I think the pad should be strongly considered to be added to the olaf 10 quest, (and Olaf 10 should also have an hp reward as well). This is a massive sidequest for mains and I think adding it to the 200/olaf 10 tasks fits. I'll read the rest of the thread and add more input soon
Just a warning to warriors to please be careful with power guard: if you tag the head at the beginning, it continues to cast throughout the battle (including dispel!). (Maybe it can be reset with Disorder...)
i made a bpq mule because i'm happy to have new content, especially content i've wanted for a long time, and wanted to play it. i am still critical of the arbitrary main/mule sidequest staff thought was a good way to bridge both sets of players, and i will stay critical of it. its just simply not fun or well executed to make a brand new character on your main account that will be functionally useless outside of this, or for anyone else who just hit 100 before the patch, or who still don't know about the content, don't know they will be gated out of it at 100 to then essentially just repeat that process one more time. a marquee at the top of the screen as a new content reminder, and a royal tip reminder goes a long way. just unnecessary and arbitrary gating, and very time consuming. imo, all time and energy into this venture, and then praying for a 3/3 pad, is frankly not that fun or worth it having done it, and im worried the content will quickly die off into just another "service" for a handful of reasons but the fight is fun, the mechanics are challenging, the music is good, the visuals look great. the prequests are breezy. i was under the impression manji's old gladius was part of the prequest. the pre's can be done in 10 minutes with some town scrolls. but they are very easy which is a relief after cpq hell. its just a very narrow expedition with not much broader impact or intrigue to the game or informs anything else in the game except the shoulderpad, is my biggest critique aside from the forced bpq mule funnel. a few more intriguing items from the chest, or crate type reward box after doing x amount of runs would add a lot of longevity to the experience and might make folks prioritize it immediatley at 75 and their bonding in cpq2/ppq/opq to create groups to run bpq asap. here's a few additional chest drop suggestions, rewards from a loot crate/party box type item with random items after completing the run X amount of times, and related content rewards, or token exchange rewards: 100/250 nx cards to chest magic/summoning rock bundles to chest grampa and baby balrog cards (all new players benefit from this) bosshunter stimulator (works on all bosshunter gear to roll 50-150 HP, can destroy the item) to chest tokens of teamwork to chest include current event drops in the balrog chest sanctuary warp item crimson balrog ship chair and mount (the one that raids the orbis ship) +1 fame each completion (once daily), and/or fame from quest line completion ancient bosshunter shield and mantle (they don't exist, but a great spot to inject them and round out the bosshunter gear set. they can have a similar itcg revival quest from various boss items) balrog related medal, rewarded after X kills (stats to be determined but i think a +20 fame boost and high magic defense stat would be great. some old school gear requires 20 fame to wear, kind of sketchy feeling to wear it knowing someone could random defame you lol) perhaps it allows a free warp to sanctuary daily, or discount bosshunter medal (can also trade within your account. can be rewarded after crafting all pieces of bosshunter equipment. an essential ETC drop should come from BPQ, therefore your mule as well as new char can both secure this etc item to revive the two new missing bosshunter equips, and are revived via tristian/mooyoung/manji etc exp bonus for faster runs (this may sound redundant to hard grinding a 3/3 pad or other items, but it indirectly boosts everstone sales lol, as well as rewarding BIGGER parties instead of small service runs) adding the balrog shoulderpad or bosshunter medal as an additional task for the olaf 10 tasks. folks who have a main that did this just for a shoulderpad should have it kind of pay off i think more materially for their character/account, and i think for as long as this can take for some people, olaf 10 is great, you're 200, you have leisure time from your main etc. i hope this is considered) also left field suggestion, an NX only dark scroll for the shoulderpad that only boosts def/m.def, since staff want to lean into the def as hp. I need more "hp" as much as everyone else bain weapons as NX covers on the bosshunter stuff, i think balrog is a great way to add the stimulators in to give the set some new life for the very thirsty HP meta. the stims add potentially a lot of natural hp if you wear the set, or alternatively, the medal boosts your hp per BH eq. adding the shield/mantle to round out the set add zest to bpq and the set, and it can become a sidequest/medal condition itself, which could also be an olaf 10 task, to give folks who have mains more than the narrow shoulderpad mule character dead-end, and keeps bpq lively by giving your bpq mule some more use (new chars ofc enjoy all this). adds more depth and intrigue to bpq and the game overall, and the ancient cape/shield/stim could be great rare drops to hope for doing bpq while you loot another 2/2/2/2, and even boost everstone sales. hope these are all considered in some regard, because i do like this content and i am thankful despite some dubious/arbitrary account mechanics, but i think these suggestions make that situation more interesting for everyone than just a very sweaty deadend sidequest. as far as battle mechanics, are the hand attacks elemental? they look ice/light to me, but DK's ele resist seems to only work on the fire attack from the head. i mention this because mages already have a rough go here, and their elemental resists should help them here. also recommend making the head weak to all elements, so mages can actually get exp if they're going to attack here. or just make DR physical reflect only, or consider letting magic damage him while he's in his seal phase, so nonmages go to break the seal, mages can rack damage up. i want mages to run this, i want them to feel welcome and not like deadweight even with the sword of dp/dr damocles hanging constantly over them. if there's a way to implement the party exp share mechanic here, or increase exp based on kill time/party size (larger killing faster being optimal) that would be great too. i'd like to see larger parties get more exp than min/max service mules making it a shoulder factory. i think these suggestions make the main account mule sidequest a lot more interesting and worth it, but for all players as well. as I said earlier, the content just feels a bit narrow/hollow, but it is fun to run, and some variety and intrigue with other aspects of the game would go a long way for replayability. thank you for bringing grampa home general question, can characters still warp to sanctuary repeatedly after 99? unable to find an answer. (if so that's a bit unfair to old chars/main mules who can't warp) lastly, i personally love the mad max aesthetic of the pad. make it visible pleaseeeeeeee. ez invisible shoulder nx sales and happy accesorizers
I remember it used to drop some cool weapons ( bain sword and others), maybe make it have a low chance to drop a nx cover of these weapons so people whould still do it after getting the shoulder.
I actually really like this content. I'm just a little concerned with regards to its longevity. I have 2/3/2/3 pauldron already and while I will keep looting for 3/3/x/3 others maybe happy to just settle for a 3 in their main stat and 2 in the rest. I endorse the previously mentioned idea of adding something like a Pink Adventurer Cape w/ godly chance to drop on a very low rate. This would provide plenty of incentive to keep running the content and new players would also have a boss that offers the potential for making some much needed mesos. Or buff the amount of nx it drops but honestly this solution is kind of boring.
I was finally able to go for some BPQ now that my second character is in the level range, sadly it seems dead. Over 2 days I asked guild, alliance and smega'ed multiple times but only rarely got replies and most "duo apple run?" "Trio run?"... It seems like either no one cares, or no one joins cause they buy the shoulder service?? It is fun and challenging but I guess too difficult and demanding to include all players. I don't see a normal 6 player party doing it unless they have no mages and also have at least decent gear and attack pots. With 4 players, all were level 9X, 2 of them are NL using apple and hitting 10k's we made it with two minutes to spare but that kind of damage just seems crazy at this level. Mechanics are fun, the pq is nostalgic, the rewards are nice, only downside for me at least is the hp gatekeeping new players from being able to do it. DR was easy to avoid once I knew what to look for, idk how it was before the change but now its very clear and avoidable.
My thoughts on this boss! First, it's really fun! Great job and thanks for releasing exciting new content! It's neat to see ppl gearing up third job characters and how different classes excel at it (snipers are actually OP?!). I don't even mind the grind to create a new char, that was kinda refreshing tbh Some things I feel could be improved: 1. When you kill the boss it seems almost... anti-climactic? Even at zakum, you expect it to be dry most of the time but that chance for a CS gives you a rush of hope and excitement when the loots go flying in the air. Here you already know what you're gonna get every time (besides the stats on the shoulder pad going up by 1 or 2 which is kinda not too thrilling). It would be nice to have a small jackpot item at a low chance. It would let players new to bossing have their first experience dealing with splits too. 2. Finding 5-6 ppl seems very difficult and it's kinda not worth it either. Trio or even duo seems optimal. But I think trio is not viable for new players, you have to be pretty funded and use apples. I personally think the time limit should be extended a bit, and then maybe go with that idea someone suggested of having some sort of token you exchange for a single shoulder pad, to prevent ppl from just soloing and getting 6 shoulders every time. Another thought to discourage soloing and encourage teamwork would maybe be to have multiple pillars instead of just one pop up, so players have to split up to hit them in time. 3. It's really clunky having multiple chars on the same account, and it makes these chars much less useful. I don't know what the solution for this is though. I also just want to say: please don't make the shoulder pad have slots or roll godly. It is fine as it is imo. I think if you run balrog frequently between 75-99 it should be enough to get a good 3 stat one. I don't think it would be a good idea to force players into BPQ limbo where they can't ever lvl past 99 because they're struggling to get the perfect one. Ideally these characters go on to become real attackers rather than just be eternal BPQ mules.
in overall agreeance w/ all this-- 1. the boss definitely needs some color and intrigue as far as rewards beyond the shoulderpad. folks w/ 3/3, 2/3, even 2/2, can just mosey on from the content. this will tie into your #2 point, but because this content is so streamlined in attacking, and narrow in rewards, it will remain deadish or worse going forward. i don't want that. i left a lot of ideas just a few posts up that should be considered, or similar rewards. purple and pink gaias are also good rewards, but i think other items that inform or involve the game in a broader way go so much farther towards replayability than moar att eq. a smidge of creativity here will go a long way for the longevity of this great content. 2. more, and bigger parties should be running this pq. it was immediately min/maxed and once that standard gets staged, its basically unrealistic to expect players to approach it any other way, when nobody wants parties of more than 3 att due to the shallow reward pool. my suggestion, along with a few more intriguing drops, is to make it reward more exp with larger parties, and more exp with faster kill times, or even better, more rewards with faster kill times. this encourages larger parties, makes the content harder to min/max, and encourages the better rewards for teamwork, instead of this content just becoming a very brief shoulderpad service factory 3. one billion %. it's not well executed and if this mechanic remains, this content really needs some additional rewards to run the content for chars that stay in this level range for the content. the other reason i say this content needs some more material/broader rewards is for players who now have chars that had to be made on their main account, who are also locked into staying this level range. if this is an isolated case of account shared equips, it either needs better long term rewards for all these dead end chars and commitments, or more rewards from the boss--or, more for this shared account char to do. thats why i suggest the bosshunter medal be shareable within the account, or the two new bosshunter equips sharable to your main, but only come from bpq. these are just suggestions but the issue is synergy. the content becomes very narrow and niche and lifeless very quickly without any additional intrigue besides +3 stats. that reward is also on its face, not very fun or worth the investment. you don't want people to just rush through this content, get the pad, and leave. that is not a good way to structure content, especially for players who go so much out of their way to play it. if it informed other parts of the game, like being an additional task for olaf as i suggested, as example, that makes it a true investment for the long game of all players. similar suggestions should be floated just because i don't want this to become narrow, sweaty content with a frustrating difficulty level for new players who also can't find parties (who won't experience much else like it until they're equipped for horntail, which is the only similar boss in difficulty bc of debuffs. in comparison of difficulty due to very close damage/hp margins, and dispels and debuffs like zombie, balrog is harder than zak and most major bosses--which really only ask you to have enough hp and potions and very little else) I think it's worth considering making the 3 pads not 100% drop, while adding some additional rewards. The 100% triple drop unfortunately also makes it inherently more min/maxed/serviceable by nature of guaranteed drops. Making them not 100% and adding additional things in makes this more akin to healthy, inclusive bossing content
