The title is slightly misleading, as hating the type of encounter is not so much the issue as despising the mechanics behind such encounters. In PVE content there are counters against, or at least ways to deal with, various boss effects. In PVP styled encounters (and for the sake of this post specifically the third encounter in the Trial of the Crusader ten-man raid) things are not generally designed in such a manner as to provide any semblance of fairness in the encounter.

For most encounters there are ways to combat crowd control. During the Faction Champions encounter, however, things are quite off-balance. In a true PVP encounter there are a number of things that would allow players to become more resilient and maintain increased survivability. These things no longer apply in ToC for the most part, however, and the general problem with the encounter lie in three main areas:

• Resilience does not have any effect.
• Crowd Control has diminishing returns for the player, but not for the NPCs.
• NPCs hit much harder than players by a disproportionate amount when taking into account the difficulty in being able to focus and burn down any single target, even with an eight damage-dealing and two healing classes party composition.

Resilience.

Often blamed for numerous problems in PVP, resilience has become an integral part of the game mechanics. Imagine the problems if resilience no longer worked in arenas or battlegrounds. ToC requires an exemplary level of coordination and luck to combat this weakness, meaning there is not a way to offset weaknesses in party composition or skill through some type of gear contribution. In many ways this is preferred (skill over gear), but few players are exemplary PVPers, and most who raid hold little or no interest in PVP. These weaknesses contribute to frustrating PVE players, often leading to simply skipping that content to move onto the next.

Crowd Control.

This is, almost unequivocally, the primary reason PVP-type encounters in PVE content should be readdressed. Any encounter where Crowd Control can be chained to keep a player from being able to contribute to any fight would be stopped in true player versus player situations, and yet in ToC the NPCs are quite capable of keeping more than one person neutralized without recourse for a majority of the fight. The simple answer is to place the same restrictions and diminishing returns on the NPC characters that players are burdened with. Further, player Crowd Control does not last nearly as long in these situations as it does in typical PVE encounters.

Disproportionate Damage.

Taking into account the issue addressed above, the ability for the NPCs to completely destroy players at appropriate gear levels within ToC is skewed in the favor of death for the player. While PVE encounters are generally designed as such, there are ways to corral the opponents in those encounters in order to keep “squishy” players somewhat more safe. In ToC there is no such capability, practically forcing the party composition to be designed around classes instead of players (healers who can absorb a significant amount of damage compared to other healing classes, for instance).

Personal Thoughts.

While this list is certainly not extremely detailed, I would like some feedback on others’ thoughts and do not want to influence the discussion too strongly in one direction or another. To partake in the discussion comment here, send an email, chat on Twitter, or visit the forums here. Tips? Tricks? Even “learn to play” trolling will work if it leads to some constructive feedback. The majority of those I speak with feel these issues are present in the Faction Champions encounter in ToC, do you?