Hound Changes - is it just me?

[Rog]

QFT.

DDO has always factored size intoIntimidate checks.. Well. For as long as I've been playing an Intimitank anyway.. (Little over a year with my Intimitank)

THe hounds Intim DC was significantly increased(What Does Intim Check against? The intimee's Intim Skill?) with Mod 8.

Bumped rediculously high IMO. I fail to see why the devs felt it necessary to take aqway this more than reasonable tactic in this raid. My Intimitank used to fail only on a 3.. Now I gotta roll a 16 or so.....

I know why p becouse if they did not take away that we would let the intem tank keep his aggro after we super buff the dogs and keep you alive with mass heals so the big doggy does not eat his puppys that they made weaker and easier to kill now it is quite the challege to keep the muts alive untill they are super buffed enough not to die u get 4 stone now and figue on loosing the first dog unless the cleric is **** hot.

[Voalkrynn2]

It's real nice you have such a romantic view of marriage. More than likely he's actually really ****ed off, since he didn't spot the little clause his dearly betrothed snuck into his pre-nup giving her absolute dominion over all kobolds...

Maybe she cut off his access to the portal or increased the timer to reset his access if you get my meaning.............

[Junts]

Charm two dogs, dont let your dogs die for any reason.

Good clericing is now at a premium

It was stupid that the 2nd easiest raid in the game was level 18. I have no problem with a tweak to it (it will be easy once everyone gets the changes down). Even the Queen killed more people than a well run hound raid lost (though at least the hound required more people).

It was easy to pike 3-4 underpowered toons through this raid. Now it isn't. Good.

[Pyromaniac]

It is a real shame that a raid that was accessible to casual players was made difficult to the point that is no longer possible to run a pure pug.

Sure it wasn't hard on normal, but it was something just about any player could do at cap. If you're going to 'fix' a raid why not abbott?

[weyoun]

It is a real shame that a raid that was accessible to casual players was made difficult to the point that is no longer possible to run a pure pug.

Sure it wasn't hard on normal, but it was something just about any player could do at cap. If you're going to 'fix' a raid why not abbott?

What he said. Pug hounds are nasty.

[Dexxaan]

If you aren´t a bit selective....any PUG is nasty.

Hound changes will just set this in stone and selectivity will become more important.

The silver lining? Well IMO (and experience) when Gianthold came out and the bar was lowered with the Loot Drop mechanic changed & farmability of Raid loot...... Guilds were weakened greatly. Changes such as this one are going to srengthen the need and ability of Guilds to become bastions of talent.

And of course something else will change in a week or so and the pendulum shall sway.........

[lostx]

If you were able to pug it before, there is nothing stopping you from making this a 7 min snooze fest. Use the same basic strategy as before:

1 guy in middle to hold argo with clerics (intim or solid fog clickie)
rest of party roam to left.
designate a non-noobie to pick up 1st 3 stones. preferbly bard or caster.
when he has 3 stones, he goes to middle to charm and buff dogs.
fog the entrance ways to the center, no aoe in outter halls.
designate a non-noobie to pick up 4th stone.
after 4th stone is picked up, everyone goes to middle.

Its really important to get to the middle as quick as possible with 3 stones and buff charmed dogs.
minimum buffs are haste and mass bulls.

When you see the 1st dm text on screen, gather in center of room for fresh haste.

half the times i run the raid, izzy is vulnerable before the first set of charmed dogs break.

If she is not vulnerable use the 4th stone to charm a dog.

Now you need to control the other 2 uncharmed dogs until izzy is vulnerable. I like to enervate and flesh to stone them. If you kill them they will just respawn. You could also have a tank get their argo and kite them around.

[Renegade66]

Bumped rediculously high IMO. I fail to see why the devs felt it necessary to take aqway this more than reasonable tactic in this raid. My Intimitank used to fail only on a 3.. Now I gotta roll a 16 or so.....

Yep, you give up a lot to maximize an intimidation tank. Not sure why you have to nerf it for the few places where it really makes a difference. It was already scaling correctly with elite being really tough, now a max intim build still misses on normal.

[miceelf88]

Well, I've been in good and bad pug hounds (not many of either, pretty casual player). Two of them failed miserably. The most recent one succeeded very well.

The ones that failed had the "charm two dogs and only two" strategy. Then keep the two up. It just didn't work. They just died, and pretty quickly.

The one that succeed really well, we charmed all three, as close to simultaneously as we could, and then buffed the heck out of them, then did our best to keep em healed. And we kept em up. By the time they broke, and we had charmed one of the dogs again, the big dog was worn down enough for a beat down.

I am not saying that the two charm approach is a bad one. Perhaps the groups I was in simply didn't execute it properly. I just know that the most successful I saw was the three dog approach, and not clear on the advantages of the two. Probably missing something.

(I'm a warchanter, so I was on middle room duty, hasting and blurring and singing. First few times through, a little intimidating in terms of the responsibility, at least for me).

[Voalkrynn2]

never had a successful run here, vod, or shroud all run on normal diff. these raids are out of control........

[Junts]

Well, I've been in good and bad pug hounds (not many of either, pretty casual player). Two of them failed miserably. The most recent one succeeded very well.

The ones that failed had the "charm two dogs and only two" strategy. Then keep the two up. It just didn't work. They just died, and pretty quickly.

The one that succeed really well, we charmed all three, as close to simultaneously as we could, and then buffed the heck out of them, then did our best to keep em healed. And we kept em up. By the time they broke, and we had charmed one of the dogs again, the big dog was worn down enough for a beat down.

I am not saying that the two charm approach is a bad one. Perhaps the groups I was in simply didn't execute it properly. I just know that the most successful I saw was the three dog approach, and not clear on the advantages of the two. Probably missing something.

(I'm a warchanter, so I was on middle room duty, hasting and blurring and singing. First few times through, a little intimidating in terms of the responsibility, at least for me).

The advantage of two is being able to recharm two right away, and not having a situation where you recharm, lose your dog and are screwed (or worse, wehre the other two uncharmed focus on the one you recharmed, capture its aggro instead of Xyzzy, etc)

To do it that way, though, its important that the clerics focus exclusively on your dogs, as we've had issues getting constnat healing on them and I'm starting to think assigning the bard to scrollheal exclusively after buffing would be a good idea. Its also got less margin for error as you almost have to kill the 3rd dog repeatedly and so you have no spares if you lose one - in any case, losing a dog is now a wipe, becuase you can't afford to lose the stone. People have toa djust to healing both dogs faster because of bees working better, etc and can no longer just scrollheal it exclusively. The dogs do go down faster, that's for sure.

I think 3 and 1 is just dangerous though, I have yet to try it that way, but it seems far too easy to have your two buffed up dogs distract the charmed one, etc.

Tonight we had issues with running out of stones (dogs got allowed to die) and were able to recover by having our chewtoy recapture X'yzzy while new stones were acquired. With her intimidate DC as it is, I do not advise this method - we lost 3 party members while I chased her incredibly fast self around and took 5 rolls to intimidate her with hte DC as iti s and the -12 penalty.

We were very lucky to complete - all our melees except myself and one other were down and I was able to pummel her without being overrun for a change to take out her last 5% or so singlehandedly.