May News/Discussions

[Swiss Mercenary]

With the exception of Mag, I agree. The current incarnation of Mag is just a total joke. If he is to be anything more then just a vending machine, the mind exhaustion needs to go back to the point where you need 2 teams of clickers.

He's only a joke because he's tanked by 16K health, unbuffed main tanks in PUGs (Made possible by ZA and badge gear).

Try doing him with a full raid of kara-geared players, without access to badge loot, and you'll be spending quite a few nights on the fight. For one thing, you won't be getting all 5 channellers down before he releases.

For another, your main tank will keep getting 1-shotted by 13K cleave + attack spikes.

Right now, if he still required the two teams of clickers, he'd still be a joke, because of the factors I've outlined. I've ran PUG raids several times on him... And never had a problem with clicking. Never even had to switch people around. Requiring 2 teams, instead of one to click doesn't seem like at all a stretch.

And looking back to last year, when my guild was struggling on him, we weren't struggling because of the clicking - we were struggling because of lack of DPS, healing, and well-geared tanks.

The thing with Mag was that, when you still need gear off him, he is a very tough fight - you need solid DPS, healers, and a beast of a tank. However, once you meet those requirements, you are far better off heading straight into SSC/TK, instead of trying to farm him for a pretty terrible drop table. The epic gem bag changed that... Just like the badge gear simplified the fight.

The reduction of HP for Kael's weapons/advisors I think was a pretty big nerf too. The encounter was very doable without it, and I think losing the part of the strat where you say "we probably can't get all the weapons, which ones are we going to leave up, why, and what are we going to do about it" was a mistake.

The answer to it was, inevitably, the axe. Not like your fourth tank has anything to do once Phase 3 hits.

Although, to be fair, these days, a T5/Badge geared guild should have no problem at all with getting him into phase 3 with all the weapons dead (Even if it takes them ~6 attempts to do a repeat kill). What it means is that the fight doesn't get interesting until Phase 3 (Where, I do believe that advisor health was not reduced).

That said, most of the "nerfs" in the game are just more gear being available over time. Well itemized blues from DM replacing pretty crappy ones from strath/scholo nerfed MC was the first big one, and now T6 badge gear and the welfare epics at the start of BT/MH are nerfing Kael even farther.

Indeed.