Dear Devs: Information please on Air Elementals

[Riggs]

I have never seen a developer post about air elementals that I can recall, and would like some clarification please.

Is there a game breaking reason knockdown had to be changed from pnp rules to make it impossible to stand up around them?

As it is now;

- the dc is so high most people cannot stand up for more than 2 seconds no matter what their stats.

- Balance skill, despite the name, doesnt help you stand up if you skill is higher than your str/dex bonus. And getting up after isnt a lot of help if you keep getting knocked down every 2 seconds and starts a fresh 6 second timer. Pnp rules show a reflex save not a dex save, which would let people stand up a lot more if that was the case in DDO. And the save dc in pnp is a LOT lower than it is in DDO.

- pnp Air elementals are like the way Genies are implemented in DDO currently. One form that can 'punch' characters, then for short periods of time, followed by several turns of rest, they can assume whirlwind form and try to knock people down. but the knockdown is an attack, not a area all around that causes auto-knockdown to anyone that is within weapon range. So the implementation of how they work in pnp already exists, and in theory could be changed for air elementals also.

- Air elementals are present in every raid and flagging set of quests except Vons and Titan(well and the Sub, but beholders are another annoying broken monster). Chains and Wiz king(for Queen), Sos, Reaver, Vale and Ritual. So they are pretty much impossible to avoid if you run anything added to the game since 2 years ago.

- overrun/knockdown/charge affects players even when the monster doesnt hit you. Charging Minotaurs, Mariliths that just wander by and knock down an entire party, and air elementals that knock down everyone within range, and zip around all over throwing entire parties down basically at will.

There are many things about DDO that people love, and love playing for long periods of time.

But when most players I know of get to a point where they run into air elementals, they start getting really angry at the game, and at Turbine for adding this monster to the game, and never changing it or taking them out despite numerous complaints.

Dear Turbine, if your intention is to make otherwise happy players really, really angry at you you are succeeding. If your intention is to make a monster so broken from pnp rules that capped characters that can beat up on a pit fiend run screaming from an air elemental sighting you have succeeded.

If your intention is to so break a monster and overpower them that it is seemingly no different than a pnp DM deliberately griefing the players at the table you have succeeded by a wide margin.

If the intention is otherwise, can we as players get some kind of timeline if there is going to be a change? or some kind of feedback as to why they are designed this way? So far I do not recall seeing anything official about them after much hopeful waiting for some kind of change, and something official would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Riggs

[Griphon]

My guess is they needed a monster type to slow things down... With something that players couldn't save against, nor find a way around....

Example: They upped the HD of the Elementals in the Reaver raid... When it was 'too easy'.... Now it's significantly harder to CC the beasties or banish them. Why did they turn it up? Simple.. Too many Reaver Raids were being completed in 10M or less and they decided to 'fix' that..

Even though it's been stated over and again that: (paraphrasing) They have no intention of altering previous content as they see it as a waste of time.

[EinarMal]

Even though it's been stated over and again that: (paraphrasing) They have no intention of altering previous content as they see it as a waste of time.

Ahem unless is is anti-player adjustments that is. They continually go back and make old content more difficult over time, even content many levels below cap to challenge more cap players running through old content.

[Riggs]

Oh, and to state as well one of the reasons air elementals are so broken...

Everything in D&D is balanced in some way. Every attack has a defence, every defence has a weakness or a hole. Almost every DR has something that bypasses it. Monsters are strong at some things, weak at others.

A player could prepare defences against some attacks, or attacks vs some defenses. Potions, magic items, skills etc, there is a way past everything, a way to beat anything somehow.

Air elementals have no preparation. There is nothing a non-caster can do. Unless you can finger or destruct one the second you see it - your getting knocked down. No defence, no way around it, just pure knockdown over and over and over again.

It is not a reasonable option for someone to be told 'well just be a caster, or hide behind a caster'. Everything else in the game is beatable in some way, or some action you can take that helps. Saying sit back and wait for someone else to handle this is not a reasonable argument, or a balanced way to design a monster.

*Edit
As he said - old content is constantly being 'updated'. All the time. That quote was about raid flagging mechanisms for queen and vons.

[Turial]

....
Air elementals have no preparation. There is nothing a non-caster or non-acrobat rogue can do. Unless you can finger or destruct one the second you see it - your getting knocked down. No defence, no way around it, just pure knockdown over and over and over again.

It is not a reasonable option for someone to be told 'well just be a caster, or hide behind a caster'. Everything else in the game is beatable in some way, or some action you can take that helps. Saying sit back and wait for someone else to handle this is not a reasonable argument, or a balanced way to design a monster.
.....

Acrobat rogues can avoid being knocked down through their showtime buff which grants immunity to knockdown.

[baddax]

Acrobat rogues can avoid being knocked down through their showtime buff which grants immunity to knockdown.

I would also like to add that Everyone who gets "charged completely" is Immune to All Air elemental knockdown effects! Thats why its very important to get as many people charged and keeping charged as often as possible. If you are lucky then as the Casters are setting up CC then the melees can go in and get their chargees. After that its time to slice and dice. I prefer stat damagers because of the complete chaotic nature the raid atm. If you can weaken them enugh through stat damagers then when/if you loose your charge they will not be as bad to deal with, and the caster might even be able to get of some insta kills to boot. Lastly heightened Mind fog and dancing balls seem to work well for croud control of the eles.

[sephiroth1084]

I don't know why the devs decided to remove the fire and earth elementals in the puzzle room only to replace them with air elementals. Honestly, wasn't everyone crying out for the opposite: replacing some of the air elementals in the puzzle room with earth and fire ones?

I honestly would have prefered for the elementals to gain Deathblock in this case. They really are the most irritating monster in the entire game, the least liked, and yet, they have proliferated, spreading throughout nearly all of the content. Couldn't we find something else to use?

It is very frustrating to play anything but a caster when there are air elementals about. The Reaver's Fate was a cakewalk before, and was boring for anyone that wasn't tanking or a caster/cleric. Now, it is no longer a cakewalk, but went from boring to frustrating for the non-casters, and has become frustrating for everyone else as well. Not exactly what I'd call a fix.

[RATRACE931]

cmon guys im sure they are "Functioning as intended" just like potions that dont prot or DC being bugged on grease and sleet storm or giant with 24 con but 3,500 hitpoints.

[xberto]

Air elementals have no preparation. There is nothing a non-caster can do. Unless you can finger or destruct one the second you see it - your getting knocked down. No defence, no way around it, just pure knockdown over and over and over again.

Now I don't like the air eles any more than the rest of you, however you can prepare. Bringing a caster is preparing. It's like saying there is no way to prepare for a trap filled quest because you don't want to bring a rouge.
And besides, there are alternatives to taking down air eles, perhaps less effective. A prepared group will all have a ranging combat alterntive. You spread out and range them. Of course bringing a fingerer is just so easy.

[Riggs]

Now I don't like the air eles any more than the rest of you, however you can prepare. Bringing a caster is preparing. It's like saying there is no way to prepare for a trap filled quest because you don't want to bring a rouge.
And besides, there are alternatives to taking down air eles, perhaps less effective. A prepared group will all have a ranging combat alterntive. You spread out and range them. Of course bringing a fingerer is just so easy.

That is not what I mean by preparing, and I tried to spell it out in a previous post.

Preparation is when YOU, and YOUR character, take some kind of action, bring some kind of item, turn on a skill, stance, or enhancement - to deal with a situation, monster, or puzzle etc.

It is not a valid agument to say, "Well to be prepared - dont be who you are, reroll a new character and bring that one instead, or just bring SOMEONE ELSE to deal with this problem."

Thats not preparation, thats saying "Anyone who is NOT x cannot handle this monster no matter what they do, what skills they have, items, potions, clickies, actions, abilities, there is NOTHING YOU CAN DO, so just BE someone else, or leave".

In D&D a high level character, of ANY class, can take steps, bring an item, set a trap, use tactics, and find a way to deal with something, as everything has a weakness. DDO you have very few tactics to use, a fraction of the items and spells that would be available to a paper character, and skills, saves, and monsters dont work the same way as in paper D&D.

So instead of having mutliple options in handling something, the ONLY response that people seem to have when defending elementals is; be someone else, or bring someone else. That is no way to design a game if you want any degree of balance or fairness.

It is not about "Oh something beat me", but because there is NOTHING you can do to stop them, other than being a caster/acrobat/ranger on a unreachable spot shooting at them. Every other class is completely pooched when fighting them, because you cant melee them (unless they are in a dancing ball, which goes back to 'bring a caster').

Air elementals cheat, and cheat hard, and it makes a LOT of people very angry each and every time they are encountered. And there is no game design reason they HAVE to be that way, as Genies are also air creatures, also have whirlwind form, but only use it sometimes. So the mechanics for the 'as they are in the pnp rules' way to handle them already is in the game...it is just not being used. I for one would like to know why.

[Tin_Dragon]

Ahem unless is is anti-player adjustments that is. They continually go back and make old content more difficult over time, even content many levels below cap to challenge more cap players running through old content.

Which is the worst idea ever.

[brool]

I just dont run quests with air ele's in them since they cheat.

IF you cant cheat and someone can cheat you, just dont go that way.

*really turbine should fix the air ele's, it is ridiculasly broke. Im not saying put an easy button on them, however atleast make them function the way they are *supposed* to. Thats all Im saying.*

[GlassCannon]

Djinn AI

Give it to the Air Elementals and DELETE AIR ELEMENTAL AI.

They will need a Bludgeon/Slash Melee Attack. Additionally, due to composition, they would deal about 1/4 the damage of an Earth Elemental.

Additionally, Djinn tend to have a troublesome problem of going Whirlwind a little too often. Once every 30 seconds is a bit much. They need a cooldown like Manyshot(2 minutes).

[shores11]

I just dont run quests with air ele's in them since they cheat.

IF you cant cheat and someone can cheat you, just dont go that way.

*really turbine should fix the air ele's, it is ridiculasly broke. Im not saying put an easy button on them, however atleast make them function the way they are *supposed* to. Thats all Im saying.*

It might be that air elementals are acting exactly the way they want them to, ever consider that. I do not think air elementals are broke, they are just a casters fodder.

[Mirta]

It's just a pathetic attempt at adding difficulty to an overly easy game. What I don't like is the fact that my characters can make a save and still get knocked down as if they didn't.

I have never seen a developer post about air elementals that I can recall, and would like some clarification please.

Is there a game breaking reason knockdown had to be changed from pnp rules to make it impossible to stand up around them?

As it is now;

- the dc is so high most people cannot stand up for more than 2 seconds no matter what their stats.

- Balance skill, despite the name, doesnt help you stand up if you skill is higher than your str/dex bonus. And getting up after isnt a lot of help if you keep getting knocked down every 2 seconds and starts a fresh 6 second timer. Pnp rules show a reflex save not a dex save, which would let people stand up a lot more if that was the case in DDO. And the save dc in pnp is a LOT lower than it is in DDO.

- pnp Air elementals are like the way Genies are implemented in DDO currently. One form that can 'punch' characters, then for short periods of time, followed by several turns of rest, they can assume whirlwind form and try to knock people down. but the knockdown is an attack, not a area all around that causes auto-knockdown to anyone that is within weapon range. So the implementation of how they work in pnp already exists, and in theory could be changed for air elementals also.

- Air elementals are present in every raid and flagging set of quests except Vons and Titan(well and the Sub, but beholders are another annoying broken monster). Chains and Wiz king(for Queen), Sos, Reaver, Vale and Ritual. So they are pretty much impossible to avoid if you run anything added to the game since 2 years ago.

- overrun/knockdown/charge affects players even when the monster doesnt hit you. Charging Minotaurs, Mariliths that just wander by and knock down an entire party, and air elementals that knock down everyone within range, and zip around all over throwing entire parties down basically at will.

There are many things about DDO that people love, and love playing for long periods of time.

But when most players I know of get to a point where they run into air elementals, they start getting really angry at the game, and at Turbine for adding this monster to the game, and never changing it or taking them out despite numerous complaints.

Dear Turbine, if your intention is to make otherwise happy players really, really angry at you you are succeeding. If your intention is to make a monster so broken from pnp rules that capped characters that can beat up on a pit fiend run screaming from an air elemental sighting you have succeeded.

If your intention is to so break a monster and overpower them that it is seemingly no different than a pnp DM deliberately griefing the players at the table you have succeeded by a wide margin.

If the intention is otherwise, can we as players get some kind of timeline if there is going to be a change? or some kind of feedback as to why they are designed this way? So far I do not recall seeing anything official about them after much hopeful waiting for some kind of change, and something official would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Riggs

[GlassCannon]

It's just a pathetic attempt at adding difficulty to an already challenging game. What I don't like is the fact that my characters can make a save and still get knocked down as if they didn't.

Yes, this is exceptionally irritating.

[shores11]

I have never seen a developer post about air elementals that I can recall, and would like some clarification please.

Is there a game breaking reason knockdown had to be changed from pnp rules to make it impossible to stand up around them?

As it is now;

- the dc is so high most people cannot stand up for more than 2 seconds no matter what their stats.

- Balance skill, despite the name, doesnt help you stand up if you skill is higher than your str/dex bonus. And getting up after isnt a lot of help if you keep getting knocked down every 2 seconds and starts a fresh 6 second timer. Pnp rules show a reflex save not a dex save, which would let people stand up a lot more if that was the case in DDO. And the save dc in pnp is a LOT lower than it is in DDO.

- pnp Air elementals are like the way Genies are implemented in DDO currently. One form that can 'punch' characters, then for short periods of time, followed by several turns of rest, they can assume whirlwind form and try to knock people down. but the knockdown is an attack, not a area all around that causes auto-knockdown to anyone that is within weapon range. So the implementation of how they work in pnp already exists, and in theory could be changed for air elementals also.

- Air elementals are present in every raid and flagging set of quests except Vons and Titan(well and the Sub, but beholders are another annoying broken monster). Chains and Wiz king(for Queen), Sos, Reaver, Vale and Ritual. So they are pretty much impossible to avoid if you run anything added to the game since 2 years ago.

- overrun/knockdown/charge affects players even when the monster doesnt hit you. Charging Minotaurs, Mariliths that just wander by and knock down an entire party, and air elementals that knock down everyone within range, and zip around all over throwing entire parties down basically at will.

There are many things about DDO that people love, and love playing for long periods of time.

But when most players I know of get to a point where they run into air elementals, they start getting really angry at the game, and at Turbine for adding this monster to the game, and never changing it or taking them out despite numerous complaints.

Dear Turbine, if your intention is to make otherwise happy players really, really angry at you you are succeeding. If your intention is to make a monster so broken from pnp rules that capped characters that can beat up on a pit fiend run screaming from an air elemental sighting you have succeeded.

If your intention is to so break a monster and overpower them that it is seemingly no different than a pnp DM deliberately griefing the players at the table you have succeeded by a wide margin.

If the intention is otherwise, can we as players get some kind of timeline if there is going to be a change? or some kind of feedback as to why they are designed this way? So far I do not recall seeing anything official about them after much hopeful waiting for some kind of change, and something official would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Riggs

I know this is a very far out there and unconventional approach to a Dungeon & Dragons game. Balance out your party with a caster, WOW did I just suggest that a D&D party should have mixed classes in a quest for its successful completion? There are plenty of NPC's out there that a caster can barely touch so we try to crowd control them some for melee types to beat up on.

All casters secretly smile when melee types get blown around and we just cast a PK, finger or destrcution on them. POOF they are gone!