Hello. At the beginning, I will write that I am a souls like game lover. I am not very sophisticated but I like challenges. Immediately for the “get gud” people, I will write that not everyone can be as good as you. I don’t have a static group in lost ark because in the world I just want to play when I feel like it. I did Gate 1 and Gate 2 in about 4-5 hours with random people. The G3 has been torturing for 3 days in total, probably 26 hours or more. Yesterday I had a perfect group of random people with whom I was on discord and even though it was really good to play it and still we wiped again and again, the reason? random death in maiden phases. Hook and saw hitboxes are shit, badly visualized, in G1 Vykas you can tell if it’s your fault that you messed up orb because at least the hitbox match the visual, here you just pray your toes doesn’t slip through the invisible hitbox. 9/10 of wipes are caused by this, and when it happens players doesn’t feel like they lack skill, they feel like they got cheated. I don’t have the pleasure of trying it any longer because it’s just a pile of feces. I don’t feel motivated like in an elden ring or valtan that I want to learn and that if I die it is always my fault.
It’s a gate based around suspect one shot mechanics that leaves very little room for rubber-banding, de-syncs and just general bad RNG. There is no recovery it’s just instant restart.
It isn’t difficult, but it is extremely frustrating and many players are not going to enjoy clearing it multiple times each week, especially when you start pugging it.
Can it be done? Of course, plenty of people will pop into this thread and tell you how they 1 shot it blindfolded while taped to a honey badger and you just need to get good.
Is it fun to do? No, no it is not.
Clown gate 3 is the most frustrating for players that are playing with 150+ ping, though its doable but its just that we have much smaller window to react compare to others … therefore OCE region when AGS?
with few changes the gate would be more enjoyable, like :
- Saws to take you like 80% of hp instead instant kill
- Hooks were ok when push immunity worked on them, now it no longer works and i preferred it how it was before
- in mario you need super armor immunity after you are stunned once for few seconds, not like now to be able to be stunned 3 times without ever leaving out of stun
- And also make it same as in the practice tool - when you press the exit gate you should become invincible to damage until you leave the mario, Instead here you can get killed by mobs while leaving
It would be cool if the Saws gave you a massive debuff (like -50% healing for 1 min) and also chunks you for 40-60% HP. That way it’s still a huge problem getting hit by them, but rubber-banding or being well out of what should have been the hit box and having to restart over and over again is brutal on the mental.
Maybe im alone but blades and hooks are prob the smallest issue for me. I have a route through the middle and the bottom that i use consistebtly without issue.
The biggest issue is when mario transition happens and you get a fear laser, birds, hp swap or some othwr bullshit mechanic stacked ontop of flames tower balls and everything else.
Most frustrating thing to see for me is ppl dying on M1 or M2, by blade or hooks or trying to rush dps during mario transition and getting a bunch of gauge and fucking everything up. G3 has so much time for dps, all you shoukd be doing is landing rotations in obvious windows and surviving everything else and avoiding gauge unless your next up.
This is my priority during the transition.
Watch mario player get gauge in tower. Soon as they transform i burst the tower. Then i clear any balls, then i hard dps the boss.
I do M3 and besides rhe first few times ive veen consistent, my worst run on M3 was when i got to second platform, i was hit by a low missile and brought to like 10%hp, i jumped back down to first platform, re adjusted and still go through the entire level wotb like 10s to spare
Saws are like Mario 3 sometimes I get through it easily 10 times and then fail 3 times in a row to stupid things that shouldn’t even happen😭 even if I take it slow I die sometimes cause I have no idea where the hit box is and it seems like it’s fine but no. Sometimes I get so close to saw/hook and nothing happens and other times I’m outside of the dust cloud around the saw and die like whaatttt and the hook pulling me like a magnet from 5 meters
If they can take the clown raid out, that’d be greaaaat. Every other raid is good.
and thats the whole problem, since when there are 4 players and each fail 3 times from 13 is 12/13 fails coz of saws and hooks, and in the end you have 1 try to actually try and clear it (failing on bingo or showtime or something else like bad rng of flames + laser + birds and whatever esle)
Gate 3 is for sure the hardest of all the gates. Gates 1 and 2 are pretty free. Many people will make due with just clearing gates 1 and 2 weekly and not do gate 3, that’s OK. The hitboxes aren’t perfect by any means, but I feel like some others have mentioned that saws/hooks are the least of the problems in most clearing groups after progging for a bit.
I dont know but nowaday even playing with Google Fiber NA east server is getting more frequent ping spike sometime up to 3500 ms, Raiding with ping spike is causing many wipe. Not great to be honest. Also Hitbox in this game always a problem sometime you are in between two saw clearly not touching it but for some reason you die.
yah i agree insta wipe mech galore is not very fun mechanic… clown is gonna get old really fast.
well overall i like the new raid p1 is a rly fair and fun fight p2 is to 90%fair only some random crap before velganos pizza can rly ruin the fight
and p3 well its somehwhat stupid that 1 tiny tiny error like the saw or 1 fails mario or the marioplayer gets stunned by a random bird or the giant laser can ruin the whole run i dont say no to a hard fight but a fight that gets artificial harder because of rubberbanding where its not your fault is just stupid-(well you can try to counteract rubberbanding by staying farther away from saws but well time is short and it dosent allways work when there are saws and hooks)
if you get hit by the sawblades its not because of being unlucky or the hitboxes suck, you can literally take the same path in the exact same way everytime youre on each mario and get through while still having easily enough time for the stagger
Clown is where most casuals give up… the raid is fine just dont be in such a rush to clear it, it will get easier with every hour of practice… hang in there and it will be on farm in a few weeks…
not rly as the sawblades atleast for mario 1 are somewhat random saw enought mario 1 saws where there was a saw right in front of the players where 1 tiny move to the left killed you and other times where there was no saw at the start of the right site
From my experience thetes generally always 2 safe routes. Bottom or straight through the middle. I udually go straight through the middle but if i go bottom i have to stagger ky movement to either wait for a blade to go up or come down some more.
no they arent, you can only enter the curtain at different times of the same saw pattern, if you just wait you can always do the exact same path
I really enjoyed Lost Ark up till Valtan, and maybe the first two gates of Vykas, but now after trying the clown g3 for days I kinda feel like if this is the direction of future Lost Ark content, then maybe it isn’t for me. 
It’s not impossible, people managed to do it before, so maybe I’ll get it right one day, but it’s just not fun to do and learn these mechanics… well, at least for me.
Look on the bright side once you’re over geared enough you can skip right into bingo from showtime.