Reaver's fate

[Hollowgolem]

Are players so terrible these days that they can't recover from losing their tank to a Disintegrate in Reaver?

Well, because of the mechanic of the Reaver fight, you can't just rez the tank. You have to have someone else tank him. And hope they don't eat super-disintegrate-of-doom (though I'm hearing reports that the disint isn't -really- that bad anyway, so it's no big deal).

[altrocks]

Are players so terrible these days that they can't recover from losing their tank to a Disintegrate in Reaver?

It's a fairly powerful disintegrate. Lots of damage on it for that level. You won't see people running elite at level 14 anymore, but most of us who run it capped for completions won't see any change, really. Might have to throw an extra heal on the tank now and then.

[joaofalcao]

Are players so terrible these days that they can't recover from losing their tank to a Disintegrate in Reaver?

Are players so alienated this days they cant see how serious death is? Has death been so banalized as to something that doesnt matter at all?

Death is a traumatic experience. Stop banalizing death.

And again, its a matter of balancing the raid to its lvl, not if people are able to complete it or not.

[Sarisa]

Last time I ran Tor elite post-u9 (the trap changes), huddled up next to the barrier in Blue is no longer safe from the lightning and force damage. There may still be a safe spot, but nowhere that I could find.

Ran Tor elite last night at level. Blue was brutal. The force traps around the little pillars didn't have a huge range, so being near the barrier avoided those. Staying off the gold kept you safe from the "shock waves" that went around. Every once in a while (15 seconds or so), there was a sort of electric blast, and that hit the whole room for 150-200 damage. Being near the barrier was not in any way safe from that trap. We did manage to complete, through power healing and my sorc breaking off to wand heal.

Black we wiped on. The entire island where the dragon starts is trapped, even if you're the game equivalent of 15 feet away from the acid jet. To succeed at level, we'd probably have to take in two healers, and drag the dragon to where we entered the room just to stay as far away from the acid jets as possible.

[Ryiah]

Are players so terrible these days that they can't recover from losing their tank to a Disintegrate in Reaver?

Depends entirely on who is tanking now doesn't it? Reaver is typically considered to be an easy raid. I've run into people before who lacked decent HP. Even some who had decent HP, lacked fortification. And I won't even go into how bad the saves are on some of them. And then there are some players who lack all three.

I think at worst, we'll just see people be a little more cautious about who they select to tank. I definitely think the number of Pale Masters who attempt to successfully tank will go down. Beyond that, I think we'll just end up with less piking clerics.

[Missing_Minds]

Are players so alienated this days they cant see how serious death is? Has death been so banalized as to something that doesnt matter at all?

Death used to mean something back when you would accrew XP debt. Then they changed it because too many players said that was too harsh. (and would be bad for Shroud part 4.)

Have a few wipes in a run and you're XP bar would be going backward. You couldn't lose a level thankfully.

Then they had "time out" xp being earned, aka you'd gain XP for not being active on the character, but only up to the point to remove XP debt.

Then they threw it out utter and replaced it with Mabar stuff and gear damage.

With the Reaver, it actually means death could have consequences due to the time out room. Not so much as in player hardship, but quest failure. The Shroud does this as well in Part 4.

It is not player alienation, but Turbine itself that has made death trivial and not something to be afraid of.

[Chette]

I wish the standard solution to "this raid/quest is too easy/boring" wasn't just to increase boss HP, damage and/or fortification. This does nothing to make these raids/quest more enjoyable, and it does little to make them more difficult. All it does is make them take longer and frequently result in casters (particularly divines) using more resources.

8-10 melees will still stand in a spot swinging their weapons when all these raid changes happen while somebody heals them. They'll just spend more time doing it. To make raids more difficult and exciting there should be more to them other than just heal and slash.

[JOTMON]

The retoractive changing to older quests to make it more difficult for high level toons running the quests is detrimental to the levelling process.

It does not make the quest more difficult for capped toons with gear and TR lives that are running the quest for specific items. These toons are already geared with shroud and epic items and experienced players.

It just makes it more difficult for the at level mixed non-power gaming groups that are running this without past life gear and shroud items trying to get their first time items and completions with at level xp bonus for running quests on elite.

Is this an increase to the challenge of the quest or is it blindly punishing newbs.

In my opinion they should leave the old quests alone, bring new challenges with the new quests, level 20 quests with high level damage and uber end game rewards. Epic Gianthold would be the place to add the exceptional fights, not the levelling difficulties.

[Rodasch]

Now when Ventilated Bracers drops for you on elite Reaver's run, you can marvel at how uber the loot is for the difficulty of the raid.

[pHo3nix]

I wish the standard solution to "this raid/quest is too easy/boring" wasn't just to increase boss HP, damage and/or fortification. This does nothing to make these raids/quest more enjoyable, and it does little to make them more difficult. All it does is make them take longer and frequently result in casters (particularly divines) using more resources.

8-10 melees will still stand in a spot swinging their weapons when all these raid changes happen while somebody heals them. They'll just spend more time doing it. To make raids more difficult and exciting there should be more to them other than just heal and slash.

This.

Increasing hp and dmg from bosses doesn't change anything for most of the party, melees will still use autoattack and afk, while casters (both arcane and divine) will use more resources.

Melees basically don't care if the boss got 10k or 1 million of hp and hits for 100 or 200, they just stand there waiting for the heals; divines will just need to spam more mass cures, resulting in more sp usage and (maybe) more sp pots usage and ofc more boredom cause they cannot do many more things than just heal..


I would welcome any added challenge, but i don't think that increasing bosses' hp/dmg in raids really solves anything, it will just take longer to complete them.

[Missing_Minds]

Increasing hp and dmg from bosses doesn't change anything for most of the party, melees will still use autoattack and afk, while casters (both arcane and divine) will use more resources.

I'm still waiting for them to pull a trick from Lotro. There are orcs over there that will cast a buff. During this time period, they get a few pulses of heal (HoT) but also any incoming damage gets directly converted to healing.

DoT and auto attack for the healing of the boss. *chuckles* So much for going AFK, no?

[arkonas]

OMG are you kidding me. Im hearing people whine that they cant pike a raid anymore or just take it easy? do i now hear people complaining they cant solo a RAID. really? really? how many of us are bored of this raid you go in and you sit there and wait. now he might actually kill you and now your complaining? I LOVE this change they need to keep it and maybe people will start to think of it as a serious raid not just a pike fest let him keep that disintegrate. this is so funny that people WANT more challenge and they give it to you. now your like omg no omg no i cant live now if he hits me for 500 and you want it to be nerfed back to the normal boring raid it is. hypocrites right? make it harder, no make it easier, no i don't know what i want.

Raids are meant to be group orientated. they should NOT be easy there should ALWAYS be a risk of death in a raid just to give it an edge. Lately some players get mad there is even one death! they think that its the end of the world if it happens. I want to see more failures close to party wipes i want to see more deaths. not these cake walks some of you are used too. im not talking about making it so hard that only elitists can get in the raid or you have to be in your best gear. just enough to give you that feeling that you earned the real victory not just whoo look we did it. most run reavers for madstone boots maybe gauntlets of eternity dreamspitter and various others. i cant tell you how many times we get skunked with an easy victory.

[Ryiah]

Raids are meant to be group orientated. they should NOT be easy there should ALWAYS be a risk of death in a raid just to give it an edge.

I agree. However there is a big difference between simply tweaking some settings and actually making a decent raid. As it stands, Reaver's Fate is simply boring. Especially compared to the flagging quests which have so much more effort put into them.

[Hollowgolem]

I wish the standard solution to "this raid/quest is too easy/boring" wasn't just to increase boss HP, damage and/or fortification. This does nothing to make these raids/quest more enjoyable, and it does little to make them more difficult. All it does is make them take longer and frequently result in casters (particularly divines) using more resources.

8-10 melees will still stand in a spot swinging their weapons when all these raid changes happen while somebody heals them. They'll just spend more time doing it. To make raids more difficult and exciting there should be more to them other than just heal and slash.

This is the "Square/Enix path to difficulty." And it makes for boring fights that are far too long.

[Jubbers]

A party of quality lvl 15-17's the raid's target, that being the case: what is a 1st life, 32pt, high con, well equiped (+6 items, GFL, heavy fort) lvl 17 barbarian HP going to be at? If that character can't survive 1 hit from the reaver's spell then that ability is overpowered.

Now if he's at 1/2 HP and gets popped and killed no issue with that, but everyone rolls a 1 the ability is a ray (which in this game dosn't mean anything) which you just get hit by due to the "improved" ray implementation. If this is the case then we need to make reaver's elite lvl 20 and set for endgame characters.

I look foreward to the increased difficuly of the given raids, but if the damage output places it beyond the capibilities of "at level" groups then it hasn't been balanced correctly.

It would be nice to understand what the Devs are trying to accomplish as the end goals for the quests. Are they attempting to match the elite runs with the level cap or are they truly representive of the level they are currently at?

[Hikup]

Ridiculous.
Everything has been said, but it's worth repeating.
If this raid is being "fixed" for geared out level 18-20 players, the rewards should be much greater. These changes are not what I think most people had in mind asking for end game content. What I would like is new content.

You can polish a turd all day long, at the end of the day it's still just a PoS

Looks like hox will be the new +3 tome run?

17 barbarian hp 32pt wf w/ 20 starting con, levels into str
85hp levels
20hp heroic duribility
20hp minos
30hp gfl
80hp toughness enhancements
19hp toughness
42 con raged w/ enhancements for a +16 mod - 272hp
I'm sure a 17 that can put that together would have a gs hp item, but requiring higher level raid loot to complete seems, again ridiculous.
571 w/ gs
My math may be bad or I might have overlooked something, but that would be 526hp raged.... hope he doesn't spit on you before/after that 1 you roll

[Rawel_San]

Since when can an entirely new player ever do elite at level for most (if not all) quests? Is elite VoD a simple matter for a smattering of completely new level 20s to beat, even if they get a caster to tank or a bard to heal? After all, elite vod is a level 20 raid...

Elite has never been for 'new' players. I can do elite now at-level thanks to experience and hand-me-downs/funding from my higher-leveled toons... which is traditionally not the case for new players.

A group of 12 well-geared and experienced 16 players can do elite reaver with no real trouble, post-change. Same for VoD pre-change.

You don't mean well geared. You mean ssmooth geared. I.e. TR'd with GS items, litany, ship buffs, raid gear out
the wazoo and obviously perfect knowledge of the quest. Well geared first life at lvl 16 means you have at most a
tier I GS item (probbly not even that) +6 con, gfl and heavy fort. It does not mean you have 420 hp's on a drow
sorc.

Do we really want to tailor mid lvl content to be challenging for fully geared TR's?

More precisely for fully geared TR's playing one of the currently most powerfull mid level characters (wf Sorc) in
a raid which makes blue bars insanely more powerful then they normaly should be since they get infinite mana
thus upping their damage+survivability to completely insane levels? If you remove the mana bar restriction on
an arcane or divine you have just increased their effectivity 2+ times at least.

[sirgog]

A party of quality lvl 15-17's the raid's target, that being the case: what is a 1st life, 32pt, high con, well equiped (+6 items, GFL, heavy fort) lvl 17 barbarian HP going to be at? If that character can't survive 1 hit from the reaver's spell then that ability is overpowered.

Now if he's at 1/2 HP and gets popped and killed no issue with that, but everyone rolls a 1 the ability is a ray (which in this game dosn't mean anything) which you just get hit by due to the "improved" ray implementation. If this is the case then we need to make reaver's elite lvl 20 and set for endgame characters.

I look foreward to the increased difficuly of the given raids, but if the damage output places it beyond the capibilities of "at level" groups then it hasn't been balanced correctly.

It would be nice to understand what the Devs are trying to accomplish as the end goals for the quests. Are they attempting to match the elite runs with the level cap or are they truly representive of the level they are currently at?

So one player dies to Disintegrate every fifth run, and the raid is forced to improvise to get by with the other 11.

Big deal.

[BrightAsh]

So one player dies to Disintegrate every fifth run, and the raid is forced to improvise to get by with the other 11.

Big deal.

non-sense, that number comes from the assimption that the reaver will cast disintegrate only once... that is not true. He castst it regularly. So a tank wil propably die a lot. It is a level 16 quest (on elite) so level 17 without XP penalty's. In a first life 500 damage is a lot: see calculation of properly geared barb a few posts above this one (properly geared = unlikely on first life toons).

It is just insane that some one can be one shotted that easily by a boss (or any othe enemy for that matter) without any possibility of defending oneself. There is no fun in that, no challange, just a certainty that you will go to the pikebox as tank. There is no balance in it. not so very well thought through.