Definative Suggestions to Make the Abbot Raid Fun Thread

[sirgog]

Please ONLY post here if you have tried the Abbot raid for long enough to reach the first teleport. If you have not done so, please give it a try (at least to that point) before asking for the raid to be deleted or other such things.


This thread is intended for us to pass on to the Devs ideas to fix the mess that is the Abbot raid.

In my opinion, the actual fight with the Abbot (not considering the three trials) is the most fun battle in the game - you can't just sit back and autoattack like you can against the Pit Fiend. You need to use strategy, know when to fight, when to disengage and heal/rebuff, and the random undead minions keep things interesting. Compare this to the Pit Fiend, which is just generally a case of autoattack, and complain about the cleric if you get killed (if you are a melee), or cast acid fog and debuffs then try to steal the kill (if a caster), or sit back and use heal scrolls (10 on a good group, 310 on a bad one) if a cleric. The Abbot fight is much more interactive and interesting.

This raid however is currently being spoiled by the three mandatory trials which are all about twitch gaming, random instant death and having a 0-latency connection. Even those players skilled enough to beat these trials semi-consistently (of which I am not one) don't particularly find them fun. These trials make it practically impossible to form a group to play this otherwise very fun raid.

Currently, killing the Abbot requires successful completion of all three trials. It also requires that the Ice Wands do not bug at a critical time (just before or during the Inferno), and it requires that the Abbot does not cast Encasement at the party while they are standing on an ice platform. Completing the three trials requires modest skill in the Ice Wands trial (that one is fine), a combination of twitch skills, near-zero latency, a lack of bugs and significant luck in the Asteroids trial (the luck is required to prevent large numbers of asteroids spawning simultaneously which can create impossible situations), and completing the Phasing Chasm trial requires either significant luck or zero-latency voice chat (in short, Ventrillo, or two players playing in the same room). If the three trials have not been completed, the Abbot does not die when brought to zero HP.

My suggestions next post.

[sirgog]

These suggestions focus on making the (highly fun) battle with the Abbot the focus of the raid, rather than the three trials.

Key Suggestion: Make the three trials no longer mandatory, but instead helpful to completing the quest.

This can be achieved by the following.

Ice Wands trial and Inferno:
Firstly, tone down the Inferno slightly, so that a 16th level party of good players can reasonably hope to survive it at the cost of significant resources. I'd suggest that it deal (on normal) 100 fire damage once per second - a prepared group can heal through that (given three clerics with Quicken Spell), but it will cost the clerics a lot of SP. In short, having the Ice Wands trial completed helps significantly, but is not mandatory.

Secondly, in addition to providing the Ice Wands themselves to allow twitch-capable groups to avoid the Inferno altogether, completing the Ice Wands trial should decrease the damage done by the Inferno. Using my above example, the Inferno damage could be reduced further to 100 fire damage per two seconds. Still deadly, but more easily survived - plus players have the option of going off the platform to avoid all of the rest of the damage too. In addition, this makes sense from a storytelling perspective - the presence of the Ice Wands reduces the Abbot's power to channel his greatest fire magic - this would be why he would lock them securely away guarded by traps and soul-eating water.

Thirdly, to provide a further incentive to complete this trial successfully, after the first teleport pass grant the Abbot resist 50 to all elements (higher on hard or elite) which a single shot from an Ice Wand can dispel. This (and other damage mitigation abilities newly granted to the Abbot and removed after the completion of the trials) should replace the Abbot's current immortality when the trials are not all completed.


Asteroids trial and Encasement:

Firstly, reduce the speed and number of asteroids, and make them all appear at angles of more than 15 degrees and less than 60 degrees from the horizontal. (Perhaps keep the current trial in place unchanged on Elite). This trial should be able to be completed successfully at least three-quarters of the time by a pair of moderately skilled players each with a latency of 500ms and packet loss of 5% - make it easier until this is the case.

Secondly, remove the ability to successfully complete this trial without destroying any asteroids.

Thirdly, have the Abbot cast Encasement more frequently than presently, but never within 30 seconds of an Inferno. This prevents players being Encased when on an ice platform, and will make completion of this trial help more in the actual battle.

Fourthly, grant both holders of the asteroids immunity to Encasement.

Finally, instead of the Abbot being immortal when this trial has not been successfully completed, after the first teleport pass grant the Abbot damage mitigation through DR 20/- (again, higher on hard/elite) which can be removed by throwing a single asteroid at the Abbot.


Phasing Chasm trial and Phasing Wraith

This is the part of the raid that most requires change. At present completion requires dumb luck, or silly strategies involving returning weapons/fireball wands, or 0 latency voice chat through Ventrillo, telephone contact or being in the same room as your puzzlemate.

First, change the trial itself so that players can see the entirety of the tile that they are standing on, as well as making the changes that are scheduled for Mod 7. This will allow players to more realistically use the (close-to) zero latency text chat to communicate strategy to beat this trial (as they can type F2 to say 'it's safe to go forward 2 tiles' rather than having to type forward then stop.

Secondly, in the theme of granting the Abbot damage mitigation effects which are removed by beating the trials, grant the Abbot total immunity to damage from positive energy (i.e. the Heal spell) after the first teleport pass, which can be removed by the wielder of a set of goggles using the goggles (as a clicky) on the Abbot.


Miscellaneous Suggestions not related to the three trials:

1) The level of the deadly water should be raised slightly, so that ghosts of players with low Jump scores who fall in can more easily jump out to be raised.

2) The spawning of Mummy Avengers as a result of any PC death on the main platform was a great idea in the first Abbot raid. This should be
reinstated on all difficulties. Perhaps on elite only, the mummy spawned as a result of a particular player's death might need to be slain before that player could be raised ...

3) Deathgrip of Dolurrh, on the other hand, wasn't such a good idea when it was added and still isn't now. I'd recommend replacing it with double negative levels from the death penalty on hard, and triple on elite. That way, players are strongly discouraged from dying (which is fun and adds tension), but not forced to wait AFK until the end of the quest to be raised or watch the party wipe (which is not).

4) The Abbot's Disintegrate spell is IMO too lethal on normal difficulty (it presently deals about 380-420 damage). A better number would be around 320 - that way, non-Dwarves can survive the dreaded natural 1. Other spells are dealing appropriate damage. To offset this slight decrease in the Abbot's power, a 10% increase in his HP would be fair. Hard and elite, it's fine to have this as a 1-shotter of all but the most HP-focussed characters.

5) The Abbot should have the spell Break Enchantment added to his repertoire, and understand when to use it (when being pwned by Bladebarriers or Acid Fog, or to use on disloyal charmed minions).

6) Improve the loot - I'd suggest adding a named wounding of puncturing rapier to the raid loot, as well as increasing the drop rate of +3 tomes slightly, to provide some real incentive to run this quest. Plus, add three extra +1 loot chests, just like in the Stormreaver.


There's my suggestions. Again, the key theme is making the battle the centrepiece of the raid and the trials little addons, rather than the other way around.

[Venar]

I think the trials are hard enough, and that when complete, should TURN OFF the abbot's special attack.
Right now, it gives an item that will help with the attack...
This is lame, since a group that is lucky enough to complete the Ice trial can still die from the inferno.
Also, the raid is very unfriendly to new players because of the puzzles. It would be fine if you could decide which puzzle to go to.

So:

1. Change puzzle rewards to runes that you activate to turn off an abbot ability.
2. Include a way to influence who gets teleported where (maybe dependant on where you stand on the platform)

[Angelus_dead]

4) The Abbot's Disintegrate spell is IMO too lethal on normal difficulty (it presently deals about 380-420 damage). A better number would be around 320 - that way, non-Dwarves can survive the dreaded natural 1.

If you ever even roll a saving throw against disintegrate, you're doing it wrong. Depress the WASD buttons to provide 100% immunity. You can test this in a PvP brawl room: ask a sorcerer friend to stand in one spot and use Disintegrate on you- it will never connect unless you screw up.

Anyway, his spells are all consistent by the rules. He's level 20 so that's 1d6*20 = 100 from DBF or 2d6*20 = 200 with Disintegrate, and then he adds Maximize bringing them to 200 or 400 damage respectively.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

If you ever even roll a saving throw against disintegrate, you're doing it wrong.

I'd edit that if I were you, that's clearly not working as intended so that means you are disclosing an exploit publically....

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Key Suggestion: Make the three trials no longer mandatory, but instead helpful to completing the quest.

Which was of course EXACTLY what the dev who designed this raid said they were supposed to be. Not sure why they ever did an about face, it destroyed the raid. I simply won't set foot in it again until they make it possible to complete without completing all 3 trials (which by the way are not games and don't even come close to making sense from a story line point of view...)

[Auran82]

I'd edit that if I were you, that's clearly not working as intended so that means you are disclosing an exploit publically....

Ray spell + Move out of the way = ???

[BlackSteel]

how about everytime you go thru a teleport and wave of enemies waiting on the abbott one less puzzle is needed to drop the lich. The exception being the first teleport. So if you manage to survive to the 2nd port to puzzles, you'll only need to complete two puzzles. After the third attempt, its one puzzle to be able to kill the lich.

This would allow groups to power thru the raid with some incentive, other than recalling after the first failed attempt at the puzzles. (Basically if you manage to do the ice flow puzzle on first attempt, survive two more rounds if you're unlucky with the other two) Thats a significant amount of resources, and still makes the puzzles important. The more puzzles done, the quicker the raid completes.

The damage on inferno isnt unsurvivable now, just requires coordination and the right items. Firestorm greaves reduces it down to around 125/tick.

[Aodh]

I'd edit that if I were you, that's clearly not working as intended so that means you are disclosing an exploit publically....

Lol, huh?? You can dodge rays you know.

[Turial]

Personally I think the puzzles should be changed slightly to use the mechanics involving the trinkets from either the silver flame or emerald claw and the litany of the dead series. Essentially turbine would rank the 3 puzzles: example goggles, asteroid, and ice = 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

If you have the first tier of the turn in trinkets when you face the abbot and you end up in the goggles puzzle you are able to see the tiles within a small radius of yourself, providing you are wearing the trinket. This would make finishing the puzzle much easier and less twitch based. I would have the radius be that of the haste spell. Also when the phase wraith spawns the players wearing the tier 1 trinkets would be able to faintly see the wraith, similar to a mob that was hiding and you had just enough spot to catch glimpses of him.

If you have the second tier of the turn in trinkets and are wearing them during one of the last fight bits you become immune to incasement.

If you have the third tier of the turn in trinkets and are wearing them during the inferno you will find that the damage taken by the inferno is greatly deminished, lets say 50 to 60%.

Once the abbot is defeated your trinkets are automatically upgraded rather then having to click on the altar. This prevents people from easily being able to get 3rd tier trinkets and keeping them to basically make the whole raid an easy task. (3rd tier would have the same powers as the first 2 as well)

[BlackSteel]

lil harder to dodge rays if u're swinging an axe in his face. Unless you're dancing around him, but you can still get unlucky enough to actually run into one. Was really a *** moment on my barb, b/c before that unlucky step and unlucky fort roll, he had never come close to doing that type of damage to me. Ranged chars should have zero fear of the green ray if they pay any attention at all.

back to the inferno, if everyone uses the greaves or a cold shield, you can easily mass cure you're way thru it. Group up on the cleric, and chug fire prot pots while cure light and cure mod mass go off. Arcane's could have double duty of potting themselves and using the spell on the cleric.

[Strakeln]

Make the puzzles optional again and we'll be running it with some regularity.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Ray spell + Move out of the way = ???

I don't beleive he wasn't saying move out of the way, I believe he was suggesting something else since dodge isn't realistic for a fighter in close combat... but if I'm wrong and he was just saying move, then I appologize...

[sirgog]

lil harder to dodge rays if u're swinging an axe in his face. Unless you're dancing around him, but you can still get unlucky enough to actually run into one. Was really a *** moment on my barb, b/c before that unlucky step and unlucky fort roll, he had never come close to doing that type of damage to me. Ranged chars should have zero fear of the green ray if they pay any attention at all.

back to the inferno, if everyone uses the greaves or a cold shield, you can easily mass cure you're way thru it. Group up on the cleric, and chug fire prot pots while cure light and cure mod mass go off. Arcane's could have double duty of potting themselves and using the spell on the cleric.

Personally I don't think Firestorm Greaves (or a not-yet dispelled Fire Shield) should be required to survive the inferno on normal. Currently I believe it does of the order 225-230 damage per tick.

That's the sort of number I'd expect on Elite, which is a level 17 quest, and so it's reasonable to assume that the party has access to the spell Mass Heal (which as far as I can tell only Nimrisr in the Shroud has the capacity to cast in the entire game at the moment, certainly players wont be until a level cap increase comes along).

[tihocan]

I say just fix the puzzles so that a normal human being with an average computer/connection can complete them reliabley after practicing each one for 1h, and it should be fine. Obviously fix the targetting bug with wands as well...

Edit: more specifically:
- except for bugs, ice wands is fine
- asteroids could have less asteroids, and reduce the range of the angles they are coming from (especially when they come from above us)
- phase tiles could be MUCH slower, with paths that require doing some left/right turns, but without being forced to react too fast

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

Call me controversial, but I don't agree with any changes that help mass healing through the inferno (i.e. bypassing puzzles). I would rather go down the route of making the puzzles easier to complete, or making the items you gain easier to use or more effective in defending against his special attacks. I still think the puzzles should be mandatory, but just possible for an average level 14 group to do.

For example - make the warnings that he is about to drop inferno or encasement come earlier, and make them more obvious (perhaps a DMtext rather than a /say that you have to watch for). Make it so the ice wands don't drop on death so it is possible to die and be ressed and still be able to use them. Make it so the people carrying meteors can't be encased. Perhaps make separate cooldown timers on the each ice wand (because you end up with two after completing the puzzle) - this wouldn't make the actual puzzle any easier, but would make it easier to recover from accidents when trying to escape from inferno. Rising the water level sounds good too for allowing people to jump out - or alternatively have soul stones teleport to the platform if they fall off.

Make it so he definitely can't cast encasement within a certain period of casting inferno - I'm sure the devs said they'd already done this but times I've run where we've had encasement hit us while we've been standing on an ice platform safe from inferno.

Make it so encasement isn't an AOE effect around the rocks but an effect only on the target.

Re: the puzzles - the devs have already put changes into mod7 to make these easier - they have made the meteors come less frequently, and they've also changed the phase tile room to make more platforms up at any one time. Ice puzzle remains easy as long as you don't stand in front of each other. It will be interesting to see how effective these changes are.

I'm looking forward to running Abbot once the changes are in mod 7... assuming I can find any other people to run it with. All the Abbot really needs is a solid group of 12 people willing to bang their heads on a wall for a few weeks and I'm sure it'll be farmable - the raid itself shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to run each time, once you have the group together.

Garth

[Cyr]

1) Remove Completion of the puzzles as a requirement for completion. These are twitch puzzles and are poorly designed and are the main reason that the vast majority of the playing population will not even set foot in this raid.

2) Change the waters from an instant death effect to a deep acid pool. No save auto death != DnD. First time I went in the raid this was my first point of disguist at the raid design. Deep acid for 20d6 acid damage a tick should be more than enough to discourage people from swimming.

3) This one again is puzzle related...having random people teleported to the rooms was and still is a horrible idea. This alone spells the end of the raid if the guy suffering from bad lag gets teleported...not to mention prevents people from even wanting to try the quest since it is literally a quest that almost requires that you not pug. This could be changed very easily...when the abbot would teleport people instead three portals appear around the platform (some rune on the floor in front could show you which is which ie a flame for ice puzzle etc). These portals should not dispear at all...if ten people want to run the phase room good...give everyone a chance at crazy random death This would make the raid much more pug friendly and much more doable by a decent group...instead of only by people who have trained at all the puzzles for hours.

4) Remove the extra death effect. Whoever put this in should be fired...it took a unplayable raid and made it into an insult to the players who tried to run it. Perhaps double the normal death penalty in here.

5) Inferno was and still is dumb. Firewall cool...maximize firewall ohhh...crosshatched maximized empowered firewalls a little much. This effect is nearly impossible to survive if you do not have one of two named items or 400+hp. Even then it requires some major healing being spammed with half your party having died to it's effects already. This effect should be reduced from the ~300 a tick to a max of ~150 tick.

6) If you complete a puzzle at the end they should have some sort of alter or other magical device that the abbot is using for that particular special attack. You destroy the alter and the abbot no longer uses that attack form period. You can even have the NPC quest giver give clues to this...as in..."The Black Abbot has forged devices to channel and focus his magic. He has secreted these devices on demiplanes parrellel to the Ascension Chamber. If he feels that he is in danger he will open the portals to these demiplanes so that he can access the incredible powers that these magical focuces provide. Beware that if you venture after these devices that the Abbot has most assuredly trapped the paths to these devices in a manner that only his cruel mind could devise." And viola..you finally have a storyline behind those dumb powers, the paths to them, and a much more playable encounter.

7) Lastly, why does the 'water' have to be so low or so deep? Raise up the water level so that those who do decide to skinny dip are not stuck jumping for three mintues untill they finally get up. Oh...fyi next time you want to fix something to prevent a ranged attack put a wall up it works much better. Forcefield wall surrounding platform from ten feet into the water to the ceiling when abbot is activated.

[Garth_of_Sarlona]

5) Inferno was and still is dumb. Firewall cool...maximize firewall ohhh...crosshatched maximized empowered firewalls a little much. This effect is nearly impossible to survive if you do not have one of two named items or 400+hp. Even then it requires some major healing being spammed with half your party having died to it's effects already. This effect should be reduced from the ~300 a tick to a max of ~150 tick.

Inferno was never meant to be survived by healing through it. If you are on the platform when inferno hits then you're just supposed to die. The devs decided to implemented this death as a pretty fiery death (with associated RP speech from the Abbot) rather than just insta-death because it just looks prettier. You're only supposed to survive inferno by jumping onto platforms made by the ice wands.

Perhaps they should have just made the platform vanish for 30 seconds rather than inferno...

Garth

[Angelus_dead]

Long ago I made a list of Abbot fix suggestions. Here they are

[Qzipoun]

Many people have said this before so I won't waste my time with details, but here are mine:

1. Fix bugs (including some sort of mechanism that allows mini-lags that will not result in puzzle failure)
2. Either make the puzzles optional or their failure less restrictive (right now, if you fail ice, you're pretty much done)
3. Allow party to choose puzzle distribution (there's no reason an 8 str clr needs to be forced to jump on ice puzzles instead of the ranger)