed mob summons:
It doesn't summon the mobs where it should.
The summon skill is "off cooldown" but it just doesn't have to use it right away anymore.
This has devastating effects on the balance for this boss for reasons I'll explain in the end.
Gargoyles summoned around 20 secs late:

Spoiler: garg summon

First golems summoned 12 secs late:

Spoiler: golem summon

And first golems in body 3 summoned 1 minute and 11 seconds late.
It was so late that the gargs came before golems, which I've never seen happen normally.

Spoiler: b3 golems

Delayed golems consume:
Normally it consumes golems after 30-35 secs (you can go back and watch old runs, the one I saw consumed after about 34~ secs).
Now, it consumes after 1 minute and 42 secs, which is absurd.

Spoiler: golem consume

You could literally clean 4 golem waves in this time, there is no challenge.

Walking and other weird behavior:
Von Leon does a lot of weird hand gestures since the change, way more than before.
It also goes on long walks without any reason.

Spoiler: going on a walk

Spoiler: example for hand gestures

The hand gestures are kinda funny, it happens because it gets stuck in ouch face now:


Why is it so bad?
Those timers serve as DPS checks for the boss.
The reason you can only run a certain amount of players (for example 10 on apple) is due to them.
Normally, golems and jail are synced in b3 because of the matching timers, meaning you can't afford running with less people, since you won't clear the golems within jail.
Now the boss is extremely easy, the following happens:
- Golems and jail do not sync.
Explanation for sync:

Spoiler: short video

- Late golems consume, so you can clear them even if you messed up.
- Teleports are extremely long, meaning you get the full 1 minute and 30 secs out of smoke. Smoke uptime is almost 100% with 5-6 shads.
- Less mobs in general.
- Less jail.

This is not the same boss we know, the current boss feels like some untested beta version with a million bugs.
When I watched an older vod I was shocked at the difference, it's so smooth in comparison to what we have now.
For many people who run this boss for fun (and whatever challenge is left?) it's extremely bad news.
What's the point of running this nerfed and random version of the boss? it's not fun, you can't work with timers anymore and it's just fully random.
The boss was never really run for profits, they barely exist on average.

Personally, it upset me seeing you write this @Tim:


This to me is the wrong approach.
You tried to implement a fix for an old problem (which I really appreciate you for trying), this fix failed.
Why try to work with a failed fix instead of just reverting and then thinking about what to do about it in the future?
I'll make this very clear, the game is broken at the moment due to this small change, this is not some minor annoyance but a major problem.
Please just do a sc and fix this? we have to re-learn all the bosses due to weird activities happening and bosses bugging like crazy.
Thank you!

 

I would also like to chime in and reiterate what I said in the thread I created about the ranged lhc issue:
A bunch of content has just become more difficult and annoying as a ranged player for no good reason.
The close range punch mechanic for ranged classes has already been annoying before as is, but this new change makes it so that there's no way to even deal with it anymore.
Just to list a few examples - LHC ranged has become a mess because golems spread on the platforms, you can't keep shao clones from getting in between you and shao (unless you have another mule to lure them to but even then they push the mule towards shao because they don't use their ranged attacks), cwk has gotten harder because pirate goes into dispel range more often and that's just out of the content that I've done since the SC.
I would personally be disappointed if this is the direction we're going towards, as the thought of even doing something as simple as an LHC run is tiresome now.
This is just my experience as someone who plays a ranged class - this change just took the most annoying part of playing a ranged class and made it much worse.

 

I feel like this is how mobs should function though. You shouldn't be able to simply ignore them. Otherwise what is the point in a boss summoning adds? They are meant to create a problem the player needs to deal with. Did you not put any points into avenger? If you are no longer strong enough to solo then perhaps bring a friend to help?
I endorse any changes that make the game more challenging and require players to adapt and invent new strats. It keeps the game fresh. Challenge born from attempting to navigate unpredictable bugs is another matter entirely of course.

 

I usually go looking for NX in Chao, Ephenia and Pap and it still seems strange to me that when he goes to the corner <<< he bugs and becomes untouchable, maybe it's not a problem, but it has to be reported! be good!