A Thread Which is Not about how Shadows Respond to Fire Spells

[MysticTheurge]

While it mentions both shadows and fire spells the following thread is not about how they respond to each other. Rather it is about how players respond to all incorporeal creatures and why. It's also about what can be done about that to improve the game. It has nothing to do with the changes from monday's patch.

Look guys, and by guys I mean Devs, here's the deal. The reason people use Wall of Fire on your undead is that they suck. We mostly use it on the incorporeal undead and here's why.

You can't cast spells on them. They phase out all the time and you waste your SPs on "not a valid target." I even tried casting some spells now that I have quicken. It still doesn't work. You either spam them, wasting about 75% of them and landing the rest, which is not good for your SPs, or you just give up on spells other than persistent AoE spells.

This problem is almost equally true for everyone else. Melee characters' best option is to stand around swinging at thin air hoping to catch them when they phase back in. Ranged characters have it easiest, relatively speaking, but given the problems inherent in Ranged attacks in DDO, that's not saying much. They also suffer from some of the same issues as everyone else, what with the things disappearing right out from under your arrows.

Wall of Fire on the other hand hits them every time they phase in. It's like you custom designed it for these super-annoying crappy-ass mobs. But then you get upset that people are just Wall of Fire-ing everything. But the problem, honestly, isn't Wall of Fire. It's the phasing.

People would still Wall of Fire if they didn't phase, but we wouldn't layer them and drag them all over. We also wouldn't be quite as upset when you just made things immune to Wall of Fire because there would be other valid, useful, reasonable tactics to use against them.

I know you've justified this phasing before by saying the things are intangibly sinking into the floor, and I've fired back with several reasons why your justification is flawed. The biggest reason is the Ready action, which allows PCs to essentially hold their actions until the target appears and fire at will. This means your sink-into-the-floor tactic really just delays everyone's assault on you in D&D. It's nothing like the "I'm going to waste all your SPs and make you just stand around looking like a dumb ass" tactic that it is in DDO. Thus, quite clearly, there's a problem with your implementation of this tactic.

And all of this is on top of the already existing difficulties of incorporeal undead. It's bad enough that no one can crit them, or sneak attack them and that we all have to use our ghost touch weapons, which are generally sub par (or suffer a 50% miss chance). And there's almost no chance to hit them with an instant death effect and stop it all before it starts, since all the spells don't work and the chances of finding a ghost-touch disrupting weapon is slim-to-none. Then you add this "feature" that just wastes time, resources and patience without actually adding anything to the game. It's not fun.

Since there's pretty much no way to implement "ready an action" for a real-time game like DDO, it's time to just give up the ghost (pun intended) and get rid of the phasing that incorporeal creatures do. I'll even let you keep it on Ogre Magi and Phase Spiders (since both of them have abilities that are much closer to their implementation), but the incorporeal undead have to stop. I don't lightly ask you to do things that would just benefit the players. And I'd never do it for no reason at all. But this has always been a problem and it's just getting worse.

So here's the deal. Get rid of the phasing and I guarantee you that the majority of the complaints about how LotD sucks will stop. It's a tactic that's not in keeping with the D&D rules. It's a tactic that's extremely unpleasant for the players (and not in a "Aw shucks, you got me" kind of way). And it's a tactic that needs to go.

[Dirac]

Had to check the dev tracker to understand what the heck is going on with the threads.

Still agree. Yes. please. Phaseing is not challenging, it is not fun.

[arcanna]

/Signed a thousand times

[Arianrhod]

Well, I hope this one is allowed to stay independent, though the opening post does have a few references to ...that spell

Anyway - agree, phasing out would be better gone.
Failing that,
Decreasing the chance to phase might help, will have to see how it plays out. Putting a timer on phasing, so a creature can't phase out for a certain amount of time after phasing in would probably help more, since the problem isn't so much about them spending too much time phased out as too little time phased in (not enough time to target/face/cast/swing/shoot).

[Seanus]

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I play a caster most of the time (Sor 14), and I'd be content throwing Lightning Bolts and Magic Missiles IF I could get incorporeal creatures to stay visible for more than half a second. In pen and paper, sure, they can hide in walls, floors, ceilings, etc, but as Mystic said, in pen and paper, we can ready an action to unload on it as soon as it appears. Not to repeat the point, but as it was previously mentioned, we are unable to ready actions here, which makes the shadows and other incorporeal creatures basically god-moders. They sneak their hits in and we can't do much of anything. Nothing is even remotely reliable. Long story short, the phasing really must stop, or at the very least cut down immensely in it's repetition. It's at the point now where it just isn't fair. It's just swinging blindly praying for a hit, and keeping an eye on your constantly depleting HP. So please, Developers, cut down on the phasing. It just isn't fair to the players.

[Kerr]

Agreeing with myself, again, yes, Phasing sucks. The AI is too flakey, there has to be a long cooldown between phasing in and out again. The way that incorp undead phase in just long enough to take an attack and them out again is ridiculous. Also, you should not lose targetting on them because they are a masive PITA to reacquire for spell casting targetting and make being a meleer against them just an advertisement for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.

[Spectralist]

I agree. I could not stand LotD part 2 because of the constant phasing. I haven't even bothered giving part 3 a chance because of it. If i were told that part 3 has no incorporeals, or that they do not phase out constantly then i might actually run them.

Undead are getting rather old to begin with, but incorporeals are simply unbearably frustrating and tedious.

PS. Love the thread title!

[Raithe]

Since I was too late last time this thread was created to post my agreement, I'll do it this time.

I agree. The phasing in and out is mind numbing play that seems to lose all credulity. Vampires going bats is included.

[Hafeal]

/signed

Not only would it make the new mod 5 more enjoyable, it would make all of the old Necro quests enjoyable for the first time.

[Mourn]

Make the "in phase" longer so we can at least do something. Otherwise the only thing that I have to use to kill them is wof.

[Qzipoun]

Thanks for reposting this MT, got buried in that mass thread

(I don't believe in merging thread but not my decision )

[ChaosTheEternal]

Hear, hear!



It's been a problem from the beginning, something I'd call a poor design choice, before the implementation of Shadows and Wall of Fire.

Shadows (and the other Shadow/Umbral ilk) made the problem much more prevalent, as they did the phasing thing much, much, much, much more often. But the problem was always there.


The right thing would be to fix the design flaw (either remove phasing for incorporeal undead or enforce a cooldown timer for phasing on all creatures), not just band-aid what we do because of that flaw.

[Kadagan]

very nice post MT... For what it's worth, you've convinced me.

[MysticTheurge]

For those who missed it the first time around, Eladrin did already respond to this thread and some of the related topics, such as spells that force incorporeal creatures to become corporeal (thus preventing phasing).

I've cut the rate at which shadows and wraiths "phase out" on hit down to a third of what it currently is (which is half of what it was before). I'll look into the possibility of getting a spell, paladin aura effect, or weapon effect that forces them to stay put.

You'll note that Quells, which are also incorporeal, don't do any of the phasing.

[BlueLightBandit]

/signed
/qft

Now where do I post my complaints about devs only psuedo-listening to the forums?

[Twerpp]

Yeah and combine incorp phasers that dont register your attacks/spells and make them running away on top of it and youve got some very broke-ass mobs that need fixing. Please.

[Azoralq]

I hate being the underdog, because it makes me look like a jerk, even when I don't want to look like one. Oh well, here we go.

I said it in the last post, and I'll say it again here. Yes, I do agree with the origional post in that they phasing in and out can be annoying. In fact, not only is it annoying, but it can be bugged a lot of the times. I've seen, and absolutely hate it, when a wraith phases in, then immediately phases out for 30 seconds, then phases in, and phases out for 30 seconds. Ove and over again, until everyone finally stops swinging, and starts to move on...then it spawns again and attacks.

No I don't agree that it should be taken out. As I stated before in the othe post as well. If you look hard enough, there is a pattern to the behavior. Almost always, the wraith, spectre, shadow, umbral worg, phase spider, scorpion, even ogre magis, will phase in behind your character. All that is required on your part, is to turn around 180 degrees, and swing away.

No I don't bother targeting these things..I just swing blindly until something dies. They phase out too much for me to have to keep re-targeting, and it is a hassle. But that fits my playstyle..I hardly, if every, target something. I just swing. I play with only keyboard anyway.

I know this isn't about firewall, but No it won't stop people from spamming firewalls endlessly. It happens with flesh golems, it happens with maruts, it happens with kobolds when you are doing kobold assault for favor. Fact is, Firewall does massive amounts of damage stacked, merely removing phased creatures won't stop this.

Can phasing be fixed so that they don't bug out, and phase in for a second, then disappear? I don't know, I'd like it if they did. Should it be removed from the game? No..it is annoying, but not impossible.

[JelloMold]

I'd say it would even be helpful if the shadows were changed to be more like the wraiths. The wraiths tend to stick around longer (probably so they can do their little purple hands thingie). If the Shadows were just set on the same duration timer it would be loads better. Usually you can get a few good hits in on a wraith, even when he is phase-happy: not so for shadows.

[arikka_hador]

Since there's pretty much no way to implement "ready an action" for a real-time game like DDO, it's time to just give up the ghost (pun intended) and get rid of the phasing that incorporeal creatures do. I'll even let you keep it on Ogre Magi and Phase Spiders (since both of them have abilities that are much closer to their implementation), but the incorporeal undead have to stop. I don't lightly ask you to do things that would just benefit the players. And I'd never do it for no reason at all. But this has always been a problem and it's just getting worse.

Obviously, tons of people are agreeing wholeheartedly with this, and I'm one of them! Phasing has been annoying since the wraiths in Delera's Tomb, in my opinion. A few people are angry about the situation with the Desecrated Temple of Vol, as well--apparently this update has made a situation where the quest is practically impossible to complete, now. It's just not fair, and it's just not fun.

/hug <MysticTheurge> :P

[GeneralDiomedes]

Consider one other aspect to the phasing. If I'm not mistaken, the 50% incorporeal miss chance does not apply to many spells as we have no touch attacks. Therefore, the only way to give Shadows the ability to 'dodge' spells is to make them phase. Some will argue that we should just implement touch attacks, but those same people have also suggested many other changes that will never, ever get implemented with the resources the dev team currently has (this would fall into that category). I suppose the doable game mechanic change would be to make shadows zoom around much faster thereby making them harder to hit with ranged spells/attacks (or even give them the ability to dodge ).

As for difficulty? If you remove phasing, they will just die even faster in a firewall (or by any other method), making the quests that much easier. Since DDO quests are mostly and exercise in resource preservation, killing things faster means the quest is easier (to those that just say phasing makes it longer and more annoying, but not harder). Shadows will need some beefing up to compensate. More frequent attacks would be the obvious one as their ratio of attacks to the time they are vulnerable to attack just went down considerably.

And if I'm not further mistaken, I thought that the Monster Manual description of Shadows described their tactics (in part) as popping out of a wall in a dark corner somewhere, making an attack on an unsuspecting adventurer, and then popping back in. Sounds like it's in the spirit of phasing at least.

On another note .. lets see some Blink Dogs!