Updated Raid Feedback: Caught in the Web

[Xithos]

Finished a couple more runs with some feedback as follows. The SP damage from the eyebeams is avoidable if you are familiar with the spots Llolth spawns and the terrain near you, but it is not as fun playing a divine if you are forced to run for cover. Furthermore, people have already mentioned that this mechanic is disastrous for rangers, paladins, melee bard/souls, or basically melee with a blue bar. Please rethink the way this is implemented to either provide an exception for these types of classes or remove it entirely. Rangers and paladins aren't exactly the cream of the melee crop in DDO and making them even weaker relative to Barbs, Fighters, and Monks is not a good thing.

Also, on one of our runs Llolth spawned a teleport gate inside of the barrier that Anna needs to run through to complete the raid. Is this working as intended or just a potentially frustrating random occurence? Basically, we spent the next 10 minutes reassembling the people who ran through and running all the way back to the end to kill another group of portal keepers to get the barrier down again for Anna to pass through. It wasn't a big deal on a normal run but having to deal with a new group of those portal keepers on something like an epic elite could be resource intensive and overly frustrating.

I like how there is a small pillar to seek cover near the barrier door from the eye beams and some of the eye laser damage is mitigated with resistances. These things are a step forward for making the raid less of a trainwreck to run and hope some other good things are on the way.

[XbaileyX]

If you feel its important to keep the sp attack please make lloth meleeable for the orb beatdowns. I understand the want and need for challenge, and im ok with working around challenges. As the raid currently stands and we either dot or range her because our melees cant attack her. Did u really intend for another pillar beatdown type system in this new raid? Hide behind and pillar while melees throw things at her?

[Gimpinator]

This might not be the exact way to go, but I feel a Will Save vs Stealz SP wouldn't be a terrible idea. Also, melees need to be able to hit her physically. Standing in the back and throwing a Shadow Star for an hour isn't fun.

[B0ltdrag0n]

I want to like this raid. I really do. I even took two weeks off to cleanse my thoughts of it, and heard from many people that the raid is so much better now than it was. It is that. You have obviously put some amount of time into the mechanics, and from your responses are a very proud papa in regards to how it has turned out.

Sp draining shots are...cleverly designed.

However, my main issues with the raid persist. There is just 'too much space' and running around, the map is still confusing. Being teleported around when knocked off isn't fun it is a pure annoyance. Why can't it just drop us back on the platform we are on maybe with a 15-20 second time out instead. That would definitely be better than running 3 minutes across the entire map to the party.

In short the raid is just boring to run. The encounters seem fine, but the lack of shrines and infinite resources of llama make it difficult to judge how hard it will actually be. Also doing 4 optional and getting 1 chest is disappointing.

[XbaileyX]

Might also consider if u are gonna steal sps, giving us a shrine that doesnt take her hps? 4 or 6 orbs earns you a shrine? Reward without horrific cost= motivation for more optionals.

[bbqzor]

Two comments:

spell point damage stays. Its function is punitive: if you get zapped for spell point damage (and you have a mana bar), then you were clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Further, this damage is much, much higher on elite and hard. It's statted as "something skilled players will never get hit with". There's a pattern for people to learn and follow. This is raid content and it will require people to exhibit a certain level of skill to be successful.

In a vacuum, this is completely fine. Raids are full of things (both in DDO and other MMOs) which are overly detrimental if you make a misstep in the event scripting. Having a mob which has attacks that favor one sort of situation over another is, in and of itself, pretty innocuous and on some level to be generally expected. After all, even regular HP damage at some level falls into this boat... with something like Epic LoB generally hitting too hard for some builds to tank and pushing it towards other builds (at least currently on live, as the expansion will change that example, but you get the idea). In concept, the function sp damage is filling here is fine. However...

Paladins ... will still be viable because there will be plenty of things for them to tank and beat down, besides Lolth, and the raid will require multiple tanks

This is where you run into some trouble. The following conditions exist in the beta: 1) you change AC to make paladin numbers more viable, where previously only fighters generally reached top levels, 2) the best tanking epic destiny is in the divine group, making it easier for paladins to take than fighters, 3) the only "epic" geared raid requires a main tank without mana, 4) paladins become mandatory offtanks with no ability to branch out. I don't mind that a raid takes multiple tanks (bearing in mind that required raid comp can potentially seriously hamper class access to the event), in fact thats generally a good thing as long as a variety of tanking levels are usable. Where you run into problems is where you design for multiple dedicated tanks, narrowing down the number of builds that can fill the shoe, and then furthermore draw a big dividing line amongst who can do what job.

That said, its quite possible for a paladin to tank without any mana; its just more difficult. The issue here is that the event design basically says "fighter tanks only", and for anyone making a tank the idea is generally to be able to tank... anything, all the time, thats their job. People don't roll up tanks saying "oh well, I'll just tank the almost big mobs". Its kind of like telling people not to make paladin tanks because only fighters can actually be used in all tanking positions. Its a dangerous design position to have, since you're deciding what people should build. Giving paladins a tank PrE, a tank Epic Destiny, and then a raid where they can't take the big named, all as part of the same release meant to make tanking viable... I mean its got to be at least partially clear why that might annoy some folks.

It sounds like you're too set to change this event, so consider this feedback on future design: Do Not make Class decisions out of Role decisions. When filling the raid up, let people who build for the role fill the role. Raids should always remain flexible like that to support the huge variety of characters DDO offers, its one of the main points of this game over any other. Reducing roles to classes basically invalidates whole segments of other classes... in this case reducing tanking to fighters invalidates (at least partially) paladins. It would be no different than a raid where Fvs could heal but Clerics couldn't, or Wizards could cast spells but Sorcs could not.

I understand paladins can fill the offtank roles, but look at it this way: You could do this raid with all fighter tanks. It would be much more difficult to do this raid with all Paladin tanks. More so on higher difficulties. Thats hamstrining peoples design choices by saying "dont build paladin tanks to this level, you can't use them"... or at least it comes across that way. Thanks for all the continued feedback, especially with this strange choice of event. I hope the sentiments here can be used to avoid any future awkwardness. Mistakes other games have made don't need to be repeated in this one. Cheers.

[darthhento]

We're working really hard on this raid right now. There will be some changes, some of them you might not even hate.

But spell point damage stays. Its function is punitive: if you get zapped for spell point damage (and you have a mana bar), then you were clearly in the wrong place at the wrong time. Further, this damage is much, much higher on elite and hard. It's statted as "something skilled players will never get hit with". There's a pattern for people to learn and follow. This is raid content and it will require people to exhibit a certain level of skill to be successful.

Healers, on the other hand, will have the easiest time avoiding this damage altogether. We left plenty of rocks and other random phallic objects for you guys to hide behind. I expect casters and ranged dpsers to have a harder time with this.

Paladins and melee fvs will still be viable because there will be plenty of things for them to tank and beat down, besides Lolth, and the raid will require multiple tanks. It's just one of these tanks should probably not have a mana bar if he or she likes blue pixels on their screen.

Flimsy, is there any reason why ANYONE would bring their blue bar into this raid?

It requires multiple tanks. So your basic pug is gonna look like: 2 tanks, 3 healers, 4 melee. Oh they need a trapper! So room for 2 more? Guessing it's gonna be 1 CC and one arty/bard.

So... escort raid, repeating encounters, not giving flexibility of roles to classes, confusing map, sp drain, buggy loot mechanics, healers being forced to only heal...

Yeah, you're giving us a very balanced raid. For melees. They'll love it. Guess I won't be running it. Unless I make a melee toon, which I'm not gonna.

Oh, and IF I get in the raid with my arcane guess I won't be killing anything since I'll be avoiding spell draining beams. Which is gonna be awesomely easy since this game doesn't have lag. Guess I'll be CCing than? Nope, I don't find that fun.

I see how this raid has been given a lot of thought to how to keep blue bars away from it. Kinda like Abbot.

Are you also gonna put the best bluebar loot in it?

[Carpone]

I'll complete any raid or quest once on the hardest difficulty for the challenge. Replayability for me is highly dependent upon the fun factor and loot. So far this raid is lacking both.

[Yalina]

My guild is lvl 94 right now (we didn't win those levels on lottery), and we prefer to play together. We do all raids, except eLoB, cause there is very low interest from guildies for that one. Noone in guild forces the others to do this one or that one, we simple do raids for fun. Telling a guildie to not bring his paladin tank to a raid, because he would be useless there is not an option, same for asking the divines to bring 100 major pots... Last time in eVoN 6 we had only one healer but 3 rogues, was a 12 minutes completion, a little slow, but who cares when it was filled with guild members. If you set a raid for certain classes it forces us to leave out guildies because they can't fit in your ideal set up and leads to an unpleasant wipe. We would never do that, and I'm sure there are other guilds who think like us.

Anyone can kite a titan in MA, a lot of people can kite/tank shadows in ToD, even a monk can tank Horoth, there are several methods to do the raids on live. If there is only one way to do the new raid... it will become boring before you start it... You must bring a barbarian to complete this raid, really? Is this a joke or your devs created this raid only to make a (certain) barbarian to be the savior of Eberron?

[PNellesen]

Healers, on the other hand, will have the easiest time avoiding this damage altogether. We left plenty of rocks and other random phallic objects for you guys to hide behind. I expect casters and ranged dpsers to have a harder time with this.

Thank you for clarifying exactly what the "proper" role of Divines should be. It's nice to get the official position directly from a Dev

Sigh...

Edit: WOOHOO! My first neg rep evah!

[MrkGrismer]

Might want to check your sources right below your post. "Multiple Sources". That's what the press use when they have none.

Will this one do for you?

14.1. We can't feature creep release at this point. Bug fixing, stability, etc.

[MrkGrismer]

Thank you for clarifying exactly what the "proper" role of Divines should be. It's nice to get the official position directly from a Dev

Sigh...

Soloing my divine has taught me how to properly dodge back and forth from behind phallic objects (and other things) in order to properly DOT things like beholders and such while still keeping my buffs. Mostly... anyways... if I don't decide to run straight at the beast in order to get behind it and cast, then get behind it and cast, then get behind it and cast...

I expect that this skill, and others, will prove useful.

I do hope that there will be more torc/con-op like objects in the raid loot, seems only fair.

[Auran82]

I do hope that there will be more torc/con-op like objects in the raid loot, seems only fair.

lol, you said raid loot.

[patang01]

This seems like corn holing classes into specific roles. Blue bars hiding behind pillars, blue bar tanks shouldn't really apply...aren't raids suppose to be about finding multiple useful tactics to figure out a solution to a problem? When you punish some tactics and rewards others you corn hole everything into a narrow gold standard solution.

I tried this raid and it was not fun. I'm sure it can grow on you, but the frustration factor is really big here; long raid, no clear path, several mechanics that poke you in the eye, optionals that just adds to the time level and end rewards directly related to how much time you want to waste with optionals.

Maybe the devs can't see it because they thought they had a very good idea, but they have piled together most of the mechanics people find frustrating while constricting choices.

I'm all game for challenges. But this seems to be a challenge of composition and mechanics and coordination, as suppose to challenge through tactical choices.

You know why everyone hated the Astral Panthers and loath the priestesses that constantly spam without interruption fear, hold cometfall etc and then survive through zapping life?

Because it removes every single option other than DPS without a reward for trying tactics. You can't trip, level drain, insta kill, hold, stun or anything. All you can do is to DPS.

Now imagine that you remove blue bar from the equation and suddenly you remove choice.

[PNellesen]

Soloing my divine has taught me how to properly dodge back and forth from behind phallic objects (and other things) in order to properly DOT things like beholders and such while still keeping my buffs. Mostly... anyways... if I don't decide to run straight at the beast in order to get behind it and cast, then get behind it and cast, then get behind it and cast...

I expect that this skill, and others, will prove useful.

I do hope that there will be more torc/con-op like objects in the raid loot, seems only fair.

Oh yeah, that's how I usually take out things like Beholders or the Green Dragon in the Forest or any other mean-nasty that you don't want to get too close to.

Just depressing to read things like "'you guys' can go hide behind a rock and hjeal, k?" from a dev, though. And I seriously doubt we'll ever see another Torc or Conc. Opp type object ever again (though I would love to be proven wrong )

[PopeJual]

Paladins and melee fvs will still be viable because there will be plenty of things for them to tank and beat down, besides Lolth, and the raid will require multiple tanks. It's just one of these tanks should probably not have a mana bar if he or she likes blue pixels on their screen.

Thanks for helping me with my tank decision. I had been trying to make up my mind between TRing my first ever character into a Paladin or a Fighter to finally make a Tank and you have now told me what Turbine wants me to make.

Fighter: can tank anything effectively.
Paladin: can tank anything except for the main raid boss in the biggest raid in the game.

...I guess that makes the decision easy.

Is there any reason why someone would want to make a Paladin tank now?

[LeLoric]

Thanks for helping me with my tank decision. I had been trying to make up my mind between TRing my first ever character into a Paladin or a Fighter to finally make a Tank and you have now told me what Turbine wants me to make.

Fighter: can tank anything effectively.
Paladin: can tank anything except for the main raid boss in the biggest raid in the game.

...I guess that makes the decision easy.

Is there any reason why someone would want to make a Paladin tank now?

Or a druid bear tank which is one of the biggest themes/rolls they push with druid.

[PopeJual]

Or a druid bear tank which is one of the biggest themes/rolls they push with druid.

How good are Druids at tanking with no spell points?

I haven't looked closely enough at Druids yet to see if that would be viable.

[Claver]

Paladin: can tank anything except for the main raid boss in the biggest raid in the game.

...I guess that makes the decision easy.

Is there any reason why someone would want to make a Paladin tank now?

Geez...It's one raid people; lighten up.

Sure, it's end game but come August (next update) it won't be. There will be more content, more raids to come.

Who knows, maybe a Rogue will be the MVP in the next raid LOL.

[Voldomar]

How good are Druids at tanking with no spell points?

They are quite poor even with spell points, atm...