Velah - revamp

[Zenthalas]

the fight against Velah should be epic...the epic version is not. you may as well be facing a training dummy with a million hit points who shoots flame at you...why not make the fight identical to the fight against Sinvala in Mired in Kobolds, except insert Velah. Fighting bosses that don't move is not fun. Fighting things like Sinvala and Lord of Blades that are mobile is a lot better and more than a clicking exercise.

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!

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.

[FastTaco]

Velah herself isn't a big threat(except when combined with the lag monster...)

This is another case of shroud blades being the most dangerous part(combined with lag, its worse), except for evon6 if the eggs aren't dispatched(again... worse combined with lag monster) it is fire elementals who will wipe alot of parties within seconds.

Therefore we need more lag, it is the hardest monster in game.

[Hobgoblin]

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.

iirc - sylph has one or two characters with red dragon armor and multiple epics from von - so know what you are talking about before you start mouthing off.

hob

[Khurse]

Again unless you change the core mechanics of the game, you can't really make it *that* much harder to fight her.

Everything is kinda hard until people figure out how to do it, even LOB gave some people issues, now many guilds and pugs have no issues running it. Heck my guild even runs it on epic without much problem. (or so I'm told, oddly enough I'm never there when the epic runs go smoothly...)

What can you do?
-If you have the boss stay on the ground you are going to have the beatdown you have now,unless they change the system so that aggro management is different than it is now,given the work that went into it, and the number of players that would be upset if their tanks were suddenly useless inr aids, don't see this happening.

-If you have the boss fly/teleport you would only be able to effectively engage them with ranged combat or spells.
Ranged combat is all but worthless right now, and a ranged combat pass that might increase the damage to useful levels would have to be balanced with AI improvements across the board so that mobs can deal with ranged combat. We've already been told that more AI = more lag so...
And do we REALLY need to make casters even more powerful in game?

[Dark_Helmet]

I have a great idea . . . stop ****ing with old content and make NEW content that is better?

QFT


A lot of what I read in here has a grain of truth - even from those who I don't agree with - about why I hate MMOs.


I don't play any other MMO continuously and the reason I still play this one is the D&D part. The problem is that they are making this YAMMO (yet another MMO). People are requiring high con / HP builds - even on casters. They take away any advantage of other classes just "for balance" and to make people "earn it". What is wrong with a certain class shining in certain quests?

Having quests where you beat down the end monster is certainly possible in this realm, but making it status quo is just annoying.

Yet, why does she sit there and get beat on?
Ego. She can't fathom that mere mortals could possibly kill her. Right up to the end, she has never been at death's door. It doesn't mean anything to her.



In PnP, your casters had a weakness of low HPs. Fighters could take a beating, but succombed to spells. It is like rock, paper, scissors. You needed a blend of classes / skills working as a team to succeed. with MMOs, people are insisting you have the perfect equipment, HPs, etc just to succeed.
Yes, EPIC should require top notch equipment, but it should also require cooperation as a team (that lag won't make you fail). Good luck with that!

The Monsters had their own weaknesses. When a monster doesn't have physical weakness, they lose to the smarter intellect. You see it in movies all the time. The hero insults the criminal / destroys their master plan to rule the world that the criminal's only purpose in life is to kill that hero. He doesn't have random agro.


Quit tweaking old quests: Reaver used to have the casters shine and you didn't need tanks to beat him down. Now, you need more DPS because he one-shots the casters - even at normal (of course, this is catering to the TR crowd with all their past lives and twink equipment and they can survive). Do Devs really think it is fun to spend 1/2 a quest lying on your back from a pack of air elementals? Only way to avoid it is to have twink gear or a charge...and charges are harder to come by anymore.

[therobb]

The problem with AI is the "A" and real lack of "I".

Why are PnP bosses so tough and so fun? Because the DM (who knows each player character inside and out) controls their actions. They're cunning and often unpredictable.

The solution is to make bosses smarter. The best way to implement this in DDO is to give a real live human control of the boss.

Please don't take this as a pro-PVP suggestion and flame all over it. Think of the possibilities of a facing a truly powerful and intelligent boss in raid fights. If a person is behind that boss you'll have a truly different (translation: challenging & fun) encounter every single time.

I'd absolutely pay a premium to access raids where a DM controls the boss. I'd go in fully knowing there's a chance that the boss will outsmart my group and we'll wipe. But also knowing that the challenge/fun factor will be much higher than a boring... control aggro/tank/spank fight.

Edit: This was one of the coolest aspects of a MUD I used to play. A DM didn't control the boss... but they did control which mobs spawned. They might summon any number of any combination of mobs at any given time. Sometimes it was too much and everyone died... but every time it was a ton of fun.

[akiraproject24]

100% agreed and this is something that many of us have been asking for years. Fighting a deadly fire trap that warns you before it fires is not very fun or challenging. Buffing her HP (which seems it's the go-to solution of Devs) doesn't make the fight any more epic. It makes it longer and boring. Revamping the whole end room would be fantastic. Make it a bigger room where she can move around, jump and land (with lots of dmg) on players, summon lesser dragons to her aid and so forth. Make it an interesting and somewhat unpredictable fight. And of course scale it down depending on difficulty. But this encounter needs a long-needed overhaul.

Vault of Night was basically the first raid at lvl cap 10 minus tempest spine...it was awe inspiring to step into and the development was wonderful. Do not go changing this around. If you want a new raid with a dragon as a boss then ask for a new raid. Leave VoN alone just my 2 cents.

[Elaril]

I have a great idea . . . stop ****ing with old content and make NEW content that is better?

Yes.

Tooling around with old content is utter fail.

[Pantsless]

I have a dream. That one day all raids will become equal. Where not just the errors of those in critical roles can force a party wipe, but that any member ever-so-slightly undergeared, laggy, or inexperienced may drown a cumulative 12 human hours of effort into the void.


Seriously, if it's too insultingly easy or boring for you, just quit running it, or run it in a way to make it more challenging for yourself (don't kill any eggs or kite any reavers, don't allow the dragon to turn to face the party when entering, only allow heals from rangers wielding scrolls, issue orders/assignments only in esperanto, etc.). There are plenty of people who don't have 300+ completions of the old content who still find beating a giant meatbag with a stupid amount of hitpoints kind of challenging/interesting. This game will only survive if there are new players to replace the old. Continually raising the bar on the new folks is not the way to retain them for the longer term. I have to agree with several others on this thread that turbine's efforts are far better spent on making new interesting content than ****ing off their player base by making old content more challenging to satisfy the ideals of the vocal few on these boards.

[Malky]

Velah herself isn't a big threat(except when combined with the lag monster...)

This is another case of shroud blades being the most dangerous part(combined with lag, its worse), except for evon6 if the eggs aren't dispatched(again... worse combined with lag monster) it is fire elementals who will wipe alot of parties within seconds.

Therefore we need more lag, it is the hardest monster in game.

That's when the lag monster is quiet, today we wiped on her in a far worse way :

1. healer warns of an incoming breath
2. melees get behind the rock several seconds before the breath
3. breath
4. healers surrounded with soulstones, yep every single melee got bbq'd behind the rock
5. half price on cometfalls now!
6. wipe

[morticianjohn]

Make her fly, tail buffet, random dragon breath, fire elementals, fire mephits.

iirc - sylph has one or two characters with red dragon armor and multiple epics from von - so know what you are talking about before you start mouthing off.

hob

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.

In addition your point plays into my point about how this raid gets boring. Anyone who has multiple epic items from VoN will have run the raid into the ground. At that point they lose the right to demand a change in difficulty setting (or even just a general change because they are "bored with it").

I still get a certain excitement out of that raid and I've done quite a few times. There is great tension knowing a mistake can lead to a wipe after all of the effort put forth to form the group and complete VoN 5.

[Zenthalas]

iirc - sylph has one or two characters with red dragon armor and multiple epics from von - so know what you are talking about before you start mouthing off.

hob

or what??

[McFlay]

Its kinda funny how people complain about dumb, boring AI. Yet, anytime anyone starts a thread looking for a little pvp love, everyone says OMG NO THAT WILL TAKE DEV TIME AWAY FROM PVM.

Theres already pvp environmental effect, a few tweaks to that, and some pvp quests, and pvp/pve combo quests with players and mobs dieing everywhere could be a ton of fun, but nah, let's just shake some dumb AI up a bit even though once you figure out a new strategy you'll win every time you don't hit a lag spike or end up in a pug full of morons.

Even something like crystal cove, how much more awesome would that be if rather then playing the same thing against the same dumb ai and using the same strategy over and over you were playing against another group of players and could steal their unguarded lines and kill them if they spread to thin while scouting? It would be a lot more replayable just for the dynamic challenge and fun factor vs what happened in CC, where it turned into YES I FINISHED MY DAGGER IM OUTTA THIS CRAPHOLE.

[sephiroth1084]

Vault of Night was basically the first raid at lvl cap 10 minus tempest spine...it was awe inspiring to step into and the development was wonderful.

Really? You and everyone else saying VoN 6 is fine weren't overcome with disappointment halfway through your first encounter with Velah, probably the first dragon you encountered in DDO, a great red beast of a monster, when you realized that she doesn't move? You haven't been even more disappointed now that you've encountered the other dragons in the game that move around, tail sweep you, wing-buffet you all over the cavern, even freeze you? And in them after encountering the abishai skyraiders and realizing that, while clunky still, DDO does have the technology for flying creatures? It doesn't irritate or infuriate you that the most dangerous part of the fight with a freakin' epic dragon is the clutch of fire elementals that she tosses out as a last ditch effort?

Sorry, but this is ****ing Dungeons and DRAGONS, and Velah is NOT a dragon; she's a draconic stature that the Wizard of Oz is operating from behind a curtain. She has puppeteered claws and jaws, a giant fan with flapping wings hung over it, and a flamethrower hidden back behind her mouth.

Sure, VoN 6 is much more interesting now, especially on elite, than it was during the first 3 or 4 years that it was out, but that doesn't change the fact that she is still just a big lump of HP and not a DRAGON.

I want DRAGONS! I want intelligent, dangerous sorcerers trapped inside the body of tremendously frightening beasts that can tear you limb from limb, or incinerate you from the skies. Dragons should be taking to the wing periodically and strafing us with their breath weapons or spells. They should be hitting us with Greater Dispel Magic, Holds, death spells, DoTs, and debuffs in between their many attacks. They should be trampling over us, sweeping us aside, and even swallowing us whole!

[sirgog]

VON6, at least on Epic, got a lot more fun in U12.

Velah *can't move* for a reason. She won't leave the Dragonshards in the vault (she thinks the information in them is worth dying for), and she can't take them with her.

The best dragon fights in the game are the Tor dragons (they are mobile, there's environmental hazards, and they are not alone). The worst are the Prey dragons (ridiculous HP, ridiculously low threat to us, fight just drags). Velah is somewhere in between.

[sephiroth1084]

VON6, at least on Epic, got a lot more fun in U12.

Which has very little to do with Velah, herself.

Velah *can't move* for a reason. She won't leave the Dragonshards in the vault (she thinks the information in them is worth dying for), and she can't take them with her.

Is her ass planted in the Vault? Is she working out some puzzle with her hind legs while fighting us? She can't get up to knock us around a bit? Or even get up for real to get rid of the people threatening her mission before returning to her work?

The best dragon fights in the game are the Tor dragons (they are mobile, there's environmental hazards, and they are not alone). The worst are the Prey dragons (ridiculous HP, ridiculously low threat to us, fight just drags). Velah is somewhere in between.

The Tor dragons and the black dragon mama in Mired In Kobolds.

[Dwarfo]

I have a great idea . . . stop ****ing with old content and make NEW content that is better?

This! I hope they make the Lloth fight epic and different from all the other previous raids made, something that WILL be unbeaten for weeks, something where a very in depth strat, not just stand in one place, intimidate and the boss will come to you like a puppy coming to his owner.

[baletraeger]

VON6, at least on Epic, got a lot more fun in U12.

Velah *can't move* for a reason. She won't leave the Dragonshards in the vault (she thinks the information in them is worth dying for), and she can't take them with her.

The best dragon fights in the game are the Tor dragons (they are mobile, there's environmental hazards, and they are not alone). The worst are the Prey dragons (ridiculous HP, ridiculously low threat to us, fight just drags). Velah is somewhere in between.

+1 for recognizing story content as part of the fabric of a great quest.

Put into perspective here that in pnp, a level 9-12 party would get incinerated by an adult red dragon, even one who is confined inside an extra-planar vault with only enough room to hover 20 feet off the ground.
But this isn't pnp; Dragons don't have their innate spell-casting abilities in DDO, but they ought too.

These kinds of threads always remind me of bioware AI modding; giving all the enemy casters in the game the ability to prebuff, load spell triggers, sequencers, and contingency spells, etc., made those games even more replayable then they already were.

I think as a community DDO is ready for smarter foes instead of buffed ones. For those of us who came from pnp, for sure, and for those of us who came from another MMO, I'm betting they're here because they wanted something DIFFERENT from what they played before.

[grodon9999]

This! I hope they make the Lloth fight epic and different from all the other previous raids made, something that WILL be unbeaten for weeks, something where a very in depth strat, not just stand in one place, intimidate and the boss will come to you like a puppy coming to his owner.

My bet is the Lolth fight will involve a caster kitting mobs for 30+ minutes while 4 people scroll-hjeal a "tank." Call me a cynic.

[sephiroth1084]

My bet is the Lolth fight will involve a caster kitting mobs for 30+ minutes while 4 people scroll-hjeal a "tank." Call me a cynic.

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