Velah - revamp

[maddmatt70]

I would rather the devs produce 2-3 raids next year instead of produce 1-2 raids and work on old raids. I do not mind that titan, tempest spine, etc. have not been messed with and the devs have moved on and I think that should be the normal course of things.

Lloth I think will be more like the abbot i.e. a spellcaster foe, but she is a spider which changes things a bit. I think the fight should be more of an adds fight because Lloth always tended to be more about her minions..

[painkiller3]

Why in the name of all that is holy would you want this ancient raid to be the "crown jewel" of the game?

ummm...the red dragon is on all the splash screens?

[maddmatt70]

ummm...the red dragon is on all the splash screens?

They can make another dragon raid and my guess is they will likely vs. a dracolich.. Why not make that one better then the 1st dragon raid and call it a day..

[Angelus_dead]

I'll give you ToD part 2 I'm thinking that was the intent, but before it was tanked it required just enough skill that it wasn't quite auto-win.

No, it's pretty clear that there was no kiting intended in TOD 2.

The apparent idea was that approximately half of the players would be killing shadows (as fast as they spawn), and the other half would be fighting the boss. If the plan had been for the shadows to be kited, there wouldn't be that special aura on them where they buff one another by proximity.

One clue to tell this is to look at how little time it takes to kill the Shadowmaster boss: obviously the devs didn't expect him to get killed that fast, meaning that they expected a lot of DPS would've been diverted towards summons.

[fco-karatekid]

i aggree that velah fight is not very epic, idea is good but looking at size of velah, we need a bigger boat...... er instance.

maybe fight with velah should be two part, first part that is placed in that old area where velah is not moveing around, you need to beat down velah to certain point that after it she flys to other floationg rock leaveing you with some creatures to kill, after you kill them shrine and portal appears leading to next area where that mobile part of fight would happen.

Two words that would fix her monotony: Jierdan Firkraag.

Devs - HE is your model.

All this has happened before - unfortunately, it has never happened again

[sephiroth1084]

No, it's pretty clear that there was no kiting intended in TOD 2.

The apparent idea was that approximately half of the players would be killing shadows (as fast as they spawn), and the other half would be fighting the boss. If the plan had been for the shadows to be kited, there wouldn't be that special aura on them where they buff one another by proximity.

One clue to tell this is to look at how little time it takes to kill the Shadowmaster boss: obviously the devs didn't expect him to get killed that fast, meaning that they expected a lot of DPS would've been diverted towards summons.

How would they change the encounter to get us to kill the shadows?

[Angelus_dead]

How would they change the encounter to get us to kill the shadows?

Firstly, an answer to something else:
If they wanted to build the encounter so that kiting (or tanking) the shadows was definitively the correct way, then the shadows would have super-fast regen so that killing them is implausible. The shadows wouldn't buff each other: they'd all have that buff built in. And if they wanted to remove tanking from the possibilities, they'd give them a kind of stacking damage (like Divine Punishment), so that the damage ticks get bigger and bigger if you stand there with them.


So, if the devs wanted to change TOD2 so that players really had to fight the shadows? Here are two methods:

• My preference would be to set it so that 50% of the hate done to the Shadowmaster is applied to each shadow. That means that if players aren't damaging shadows, they'll get attracted towards the boss group. To deal with that, players could either assign several casters / shooters to kill each shadow when it arrives, or try to have whichever guy pulled aggro run away and start kiting until someone else pulls. (Asking different people to start kiting like that would be confusing and error prone, so I predict that people would mostly just kill them).
  
  
• More simplistically, the shadows could ignore all aggro and simply fly towards Nythrious when they spawn, eventually coming to rest at his feet. The players wouldn't be able to maintain melee DPS on the boss unless they killed shadows (either before the shadow makes it to the boss, or by taking a break once it gets there).

Note that because killing a shadowfiend is much much easier for casters than melee, either of the above changes would have the problem of (further) tilting game balance towards casters. But if that's a problem, the stats of shadows can be adjusted to let melee work on them a little better.


PS. I don't recommend the devs go around tweaking TOD gameplay at this time. (Well, reduce traps a little, such as by allowing a Rogue to disarm)

[Yvonnel-1]

Two words that would fix her monotony: Jierdan Firkraag.

Devs - HE is your model.

All this has happened before - unfortunately, it has never happened again

lets cast some death clouds and hide in the shadows, yeeha!

[Teharahma]

Trying to sleep last night, I thought of something that would make it interesting.

As well as having her breath attack how about she takes flight, then a marker will appear on the ground, (Either on party, healers or the location that is the opposite of where the healers usually stand) and after 3 seconds nuke it with a fireball that goes for 600 damage or something. Seeing as the healers are mostly stationary and dont ever have to move.

(This is actually the superman-leap from LoB but instead of herself landing on the party, she shoots fiery goodness at you.)

Afterwards she would land knocking everyone down for 1 second or something. This would give healers using Mass Heal exclusively something to think about, seeing as the knockdown will interrupt your casting. Making mass cure serious/critical more used.

[Hordo]

/thread.

This.

And +1 For the location Bel! ROFLMAO!

[Malky]

As for Into the Deep - you don't see trash at all unless you make a mistake in the final fight. Kiting is then what you do if you stuff up portal killing and you don't have a bard to fascinate it.

Moar trash killed = moar scrollz, i'm usually having fun with M. Otiluke's here

[Syllph]

Pretty obvious that you haven't done the fight on epic yet as 1 or 2 cometfalls from her = dead, there are fire elementals that spawn along with fire reavers as well.

Why exactly are you getting cometfalls in epic? Why have you not destroyed the eggs before the fire eleys spawn? Seems to me like you've just found some bad pugs. i almost never see the fire eles or cometfalls unless people are piking or there is lag.

And not that it matters, but I've done epic von honestly close to 200 times. I was hunting for my red dragon armor for most of those but managed to get an Esos along the way.

Name's Oceann on argo server if you happen to be on that server.

[Syllph]

you gotta see where the poster is coming from considering that fire elementals do spawn (or can spawn) in the raid which is clearly not something that syllph has shown to have knowledge of based on his post about wanting to change the raid so that fire eles spawn.

See above post

I want fire eley to be there not only when the group is too incompetent to kill some low HP eggs, ~600ish HP. Come now people if you're seeing the eleys spawn you don't need to be in an epic. Velah doesn't move you have no excuse to see them ever.

I want them to spawn in waves not just when the group is disorganized. She doesn't cometfall during the eggs. Ever. So have the whole group smashing eggs for 10 secs.... Come now people don't tell me about eleys.

Am i the only one who has no trouble with this? Do you guys also see the wall in shroud each time too?

My issue here is that the fight is boring. It is. Giving a boss a gazillion HP doesn't make it more challenging it just means I have to wait that much longer for dinner.

agreed fully. It's pretty boring, and the training dummy analogy is dead on. We fight two white dragons in Prey on the Hunter too, it's quite a tough fight. (if you're not cheesing your way through it)

Make her fly, tail buffet, random dragon breath, fire elementals, fire mephits. In Pnp dragons could cast spells too, let her cast some potent spells not just cometfall. Heck, make her able to cast simulacrum!

Note the random above

[baletraeger]

Am i the only one who has no trouble with this? Do you guys also see the wall in shroud each time too?

If you mean constant rainbow in part3, the answer is no; the standing ask for part three is DOUBLE RAINBOW

misread, thought you were referring to a change in shroud, as opposed to asking if people still get rainbow; and yes, it still happens on pugs and whenever we have more horrible than normal jumplag during that test.

[Neouni]

To my knowledge Velah only uses meteor swarms when she is ready for melee, but noone is near her.

Because red dragons are so confident, they seldom pause to appraise an adversary. On spotting a target, they make a snap decision whether to attack, using one of many strategies worked out ahead of time. A red dragon lands to attack small, weak creatures with its claws and bite rather than obliterating them with its breath weapon, so as not to destroy any treasure they might be carrying.

*Can also cast cleric spells and those from the Chaos, Evil, and Fire domains as arcane spells.

Would love to see it cast animate object on the rocks people hide behind.
Just don't let it cast a fire shield on itself, healers have enough to do.
----

Atleast with the new gear from the f2p quests in the update your making abbot a little easier for some classes.

I wonder if these 5 new levels will give a problem again, where the devs think level 12,16,17,etc raids will be too easy for level 25 and needing to increase their difficulty.
If they keep doing that why not exclude all raids from bravery bonus, you really don't want us to run them at level anyway.

[Chai]

They do love their "go kite this" mechanic to keep someone busy through a raid fight...

Yeap, its the "crowd control" used on mobs that are immune to enchantment.

Do you move faster than the mob? Yes? /win.

[Syllph]

Off topic but wow just read your sig "By our metrics you guys (forum folk) are less than 5% of the population. Bug reports come from 100% of the population." -MajMalphunktion

How disheartening.

[Chai]

Off topic but wow just read your sig "By our metrics you guys (forum folk) are less than 5% of the population. Bug reports come from 100% of the population." -MajMalphunktion

How disheartening.

Disheartening?

I think its hilarious. People harp on the forums all day about specific issues citing that because the majority piled onto one individual, they must be correct or their suggestion must be adhered to, due to simple quantity based majority rule. They cant speak for 95% of the other players who dont even read / post on the forums, heh.

Also - most of the rant threads about what to expect in LFMs / PUG raids etc dont get read by the right people - chances are theyve never been on the forums.

While 5% of us are blathering about how the game should be, 95% are just playing the game.

[Syllph]

Disheartening?

I think its hilarious. People harp on the forums all day about specific issues citing that because the majority piled onto one individual, they must be correct or their suggestion must be adhered to, due to simple quantity based majority rule. They cant speak for 95% of the other players who dont even read / post on the forums, heh.

Also - most of the rant threads about what to expect in LFMs / PUG raids etc dont get read by the right people - chances are theyve never been on the forums.

While 5% of us are blathering about how the game should be, 95% are just playing the game.

We are the 99%!

(Too early?)

[sephiroth1084]

I wonder if these 5 new levels will give a problem again, where the devs think level 12,16,17,etc raids will be too easy for level 25 and needing to increase their difficulty.
If they keep doing that why not exclude all raids from bravery bonus, you really don't want us to run them at level anyway.

Which is why I have suggested a few times (along with others) that raids get a similar scaling to Devil Assault, where elite, or epic for those that have been tuned for that, is pushed up to, or near, the level cap, hard is dropped about midway between normal and elite, and normal remains roughly unchanged and at its original level. Rewards for elite would need to be scaled better as well.

Honestly, the way epic raids work is similar to what I had suggested long ago: scale the raid up for endgame play, and have special tokens drop that allow us to upgrade the old base loot to be useful for characters at cap. That's basically what we got, with some minor differences, but the devs stopped not even halfway. The revisions to The Reaver's Fate and Accursed Ascension are similar, with the tokens that drop on hard and elite serving to upgrade the items, but Reaver hasn't been significantly scaled up to challenge level 20s, and the Abbot loot doesn't quite measure up, in most cases, to what characters want at endgame. Some of it certainly does, but not all of it.

If the epic system were overhauled, I'd push for all of the existing raids without epic difficulty already to get that added, and have their hard and elite difficulty settings upgraded a bit to create a somewhat even progression from their starting level to cap, with significantly scaled loot and other rewards for the harder difficulties in order to make them worth running for higher level toons.

Titan, for instance, would have hard raised to around level 16 and elite to 19, unless it also received the epic treatment, in which case it would be more like 15 and 18 for hard and elite, respecitvely.

Obviously, bravery would be removed from raids, but most raids could stand to have their XP scaled up anyway. I think I'd also prefer for DQ1, VoN 5 and Twilight Forge to be changed to require running on the same difficulty as you intend to hit the raid itself, but I don't think that's a necessity, and they would have to be retooled a bit to be worth running on those difficulties as well.