Monster Champion Feedback

[Albinosaurus]

Or we could revert pallies back to how they were say update 20.... But in all seriousness i think things for pallies are fine now, sorry if the 250% buff of the last update or two was nerfed down to 200% over say... Update 21. Not feeling sorry for paladins at all!

It's not even that drastic. The removal of that +1[W] is almost insignificant considering how strong their enhancements are and the other benefits of Holy Sword. Add Kensai splash and Fighter feats and you won't even notice they did anything. For pure paladins it's still not that much of a nerf. Compared to pre-buffs, it's actually more like having them just "buffed less" overall. The real problem is with Barbarians...

That aside, still waiting on some dev feedback about these champions. That non-talk earlier only adds to the frustration this update has brought.

[bartharok]

Why in general you are right that protection quests really got extra tough (cannith crystal on elite anyone?), this is no longer true for the much maligned Hold for reinforcements - because since U23 Coyle can not even be killed, and its an optional to protect him from going down (for a solid chunk of XP, but still).

I have noticed that these NPCs we have to protect, as well as all our hirelings really need to get updated with the current state of enhancements, buffs, MRR, PRR etc, because not only are hirelings getting near useless to heal / protect anyone, they are usually one shotted first!

CAnnith crystal on elite, new server, new toon, no special gear. Not a problem, really. Might take 2 tries though (did it twice today with different toons on different servers, one went on the first try, despite champions. The second time i was so focused on the champions i let a trashie break the crytal while i was fighting a champion. Retried and succeeded)

[Paps]

I agree for certain players base , They should put a check Box for Heroic Norm Heroic Hard , Epic Norn and Epic Hard.. Leave the Elite the way it is , I am loving the new challenge Please don't change it.
But you could add some Unique Items drops that would only drop on elite.. That would inspire players to farm quest over and over

[Ayseifn]

I agree for certain players base , They should put a check Box for Heroic Norm Heroic Hard , Epic Norn and Epic Hard.. Leave the Elite the way it is , I am loving the new challenge Please don't change it.
But you could add some Unique Items drops that would only drop on elite.. That would inspire players to farm quest over and over

A checkbox for raids would be pretty sweet too, all of the older ones haven't held up well at all.

[leadfarmer]

I think I understand the premise of increasing game difficulty to force players into groups but with an average wait time of over an hour to find a group...and often times a group never presenting itself I have found I have been forced to solo most my time away. This has worked for the last 10 or so lives with little problems. Now even solo play is a waste of time. Myself and the parties I have been in have died more than I think I have ever seen. We just were on an Heroic Elite Siegebreaker...with a small grp of only 3 people..2 fighters/hybrids at level and a cleric. Took two hours for grp to form up so it was as big as we could get it. Total wipe over and over again. All players just quit. We got multiple Monster bosses who could one shot us to death which is neither fun nor entertaining.

With so many gaming options I have no idea why a company is so eager to make a game nearly unplayable. With 10 lives and very solid gear I can hardly stand my own against random "champion" mobs. Everything casts curse now and at such a frequent rate that they should either just permanently add cursed effects to every player or just give out an endless supply of pots. Burned through a 100 stack in 2 quests...worthless! Solo play is near impossible now.

No longer see any value in VIP subscription nor have any desire to continue to play. Very disappointing turbine. If you are looking to make the game more challenging I think you guys went way over board! You should focus more of your effort in connection issues. Btw..every player I know goes dc entering Orchard or Sands every once on a while. Maybe you should look into that.

[Irongutz2000]

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!

I feel that monsters hitting for 1000 - 4000 is wrong. This does not make it challenging, it makes it frustrating. U spend all this time gearing ur toon to have good defenses and can still be one shooted by a trash mob? That said I can still beat any quest in game ( that's not bugged) with or without champions , just feel if u guys scaled back the huge damage everyone would be a little happier.

[raeslys]

Hi all, thanks for the work you are doing, champions characters was a pleasant surprise to me, since many heroic quest were difficult to make. But these are things that in my opinion are not working (I do not know if it has already been commented before, but are many post and English is not the native language for me and I is a bit hard to read all):

1. For a novice player some champios could be very difficult, maybe shoud limit the number of champions in HH and EH.

2. Champions are not all just as difficult, for example, I played with some friends yesterday AtDQ (4 players in HE), at the monk-side when un monkey dps had the crown are relatively easy to kill, however a monkey chaman with crown was much more difficult (heal very fast and massive damage with spells). I think that was better if the mobs champions are equal.

3. The true seing is dangerous, specially for novice casters that depend spells such as displacement.

P.D.: As I said above, English is not my native language so that sorry if I make any error.

[Dard]

Just that.

Playing yesterday with a weak rogue around Harbor/Market elites/hards and i didn't found any 'one shooter' doing 1000k - the most damage taken was from a champion ooze (~70 with acid dmg added).
That said IMHO the change taste a bit like playing old DDO (preMOTU), and i like it. We were grouping more, we were trying tactics and yes, we were sometime diying, and what? Is elite and it shouldn't be a cakewalk.

Thanks Turbine for trying this.

PD - Sorry for my english.

[Paladinsmight]

WAY too OP with full party at level... there is NO reason why a kobold shaman, champion or no, should be able to one shot an entire party of well built fully buffed characters!... and we're not talking about a boss or even mini boss... the idea is just ********. So PLEASE remove scaling or remove champions as they are... it greatly imbalances the game towards those with level 100+ guilds and those with the best twink grinded gear and **** loads of past lives.

[silisav]

Probably others have mentioned it before but I didn't have time to read all the replies so please excuse me if I am repeating something.

I have not run lots of heroics but for instance there was a champion on bloody crypt with 4500 hp. We were 28 lvl doing favor run but hey 4500 for lvl 9 quest random mob is way too much.
EH and EE on quests that were around lvl 25 were not that hard with a very good party.

Terminal delirium mirror room on EE it is just impossible with a full party and a ton of mobs spamming in very small room. There were like 30/70 champions/mobs , mirror was blocked by gargoyles and everything was laggy.
So with 6 people it w was extremely impossible. I have short-manned it with 3 other people but 2 of them were among the best players of Khyber on another run and we managed to go through.

If you want to make champions worth of something make them give some amount of xp, like 500-2000xp on epic. At least this is some kind of real reward for the effort of the player to take them down. Chests that are dropping are not really worth at the moment.

I believe it is a really nice feature as long as the player is rewarded for the effort and the spawns are streamlined so that it is fair with regards to the party level vs the dungeon cr. Especially if you award xp then I think that it will be something people will be looking forward to.

[ForwardWu]

Solo Kobold Assault Heroic Elite, kill 200 mobs and Count the Number of Champs

First Try: 14 / 200 = 7%
Second Try: 26 / 200 = 13%
Third Try: 24 / 200 = 12%

Hit Point
Normal Kobolds : 60-80 hp
63 Champ Kobolds: 180-220 hp,
1 Champ Kobold: 520 hp

[xaniri]

First let me say that I like the idea with champions, and especially the randomness,
That said I still think there need to be some adjustments....

Yesterday I joined a pug on reclamation, the orangenamed champions dropped a chest every single time, but most of the time they were invisible, if not the other player had accidently spotted one I would never had known to keep looking for them. This makes me wonder if they are always dropping chests, invisible or not, or if it was just that quest. I have gotten chests before about one out of two or three, but I had never looked for invisible chests..... Did anyone else get invisible chests?

After reclamation I was a few point short for getting the last extra bankspace from kundarak favor so i decided to do gateway to khyber. I went in as usual, solo with no hire, didn't get very far though before I realised it would never work out, since I was on my fvs-halfling and lacked the dps. Tried again with a meele-hireling this time, this time more cautious, I was however surprised at the number of champions, champions were making up 60-70% of all the trolls, at my first attempt there was also a surprisingly large number of champions, but nowhere near the same as on my 2nd attempt. I managed to get through the quest, mostly by acting is bait and pull a smaller number of trolls away (which troll can resist running after a halfling), usually I got a group of 6-8 trolls running after me, where more than half were champions.

Now as liked the idea of champions, this huge number champions that also are regenerating with many of them healers was very frustrating, too often did I beat one troll down to 10-20hp just to see them healed and having to start over, some of the champions had 4k hp, even saw a few with 6k.... I did run quite a number of quests on different characters in the weekend, and mostly the amount of champions were just right... enough to make it exciting... but when more than half of the mobs are champions it is just too much

[ArtharianDagworth]

First of all, english is not my first language so expect a lot of grammar mistakes, and I'm sorry for them. Second, my experience is based only on running Epics.

I really liked the Champions concept when I first heard about it.

Having said that, I got admit I was expecting something totally diferent. I thougth they would be like bosses, bigger buffs (Only damage buff was bigger then what I expected) and a much lower appearance rate. To the point you would get 1-3 per quest, even doing some quests without meeting them being possible.

Instead we got Diablo style, hats not that bad IMHO, just not what I was expecting. I was a little disapointed before testing it.

I played the game a little after it went f2p, but had to stop at the time before even hitting level 15 due to college that left me no time for a MMO RPG.
Returned to the game 3~ months ago, joined a good guild with a lot of nice people who helped me with a lot of advice, some gear and made to 28. Problem was, I tried to save my toon from bunch of years ago, so I had a completly gimped build with barely no self healing that even the +20 heart of wood I had couldn't really fix it. No way in hell I could run EE, EH was a challange unles I used a cleric hireling. So, when Update 23 came, I jumped in the Paladin vagon and went for a S&B heavy armor paladin. Things got way easier, had good self healing, damage and decent gear (at least once I got to 27 and could use all necro 3 gear). And I could solo most epic quests on elite, (Cove, Necro 3, storm horns, and some especific quests being the execeptions).

That with a first life I leveled to have a end game toon while I joined the TR train on my old one, with half decent gear.

The reason I told all this story is for context on my feedback.

Feedback:

I liked the way EE was before, I had fun running it with guildies or even on public games, I didn't really feel a need for change on it. But I've been playing on EE for 1 month or so only. I can easily see how it was boring for mostly people who have been running it for way longer or had toons way stronger. So I see how something to spice things up was necessary. So, I like the concept behind the champions idea and agree with most of it's implementation.

Due to overpowered builds and in oder to ward boring repetition at end game content, the champions were necessary.

My experience with it during this weekend is that they aren't as bad as many people are claiming on the forum if you have a toon well builded, it dosen't need to be a min-max build, just habe some planning.

EH

- Barely felt them. If they added any dificult at all, it was less then 10%. I think near any toon can handle them if you are playing in your level range, pay atention and not rush a big group of mobs with champions and have at least some decent gear.
- If you are a tank they don't hit at all, if are ranged you can kite them and a wizard/sorc can blast/CC then easily before they are a problem.

EE Solo

- They are a big increase in dificult on EE, especially if you are used to play solo with a build without any CC form.
- Some of them hit so hard (300~ per hit on a 210 PRR toon with 150 AC), that you can't just tank staying still, they require some movement and positioning.
- Sometimes if I got unlucky and got 2-3 champs on a group of mobs it was certain death if I aggro all of them at the same time.
- Still mostly EE on my level range and under were doable solo if I went really slow and wouldn't mind dying some times.

EE - Group

I ran whole Storm horns with a full group yesterday.

- We still beat it without getting wiped at any moment.
- It was much more challenging, since it required much better use of CC and focusing the right enemies.
- We had a lot more of deaths on quests with big group of mobs that would spawn a bunch of champions together (Ranks and WGU) but never hit an absurd amount (10 deaths was the most I think in WGU)
- Some Orc Berzerker and Shadar-kai assassins hit for 400 on my paladin and 700~ on some of the party wizards.

I think in general that champions are working well on EE content for those who want Elite to be really for well builded toon with at least decent gear.
The system need to be tweaked but it seen to be going in the right direction.

The downside of the system is that flavor & casual builds are no longer viable. For many (like my old gimped toon) even EH will become impossible of too much of a drag. This need to be fixed.

I desagree with all of those who says people should just go play casual/normal if they don't want champions.

Casual is not worth mentioning, it's way to easy and boring. You could probally intentionally screw up a build and still be able to do it.
Normal is for those who just goes with the flow, level up correctly even if not top builds, and use correct gear even if not best in slot.

Trouble is that even with gear you don't need farming, casual/normal are easy. Most casual players can do them while talking on the phone and watching tv. My gimped toon did them with all his bad gear and totally screwed up build..

For a casual player to be forced to run normal it's the same thing it was for vets that got bored of running Elite cause it had no challange. So IMHO, any vet who says "don't want champs, go run normal", and has asked for Elite to be harder, is being a little of a hypocritical, even it not intentionally.

And not to mention the giant experience benefits of running Hard and especially Elite. That casual players are being cut off (Bravery Bonus, I'm look at you).

I also don't think a option to turn champions on-off is a good idea. After novelty passed near everyone would run with them off for faster exp and the system would have acomplished nothing. And if benefits are added for those who ran with champions, running with them will in the end become near mandatory if they are good enough or will be ignored if they are only a token benefit.

TLDR: While I liked the champions and think they are a step in the right direction, they need to be tweaked and balanced. Especially to not exclude casual/new players from running at least hard. Elite can be and should be really dificult and only for those who put effort to learn the game

[FestusHood]

Just a couple data points. Running the pit on level 9 sorc. 0 prr because i'm a sorc. Ambush at the end. Of course all trogs spawned as champs. Got clipped twice for 88 and them 107 slash damage. Not a one shot, so i guess it's balanced.

Was thinking about how much this "randomness" is going to reward metagaming, like for instance, knowing ahead of time that there would be an ambush there.

[N-0cturn]

So far I like the concept, but I would like to see the following changes:

- Lower chance for a Champion for normal enemies. I feel like 10% is to much. With 10% I will often get several champions and almost a champion in every fight which makes them less special. Maybe 5%
- Lower chance for a Champion for orange names enemies. If orange named would only be uses as mini bosses consistently the current percentage would be fine. However in HH for example there are lots of orange named enemies and I don't feel like almost every one should be a champion. Maybe 20-33%.
- With less champions at least the HP buff could be increased. I felt like "normal" champions were dying a bit too fast.
- The crown show the abilities of the champion. Many mentioned this already and I feel like this would be the most important change.

[slarden]

Part of the problem with balancing champions is that you have people that are done with all their lives running @ cap with their best destinies, optimal gear and bonuses galore. You also have people running their first life level 21 barbarian in magister running the same quest to fill out ED. Why try to balance all quests around people actually at end game and people leveling? That is exactly what you are doing with this champion system.

Fran suggested a mythic end game difficulty that can only be run by people at cap and for no xp. While balancing is still an issue, it will be easier to provide a challenge balanced around an end game questing system than what you are attempting now which is a one-size fits all solution.

I think this champion system should be optional while rewarding.

Add an end game mythic setting as Fran suggested that is entirely balanced around end game with no xp. Making leveling harder for casual and new players is a mistake in my opinion. You are simply creating an unnecessary barrier that will result in attrition. For those of us with 1 or 2 finished characters the game may be too easy, but it wasn't always easy. You shouldn't raise the bar for leveling simply to please those of us that are effectively done leveling.

Good luck. I don't envy your jobs even a little, but I wish you the best in trying to find the right solution.

[Urjak]

When Monster Champions first hit Lammania, I already gave some feedback based on running the new quests on EH solo.

Now I ran my level 1 TR sorc (fleshy) from 1 to level 7 solo, constant elite streak starting at level 2 (level 1 -> 2 I duoed on elite) ... and ... well I felt I had to give some more feedback:

• Especially at the lowest levels (level 1-3) champions can be really rough. TBH without my saved up Festivault cookies, I would have never made it through (I am now officially in love with those Call Lightning Storm cookies ... though the Shrieking Defender cookies helped a lot too). The higher level I got, the more level appropriate the champions felt aka they were still ranging from tough to very tough - but I felt like having a chance - even without cookies^^. Please consider tuning down champions at the very low levels, especially level 1 and 2 quests - some character classes are still very fragile at those levels and simply feels wrong to have the toughest time during the first levels.
• No matter at what level (on my journey from 1 -> 7 ... so level 1 -> 7 quests on elite) - I often thought, "Oh, thank god that boss is JUST a red named" - meaning, I was much more afraid of orange named mobs, than red named. Yeah, I could not stun red nameds ... but they also rarely posed any threat - while the orange nameds (who almost always were champions) did not only kill me once (but actually quite a few times ...)
• Orange named champions REALLY need to give *some* reward. A chest with some vendor trash really does not cut it. I very much doubt anyone really cares about vendor trash anymore. Even though it feels weird to view orange nameds as the actual bosses when running elite - it is also kinda fun, as it brings the challenge back (except for the very low levels as mentioned above - elite Butcher's Path was a nightmare) - but please give us some serious reward as orange named foes are often optional or can be skipped in some way - for heroics I think a nice chunk of xp would be awesome. For epics - I dunno - maybe some new ingredient? or like 2d4 commendations at least?
• Give us some indication as to what buffs a champion actually has. Honestly, during combat I do not have the time to select the champion, open the inspect box, mouse over each of the icons, wait for the tooltips to pop up and read them all. Please give them an aura, different crowns or whatever to immediately spot what you are up against (does not necessarily mean one icon/buff ... but maybe like one for uber-damage, one for defense, one for deathward, one for fort-bypass, ... something along those lines) ... it is just annoying to first have to actually fight the thing to find out what its buffs are.

And for good measure ... a screenshot of a level 4 quest with a 1267 hp unnamed champion!



While, I think a few tweaks are still needed ... all in all I like them

[Wanesa]

Please remove chests. Let each champion drops 1 item similar to breakables. The probability of dropping something may be better finetuned depend on type of champion

Normal champion - small chance of dropping (20%)
- gold or plats (50%)
- potions (20%)
- random item (15%)
- crafting essence(10%)
- rare collectables (5%)

Miniboss - small chance of dropping (50%)
- gold or plats (49.9%)
- potions (20%)
- random item (15%)
- crafting essence(10%)
- rare collectables (5%)
- DDO store item or 1 astral shard or skill tome or xp elixir (0.1% or less)

[Impaqt]

I think I understand the premise of increasing game difficulty to force players into groups but with an average wait time of over an hour to find a group...and often times a group never presenting itself I have found I have been forced to solo most my time away. This has worked for the last 10 or so lives with little problems. Now even solo play is a waste of time. Myself and the parties I have been in have died more than I think I have ever seen. We just were on an Heroic Elite Siegebreaker...with a small grp of only 3 people..2 fighters/hybrids at level and a cleric. Took two hours for grp to form up so it was as big as we could get it. Total wipe over and over again. All players just quit. We got multiple Monster bosses who could one shot us to death which is neither fun nor entertaining.

With so many gaming options I have no idea why a company is so eager to make a game nearly unplayable. With 10 lives and very solid gear I can hardly stand my own against random "champion" mobs. Everything casts curse now and at such a frequent rate that they should either just permanently add cursed effects to every player or just give out an endless supply of pots. Burned through a 100 stack in 2 quests...worthless! Solo play is near impossible now.

No longer see any value in VIP subscription nor have any desire to continue to play. Very disappointing turbine. If you are looking to make the game more challenging I think you guys went way over board! You should focus more of your effort in connection issues. Btw..every player I know goes dc entering Orchard or Sands every once on a while. Maybe you should look into that.

please answer me this.

why would you not run the quest on Hard instead of Elite?

Or even normal?

[Albinosaurus]

please answer me this.

why would you not run the quest on Hard instead of Elite?

Or even normal?

Exp, Favor, and better shinies. Same reason as anyone else.