Pink Bean is bad

Yes, giving feedback on rubberbanding and sliding is not valid because it is intended to be fixed, I understand that.

However, we are allowed to give feedback on what behaviours "likely" will still be kept after your intended timeline. I do appreciate you being transparent on the order of the fixes you intend to make.

There is still one mechanic that "likely will be kept" that really frustrates me and its that only the person holding aggro is allowed to reposition the boss. If this change is kept, it invalidates a core identity of a whole set of classes (buccaneers, warriors) and their skill kits and what they are meant to do such as pinning the boss and controlling it.

I know this is not a typical RPG, but I have never seen an online RPG where a boss can decide to aggro onto a ranged character in the backline and run at them at mach speed while the frontline is completely helpless to do anything until aggro switches again randomly and you pray to god that frontline is able to win that lottery and get the aggro back.

It's hilarious and (not intuitive) when Nameless runs through 3 Frontline characters (Hero, Bucc, Pali) to go magic claw a low-washed bowmaster in the back. OR in Pinkbean body stage and it runs all the way to the right while you see 8 warriors, 3 buccaneers rushing pointlessly trying to win that aggro lottery and reposition it.

The rubber banding makes everything above worse, but I believe that this concern is still valid as even after the fixes, it's still going to behave this way unless you give back cleave/bucc players the ability to reposition bosses without having to hold aggro. I know that this might be the source of some bugs that you hoped to address with this patch, but I don't believe the "best" solution to this problem also involves the invalidation of a core gameplay mechanic for frontline classes.

 

Thank you for the clarification Pasta, if it's intended to be changed, then I, for now, will remain "cautiously optimistic" for the new patch notes. Thanks for your work.

 

Yeap forcing people to spam more NLs would make things harder because as we all know NL needs a lot of min-maxing such as moving every x amount of time to stop the 100 attacks cap to catch to you or have to do that hard task of remembering to recast your Shadow Partner ever 3 minutes, and like the definition says playing NL is interesting and thought-provoking. Also, you need gear, getting gear in this game is hard, as hard as winning the lottery or any gamble.
Now let's be real ML bosses will never be challenging but GMs do add new stuff or change mechanics so people have to remake their strategies, it has happened with HT and it's happening with PB and I am ok with it, good work ML staff. Adding more time or more HP to something is a cheap way to add "difficulty" into games altho I must say I do want a shorter time but with a shorter DR, perhaps a 10 sec DR and Cancels, those mechanics just add air to the boss and stall the timer for no good reason, yes I know you are supposed to pay attention and not die to reflect, and thats the point of it but does it has to last that long? most people die on the first 2 seconds of the reflect.

 

Anything that is not static is pretty bad, and not just bosses last day I used Corkscrew Blow on a regular mob, and they all went ultra instinct on me.


Edit: RIP our Corsair, my beloved job cousin
Credit to Skarmori's tier list

 

Funny enough, the bean rubber banding is probably the only thing keeping new bean from being a literal punching bag for an hour. Even if the sliding is not intended, it is definitely still valid to evaluate the state of the fight.

For the statues, as they are all now non auto-aggro minus ariel, they are essentially uninteractive, single target fodder, with no more than a couple being active at any time. The statues all line up waiting for their turn to die. Of course this compounds with the current statue freeze bug so even the one the squad is attacking is reduced to a dummy dpm. The important note here is that little changes if/when that gets fixed. Before the patch, squads were effectively forced to split up their runners into a left half/right half as the bird was effectively impassable without a large number of bishops, and even the squads that did cross under shield suffered a dpm/time loss for the safety of removing Solomon kb early.

This forced "range/cleave" split helps not only as a counter against the statue freezing as not everyone is attacking the same thing, but also meant that rex dp was in play much earlier, as he was being attacked as well. None of the statues actually do anything too terrible (even the right bird when he's eventually singled out), but it adds up when they are all going at you. A statue freeze fix does not change that. At best, it means more potential time is lost to the bird dr, punishing squads that don't attack it first in the hopes it just freezes.

Speaking of birds, the right bird has entered the chat. Its cool that it's no longer aggro abuse central, but it still doesn't really *do* much. Non-auto aggro means everybody can safely burst everything else down with no planning and then burst it down under the protection of multiple shields. No longer is the bird a menacing wall forcing tactical split decisions, but rather reduced to the final dummy dpm target.

Hey, at least bishop mains get their time to shine now, right? They get their 40 seconds of fame casting holy shield, and then go back to just roaming the map because they aren't allowed to do any noticeable damage. For real, I've seen times where bishop players are sitting around half the fight (body included), pushing one button and going back to whatever it is bishops do when they arent casting shield or ressing. Whoever thought bishops were anywhere near "overtuned" is sorely mistaken. What else can cast a couple holy shields, ress a few players, and recieve time leap? A literal mule. The joke before patch was that a 150 bishop contributes just as much as the #1 bishop; now that bishop is running fp and leaving the bishop in the corner where it belongs. (What mini beans?)

Currently, statue clear times are faster than ever, and with enough bishop (mules), safer than ever too. I can't help but wonder why these changes were required to finally kill aggro abuse. It definitely is MUCH less interactive than statues were before.

Speaking of uninteractive, the body phase. Ironically, the sliding bug really is the only thing keeping the fight from being even more of a snooze fest than it was before. If that is fixed seems to imply one of two things: 1) either rushing as a whole is impossible unless a user has aggro, or 2) rush can push the boss without it sliding back into position if they did not have aggro. In case 1, more effort would likely be placed in allowing warriors/buccs to claim aggro target (likely involving every other class to run away if it peels far off the wall). In case 2, rushing is "fixed", and with it goes any chance of the bean being anything other than a knock-off nameless that casts timeout every once in a while. Going off previous run knowledge, left pin is much safer than it was previously, only allowing the bean to turn left a couple times throughout the entire fight. Of course, left wall pin is only applicable if EVERYONE is on the right side, which brings to light the fundamental design issue with such a meta....

A full left pin subjects everybody to the higher damaging, launching attacks. This means that classes are affected adversely. Classes that avoid all attacks anyways (nl, shad, bucc) can still do dummy dpm, while other classes suffer harder. As a bucc, my dmg numbers have never been higher, freed of the need to be an "aggro tank" to enable damage for the squad. Dk is freed of trying to zerk as they on right side now, giving more time to focus on pressing hyper body. Sair doesn't need to zerk either. BMs that can afford to touch body can try to stay close to the bean now to hurricane, but low washed bm gets yeeted to the timeout corner with the bishop mules. Speaking of wash, left pin tech has no room for anybody who isn't washed to take at least a big bang, so wash requirements just went back up.

One might suggest not doing a full left pin, rather trying to keep bean positioned slightly to the side so players like unwashed nl and zerking dks can play to the left. Interesting in theory, but takes far too much effort (especially right now) to do a semi-left side pin for little gain, and more risk if it decides to turn to that player. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it cost more in dpm/effort to maintain enough control to allow like 2 players to be on left side. Previous strategies worked well because it enabled a significant portion of the squad to do their best, even if aggro control could never be perfect.

And funny enough, our DRs have been delayed more often now than they were pre-patch. The stats for that are floating around somewhere.

Tl;dr both statues and bean are an uninteractive mess and will be even if the "freezes" get fixed. The one thing it has accomplished for now is nuking body dpms of most classes that were previously balanced to make runs longer and require more apples (perhaps why that dpm flex thread died). But I wholly disagree that this makes for a "better" fight in any sense of the word. Left pin is more degenerate than aggro control. The only difficulties of left pin are hoping you don't get launched and trying to see dr under the NPC.

 

All of this reminds me of the old HT sed changes and how it basically forced the meta to shift away from cleave and into a single-target head-only fiesta while completely avoiding arms and sed in favor of bringing along a sed mule. I get that staff wants to push to improve and fix certain bugs they deem frequent and important enough to tinker with certain core mechanics, but I'm left wondering if staff should be doing more canvassing in-game and with players to better flesh out their plans. This thread serves as a pretty good example of the deeper insights that players have regarding changes and the impacts it may have on other aspects of gameplay/balance that may have been overlooked by staff.

 

Investing in any character that isn't a NL has big nerf risk, it is simply far too easy for staff to accidentally nerf non NLs. Pretty much any change that makes a boss more difficult is just going to be a buff to nightlord who doesn't care as much due to high avoidability. This is a simple truth you need to accept.

That being said, because we have multiclient, there will always be creative ways for players to overcome such challenges. Muling your shadower is potentially one of them.

 

Any thought of doing a public Kanban board a la Trello?

The Subnautica team did that and it was really great for the community.

Of course, copyright issues, etc. might preclude that.

 

Slightly off-topic now but..
I think this is an excellent idea and would put an end to a lot of the frustrations felt by the community and subsequently staff. An openly communicated roadmap, if you will.

 

Just delete NL. Make the first NL-less server out there.

 

I think there was a road map for 2021 around anniversary patch time. So maybe expect 2022 road map around that time as well?

 

make a nl