U23 Quest Feedback - Epic Black Abbot Raid

[Monkey_Archer]

For the next build, the damage the water does has been altered significantly - If you fall in briefly, the damage won't be as high as it is in the current Lamannia build, but if you don't get out of the water (and stay out, for that matter), it'll start doing devastating damage.


The damage from the circles will likely go back up a little.

Good.

If you don't want the Archers to reach 120% Fortification Bypass, don't let them get that far. Also, there are definitely ways for fleshy characters to get 120%+ Fortification.

Getting fleshies to 220% fort is generally unfeasible except for certain tank builds. I don't disagree with forcing players to kill the archers, I'm just confused as to why you are still allowing WF characters to tank them with minimal effort.
Similarly, if the tile puzzle is supposed to be completed properly, why allow certain builds (sentinels) to bypass that as well?

Interesting. If you've got video of that happening and can show us, that would definitely help nail down how/why that's happening.

I can try, but the guild has more or less lost interest in testing lam atm. We, at least I, will definitely be back for the next build though.

It's supposed to kill you. Is it not doing that right now? We'll investigate it.

When it did kill you instantly, the only way we were able to survive it was to jump in the water. There were numerous times when I would still end up dead on an ice island. I'm not sure if the damage doesn't sync up with the animation, or if the AOE effect extends off the platform to the ice island. Either way, swimming was the only successful method for us, and that will depend on how much the water does next build.

Generally, is the high number of pots being consumed due to the amount of magic being used, or due to being caught in the Inferno? One more than the other? The inferno's HP and SP damage doesn't scale with difficulty (including Heroic to Epic - It does the same damage as the level 17 Heroic raid).

While we were first playing around in here I went through countless pots to test things. Once we got the hang of it I was only using a couple, due to being caught by inferno. Pot usage will not be necessary when the raid is done properly.

[etotheipi]

The water is too deep for many people to even be able to get out of the water to take the rez.

Well, you don't have to get out of the water to take the rez. You can take a rez in the water (at least, last time I checked). Jumping up onto the platform is safe. Just don't take a rez in the water, jump, and land back in the water. If Steelstar has changed this, that is important to know and changes what I have to say, but I'll assume for now that this is unchanged.

Some players couldn't even get out of the water because they didn't have enough swim time or the enough jump skill points to get up on the ledge.

It's Jump, not Swim that's required for this. And yes, you can't jump-hang, oddly. I'm not sure what the minimum required Jump is, but I know that 25 will do it. So wear a Jump item. You can also swap items in the water. So after you take the rez, you can put on your Jump boots. Everybody should be easily able to hit 25 Jump.

In epic with escalating damage .. I am guessing the swimmer is screwed and anyone who cant swim up to take a rez will just have to recall without getting their loot, let alone continue to contribute to the fight.

While the swimmer might be screwed, a swimmer is unnecessary since you can take rezzes just fine while in the water. Again, this is how it was last I checked, and I assume Steelstar hasn't changed this. We'll find out next build.

[Monkey_Archer]

If the sp drain is going to stay, please make the inferno 200% current hp so it doesnt have a chance to drain. I would rather take a death if i cant get off the island. Better yet would be to penalty box players for not leaving the inferno with the option for surviving members to go to another more difficult door to rescue them.

If you would prefer to die rather then take sp drain, you can jump in the water.

[Cetus]

Yes, getting 220% on a fleshy is hard, but definitely not required for this Raid. If you don't want the Archers to pierce 120% of Fortification, don't let them. There are a lot of ways to mitigate how much damage the Archers do, and to whom. If a party wants to ignore the Archers instead of dealing with them quickly, that party should probably bring a lot of Fortification.



The Inferno is meant to be avoided; if it is avoided, SP is not drained. Getting SP drained is a penalty for not avoiding an extremely hazardous attack.



Skipping the tiles will be much harder in the next Lamannia build.. (Won't say impossible, players are crafty). We have a solution in place if you lose the goggles in the water which should appear in the next Lamannia build.

Any SP drain mechanic without some SP regen mechanic sounds like a money grab to me.

Hey, lets make them buy DDO mnemonics by draining their sp!

[Impaqt]

The Inferno is meant to be avoided; if it is avoided, SP is not drained. Getting SP drained is a penalty for not avoiding an extremely hazardous attack.

and if we could 100% rely on ourselves to make sure we could avoid said inferno, that could be a very valid point.

Its also quite odd that this effect doesnt scale at all.

SP Drain, Beholders, and lack of shrines.... this is shaping up to be yet another raid that is completely unfun for casters.

[etotheipi]

Any SP drain mechanic without some SP regen mechanic sounds like a money grab to me.

Hey, lets make them buy DDO mnemonics by draining their sp!

Perhaps you have forgotten the original Abbot? It had an SP drain mechanic without an SP regen mechanic. And it wasn't a money grab. They didn't have SP Pots in the store when it was released. This suffices to show that your claim is false. Perhaps you can try to be more reasonable?

More amusingly, the SP drain mechanic in this raid is almost identical to the SP drain mechanic in Abbot. There is one notable difference, of course. Most groups will see the Inferno in Epic Abbot before they have Ice Wands...

Try to be reasonable, Cetus. Nothing is accomplished by this kind of hyperbole and exaggeration. You're better than that.

[Andoris]

The Inferno is meant to be avoided; if it is avoided, SP is not drained. Getting SP drained is a penalty for not avoiding an extremely hazardous attack.

If it is meant to be avoided, then we need to have a way to get the ice ball wands before the abbot starts casting Inferno. Asking players to avoid Inferno and not giving them a way to do it is somewhat silly.

[Andoris]

All blue-bars will be useless in here.

Agreed.. all that caster loot and no use for a caster in the Raid.

Thinking 15 pally / 3 ranger / 2 monk might be a fun split to TR my Completionist/Triple Caster lives/Epic Completionist/Max Gear Pale Master into .. that way I can do something more than pike while working towards getting my gear.

[redoubt]

Or, you could make beholders work like they do in pen and paper, and not let them cast spells into their own anti-magic field. Plus, buffs should be surpressed, not dispelled. Just a couple thoughts.

Yes, this please.

[redoubt]

I set off some pitchfolks and torches in the Player's Council Forums and Steelstar and the Player's Council members voiced off a nice discussion. Considering he was not at work that was noble of him. I have a great deal of respect for Steelstar having worked with him.

_{Note that when the PC and the player base say similar things they are more likely to be listened to at times. You are important.}


End result:

_{subject to instantaneous error and change / other disclaimers / etc... nothing here is a direct quote or the like..}

Steel will be twitching some things and turning some knobs, and testing buttons.
He agrees that EN is a soul stone festival atm, and will adjust things.

The raid itself will likely remain a raid that favors melee damage over spell damage as a whole.
After all this is the Amor Up Update for MELEE.


Tips:

Pally = fear immunity
KotC or Shadowdancer or Bladeforged = level drain immunity
Divine Crusader = petrification immunity (tested by me already)
Silver Flame potions or Consecrated Ground or Light the Dark = healing while in anti magic.
Enlarge = casting range further than normal anti-magic field range (untested by me on doomspheres)
Rage = more damage while in anti-magic zone

Copy all... time to do my Bladeforged Pali lives in Divine Crusader...

In all seriousness, thanks for the info on the PC.

[maddmatt70]

Yes, getting 220% on a fleshy is hard, but definitely not required for this Raid. If you don't want the Archers to pierce 120% of Fortification, don't let them. There are a lot of ways to mitigate how much damage the Archers do, and to whom. If a party wants to ignore the Archers instead of dealing with them quickly, that party should probably bring a lot of Fortification.



The Inferno is meant to be avoided; if it is avoided, SP is not drained. Getting SP drained is a penalty for not avoiding an extremely hazardous attack.

I absolutely detest spell draining mechanics. I do not care if they are avoidable or not. The spell point drain was one of the biggest complaints in the Lloth Raid so why are we seeing it yet again just 3 raids later? People are new to a raid and or they make mistakes, but to completely invalidate a character build due to mistakes or newness and force that player to pot up is something that should be avoided by you devs. I would prefer it if you used a different type of mechanic such as if someone is caught in an inferno they lose 50% of their spell power for a specific time frame. That would give players something to do even if they get caught in an inferno and also gives the players an appropriate penalty. Your current solution is to invalid builds and characters and force players to use currency which is all very repugnant. If you want to tie this to currency you can have drinking a mana pot removes the 50% spell power penalty.

[redoubt]

Back in the day, when it was worth running Reaver's Refuge, the kobald quest with its respawning living spells was a nightmare at first. Then we learned to stat stun them to prevent them from wiping the party.

As I look through my dusty, unplayed characters, I've found dozens of weakening weapons. I had them on all my characters at that time. Once we learned that this was a way for non-evasion to survive, we hunting the appropriate gear and then went back and found success.

Later, stat damage was nerfed and constitution zero kills were removed. Maybe it is time to bring them back. I don't think that we as players need auto-regenning stat damage. Same for all the curses and other negative affects. Bring potions, clickies or scrolls to remove the bad stuff. Or better yet, bring along a few friends or pugs and work as a team.

Even if you are afraid to completely remove the stat damage regen from mobs, then put a longer timer on it. Right now, epic mobs remove stat damage and neg levels too quickly. Enough so that its rarely worth using. (I should never see a mob regen all the neg levels from energy drain before I can can a second spell.) Set it up so that a stat to zero stun lasts at least 15 seconds or so before the mob auto-regens that stat. Also allow us to restun them quickly.

In the "not removed, but slowed regen" category I can see a tactic where one or two people in the raid are designated to run around and constantly wack the beholders and quells with weakening weapons to keep them stunned and out of the fight. Its too dangerous to actually kill them because they just respawn and cause havoc again, but you put a couple melee (or maybe a caster doing debuffs, though melee seems more likely) on crowd control this way. Before you deem this to powerful, don't forget that a melee or two would now be out of the dps calculation for the group because they will be spending the entire quest keeping these mobs stunned so that the rest of the group can actually deal with the bosses.

[Ayseifn]

Why do you need 220% fortification, are the archers CR 70 and something in the raid gives a -50% debuff or something like that? Abbots disjunction should remove heavy fort as well as any exceptional gear you might have on anyway right? So doubt it's just about that.

[Nascoe]

Back in the day, when it was worth running Reaver's Refuge, the kobald quest with its respawning living spells was a nightmare at first. Then we learned to stat stun them to prevent them from wiping the party.

As I look through my dusty, unplayed characters, I've found dozens of weakening weapons. I had them on all my characters at that time. Once we learned that this was a way for non-evasion to survive, we hunting the appropriate gear and then went back and found success.

Later, stat damage was nerfed and constitution zero kills were removed. Maybe it is time to bring them back. I don't think that we as players need auto-regenning stat damage. Same for all the curses and other negative affects. Bring potions, clickies or scrolls to remove the bad stuff. Or better yet, bring along a few friends or pugs and work as a team.

Even if you are afraid to completely remove the stat damage regen from mobs, then put a longer timer on it. Right now, epic mobs remove stat damage and neg levels too quickly. Enough so that its rarely worth using. (I should never see a mob regen all the neg levels from energy drain before I can can a second spell.) Set it up so that a stat to zero stun lasts at least 15 seconds or so before the mob auto-regens that stat. Also allow us to restun them quickly.

In the "not removed, but slowed regen" category I can see a tactic where one or two people in the raid are designated to run around and constantly wack the beholders and quells with weakening weapons to keep them stunned and out of the fight. Its too dangerous to actually kill them because they just respawn and cause havoc again, but you put a couple melee (or maybe a caster doing debuffs, though melee seems more likely) on crowd control this way. Before you deem this to powerful, don't forget that a melee or two would now be out of the dps calculation for the group because they will be spending the entire quest keeping these mobs stunned so that the rest of the group can actually deal with the bosses.

That feels like a solid proposal, making it more of a group task to beat the whole thing, where people can contribute different things. Also makes some weapons that are gathering dust see some use as well.

Altogether if this is to be an end game raid, it needs to be tough and would be preferrable if its not beaten on EE the first night its out on live and starts to be a run for pugs only after tips, gear-lists or even specialized builds start being hammered out on the forums or in guilds. Ideally first time completion on EN with a boatload of pots would be fine for me, so that its still a challenge to learn the raid on lower difficulty. After doing 10 runs it should still pose at least the challenge of not making (too many) mistakes and needing a somewhat geared and decently filled raid party to do on EE, not almost auto complete with pugs and showing up in solo speed runs within a month from going live.

[Wizza]

Ah people, if only you would think before replying.

Every new raid the last several years has been called a pot fest until players figure out better tactics. Inferno is meant to be avoided and you would have an argument if that wasn't the case.

Tell me how you are doing EE Firepeaks and EE Deathwyrm on a caster without chugging pots. PLEASE. DO TELL ME. Good luck getting Red/green light AND Tower as 2nd set of puzzles in Deathwyrm, I'd love to see your casters NOT chugging pots in there. Even on Normal, you have to chug pots, specially in pugs, when you get the wrong puzzles. Do not bother, you can't do it without pots.

Perhaps you have forgotten the original Abbot? It had an SP drain mechanic without an SP regen mechanic. And it wasn't a money grab. They didn't have SP Pots in the store when it was released. This suffices to show that your claim is false. Perhaps you can try to be more reasonable?

More amusingly, the SP drain mechanic in this raid is almost identical to the SP drain mechanic in Abbot. There is one notable difference, of course. Most groups will see the Inferno in Epic Abbot before they have Ice Wands...

Try to be reasonable, Cetus. Nothing is accomplished by this kind of hyperbole and exaggeration. You're better than that.

Perhaps you have forgotten that:

1) Original Abbot is HEROIC, so HP pools of every single mob and boss is way lower.
2) Original Abbot has 3 puzzles that requires you to spend exactly ZERO SP on each.
3) This new Raid has rooms with Deathknights that you HAVE TO KILL, using SP.
4) The main platform has RESPAWNING MOBS AND 2 BOSSES. Unless you want to pike the raid, you are going to chug pots, even on normal.

It's funny how 30 people are telling that this will be a pot fest, and then the 3 people that reply "it won't" are the one saying "try to be reasonable".

But it's fine I guess. Steelstar has made pretty clear that he thinks this will not be a pot fest, that we can do absolutely fine by just avoiding Inferno (someone reminds him that we have to use SP to kill mobs please) and they will not add neither a Shrine nor a way to get the SP back with some kind of fun mechanic.

Also, someone reminds him that we are also meant to run this on EE. If this is a pot fest on ENormal, go figure on EE.

[Ayseifn]

I'd be cool with SP pots not working in raids, like spirit cakes. No one would complain about P2W at least, probably need to make magical training a tad better though and maybe tweak caster casting endurance.

[JOTMON]

Perhaps you have forgotten the original Abbot? It had an SP drain mechanic without an SP regen mechanic. And it wasn't a money grab. They didn't have SP Pots in the store when it was released. This suffices to show that your claim is false. Perhaps you can try to be more reasonable?

More amusingly, the SP drain mechanic in this raid is almost identical to the SP drain mechanic in Abbot. There is one notable difference, of course. Most groups will see the Inferno in Epic Abbot before they have Ice Wands...

Try to be reasonable, Cetus. Nothing is accomplished by this kind of hyperbole and exaggeration. You're better than that.

Well ignoring your obvious barbed attack against Cetus..

I see this being a raid for paladin/splash builds blue bars need not apply.

Epic Abbot will have a lot more HP, so it wont be one wave of inferno to deal with.
When it was released the AH was the go to place to buy mana pots, or farming GH/Vale for end reward list pots.
Many Level 28 groups are still failing heroic Abbot repeatedly before getting a completion.
The exisiting raid run of Abbot also relies on clean puzzles or release and repeat.

The Epic version is going to be a longer fight duration, has added Beholders, added Lady Erandis for dragon breaths and whatever other attacks she has, additional Mob based damage, Abbot teleports people to him, water is doing increasing damage, aoe blue haze damage...
We are going to be taking more damage during a longer fight with more mobs and more magic disabling effects.
The additional Mana drain is going to create a potfest along with the failed spell casting that still takes the SP.

I have already resigned my cleric from entering this raid and it isn't even out on live yet.. .will TR him into some sort of a Paladin so as to be useful instead of standing there chugging pots in between failed spell casts.

[Silverleafeon]

Loreick and I were discussing possibly a bard using the vigor song or perhaps

Endless faith : Passive Bonus: Spell point pool increased by [4/7/10]%. Echoes of power restore up to [18/24/30] sp.

Echoes of Power is a temporary SP regeneration that begins once a character drops below 12 SP. It will restore 4 SP every 6 seconds until you have reached 12 SP again. The effect cannot put you over 12 SP, unless you have more than 0 when it begins to regenerate your SP (ex, 3, it will recharge to, 15 before stopping).

Echoes of Power requires the Magical Training feat. The Magical Training feat is granted to Artificers, Clerics, Druids, Favored Souls, Wizards, and Sorcerers at level 1.


charging up

Cocoon and Renewal?

[JOTMON]

Well, you don't have to get out of the water to take the rez. You can take a rez in the water (at least, last time I checked). Jumping up onto the platform is safe. Just don't take a rez in the water, jump, and land back in the water. If Steelstar has changed this, that is important to know and changes what I have to say, but I'll assume for now that this is unchanged..

Damage in the water is increased so it is likely that people will not survive taking the rez in the water which means multiple rezzes & increased death counters.. and wasting Rezzers time casting multiple rezzes to get stragglers back onto the island..
besides the missed rezzes from player being out of range while casting in quells and beholders anti-magic fields.

It's Jump, not Swim that's required for this. And yes, you can't jump-hang, oddly. I'm not sure what the minimum required Jump is, but I know that 25 will do it. So wear a Jump item. You can also swap items in the water. So after you take the rez, you can put on your Jump boots. Everybody should be easily able to hit 25 Jump..

I said swim time.. the time/distance ratio to swim from the spot that the Abbot telekinesis you to and you died ..swimming up while dead from the bottom of the water to the ledge in hopes of catching a rez before rebounding while the rez caster is running around trying not to die themselves.
My point was the water is too deep for some players to be able to swim back up.. generally low STR builds and Clerics have a poor swim speed.. worse so when dead..

The jump itself is also an issue to get up on the ledge for some players as there is no lip to climb up on.

While the swimmer might be screwed, a swimmer is unnecessary since you can take rezzes just fine while in the water. Again, this is how it was last I checked, and I assume Steelstar hasn't changed this. We'll find out next build.

The stacking dots of water damage do not reset when you die.
•The DOT effect from the deadly water is no longer removed when a dead player gets snapped back to their soulstone.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...pdated-9-5-14)

[Seikojin]

From what I have seen so far, nothing is too extreme. People chugging pots like it is going out of style is the easy button for casters. So they do this to bypass the challenge and shortman their conquest.

I think the sp drain mechanic is fine and should stick around.

The fort bypass. Top end raid, top end rewards, top end challenge. My garbage buils drop me over 120 fort every time. So having some fort past 120 is not a big deal. Fort is the new toughness. Or min 16 con.

I look forward tot he day when something like old titan is released. A real achievement is completing it.