Feedback - Challenge - Dr. Rushmore's Mansion: Picture Portals EPIC

[Shade]

From this perspective, Crystal and Rushmore are 'phased' fights.

Tried to reply earlier but constantly got errors replying to this thread.

Like I infered before tho: I get your intention. Kookiekobold also just plain told me on lam while he watched our run.

But it simply doesn't work that way because of how its set up, and cant no matter how we approcha it.

What you want:
Us to kill the elementals to "weaken" teh boss. (and potentially get sam to help, tho he requires intim and a certainly patern, so should not be required to use)

Why we can't:
The elementals respawn insanely fast, so killing them has litterly no effect. In the 6 seconds to takes to kill one, another takes it place, and the boss heals up.

Only soluiton:
Brute force.

It's how you set it up taht forces us to do this, not our lack of understanding the mechanics.

Massively increase the respawn/summon timer on the elementals to say 2 minutes, and buff them so they take 20-30 seconds to kill.. Then you may have the encounter work how you like..

Until then, it will be done as you see in the video I posted.. With epic swords of shadows.. His regen is so insanely fast I dont think the fights even possible without the level of gear I have - and at least several melees with it, that or maxxed out sorc dps. 9 runs out 10 the quad dmg buff is unavailable.. I got VERY lucky to get that for the vid.

[Deathdefy]

I was struggling with the elemental bosses' regen on CL 20.

After messing about, my experience was that Crystal (haven't tested the others) won't summon more than 3 elementals at once (possible more in the beginning, but maybe not even). They do respawn near-instantaneously, but I don't think that's a bug.

Water = huge increase in regen
Air = evasion(?)
Earth = AC boost
Fire = some rubbish. Damage boost maybe?

The air and earth are too much of a pain due to their earthgrab and knockback rather than their effect on the boss, and water's regen really is very fast, so I was killing elementals till I had 3 fire up, then going for the kill.

Haven't tried epic yet though to be honest so it may be radically different enough that you can't just opt for 3 fires.

[Shade]

I was struggling with the elemental bosses' regen on CL 20.

After messing about, my experience was that Crystal (haven't tested the others) won't summon more than 3 elementals at once (possible more in the beginning, but maybe not even). They do respawn near-instantaneously, but I don't think that's a bug.

Water = huge increase in regen
Air = evasion(?)
Earth = AC boost
Fire = some rubbish. Damage boost maybe?

The air and earth are too much of a pain due to their earthgrab and knockback rather than their effect on the boss, and water's regen really is very fast, so I was killing elementals till I had 3 fire up, then going for the kill.

Haven't tried epic yet though to be honest so it may be radically different enough that you can't just opt for 3 fires.

Nice tip.. tho its difficul to "opt" for something when your swinging a two hander weapon the bloody things constant teleport right on your face.

Less telporting and that may be a good strategy.

But I also dont believe thats how it works..

I think the limit of 3 elems you were seeing was due to solo or 2/3 player scaling.. I noticed they put in # of monster scaling in all the challenges like in devils assault. So groups may well get a more then 3 elems. Im pretty sure I've seen one of each type alive in some encounters (at least 4), maybe not the crstal one.

[Viisari]

Just kill the water elementals and dance air elementals, that makes the kobold drop pretty easily with a decent group. Atleast at level 21, level 25 seemed pretty insane from a few test runs and not really worth running for ingredients.

I'm also pretty sure kobold only has 3 elementals around him even with a full group at level 21, might be wrong though because I only ever really paid attention to water elementals, the others are only a minor annoyance, water ellies are the ones that make him almost unkillable.

The wizard dude has one of each elemental around him I think, we just kill water here too.

Then there's that one guy who has earth eles around him, those things pump his AC to pretty crazy numbers so if your group relies on melee dps heavily it's better kill them, I think air elementals are what spawn there after earths, just dance them or something. This guy only has two elementals around I think.

The healer succubus seems kinda weak, could probably use some kind of a boost, I don't even remember if she has any elementals hanging with her because killing her is a total non-issue, could probably solo her easily in a full group. The rogue dude hits like a truck though, two monks didn't fare too well against him without any heals (kinda dangerous to go through the traps with non-evasion classes, I don't think they can be disarmed?)

I also hate those **** rats, they hit harder than most other mobs there lol

So basically the idea with the bosses, as far as I can gather, is not to get rid of elementals in general but to get rid of specific elementals depending on which boss you are trying to kill and also on who's trying to kill them like casters killing air ellies if they grant evasion, wouldn't know about that myself though becuase I've only taken my melee in there, melees might want to be rid of earth ellies because they can pump the bosses AC a huge amount. Water elementals you never want there as far as I can tell. Fire ellies seem like the best ones to have around, no idea what they even boost for the bosses. I also think that the elementals always spawn in a specific order, would need to test that to be certain but that's my gut feeling (kill earth ellie -> spawns air, kill water ellie -> spawns fire, atleast those are the elementals that always seem to be around in the fights where we kill water and earth ellies).

Maybe I spoiled too much

And if the above is the intended way to do it then yeah, the elementals are pretty weak, they drop in a few seconds with two melees beating one.

All in all, Picture Portals is pretty **** easy to do with five stars @ lvl 21 once you know what you're doing, lower levels are only easier, higher levels I haven't really gotten to yet because they seemed a lot more difficult and afaik they don't provide any addition crystals which makes them pretty much only worth running for kicks and favor.

I seem to have too much to say because I keep editing this **** post all the time >_<

[Deathdefy]

Agree with everything you said Vis. Having got better at the bosses, I now agree just killing the waters seems to be enough on both Crystal and Rushmore (on CR 20 and 21; 25 God knows).

I think you're right that the question of whether you want Airs or Earths on the Tank guy is dependant on class make-up. I don't know if the Earth AC bonus stacks, or if in addition to granting evasion, each Air elemental further boosts boss reflex save. Maybe 1 of each being up would be ideal sometimes.

For elemental numbers, I also have found it to be:
Thief: nothing
Succubus: nothing
Tank guy: 2 max, initially 2 Earth. Respawn cycle = Air, Air, Earth, Earth, Air, Air, etc.
Crystal: 3 max, initially 1 Water, 1 Fire, 1 Air. No idea of cycle, but doesn't ever spawn Earth I think.
Rushmore: 4 max, initially 1 Water, 1 Fire, 1 Air, 1 Earth. No idea of cycle, but includes everything.

I still have no idea what buff Fire Elementals give, but the others are right.

My latest trick for soloing is just kiting the Succubus and Tank as I go about the level per normal since they never rubberband.

For the one successful 6 star (non-epic) run I've done I went with buying the jump and quad damage buff to get to and kill Crystal (after his water ele) as soon as I entered that last outdoor area (and to get the sell 2 mins star, though I'd happily buy another quad damage if I could manage to make that kobold walk to Rushmore in a timely fashion).

The traps are disarmable I think, but not too bad to dodge consistently. If you just avoid the spinning blades, but otherwise constantly go forward (strafing around them with q or e), you don't seem to get hit by the fire or executioner blades on the first part. The second part you can just jump over the floor spikes on, and the third part doesn't spawn any traps until you click on the first crest socket, so you can just assemble at the door before-hand.