Gods from the Machine Nightmare/Master Mode

Hello Keith!

First of all, thank you again for providing the raiding community with a Nightmare operation, I hope you have seen some of the forum threads, discord conversations and twitch streams where groups are discussion strategy, wiping for hours and finally downing some of the hardest bosses in the game. Speaking for myself and the raiding team I am in (Group <Farming Components> on the European server Darth Malgus), we have had a great time with these bosses, coming up with strategies and killing bosses, Matt did a great job with creating challenges that REALLY felt next to impossible at the start.

That said, something that has been on my mind recently is how almost 8 months have passed since the release of Gods Nightmare, but a mere 5 teams have managed to get the timed run and just 8 teams have killed Izax. I know quite a few teams are close, a few friends of mine are doing their best on Izax and will likely be killing it sometime this summer, however many more of are in teams that simply do not have the capacity to kill some of these bosses.

The raiding community, in particular on Darth Malgus, has been growing steadily during the last few years as more experienced raiders are helping new players and the Nightmare community today has loads of players with the capacity to clear most of the older Nightmare operations. However, Gods Nightmare is not one of them and I think this is a huge issue going forward, in particular as players end up clearing the old Nightmare operations but feel like Gods Nightmare is too much of a jump in difficulty.

Thus, I think that a slight decrease in difficulty of Gods Nightmare could be an option, looking at the fights I think that the HP of bosses/adds and their damage dealt could be reduced and that would still ensure the fights keep part of their unique difficulty. Perhaps this could be done in a similar manner as when Dread Fortress and Dread Palace lost their Nightmare Power and how Gods Hardmode had a period during which it was harder, followed by a patch in which most of the fights got significant nerfs.

Although I am not sure, perhaps this is what you guys have been thinking all along? When I first killed Izax and were rewarded “Slayer of the Machine Gods” title it seemed similar to how players gained “Conqueror of the Dread Fortress”, “Deposer of the Dread Masters” and the “Bane of Izax” titles prior to nerfs. Speaking with a lot of raiders that have cleared Gods Nightmare, I think that a lot of people wouldn’t mind nerfs to the Nightmare mode to allow the larger raiding community to start venturing into the operation and experience the fights. A key argument I think is that so many of the mechanics are fun and that the boss fights are really challenging both on an individual level as well as for the team, however, the current difficulty level excludes a lot of the larger raiding community.

Tldr: Reduce the difficulty of Nightmare Gods from the Machine to allow for the larger raiding community to experience the fights, remove the “Slayer of the Machine Gods” title upon killing Izax as a token to the players who killed it prior.

Necro here, but I really don't think there's any reason for devs to nerf any of the Nightmare/Master Modes, even Izax or some of the new modes in Dxun. I prefer if they keep those as hard as they can think of (While still proving to us that they actually played it themselves and found a clear strategy to beat their own game even if they have no intention of telling us that strategy).

What I don't prefer is the constant nerfs of lower level content to appeal to casual players, leaving players who want to do harder content without a suitable bridge to their endgame goal. The old Operations are completely devoid of challenge in the story modes now; and even on Story Mode Gods, where the opportunity to execute mechanics skillfully is at least present, countless prog groups just starting out ignore that teachable moment in favor of something more expedient (let Tyth kill the adds for us, stack A&E to aoe fluff them down, don't bother with Ignition Catalysts on Scyva and above all STACKING under the lady to aoe heal through EVERYTHING, etc.) all because it's so mind-numbingly forgiving. I don't think it's that hard to wonder why it then takes ages for them to catch on to what has to be done in harder modes when the groups come to them; the intensity of the mechanics will crash on them like a ton of bricks.

I'd prefer if the Devs found a way to make a 4-tiered system of difficulty rather than 3-tiers for all the usual ops, though I have no comment on Rav and ToS. The immensely nerfed Story Mode as it is today is fine, but there should be a bridge difficulty between that and Hard/Vet, which returns most of the mechanics and/or a bit of the parse checks that were removed from Story Modes way back before Fallen Empire. Dxun is *okay* as it is going into squeezing Master Mode in there, but Gods is falling prey to the lack of a bridge difficulty issue, and needs either that 4th tier (Story, Hard, Veteran, Nightmare) or at the very least a scaling overhaul so the bosses and their difficulties feel more balanced between a keyboard faceroll and a wipefest where no one wants to waste their evening on it again.