Elite mod 6 content commentary

[Gol]

did some of this stuff on elite last night and thought i'd share some observations. note they are specifically targeting elite, not normal.

1) you need all the attack bonus you can get. 34 str, axe attack 2, 15 BAB, GH, haste, +5 great axe, attack boost 1, and power attack off. my first two swings rarely hit most stuff. Red names were even worse. For what it's worth, I only hit with a bow on natural 20s.
2) the trap will kill you (no specific one, just in general). even if you have evasion. a rogue with improved evasion and 400 HP has a chance. problem is the save DCs are north of 47. I was failing on rolls of 19.
3) Orthons are scary. they're worse than red named mobs. if you don't have 300+ hp and a cleric behind you, let the fighter/barb take it. from a tactical perspective though, take these guys down first. maybe even before spellcasters.
4) in running with the devils, bring your wounders. you'll need abou 30 str to get through the DR, but they go down a lot faster this way - especially on elite (yes, I actually did this on elite). if you can't punch through the DR, bring a transmuter (pretty sure their DR is 20-25/evil).
5) don't pug these with anybody short of true powergamers. casual players or players without lots of uber and raid gear (and clerics w/o deep pockets) won't last long. skillmonkey non-combat rogues are total deadweight in the vale quests.

As I think of more, i'll add to this post.

[CSFurious]

those are the devils that you are talking about

additionally, i agree that one would be wise to only pug these quests on norm & maybe hard, that is still a challenge

but, i think balanced parties will still do well

peace

[EspyLacopa]

those are the devils that you are talking about

additionally, i agree that one would be wise to only pug these quests on norm & maybe hard, that is still a challenge

but, i think balanced parties will still do well

peace

Good Combat Rogue + Spellcaster with Sunburst = Ownage

[akla_thornfist]

we will get better at these elite quest the more we run them but my 28pt build fighter gets his butt handed to him in there on elite, its a lev 18 quest so should be expected. i wont run them on elite until im lev 16 might have a better chance.

[MrCow]

Good Combat Rogue + Spellcaster with Sunburst = Ownage

How true, and sunburst has no SR check to boot. :D

[EspyLacopa]

How true, and sunburst has no SR check to boot. :D
And unlike other spells that blind, it's a Reflex save, not a Will save.

And the handy benefit of insta-killing Vampires.

[jmonty]

i haven't gotten around to running elite quests out there with my ranger yet; i've been trying to get my cleric up to 15 first. if i can't hit with dual +5, full-sized axes, i can always switch to one handed style. :)

did you have greater heroism on?

[Aspenor]

And unlike other spells that blind, it's a Reflex save, not a Will save.

And the handy benefit of insta-killing Vampires.

Blindness is a fortitude save spell.

[Hadrian]

In case you haven't tried yet, the orthons and other devils have a very poor will save, and do not pass the HD cap on banishing weapons. Even on elite it is fairly easy to get them to banish.

The caster-type outsiders in RwtD can also be banished, but their will saves are very high. Con damage works well on them except that some of them can cast full heal and remove the stat damage before it's enough to kill them.

We found Mass Suggestion (on spell penetration builds) to work very well. They do have high will saves when it comes to the DC on banishing weapons, but a full caster has enough DC behind his spells. This way they aren't all concentrating fire on the group, but they're helping you kill eachother with their light spells.

I know that with a +23 spell penetration, I was failing to penetration with a roll of 11, but a roll of 14 was penetrating SR. (This was on the basic caster-type encounters) I did not narrow it down beyond that.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Blindness is a fortitude save spell.

Glitterdust is a will save.

[Aspenor]

Glitterdust is a will save.

Technicalities :p

[sirgog]

PUGged elite Let Sleeping Dust Lie (including optional chests), took a long time but no problems.

Also PUGged elite Ritual Sacrifice, not even a single death :-)


Carefully made-up parties seem key.

[Vengenance]

Ran Running with the devils on elite last night in all guild group with power gamers with all best gear and all I have to say is ****. So far this seems to be the hardest out of them all to run on elite. I ran it with my cleric, and all I can say is that I went through north of 20 major mana pots. The best weapon on all mobs seemed to be vorpals, 20 and confirmed crit and they're dead. Second best was wounding of puncturing. Red names, were **** near impossible, the three demons at the end were also extremely tough, those orthons are just brutal on elite and they followed us through the d-door we cast. We finished it, killed them all, but it was a very costly endeavor, not to be attempted lightly or w/o a lot of resources.

[QuantumFX]

1) Paralyzers are your friend. A lot of the new baddies have poor willsaves even on elite.
2) Puncturing > Wounder. No DR issues and you can get DR bypassing Axiomatic/Anarchic of Puncturing pretty easily.
3) Practice, practice, practice the quests before going in on Hard/Elite. Coalescence Chamber, the mutant love child of Trial by Fire and the Pit, is more about knowing how to get around and then when to zerg and when to fight than about beating stuff down.
4) Carry at least Anarchic of Pure Good and Axiomatic of Pure Good to bypass DR
5) Not just for Mod 6 but... Know your enemies. This mod does little to change the Undead/Giant/Evil Outsider paradiam other than possibly adding construct at the best choice for the lvl 15 FE. (Destroy constructs in Von6, Titan Awakes, Shroud and oh yeah there's those pesky warforged, Maruts and golems...)

[Osharan_Tregarth]

1) Paralyzers are your friend. A lot of the new baddies have poor willsaves even on elite.
2) Puncturing > Wounder. No DR issues and you can get DR bypassing Axiomatic/Anarchic of Puncturing pretty easily.
3) Practice, practice, practice the quests before going in on Hard/Elite. Coalescence Chamber, the mutant love child of Trial by Fire and the Pit, is more about knowing how to get around and then when to zerg and when to fight than about beating stuff down.
4) Carry at least Anarchic of Pure Good and Axiomatic of Pure Good to bypass DR
5) Not just for Mod 6 but... Know your enemies. This mod does little to change the Undead/Giant/Evil Outsider paradiam other than possibly adding construct at the best choice for the lvl 15 FE. (Destroy constructs in Von6, Titan Awakes, Shroud and oh yeah there's those pesky warforged, Maruts and golems...)

1. I'll think about it.. But no promises. Dead baddies don't need to be paralyzed!
2. Yup yup... My normal weapon set includes a +5 acid rapier of puncturing... Good times. Our casters(and me on mine) have been doing a lot of disco ball/cloudkill combo's(with the occasional mindfog thrown in, just for extra added injury.
3. Every time I go in there, I tell myself that THIS TIME the first person that falls is going to "accidently" get killed by the mobs, and then I'll just carry their soul stone around until the end boss fight. I haven't done it yet, but I sure feel like it...
4. nothing to say here one way or the other.
5. I'd picked up Aberations for favored enemies, but with the raid portals and such, construct might work out a little bit better.

[BRINKS]

General info on a run we did last night. Searing light from the enemy clerics hits
for around 84hp. Banishing and vorpaling works well until you run it on elite,
then it's all about DPS. The difficulty lvl jumps tremendously from hard to elite.
At the final battle, take out the red named (taelrun or some such) while he
spams you with searing light. That will drop the barrier to the final red names.
We found that if the party stays in the entrance corridor out of sight and
one toon runs up to activate the final boss, then runs back to the party in hiding,
the bosses henchmen will go to the tunnels at the back of the cave after a couple
minutes of waiting. This allows you to take on the boss and each of his henchmen
seperately. Since they are red named with a bazillion hitpoints each, taking them
on one at a time is a good thing. Even then party wipes happen. I don't know if the
instance was bugged, but most spells (i.e. firewall) had little or no effect. Force
weapons and transmuters seemed to do the most damage. Pugs can knock out the Vale
quests on elite if all are willing to put in the time (and plat) for healing and repair.

PS-The Vale is not a Clerics friend so help em out :)


LVL16 Ranger

[Shade]

Yea running with the devils is the hardest by far on elite. Mainly just due to the end fight with the devils, think its 3 devils + 3 tieflings.

I have no trouble killing them on my barbarian. only takes a minuit given a few heals... But thats the problem, they generally kill my clerics so fast I rarely get any heals until there dead... No way to hold agro, they just kill the clerics over and over as fast as they can no matter how hard you hit them. Tho that could be due to those blade barriers clerics love to cast...

Last couple times I did it cleric and most other died as I killed all the tieflings.. Then those who survived ran back to the shrine with the stones, heal me as I kill them there and rez themselves as needed.

Im sure theres some better strategies to do it heh. But still never really needed any mana potions, and was fairly quick, 30 minuits.

[QuantumFX]

1. I'll think about it.. But no promises. Dead baddies don't need to be paralyzed!

Yeah, I forgot to mention that this is a playstyle preference too. I loathe putting out a lot of effort to hunt stuff down and I think it helps the cleric out. (Fendish scorpions can't burrow while paralized, Giantkin can't throw down the temper tantrum of doom and it's less headache to deal with paralyzed teleporters.)

Also I'd like to add:
3a) Practice mana conservation even on normal. Even though rest shrines reset on normal, learning how to pace yourself will pay off on hard and elite.

6) Protection from Energy (PfE) is situationally useful for dealing with traps and dispel spamming casters (DSC's). With the stupid high elite saves PfE will usually suck up the first failed save and resist will allow you to get past the 2nd failed save. For DSCs, the ablative nature of PfE will help the spammed chain lightning and will usually be gone before they dispell it.

[rpasell]

Con damage works well on them except that some of them can cast full heal and remove the stat damage before it's enough to kill them.



Even full heal doesn't remove sat damage on enemy mobs. That may be as intended or not, but I have no problems burning them down with Wounding of Puncturing even while they are full healing themselves.

[BRINKS]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that this is a playstyle preference too. I loathe putting out a lot of effort to hunt stuff down and I think it helps the cleric out. [I](Fendish scorpions can't burrow while paralized, Giantkin can't throw down the temper tantrum of doom and it's less headache to deal with paralyzed teleporters.)

Unfortunately scorpions still burrow when paralyzed, demons teleport, archers shoot... theres a lot more work to be done by the devs to fix that issue.

[Illuminati]

did some of this stuff on elite last night and thought i'd share some observations. note they are specifically targeting elite, not normal.

1) you need all the attack bonus you can get. 34 str, axe attack 2, 15 BAB, GH, haste, +5 great axe, attack boost 1, and power attack off. my first two swings rarely hit most stuff. Red names were even worse. For what it's worth, I only hit with a bow on natural 20s.
2) the trap will kill you (no specific one, just in general). even if you have evasion. a rogue with improved evasion and 400 HP has a chance. problem is the save DCs are north of 47. I was failing on rolls of 19.
3) Orthons are scary. they're worse than red named mobs. if you don't have 300+ hp and a cleric behind you, let the fighter/barb take it. from a tactical perspective though, take these guys down first. maybe even before spellcasters.
4) in running with the devils, bring your wounders. you'll need abou 30 str to get through the DR, but they go down a lot faster this way - especially on elite (yes, I actually did this on elite). if you can't punch through the DR, bring a transmuter (pretty sure their DR is 20-25/evil).
5) don't pug these with anybody short of true powergamers. casual players or players without lots of uber and raid gear (and clerics w/o deep pockets) won't last long. skillmonkey non-combat rogues are total deadweight in the vale quests.

As I think of more, i'll add to this post.


1) I punctured most no prob and the red named stunk but was able to smack them down pretty good after a destruction wep (that -4 ac to them is pretty nice)
2) One of the reasons I am glad to be high dex =p
3) Puncture them no prob, cool death animation.
4) Agreed , no prob with w/p or just puncturing (try to get a seeker one if you don't have).
5) Noticed that. The demand for the skilled rogue is greater than ever.

[Aesop]

Ya know I pug'd the Chamber on Elite and we didn't really have many problems. I really don't consider myself all that elite over all. My rogue is sorta balanced with a slight lean towards skill focused. I don't have a lot of uber gear... and neither did 3 other members of the party. We had a bard that was pretty badass and a caster that was pretty decent. I think a lot of the deal with these quests is finding a decent strategy and not getting overwhelmed. Stick to partyy tactics and work together.

Aesop

[Gol]

Ya know I pug'd the Chamber on Elite and we didn't really have many problems. I really don't consider myself all that elite over all. My rogue is sorta balanced with a slight lean towards skill focused. I don't have a lot of uber gear... and neither did 3 other members of the party. We had a bard that was pretty badass and a caster that was pretty decent. I think a lot of the deal with these quests is finding a decent strategy and not getting overwhelmed. Stick to partyy tactics and work together.

Aesop
Chamber is the easiest of the 5 vale quests, IMO.

[ArkoHighStar]

Chamber is the easiest of the 5 vale quests, IMO.

but the most annoying:D Its like running up and down the escalators at the mall

[QuantumFX]

Unfortunately scorpions still burrow when paralyzed, demons teleport, archers shoot... theres a lot more work to be done by the devs to fix that issue.

The only things I've noticed are the teleporting. (FtSed Bearded Devils are henceforth known as "tricky lawn gnomes") and the Orthon's maggot heavy repeater (But they still can't change facing w/o teleporting). Other than the porting I have never seen the problems you're reporting. (Though I haven't seen the off hand attack bug either..) /shrug

[Heladron]

Ran Running with the devils on elite last night in all guild group with power gamers with all best gear and all I have to say is ****. So far this seems to be the hardest out of them all to run on elite. I ran it with my cleric, and all I can say is that I went through north of 20 major mana pots. The best weapon on all mobs seemed to be vorpals, 20 and confirmed crit and they're dead. Second best was wounding of puncturing. Red names, were **** near impossible, the three demons at the end were also extremely tough, those orthons are just brutal on elite and they followed us through the d-door we cast. We finished it, killed them all, but it was a very costly endeavor, not to be attempted lightly or w/o a lot of resources.

I can confirm that vorpals rule in RwtD. My tank and the other were vorpal wielding and the ranger we had was paralyzing stuff so we did well in that quest. The only trouble was on the final fight. That was a wipe but we came back and finished them off.

Webs worked great in RwtD too. The Devils got stuck a lot and even though they would teleport shortly after getting stuck,they would just teleport back into the web and would get stuck often enough to make things manageable.

[Heladron]

Just curious, In RwtD, has anyone tried Chaos Hammer and the obscure cleric offensive spells like that? Since the Celestials are good I was curious if they were easier to damage with those spells or not.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Just curious, In RwtD, has anyone tried Chaos Hammer and the obscure cleric offensive spells like that? Since the Celestials are good I was curious if they were easier to damage with those spells or not.The Eladrin (Bralani and Ghaeles) and Djinn/Nishan are CG. You can use Unholy Blight or Order's Wrath.

[EspyLacopa]

Just curious, In RwtD, has anyone tried Chaos Hammer and the obscure cleric offensive spells like that? Since the Celestials are good I was curious if they were easier to damage with those spells or not.
Actually, for the Eladrins in RwtD, you'd want to use Order's Wrath since they are Chaotic. Chaos Hammer would be used on the Devils, since they are Lawful.

[Heladron]

Actually, for the Eladrins in RwtD, you'd want to use Order's Wrath since they are Chaotic. Chaos Hammer would be used on the Devils, since they are Lawful.

Thanks, while my cleric was dead I just did an inspect on the Braelani and friends that killed us and it said something along the lines of "Celestial something something...good something something." :)

[EspyLacopa]

Thanks, while my cleric was dead I just did an inspect on the Braelani and friends that killed us and it said something along the lines of "Celestial something something...good something something." :)
Celestial is a general description of any good-aligned outsider or extraplanar style creature.

Within that, you'd also have Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic ones. Eladrin happen to be Chaotic Good. Archons are Lawful Good.

[Mad_Bombardier]

Thanks, while my cleric was dead I just did an inspect on the Braelani and friends that killed us and it said something along the lines of "Celestial something something...good something something." :)The Celestial note is "Celestial Petrification Immunity." Good is "Good Outsider."

[Aesop]

Chamber is the easiest of the 5 vale quests, IMO.

really I thought rainbow was

Aesop

[Vengenance]

The rainbow quest, knoll quest, and spider quest are the easiest on elite imo. The chamber quest isn't hard just extremely annoying, so from that standpoint it will only ever be run on elite one time with each of my characters, and Running w/the Devils is a complete nut buster, that I'll continue to run until we develop a better strategy for it on elite. It is one of my favorite of the new quests, it's just hard as hell on elite. Getting the right party make-up will probably make this quest more doable on elite, maybe 2 clerics, 1-2 casters, bardish tank for fascinate, and mega tank.

[Aesop]

The rainbow quest, knoll quest, and spider quest are the easiest on elite imo. The chamber quest isn't hard just extremely annoying, so from that standpoint it will only ever be run on elite one time with each of my characters, and Running w/the Devils is a complete nut buster, that I'll continue to run until we develop a better strategy for it on elite. It is one of my favorite of the new quests, it's just hard as hell on elite. Getting the right party make-up will probably make this quest more doable on elite, maybe 2 clerics, 1-2 casters, bardish tank for fascinate, and mega tank.

I've done a couple others on Hard and they are n't too bad... but yeah Devils is the biggest pain in the but. I'm thinkin mass Charm and suggestion and try to have them fight each other is the b... easiest way to do it. Heck have the melees curse everyone to help keep the saves from being made if possible

Aesop

[Lorien]

did some of this stuff on elite last night and thought i'd share some observations. note they are specifically targeting elite, not normal.

1) you need all the attack bonus you can get. 34 str, axe attack 2, 15 BAB, GH, haste, +5 great axe, attack boost 1, and power attack off. my first two swings rarely hit most stuff. Red names were even worse. For what it's worth, I only hit with a bow on natural 20s.
2) the trap will kill you (no specific one, just in general). even if you have evasion. a rogue with improved evasion and 400 HP has a chance. problem is the save DCs are north of 47. I was failing on rolls of 19.
3) Orthons are scary. they're worse than red named mobs. if you don't have 300+ hp and a cleric behind you, let the fighter/barb take it. from a tactical perspective though, take these guys down first. maybe even before spellcasters.
4) in running with the devils, bring your wounders. you'll need abou 30 str to get through the DR, but they go down a lot faster this way - especially on elite (yes, I actually did this on elite). if you can't punch through the DR, bring a transmuter (pretty sure their DR is 20-25/evil).
5) don't pug these with anybody short of true powergamers. casual players or players without lots of uber and raid gear (and clerics w/o deep pockets) won't last long. skillmonkey non-combat rogues are total deadweight in the vale quests.

As I think of more, i'll add to this post.

"Skillmonkey non-combat rogues are total deadweight in the vale quests" ..... Very unffair man!!! Maybe the average skillmonkey rogue ... but if your runnin with powergamers ... take a skillmonkey rogue with you on every quest. These rogues are co-ck D!!!! (By the way .. there is no such thing as a non-combatant rogue :) )