This is RIDICULOUS

[Jiipster]

People still have trouble with Devils? I solo it routinely on my caster... one crit FW cooks him nicely.

[Asketes]

I don't think the OP was trolling,

I base my opinion because the OP hasn't responded after 3 pages.

[redoubt]

The OP is trolling. If it was serious he would own up to which quest it was.

If it was on anything other than normal, then ignore it all.

If it was on normal, its time to stop buying stuff at the store and learn to play.

For the love of the game:

STOP MAKING IT EASIER!!!!

Read the posts in this thread and elsewhere. I won't invite some magic stat percentage, but it appears to this reader that there are many people who have joined since F2P asking for the game to be easier and a lot of people with 2006 join dates screaming to stop the madness.

Us angry old men survived not having gear. You will too. You will be better for it. What the heck, I'll even add: it builds character. (lol)

Earn your way for once!!!

[sephiroth1084]

I don't think the OP was trolling, because I have a similar complaint. Here's some specifics: in the Ruins of Gianthold, not a boss, just some pis-sant hobgoblin shaman. There are about 10 various gnoll, hobgoblin, and orc melee/ranged fighters and 1 hobgoblin healer. The healer casts blur on himself and glitterdust, just to be annoying. Big deal, I say, I'll get to you in a second. I take out all the melees in less than one minute. It took me about 10 minutes to kill the one stupid healer pipsqueek. Not only because of his unlimited healing power, but also because apparently, when you run around aimlessly, you are unhittable. I could not miss him and was hacking off about a fifth of his hp per hit, until he got down to the final blow. Then, I somehow lost all proficiency with my weapon. He'd run around and heal 2 or 3 times, back to full health. Rinse, repeat, ad infinitum (ok, only 10 minutes). Finally had to waste pots and buff to end the pointless battle.

Don't chase casters and archers. Let them run away, stop and start to cast, then run them down.

Or, move around them so that when they run away, you run them into a wall or other terrain that will block their movement.

For example:
X = you
Y = caster
//= wall


Bad:

Y X //

Good:

X Y //

[Thrudh]

Most of the time, if a group is struggling with these types of encounters it is because either their DPS is really low, or they run out of gas too soon.

Yep, makes me think of "The Fast and the Furious" where that one guy always hits his nitro too soon...

Trick with those healing bosses is to get them down to about 50% using normal DPS... At that point, almost all he will cast is heal on himself (before that he was probably casting various attack spells mixed in with heal).

That's when everyone should hit their Haste Boost, Smite Evil, madstone rage, manyshot, whatever..

[prestorx]

I am a relatively new player(almost a year) and this is my first post on these forums. Normally I'm content to lurk and eat popcorn, but the OP and subsequent posts raise issues that are relavent to others often discussed here and I have decided, for better or worse, to wade into the morass...

DISCLAIMER: I POST WALLS OF TEXT. IF WALLS OF TEXT ARE UNACCEPTABLE TO YOU OR YOU ARE ATTENTION SPAN CHALLENGED PLEASE DISCONTINUE READING NOW AND AVOID ANY FUTURE POSTS MADE BY ME SINCE THEY WILL MOST LIKELY BE WALLS OF TEXT. THANK YOU.

First, let me give props to the DDO vets. I know you guys know what you're doing and play the game well. You have been here in some cases from the start and had to learn about the game through trial and error, have had to suffer through some less than pleasant game changes and are now dealing with an influx of players who are in many cases clueless to all of that and to how the game is played successfully, all while paying $15 or more a month and sometimes feeling no love from Turbine in return for it. The majority of the veteran players I have met have been pretty decent to me by showing patience and a willingness to tolerate less than perfection, thank you for that.

Next, props to Turbine. I commend your efforts to keep this game alive by introducing the "free to play" system which is what convinced me to start playing. I have been and will continue to be critical of some of your efforts for no other reason than to attempt to influence the ongoing development of DDO in a positive manner for your company *and* the players, since that is the only way the game will survive. Thanks for your understanding of this.

I immediately thought of Running With The Devils(RWTD) when I read the OP. There of course are other quests that the OP might be referencing but RWTD is an excellent representative quest to focus on.

RWTD is a raid flagging quest and moreover the loot from it is required to craft greensteel items. Some of the responses to the OP indicated that the quester should just show up to the quest with "plenty of DPS" and its problem solved GG BB. That is way easier said than done. To achieve the required melee damage output for that Eladrin boss pretty much requires greensteel weapons or at least outsider bane weapons and/or DR breakers(which are not at all easy to find on the AH let alone at an affordable price for a newer player, and can not realistically be expected to come out of a chest). So my question is this:

How can a new player be realistically expected to acquire a tier 3 crafted greensteel weapon to defeat that boss when they need to complete that quest to get the greensteel weapon to defeat that boss?

Now I anticipate that most if not all the vets will be thinking something like "well one just needs to get into a good group or join a good guild to do that quest" but this logic only works if the following are true:

A. The quester is okay with grouping and zerging the quest, especially for the first time, which I submit just takes all of the adventure out of it and immediately turns questing into a mechanical exercise which after 10 times of running might be acceptable but rarely, if ever, is the first time to many players including myself.

B. The quester will be accepted into a *competent* group or guild by the MyDDO elitist crowd(you know who you are) which seems to reject out of hand anyone who does not possess 4 years worth of gear and has anything less than a "perfect" build. I mention it because this behavior is becoming more frequent.

C. The quester is not a solo player. Some people prefer to play the game alone to varying degrees for a variety of reasons. This is not unreasonable. MMO is a description of the game in a macro sense not a definition of the game in a micro sense. In addition, what is often referred to as an "easy button" is to many solo and new players a "possible button".

I have personally experienced the problem with that Eladrin boss in RWTD on casual with a level 20 tempest ranger using the best weapons that I could get at the time. I cycled through all of my weapon combos to fight him
and he just kept healing himself before I could kill him. I was not in any real danger of dying until after I ran out of all healing resources including a cleric hireling. I just couldn't kill that boss with any of my 30 bastard swords several of which were 2nd tier GS. That character was my first in DDO and is not a min/max build(which I detest, but have since found to be necessary for end game play just so I can get into raids).

So to sum things up, the situation for new players is most often times as follows:

1. Sub-optimal gear
2. Sub-optimal build
3. Sub-optimal group

That is not to be read as:

1. Junk gear
2. 6con failure build
3. 6 level 13 elf barbarian group

Nor is it:

1. Tier 3 greensteel weapons, 3 Tier 3 greensteel items, litany, torc, bloodstone etc.
2. Exploiter, Monster, Egomaniac builds etc.
3. 6 TR'd level 20s(fighter, ranger, healer, arcane, bard and rogue)

So the question is this:

What is reasonable for a group of new players to expect from the end of a quest after successfully completing 95% of said quest?

The answer is:

They should be able to expect to complete the quest.

and more importantly:

What is reasonable behavior to expect from new players who find it impossible to complete quests that they should reasonably be able to expect to complete?

The answer is:

One can expect some or all of those players to quit playing the game.

Posting smarmy, flippant or simplistic suggestions will not keep those players playing, and more importantly for both Turbine and the veterans, paying for, the game. To rephrase it in clear and certain terms:

If the new players leave, your game will die.

Take some time to ruminate and soak that fact up. This is not your game. This is not my game. This isn't even Turbines game in a non-legal sense. This is our game. All of us who maintain it, play it, and particularly all of us who pay for it to whatever degree, and we all need each other if we are going to keep maintaining it and playing it. Anything less than specific helpful responses to the OP, and any similar posts, works to the detriment of us all.

In that light I offer this suggestion to the OP: Submit a bug report to Turbine regarding the boss in the quest to which you are referring and know that at least one other player feels your pain.

[KKDragonLord]

What is ridiculous is that i still dont know what the hell this is about

i can't even blame Turbine on this one.

[HarveyMilk]

Prestorx, while I am noobie myself too, I need to say that I don't think anyone expects someone to have greensteel when they are first running Running with the Devils. With a balanced group of 6 players with ok equipment, and ok builds, and decent playing sense, it is a rather fun, challenging, but completely doable quest.

Some people just expect to be able to do more before they have equipment, because they see other people can.

[Matuse]

It's extremely frustrating to plow your way through an entire adventure, only to get annihilated in the final room because the level of difficulty ramps way up for no apparent reason.

Just wait until you try Enter The Kobold!

[prestorx]

While it is possible the OP was a troll it seems to me that PsychoBlonde had the bad quest experience, made the forum post, then left. Whether or not they will be back remains to be seen.

Does it really matter which quest it was? The point is they got somewhere near the end to find a boss that was healing faster than they could damage it. Even if it was an elite quest so what? The bar for the quest went up by factors near the end rather than in linear fashion like they normally do. Usually in non-raid quests the boss is tougher than the trash but not so much that he can't be beat by the same characters who did the previous parts of the quest. I say usually because there is more than one quest which is exactly like that. RWTD, Spawn of Whisperdoom(better than it used to be), the low level one with the giant at the end, maybe some others I can't think of right now. Yes, Enter the Kobold, the poster child for quest end-fight difficulty uber-ramping. That one is so bad alot of players only do it on casual once for the essence and never go back again with the same character.

To suddenly encounter a situation in a quest you have almost completed that requires players to have foreknowledge of the bosses weaknesses in order to beat him is nothing short of lame.

[sirgog]

I bet it was the Eladrin in Running with the devils.

yes, hes tough, but not impossible. If you couldnt get him down in 1/2 hour you did not have good dps. or you were doing a difficulty higher than you were capable of doing.

He heals 450 damage per 4 seconds on Normal (level 15 or higher Heal spell with x3 healing amplification). He also has a pretty high AC and frequently dispels.

He is one of the game's few true DPS races - an encounter where medium to high DPS is actually required to win. That said, any single melee with DR breaking weapons, or any two without DR breakers, should be able to kill him.

My suggestion? Put the shield away and tell the other melees to do so too, this is one encounter where it doesn't help at all.

[Vordax]

Stuff

When this quest came out, the cap just went to 16. This quest wasn't that big of deal then either, with no greensteel and level 14 or less equipment.

This quest now has the "easy" version of normal also, there was no dungeon scaling until much more recently.

I think the OP just needs to find a group, or wait to do this quest until he has acquired better gear.

Vordax

[pasterqb]

People still have trouble with Devils? I solo it routinely on my caster... one crit FW cooks him nicely.

4 or 5 Blade Barriers stacked right on top of each other (not making a venn diagram) in the doorway you enter to find him works perfect for me also.

[theb]

Does it really matter which quest it was? The point is they got somewhere near the end to find a boss that was healing faster than they could damage it. Even if it was an elite quest so what? The bar for the quest went up by factors near the end rather than in linear fashion like they normally do.

To suddenly encounter a situation in a quest you have almost completed that requires players to have foreknowledge of the bosses weaknesses in order to beat him is nothing short of lame.

DDO is a complex game. It's not just a matter of easy or hard. OP was in a very defense oriented group, with hezrou and earth elementals doing damage (possibly with their dps being hirelings). That doesn't stack up well against healing enemies. Certain parties and class combinations will be better at some things than others.

I have no problem at all with Casual mode being dumbed down DDO. If normal mode practically guaranties completion with a competent group that's fine. But you are not entitled to traipse into a hard or elite quest with a bunch of hirelings and even dumber PC companions and beat the boss without tactics. If you want your 6 CON, ALT-TAB, DDO store bought, lobotomized completion, I don't begrudge you that and you can have it on casual mode or even normal.

Why do you begrudge me hard and elite modes being challenging? Are you so mean spirited, in addition to being inept at DDO? What do you gain by making the hardest difficult easy? Is it just so you can say you did the hardest difficulty available? Are you trying to **** up the game for others just so you don't have to admit to yourself you are unable to face up to some of the challenges of Eberron? Elite DDO is the game I enjoy playing, and you want to turn it into casual mode? A CASUAL MODE THAT ALREADY EXISTS! So insecure morons don't have to admit they don't have as much time or skill as other people to *play a game*, you want to break the game for others.

If you have any talent, skill, or proficiency at anything at all, I hope someone suggests to you eliminating that specialty so anyone can fulfill the task in an inferior way without being outshone by you.

Just wait until you try Enter The Kobold!

I joined this year, never made any greensteel (just blanks so far that is, I sold most of my ingredients and mats to Ice over 50 weapons), and solo'd it on normal without a hireling. IT"S NOT THAT HARD.

*Edited to tone it down...

[Visty]

When this quest came out, the cap just went to 16. This quest wasn't that big of deal then either, with no greensteel and level 14 or less equipment.

This quest now has the "easy" version of normal also, there was no dungeon scaling until much more recently.

I think the OP just needs to find a group, or wait to do this quest until he has acquired better gear.

Vordax

this

+1 to you as i was just about to post that too but you have beaten me

[transtemporal]

I like that you put the earth elemental IN ALL CAPS like that was just the most awesome thing ever to have summoned to beat on stuff.

I know right... especially since everyone knows the black pudding is where its at. Once the pudding is summoned everyone can go afk while he kills the boss.

[mehlinda]

I'm going to make a few assumptions, but I think the answer is... next time take silver weapons.

Running w the devils ?

[oweieie]

Running w the devils ?

The Church and the Cult. Although I think the boss got nerfed hard, he's still pretty hard to kill if you're relying on pets and don't have anything to get through DR.

[Logicman69]

I ran Devils solo on my light-monk, and I breezed through most of the quest right up until that Palidin. I was able to beat on him till he hit about 1/3 hps left, then he would heal himself. The funny part was that he couldn't hit me either (except for the occasional 20 he would roll.. and healing curse took care of that damage). It was pretty much a stale-mate. I had to wait for about 35-40 minutes before a guildmate logged on and came in to help.

[Khurse]

The problem isn't that that boss is too tough, it's that 90% of the other bosses in the game are too easy.

If more quests had an end boss that wasn't necessarily invulnerable, but one that took at least some thought into beating them, we'd probably have a player base better equipped to deal with things other than rant " My earth elemental didn't win the quest for me".