HT timer discussion

As you all know, about 2 months ago the timer for HT was changed from an essentially irrelevant 12 hours to semi-restrictive 2 hours. This was a fairly controversial change that sparked quite a bit of discussion at the time. I feel like at the time there was a lot of panicking and nobody really knew exactly how the timer change would play out. However, now that its been a good 2 months and we have all gotten a chance to see the consequences, I think its worth discussing this topic again. I will open by giving my thoughts on the matter.

Initially I held the opinion that the timer change was not that big of a deal and would have very influence on HT runs. I now hold the opinion that the timer change is an overall negative update.

I believe the intent of the update was to make HT harder and encourage more 2 party runs. However I think the only significant consequence of the timer change was that it made HT runs more selective.

Despite the harsher timer restriction, there are more 6man runs that ever before. In fact there are almost no 12man groups running HT anymore. The reason for this is that the 2 hour timer isn't actually a very big obstacle for people who regularly run 6mans, since 6man parties are usually strong enough to clear in less than 2 hours anyways. Furthermore organizing 12man runs is quite a bit more difficult than 6man runs, and the reward from a 12man is significantly worse than a 6man. Aside from a few altruistic saints who go out of there way to host 12mans to help their lower level friends, there is really no reason to expect any experienced player to host 12man runs. Unless huge changes are made to HT, 6man runs will become the norm henceforth.

Once we establish that the timer does very little to encourage 12man runs, it is clear than the timer change does nothing but make existing 6man parties more selective. While I did say that most 6man parties finish in less than 2 hours normally, because of dcs/unexpected deaths most parties dont want to finish with 5mins left. This encourages people to recruit stronger people so that the party can finish with some time to spare in case something goes wrong.

The consequence of this increased selectivity is that HT has become less accessible to lower level players. In the past a new lvl 155 attacker could pretty easily find a 12man run to join, but due to the general population getting stronger only 6man runs exist. However because they are too weak and the 2 hour timer encourages stronger parties it becomes very hard for a new player to join any HT runs at all. Furthermore, its not only low level players that get affected, people playing non-optimal dpm classes also feel burden of this increased selectivity.

I will end by noting one arguably positive effect of the timer change. Although the timer change does little to discourage 6man runs, it does however heavily discourage 3-4man runs. In past there were a handful of very strong attackers who brought their own mules and regularly ran HT with 3-5 people, which obviously drove book prices into the ground. The fact that people can no longer do this probably contributed to some of the book prices recovering a bit in the past 2 months.

This is pretty much all I have to say about the timer change, let me know if agree with my observations/claims.