LET'S TALK: The Shroud

[shadowhop]

I think the blades deal good damage, only there should be a way to tone the damage down for the players.
(thinking about evasion for lesser damage or let ac have effect it and damage reduction should always work against it)

In D&D there should be no attack where you can't lower or evade the damage.
Even a firewall where you stand in gets reduced with fire resistance and fire protection.

And there are already to many reasons to have as much hitpoints as possible, else some classes are even less liked (melee rangers, rogues).

[Dendrix]

Shroud is the 1st time we fight a pit fiend, a top end devil, a general.
And he's not the scarey part, the dumb blades are the scarey part.

They do too much damage and too quickly, the slightest lag is death. Reducing the frequency of their damage would solve it.

[TempestAlphaOmega]

Normal should NOT allow players to totally ignore the blades (i.e. stay in the healers will just mass through the blades).

I believe we are seeing less Shroud runs right now because more people are completing rather than farming, so the incentives (loot and raid difficulty) are working to encourage people to complete without forcing them to do so.

Pugging normals I see completions except when people ignore directions (i.e. don't drag blades to the middle and wipe the melees) other than listening skills (and I don't mean on people who don't speak English, these are people speaking in voice chat who just choose to ignore what is said or have a really short memory span).

A change to how the blades work is something I would not be opposed to. DDO allows saves vs just about everything, why not these blades? Don't want reflex saves so people with improved evasion can practially ignore them, then change the blades to some type of energy/force and use a will or fort save.

[Xufang]

Most people seem to have already said much as I was thinking. Hard and Elite should be as they are, a real tough challenge with great rewards for well equipped seasoned players.

Normal should be for under-geared first-lifers trying to craft their first Greensteel items.

In order to do this, Normal should be scaled down to a manageable level with those people in mind.

Thanks for taking the time to ask these questions, Mad. I'm sure the community as a whole really appreciates it.

[Jandric]

It does seem that Shroud is Pugged alot less on Thelanis since the changes, but I think this is a product of:

1. Elite players wanting to do hard/elite runs and sticking to private channels/guild groups.
2. People that were traumatized early and didn't adapt to the changes.

The elite players aren't going to go back to pugging no matter what you do to normal, because they want their extra larges. That's unfortunate, really, but that's product of the new incentives.

Normal is extremely survivable even after the changes. Don't wail the devils, watch the heat seeking blades, and get out of dodge when the blades close in. The last few Shrouds that I've run were still 1 rounders, due to great DPS. The problem is that any lag at the wrong moment=death. The best way to tweak normal at this point would most likely be to shrink the hit boxes on the blades to reduce the amount of overlapping damage that can be dealt. Hopefully news of a change might enhearten some of the folks that just stopped running it to come in and adapt, because I reaaalllyy miss the days when you didn't have to wait more than a few minutes to hit a Shroud run.

[ulticleo]

Normal should be reverted to what it used to be
Hard needs to be toned down, equivalent to what norm is now
Elite should be toned down considerably, perhaps a hair above what norm is now.

I am in a reasonably competent guild, and we went at elite shroud 6 times with a "traditional" party (3 healers, 2-3 arcanes, mellee). mostly 20s. The best we did is get harry down to 20% in part 4 before a wipe. AFAIK, the vast majorities of elite shroud are being completed with arcane/divine groups. that simply should not be.

A level 17 raid on elite should be tougher than a level 20 raid on hard, let alone elite. Right now, elite shroud and elite abbot feel tougher than elite tod and hard lob (I have not done elite lob, so can't comment).

Not a complete roll back, perhaps, but some toning down is definitely in order, and a reflex save would go a long way.

[Lormyr]

I would like to see the blades allow a reflex save for half damage (make them the same DC as the pit fiend's spells for the given difficulty being ran), and be slightly less tracking/clingy.

I am not a fan of attacks that allow neither a saving throw nor make an attack roll against armor class for this game. What is the point of having these attributes and calling the game dungeons and dragons if we are just going to ignore and circumvent the things that make it dungeons and dragons?

[Mrmorphling]

For me it's fine as it is and on my play hours PUGs fill resonably fast for normal and incredibly faster for hard (before the change they were almost non existent) so i wouldn't touch anything.

[Thrudh]

I'm okay with them toning down the blades a little, but so far in my experience (a dozen normal runs and two hard runs), it's not that hard to handle the blades with a little communication.

Kill the devils one at a time, preferably from a distance with a caster or ranged character... Stone or dance the last one, and don't kill it until all the other spawned blades have disappeared...

Pay attention to those spawn blades and keep away from them...

When Harry drops melee him for two action boosts (1 minute), then everyone run together in the same direction towards the clerics (south is good). Voice communication is key here.

If you get out early, then the blades aren't bunched up together, and you don't get that hurt running out...

However, getting out early means he's going to throw meteor swarms so everyone needs to keep moving on the outside (casters can still DoT and ranged characters can still do damage..)

Repeat.

2 rounds so far every time... (One 1 rounder where everyone ran out, but the casters and the ranged characters finished him off)

All that said, normal could be slightly more forgiving so new players can handle the raid.. But Shroud is NOT hard with a even a semi-decent leader and people who listen.

(One last caveat - All this assumes little to no lag - obviously lag is much more dangerous in the Shroud now because of the blades)

[~Cavalier9999]

Yes, please take normal back to where it was.

Then dial back hard and elite to somewhere in between where they were and where they are now.

Agreed with dropping small and mediums from the end reward. The potential for larges and vale mats was a great change, but I would rather have trash loot than smalls and mediums.

[keefer1]

At first I was a little upset with the change to the blades. I felt like "so this is what we get for grinding this run for years starting at lvl13" !!

Now after calming down, What you kinda of did was bring the fun back into running the shroud...like when we where lvl13's again and there was a chance that we would die in part 4!!


I also agree that evasion/ac should have an effect on the blades and the proc should be looked at though.
The blades are a bigger threat than Harry and thats a problem.

Maybe on norm the blades may need to calmed down a bit for the toons that have never run it. But I think H/E should pretty well be left alone.

And thanks for asking the players their opinions....Devilsbane

[gloopygloop]

This thread assumes you are familiar with the Shroud and are aware of how it played before and after recent changes.

Designers had noticed that more often than not, players weren't completing all phases of the Shroud and in the spirit of 'making things better', it was decided that more incentive was called for. Loot changes were made. However, while he was 'in there', the designer felt compelled to fix a longstanding bug with the blades.

Controvery ensued.

It appears that we've taken what was a very pug friendly experience for pugs and changed it such that's it no longer - well - pug friendly.

I guess the question here is pretty straightforward: should we revert the changes to the blade section of the Shroud - perhaps just on Normal difficulty?

I was not happy with the new Shroud when it was first changed in 12.0, but I figured I'd wait a week or two before shouting vitriol from the rooftops. I'm glad that I waited.

I like the new Shroud now. I'd like it even better if you reduced the portals' HP by half just because that part still isn't exciting after the several hundredth time of running it, but I've always liked parts 2 and 3 and now part 4 is exciting too.

I know that there are a lot of people who really don't like the new change, but I will ask this: if you do decide that the "new Shroud" is too much on Normal, please consider eliminating just the spawn-from-devil blades and not reducing the damage at all OR reducing the damage somewhat, but not reverting the quest all the way back to its U11 version.


Also, I absolutely LOVE the new end reward list. LOVE IT!

[voodoogroves]

Not only are they a bigger threat than Harry, but whenever we remove D&D mechanics and replace them with active keyboard components, that can be painful for those who are experiencing lag.


Lag will happen. People will play this game in far away places across wide networks on a range of PCs. Raid synchronization where each PC is also getting updates on 11 other PCs will have times where things aren't quite exactly as they may be painted on the screen. I'm not saying it's the game, the individual PCs, the networks involved ... no finger pointing. Regardless lag does and will happen - and for the biggest threat in a long quest to be one that is impacted so much by lag, it's a downer.

[zeonardo]

I will swing my Greater Dead Horse Bane again, just so people won't say I complaint but did nothing to help.

Revert normal, leave hard and elite as it is now.

Just for the kicks:
I'd like to have a system where you could get the names of all the "blades are good" on the forums, link to their characters and prevent them to run any other difficulty than Elite. You would be helping them since they like it so much. And it keeps the streaks! (I made this unreadable on purpose)

[Qaliya]

First, thanks for making these sorts of threads. Regardless of the topic and the end result, they are appreciated.

I still think the whole issue with the blades is overblown, but I do think toning them down a bit on normal would be fine.

Strongly opposed to the reflex save. Do this, and people with evasion will end up taking nothing, and we'll be back to the blades being considered a joke again. Worse, it will set up a huge divide in "shroudability" between those with good reflex saves and evasion, and those without.

I think there are many other changes that would make Shroud more enjoyable that have nothing to do with blades. Starting with making part 1 a lot harder and a lot shorter. Right now it is tedious and, frankly, pointless.

[gloopygloop]

One other thought: it might be worth considering an option to open up Casual as a difficulty for Shroud that would have old-style Shroud mechanics (i.e. blades that are no threat to the party). You could eliminate the chests from part 4 on Casual and either drop the Large drop rate in the part 5 chest to 50% or even leave the part 5 chest alone.

If people want a sleepwalk-through-the-raid difficulty level, that's exactly what Casual was made for.

[Meetch1972]

Ok, what about variations on what the blades do rather than just DPS?

What about lower damage per tick but a 15/25/35% (N/H/E) chance to hamstring whoever they're chasing when they hit them?

Or - talking about the blades that spawn when a devil is dropped - if the blade damage is the same per tick between N/H/E, but on normal it runs out of power after it chases you for a while, on hard it stops only after it's done 300 or so hp damage, and elite it only stops after doing 600 or so in total? Scale as appropriate - I'm yet to run hard or elite... possibly double those numbers? But still in smaller increments. Of course, the circling blades should still behave as they currently do since we have the option of chickening ou... I mean exiting them before they close in.

[Fejj]

/Skip to end of thread and reply

1 - Blades should have a reflex save on all difficulties.
2 - Normal - blades should hit for much less, and hit less often
3 - Hard and Elite are just fine as is.

Thank you for your intrest

[Moltier]

Just fix the multi-proc nature of the damage dealing mechanic.

Scraap!

Thats the only problem with the blades. They often do more damage then epic queen, on normal.
(or just add some kind of character defense)

[dynahawk]

For the most part things are back to normal for the pug scene, but what I really worry about is the first time shroud experience for a new toon/new player. Those blades aren't mistake friendly.

The extra rewards are great for the harder difficulty, and I believe the harder difficulties should remain unchanged.

Multiple difficulties settings are great as long as there is some extra reward along with it, but what should not be forgotten is that everyone needs to start somewhere. On my first toon all my preparation went to becoming shroud ready. Not sure how I would have handled it walking into todays shroud getting slaughtered by the blades. I could see some people giving up, and that would be a shame.