Monster Health Scaling in Parties

New Patch:
Increased the monster life bonus per additional player by 25% in Cruel and 50% in Merciless.

Before: I could group with people in any and all difficulties and watch the monsters melt before my eyes! It was gorgeous and beautiful. Heck, a group could be carried by one guy doing a ton of damage while the rest had their suboptimal builds. This made the game easier on people who didn't have super crazy damage builds, but allowed those min/maxers to really show how good their build was with the speed of the clear.

After: I feel like grouping with more than 1 or 2 people slows down the game so much that it's not worth it(The increase in rarity isn't enough to offset the time invested). I often cannot ask my public groups to have optimal builds not do enough damage not to slow me down. The result is that I cut off my public groups at 3 people total.

I understand you need the monsters not to be one shot, but also you can't go too far the other way, where the monsters take way too long to kill.

So please find some better numbers. My suggestion is to go 15% for Cruel, and 30% for Merciless.

I know the game is "hardcore" in terms of difficulty, but I feel like this change in % health given to monsters will give groups the incentive to be as full as possible.

Where it is now, people are not grouping and that is, I believe, the antithesis of what you want from this game.

With the addition of guilds I want the game to be more social and friendly, but this dynamic lessens that.

Please reconsider the health of the monsters in the last two difficulties and scale them down.

I'm willing to help test if you need someone.

For reference:
I've leveled a Scion to 57 in Nemesis and a Duelist to 45 in Nemesis so far.

Your local Exalted Supporter,
Verminoth

To do math around this:
Monsters gain extra life for each additional party member after the first: 50% in Normal, 75% in Cruel, and 100% in Merciless

The jump from 300% in Normal to 500 in Cruel to 750 in Merciless is too much.

Another unique problem introduced with the large monster health pools:
The parties get bogged down in fights so long that everyone's mana is gone and the mobs doesn't give anymore charges.

Heck, one simple fix to the mana issue is just to have the charges scale with the monster health and currently I do not believe they do.

The change in difficulty and pacing was well merited. What I think you're getting at is the disparity between monster HP and rarity and experience. It's important these things are tied together as opposed to arbitrarily different to encourage or discourage grouping.

Let's be honest though, the complaints about solo vs party were never about monster difficulty, although it made for an easy talking point. The complaints stemmed from the increased return on investment (ROI) groups had over solo in end game mapping costs. Groups may be getting less loot per person but they're also splitting costs 6 ways and getting 3.5x the loot per investment.

I don't like this change because, while it does offset groups with slower farming, it doesn't actually resolve the underlying disparity in ROI, and actually it causes additional problems outside of mapping. Why can't difficulty, experience and loot all increase proportionally to the number of players?

As an aside, I wrote about a possible solution for solo vs party ROIs here.

"

Verminoth wrote:

The jump from 300% in Normal to 500 in Cruel to 750 in Merciless is too much.

These numbers are wrong. The % monster hp for 6 player parties is as follows
Normal-350% (as before)
Cruel-475%
Merciless-600%

How is 600% monster HP bad for 6 players? If anything the problem is the disparity between reward and monster HP. And the real problem of mapping ROI has yet to be addressed.

I get my math from here:

Monsters gain extra life for each additional party member after the first: 50% in Normal, 75% in Cruel, and 100% in Merciless

and adding the patch notes means:

50% in normal
100% in Cruel.
150% in Merciless. (50% of 100% is.... 50%)

The only math I might be incorrect one is in Cruel. I'm not sure if the 25% is just added on or if it's 25% more than the 75%.

Which in that case.
75+18.75 which is: 93.75& instead of 75%.


And I'm saying the increase is BAD because it makes grouping more a negative experience than a positive one. I can't count how many times my group has had to stand at a rare in Felshrine and at the end I have no mana left (2 pots).

If you're grouping with people and going SLOWER than alone you're in a terrible group. worst case scenario enemies have 600% life, in a party with 6x the members.

If a full party can't do 6x the damage you do alone there is something wrong.

where you got your information from has already been updated to reflect the patchnotes /sigh

"

Autocthon wrote:

If you're grouping with people and going SLOWER than alone you're in a terrible group. worst case scenario enemies have 600% life, in a party with 6x the members.

If a full party can't do 6x the damage you do alone there is something wrong.

where you got your information from has already been updated to reflect the patchnotes /sigh

My spectral throw double strike build is pretty min/maxed quick well and I do not expect other Nemesis league players to have a very refined build like mine.

Before I could group with literally anyone and grouping paid off because even if someone newer to the game had a suboptimal build, it didn't matter as much. Now it does.

The requirement for grouping when from "being a body in the room" to "must do at least my DPS or more" which I feel takes away from casual grouping.

I think you forget that not everyone can or should have the same kind of optimized build as you or I might have.

If the area I mentioned has already been updated cool! Obviously I am seeing the increase as too much, so I wanted to say something. :-)

If grouping slows you down don't group.

That's it.

You can get away with low dps if you are running an aura no one is running. Or if you are simply spamming rejuvenation totems and curses.

"

Verminoth wrote:

I get my math from here:

Monsters gain extra life for each additional party member after the first: 50% in Normal, 75% in Cruel, and 100% in Merciless

and adding the patch notes means:

50% in normal
100% in Cruel.
150% in Merciless. (50% of 100% is.... 50%)

The only math I might be incorrect one is in Cruel. I'm not sure if the 25% is just added on or if it's 25% more than the 75%.

Which in that case.
75+18.75 which is: 93.75& instead of 75%.


And I'm saying the increase is BAD because it makes grouping more a negative experience than a positive one. I can't count how many times my group has had to stand at a rare in Felshrine and at the end I have no mana left (2 pots).

It works like Diablo 2. You start with 100% and add +% for each additional player. So 2 players in Normal is 100%+50%=150%. 6 players in Cruel therefore is 100%+75%*5=475%. 6 players in Merciless is 100%+100%*5=600%.

Grouping should be no more difficult, proportionately speaking, than solo. Welcome to the game we've been saying was difficult. The problem with grouping right now is the loot is somewhat diminished. Also ROI for groups is still significantly better.