Ever since I started seriously running endgame dungeons in Discords such as Pub Halls, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that the current endgame meta excludes many otherwise interesting UT items, and dictates a playstyle that is much more boring than the dungeons and bossfights in question have the potential to be.
This is not a new revelation, but the best way to farm endgame content is with a survivability build. In a large group, your individual damage will barely affect the overall time it takes to finish the boss, and as long as you know which phases are safe to got your soulbound damage in, all you need to worry about is dodging and staying with the group.
The result of this is any DPS-oriented gear becoming obsolete outside of solo farming in a realm, and small O3s (excluding things like speedrunning), as well as the perceived redundancy of 95% of all UT rings in favor of a UBHP/Deca. Even the pyra, a ring almost entirely revolving around survivability.
There are a number of things could help to dampen this issue, and the ones I will mention have almost certainly been considered by DECA already. Still, I believe that something needs to be done to resolve this, or to lessen the issue at the very least, and encourage the utilization of more interesting, diverse builds. Please post any other suggestions, as I’m sure there are many creative and effective ways to achieve this.
Reverting Soulbound
The first and most obvious solution would be steepening/flattening the soulbound curve similar to what it was pre-DECA. Soulbound is, in my eyes, the most effective way to encourage diverse builds. Not only will it give players a reason to bring DPS enhancing gear, but will, in turn, speed up bosses and increase the focus on dodging and effectively using abilities, as well as building a unique and personalized character loadout that balances preferred stats, bringing more aspects of skill into endgame content. Regarding the formula itself, it should be a soulbound equation that rewards good playing, and acts more like a curve than a threshold of damage that needs to be reached in order to get a shot at loot.
Further decreasing dungeon cap
The dungeon cap pretty much only affects organized, planned and led runs. I fully supported DECA’s decision to lower the dungeon cap, and would be perfectly happy if it were reduced by a further 5 or 10 players. A lower player count means less party buffs, meaning more focus on your own play and skill. Less group DPS, meaning more focus on individual DPS. Less HP scaling, meaning more boss health compared to the amount of people in the dungeon (further incentivizing damage). Obviously DECA have already considered the effects of lowering the cap, and have decided to keep it where it is, but I see no harm in lowering it a little more.
Top damage reward
An idea that I had around the release of exaltations is some sort of dedicated reward for the top damage of an endgame boss. My original idea was for the top-damage player to get a new type of bag drop, (black bag? opposite of white bag, black bag is skill and white is luck) and for it to contain some sort of bonus loot, possibly something specific to the dungeon, or double the drop chance of rare items, or the dungeon’s quest chest. Another idea is for top damage to receive 2 dungeon completes towards exaltations.
On paper, this seems like a bad idea as the people who were going for survivable builds before will not suddenly try to go for top dmg, but the idea is that more people will do public halls/shatters/nests/caverns to try and get that bonus bag. Also, I get the feeling that DECA is trying to get more people into the Realm anyway (so far by reworking everything).
UBHP/Deca nerf (unlikely)
A 20hp nerf to UBHP and Deca would probably not sit well with the community, especially seeing as so many people use them, but it would encourage some people to consider other options. This one really just stems from the fact that there are so many people that don’t even consider most if not all UT rings when making a loadout, which often goes for T13 armors too.
I’m sure other people have much better ideas, and I’m sure DECA knows about these issues already as they are far from recent. Still, there needs to be more discussion around them and potential solutions, as it is holding back an entire area of the game. Thanks for reading my ramblings.