Wildstar- Skullcano Dungeon Feedback- Level 35 dungeon for 5 players

Before we begin, I'd like to include a brief request from mr_gahdoh, the ban-dodging, house screen taking extraordinaire.

"Well, there don't appear to be very many high level Exiles around, but if any are interested in running Skullcano sometime on Sunday feel free to post here or add me ingame. I have the full heavy armor crafted set and support sword, so shouldn't have a problem tanking. IGN: mondo, or my alt on dom is mondoe. Maybe we can cook something up before servers go down!" -mr_gahdoh

#1-

Player name: Weenz

Guild: Eugenic - Eu Hardcore Raiding Guild

Guild Description: Full of Top players from a multitude of mmo's who want to be the best

Post begins-

"would like to start by first saying how little people there were available to test Skullcano and/or poeple not wanting to test it.

My first experience was with a group of 4, where i met doombringer who told me about the broken warrior spec so me and my friend could go in and duo it.

Now i cannot comment on the trash, as we 99% skipped it and tested the bosses. But i believe the trash we did pull to see if we could duo it was pretty hard and you would probably need a full group to do these (with a proper tank and healer).

General - I would like to say that all the bosses in here were really fun and decent. So far i have experienced the dungeons in wildstar to be nicely done. A lot of people are stating that damage should be increased and hp buffed. Personally i see them just fine as they are leveling dungeons, and not end game features so they are nicely tuned, but maybe a slight hp buff could be added to some.

Trash skipping - Wall climbing to get to the bosses. I believe this has been addressed in another thread so i will leave this at being lol :P

At the end of the Dungeon currently you get ranked in 3 categories, with a chance to get a medal etc. I would really like to see it as a full table of the groups contribution, like you get in pvp or a world event. This would be a nice comparison between friends and also to see who was a good player

Stew Shaman (1st optional) - You need at least 3 people for this fight for the dps, so i have only done this a few times. No tank is required for this fight really, as most of it is telegraphed and not much white damage. If the boss went after someone I could just taunt it and soak a bit of damage and then another phase would pop.

The fight was actually nicely done, and you had to interrupt the boss so he didn't heal a lot which i enjoyed. The added Fire totem things, which were spawned at an increased rate was really nice too, as it limited the area to kill the boss and they attacked quick enough that it was hard to aoe them down without them firing off their attacks

p.s. I dont think any bosses should be optional!

Thunderfoot (2nd boss) - This boss was realtively easy to do, and didnt really need to be tanked, and you could just run around the boss to avoid all the telegraph damage he does. The way he stomped on the giant mushrooms to tranquilize himself was a great idea, gives you a few seconds to recover yourself after doing the mechanics correctly, and ofc nice burst dps time on the increased damage taken part. Not much else to comment about this boss.

Squid Alien (3rd boss) - Again this boss didnt really require a tank as there was a lot of telegraphs to avoid, and as i could tell centered over one person randomly . If you got caught by these there was a chance if the next one spawned on you that you would get hit again which meant you should avoid those and i liked that. Phase 2 with the little pink blobs chasing you was nice too and when they blinded you it made it really fun to try to dodge, especially when the big add was up it made it very chaotic. The introduction of an Add that did significant damage if you got caught in the telegraph was good, as it needed to be tanked really otherwise it could deal a lot of damage to the squishy classes. The way it entered was nice to.

BUT we did encounter a bug when facing this boss that it would emote for the big add to come and help, but nothing actually happened and no add spawned, which simplified the fight

Robot Driller (4th boss) - This fight was really well done and probably the best in the instance. The beam going round would kill you unless extremely lucky and you tried to roll back through it. The pools of molten goo that spawned and stunned you were great and made you panic if you got hit by one. Maybe the beam could go slightly faster because when you stayed on the inside of the circle if was really easy to keep ahead of the trailing beam (almost running into the front beam if not careful) . This way you would need to sprint more to avoid it and make it more fun. When the boss came out of this phase, he did generally need to be tanked, as he did unavoidable 4-5k damage to his primary aggro target, so this was a welcomed change. His jump of doom mechanic was good too, and the person who was target had to react fast to break out and then dodge out of the way, otherwise take big damage.

The cannons in this fight were hit and miss for me, It seemed like he spawned one cannon per person engaged, which actually made it easier with 2 people, than it did with 4, especially for the last phase when he doesnt do the laser spin to destroy the cannons. But also the cannons could just be outranged, this might be intended and a soft enrage mechanic for the last phase, But when you have a full group i dont think it would last that long anyway. Also i beleive that there could of been a bug where sometimes the cannons didnt spawn when supposed to, but i think it only happened once so might of been me getting it wrong.

The last phase where the Robot does a spinny attack with pink bubbles could be avoided by moving out of the range of the telegraph (but I guess you cant damage the boss this way) , otherwise it was nicely done and pretty hard to avoid not getting hit while being in melee range still.

Overall a very nice boss.

Conclusion - These dungeons are really nice and personally i think they are good for leveling content.

But it would be nice to send out some more beta invites so we can have more people test the dungeons and try to find bugs and break them :P I know of a lot of people in my guild that would love to get their hands on Wildstar beta access, and are itching to test the game for the greater good <Shameless guild plug over>. I mean i was ever queued for the pvp most of the night and didnt get a single queue pop, so really there does need to be some more testers imo."

2)

Player name: Sang

CKN- east coast NA progression guild

Guild Description: We are a group of highly skilled and experienced players with backgrounds in some of the best progression raiding guilds in the US. We strive for World First boss kills (and have a couple under our belt).

"This past weekend after finishing up the Farside quest line, I had the fortunate opportunity to group with several other higher level players on the Dominion side and really test Skullcano, the level 35 instance located in Wigwalli Village. Needless to say after several hours of playing and roughly six full clears (and a dozen partial clears), I feel it prudent to write-up an elongated feedback thread as this type of group PvE content really excites me looking forward to raiding. :)

The Group

I’d like to start by acknowledging the group I was running with was not a full guild group. We were simply a group of higher level players who came together to test higher level content. Our composition was as follows:

Warrior, Level 36 – DPS/Tank

Warrior, Level 35 - DPS

Warrior, Level 35 - DPS

Spellslinger, Level 34 – DPS (me)

Esper, Level 31 – Healer

As you can see above we had no dedicated tank. Our highest level warrior would throw out a taunt or two here and there, but overall we had no true tank. I apologize in advance for not knowing all the bosses’ proper names, I didn't write them down while playing last weekend and I’m currently traveling.

Stew Shaman (1st boss)

Likes: I really liked the two different mechanics of this fight. The primary mechanic requiring the group to eat the food so the shaman doesn’t full heal himself is great because it is something more than your typical tank+spank first boss fight. I also liked how players are able to full CC the boss while he goes around trying to eat the food on the ground. Stuff like this puts more control in the handoff the player and allows really skilled groups to excel beyond average. To the same effect, I like the concept behind disarming the group at the start of the food phase because it almost guarantees the boss will regen a little life, even if it isn’t much.

Dislikes: I think the totems bowls spawned the boss (or whatever they are) could use better notification that they are an important mechanic of the fight. Presently, they kind of just spawn and more damage telegraphs come out of them. Something simple such as putting a healthbar nameplate ontop of them could help. Not a huge deal, but it speaks to the learnability of the fight.

Final Thoughts: For a first boss of an instance, I think the Stew Shaman is just right. The fight is challenging enough to punish groups who do not respect its mechanics and easy enough for good groups to roll through. Once you kill this boss once, repeatedly killing it should be a cakewalk.

Gorilla (2nd boss)

Likes: The mushroom/toxic mechanic is a cool one and it is extremely punishing on the raid (even more so than the stew-shaman self-healing) if not dealt with appropriately as it will eventually kill the raid. I also like how there was a moment of opportunity built into the mechanic of the fight, which gave players the opportunity to excel beyond the norm by appropriately timing their most powerful attacks.

Dislikes: Unfortunately the rest of this fight outside correctly handling that toxic mushroom mechanic and healing is pretty easy. Don’t stand in red stuff and tank+spank the boss. With no dedicated tank and 4 DPS, we were able to kill the boss without ever reaching a second toxic mushroom phase (the boss fight starts with one spawned).

Final Thoughts: Overall, this fight only felt like a small increase in difficulty from the first boss. I wouldn't go as far as to say the fight was bad, but it wasn’t good either. Perhaps more can be done to make this fight a bit more meaningful.

Squid Alien (3rd boss)

Likes: There were a lot more mechanics to this fight, and this time, each player in the fight was targeted by pool dropping mechanic which forces everyone to be on the ball. Furthermore, the large single add spawning is a great twist. The small squid adds that spawn can be a pain if they blind you, which is nice to put an added importance to kill them. The moving large aoe damage telegraphs throughout the fight was also nice, because it prevents you really ever standing still and turret facerolling on your keyboard.

Dislikes: Similar to the totems of the first boss, perhaps more can be done to indicate the importance/effect of the small squid adds. Again, perhaps healthbar nameplates would be beneficial?

Final Thoughts: This fight was significantly better than the first two in the sense it was more complicated and had multiple mechanics that had to be dealt with by the entire group, as well as mechanics that were specifically targeted to different roles (boss shielding himself for DPS, big add spawn for tanks, pool dropping/aoe damage for healers).

Last Dude (Final Boss)

Likes: I think the best way to summarize my likes is that this final boss was better than the first three combined. The random telegraph mechanics are fantastic and they really challenge the group to stay alert at all times. This is very different than just ‘oh move here during this part of the fight.’ You really have to watch and act appropriately. I love how the boss has a moment of opportunity with a blind built into it. I love the turret adds that spawn and how they take extra damage and can be killed by the lava laser beam thing.

Dislikes: I think perhaps my only dislike of this fight is how short it can be if your group executes correctly and stays alive. I would love to perhaps see this fight drawn out a bit more. This isn’t a huge deal considering this fight is already the best fight in the instance by far, but I’m super selfish, I want more of the good stuff.

Final Thoughts: Great final boss fight for the whole instance.

Other Items of Note

Loot is currently a mess. Different bosses drop different types of gear of different rarity and some of it just makes no sense. We saw the best DPS warrior sword drop off the final boss on our first full kill, the best DPS stalker claws drop off the second boss twice, and the best DPS esper weapon drop off the first boss once. Furthermore, we had some items dropping off bosses for the unannounced classes, items that were level 37, items that were just plain broken (+0 +2 +7 stats). This can come in beta, but the whole loot table and drop rates for bosses needs to be cleaned up.

The two paths the group can take after the second boss (through the tunnel or across the rocks) are astonishingly different in difficulty. Going through the cave is actually challenging and requires your group to play well. I can get my 12 year old cousin to derp across the rocks correctly. I think both these paths should be more in-line with regards to their difficulty.

Related to the above point, the tunnel rocks falling could be a slightly easier mechanic. Currently, the knockdown is quite strong and keeps you down for a while. If you get really unlucky, you could just be stuck in place until you die.

I like how trash mobs are not necessarily large mobs of 5+ adds, but rather small 2-4 mobs that focus on the difficulty/mechanics of the NPCs. Additionally, pulling extra trash mobs is a challenge, which is nice.

Bugs

I submitted a bug report on this, but there were several times we had to go through the tunnel and the entire game disconnected/crashed for everyone in our group. We seemed to think it happened when one member of the group was dead near the end of the cave. Furthermore, when we would come back, our even quest would be reset and we would have to go back and kill the second boss again to get it update.

I don't know how to put this lightly, but there is a HORRID amount of trash skipping and general tomfoolery that can occur because it is soooo easy to get off the map by scaling off the side of the map walls. At one point, we were bunny jumping up huge mountains, swimming in lava, and running around places not even marked on the map. Skipping trash isn't a problem, but the amount of zone exploiting available in the instance right now is frightening.

Taking a PvP queue will in skullcano will bug the instance for you and you won't receive XP or loot from the bosses. Strangely enough however, you will receive XP and loot from trash.

Closing Comments