131966-what-did-you-do-to-the-boxing-fab-challenge

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I'm getting tired of writing critical posts here, folks.
 
To the topic, you create this pretty neat FAB for housing that involves a nice, fun time fighting baddies in a boxing ring, while still enjoying the look/music of someone's plot. Awesome. You tune it so it can be solo'd with some difficulty, is more fun with friends, and most rewarding with 3-5 people doing a farm. Great.
 
Now I come back to this 'fun' event some months later and find, what? That you've somehow, for some reason I can't even imagine, tuned up the entire thing way beyond what seems reasonable for a housing FAB challenge. Unless I've had some massive brain damage along the way. Because what I used to solo with some focus and a good spec, and a significant feeling of accomplishment, is now basiically impossible for anyone not in runed raid purples, and maybe even for them. This last boss hits like a truck with his auto-attack, which means it's not even avoidable damage you skill away from. Why? I just spent the last two hours trying to get people to come help me (which now looks like a necessity) but guess what, no one is interested, and when I do manage to get one person to give it a shot with me, it's a big flippin grind with multiple deaths and more angst than fun. In the end I get a bunch of mediocre repeat decor and two of the same dye from the final reward bag, thanks largely to the RNG nature of the reward system... which was fine when it was readily farmable by 1-3 people. Now it's like I'd need 3 people just to comfortably complete this challenge, and 5 people with a tank to put it on farm.
 
A housing challenge. Yep.
 
So again, why? Why did you tune this up to this degree? Why is the last boss's auto-attack damage so high that it prevents using strategy to win? Is this a bug? (I suspect not.) Did anyone ask for this? Is it a good idea to suddenly ramp up the difficulty of an established encounter, which everyone I knew— after its initial release— thought was grand?
 
I'll summarize with what my friend said when we had finished struggling to beat this encounter for a cheap and useless reward: "Well, that could have been fun".
 
/boggle
			
				
	Edited September 18, 2015 by EsperXIV	
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			Seriously I solo this in under 5mins with no deaths, lol I am not sure what you are doing.	
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			Just went and did it to make sure nothing was changed. Took about 4mins	
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Seriously I solo this in under 5mins with no deaths, lol I am not sure what you are doing.
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I don't remember having issues either with this thing...
Can try it again when I hop online.	
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Thanks for the long reply, Spider. Funny enough I was doing this on your plot (someone gave me your name when I was trying to find the plug). :P
 
I guess a few things to clarify on my part: 
DPS medic. Mixed purples/blues with purple weapon, no runes. Using dps spec with shield surge and mending probes for some survival that doesn't take time away from dps. I train before the match and use the HP buffs.
 
Now, I have no problem getting through the pre-boss fights. The odd death but mostly because I don't carry a CC breaker and sometimes get beat for it. I don't use the breaker because it seems to be useless on the last boss, as are interrupts, and he's the one I have trouble with.
 
When I get to the boss, he will kill me in like 4-5 hits, which means the HP freebies aren't helping much, even combined with shield surge and mending probes. I can avoid most of his red... but the auto-attack is too much to recover from. I'll last about 40-60 seconds, but even then, the boss will (quite literally) have about 90% of his health left. It's not even close.
 
So that's my situation. While I'm not in great gear (specifically lacking runes), I don't see why a housing challenge should require that. Further, and this is my sticking point, the thread isn't just about why the encounter is this level of difficulty... it's about why it seems to have been buffed by a significant amount. To reiterate, after it released I also beat this encounter without too much trouble as a solo DPS medic in slightly worse gear than I have now. That is sadly no longer the case. I had a friend join me who was also in mixed gear with no runes and the two of us barely beat the challenge after 10 minutes, with several deaths along the way. It was more frustrating than anything.
 
Right now this feels like training for raids, not a fun housing challenge. It's like they took the 'hardcore' stick and boom... very unforgiving fights.
			
				
	Edited September 18, 2015 by EsperXIV	
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I guess it got "Knocked up"
 
/ducks	
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Long'ish reply explaining stuff
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The plug wouldn't be much of a problem if the final enemy was like the Y-96 (or whatever) guardian in the Defile: he doesn't have attacks that hit you automatically (the magical 'auto-attacks'). That would keep damage down a lot and make it truly a challenge of skill instead of how much armor or healing capabilities you have. 
 
Incidentally, another thing that greatly helps is the third ability they give you (ctrl+f3) it's a 'knockdown' or such, but acts as an Interrupt Armor breaker. Since only the last boss requires that much armor breaking, you can get away with only 2 stuns instead of 3 in your LAS. Even if you dodge all the red attacks perfectly that will give you a Moment of Oportunity. That's ome free extra damage and, plus, he won't be hitting you for a few seconds. 
 
I still have my doubts if a non-tank class without at least Contract gear could solo it. The increase in difficutly seems unwarranted either way.
			
				
	Edited September 18, 2015 by Ildur	
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Thanks again for the great feedback, Spider. Reading how you've managed to beat the encounter, I can see that you spent a good deal of time coming up with ways to get around the fight, which is obviously gonna help. :P  Although strangely, after four or five runs I only ever saw the one big boss.
 
After a bit ot reflection I think that in the end I'm just not into this game's combat system and that's creating impatience on my part. The action style is cool but for some reason it's just not my bag— the fact that I dislike leveling, PVP, don't get much thrill out of adventures, and pretty much only ever liked veteran dungeons as a healer... this must have some deeper meaning. After so many years I still feel like BC WoW by far had the most appealing MMO combat I've played, which means that everything since then has been a downgrade. RIFT, SWTOR, FFAAR, pretty much all of them couldn't hold my interest for too long, and without the housing feature I think WS would have also been uninstalled long ago.
 
So it's probably a good thing I'm leaving, at least for awhile to clear my head. I do feel better after writing those criticisms in the other post though. Obviously I've been keeping in a lot of annoyance from various sources, some legit and arguably objective, but some might have been my own problem (which I've suspected for awhile and why I didn't call out anything related to combat in that post).
 
If I could just play a polished version of housing with other players, Wildstar would be an amazing match for my current interests. Alas, even though I encouraged cosmetics on the shop without knowing how exactly the features would be implemented, F2P is complicating my housing addiction in a way I really don't like. I've just been getting more short-tempered about various roadblocks until this morning when I realized the game was no longer making me happy, only the people in it.
 
Hopefully I'll have a bit of time to come back and dabble after the F2P launch, but since I have no real income now as a student, and obviously no great interest in grinding nCoin, it might not happen. If I do though I'll be sure to add you as a friend!
 
Cheers, and have fun out there!
			
				
	Edited September 18, 2015 by EsperXIV	
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{| class="blockquote"
The plug wouldn't be much of a problem if the final enemy was like the Y-96 (or whatever) guardian in the Defile: he doesn't have attacks that hit you automatically (the magical 'auto-attacks'). That would keep damage down a lot and make it truly a challenge of skill instead of how much armor or healing capabilities you have. 
 
Incidentally, another thing that greatly helps is the third ability they give you (ctrl+f3) it's a 'knockdown' or such, but acts as an Interrupt Armor breaker. Since only the last boss requires that much armor breaking, you can get away with only 2 stuns instead of 3 in your LAS. Even if you dodge all the red attacks perfectly that will give you a Moment of Oportunity. That's ome free extra damage and, plus, he won't be hitting you for a few seconds. 
 
I still have my doubts if a non-tank class without at least Contract gear could solo it. The increase in difficutly seems unwarranted either way.
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