Monster Champion Feedback

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

I'm on board with the champions, so far. But I've also only run the 10-13 range quests since the update, so mileage varying etc.

Two things to note:

1) I've run into a couple that would've stopped a solo run like a brickwall, namely HP or defense buffed self-healing champions. Scorrow priests, for example: I couldn't out-dps their healing, running a super-geared barb with 20 past lives. Not a low-dps toon. I'm not saying it should be nerfed to oblivion by any means, but that seemed a little.. excessive.

2) Tomb of the Tormented. Champion carrion eaters in the maze. Come on. QA.

[Cruxader]

1. I love the idea of monster champions, restores balance to the game and makes EE quests truly challenging again - Home run Devs great job!

2. Why on earth nerf Holy Sword?? In case none of the Devs noticed, very few serious players were playing pallys as their primary character before the U23 Holy Sword improvements, (which was a nice bit of work, and very long overdue- thank you!).

Now after giving Pally's a taste of competitive play, they nerf it yet again back to mediocrity and thereby banish Pallys again to obscurity?? Everyone will simply HTR out of them yet again, is that the intention? Why not simply revert Holy Sword back to how it was originally implemented in U23- when it was well balanced and well thought out as originally designed! Its not like Pallys were OP just because of Holy Sword, give me a break, rather they were finally at long last *competitive* which is what you want in a balanced game, someone to play the role of Knight in Shining armor leading the charge, not just a watered down hate-tank that can't kill their way out of a wet paper bag as you seem intent on reverting them back to. Please change them back soon before everyone dumps their Pally builds (again).

Now that Update 24 is out, and clearly there's a lot of community interest in discussing the new Monster Champion system, we thought it would be a good idea to consolidate the large number of threads on this topic into an official thread. Please run some quests, give it a bit of time, and provide us with your feedback on the Monster Champion system.

We have seen a lot of feedback that appears to be tilted toward Terminal Delerium in particular. It should be noted that Terminal Delerium is an Extreme Challenge dungeon, so particularly if you are running it on Epic Elite, it may not be the best quest to singularly evaluate Monster Champions on. That said, we do appreciate all of your feedback on this topic, regardless of what quest(s) are being used to evaluate the system.

Thanks!

[Robai]

I'd fix champions this way:

- give them all some small universal bonus (like +2 to all abilities)
- and give them one random big bonus
- show crown color depending on which main bonus they have

A list of big bonuses (subject to opinions/discussion):
- immunity to all spells
- immunity to ranged attacks
- immunity to slashing (yes, just slashing)
- Deathward and 200% fortification and immunity to crowd control (including disco/web/stun/paralyze/even slow/etc)
- +300% hp (yes, even that, but it's just one bonus, and it's a perfect target for instakillers)
- +200% dmg (yes, some of them has to be dangerous)

The idea for immunities is that it might encourage grouping.

Immunity to all spells? Immunity to ranged attacks? Immunity to all CC? Why not immunity to all melee attacks while you're at it? Oh, you must play melee's. This would not encourage grouping, just the opposite. Why take a ranged or spellcaster with you when they are most likely going to be useless? This is utter nonsense.

Why it's a problem if a caster won't be able to kill 2% of mobs? Does that mean he is useless?
You know, I did a test run with my lvl 20 Cleric (first lifer) in lvl 32 quest (EE The Mask of Deception), he spammed BB and safely killed the first rare (also 20+ trash, including several Champions) who was also a champion and he dropped a chest.
My BF pally had a hard time to kill even the first two mobs (one was Champion, who hit 1200+ dmg and I died).
My ranger can safely kill mobs too (even without manyshot I can safely kills mobs with him).
See my point?

[Qhualor]

I'm on board with the champions, so far. But I've also only run the 10-13 range quests since the update, so mileage varying etc.

Two things to note:

1) I've run into a couple that would've stopped a solo run like a brickwall, namely HP or defense buffed self-healing champions. Scorrow priests, for example: I couldn't out-dps their healing, running a super-geared barb with 20 past lives. Not a low-dps toon. I'm not saying it should be nerfed to oblivion by any means, but that seemed a little.. excessive.

2) Tomb of the Tormented. Champion carrion eaters in the maze. Come on. QA.

1. I could see that as annoying when soloing

2. yuck. good way to make a boring quest more boring.

[Scrabbler]

• Many Champions have a random damage type added to their attacks (either instantly or DOT).
  
  One of those damage types they can get happens do to 200-300% damage to a particular class of player...! That's not good, especially because of how hard it is to tell when one is coming up (there is NO way to know except by mouseover).
  
  
• Also, the generic Champion damage buff has brought Ice Flensers back to where they can commonly one-shot ordinary players in Heroic levels.
  
  
• When a Champion is resistant to 2 kinds of damage, he gets vulnerability to a 3rd type. But if the base monster is healed by an energy type (such a Flesh Golem that's standing in a Lightning trap), it can get "vulnerability" to its own incoming healing. What was supposed to be a weakness functions as a buff.

[Qhualor]

2. Why on earth nerf Holy Sword?? In case none of the Devs noticed, very few serious players were playing pallys as their primary character before the U23 Holy Sword improvements, (which was a nice bit of work, and very long overdue- thank you!).

Now after giving Pally's a taste of competitive play, they nerf it yet again back to mediocrity and thereby banish Pallys again to obscurity?? Everyone will simply HTR out of them yet again, is that the intention? Why not simply revert Holy Sword back to how it was originally implemented in U23- when it was well balanced and well thought out as originally designed! Its not like Pallys were OP just because of Holy Sword, give me a break, rather they were finally at long last *competitive* which is what you want in a balanced game, someone to play the role of Knight in Shining armor leading the charge, not just a watered down hate-tank that can't kill their way out of a wet paper bag as you seem intent on reverting them back to. Please change them back soon before everyone dumps their Pally builds (again).

so that +1(W) makes or breaks Paladins?

[Scrabbler]

Scorrow priests, for example: I couldn't out-dps their healing, running a super-geared barb with 20 past lives. Not a low-dps toon.

Ha ha, did you try Cruel Cut on that monster? Maybe Cruel Cut would actually be useful for once (for a purpose besides refreshing Meleepower)

[redoubt]

Buffing 30-50% of the mobs is just a buff to the mobs. Its not a "champion system". If you want a system that reflects the occasional champion amongst the bad guys consider this:

1. Catagorize the buffs:
-- offensive - 50% fort bypass, TS, 2x damage, vorpal, etc
-- defensive - +50 to 100% fort, displacement, +50 to one energy resist
-- party - bard song damage boost, haste, mass heal (to include long cast time)
Note 1: Many people in this thread have listed good, reasonable and challenging buffs the mobs could have. There should be no trouble picking good ones without resorting to putting extra damage x3 and extra hp x2 on every mob.
Note 2: Also, don't put melee buffs on casters and don't put caster buffs on melee.
Note 3: Don't jack up traditional vulnerabilities. i.e. I've see too many trolls with high fire and acid resist. They are supposed to be vulnerable to it. I'm fine if a caster drops a Protection from on them. That is something that 1) I can wear through, and 2) seems more reasonable than a troll with innate fire resist.

2. Set the rate by level (no named, not even orange, they are already buffed.):
-- normal: 1% of mobs
-- hard: 2%
-- elite: 3%
Also, do set some mobs to be ineligible for champion status. i.e. the mobs IN the maze in tomb of the tormented.

3. Set the buff rate:
-- normal: one buff
-- hard: two buff (not from same category
-- elite: three buffs (one from each.)

4. Set auto drop reward from ALL champions (make champions worth killing or don't bother putting them in the game.)
-- each champion is worth xx% of base xp. (5-10?)
-- XP capped characters get: commendations, heart seeds, tokens of the 12, astral shards... something worth actually getting.

People running normal won't even see a champion in every quest. Most quest they might see 1 based on the average number of kills. This will provide a learning experience for dealing with champions, but the very low frequency of seeing them should keep frustrating encounters to a minimum.

If you are worried that this would not be enough of a challenge, by doing it smartly, buffs won't be wasted. A hobgoblin archer won't have +50% fire damage and a beholder won't have "extra slash damage". They will get buff appropriate for what they are. Next, by the time you get to elite they will have 3 buffs. It might look like, +50% damage, +100PRR, haste clickie. Now this mob is tough and once he agros, he drops the clickie and the whole pack is hasted.

I think adding challenge in a smart way is a great idea. I think the champion system as a concept is also a good one. Sadly, I think the implementation is flawed. (Bad enough that I'm worried that 2 of the 6 in my guild are going to quit. I'm trying to get them to hold on, but they told me today that they took a pair of 28s into the new evening star quest on heroic and both got one shotted. Neither of them is a fan of the new system at this time.) I'm hoping if we can "tweak" the system and use smarter buffs maybe we can bring it around to be a system that more people will have a positive reaction to.

[EllisDee37]

No offense Ellis, but by your own admission you won't play epic elite. I get that it is some kind of principle thing for you, what is that principle?

How is that relevant to anything I've said or the specific post you quoted?

EDIT: But to answer your question, I don't run EE because I'm a casual player. The truth is that there are lower difficulties for a reason. I, as a casual player, am one of those reasons. I run EH because that's the difficulty designed for me. I do run heroic elite, which is mainly just a more difficult version of heroic hard. I do not run epic elite because it is essentially a different game altogether compared to epic hard. That different game on EE is one that I don't care for.

[Neomarica]

So to force down on EVERYBODY something that, if made optional, NOBODY will select is good thing?

If the intention is to make the game harder? Absolutely.

[Rys]

You're in the Mirror room, so the developers will tell you that this is an intended feature of that dungeon, and not a problem with Champions.

In reality they are incorrect: The Terminal Delirium dungeon was created before Monster Champions were active, and an encounter that worked fine without Champions can be broken when they're added on top.

Completely agree.

I actually didn't have much trouble with champions outside of The Terminal Delirium where the mechanics really seem broken. The only issue I have with them is their hp and spawns. I have noticed that with scaling of two players, the human champions had around 25 k in Mask of Deception. And if you encounter four or more champions in each fight, it starts to feel boring (once again adding hp is not making the fight more challenging). If they change the spawns of champions so you actually get two per quest, then the hp is ok. But as it is, it gets very annoying.

[EnziteBob]

1. chests don't seem to drop often in heroic
2. way too many at times. (4 or 5 in the same room)
3. one shot kills (makes Escort quests pretty hard at times. Threnal is so much more of a pain lol.)
4. epic mobs in heroic content (should not be facing cr23 mobs in a level 9 quest unless maybe it is the main quest boss or a raid boss)

In the end I love the idea and it does make old content a bit more fun. It just needs a few more tweaks.

[Wizza]

Completely agree.

I actually didn't have much trouble with champions outside of The Terminal Delirium where the mechanics really seem broken. The only issue I have with them is their hp and spawns. I have noticed that with scaling of two players, the human champions had around 25 k in Mask of Deception. And if you encounter four or more champions in each fight, it starts to feel boring (once again adding hp is not making the fight more challenging). If they change the spawns of champions so you actually get two per quest, then the hp is ok. But as it is, it gets very annoying.

Pretty much this.

Tweak their HP, tweak their spawn rate which is way too high at the moment, make them so that they will never one-shot you ever because that's just ridicolous and maybe we have an interesting mechanic.

And Terminal Delirium is way too broken. It needs to be fixed. It's not that the quest itself is broken, but the quest's mechanics PLUS the champions that make it broken. Getting hit for 6k damage is stupid and in no way fun.

[Aletys]

... This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount. ...

Except that the numbers I'm seeing are much higher than that, and very variable. I ran 12 quests in Korthos today & yesterday, some more than once, to test what is happening. I ran some quests solo on an iconic, and some with friends at level.

• The total on all the quests we ran were 54 champions out of 397 monsters, or 14%.
• However the total no. above is highly skewed by three quests that had a low percentage of champions and much higher total no. of monsters than the rest of the quests (23/233, or 10%). Excluding those three quests brought the average for the other nine quests up to 19% (31/164)
• There was high variability on the champion spawn rates, ranging from 6% (2/36) to 27% (4/15), and it varied considerably from one run to another on the same quest.
• On 50% of the quests the no. of champions ranged from 22% (4/18) to 27% (4/15). That is much, much higher than 10%.
• Running at level there were frequent deaths, but we didn't wipe unless we got swamped by a mob of champions, which happened more than once. But we had to run very, very slowly, checking what the next mob looked like before we proceeded. If we saw multiple champions, we learned to abort, reset & restart. This is not a fun way to play.
• Run to run on the same quest, there is high variability on both the total no. of champions & the makeup of the champion mobs (i.e.: one champion at a time vs. multiple champions at a time). Those quests on which we wiped on the 1st or 2nd try because we got swamped by multiple champions, when we ran them the second (or third) time, the champion rate was much lower. When we didn't get mobbed by champions, we were able to successfully complete.
• In addition to the Korthos quests I ran, a friend ran Haverdasher on an epic toon for favor today, and he reported that 6 of the 8 scorpions were champions. That's a 75% rate, which is insane.

While this is a small sample, it appears that the longer quests with a larger total no. of monsters are staying closer to the 10% no. given by the devs. The shorter quests with fewer monsters seemed to be much more variable. However, any time that we had multiple champions spawn on us, we were pretty much guaranteed to have a party wipe.

On a side note, we ran the first part of Demon Queen tonight on epic hard, and we rarely had just a single champion spawn. Generally there were at least 3, and sometimes so many that I didn't have time to count as I was too busy trying to keep party alive (yes, multiple deaths, to the point of having gear broken).

Fixes needed if you're going to keep this miserable champion system:

• Put a cap on the maximum no. of bosses on a per quest level. If the rate is supposed to be 10%, then cap it, don't make 10% the average, or we'll continue to see the high nos. we're seeing on some quest runs.
• Prevent multiple champions spawning at once (this leads to party wipes & is not fun).
• Prevent champions respawning (yes, we saw this).
• On at least one occasion we had the end boss turn into a red named champion. This is nuts, and should not be happening.
• Every mini-boss in a quest should not turn into a champion. I saw that in an EH run of Inferno of the Damned two days ago.
• Exclude certain parts of quests from spawning champions. The carcass eaters & worgs in the maze in Tomb of the Tormented is a prime example. This was a miserable quest before champions were added, only being run once per life, if at all. Putting champion mobs in with the rats in the maze is stupid. It will simply not be run at anything other than normal by anyone.
• The champion's buffs should be equivalent to what a player the level of the quest can use, both in type & duration. Champion buffs currently last for 10 hours (not minutes or seconds). I don't know of any player who gets a damage boost that lasts 10 hours, and every single champion we saw had damage boosts on it, some with more than one type, all lasting 10 hours. And I don't know of any way for a Korthos level toon to get true sight.
• Below level 9, if you can't get to a resurrection shrine, the quest is generally over, as there is no other way to resurrect anyone. In at least one case, we had multiple champions spawn on top of us at the shrines, which guaranteed the party wipe. So unless the intent is to boost sales of cakes, this all needs to be fixed.

There are players (a small, rather vocal minority, btw) who have maximized their stats & have the best available gear, and are now bored. Give them a nightmare mode to play, with more XP and more chances at the quest named loot (in the champion chests) as an inducement. Don't give them even better gear on nightmare level, as then the creep upwards will just continue, & they'll soon be bored again.

Personally I vote for scrapping the entire champion idea. At the very least, eliminate the champions from hard & elite so the majority of players can continue to enjoy the game. Saying that the rest of us can play on normal, when we all need the favor & XP, is frankly an obnoxious attitude. This is a major change to the game, and completely changes the playability of the game. It was not well designed, was badly implemented, and for most players makes the game an unpleasant slog. The post-U24 game is a very different game than what we had prior to U24, and the changes are not for the better. This will not attract new players, and it will drive many current players away.

[Aletys]

Why it's a problem if a caster won't be able to kill 2% of mobs? Does that mean he is useless?
You know, I did a test run with my lvl 20 Cleric (first lifer) in lvl 32 quest (EE The Mask of Deception), he spammed BB and safely killed the first rare (also 20+ trash, including several Champions) who was also a champion and he dropped a chest.
My BF pally had a hard time to kill even the first two mobs (one was Champion, who hit 1200+ dmg and I died).
My ranger can safely kill mobs too (even without manyshot I can safely kills mobs with him).
See my point?

My comments were to his proposed changes, not to the current implementation, which is bad enough as it is. Your ranger & cleric were able to kill the champions because, as far as I know, there are currently no champions that are immune to all spells, nor are they immune to ranged attacks. He was proposing those changes, along with immunity to CC. Those are what I was objecting to.

[Vanhooger]

Siegebreaker lvl 13 quest on elite...I was nuking a wolf and wondering why he wasn't dying even if he was taking amplified damage from my fire spell....
Something wrong posting image on forum, so ill put a link instead...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B46...ew?usp=sharing


Basically for who is too lazy to view the image, a wolf champ cr18 with 7,870 hp. Some EE mob doesn't have that much.

[Glascanon]

There are players (a small, rather vocal minority, btw) who have maximized their stats & have the best available gear, and are now bored. Give them a nightmare mode to play, with more XP and more chances at the quest named loot (in the champion chests) as an inducement. Don't give them even better gear on nightmare level, as then the creep upwards will just continue, & they'll soon be bored again.

Sorry but the difficulty level u are talking about already exists. Its called Epic Elite. If u can not handle it, run hard!
I don't get why players like u always complaining about EE like lower difficulties do not even exist.

Its not the missing ability to run EE that makes u look like a fool. But crying about it without checking your options makes u look like that.

How is that relevant to anything I've said or the specific post you quoted?

EDIT: But to answer your question, I don't run EE because I'm a casual player. The truth is that there are lower difficulties for a reason. I, as a casual player, am one of those reasons. I run EH because that's the difficulty designed for me. I do run heroic elite, which is mainly just a more difficult version of heroic hard. I do not run epic elite because it is essentially a different game altogether compared to epic hard. That different game on EE is one that I don't care for.

We need more Players like that! And your time for EE migt come one day.


My feedback for the Devs:

Died the very first time in a quest since a half jear now with my full deff Tank build and i was like: "YESSS!!!!"

In most quests i don´t realy notice a increasing in Difficulty.
I was able to tank 8 Champion Helmet Horrors at the end fight of Haunted Halls like i was able to do it before.
But i see more Players dieing around me, making them play more patient and let me engage and do my job as a Tank to have a easier time.
Some barely spread mobs let my Hitpoints pop down fast wich keeps me bussy watching what happens on the screen.

Exept the Mirror Room in one of the new quests nothing was one hitting me or players around me at all.

But that room made the Hitpoints of my full geared lvl 28 full Defensive Tank look binarry. It was 100% and death. Nothing in between.
The only tactic i can see wich might work in that room is onehitting those mobs one at a time before u get agro til the whole room is clear.
But even that only would work wit tons of instant deaths.
Thats not a challenge at all thats annoying.

A challenge would have been a low number of small moving spots on the ground wich prevents u from the debuff of the room for about 5 seconds, so that u have to frequently get the buff to be able to do that fight.
The developer team really seem to need help with creating encounters to make a "challenge".
Something else like Mob x and y have to die in a time window of 5 seconds.

Liked the idea of the Dancing challenge at the end though.

[Blackheartox]

I think i got it. You are doing an impression of Lee J. Cobb in Twelve Angry Men, right?

You are very much against the idea of a checkbox for this. Are you against the ones we had before champions too?

Tell the truth, putting champions aside, do you think that the game would be better if they removed all the difficulty options and only had one difficulty? If your theory is correct, any difficulty above the lowest one will never be used anyway. Yet everybody agrees that heroics are only run on elite, despite that it is undoubtedly harder than the other difficulties. How do you explain that? It's the xp right?

I have no problem if they give an extra xp bonus for people who would choose to run with the champions checkbox checked. In fact, i think they should make all kinds of other things available from them so that not one single player would not find something desirable from them. It doesn't have to be better gear, although i would not really care if it was.

Il date back to times before bravery bonus.
People didnt run elite, it was normal xtimes til ransack, then sometimes hard and sometimes elite if the quest had high base xp.

The issue is not the difficulty, its the xp provided by bravery bonus.
Those mechanics, that sum up to high xp included with 10% xp loss from party member dying are part of anti grouping mentality we have nowadays.
IF bravery was to be changed, people would not complain about elite getting a huge bump to difficulty.

And im not against casual, normal. hard or elite.
I just think there should be a difficulty for all sorts of players.
And current epic elite is to average, to stoic, and a difficulty for everyone, and not the one seeking the thrill of highest challenge.
There are many ways to fix this issue.
It is a issue, a mmorpg with mentality and mechanics that forces you to play solo is a issue in my gaming world.
Simple ways, change bb mechanics, change death xp loss mechanics, maybe keep champions from heroic content.
Issue with champions is rather simple, its a tool added to the game due to lack of challenge as product from recent buffs and gear that is quite powerful.
But it was directet at the wrong spot, heroic and epic.
It should had been done the normal for epic elite and epic hard, but erased from heroic content.
A rather simpler fix then checkbox.
IF we dont have a higher difficulty, then there is no reason to run the lower ones to improve oneself to one day play higher one.

Also i do agree from some standpoint that if epic elite stays as it was pre this update, that it made no sense whatsoever to have epic casual epic normal epic hard and epic elite, since epic elite didnt provide the factor a elite should give, they could had just changed all epic content simply to epic and thats it.
If there is no improvment to a setting there is no reason to call it epic this or that or whatever since the highest one is not fit to be called elite anyways.

[kanordog]

I like the idea of the champions a lot, I was really excited about them when I saw the announcement on the forums.
I think they make the dungeons better but:

Heroics:
I can not run Heroic Elite that means I will have to run each quest twice so obviously I will gain power slower. And get burnt out quicker. A player who runs EE without being challenged will have no problem to run heroic elite filled with champs, he will TR once a week as before, I will need half-a year.
The gap between me and an elite player will be just wider and wider. I will have have worse loot as well especially as the drop rates greatly increased in elite.

Epics:
As a casual player I am not good at epics (no skill, experience, build and gear yet), I am not keen on running Epic Elite, Epic Hard is my challenge level, Epic Normal is easy for me. Therefore I don't have any issues with Epic champions. Keep them as they are, as long as players who run Epic Elite find them a good addition! I do not want to ruin others fun!

Execution:
I think the spawn rate too high (especially there is usually one champion in a certain social group, so even the name suggest that they are rarer). They should be like extra "orange named" monsters and not like 30%. Like one in every 5-10%. With a lower spawn rate I wouldn't mind if they were even tougher!
I ran the same quest three times yesterday, the champs were a great increase in challenge when I ran it alone (failed twice as hire ran out of sp too early), but they did not increase the challenge that much with a group.

[Pamy]

Personally I vote for scrapping the entire champion idea. At the very least, eliminate the champions from hard & elite so the majority of players can continue to enjoy the game. Saying that the rest of us can play on normal, when we all need the favor & XP, is frankly an obnoxious attitude. This is a major change to the game, and completely changes the playability of the game. It was not well designed, was badly implemented, and for most players makes the game an unpleasant slog. The post-U24 game is a very different game than what we had prior to U24, and the changes are not for the better. This will not attract new players, and it will drive many current players away.

I read the last ten pages of the thread and I agree with redbout, Aletys, doucefeuille, MangLord, cyreme, ivonstoke, Talon_Dragonsbane, etc.

Here is a list of criticisms that I would (this is my own personal opinions but I found echo in others' posts). I should say that I am a new player in DDO, I have a VIP account, I play duo and we sometime group, I am casual due to my game time availability but I love challenge and I do not mind dying 10 times to complete a quest. Note that I read combat logs so I have checked the numbers. My comments only relate to heroic content.

I will start with the good points of champions monster as they were implemented;

- make the game harder: why not?
- surprise players by making each monster a real threat? Yes but...

What are the bad points now?

- crown symbol is detrimental to in-game immersion. Think about those hidden crowned wolves... or crowned NPCs.
- as pointed out earlier, trash mobs should not be able to one shot players without a clear reason (if they use destruction, etc.) but these should be coherent with the quest and the level of the players (do they have access to deathblock?). Redbout has summarised on p.32 more appropriate ways to boost trash monsters.
- they should not be purely random. They should be a tactical challenge; not just like tossing a coin. Most champions are ok to manage and suddenly, one will be able to chain one shot us, despite decent resistance, etc. Why are they stronger than bosses? I love challenging bosses but there is a reason for them to be this strong and there is a way to eventually get passed them. I accept to chain wipe on a boss but not on a random trash monster with no clearly identified tactical dimension other than 'hits superhard; resists everything'. I even got killed in four swings by a crowned rust monster which had just repoped in a lower level elite quest...
- they should not be at elite only difficulty mode. As suggested above, there should be an 'elite with champions' with extra chest and xp (no specific reward though) and an 'elite without champions'.

These are the main points. Making the game harder is not an issue but DDO has the advantage to offer a variety of challenges which are far more than just 'instakill monsters'. Elite is also about harder traps, stronger bosses, etc. I can handle most of them in my duo with resilience at level. I suppose than trying them at higher level is a challenge for experienced players. As said above, alter the game but do not change the whole game dynamics.