Enemy SP bars

[Windex69]

Gimme.......... Now.

Make it so number one.

It has been said too many times to count... Enemies should have finite mana as we do.

[Qezuzu]

But they'd then be given a large number of Menm pots.

[Xenus_Paradox]

But they'd then be given a large number of Menm pots.

Every second spent drinking a mana pot is a second they're not spamming Cometfall.

[cdemeritt]

Every second spent drinking a mana pot is a second they're not spamming Cometfall.

Speaking of this, why don't they get a cooldown timer too.... seems they can spam anything 10 faster than my sorc can...

[SardaofChaos]

Speaking of this, why don't they get a cooldown timer too.... seems they can spam anything 10 faster than my sorc can...

Probably because that's a whole 'nother set of timers that would then be possibly all running simultaneously, thereby increasing the lag problem in high population quests.

[QuantumFX]

Well, the reason given for the unlimited mana is that players could simply wait out enemy casters because they don’t know how to conserve mana. (Translation: The A.I. is too stupid to stop attacking.)

That said, I still don’t understand why they think not giving concentration checks to the less than red named casters is considered a “good idea”. (Yes, there is the B.S. “They can be disrupted by taking a certain % of their H.P.” but that system breaks too easily when mobs are given 5,000+ HP.)

[Bobthesponge]

Gimme.......... Now.

Make it so number one.

It has been said too many times to count... Enemies should have finite mana as we do.

Why? Are you having trouble killing stuff? Then change your tactics and up your DPS.

/Thread Fail

[NaturalHazard]

But they'd then be given a large number of Menm pots.

can we get these then if we kill them? :D

[dameron]

This particularly sucks when soloing high end content with a melee toon, mostly when dealing with a red named healer.

I don't know how many times the game has been reduced to immediately knowing that I will defeat the enemy, since I can out dps his healing, but the whole mess taking 4-5 minutes to decide what's already decided.

There aren't enough variable to make the fight interesting, and the only way I can screw it up is to somehow allow the mob to scamper away while I'm painting my toenails, or whatever else I happen to be doing while I wait for the mob's health bar to finish doing the hustle, four steps left then three steps right.

Red named healers should be avoided in the game design as they're a cheap way to require a certain amount of dps to bypass. They add almost nothing to the excitement of any encounter they're in as they usually just sit and spam their infinite and uninterrupted healing on themselves.

They make for incredibly boring combats.

[frznvimes]

This particularly sucks when soloing high end content with a melee toon, mostly when dealing with a red named healer.

I don't know how many times the game has been reduced to immediately knowing that I will defeat the enemy, since I can out dps his healing, but the whole mess taking 4-5 minutes to decide what's already decided.

There aren't enough variable to make the fight interesting, and the only way I can screw it up is to somehow allow the mob to scamper away while I'm painting my toenails, or whatever else I happen to be doing while I wait for the mob's health bar to finish doing the hustle, four steps left then three steps right.

Red named healers should be avoided in the game design as they're a cheap way to require a certain amount of dps to bypass. They add almost nothing to the excitement of any encounter they're in as they usually just sit and spam their infinite and uninterrupted healing on themselves.

They make for incredibly boring combats.
it's much more tolerable if you own a smart phone. or a book.

[callforkills]

Why? Are you having trouble killing stuff? Then change your tactics and up your DPS.

/Thread Fail

Agreed.

[Memnir]

Why?

Given how inflated SP numbers are for players in this game - no spellcasting monster would/should last long enough to deplete a like number of spell points anyways. If you are having issues with casters enough to feel the need to "wait out" their spell casting - well, I don't think that limiting the monster would solve the problem.



/no thank you.

[Mojhoman]

Why?

Given how inflated SP numbers are for players in this game - no spellcasting monster would/should last long enough to deplete a like number of spell points anyways. If you are having issues with casters enough to feel the need to "wait out" their spell casting - well, I don't think that limiting the monster would solve the problem.



/no thank you.

I agree. The only way I can see something like this NOT breaking the game is by creating an AI that is on par with a humans actual intelligence.

[MrkGrismer]

I think the 'problem' is almost entirely limited to self-healing casters, and especially ones that cannot be 'vorpaled' (like red named).

Generally not a problem for a full group, but for somebody soloing with or without a hireling they can be a major source of frustration, especially when they are at or near the end of very long quests. Some that come to my mind readily is the end boss for Hiding in Plain Site (bad enough he is surrounded by orange named, but at least they can be vorpalled). The other bad one in my experience is the Ghalle orange named in Running With the Devils. At level a soloer can be hard pressed to be able to kill the critter, and you can't get completion unless you can kill it.

Their heals are non-interruptable and infinite, if there was just some way to limit that I think it would lower frustration levels a lot for some. But when you are fighting one of them and their red bar fills completely as soon as you get them to 50% EVERY TIME it is obvious that you are not going to be able to kill them unless you can figure out something else, most likely trying to get help from somebody else.

Sure, for some this means going to the ddo store and buying some melee hirelings, but then dungeon scaling kicks in and all you've done is purchase some expensive soul stones (although sometimes the melee hireling thing works).

[MalakRevan]

What's the point? Enemy casters usually don't live past the first two spells anyway.

[Hendrik]

Gimme.......... Now.

Make it so number one.

It has been said too many times to count... Enemies should have finite mana as we do.

So we can stand behind objects in safety as they spam spells at us, miss, and then fight them when SP gone?

Ahh, no.

[Rodasch]

It's really not that hard to code the AI to stop casting offensive spells when they are dealing zero damage or when they lose line of sight to their target and seek a melee attack range or resumed Line of Sight, then succeed on melee or missile attacks before resuming offensive casting.

Creating monster AI isn't really as complicated as creating actual full blown AI, it just needs to have good fall-through loops to make reasonable strategic decisions. They simply need to look at what breaks their "AI" and alter the decision matrices to account for it without breaking the other decision processes.

I've seen better AI decision trees in other MMO's, so I know it's possible. It requires some time and effort and research though, and I'm not sure the devs are given enough time to do that by Turbine. I'm sure most of them would love to improve tons of things about the game that they simply aren't given the time and opportunity to work on due to other work load.

[Angelus_dead]

Speaking of this, why don't they get a cooldown timer too.... seems they can spam anything 10 faster than my sorc can...
Monster casters use the same spell cooldowns as a player Sorcerer. Not that it matters much, because monster casters waste so much time on harmless non-casting animations anyhow. Look at how a kobold shaman does Magic Missile, throws a rock, jumps left, jumps right, then decides to maybe think about casting something else...

Step into Wayward Lobster to see how much faster players are at casting than monsters.

[Angelus_dead]

It's really not that hard to code the AI to stop casting offensive spells when they are dealing zero damage or when they lose line of sight to their target and seek a melee attack range or resumed Line of Sight, then succeed on melee or missile attacks before resuming offensive casting.
Of course the easy things about checking line of sight before casting are manageable, and the hard stuff about enforcing smarter tactical use of spells might be approachable too.

But to do that would negate the suggestion: If monsters cast smarter so they don't waste spellpoints, then they'll have so many spellpoints that for them to run out will be completely unrealistic. If you run a few dungeons and count how many spells each enemy gets off, you'll notice that a regular party only lets non-bosses live long enough for maybe 2 casts on average.

[Rodasch]

Of course the easy things about checking line of sight before casting are manageable, and the hard stuff about enforcing smarter tactical use of spells might be approachable too.

But to do that would negate the suggestion: If monsters cast smarter so they don't waste spellpoints, then they'll have so many spellpoints that for them to run out will be completely unrealistic. If you run a few dungeons and count how many spells each enemy gets off, you'll notice that a regular party only lets non-bosses live long enough for maybe 2 casts on average.

This isn't about the regular party. It's about the less than optimal party. Just because you or I don't happen to have the problem very often doesn't mean it doesn't occur. The number of spells a monster can cast should be finite, but how big that number is has yet to be determined. Either that or we should be able to more easily interrupt monster casting (force concentration checks) via damage, shield bash, or other methods (especially for melees).

[kitsune_ko]

I had posted something very similar to this quite some time ago. Way back when I was trying to flag a char for the Gianthold raid, for the life of me I could not find or even make a full party to run crucible with. After waiting and trying for a week, I finally grabbed a hirling and ran it on Casual.

Long story short, the end fight took me about 40 min. Not that I was unable to damage any of the red names in the final fight, I could knock their HP down quite quickly, just there were two red named healers spamming uninterruptable, endless mana fueled, heal spells non-stop making it nearly impossble to do enough damage quick enough to kill anything.

Once the first healer was finally down, the rest of the fight took about 3 min. It was a long, annoyingly pointless end fight. It should have been finished in minutes, but took **** near an hour because as red named they were immune to any insta-death/disabling effects, and as NPC casters they had endless MP to cast heal with, and with no chance of interrupts.

The endless mana I can live with, its sloppy programming (Hey, instead of developing an intelligent NPC AI, lets just give them endless resources) but this can be dealt with by players. Why all NPCs are automatically granted a 100% never-fail, totally un-interruptible casting ability baffles me though.


Kit

[Smexxy]

I had posted something very similar to this quite some time ago. Way back when I was trying to flag a char for the Gianthold raid, for the life of me I could not find or even make a full party to run crucible with. After waiting and trying for a week, I finally grabbed a hirling and ran it on Casual.

Long story short, the end fight took me about 40 min. Not that I was unable to damage any of the red names in the final fight, I could knock their HP down quite quickly, just there were two red named healers spamming uninterruptable, endless mana fueled, heal spells non-stop making it nearly impossble to do enough damage quick enough to kill anything.

Once the first healer was finally down, the rest of the fight took about 3 min. It was a long, annoyingly pointless end fight. It should have been finished in minutes, but took **** near an hour because as red named they were immune to any insta-death/disabling effects, and as NPC casters they had endless MP to cast heal with, and with no chance of interrupts.

The endless mana I can live with, its sloppy programming (Hey, instead of developing an intelligent NPC AI, lets just give them endless resources) but this can be dealt with by players. Why all NPCs are automatically granted a 100% never-fail, totally un-interruptible casting ability baffles me though.


Kit

What is bold and in red is the main problem. This is why I wish DDO had the silence spell. Make it a globe spell so that you simply cant cast is on a specific target and give it a large cool down timer. It would allow for some tactical maneuvering to get mobs to stay within and disallow misuse with the long cool down.