Make TOA Insanity skull timer more forigivng in solos

[chilly birch]

For the skulls in TOA P3 warden on insanity invo, for any raid of 2-8 players the timer is extremely forgiving. In solo's it makes the most minor mistake or even lag spike extremely punishing and anti fun and feels awful to wipe a 450 or 500 invo raid solo because of that one part alone. Timer doesn't need a big increase, literally I can't see why you wouldn't just increase it by 2 or 3 ticks even and that would make it still punishing but less frustrating in the odd raid or so.

[mint river]

Skull skipping makes the timer irrelevant, and is good for your purple chance.

Its also super easy to do.

[chilly birch]

It has its advantages but doesn’t mean the default can’t be tweaked and doesn’t justify not changing the timer alone. We are talking a matter of two ticks here, that wouldn’t make it way easier than it is nor changes a meta

End of the day that segment of the raid was designed for you to interact with it in principle so skipping a mechanic because it’s more efficient isn’t a justification for the initial intended mechanic not to be tweaked

[fringe kite]

It would make more sense to not make you have infinite time in group raids

[naive seal]

this is why i also partially just do team toa its easier. ppl complain about being super punished at toa and skulls in solo are by far the most egregious thing imo. but geninuely i just really enjoy group toa regardless. lot of ppl skull skipping also are not even doing like 430-450 raid lvl either. im fine with it being changed

[blazing oracle]

you should still learn to tag skulls and be able to do it when needed whether it's due to an earlier mistake in the raid draining supplies or cutting close on timer. sometimes you leave p2 on low hp and want to tag some skulls with keris to heal up, or you proc rubies/zcb spec and want to be full hp for p4.

also even when skipping skulls you want to tag all but 1 skull so that a mistake in skipping doesn't one shot you.

agree on adding 2-3 extra ticks for solos

[mint river]

If skull skipping, I assume the person already knows how to tag skulls properly and utilize them fot healing in the mix as well.

How many mistakes are being made tagging that it requires a timer increase?

If it were impossible to clear i might be more on board with the adjustment but, it isnt impossible and higher invo are designed to be difficult/punishing. If you make it slightly easier you lessen the skill requirement, even if my a tick.

Toa is already a beginner raid, and very easy to learn and get good at.

[chilly birch]

how many mistakes are being made? literally one misclick can cost you there. It's not a matter of "do I know how to do this mechanic or not"

if you think it should be punishing as an example then they would have never reduced the chip damage from akka and baba or made monkey waves easier to make the raid frustrating for the sake of being frustrating

this isn't a per raid issue because if you're doing 500 solos you're clearing consistently anyway, this is a maybe 1 in 5 or 10 or 20 raids i'm going to misclick one tick and just waste 30mins of time doing so"

[blazing oracle]

one of op's initial reasons was it being unreasonably punishing for mistakes (read: op finds tagging non-trivial) to which you replied to skip, you're contradicting yourself.

currently i believe you have 2 ticks which is just barely enough time for someone to make 1 minor mistake such as yellow click and immediately fix it. if you make a mistake bigger than 1 tick or spend 1 extra tick fixing your mistake you wipe. if you get sat on by the skull coming out you immediately have to skip or wipe.

i would normally agree except wardens and especially p3 skulls is the one case where this doesn't apply as you cannot practice it without clearing the 4 bosses first, and it's a wipe on a mistake even in lower raid levels. it's not like say dt or kb or upset stomach where people can freely enter the raid and practice it very quickly.

for the last few skulls sometimes you also don't get the choice of skipping due to the time it takes to get to the skip line.

[chilly birch]

and the servers are definitely not stable enough to allow for a 2 tick tolerance at best

[blazing oracle]

yeah servers have been awful for a while but that's a separate issue, plenty of mechanics are punishing if you mess up 1 or 2 ticks

[chilly birch]

i know but those are seperate cases, dt2 bosses etc, that can remain

last row phase 4 of wardens isnt as punishing either even with it being harder

or well it's fairer

[blazing oracle]

yes p3 skull is one of the only actual frustrating mechanics for learners in toa, most other "bullshit 1 shots" that learners complain about are relatively fair and/or not 1 shots such as fast memory, upset, gap (seriously?) etc

[chilly birch]

an alternative is to reduce the mistake damage if you miss one skull to like 60 rather than whatever it is

[naive seal]

to me its just odd as well that team toa has way more forgiving timing no reason to really wipe someone. I wouldint mind keeping the current timing either but just not make it a 1shot maybe if u miss more then 1 more skull u just go down to 1hp

[blazing oracle]

currently it hits around 70 (in 500s, idk how/if they scale), if you want it lowered it'll have to be like 40 so you can tank up to 2 instead of 1 skull missed

and yeah pretty crazy you can kinda solo 2x skulls in teams

[chilly birch]

would rather the timer adjusted by 2 ticks but even 1 tick probably reduces how often (even if not that often) you wipe there, by a long margin

it doesn't make it easier for people that aren't doing it properly, but it makes it more consistent for people that are already doing it properly. And most of the time its a yellow click that's gotten to me rather than missing the skull completely

[naive seal]

ye idk id prefer just seeing timing increased but i think that would be a more fair middle ground due to timing being there and u still being punished on mistakes

[mint river]

I didnt contradict myself? Please elaborate lol because I think im either missing something or you aren't comprehending my angle fully.

[blazing oracle]

op: tagging skulls is hard and punishing
you: just skull skip then

also you: if you skull skip i assume you're capable of tagging skulls too

which i agree btw if you're skull skipping it should be by choice while still being capable of tagging when needed

[mint river]

Being capable of tagging skulls, and being competent to do it efficiently are different.

[fallen plume]

Always looked down upon skull skipping even being a thing.

If you have internet connections I kinda get it but you should interact with that mechanic entirely.

Also agree with having 1-2t leeway in solos. God forbid you stall for 1 tick, you’re just dead

[chilly birch]

yeah tagging skulls isnt hard, doesnt mean its not frustrating in its current state

[marble trail]

I wouldnt be opposed to getting hit for all but 1hp if any skulls are up. And get caught in the mix.

Id like to see killing the skulls give more points than skipping. To give incentive of doing the content as intended.

[mint river]

I fully agree doing skulls should provide more points than skipping.

[spiral cedar]

I would like it if there was at least some decision making involved. Right now there's no reason to not do skull skip exactly because of the reasons you mentioned. If I'm doing more work by not skull skipping, I should get a better reward. As it stands right now, you only properly do skulls if you just want the skull phases to go by faster (so speedruns or very high invo raids where you're low on resources)

[spiral cedar]

I would even go so far as to remove the current skull mechanics and just add skulls during the right/left/middle slams that you have to go out of your way to clear while still dodging floor slams before they explode and deal damage

This would make P3 at least somewhat more interesting whilst removing the one-shot at the final part of the raid. The skull explosions would do massive damage (think like upwards of 60) but they wouldn't kill you.

[spiral cedar]

This would also make P3 inherently faster since the fight doesn't get 4 pauses

[chilly birch]

I highly doubt they ever rework the mechanic of the room

[spiral cedar]

Yeah, but one can dream 🙂 they did say they might be open to revisiting their invocations when ToA launched ..

[fallen plume]

Well in teams you ideally wouldn’t ss either but yeah you should be rewarded for more effort

[chilly birch]

Just adding two ticks to the timer for solos is literally the least offensive change they could do

[spiral cedar]

Agreed, the perfect kind of change for the Summer Sweep up 🙂

[blazing oracle]

Pls

[sharp marlin]

My solution to that is to never do insanity EVER 😄 tried it, lagged slightly, got one shot, learned to never touch again.

[fallen plume]

Try it again mate. Easy invo for a lot of points

[blazing oracle]

try lagging in verzik or olm let me know how kind and understanding those bosses are