CactusChan
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As a primarily juggernaut player, I've gathered a lot of data about the NPCs level 40 juggernauts face, including the buffed NPCs that were implemented as an attempt to cut down on botters. Most of the buffs were relatively minor; HP and energy buffs, adding passive bloodlust/reroute to some NPCs, and adding active skills as well. Most of the buffs don't make the NPC too much more difficult than they were originally, but one particular NPC stands out from that rule very clearly:
The level 30 Yeti Hulk.
This guy has surpassed even Valestra in my levels of hate toward an NPC. He was annoying enough pre-buff, but now he's just absurd. I'll break down exactly why he's way too powerful and needs to be nerfed; for reference, I'm a tech TLM with 455-513 defense in juggernaut.
The level 30 Yeti Hulk has 5 skills: Blood Lust, Field Medic, Double Strike, Cheap Shot, and Berzerker. The first two won't normally be used, obviously, so he only uses the last three mentioned. However, all three of those skills, have a 2-turn cooldown, which means he's able to use them one after the other without stopping until he runs out of energy. Well that shouldn't be a problem, right? As long as you have enough defense you can withstand it for a while, right?
Wrong.
With my level of defense, the average damage output (non-crit) for his skills are as follows: Cheap Shot ≈ 200; Double Strike ≈ 150; Berzerker ≈ 250. So for a normal juggernaut with 800-900 HP, 2/3 to 3/4 of your HP will likely be gone in only 3 turns -- and that's just from one NPC. If Yeti Hulk is paired up with another NPC such as Frost Demon or Valestra (either of which can happen because Yeti Hulk is only level 30!), you're most likely going to need a Field Medic or other powerful healing skill/core by round 3. Of course, that won't help you long...Yeti Hulk is just going to keep up the barrage, so if you don't either kill him or have insane defense/HP regen, you're going to die for sure. Finally, if Yeti Hulk is paired up with a real opponent, you might as well kiss your sorry behind goodbye, because unless the player is hot garbage you sure ain't winning that one.
Having an NPC this powerful is extremely punishing to juggernaut players; while the gamemode certainly shouldn't be a cakewalk, this level of difficulty is too much, especially since it gives lower-level 2v2 players a cheap, easy win. No player should be punished with a loss they can't prevent simply because they got the wrong NPC.
All that said, here are my suggestions for a possible fix to this problem:
1. Remove one of Yeti Hulk's skills, preferably Cheap Shot or Berzerker. His damage output would still be high, but not unfairly so.
2. Promote Yeti Hulk to a higher level: 33-34 if you want to keep him in juggernaut, 35+ otherwise. This would prevent him from being paired with the other powerful NPCs in juggernaut.
3. Nerf Yeti Hulk's strength. HARD. If an level 30 NPC has triple the damage output of NPCs 4 levels higher, you know something's wrong.
Doing any one of the three things above would, I believe, solve the problem. Feel free to provide feedback/questions.
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