Reaver Redux

[boldarblood]

Because melees USE to be able to at least swing at the fire and earth elementals in the puzzle room. The earth had especially high fort saves, so were usually best taken down by firewall + melees anyway. Now they don't even get that chance.

Get your charge as a melee and stop complaining about it. DPS or wounding works equally as well. The quest is still overly easy.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

Actually, I kinda like the changes.......but....

Air Ellies in general need an ajustment IMO. That "if I even slightly touch it I get thrown across the room thing" is not right IMO.

There should be some way for a melee guy to effectively fight those things.
Maybe not by meleeing, but there should be some way.

Which if they would just fix ranged combat for non-ranged speced chars, it would go along way.

Also achange to the argo system for air ellies would be more fare IMO.

I've always hated any creature with that change target evey round agro mechanic.

Damge and Intimidate should keep agro. That would make certain melees effective there.

IMO though, the reaver got a whole lot more fun after the change.

Sometimes frustrating, but with enough casters it isn't that bad IMO.

Add anyone with UMD using enervate scrolls and it will help out alot.

Paralysing ranges weps do work......but barely.

If you adjust your tactics most chars can contribute something.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I see a lot of potential for some adjusted tactics here.

Spread out.
Have someone stand across the room.....the ellies will agro on him....again and again, because they will be too far away to change targets.

Intimidate.....over and over again.

Back up lvl pullers, and prob back up puzzle solvers.

Intimidate guys stand just close enough to puzzle to pulls agro.

UMD guys enervate.

Range with debuffs, stat damagers...paralyzers.

So many ways to contribute IMO.

Try some pets to draw agro.......be creative.

Maybe stand in their spawn points and intimidate as they spawn, right after lvr pulled.

Maybe form wall around puzzle guy......just some thoughts.

Puzzle guy with high Diplo maybe.

Invisible Clerics.

[query]

Air spells (Acid fog, cloudkill, etc) do NOT stop the air baddies let alone slow Mr reaver.

I have envenerated those )(*)()_ 4 times and still they manage to resist my spells period (with enhancements and bumps up.) Of course balance is **** especially since they don't follow the rules they SHOULD be (even w my exceptional saves I play pinball alot.)

And to all those "just get a charge first," perhaps you didn't see, but the Reaver is often stingy (pre and post mod) with giving charges. There have been entire runs where I NEVER got a charge, even a minor one.


And drop rate....60 darn runs never a tome...2 post mod runs and same or WORSE drops. Assuming i can find a group and even CONVINCE them to go elite now.

I'm a player type with multiple options in doing things. When tactic number 5 fails, i see there was an imbalance to the suggested solution, and not even discussed by stealth applied. Why do fleshmaker's anymore as it now is totally impossible when the upped saves mean we get knocked being unable to even cast debuffs.


I respect change, but announced TESTED changes that don't take away the quickness or overall enjoyment of a quick run. if it's harder, then I demand better compensation for all the resources we now go through!


and 62 runs, I gotta be given SOME respect on this quest, trying alternate things, working when i didn't even HAVE FoD and Otto's...when all those things kaptu, including attacks with cursing, paralyzing and weakening to make any notable difference and the next batch is about to pop, something is just wrong.

Why do monsters get unannounced updated until after release, yet we never do?

That sounds fair now if WE did.

[Junts]

No one has said it is hard. It is harder than it was. I have certatinly been in PUGs that have failed, but I have not taken real statistics.

I have not noticed a change in tome drop rate. I have noticed a huge drop off in LFM's, and increase in difficulty in putting together Reaver raids.

I don't have really strong feelings about this, but I'll offer how the change has affected my playstyle: Prior to MoD 8, if I had 30-45 min and a character off timer, I would log on and start an reaver LFM, knowing I could fill and finish in that time. Now, I don't log on.

its not hard to run the reaver; its not hard to get a group together.


however, most people who did their every 3 days reaver 3/16 **** have stopped, because of how and why that was done.

running a dozen reavers in a row was an incredibly low-attention exercise; people would reform the same static or near-static group constnatly and put all their toons through, and it was extremely low-effort because -2 or 3 people would take turns doing the raid- and everyone else could go afk or troll the forums or whatever.

so it was a nice, laid back and basically zero-effort way to get raid loot and chests.

the raid is not noticably harder now, but it does require that more people pay attention, and -most people were only running the reaver for essentially free chances at +3 tomes in a raid they didnt have to expend any energy on whatsoever-.

now that they have to incur the slightest amount of energy (eg, pay attention while running a dozen reavers in a row for 6 hours), its no longer worth it to them.

the real answer is that it was never supposed to be that easy to have 4 of every raid item and 120 completions of a level 16 raid.

[Justicesar]

I'm waiting for the LFM "No Fat Kids Please" go back to WW. The quest is much harder....everyone needs to contribute now. Only if you ever ran this with all above average players could you say anything else. I have joined some groups that looked weak/odd mix that would have passed before the fix. Out of 5 of them 4 failed very bad....I went to the res switch all times and only salavaged 1 of the runs. I have had runs with no problems with guild or players that I know and the quest is very much more managable. The reaver is no longer a raid where slackers can gather and grab raid loot. One positive thing from this is that there will be alot less madstone boot toons wondering why they arn't getting healed when they are cursed.

Oh and I do like the change...it does make the quest more fun. Just throwning that out there before I get the "Get a charge on your fighter and shut the "blank" up" you noob.

[Lithic]

I love how people always say "Just get a charge". Sure when I'm all alone with the reaver getting a charge only takes about 45 seconds (more if antigrav hits, less if I get real lucky or am the one with aggro), but if all 12 people are crowding in to get a charge, then NOONE will get one before their minor charge timer expires.

Even if you assume an orderly charge gain of 45seconds per person, thats 4 charges before the first person needs another one. In a perfect world, you could probably get 8 people charged in that time if everything goes well, and the reaver hits more than one with every charging strike. Since clerics and casters should get priority in this quest, this means you still have a bunch of melees sitting around chargeless waiting their turn, which would likely come long after the reaver is dead.

So in conclusion, YES WE ALL KNOW ABOUT CHARGES. Thank you. The point is that air elementals suck for anyone without spells (or possibly rangers with enough strength to bypass thier DR with wounders). We wanted LESS air elementals so that the poor non-charged masses could contribute. They WANT to contribute.

Instead we got MORE elementals. Ah well, not my problem come Jan 15th.

[sephiroth1084]

My opinion about the raid before and after the change:

Before the change, yeah, it was much too easy. Anyone who asked, "What difficulty?" was playfully laughed at, and told that there was only one difficulty for the Reaver: elite. In runs that I led, I began letting anyone who wanted to tank the reaver, because even a squishy wizard could do so, or, if he failed, he merely died, and someone else would do so.

On my wizard, I'd drop some dancing balls, hit the reaver with every debuff I could muster, and lazily fired off FoDs and PKs. In the puzzle room, I'd drop a couple of dancing balls, then set to work on the puzzle and would largely ignore everything going on behind me. The quest was a lazy sort of fun, a familiar sort, but it was a cakewalk.

On my tank, I would usually tank the reaver, who really couldn't hurt me much at all, and I would usually require almost no healing if I could get over to the right spot to drop down from the ceiling each time. During the times that I was not the main tank, I would usually just sit back and watch, or joke around, though on occasion I would grab the aggro of a bunch of ai elementals if some of them had punched through our defenses so that the casters could take care of them. In the puzzle room, I'd go after the fire and earth eles. I generally had less to do that on my wizard, but it was a little more active.

I think that I had failed the raid twice, ever. Once because someone claimed to know the puzzle and didn't really (they were using a solver), and put in 10 incorrect solutions, and another time because a few members of the group killed the reaver before someone got to the lever.


Now, after the change, I haven failed it more times than I've completed it. Before the changes there was a preference for casters and clerics, but we could get by with only one of each, or just 2 of one and fill in the rest of the group with whatever. Now, characters die so easily in there that groups I've been on really want 3+ casters and at minimum 2 clerics (like every other freakin' raid). But, let's see how the changes affected me two flagged characters...

On my wizard, I have failed one run because the air elementals dropped before anyone was able to get a charge, and no one was able to from that point on. I dropped acid fog, solid fog, web, dancing ball, wall of fire and symbols of pain, fear and stunning, all maximized, empowered and heightened. And the elementals were still tossing people about. People have been dying more due to the spiked hole in the ceiling because the elementals toss people out into the middle of the room. In the puzzle room, I have failed several times, because either A) we were unable to all get a charge before the reaver was brought down and the casters and clerics ran out of SP before the puzzle was done, or B) no amount of CC was able to prevent the elementals from getting to the puzzle solver and lever puller(s) and knock them all over the place.

My tank has an even harder time of it. I can run around trying to kill elementals, but even with the immunity to knockdown charge, melee characters still get tossed about, making it almost impossible to contribute meaningfully anyway. There were a couple of times where I grabbed all the eles' aggro to try and buy some breathing room for the casters, but both times I got flung all around the room and sucked up into the ceiling. Now, in the puzzle room, I am just about as useless as I had been in the main room when not tanking, except that now there is great risk of my dying and of the party's failure, and there is little to nothing that I can do about it.

The raid has become more hectic and far more difficult, yes, which could be a good thing, if it also had not become one of the most frustratingly annoying quests I (and most of the people I play with) have ever run. AIR ELEMENTALS ARE NOT FUN! I have no clue what all these people who are saying that the quest is still easy are talking about. I've had an easier time doing VoD and the Hound on hard, than I have with the reaver recently. Honestly, throwing in a ton of air elementals would have made the quest more difficult without ALSO making them immune to most forms of crowd control and death effects. Conversely, Turbine could have given them the super-charged saves, but not raised the number. They also could have added the other 2 elemental types to the main room, and beefed up all the elementals a little bit.

Previously, I could get 2 reaver runs, back to back, filled and completed in about the same amount of time that it now takes me to put up and fill one LFM. And we have gotten almost no named loot from the chest since the change, making it all the harder to bear.