Scales run in Gianthold... has the difficulty been modified too much?

[Graz]

I’m not posting here to rant, and I may get some a few mortars from others saying how easy this quest is and such, but I’d like a dev to please step up and post some kind of reply to this message.

Last night I played with a group of people who have extensive experience in running the Stormreaver pre-raid. By extensive, let me preface that by saying that most of these people have suits of scales armor or robes on at least one of their characters or even multiple characters. And they did not buy the scales as such they acquired them by running the quest over and over again only trading within the semi-static group. Basically they run it every Tuesday and Wednesday night.

We ran the quest on Normal difficulty.

Now last night was the first time they have done the pre-raid since Mod 5 went live, so we were all interested to see what kinds of changes happened as we knew there would be some.

There was a post in the release notes for Mod 5 about some hiding places and such that were removed and we found these ‘removals’ right away. That was not a surprise, and was mostly expected.

The Blue Dragon and Giant were not too difficult. A few changes to the AI were seen, but this section of the quest we were able to complete with minimal difficulties.

The White Dragon and Giant were definitely modified. Why was the Giant modified to be immune to so many spells? Our casters were hitting him with maximized/empowered scorching rays and he was only taking 15-25 yellow damage. Also he was totally immune to firewalls? Was it believed that this part of the quest was simply too easy and needed to be toughened up? I’d also like to ask why was the Giant able to spam maximized Comet Falls on the entire party the whole time? We were fairly stretched out, I was about 1/4 across the room when the fighter that was tanking the Giant was hit with a Comet Fall, and I took damage? Why was the area effect increased so large? This part of the quest took us two attempts, but we did get it completed.

The Black Dragon and Giant were a whole different story. We tried a couple different approaches. We did get the giant down to a sliver, then focused on the Dragon, but the Giant was spamming himself with empowered Heals, and in a matter of about 15-20 seconds was at full health. Then he started dropping delayed blast fireballs on the party and these had to be maximized and empowered healing on the Dragon.

Many reported: You take 160 pts of fire damage from a delayed blast fireball, 30 is stopped by your fire resistance…?

The casters were wiped out in one shot. I was dropping resurrections and heals on the entire party as fast as they would either recharge or the scrolls would allow.

Also I’d like to point out that both the dragon and the giant were not missing on any melee attacks. One of our fighters had ~400hps, and about a 50AC, and I was having to cast heal spells as fast as they would recharge just to stay constant health on one player.

The acid in the room was also a bit extreme and was hitting for 60-80 pts each time you got lucky enough to be thrown into it. 30 was stopped by your acid resistance…

The AI on the Giant was obviously modified, but considering we ran this on Normal, this was far to the extreme of making it more difficult.

I’m not getting on the band-wagon of mobs should also have the mana restrictions the player have… but this was a massive modification to the quest that was far above and beyond “making the quest a bit more difficult”.

1 Cleric, 2 Casters, and 3 Tanks, we called no joy after the 5th party wipe.

I understand that you want to make the game a challenge, and there is always the issue of unbalanced game play, but the modifications to this quest definitely seemed excessive. I’d request that you review the changes you made and consider if these changes were a bit ‘to much’ on this quest, particularly the Black Dragon segment and on Normal difficulty…

Regards,
…Graz

[Shiranai]

I was in on that party with Graz.

For the black dragon/giant combo: one of the party wipes happened in about 9 seconds. We ran in, got aggro, 1 caster and 1 tank dead on 1 hit.

The excessiveness of the delayed blast fireballs was a bit over the top. Seems to me he was casting Elite level spells on normal.

The dragon, never got down more than 10% from max health. I could have killed the giant 2 times over and the dragon was always near total health. 1 caster on the giant, the rest of the group on the dragon and the dragon was barely scratched.

The gaint was casting: delayed blast fireballs, force missiles, and heals on himself and the dragon...these occured, from my perspective, continually.

The white dragon, we adapted after just one wipe, and then succeeded. The blue, no party wipes. Black, 5 wipes. Again, the black dragon was barely scratched in any of the attempts.

I hope a DEV does take a look at this thread and reply.

DEVs, please take a look at the 'balancing' of this quest and verify what should/should not be.

FYI: if you want to look at your logs, the quest was run from approx 11:00pm EST to 1:00am EST on Ghallanda.

[Kalanth]

Since I am a lemming in DDO, and the only time I have run this quest was as a cleric, I will ask the dumb question. Why do you keep one alive so you can kill them at the same time?

Cause the only thing I could say would be kill the giant, then work on the dragon, but I know you can't, just don't know why.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

They have to die together, else the dead one will rez......and it starts all over....

Ive ran the Tor I dunno how many times, difficulty was always white hardest, blue second - cause the giant has ADD, then black was just a cakewalk...

Sounds like its not any more.....

[binnsr]

My guild ran it the other night to flag more alts (and get scales, of course). The blue actually ended up giving us the most trouble - and caused 2 party wipes (which I take credit for with my n00bish healing - she's a death priestess, not a healer, Jim!). Both white and black went down without a single issue (lost a sorcerer at each of them, but that's pretty much to be expected).
With the white, the cometfalls were all over the place - but since I'm usually tanking the giant on my other chars, I've never noticed where they hit other than the ones that hit right around me..

edit: I take that back - my faulty old-man memory again.. We wiped once on black due to miscommunication - one tank was using treason to off-tank the dragon so he could switch to the giant when needed to get them down together, but neglected to tell anyone that, so the one with agro jumped over to the giant and got tossed into the deep acid. He immediately died at which point, the dragon went berserk and destroyed both casters and the cleric (poor me) before helping the giant decimate the two survivors (ranger and pally).

imho, that is one of the best designed quests in the game..

[Missing_Minds]

*can't help but chuckle* yeap, experienceed group of people using the "you can't touch me, ha ha." areas are finally finding out how to beat it normally.

Ran it recently after mod 5. Nope, can't say the white dragon's giant changed what so ever. he's always spammed the comet falls, always had huge resistances. Nothing new here at all.

Black dragon giant. Wow... for an experienced group, are your tanks just not able to cut it or something? Black is the easiest of the trio to take out. I am *NOT* the best player in the game at all, nor do I consider myself uber by any means, yet my barbarian with aid of a cleric or bard for heals can take out any of the giants by himself. He can take out any of the dragons as well. Heck, often I have to jump over to a dragon to help out in some cases.

I saw NO changes in the giants or dragons with Mod 5 at all.

Little hint. Work together to bring them both down at about the same pace and you'll be fine.

Sounds like your casters started off with getting agro at the start. In my opinion, very dumb move. Yes, casters can drop them like a rock, but when the rock hits back your casters can't take it. Casters should hold off and do their best to actually keep the dragon and giants about even.

As for your blast balls.. *chuckles* funny... that is what we use protection spells for and lots of communication.

[Zenako]

mmm, thinking about the Black.

If the Giant was helping the Dragon so much, Kill it, hammer the Dragon Down more, keep killing the giant over and over until both it and the Dragon are down to slivers and then take them both?

Would that work or am I missing something?

[Beherit_Baphomar]

mmm, thinking about the Black.

If the Giant was helping the Dragon so much, Kill it, hammer the Dragon Down more, keep killing the giant over and over until both it and the Dragon are down to slivers and then take them both?

Would that work or am I missing something?

Dont think that would work Zen.

You'd take the giant out the picture for all of, what, 10 seconds? Not enough time to get the dragon down...the giant would be up and healing the dragon back to full in 12 seconds.....

[kungfu]

Just a suggestion.

We did a scale run the other day on normal. Not discounting your experience, but we didn't have any difficulties. I'll share with you our strategy and maybe it will or will not help you out on the black dragon. Basically, I play a 12 Barb/2 Fighter. I rushed the giant and solo'd him with a +1 Holy heavy pick of Greater Giant Bane. The rest of the party concentrated on the dragon. Once the dragon was down to a sliver we had 1 caster come over and help me finish the giant off. I personally had the giant down to about 30-40% before the cavalry showed up to help with the finishing touches. I have 530 hp's buffed/raging and only 44 AC. The giant stayed focused on me the whole time, didn't try to heal the dragon, and I really don't think that he tried to heal himself, maybe he did and I didn't notice, but ultimately it was inconsequential. Also, it very well may have just been the luck of the draw for us, not sure. I do recall, prior to the update, party wiping on the black dragon multiple times, even though we had no prior difficulties, which may have been attributed to crappy rolls on our part, etc. Anyway, sounds like you've had a ton of experience in this quest so not sure I'm stating anything new but just wanted to share what worked for us the other night. No party wipes that evening by the way. Just another scale run in our opinion. Hope this helps. Have a good one and good luck.

-Bal

[xberto]

I'm fine with the quest being a little more difficult. I mean Dragons, even young ones, should be bad ass. However, after killing three dragons, I would expect, i should find a scale or two. It's been a few runs since I've pulled a scale and I'm starting to get a little discouraged.