One item that I always find interesting for raid bosses is the type of CC allowed in raids. If given a choice what would you prefer to see? The spectrum runs from having a CC class as mandatory to complete a raid to CC being non-existant in a raid. What is a good balance for CC in a raid environment?
(sample list, does not include all options)
Open season on CC anything and everything can be CCed.
Diminishing returns on CC (a 1 second stun will only stun for 0.5 seconds if cast within X time).
Bosses immune to CC.
CC armor: for each armor point it ignores that number of CC abilities within a specific time period. If a raid boss has 15 CC armor 15 cc abilities would need to be used before the 16th went through (or would trigger a specific CC type for the encounter).
This is a tricky question. I spent a lot of time raiding in EQ2 and they used both diminishing returns and immunity pretty heavily. All raid targets were immune to charm, fear and mez. The only CC that worked was stun/stifle/daze, and each application would contribute toward diminishing returns (for that specific type of CC) until finally getting to the point where the mob would gain immunity from that type of effect for approximately 30 seconds. In addition, the duration for each effect, even before DR was factored in, was reduced quite a bit compared to how effective they were against any non-raid mob.
All in all, this lead to some pretty tactical gameplay. You would generally unload your major CC near the beginning of each fight to minimize the damage of the mob while some of the major debuffs were still being applied. It's been awhile since I played but I think the max duration for any specific type of CC was 2 seconds, and then 1 second for the second application, and .5 seconds for the third application, followed by a pretty lengthy immunity period thereafter.
In addition to the above, it was impossible to interrupt a pretty high percentage of spells or abilities. There were some fights where you could successfully stun the mob while it was using an ability that wasn't immune to interrupts and it was very important to coordinate how you went about doing it when this situation presented itself. If players were just mindlessly applying their stuns the mob would inevitably gain stun immunity and potentially prevent players from being able to interrupt some of the more powerful attacks.
The combat in EQ2 was really demanding at the highest level and eventually got to the point where near-perfect play was required in order to beat some of the fights. While I definitely enjoyed this intense style of combat, I'm not really sure that it could translate to a game with a more meaningful death penalty without scaring off the non-hardcore raider types. The amount of work that went into balancing the classes and tuning the encounters must have been incredible because the margin between victory and defeat was incredibly slim for the more mechanically intense fights.
Personally, I think I would like to see CC have a much larger role in raiding than what I saw in EQ2. As the game continued to age, DPS meters became more and more important. Gone was the art of "Survival" and in was the art of "MAX BURN!!!" and I think a part of that was the lack of CC functionality against raid mobs. It got to the point where the majority of bosses had wave after wave of heroic adds that performed major roles in the fight, often dwarfing the significance of the actual raid boss itself. Heroic mobs weren't immune to CC so a big part of the challenge was figuring out which ones to control and which ones to burn while also applying debuffs and ranged damage to the main boss.
I also have experience raiding in FFXIV which felt kind of similar but for different reasons. Rather than using diminishing returns, they would just put long cooldowns on interrupt abilities. It really limited what kind of raid composition you could use because X amount of interrupts were required for a lot of the fights. The majority of early raids were capped at 8 players which was extremely annoying. I personally hate the idea of going into a raid without even having the possibility of utilizing at least 1 of each class. I think it's much easier for developers to "tune" encounters as you further decrease the raid cap but the social aspect of the game is damaged to the point where you ask yourself why you're even playing the game.
As far as Pantheon is concerned, it's difficult for me to speculate on how CC should work during raids. Limited hotbars are definitely a factor to consider so part of me thinks that CC should be extremely effective seeing as each different ability will take up a valuable slot on your bar. I think DR and immunity definitely have a place but I would rather see them used as sparingly as possible. When you start taking the tools away from the players you're only going to reinforce the "MAX BURN!!!" ideology and to be quite honest that has gotten pretty old over the last decade. I don't think this question can be fairly answered until we have a better understanding of how VR plans on challenging us. DR, immunity, limited hotbars, cooldowns (and if/how misses/fizzles affect them), resist probabilities, % based success rates all need to be considered.
In smaller group zones, I wouldn't mind full open CC because you'll have a samller toolkit due to the smaller size of the group, and things like harsh DR and imunities in multiple mob encounters might leave the party with no options to handle the fight, because there's not off tank to handle immune mobs, or enough CC types to counter the DR with a CC rotation.
In raid situations I think variety and unpredictability is key, you can only do so much to make CC interesting, once the tactic is set it's just a matter of execution. So it would be nice to have a twist on how DR works. My sugestion is making it so DR doesn't just cut in half the duration of the CC each time, isntead the mob being CC'd also starts gaining immunity to that type of CC, so for example, if you Root a mob one time it gains a 10% immunity chance, root a second time 30% immunity chance, root a 3rd time 70% immunity chance, and the DR instead of cuting in half the duration of root with each aplication, it will simply reduce it's duration from 45secs, to 30secs, to 15secs, to finally 10secs, but it never goes bellow the 10secs CC, isntead the mob will gain the immunity stacks until a CC finally fails and a mob gains temporary full 100% imunity to the CC type in question, requiring for the next CC in the rotation being cast. The CC type imunity should be a long one, to incentivize class interdependancy and various types of different CC's
Hopefully you will need CC for the big raids, otherwise it's just a tank and spank dps race which VR seems to want to get away from. I want mobs coming from all different angles in waves during the boss raid encounters. Let the guild ccers shine under this pressure. They were left out in many games raid time.
I've always liked a varied approach. This way it's not the same old strat every fight. Keeping things somewhat random keeps them interesting in my opinion. Besides, there are may other mechanics that can be brought to fights to avoid having to rely on CC to keep things interesting.
When i watch some of the nice Animes out there that are based on MMORPG i always have to think about Everquest. Overlord / Sword Art Online / Log Horizon / Quan Zhi Gao Shu + a few more.
The Main char alone is always able to do something against all odds. So i kinda would like for all Classes to have importance with theyre skills. So he can feel like a Main char.
If theres too much immunities it doesnt feel right unless they make sense lore wise.
Lets start with a big NO for "CC armor" it works very BAD in GW2 and actually it never works. it turns to "spam every CC on cooldown to remove the CC armor and then the actual CC is random .
now, for the actual question:
the trash mobs should have regular CC, you should be able to chain CC on a specific non boss mob.
the bosses should be immune to most of the CC abilities, because then you dont need tanks, just take a raid full of enchanters and they will pacify the boss in one corner untill he is dead.
Xbachs said:You know what I want to see rather than a hodgepodge of CC ascembled from other MMO's? I want to see something new and unique. I want to see something creative and challenging, not just reruns.
Now this is something I can totally agree with. Let's see something new :)
I would like to see a CC system that involves more than just the caster to make it a multi-person job. I guess you could think of it like needing to frustrate the enemy to make them susceptible to CC.
Melee berserker types need to have their attacks blocked/parried/shielded in order to frustrate them (need a tank or a healer's damage shields). Ranged types would need to be engaged in melee range to frustrate them (any character willing to take some return damage). Casters would need to be interrupted to frustrate them (whoever can interrupt). Tank types would need to have their defenses bypassed through armor piercing or the correct magic type to frustrate them (rogues, mages, etc.).
I guess these all seem fairly simple and surely there's a better implementation, but I think it would be neat to see dps, tanks, and healers take part in CC when it gets to raid tier content. You don't have to have that much coordination for just group stuff though.
This, but with Skeletons and Orcs:
Rather than taking the lazy way out and making bosses immune to CC (or slow, or any other debuff), they should implement the mechanic so more than 1 CC character is required to CC a boss mob. If a boss requires 4x the players to defeat, then it stands to reason it should require 4x the CCers to CC.
Back in EQ1 you needed a single Shaman to slow the mob, and there was no reason to bring another on your raid. Raids just brought a couple MTs, a squad of healers, 1 debuffer for each type, and an army of DPS.
Same thing with Enchanter and mez...if 4 Enchanters mez a boss, it should be mezzed until someone hits it.
If Pantheon bosses required 4 Shaman to slow the mob by coordinating their debuffs, or 3 off-tanks all shielding the MT so he could survive, class balance would be much better at the raid level.
I'm hoping there isn't a one size fits all mentality when it comes to raiding. I have seen it in plenty of games, especially when you have an artificial raid cap. I would like to see encounters where it might make sense to bring along more bards/enchanters than melees, or vice versa. Some fights where having 4-5 tanks makes sense or others where you might only need 2-3. I don't want to see rinse and repeat when it comes to raid composition so hopefully there will be raids for all sizes, starting at 2 group all the way up to uncapped. Caps are painful for larger guilds because it always turns into the same people sitting out especially if any sort of meta trend emerges. I'd rather see it so nobody has to sit out ... summon extra adds, make the atmosphere more deadly, let the mob heal whenever someone dies, do whatever you gotta do without forcing guilds to sit players out for raids.
Asking players to ride the bench is probably the worst feeling I have ever had to endure as a raid leader or guild leader. Even if you fail 100x against a boss, at least you get the satisfaction of being there and feeling like you are making progress. I don't mind if group content is balanced around having no more than 6 players but I always viewed raiding as content designed for large teams of players that want to work together. I don't mind if some of the raids are structured but it would be a breath of fresh air if there was a significant amount of PVE content that guilds can work on cooperatively without forcing players to sit. EQOA had some of my favorite raiding ever and a large part of that was due to it being uncapped. There was no voice chat in EQOA and I would rather deal with that restriction than raid size limitation all day, any day, and 5 times on Sunday.
As a CC player primarily, I can say that when EQ2 introduced this concept of "Oh, hey - we are going to make raid content so that it is - for all practicality - immune to CC completely" was almost teh end of gaming for me. Nothing says "screw you, players - we are going to make you completely useless (but ONLY your class) in a raid so that you wont get to raid ever" like this kind of nonsense. Let me ask you this, how would you feel if instead they said "in Raids, heals are going to be useless". How about "Taunting doesn't work in raids". What if they came up with a rule like "Only indirect damage will harm a raid mob"? When they came out with this "idea" most folks didn't care and led the DevTeam to believe that it was OK because the vast majority of the players didn't mind. You know, the same vast majority of players who didn't play a CC class.
This kind of thing is a deal-breaker for me.
You give the CC class some great abilities/spells. Let them use it. To come up with a raid scheme that is succesful only be simply saying "Nothing you really do is going to do a single damned thing" is the eptiome of lazy. Maybe someone would actually have completed the stupid Djinn Master Raid legit if they could actually throw a mezz? The vast majority of my raiding experience in EQ2 was as nothing more than a portable battery. I just had to be there - no real participation required.
Implementing this is going to be my invatation to leave. If this is the design, simply say it so that I know not to be a part of it.
oneADseven said:I'm hoping there isn't a one size fits all mentality when it comes to raiding. I have seen it in plenty of games, especially when you have an artificial raid cap. I would like to see encounters where it might make sense to bring along more bards/enchanters than melees, or vice versa. Some fights where having 4-5 tanks makes sense or others where you might only need 2-3. I don't want to see rinse and repeat when it comes to raid composition sop hopefully there will be raids for all sizes, starting at 2 group all the way up to uncapped. Caps are painful for larger guilds because it always turns into the same people sitting out especially if any sort of meta trend emerges. I'd rather see it so nobody has to sit out ... summon extra adds, make the atmosphere more deadly, let the mob heal whenever someone dies, do whatever you gotta do without forcing guilds to sit players out for raids.
Asking players to ride the bench is probably the worst feeling I have ever had to endure as a raid leader or guild leader. Even if you fail 100x against a boss, at least you get the satisfaction of being there and feeling like you are making progress. I don't mind if group content is balanced around having no more than 6 players but I always viewed raiding as content designed for large teams of players that want to work together. I don't mind if some of the raids are structured but it would be a breath of fresh air if there was a significant amount of PVE content that guilds can work on cooperatively without forcing players to sit. EQOA had some of my favorite raiding ever and a large part of that was due to it being uncapped. There was no voice chat in EQOA and I would rather deal with that restriction than raid size limitation all day, any day, and 5 times on Sunday.
Not sure I understand....
You want variety in raids (different mix-up in class composition) then state you do not want people to ride the bench... If a raid requires 5 tanks and then another raid requires 3 tanks, guess who is riding a bench (hint, 2 classes not needed for that raid)?
Rifts had a variety in raid composition and that was enjoyable; however, in Rifts you could also change your spec from Healer/Tank => DPS so nobody had to be benched. With forced roles, making some raids require 1 tank and others upto 5 tanks, you will need tanks (healers/support/etc) to be benched to reach the raid comp needed.
Hopefully raids can be completed without the cookie-cutter classes used by top server raiding guilds. In EQ2 we raided with 25% of the raid as a tank class of sometype (normally 2 Berserkers & 3 Paladins) every now and then (no Guardians though, we used Berserkers as MT), and while we where not the best raid guild out there (or even in contention) we had fun and could kill level appropriate raids. Did we die a few times? Yep, but had a blast doing it.
CC armor: Wildstar did Interrupt armor well I thought. A raid boss would have 20 Interupt armor and have a specific CC happen to the raid boss. A boss would also have an attack that needed to be interrupted so people did not want to use their CC on cooldown because you wanted to interupt the special attack from the raid boss. With that said, Wildstar was an actionish based MMO and I am not sure if that mechanic would work in Pantheon.
What I would like to see is to have different tactics available to defeat raid encounters. If raids have CC allowable (and I hope they do if they are going to have classes with CC) then I would like more then 1 option (Enchanter) to be viable. Sure, the Enchanter could make CC much easier (and have additional utility); however, I would prefer other options allowed: off-tanking, kiting, rooting, etc.
It was a two part response. The first one was centered mostly around composition. If the majority of raids are capped at 24, I would hope to see a variety of compositions being ideal depending on what you're fighting rather than a single composition reigning supreme for entire expansions. The second part was centered around raid size. If raid sizes aren't capped that would pretty much eliminate the first pain point entirely as raid compositions wouldn't have to be restricted at all. After reading over that post I see that I could have done a better job separating each point. In a nutshell, I would prefer to be able to play with all guild members as much as possible (without caps) but if caps do indeed end up being used, I would hope that things are mixed up a bunch and that no archetype ends up feeling left out.
My answer to the original question:
All of the above (and more) depending on the encounter.
Seriously, let's not lock ourselves out of creative raid encounters here. I don't think we should want every fight to work the same way. Part of challenging experienced raiders is changing the rules on them so that they can't simply approach every encounter using the tried-and-true formula, but instead have to learn it.
I know as a raider, I'd much rather see 20 diverse and unique fights that require my raid to prepare, think, and execute in different ways for each one, than 20 different variations on tank-and-spank with AoEs and adds.
:)