DUNGEON LOG: Flooded Sewers 45-55 feedback

The issue with the second Vodyanoi spawn is being fixed next update. Also adding an exit close to the boss.

I ran it again and it was appropriate. Boss seems fine and registered in Bestiary; tier 1 was the expected difficulty of tier1.  I'd suggest tier1 can be mostly tanked and a party could make fast work of this.  I ran around due to habit and didn't need hardly any air for the fight this time.

I didn't find the boss exit to surface, though - I assume it's probably still work in progress.

Imho the boss has its creature action tells/timings and you just need to get a feel for what they are and how to work around it.

Edit:  I see there is an exit close by though, so looks good.

There is a minimum time between boss kills. It's mainly there to stop the same party from immediately returning to a completed dungeon in order to grab another tier advancement.

Exit should be fixed next update.

^Agree with Kit.

Went in with party of 3.  Boss party dynamics are fairly different from solo, mostly due to more hazard to party.

1.  Suggest shark tank start with 0 sharks and add one each time a PC is thrown.  That way can fight shark or bypass.  1v shark fight would be doable; bypass would take time and possibly endanger the next PC with 2v1.  Adds some strategy flavor.   In any case, it removes a PC for a time from the main battle.

2.  Tank casualties should not be removed and exempted from boss fight.  Underwater casualties can not be defibbed in combat, but bodies should still be there after a successful fight.  Maybe add a small air dome environmental object for revival RP at end of fight.

3.  Boss DR might be a bit high now.  Unless there is some secret weapon, imho the current DR/minDR is suitable for tier5, and tier1 should be less.

-last time I fought it, I was using the OP sonic hammer, which has been appropriately adjusted. I also used an offhand spiked axe which guaranteed 3 bleed each attack due to DR. 

This time I used the corrected/new hammer version with a mace (no spiked axe bleed) and it was an extremely long fight with mostly 1-8 sonic hammer damage plinking on it.  The others got isolated and ambushed by the 3 shark-tank sharks, I believe - one at a time. 

However of note:  I brought and tried a number of other weapons in this very same fight to less success, rarely getting past DR:
-Darksteel Claymore (slashing/piercing)
-Titanium Halberd (slashing/piercing)

EH had crossbow (pierce) to no effect

Kit had a great hammer (bludgeoning) to no great effect.

All of the weapons above are fairly big hitters and should have been doing respectable damage.  I know Boss has some crit% resist and I might have been very unlucky with sucessful crits - but I think there needs to be some part of big damage numbers going consistently past DR at tier 1.  This is ~lvl 55 Boss.

The only elemental I've ever been able to use underwater were elec grenades-which likely are more dangerous to party than boss in a party fight.  ie, elemental is not an option in this fight.

Serena and I ran this dungeon yesterday, making it up to the boss.

Both of us are technically well over-leveled for the dungeon, punching weight in the high 70s low 80s for our primary skills, but James was using sword-and-shield as I tried to gain some XP there (rank 52) but stuck with Dual-Wield primarily for crabs and boss.
James: Heavy armor(78), Dual-weild(77)/One-Handed(52) (Demo, which wasn't used due to dungeon limitations is 80)
Rhistel: Light armor mid 70s, Dual-Wield low 80s, Stealth low 80s.
Tactics:  Generally James was tanking or maneuvering, and Rhistel was flanking.  James had BlueScale with 45% immunity for the Eels, and we both alternated between stabbing and bashing weapons depending on the enemy.

The dungeon itself got a little hairy at times, mostly when we had situations with up to four Vodyanoi regulars on often with one or two Warriors, generally getting 4 but once got 5 crab-men for two players.  We wiped once midway through the first level when we had a 4v2 out in the open after a swimmy-bit took all our stamina, and took to retreating to narrower areas to engage crabs after that.

Overall, we had little issue with the main dungeon, but the level of murk and inability to use NV potions or gear once you are down there makes reliance on tab-targeting, Z-highlighting, and the Client-Extension area-map practically mandatory to keep tabs of enemy placement and counts.  I might suggest turning down the ambient fog a little bit given the dungeon's limitation on player illumination.

There was no visible air prior to the Boss-room and resting did not replenish air, so we went in to the boss with half a tank of air each which may have given a more distracting time-limit than strictly existed.  
This boss in particular appears to encourage ignoring loot until after the boss, and then sweeping through later, given the severe limitations in the fight from being even partially burdened.

The boss was, as ever, a doozy.     The pair of us lasted a few minutes, dealing less than a fifth of the bosses HP (probably more like an eighth), and spending more time in the Shark-Tank than in the boss chamber.  I particularly noted that Hold-The-Line worked against me often when I was attempting to distract the boss to give Rhistel a flank, given that I had low mobility anyway and was unable to dodge the projectiles and slams, ended up in the shark tank moving at one quarter normal speed due to the speed decrease and Dive-Belts only applying when walking/running underwater and not while swimming.  Rhistel was chucked into the tank after James, and managed to depart and get tossed back in again before I made it to the exit-pipe due to the duration of Hold-the-Line.  I noted that we got 2 sharks when I dropped in, and them being distracted by James (and biting the armor-spikes) likely assisted Rhistel's survivability, but it was still time that neither of us was interacting with the boss at all.

Given how often the Slam will chuck a player into the Shark Tank, and the effect of range on travel time of the projectile, this heavily-disadvantages melee-based players and groups, as (partially thanks to the murk mentioned above) the time between the casting tells and the effect is low enough that anyone who cannot run out of melee seems to have a high certainty of being removed from the boss-chamber.  
Perhaps allowing a save against stage-expulsion, such as a Knockdown Resist or a Dodge Check like the Trees have, might help balance the ability.

As it currently stands, finding the boss' weakness is problematic primarily as a factor of trying to remain in the same room.  Overall it seems to have a very high Health-Pool and armor, while disallowing most means of recovery or circumventing the Boss's innate resistances due to Dungeon restrictions (no potions, defibrillators, elemental, demo, or guns effectively necessitates a very high-durability melee-focused solution).  Combined with the high frequency of being literally thrown to the unassailable sharks (the only way to kill them is Armor Spikes), results in a rather frustrating fight if one approaches it straight-forwards, or likely a long and tedious one with a fair probability to go sideways if one decided to run it like a Benny-Hill skit of kiting it in circles.

As it currently stands, while I expect it is probable to determine the weakness of the boss by Tier 5, I am currently heavily suspect of the ability to determine the weakness that might allow defeating Tier 1, without having a character-build focused for melee-boss-killing.