Revision to Abbot. To make it fun and doable!

[Ungood]

Yes. Abbot, that raid. The one that has been messed with and made into an exercise of futility by all but static teams and well geared over level players.

So, how do you fix a raid as broken as Abbot is and still keep all the fun for us mortal players and still allow for those meta's to be have challenge?

First Revision: The Opening Fight!

Starting off beating up the Abbot always struck me as kind of lame. I mean really, the guy is going to be a God, he is not going to mess his hands up, with pummeling some rabble that walked into his manor. He has servants for such a task.

So, he sees you arrive, and as opposed to himself porting down, he pulls up the soul of his bound servants.

This would be a Large Skeleton (Not a Giant Skeleton, just a Normal Armored Knight, or other type of Ice Boned/Dry Boned, Kind of Skeleton) like Kai-Teng Fairuza who meets you in Litany. But these were other "hero's" that made deals with the Abbot.

Think that fight in Xorian Cipher, after you pull the lever and the Urdak brothers spawn to fight you. It would be like that. Much Fun!

They vary between casters and melee, from Arcane, Divine, Barbs, fighters, etc. I think their should be around 12 Variants, (On of each class) Each would have their own DR, weapons, special attacks, etc. This would add a whole new dynamic to combat to force players to think on the fly, (Like Part 2 in Shroud) and deal with what comes, but also not need to deal with the Boss Man himself just yet.

The number of these Cursed Hero's is contingent upon the difficultly of the Dungeon. 1 - 2 on Normal. 4 - 5 on Hard, 7 - 8 on Elite.

To Be Fair. This should be a little easier then beating the Abbot to 75% of his life, once players get a handle upon how to deal with them, and what they are facing. at the beginning this would I would wager cause some fun and rather entertaining wipes.

If you beat them The Doors Open.

Second Revision: The Puzzles

Tile Room:

Revision to Normal:

IF a player falls in the Tile Room, they loose "A life" they do not die and get teleported to the middle room, they get teleported back to the starting side of the Tile Run. This can be done by fixing the teleport relocation to that Platform.

On the Platform there would be 2 Single Shot Raise Shrines (To represent their "Life" used up),

Upon their third death, (Third time hitting the floor) the Titles Room resets and kicks everyone out of that instance, and they are sent back to the main room, dead or alive.

Hard, there would be only 1 Rez Shrine.

Elite would remain Unchanged from how it is now.

Ice/Water:

Normal, the Traps would not be there at all.

Hard and Elite, would remain Unchanged.

Asteroids:

Are fine the way they are.

Next Step: Failure to Break the Coffins.

Ok, Great, you tried to do the Puzzles and you failed, now what? You have to beat the Abbot to an inch of life? That's a waste. Just reset right, and call this a fail raid. Sounds like a waste in my book. so lets fix that to make it more fun and offer some good entertainment value.

You failed, a Challenger Appears!

Revision to Failure on Normal:

Upon the First failure, The Abbot calls up the Spirit of one of his bound servants (Mentau, Cinnis, High Priest of Vol, or Cholthulzz) to fight you for his entertainment value.

Remember, at this point, the Abbot is still indestructible, he is not going to messy his hands with the grunt work of kicking your butt all by himself.

So he pulls a Spirit Version of the real individual you beat, A shade of them, not the real deal. Weaker then they were in life, but still a new form to fight and adding diversity and new tactics to deal with.

If you beat that servant, you get to run the Puzzles again.

Revision: Difficulty Tier:

• Normal 1 Servant would be Sent.
• Hard would be 2,
• Elite would be all 4.

Now. This is where it gets to be a bit more a challenge again.

If he runs out of servants,

IE: On Normal, you went though 5 tries of the puzzles and still did not do them. (Hard you get 3 tries) (Elite you get 2 Tries) The Abbot Himself comes down in all his Indestructible Godhood, and Calls upon the Inferno. Which insta-Kills everyone (Think failing to solve the Reavers Fate puzzle), the Raid is Failed, and the Abbot becomes a God and you get kicked out

If you solve the Puzzles,

The Abbot becomes enraged that he has become mortal again, and ports down for the End fight, to "Deal with you himself" and it is the normal Abbot beat down, but the Abbot is made weaker, however, he uses a lot more spells, like Hold, Ottos, Meteor Swarm, and other high damage spells, to wipe the party out like a proper godly powerful arcane would. However, he just can't take the punishment (IE: Much less HP then he has now), so, it would be a quick fight, one way, or the other, it would need to be a fast fight. Not the tedious beat down that it is now.

In closing:
I think with this revisiting of the Abbot, it would become, one of the more commonly run raids, simply because of the dynamic and fun of it.

Thank you if you read all of it.

[katz]

i think something like this would go a long way toward making one of the more tedious and asinine raids in the game much more doable, while still keeping it a worthy challenge.

/signed

[Kmnh]

No. Don't nerf the second most fun raid in the game. If you don't have what it takes to farm it on elite, farm it on normal instead.

[katz]

fun? heh. who are you running with that considers that messed up, buggy, lag-sensitive, with fouled up chest and 20th end rewards raid... fun? no one i know considers it fun. R *used* to consider it somewhat fun, but then it got even further fouled up with U-12, so he doesn't run it elite anymore.


it needs a touch up. BADLY. and saying "bah, run it on normal" don't cut it when you cannot get the seals on normal.

try again

[Aaxeyu]

Lots of people like it as it is, so they should really just leave it alone (maybe adjust the HP).

[Kmnh]

fun? heh. who are you running with that considers that raid... fun?

My guild tag is right on my signature

Between triple positive and mournlode weapons, DPSing the abbot down is not that hard. I like that there is a place to use those weapons. I like it even more that the place to use it requires skill no to die on the water and be useless.

[Yarrrrr]

/Signed

But I would also like the Abbot throw some spells on the raid party like Toven do in master artificer. Not something too deadly, but something because he want to make the fight more interesting. It's fun to have gladiator, but gladiators fight always have a champion! He don't want you to get to the puzzle with no problem, he is immortal, but he know he still have weaknesses!

[Ungood]

/Signed

But I would also like the Abbot throw some spells on the raid party like Toven do in master artificer. Not something too deadly, but something because he want to make the fight more interesting. It's fun to have gladiator, but gladiators fight always have a champion! He don't want you to get to the puzzle with no problem, he is immortal, but he know he still have weaknesses!

I thought about that as well, perhaps a random Mass Hold Monster, or Ottos, being tossed up to play with the party. More of a Cat and Mouse type gesture, to humble the party as opposed to just killing them outright, a sign that he is just toying with the Players, After all, he would come across as egotistical, and over confident, he is near a god as it is.

I would not know how that would be to put in, but it would be fun, if he did not do it too much, just a little time to time thing, maybe at about the half-way though mark of each of the fights with his named minions.

But good idea.

[Ungood]

i think something like this would go a long way toward making one of the more tedious and asinine raids in the game much more doable, while still keeping it a worthy challenge.

/signed

My hope was to move from asinine super powerful boss fight that it is now, to a dynamic and mutable raid, while dropping the need for being over geared and over leveled for a 17th level raid, while equally so still trying to keep the challenge there in a new format to make it more enticing and enjoyable to the general population of the game.

And while I am Sure, some people consider the Abbot fun, in fact, every quest has their champion, more so I am equally sure there are people who believe the best drop rate is when they have it, and no one else does, but, the number of "Fix Abbot" posts, should be indicative that it needs revision.

[katz]

My guild tag is right on my signature

Between triple positive and mournlode weapons, DPSing the abbot down is not that hard. I like that there is a place to use those weapons. I like it even more that the place to use it requires skill no to die on the water and be useless.

i notice you took all the negatives in my quote out. heh

Templar, huh? nice. 80th level if MyDDO can be trusted.

with U12's changes the Abbot is way overtuned. All the well known and frequently successful pug Abbot raids on Orien have dried up. None of them are completing now.

that's what someone from a 100th level guild (the FIRST 100th level guild...) had to say about it recently.

i have no doubt you run it, and frequently. your staff of the petitioner, vile blasphemy, and litany lay testament to that, but i find it very hard to believe that a raid that is harder to PUG than LOB (i've run both raids in PUGs. admittedly my sampling is small, but it is, nonetheless, my observations.) with such messed up issues recently with loot and end rewards... can actually be considered "fun".

to each their own.

i'll stick with TOD, LoB, and MA, thanks. those raids at least i know i can complete.

[Kmnh]

i notice you took all the negatives in my quote out. heh

Templar, huh? nice. 80th level if MyDDO can be trusted.


that's what someone from a 100th level guild (the FIRST 100th level guild...) had to say about it recently.

i have no doubt you run it, and frequently. your staff of the petitioner, vile blasphemy, and litany lay testament to that, but i find it very hard to believe that a raid that is harder to PUG than LOB (i've run both raids in PUGs. admittedly my sampling is small, but it is, nonetheless, my observations.) with such messed up issues recently with loot and end rewards... can actually be considered "fun".

to each their own.

i'll stick with TOD, LoB, and MA, thanks. those raids at least i know i can complete.

The seals drop on hard, and hard is a lot easier than elite right now. Leave elite alone, there are at least 3 guilds in cannith who are enjoying it, and It's on one of the smallest and newest servers.

[Ungood]

, there are at least 3 guilds in cannith who are enjoying it

...and if someone told me they were the only people in the entire game that enjoy this raid, I would have no trouble believing them.

[Epicstorms]

/Signed

I never run abbot nowadays.

[protokon]

I think abbot is both fun and doable now. If anything, the puzzles could be a bit less buggier (ice wands firing off in random directions, invisible roids, people falling through non-disappeared tiles etc..)

elite is challenging for a prepared group. it should not be a cakewalk for an undergeared pug.

It should take more than 4 people willing to do ice/tiles for the other 8 people to complete on elite.

[Niv-mizzet]

How to fix abbot v 1.0

-Enter, initial fight, two portals open. Both lead to a copy of asteroids.

-Both halves of the raid do their own asteroid instance. At most, only 4 people will be piking for 5 minutes during this. (note for future versions, maybe think up something else to do here, like maybe just put 2 more boulder stacks down so 6 people can play.)

-Both asteroid rooms finish and exit into their own ice instance. No one is piking because they all want across. (possibility: have more traps, but have them disarmable, with the boxes out on the wall near them, thus requiring ice platforms to get to.)

-Both ice teams enter into opposite sides of a SINGLE goggles instance. (If you had a pair of people planned to work together, you would send them apart at the beginning so they would end up on opposite sides.) Side 1 goes as normal, slight expected pike-time, however at least they're there to watch instead of staring at stars and a portal.

-As soon as the stone gets broken at the other end of the first side, the bridge on that side becomes VISIBLE for all to see. (it DOES NOT, however, stop shuffling tiles, so the rest of that side will still need to get across, but shouldn't take as much effort as the first guy.)

-Repeat for side 2.

-All deaths send people to the center room just as now, thus your side of the raid could run out of people if you make too many mistakes, or you may just find that after goggles, you have too many people having to get rezzed mid-fight.

Abbot issues to address:

-people finishing a puzzle and going AFK for several minutes, or sit there and stare at nothing but stars or water. (should be mostly fixed, or at least spread out a little so that people don't feel like they can get up and take a shower mid-raid, and even when they do have time to do nothing, they can actually see the active puzzle being worked on.)

-Having no chance of completing without prior knowledge of the raid. (should be somewhat fixed, as now you can simply see two portals, and thus you split the raid in half and deal with each one as it comes. Granted 12 people who have never done it still probably have little chance, but its not 0!)

-Crippling lag of doom during fighting. (...I ain't a miracle worker)

Anyway my main gripe with the abbot raid as-is is the fact that, as long as I'm not in goggles, I literally have time to go take a shower or get fast food after my puzzle is done. I have nothing to say, nothing to look at, nothing helpful at all to do except sit there for an unacceptable amount of time. And yes every time I've taken advantage of the abbot 'wait-time' to go do something that takes like 15 minutes, I've returned with 1 or 2 minutes to spare. This should not be occuring during a RAID. A RAID should be somewhat exciting. Even old Reaver was more exciting than watching a static field of stars for 20 minutes.

Although in line with that last couple sentences, I believe TITAN should be looked at after Abbot.

Quote from my suggestion in yet another abbot thread. I don't think MUCH is wrong with the raid, but the fact that a significant portion of the raid is going AFK DURING A RAID is bad. Like hit-the-devs-with-a-newspaper-until-they-learn-their-lesson bad. I aimed this plan at fixing that, rather than making the raid easier.

I have to also make this clarification every time, because inevitably someone starts fanboy-defending the abbot claiming that anyone who wants changes to it wants free abbot completions. NAY I DO NOT. I do not want the raid easier. I want it to give more people ACTIVE ROLES. Even if it requires making it HARDER.

[dotHackSign]

Maybe increasing the time the tiles are "stable" would help make this raid a little more runnable and let people make it through goggles a little faster so everyone isn't waiting.

[HalfORCastrator]

I've been doing this for a while(on norm or hard, pugs of Khyber), and recently wasting hours upon hours just for one ****ing completion until a couple days ago. (!!!) I think the overall setup of the raid is interesting and challenging, being more than just, kill this, kill the boss, loot chest. Though there's a huge problem where any small misstep(sometimes literally) can fail the raid, one wrong death somewhere and it's recall/reform. Rarely do I see a deficiency in DPS; 90% of the problem, at least on normal or hard, has been the puzzles, particularly goggles.

I suggest a few subtle changes for this part:
1. Code it so the blues will be more evenly spread out.
2. Have slightly more blue tiles in each version of the puzzle.
3. Increase the time that tiles are phased in slightly.
4. Enable being able to catch the edge of a tile, like hanging from the top of a roof by the hands, and climb onto that tile. (Lower the death level, the limit where if you drop to far you die, so you can dangle there for a second or two without dying because the legs are going past it. Not sure how it works.)

[Ungood]

I've been doing this for a while(on norm or hard, pugs of Khyber), and recently wasting hours upon hours just for one ****ing completion until a couple days ago. (!!!) I think the overall setup of the raid is interesting and challenging, being more than just, kill this, kill the boss, loot chest. Though there's a huge problem where any small misstep(sometimes literally) can fail the raid, one wrong death somewhere and it's recall/reform. Rarely do I see a deficiency in DPS; 90% of the problem, at least on normal or hard, has been the puzzles

The biggest issue I have with Abbot Puzzles, is they are twitch fest of puzzles in a game that seems to becoming increasingly lag laden.

Which is why I suggested a more dynamic way to keep re-trying them.