It seems to me not many people here realize why these nerfs are not that big of a deal, and are even welcome. Now, full disclosure I’m not a veteran player in this game nor did I play on other regions. I’ve been playing this game for the past couple of weeks and having a good time (mostly) with a few issues here and there that I might dedicate a separate post for. So, my feedback may “carry less weight” I suppose?
Regardless, I’m coming to the conclusion that most of the guardian raid fights in T1 (and maybe T2?) are poorly designed, and no amount of nerfing or buffing is gonna fix a poorly designed fight. When it comes to abyssal dungeons I found them fun, challenging, and perfectly (at least the ones I’ve done so far) doable if you learn the mechanics (without mentioning some significant clarity issues, some of which are getting addressed already)
Without diving into too many details, I’ve found that a lot of the guardian raids have several issues such as attacks that are poorly telegraphed, ability effects not being clearly visible enough, and that they generally favor ranged classes over melee ones. This in combination with the increased health pool (still not sure whether this is true or not because I’ve seen many people saying both) makes them feel more tedious and difficult than even abyss dungeons for me personally. I don’t think abyss dungeons deserved any nerfs at all, but for guardian raids they need to be redesigned imo. Obviously that would take a lot more time and effort, so the easy fix it to just nerf them and let people pass on to higher tiers.
Additionally, after doing some research, most Korean players seem to agree that T1 and T2 content is arguably the worst part of the game, especially when it comes to guardian raids, and that boss encounter designs are leaps and bounds better in T3. To the point that even the developers admit this, and try to push players to reach T3 as fast as possible, because that’s where the game “supposedly” becomes really good. I found that on korean servers players can get 2 free power passes that put them in T3 immediately, and there were (rumored) honing system changes on korean servers that accelerate progression significantly. That’s how badly the devs want you to skip T1 and T2. This makes sense cause they want to retain as many players as possible, and if most players get stuck in the shitty content of T1 and T2 they will most likely quit.
And to those of you arguing about players not being experienced enough for T3 if T1 and T2 are nerfed, and are worried about T3 nerfs. The issue was never the difficulty of the encounters. The problem is the game doesn’t provide enough guidance and proper visual queues to teach the player what to do in these encounters in addition to fundamental design flaws. If a player is required to go to 3rd party sources for information, then the game has failed to guide the player properly. I’m told this is much better in T3 because, that’s right you guessed it, they’re designed better. Players can still learn proper mechanics at any Tier, and in fact easier with better designed encounters. I’m also told that T3 has been nerfed in korea before, multiple times in fact… and it’s very possible to happen here as well. This is the nature of this game. Buffs and nerfs will come and go constantly. So, I don’t really understand why people are making these nerfs out to be the death of this game when it clearly has more pressing issues.