Official Shadow/Wall of Fire Feedback thread. - PLEASE KEEP ALL DISCUSSION HERE.

[MysticTheurge]

you can't ready full actions

**** you! Fine, you read a single attack.

[Zenako]

As mentioned elsewhere, Air Mephits and Abrasive breath, not stopped by elemental resists at all. One huge key is to control how many you wake up at once. It is very very easy to be overconfident in that quest when you are powerleveling it. I have brought my bard in more than once to rescue groups who were getting hammered. Disco Balls and Fascinate makes the mass battles a LOT easier to handle. Drop some Freedom of Movement down and life becomes a breeze. toss in some Displacement for avoiding incoming attacks, and things get another notch easier.

It is NOT a pure melee friendly quest. It was kinda like bringing a Knife to the gunfight kinda thing. Since the quest does not get run that often, except for favor I expect, not many people are that familiar with the do's and don'ts of the run.

[MysticTheurge]

I believe your mistake is trying to fight in this quest. Every time I've done it we just run. And run. And run. And then fight a little. And then run.

[Nuckin]

yea but ive never seen nethin pass throught the gates in Vol and haven't had a vamp cast through it before. I just think its cheap how the devs tried to "fix" these quests. I for one didnt know ne of em were really broken except the raid.

And i dunno bout the ghosts thing its just somethin i read on here as well as somethin i heard from a buddy but dunno if its true havent ran ghosts since the fix lol.

[Club'in]

Not sure what happened for you. We ran it last Saturday night, on elite, with a group of level 6 to 9's. Was much more trouble free than I expected. We ran past all the fire elementals, fought the mephits in the clear areas, basically just clobbered the earth elementals. I doubt anyone had anything like a banisher. I think you were just undermanned. We had a nicely rounded group; 3 melees (two multiclass rogues and a pure ranger), a sorc, a bard, and a cleric.

Kind of like in Freshen the Air, when the guy just inside says "bring some friends", plural...

[Arianrhod]

Yeah, but as I've said, the Ready action alters this entire dynamic. All a melee character has to do is "Ready an attack if any enemy appears within reach" then there's no reappearing behind you and getting in a potshot before disappearing.

A caster or ranged character has to do even less. "Ready a searing light for when a shadow re-emerges from the floor" and you're all set. As soon as they appear, you cast the spell on them, and it happens. Nothing disappearing while your casting and spending your spells on an "invalid target."

Slowing down the rate at which they phase is good, but still not really faithful to the spirit of D&D in these situations. Adding some more means to combat this will help too. I suppose I could be satisfied with those two things.

While I'd be happy with getting rid of phasing, I could live with it staying ingame if the "ready action" could at least be simulated, perhaps by putting a timer on phasing, rather than giving it a chance (even a reduced chance) to phase every time it gets hit (or hits something?). Say, for instance, the timer begins whenever the creature phases in - it is then unable to phase out for at least 5 seconds (or 10, whatever seems appropriate), thus giving casters enough time to target, face, and cast, as if they had the action "readied" for the creature's reemergence from floor or wall.

[BlueLightBandit]

I believe your mistake is trying to fight in this quest. Every time I've done it we just run. And run. And run. And then fight a little. And then run.

You know... it's not the zergers that bother me... it's the people screaming "zerging is the worst thing since unsliced bread" that really gets my goat.

And yes, he's a very nice goat, I call him Tim.

[Yaga_Nub]

Until you lose the right to say anything for being nasty.

You never lose the right to say anything just possibly the forum in which you wish to say it.

[Kalanth]

My trick in there is fire resistance 30 and Spell Resistance. I have taken people through there, and soloed the quest on my cleric because of those two spells alone. Take very little damage at all that way.

However, on the point of the quest matching the difficulty. I believe it was back when Mod 3 came out that I first tried it, at lvl 10 and with a full group... Without knowing some form of trick to get around the damage the quest is ridiculously overpowered.

[Symar-FangofLloth]

I'll look into the possibility of getting a spell, paladin aura effect, or weapon effect that forces them to stay put.

Make Manifest, Mass. Cleric 6, Sorcerer/Wizard 8. 25ft radius, all creatures in that radius, for 1 round per level, are forced to your plane and cannot leave it until the duration ends.
There's a lower level version, Make Manifest. Cleric 4, Sorcerer/Wizard 6, that only affects one target and would not be worth it. However, implementing the Mass version at the lower level, (and adding a paladin version, perhaps at level 4) would be fair.

[MysticTheurge]

Make Manifest, Mass. Cleric 6, Sorcerer/Wizard 8. 25ft radius, all creatures in that radius, for 1 round per level, are forced to your plane and cannot leave it until the duration ends.
There's a lower level version, Make Manifest. Cleric 4, Sorcerer/Wizard 6, that only affects one target and would not be worth it. However, implementing the Mass version at the lower level, (and adding a paladin version, perhaps at level 4) would be fair.

These are not the appropriate spells.

Do we need to have the Incorporeal != Ethereal talk? I probably should go ahead and do so since many of you seem to be confusing the two.

Incorporeal creatures are intangible creatures on the prime material plane. They never go ethereal or to any other plane (except by the same means as you or I). They can pass through solid objects and even magical items and spells (of the non-force variety) have a chance to pass right through them.

Ghosts on the other hand live on the ethereal plane and can manifest to the prime material. In many ways being ethereal is like being incorporeal in terms of its effects. You can pass through "solid objects" because they're not really there, and only special magic can hit you while you're ethereal. To make it worse, even when a ghost is manifested on the prime material, they're still incorporeal.

But creatures like Shadows, Wraiths and Specters are not ethereal. Make Manifest would do absolutely nothing to them, since they're already on the material plane. More over, Make Manifest won't do anything to Ghost either in terms of their incorporeality. It just prevents them from returning to the Ethereal plane at will.

There are spells (that were discussed earlier in the thread) that force incorporeal creatures into a state of corporeality, but Make Manifest isn't one of them.

[Taoxos]

Yeah, I posted the same thing earlier today, and agree with it. The only reason we use firewall is because undead incorporeal mobs AI sucks.

No, the only reason we use Firewall is because MM and Force Missile don't work (they are supposed to be able to affect ethereal creatures as well, and yes, incorporeal doesn't not equal ethereal, but incorporeal creatures aren't supposed to phase out, either, as they're always supposed to be incorporeal, which is just a mischance). You cast MM, and then the monster phases out before MM hits, and MM is still supposed to hit...although it doesn't in DDO...

And Hell, for the shadows and such, you can actually move them through the walls... That would prevent spells from hitting them through the walls (including MM, I think...not sure), but doesn't do this "phasing" stuff (which is going to another plane, whether ethereal or shadow...since those are the only ones easiest to transition from the Prime Material...).

To be honest, MT put it all pretty nicely... And incorporeal creatures shouldn't phase at all (I know I'm being redundant...). As MT said, going through the floor doesn't mean much... And you can still make them go through walls...but making them invalid targets (when you should always be able to see them (ghosts you wouldn't, as they would actually phased, but MM would still hit them anyway, so I wouldn't care if they phased or not...).

All in all...kudos, MT.

[Cruzer]

If a level 14 paladin with banishers, a bloodstone, +5 mithril full plate, and + fire resistance dies this much in a level 8 quest. There's a problem somewhere.

If there's a problem, it lies in the player. I've soloed it elite at level 10. Granted, its not worth the effort at level 6-8 to do besides for favor, but no one at level 14 should die 5 times..

[Jomee]

So here's what happened. I was helping a guildie last night get favor for the quest on elite. I was level 14 (a pure paladin) and I figure, ok, it's level 6, level 8 on elite, should be no sweat.

The horror....

It's a tough quest on elite. Better to run with a full group on that one.

[Charmazal]

op:

i agree. well written, consise. I don't think I could have have posted it better myself (actually i'm sure of it)

[Quarion]

We realize that the changes to how Shadows respond to fire spells is an important issue right now. In an effort to keep feedback in a thread we can read, please post it here.

All feedback on this issue will be moved to this thread to help us track it.

[Charmazal]

Ok, now that I have your attention, seems like a lot of posts in the last few weeks have been regarding "nerfs", immunities, tactics, ease of play, and cheese.
Borr.

ddo gives cheese a bad name, in fact i'm becoming lactose intolerant.

[MysticTheurge]

Aww... am I going to get merged?

(My thread's not about wall of fire!)

[Aspenor]

The shadows phase in and out too fast to be reliably hit with anything other than AoE damage, and the most effective (actually, ONLY effective) AoE DoT arcane spell we have is firewall.

This is an undead quest, fire hurts undead (usually), it is logical to assume that it will be very powerful in this quest. Don't take away the only real weapon certain classes have against a certain monster.

*edit* drat MT beat me to the punch

*double edit* This was SO in a thread of it's own....GAHH Quarion was the first....I'm losing my mind

[Beefcakes]

Did this quest today on elite by myself with my battle cleric, finished the whole quest took maybe 100 points of damage. Did it cause I needed the favor, no idea how you could die 5 times, let alone once.