#NoL cutscenes deleting resources is harmful to the game experience.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

astral spindle
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As I'm sure most people are aware by now, NoL’s cutscenes disable the ability tree, this seemingly minor mechanic has been a point of contention for players since their inception and has already been discussed a good deal with regards to whether it is a preferable state or not.

I personally believe that the cutscene resets NoL current has (predominantly in the boss door preventing pre boss stacking like in tcc and tna, and in the parasite cutscene, preventing resources from carrying over) are highly detrimental to gameplay, build diversity, and the flow of the experience which I will attempt to prove with examples as discourse around this is commonly limited to anecdotes.

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Beginning with gameplay, the cutscene resets cause any class with a resource mechanic to require stacking their resource at the beginning of the fight instead of in a free window like pre boss or during a qte like with greg and groot coming out of the ground. This leads to an unfair experience where some builds will be stuck waiting several seconds if not longer to start damaging the boss and engaging in the content whereas their peers are already doing so, this dichotomy is extremely frustrating to be on the wrong end of as every fight now starts with a race to generate resources, builds like acolyte or sustained fallen feel like they are missing out on the fun as they have to engage in stacking chores to set up their damage conditions while other classes are already hitting the boss. Acolyte feels this by far the most and in the worst cases Orphion can be put to sun phase before you even have your blood pool at a manageable amount, and parasite can easily be a third to half dead by the time you’re in the fight which I have a clip to show below, in a party with two riftwalkers and a paladin too, showing this is clearly not a DPS issue.The sort of selective punishment to resource classes this creates greatly discourages their use and makes use in spite of disadvantage extremely punishing and unfun, as you are stressed with setting up while the fight is already going on just to earn the right to participate.

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Leading to my next point, the harm to build diversity. It is unavoidable that some builds will be stronger than others in some raids, some examples of natural advantage classes can have that is healthy for the game are things like trapper or aco being much stronger in groot because of the aoe, or burst classes like shade and fallen being especially strong in TNA because their damage windows roughly sync up with watched phase transitions. In NoL however, the standard of what makes a build feel good to use is “Does this get affected by cutscenes” and “If it does how well does it minimize the damage” Because of this large artificial and partisan restriction, certain builds that would otherwise be well fitted to NoL such as trickster, sustain fallen, acolyte, or ritu (melee or pbomb mostly) are highly discouraged, and though correlation is not necessarily causation the recent use graphs for the raid show this point completely, not a single mentioned archetype is played consistently and instead archetypes that are not hurt by this mechanic, such as lightbender paladin, trapper, and shade enjoy near total dominance of the distribution. It is also worth mentioning that some classes which logically should be affected by this mechanic are able to sidestep or mitigate its effects entirely, paladin and summoner are entirely unaffected in spite of having a resource mechanic, and arcanist and ritualist can consume their bars before and after entering the cutscene respectively to avoid issues as arcane transfer itself is not canceled and is delayed from going off until you enter the boss, but awakened does get canceled and the mana bank bar is deleted but awakened bar is not. This mechanic is arbitrarily greatly inhibiting the diversity in NoL and has a strong stick approach against anyone who wants to subvert the norm and play a class that is disadvantaged by the mechanic while being incredibly inconsistent in how it does so as well.

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My final point will be the detriment to combat flow and the jankiness that the reset mechanic creates, especially in the Orphion to parasite transition. Even for classes that are not massively affected such as shade arcanist or sharpshooter, the phase transition for paraste resetting resources still feels awful, the parasite fight is supposed to take place immediately after Orphion gets it off yet the separation the cutscene and reset create completely kills the momentum, most classes lose their reward mechanics like focus, nightcloak knives, or mana bank which feels wrong and clunky, mechanically it feels the same as if sun phase randomly took all buffs and effects from players, a natural break should not kill all momentum in a fight.

Overall I believe that the cutscene mechanics in NoL current are a considerable hit to the enjoyment of the raid for many archetypes and players alike that feels bad, artificially restricts builds, and hurts the flow of combat. To address this personally I would suggest doing some or all of the following.

  • Making NoL cutscenes environmental like NotG or TNA, this change would allow GMs and players to have our cake and eat it too, it would let those playing the raid for aspects rewards or just repetitively for fun to use cutscene time for preparation and would make it feel much less forced while allowing newer players to get new perspectives and angles on events like Orphion rising or parasite’s roar, this also would make the raid feel a bit more immersive as you are not shuffling between a third and first person perspective storytelling wise by shifting focus between the player and the bosses.
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  • Making cutscenes no longer turn off the ability tree, this change would go hand in hand with the first proposal but also can work by itself if necessary, this serves to address all 3 issues given in the post without changing creative direction for the raid at all for better or worse.

To conclude I would like to say that I am enjoying the direction NoL has gone recently with changes like lightroom, the artistic direction of including more dark elements such as the dark pillars in cloud room, and the reworking of parasite to feel more like its own boss instead of a victory lap (the ost is great too btw) I believe a few small things like this are taking away from NoL being one of the best experiences in the game.

tall herald
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it's that time of the season again, huh

junior spade
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Please let me carry blood

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And stop reseting masks too ts pmo

tacit iron
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@red eagle called, he wants his essays back

sick pine
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Never seen a graph in a constructive feedback post before

stray skiff
red eagle
stray skiff
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Also pala is being used???

mellow tree
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It's the last playable Warrior archetype trust saltroll

tacit iron
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Paladin is goated

tall herald
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it's been used since that one update where trumpet and the other stuff have been added

stray skiff
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i just never thought it was being used this much

tall herald
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trumpet is one hell of a support ability

junior spade
# astral spindle

To add to this the gambits for that day were

5/6/2025- Burdened Pacifist, Ingenuous Mage, Cursed Alchemist, Maddening Mage

As most of these gambits can be considered a free pick to most builds you can assume that most people are running builds that they enjoy/want to run, though iirc during cursed Alchemist days there usually is an influx of archetype with self reliant health sustain

tall herald
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and its DPS is very alright for a support archetype

clever olive
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doom

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have a nice day

summer drift
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yk the only part i think this is valid for is the orphion/parasite changeover cutscene

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clearly they should just delete all archetype resources manually after entering a room

earnest hamlet
# clever olive

"silly to encourage pre-room buffing" bro look at literally any game where you fight NPCs

clever olive
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bro that is not my words...

earnest hamlet
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I know

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  • Acolyte is a special case where the game is stripping the resources you already had
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whether you pre-roomed it or carried it over from a previous engagement, woops there's a cutscene start over

astral spindle
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just so that isnt taken out of context what i said is that aco having to sit and charge pool is really dumb and rooms encouraging that is also dumb and waiting sucks but that does not mean aco should be stripped of its resource it needs to do literally anything anytime they want to make something slightly artsy lmao

earnest hamlet
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yeah just patch it and it's good honestly

clever olive
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im just demoralized going through like round 10 or whatever of this argument so gl

earnest hamlet
tall herald
red eagle
earnest hamlet
tall herald
earnest hamlet
junior spade
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Def not a fix but in nol I think you are forced into shatter if you want comparable blood sustain

tall herald
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even if it's small, it's still something you can use and it's still part of aco's kit

earnest hamlet
worthy sparrow
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one sec

red eagle
junior spade
earnest hamlet
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right

tall herald
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I started playing double totem recently yeah

junior spade
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It's also more of an ease of use since u don't have to think what mask u are on

worthy sparrow
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i agree it shouldn't reset for the parasite cutscene

arctic gazelle
verbal cedar
arctic gazelle
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This being real just inherently means no matter what acolyte will always have the starting up experience of needing to accumulate blood

red eagle
tall herald
arctic gazelle
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It's just a package deal

red eagle
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what about other classes then?

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cuz it's pretty obvious how much other classes are affected compared to others

arctic gazelle
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Well I think acolyte's reliance on its resource is the major point why I dislike acolyte as an archetype

red eagle
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ok

earnest hamlet
arctic gazelle
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I don't hold the answer to acolyte's issues, geniuenely no idea

red eagle
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what about other classes that are affected by these cutscenes?

astral spindle
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if acolyte is too distracting with its own issues theres a bunch of other classes that are also affected alot we dont need to talk about the class' balance xd

arctic gazelle
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but this already wasn't a talk about balance

earnest hamlet
arctic gazelle
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it plays kind of in the fundamental issue, i feel classes that use resources they can generate on their own just inevitably run into this always

earnest hamlet
red eagle
tall herald
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future reworked riftwalker mains gonna have the same issue saltroll

arctic gazelle
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cuz what's the point of something needing resources to build up

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as a part of the archetype, if you're not forced to do it in the fight

red eagle
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i’d understand this more if this was something that only happened at the start of the fight

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but stripping the resources of the player mid fight, between orphion and parasite, feels really weird

arctic gazelle
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but they're two different fights

red eagle
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and?

arctic gazelle
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???

worthy sparrow
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imo i always viewed it as 2 phases of a boss

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but i can see that as well

arctic gazelle
earnest hamlet
red eagle
# arctic gazelle ???

my point is that you can see how little the other classes are played within these raids because of their lack of effectiveness in bosses compared to classes that are just good to go off-rip

arctic gazelle
red eagle
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if all classes were forced to start from 0 resources all the time when starting anytning their playrates would plummet. this is reflected in the nol playrates

astral spindle
arctic gazelle
arctic gazelle
earnest hamlet
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So what is the topic of discussion then

arctic gazelle
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players bringing them into fights is more happenstance because you can than it is intention (tmk from what term said)

earnest hamlet
astral spindle
rough compass
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what do you think about changing nol cutscenes into something similar like notg boss cutscene

arctic gazelle
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I don't think just exempting certain abilities from being cleared specifically if you're only in camera would work as a bandaid, but it's fighting symptoms more so than issues

tall herald
rough compass
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😁

arctic gazelle
red eagle
arctic gazelle
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I don't know, it's a bigger issue

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I think in AT design, resources should never be something you can build up in a passive preroom

rough compass
arctic gazelle
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That just defeats the point of a resource and puts the burden on the content to provide you with the opportunity to cheat your way out of building them up in the fight

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I agree with you, it sucks that you feel slogged down because the game for once put you into the fight in your base state

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But I think it might not be the most sustainable solution to just fix the symptom and now keep a list of abilities that shouldn't be cleared because people feel bad when they are cleared

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if terminated is up for a bandaid fix on this, sure I geniuenely wouldn't mind

junior spade
red eagle
arctic gazelle
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I just feel like the fact that specific archetypes run into this issues and others just don't mind is more of an indication that that archetype suffers from design problems

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than the fact that sometimes clearing abilities is a reasonable step at certain points

red eagle
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a lot of classes would have to change the way they gain abilities if cutscenes are to be regulated and they clear their resources

astral spindle
junior spade
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I'm just saying if all the raids had an intro scene to introduce the boss alot more people would be complaining about this LMAO

astral spindle
junior spade
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I cant imagine explaining how to skip cutscene in notg to newer players

arctic gazelle
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@weak orchid I think I've said everything that I think is pertinent to the content side of this, what do you make of this?

astral spindle
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i think warze has like a keybind that says "you can press f to skip cutscenes!" or smth like that lmfao

junior spade
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I'll just cope with overhealth draining

astral spindle
junior spade
astral spindle
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oh it decays yeah nvm m

junior spade
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You will sit at the door casting bloodsorrow for 10 seconds

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You will cope when the party doesn't skip

vestal raptor
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For the record I agree with the post

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Wait someone already linked that 👽

vestal raptor
tall herald
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oh talking about parasite

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yeeeaaah that's a whole other issue pumpk

vestal raptor
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df still on top to this day lmfao

astral spindle
# vestal raptor

bro thats a clip from pre rework with a guy on df this is not indicative of the game at all rn

vestal raptor
astral spindle
vestal raptor
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What I notice about your clip is you take longer to generate blood than I did

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Yeah the boss isn't insta killed but we're talking about waiting for blood gen. My party was focused on speed but it doesn't really change the fact that waiting for blood takes you out of the fight completely while (most) of your teammates will be unaffected

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now my solution to all of this would be to make NoL cutscenes interactive like TNA so everyone has a chance to prepare somewhat. I understand where Term is coming from, they dont want everyone to charge before going in the boss room but it really is unfair and just painful

summer drift
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wait wtf shatter stays triggered if you blip into fanatic for a second?

earnest hamlet
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yup

vestal raptor
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It's what makes most reso cycles possible

summer drift
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thats wild im surprised its a thing

earnest hamlet
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do you just not immediately shatter the totem?

vestal raptor
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Pretty much, you just need to make sure you have Lunatic up as often as possible

weak orchid
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Bit too much to read all of but this ain't the first thread about this

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Archetypes that build up a resource over time to use certain effects or stronger versions of effects have a resource for a reason

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It's there to be built up over time after a fight starts, not to be cheated in a pre room and then used at it's full potential instantly. It defeats the purpose of having the resource

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I think nol is the only raid that actually respects this completely by accident and due to the cutscenes

vestal raptor
echo stratus
weak orchid
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There are some abilities that don't clear and it is a bug and I've been meaning to address that yeah

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And the raid thing is probably something I'd agree with doing

vestal raptor
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As long as it ends up being more fair to each class

weak orchid
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Not solely my decision though obviously

vestal raptor
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I also heard winds of adding hp/mana regen to connecting rooms

umbral ermine
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how much would people hate it if all abilities got cleared at the start of every room

weak orchid
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It's just terrible for at balance if an archetype that has steady sustained damage feels completely unviable because something that has ramping damage has it's max damage bonus from the start of the room

red eagle
weak orchid
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And resources that charge quicker or slower are just meaningless

echo stratus
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It would have to be a full reset of everything for it to be fair

red eagle
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or at least how fun

echo stratus
weak orchid
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You know how easy everything is to charge up

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Archetypes aren't the point of discussion really

vestal raptor
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hopefully LI stays safe

astral spindle
echo stratus
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Nope reset everything every new fight. Now in qira hive and toa as well

weak orchid
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I get the frustration if it's between many short encounters like imagine if it was cleared every single floor of TOA or the hive

astral spindle
weak orchid
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Orphion and parasite is a place I do agree shouldn't clear your stuff

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It's phase 2 of the same fight

vestal raptor
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yet allies are revived, no?

weak orchid
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Yes they are

shadow oar
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well they're considered separate challenges now

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so it makes sense not to

weak orchid
vestal raptor
weak orchid
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It's a test of your abilities to play the game, it's not a test of your abilities to become strong when nothing is attacking you in a pre room

vestal raptor
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Is corrupted cleared thru cutscene btw /gen

weak orchid
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And I think the reverse is true of archetypes that don't have any ramping damage that are deemed useless because their friend goes into the boss with max corrupted which should always take time to build up

echo stratus
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So currently its a bug if something doesnt get reset?

weak orchid
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Abilities are deliberately all ended when going into a cutscene/spectator to avoid issues with your abilities running when you are not actually playing the game in quite a few cases

red eagle
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if resources building up is goign to become something that is more forced i do think a good few classes that rely on resources should have their generation looked at before making the change to force a reset on those resources every raid room or whatever equivalent happens

weak orchid
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Some abilities like passives may not be cleared correctly when they terminate, this is a bug ye

echo stratus
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Alrite

weak orchid
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I don't think any classes have an issue with resource generation, it's only ever complained about by people in the meta I kid you not

vestal raptor
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Pure Acolyte?

astral spindle
# weak orchid You are meant to be limited at the start of a new encounter

limiting as in limiting in the classes i want to play because right now the only difference i feel playing a class like aco vs a class like arca is that aco takes forever to start doing what arca had been doing from the beginning.

if resources being cleared is a major point of wynns gameplay philosophy im not opposed to it but as it is right now the resource driven classes do not out compete non resource driven classes when they are at a surplus, and getting to a reasonable spot means doing very little active gameplay, for this to work classes like aco are going to need alot of work in how their resource management works because hopefully you can agree the gameplay linked in the bottom does not look ideal

weak orchid
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Nobody has complained about acolyte blood gen in any video/reaction to the reworks or statements I've seen other than high end raid players

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Arcanist does have mana bank tbf

vestal raptor
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Well im assuming the high end raid players are the ones with the most experience, another counterpoint would be that I havent seen anyone play Pure Acolyte outside of early/midgame when its completely different

astral spindle
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landing 2-3 meteors to charge mana bank and spending several seconds at the start of the fight to get blood on aco are not comparable i dont think

vestal raptor
weak orchid
vestal raptor
weak orchid
weak orchid
echo stratus
weak orchid
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It isn't possible to fix. You can't gain resources from mobs that aren't hostile to you

echo stratus
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The vexes in that cave near Ahmsord...

vestal raptor
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the illagers in the picture I attached are hostile as well, I dont doubt its hard to fix but it is a hostile mob

crimson helm
red eagle
tacit iron
red eagle
tacit iron
red eagle
tacit iron
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gg

red eagle
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yeah its a softlock

tacit iron
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dubyuh

hybrid oxide
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Cant wait for another blood pool nol post in 30 days

tacit iron
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3 days*

dense lodge
weak orchid
# dense lodge I feel like it’s a bit disingenuous to dismiss concerns from players just becaus...

I haven't dismissed anything because people are playing the meta, I'm just saying that the viewpoint of people who are admittedly min-maxing every part of a given archetype is very different to that of a casual or even regular and active player.

Acolyte has a passively charging resource being blood and its not a coincidence that meta level players want to both have constant uptime of abilities that are deliberately made to not have that and they want more blood gen

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its just an observation that I see this opinion from predominantly meta level players and I don't think its something that the majority of the acolyte enjoyers on the server feel like they are missing when playing

dense lodge
# weak orchid I haven't dismissed anything because people are playing the meta, I'm just sayin...

Hmm ok, fair, I think I’m wrong about the former part, but I also don’t think we can make blanket statements about causal players without having observed them in raids & getting their opinion (is what I’m trying to get at). How do you know it wouldn’t be an annoyance for them? As a new player, you’re probably going into boss having previously passively charged your pool & getting it wiped [twice] for seemingly no reason would detract from the whole experience, no?

Imo acolyte kind of in a unique situation, because most other resources that people carry over are damage ramping mechanics (focus, knives, corruption, awakened, etc) whereas acolyte carries over a resource that’s integral to its gameplay loop.

astral spindle
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i dont think wanting to feel useful and wanting to be able to use your abilities frequently is a mindset only meta players have not to mention i am not a meta player i stay far away from optimization because its too good and makes the game boring, theres a difference between wanting blood pool because charging at the beginning of the fight is boring and wanting blood pool because you want to oneshot the boss

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like again to reference the clip i dont care how much damage i did after waiting a third of the parasite be it 1 or a legitemate oneshot that level of waiting and doing nothing is just not fun to play at all, if the intent of aco is that it has to accrue blood pool while in combat it has a long ways to go before that feels remotely satisfying as from what i can tell by feeling it out the class performs most in line with the others when it has full pool at the beginning, if it has none it is actually quite weak both numerically and in engagement/feel

earnest hamlet
astral spindle
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orphion pacifist%

hybrid oxide
red eagle
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🧍‍♂️

arctic gazelle
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will get pushed sometime soon™️ blobsweat

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in the meantime, try not to be at the edge of the area where orphion is when he charges again

red eagle
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noted lol thanks

weak orchid
junior spade
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Hi citied

astral spindle
# weak orchid everyone wants to feel useful and I think that you can use your abilities freque...

i hate to sound like a broken record but youve seen the video right? the boss is 1/3rd dead in a party with 2 riftwalkers and a paladin by the time i can start being active i dont think anyones definition of frequent is like that, i totally agree 100% uptime is too much and defeats the purpose of resource management but just sitting and waiting (while being extremely vulnerable mind you) is not engaging

astral spindle
uncut cedar
tall herald
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which vid?

vestal raptor
tall herald
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there was 4s downtime before their first aura

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and an 11s one before their first sorrow

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the main problem is that health isn't regained in this cutscene really

tidal torrent
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aco in nol needs a lb partner to heal so you dont have to aura and to use double totem if u want to get into the fight faster fr

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i mean if blood pool is meant to be charged only to be drained by cutscenes the downside is if you arent healing while its charging when it deletes you are left with no hp left when boss starts

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sometimes i have issues where i put down totems before a cutscene on accident only to get into the cutscene with no health and when i get out i cant heal with aura

proud belfry
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entire essay on complaining about having to generate blood pool or focus at the start of the boss

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peak constructive feedback

uncut cedar
proud belfry
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they're 2 different bosses

tidal torrent
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focus is like meh bcs it doesnt do that much ngl and easy to regen

proud belfry
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funnily enough diffusion can instantly give parasite 30 winded

stray skiff
uncut cedar
proud belfry
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ask elon musk for better wifi connection

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(i dont know. im an item maker)

stray skiff
proud belfry
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erm. bad internet!

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most people on NA are having the same lag issues so idrk

stray skiff
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its been happening since forever lol. who do i ask for like hlep fixing this or report this to?

uncut cedar
stray skiff
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i found what causes it. i think its a phase change

vestal raptor
tall herald
arctic gazelle
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neither do?

tall herald
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wait, orphion doesn't?

arctic gazelle
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no lol

tall herald
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huh, I though it did, nvm then

arctic gazelle
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people are just usually healed up cuz there's a buff room and staircase beforehand

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i do agree though, when there's "ability resets" before stuff like bosses, they should full heal you

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maxed out active abilities isn't the default state of being but being fully healed is

tall herald
arctic gazelle
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it's a consequence of it beign awkward to put an interlude when you're already at the arena ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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parasite is a separate fight because that just plays better and allows a more fitting way to give people extra rewards for playing nol when nol effectively has one more challenge than the other raids

tall herald
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just put a player.health = 99999 after the parasite cutscene or something saltroll

arctic gazelle
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i think making the end of a raid challenge just full heal you is probably the easiest solution to this, true

arctic gazelle
tall herald
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😭

ashen mountain
arctic gazelle
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skill issue

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shoulda played around it