You could see this as a more dedicated thread to the Heroic Abyss, rather than the patch notes or the more generalised discussion on the concept of Heroic dungeons.
Personally, I like the concept to some degree, but the execution for the Heroic Abyss has left a sour taste akin to the first release of the Heroic Undead Lair.
The good parts: A dungeon that enforces people to no longer rely on their pets is great. It’s a refreshing take, and means that Pet Stasis spam isn’t required anymore for an endgame dungeon.
The Malphas sprite is pretty cool, and the loot is quite fitting as well. (Pots become greater pots, the corresponding UT drops at a higher rate, high-tier weapons)
The bad parts: Hoo boy, everyone’s favourite thing about new dungeons - complaints. Unfortunately, the Heroic Abyss has quite a number of issues that severely disturb my experience.
First off, the Malphas protectors (
). The most notable change to them was their shot’s damage - buffed up from a standard 50, to an Armor Piercing 100, as well as being able to pierce through players.
Their constant barrage, while retaining high speed (as well as constantly beeing spawned by Malphas) cripples long-range classes, who are forced to get dangerously close to Malphas. Standing at mid-range isn’t much better, as they cover quite a ring around Malphas - and getting hit by 300 damage is a notable chunk of your health away, in an environment where regenerating takes a long while.
Onto Malphas himself, most of the phases are simply buffed up. The first phase with Malphas Missiles is alright, but harder than it needs to bee due to aforementioned Protectors. Additionally, Malphas is invulnerable for a surprisingly long amount of time when at lower %HP, which drags out the fight.
The second phase, shrinking and growing, is somwhat untouched. At lower HP, the grown phase lasts for a much shorter period of time, and doesn’t have a lot of vulnerability time either (at really low HP, it lasts for barely a second!).
His Flamer (
) summoning phase is also hindered by the Protectors, and yet again by the lower-HP-shorter-phases, as they don’t despawn any faster - meaning that they can easily spawn together with the Missiles, giving you more to worry about. In addition, their spammy attacks deal a sizable Armor Piercing 65 damage, which can stack up quickly.
Onto the new phases. I don’t think the phase with the Flame Breath attacks is too bad. They have a weird wavy pattern, but they’re slow, and you can make out their pattern if you stand back to observe.
However, the new tentacle phase is where there’s real problems.
First of all, it forces you to keep circling Malphas, while turning at a speed that’s faster than a 50 speed character on hardened lava - the safest ground of the arena, the square around Malphas, consists of it, mind you - while also having another stream coming from outside the arena that persists after Malphas transitions into another phase.
But that’s not all: there’s also a large White Bullet that deals heavy damage beeing shot at the closest player. Although slow, it does mean having to go around it, which easily results in beeing caught by the tentacle that easily shreds through pretty much any class.
Now add in the fact that Flamers can also be active during the phase if you’re unlucky.
Oh, and Malphas also gives only 1 fame, which is miniscule compared to Septavius’ 20. So. Yeah.
In short, the Heroic Abyss is alright, but needs serious tweaking to become less punishing than it currently is.
