147593-ssm-normal-feels-like-it-is-tuned-a-little-hard

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I've been levelling an alt, and I've queued for every dungeon as I've levelled. Each dungeon has (of course) come with its share of shouty elitists who rant and rage quit when something goes wrong, but pretty much every dungeon has been completed with most (if not all) of the original group and only the odd wipe.
 
When I hit 45, I queued for SSM normal (I had thought it was reduced to 45 in FTP, but it turns out it was 40). As with all the other dungeons I had done, my gear was largely unruned, but was definitely all level-approriate.
 
I tried twice, each for about an hour, to kill the first boss. The closest we got was getting four people to the final phase, but it wasn't enough and we wiped while she was at 35k hp.
 
There were quite a few failures on the sound waves, but really, the encounter just felt too hard. Not "OMG this is impossible" hard, but certainly "Ooo, this is more than I was expecting, I'll gear up a little, pop some runes in and come back with a guild group".
 
I haven't got a problem with that, but really, by the time I've geared a little more, I might as well get to 50 and run Veteran dungeons. So to me, the current tuning of the Normal SSM dungeon is way beyond that you would expect a PUG of players in unruned questing greens and blues to complete, which is exactly the sort of people that should be completing it. I certainly won't be going in there again.
 
Can you please review the difficulty of SSM normal? Some stats on wipes, disbands and ilvl/rune status and actual levels of successful groups would be nice.	
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			Maybe it's fine... maybe it's a good think considering how plowed people get a max trying to clear them when they've never done a dungeon	
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I prefer it hard like it currently is.
Why? Because people needs a reality check before reaching max level.	
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I prefer it hard like it currently is.
Why? Because people needs a reality check before reaching max level.
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The irony here is that Vet SSM feels significantly easier than Normal SSM.  A part of me wants to say that is wrong, but another part of me thoroughly believes that is only because Normal SSM was brutal enough that it kind of serves to light a fire under peoples butts when it comes to learning their class/role as it exists in Wildstar.  That and it, without being so straightforward, kind of illustrates the importance of proper gearing/runing.  And, of course, it also really works well for highlighting the need to develop those situational awareness skills.
 
Could it stand to be toned down a bit?  Meh, maybe.  On the other hand, it probably just needs to have some sort of a warning label that says "hey, you're gear sucks and you're not runed yet, be ready for a challenge".  But... then again, why bother runing leveling gear?  You'll just replace the crap an hour later anyway.
 
All I know is that doing Normal SSM every chance I got really helped me to enhance my skills for the Vet Dungeons through wipe after wipe.  It could probably stand to remain where it is, and people can just discuss it a little more while they're working their way through it.  That whole, "observe, collaborate, overcome" thing.	
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			I always had runed gear leveling... blues and purples are absolutely worth runing... hint: you won't replace your gear that often when your gear runed is way better than anything for a few levels when it's worth it to chuck more runes in.	
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I've been levelling an alt, and I've queued for every dungeon as I've levelled. Each dungeon has (of course) come with its share of shouty elitists who rant and rage quit when something goes wrong, but pretty much every dungeon has been completed with most (if not all) of the original group and only the odd wipe.
 
When I hit 45, I queued for SSM normal (I had thought it was reduced to 45 in FTP, but it turns out it was 40). As with all the other dungeons I had done, my gear was largely unruned, but was definitely all level-approriate.
 
I tried twice, each for about an hour, to kill the first boss. The closest we got was getting four people to the final phase, but it wasn't enough and we wiped while she was at 35k hp.
 
There were quite a few failures on the sound waves, but really, the encounter just felt too hard. Not "OMG this is impossible" hard, but certainly "Ooo, this is more than I was expecting, I'll gear up a little, pop some runes in and come back with a guild group".
 
I haven't got a problem with that, but really, by the time I've geared a little more, I might as well get to 50 and run Veteran dungeons. So to me, the current tuning of the Normal SSM dungeon is way beyond that you would expect a PUG of players in unruned questing greens and blues to complete, which is exactly the sort of people that should be completing it. I certainly won't be going in there again.
 
Can you please review the difficulty of SSM normal? Some stats on wipes, disbands and ilvl/rune status and actual levels of successful groups would be nice.
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			SSM is my favorite instance in the entire game. D: Don't touch it! It was as close to 5-man "raid" content as one could get and I loved it!	
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I am leveling a second esper currently, and I have mixed feelings on this topic. Since my main is an Esper, I was better than your average new to the game leveling player, so my ability in this dungeon is nothing to compare everyone's experience to; however, the gap in player skill was staggering to be perfectly honest. There were two other espers in my run. One was healing and the other was dpsing. I was level 42 when my que poped, and the other DPS esper was level 45. The healer was level 44. Anyway, we wiped probably 15 times on the first boss while everyone figured out waves and the like which was fun, but what bugged me is I was pulling about 2.5k dps, and the other DPeSper was at 600 and was the closest one to me. I brushed it off figuring whatever they are learning a new boss, and I have been doing this a long time. I sent the Esper some tips and he broke 1k on the frog mini. Although as the Dungeon continued, I noticed that the tank could not keep aggro off either of us and he was level 46, then on the fire boss we wiped for a solid 45 minutes before I really had to go because we had been in there two hours with no end in sight and I had other commitments to take care of. 
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			It's rough really, I've always been a fan of thw idea of solo dungeons every x levels to lock your level until you completely them, and go up in difficulty ofcourse... I remember the mantis boss in jet force Gemini ripping me a new one for like 5-6 hours and that was acceptable for a game to do, but people complain when it happens in an mmo?	
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but going into a vet as a fresh 50 is the equivalent of throwing toilet paper at a fighter jet.
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			Also Rakaposhi, I'd caution you against hitting 50 and running veteran dungeons. They are not meant to be run at fresh level cap in questing gear / pvp vendor gear. The game doesn't do an amazing job of telling you that, but going into a vet as a fresh 50 is the equivalent of throwing toilet paper at a fighter jet. You may already know this of course, but it's a helpful message for those who don't.
			
				
	Edited November 29, 2015 by Frosthaven	
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IMO, Grond (first boss in KV) have way too much HP for the level.
SSM seems fine, people just need to know the mechanics.	
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I am leveling a second esper currently, and I have mixed feelings on this topic. Since my main is an Esper, I was better than your average new to the game leveling player, so my ability in this dungeon is nothing to compare everyone's experience to; however, the gap in player skill was staggering to be perfectly honest. There were two other espers in my run. One was healing and the other was dpsing. I was level 42 when my que poped, and the other DPS esper was level 45. The healer was level 44. Anyway, we wiped probably 15 times on the first boss while everyone figured out waves and the like which was fun, but what bugged me is I was pulling about 2.5k dps, and the other DPeSper was at 600 and was the closest one to me. I brushed it off figuring whatever they are learning a new boss, and I have been doing this a long time. I sent the Esper some tips and he broke 1k on the frog mini. Although as the Dungeon continued, I noticed that the tank could not keep aggro off either of us and he was level 46, then on the fire boss we wiped for a solid 45 minutes before I really had to go because we had been in there two hours with no end in sight and I had other commitments to take care of. 
 
All of these players needed to learn a lot about their respective classes before they were ready for Vet content, but more importantly I doubt they felt good when I really had to leave for real life stuff. This is a double-edged sword. If players do not hit road blocks like this and realize that this is not you average game so they get good, then we end up with scrubs whining about content needing nerfed into the ground so they can feel special at cap. On the other hand, if players do not see some success, then they will get frustrated and leave the game. SSM normal is fine for a group that is solid and knows the fights. For a group that does not know it or the class well, it is face-smashingly hard. Not really sure what to do about that. I can say that it is tuned fine for a good group at 40 that can pull 1-2k dps on each DPS class with a tank and healer that know how to do those things. They will wipe some while they learn where the red is, but they will get through and love it. A group that is not good will have some real problems here. I am looking at you level 40 players pulling 300 dps. 
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sounds too hard to me considering this dungeon is the last group pve content / should prepare for shiphands -> adventures -> vet dungeons.
 
i ran this dungeon (on lvl50) 1x with my main and never again with 3 other chars. and back then (1st month if release) it was a terrible experience as well.	
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I agree with this except for the fact on dps and by that I mean people really shouldn't be doing such low dps period. In my view if things like that are happening its more then not knowing your class. At the same time in a game like this that utilizes a LAS and you can find some very new players using multiple support abilites while quesing. Still tho imo low dps like that  comes from either wasting gcds or missing a lot.
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			also floroflo, you can't think of these dungeons while leveling as the natural "progression" of difficulty... that's simply not their purpose... dungeons stick out in difficulty significantly from shiphands/adventures/questing - and it's clear that they aren't paced throughout levels because of difficutly... why would they open up a dungeon to a player leveling only to follow it up by a much simpler and easier shiphand/adventure? I think it should be more clearly labeled in the groupfinder... like "you think you're tough? see if you can make it through one of these in 1 peice[Difficulty: Hard]" and labeling adventures "[Difficulty: Medium]" and shiphands "[Difficulty: Easy]"they work well as is... at launch when I was helping friends level they would make comments like "getting kind of bored" or "these leveling dungeons are easy" because they were just spamming adventures(shiphands weren't a groupfinder thing back then) because you could just go in and do w/e and make it through so I would say "those aren't dungeons, lets run a dungeon" and even just the other week when my buddy I got playing during F2P(who has already stopped playing because arena rating is broken) was kind of in the same mentality and mentioned pve in this game sucking or w/e... so I said, let's run KV, I wanna show you this boss and he's like okay, and when I qued for normal he's like "woah, aren't you queing for veteran?" >.> like I'm going to whipe a veteran party over and over hahaha and his words were "damn, this is like a completely different game". so it's great to let players know while leveling(either because they're bored, or just cocky ;D) that there is more interesting/difficult content to work towards... I ran protostar training on an alt and I can say that it should be MANDATORY for that instance to be done before players can even que for any other dungeon... it was very well made and should instruct players the basics of PvE so they don't mindlessly slam through droves of mobs in shiphands and think they're doing themselves any good	
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