Being able to pick your difficulty setting is an idea that has actually popped up a lot recently. I think it would be interesting, but (like you pointed out) probably hard/complicated to implement. Who knows though - anything could happen! :)
~Vanessa Mythdust
I just wish I knew the reason for it not happening. They already have selectable difficulty options for Baddle of the Bands and Tanglewood Terror. I understand it's not exactly the same, but I just don't see how the gap can be so wide that it's not possible to adapt scalability to world content.
So I have to wonder if the issue is that they can't figure out a way to do it, or if they just don't want to start down that path. Maybe their concern is that offering multiple levels of difficulty will open up the can of worms of everybody asking for something special for what they've done. "Well, me and my team completed this on maximum difficulty, why don't we get something special that the people who play on easy don't?" "I played easy, but I played solo, and solo even at easy is at least as tough as hard with a full team, why don't I get something special?" "Well I played hard solo, why don't I get something special?"
I can see that being a legitimate concern, and maybe that's their reason for not developing scalability.
I think the fact that players needed "proper gear" is a big reason why it was nerfed. No storyline battle should require perfect gear ... because not many have it. Hence why so many people were having problems.
A challenging battle that requires a unique strategy is one thing. Requiring the best gear in the game is another.
As to your health point - the Rat's health is not what made the fight difficult. It was more how if you bladed, you eventually got hit with an AOE insane bolt. If you trapped, stacking debuffs were put on you (including a -90% weakness). Although healing minions were the best of the worst, they still packed a powerful spinysaur punch which was potentially deadly for people without the best resist gear.
The fact that the Morganthe bosses add up to 100k health doesn't matter when you can still kill them all at the same time with an aoe. Whether it's one 25k boss, or four, you still need the same number of blades to take them out. Grandfather Spider may have 99,999 health, but he doesn't have the pesky minions that punish you for buffing.
My point is, each fight is different and requires a different strategy. I don't think only comparing their health (while forgetting their cheats) is a realistic challenge evaluation.
Regardless, I'm sorry to hear that you're disappointed with the nerf. You're certainly not alone. Difficulty has been a touchy subject for a lot of people lately.
~Vanessa Mythdust
You didn't need perfect gear. All you really needed was ~15% pierce on your gear, although you could probably make do with 5% and a lot of school spears. Cast TC infallible, and all you need is 1% pierce and 100 damage to kill a level 1 minion. A storm wizard can just load their main and side deck with Tempest and spam it every round, or any other school could alternate spears and 4 pip AOEs. The difficulty in the Rat wasn't his cheats, it was the guy who insists you never told him to bring infallible despite the fact that you did. If you get a team that can actually work together he's easy. I don't think KI should nerf battles to cater to people who won't work together.
You didn't need perfect gear. All you really needed was ~15% pierce on your gear, although you could probably make do with 5% and a lot of school spears. Cast TC infallible, and all you need is 1% pierce and 100 damage to kill a level 1 minion. A storm wizard can just load their main and side deck with Tempest and spam it every round, or any other school could alternate spears and 4 pip AOEs. The difficulty in the Rat wasn't his cheats, it was the guy who insists you never told him to bring infallible despite the fact that you did. If you get a team that can actually work together he's easy. I don't think KI should nerf battles to cater to people who won't work together.
"All you really needed was ~15% pierce"
Most of the people I've helped with the Rat do not have 15%, and were not able to kill any minions with just infallible. They absolutely needed a shadow pip to cast shadow shrike. So the fact that you did need 15%, means that the fight did need close to perfect gear.
"I don't think KI should nerf battles to cater to people who won't work together."
Many people try extremely hard to communicate, but it's very difficult to get through a challenging battle with complete strangers. I run with the same group of people every time, so we're used to each other and can develop strategies easily. Other people rely on team-up, and finding good coordination there is extremely hard. In most cases, it's not that people won't work together, it's that they can't work together smoothly simply because they don't know each other very well. This leads to confusion, and many times people abandon ship and leave.
Most of the people I've helped with the Rat do not have 15%, and were not able to kill any minions with just infallible. They absolutely needed a shadow pip to cast shadow shrike. So the fact that you did need 15%, means that the fight did need close to perfect gear.
"I don't think KI should nerf battles to cater to people who won't work together."
Many people try extremely hard to communicate, but it's very difficult to get through a challenging battle with complete strangers. I run with the same group of people every time, so we're used to each other and can develop strategies easily. Other people rely on team-up, and finding good coordination there is extremely hard. In most cases, it's not that people won't work together, it's that they can't work together smoothly simply because they don't know each other very well. This leads to confusion, and many times people abandon ship and leave.
~Vanessa Mythdust
I also said that you can augment that pierce with a school spear. You only need 5% pierce then, which is easily obtainable from the Bazaar. If you cast 3 blades or anything else that triggers a minion first round, you can kill them all second round without having anything else spawn, giving you ample time to cast your spear. You can also designate 2 minion killers and kill the minions in their first level every time, in which case you'd only need 1% pierce.
So? When I run the Rat, I do so almost exclusively on team up. Most of my runs have gone well, although a few have gone pear-shaped, mostly due to people just straight-up not listening. I see no reason why not knowing someone precludes you from listening to what they say.
I also said that you can augment that pierce with a school spear. You only need 5% pierce then, which is easily obtainable from the Bazaar. If you cast 3 blades or anything else that triggers a minion first round, you can kill them all second round without having anything else spawn, giving you ample time to cast your spear. You can also designate 2 minion killers and kill the minions in their first level every time, in which case you'd only need 1% pierce.
So? When I run the Rat, I do so almost exclusively on team up. Most of my runs have gone well, although a few have gone pear-shaped, mostly due to people just straight-up not listening. I see no reason why not knowing someone precludes you from listening to what they say.
The more complicated you make your deck, the more prone it is to producing unpleasant surprises. Adding loads of Infallible, Extraordinary, and Spear cards in order to make up for lack of Pierce makes a player an unreliable spammer in this match.
In any case, minions still have the same degree of resist in this battle, don't they?
As I stated in a previous post on this very thread, the minions had greater than 145% resist once they got to their second round. My Balance had 25% pierce innate to her gear and then used Infallible, bringing her pierce to 45%. It wasn't enough to kill the round 2 minions, who only had 10 health.
And frankly, I take exception to those on this and other threads who sneer that people should work together.
As also previously stated, my team of one Fire, one Balance played together in the same room and took careful notes while trying out various strategies: minion killer vs heal spammer, and trading off the hammer duties between the two so that we tested each strategy a minimum of 4 times. We took notes. We came closest to success when using the heal spamming method with Fire as the hammer.
How close?
We hit the Rat for 45K even while wearing a weakness that we couldn't dispel in time. Before we could get a second hit set up, we ran out of time (hit round 30). That's why I asked KI to at least consider reducing the Rat's health by 1/3 (which would have brought him to 50K instead of 75K).
I've been staying away from this thread because it has frankly frustrated me that some players insist no adjustments be made because they like 'the challenge.' To that, let me counter with this: I happen to love 'the challenge' of playing through with a small team of two. Why should you guys get to ruin MY challenge just so you can have it 'easier' to do yours?
I really hope those who are complaining about the reduction in the Rat's health will actually try to solo him or run a small team of 2 through. If you find it's far more challenging than you bargained for, then please give credit to those of us who choose that particular challenge as our standard M.O. for every battle we face.
Alia Misthaven