Hey everyone,
Now that I've been in veteran March of Sacrifices a few times, I'd like to echo some sentiments I've read on the forums and seen in game. Namely that, the hard mode for this dungeon is vastly overtuned, and, an unhealthy precedent for the game going forward.
Earlier I cleared March of Sacrifices hard mode, no death, and speed run as a Khajiit Nightblade tank, in a 2 man pre-made (our other 2 were PuGs we had to teach), with no healer, AND no voice comms whatsoever. All strats and progession was done via text chat.
Short of gimping myself (further than I already have by not being an Argonian Dragonknight) by removing CP, or playing with a 2/3 man party, this experience could not have been any more challenging.
Now, that might sound like a contradiction right? If a half pre-made / half pick-up group with non-meta roles can clear supposedly the hardest 4 man content in the game using only text chat for communication, surely anyone else can right? And the difficulty can't be
that bad, right?
Wrong.
Because it's not about, if it's
technically possible to clear this content under these circumstances. It's instead about the frustration levels being amped up to 11 and ruining an otherwise enjoyable piece of content.
What's the point of clearing something if while you're doing it, all you want to do is pull all your hair out in the process? Unless having all your players go bald is your primary objective, the difficulty of this hard mode is a terribly unhealthy precedent going forward.
There is just too much noise in this hard mode. Visual and audio, but mostly visual. Apart from some crippling bugs that are being addressed, most of the difficulty comes from the hunt phases, and even the difficulty in the hunt is relegated to a few specific things. Now, after running this with several group compositions, every group kind of struggles a bit differently with different hunt elements.
But as far as the live iteration of the hard mode goes, I really think the difficulty would be fine if:
1- Hunt strangler detection radius was significantly reduced. These should only grab you if you literally run right into them. How many times has a strangler grabbed you from 8 meters away while you are sprinting past a pack of perma-snaring wolves to the next Balorgh trap? Well I've seen it happen on plenty of hunt attempts actually. The range they can pull is just too extreme. Especially when you couple that the traps and Stranglers can spawn over / inside one another, and, based on how close the traps / stranglers are to a wall, you might be in a situation where in ANY WAY you approach leading the boss to that trap, you will get strangled.
Now, this too has
some counterplay. Stranglers can be killed or stunned for example, but that isn't always possible or reasonable. And, due to an RNG dice roll, a group that plays through an otherwise perfect hard mode pull, can get their run completely dismantled, through no failing or fault of their own.
This is bad design.
Now if the stranglers only pulled based on extreme proximity, in essence, a careless player running right through one while focusing on other things, THEN I think it is an appropriately placed punishing mechanic. But how it stands now, with their long / buggy range, this more often than not punishes players who otherwise play the mechanics perfectly, but just have bad luck.
I guess I'm of the mindset that a group failing should be a fault of their skill level, awareness, build preparedness etc...
Not because the game decided to spawn a strangler inside of a trap and cause a domino wipe effect.
And another sentiment I've seen by multiple people regarding the hard modes in Wolfhunter, the experience was so poor and overtuned, that they NEVER WANT TO RUN THESE DUNGEONS AGAIN.
How's that for an unhealthy precedent? Once people get whatever it is they want from these dungeons, they never want to step foot in that content again, and honestly regarding MoS hard mode, can you blame them?
So in closing, I think you guys hit a good balance of hard mode difficulty with the Horns of the Reach and Dragonbones dungeons, but with Wolfhunter, I'm sorry but you are off you're friggen rocker.
Please consider dialling it back with the next DLC dungeon release!
Sincerely,
A Khajiit Werewolf Nightblade tank who understands completely why Vykosa wants to stick it to Hircine
![z85YskP.jpg]()
@ZOS_Finn
