Temple of Elemental Evil: Round 2 Feedback!

[Texlaw1992]

Ran part 2 and this time went through all the elemental nodes (EN for both runs):

1. No dragons this time, just giants, so could not tell if dragons were fixed or still getting their heads stuck in the ceiling.

2. IMPORTANT: Nodes were NOT dropping epic mushrooms, only normal ones. Not sure if this is WAI.

3. End fight was smoother second time around now that mushrooms appeared. Mushroom timer seems a bit off though. Ran behind one when Zug started her death aura, and it vanished about a second or two before the aura stopped (so I died).

4. Would be nice if we had another couple of seconds when Zug does death aura. If you don't spot it right away and it's across the room, it's tough to make it.

5. Didn't see any real problem with any mob hps or saves. I did enjoy in part one how the traps also affected the mobs - kind of funny to watch three temple guards engage me while poisoned.

[gwonbush]

Something I noticed when seeing the abnormally large damage from ranged in ToEE (EH): champions didn't seem to hit any harder at a range than their non-champion version.

[Rys]

I like the density of mobs now. It was very sparse for the most part, but now things are juust right per difficulty. On eh or en, things seem sparse to a small degree, however the harder hitting makes up for that.

The Earth path in EE ToEE 2 got boring really quickly. The mobs weren't even that hard to beat (quite different from running with perma red alert lol), I just felt like doing slayers in the wilderness area which I hate from my heart. Every encounter was just as the one before. Water and Air paths are ok IMO because those are at least little bit different. Earth and Fire could use some interesting features as well (mario jumping for Earth, maybe? ).

[Vargouille]

I should also be asking if Dungeon Alert is active while testing saving throws. Dungeon Alert, at all levels, increases monster saves (increasing along with Dungeon Alert). There are some places we probably need to make sure Red Alert isn't happening when it should not be, as well.

[Rys]

I should also be asking if Dungeon Alert is active while testing saving throws. Dungeon Alert, at all levels, increases monster saves (increasing along with Dungeon Alert). There are some places we probably need to make sure Red Alert isn't happening when it should not be, as well.

May I ask how much? Green/yellow/orange/red? Are the numbers set or change with n/h/e?

[Monkey-Boy]

[LIST][*]Temple Cultists are designed to be pretty weak on saving throws. On Epic Elite shouldn't have any saving throw over 50.

This is absolutely not true, with a Fort save of 50 my DC77 wizard should have gotten them 95% of the time . . . and though my few minutes of testing fort saves was better than round 1 I sure as heck wasn't hitting things 95% of the time.

you sure you don't have some hidden multipliers or something?

[slarden]

There are some places we probably need to make sure Red Alert isn't happening when it should not be, as well.

This is the biggest understatement I've seen so far in 2015.

[Vargouille]

We have plans to make Dungeon Alert happen less in both Temple of Elemental Evil quests.

This is absolutely not true, with a Fort save of 50 my DC77 wizard should have gotten them 95% of the time . . . and though my few minuted of testing fort saves was better than round 1 I sure as heck wasn't hitting things 95% of the time.

You definitely didn't have any dungeon alert during these times, and they weren't explicitly buffed in any way (if you target them, no effects on them)? And yes, our current expectation is that if you have a standing 77 DC that "Temple Cultists" would fail 95% of saves, which is why these questions are being asked here.

This is the biggest understatement I've seen so far in 2015.

It's only March, we can beat this.

[GoldyGopher]

We've done some polishing on the Temple of Elemental Evil in the new Lamannia build that went up today (Friday, March 27th.) If you are interested, please take a look and give us your feedback!

Okay I went in solo on Epic Elite playing my Dwarf Pally (18 Pally / 2 Fighter / 8 Epic) AC 207 PRR 192 DR 30

My first time in I was on an off Epic Destiny, same one I cruised through Epic Elite on Round 1, needless to say after ending up dead I revived and came in on a stronger ED and still ended up dead, so came back in in Full Tank Mode (which isn't as good as I can get for AC PRR DR MRR but rather they best I could do on Lamanna)

The Archers were hitting me once every 7 or 8 shots fired for 40 to 45 HP damage.
The Human Melee were hitting me for 90 to 105 HP Damage every other swing or more.

Spiders did damage in the 50 to 60 range.

Ogres damage was meaning full, but by the time I cleared up the action enough to check the logs it had cleared out, I think it was around 200 points damage

The Earth Elementals swatted e a few times for the low 100's.

Now I only played an hour, so my feed back needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

On this character I had to go into my primary epic destiny and into full tank mode, but this is EE and I have no problem with that.
As a tank the damage from most mobs was noticeable and I had to keep an eye on my health, using Lay On Hands, Pots and cocoon I was able to keep my character up long enough to kill 100 plus mobs.
The human melee mobs seemed to hit my character a bit to often in comparison to the other mobs. I was hit 3 out 5 or 2 out of 3 swings each doing 100 HP damage, which in dealing with mobs in 1 and 2s was okay but 4 melee mobs at once spelt trouble.

The quest was slow because I was pulling mobs in 2 and 3s, the problem was a lack of DPS in tank mode.

For this character it would be a monumental task to complete this on EPic Elite, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Some flavor of the month build probably has huge advantages over this build so that comment has to be taken with a grain of salt.

I clearly felt if the mobs maintained their level of damage (or doing slightly more) than a well conceived tank and smash party could easily complete this quest. However I am not sure how scaling effects this quest at the moment.

[Vargouille]

May I ask how much? Green/yellow/orange/red? Are the numbers set or change with n/h/e?

It can be as high as +28 to saves on the highest levels of Dungeon Alert. There are some straight saving throw boosts and some ability score boosts monsters receive with higher Dungeon Alert. It's much, much lower on low levels. Green alert is +4 (or +20%) to saves (+2 to saves and +4 to ability scores).

[Vargouille]

The Archers were hitting me once every 7 or 8 shots fired for 40 to 45 HP damage.
The Human Melee were hitting me for 90 to 105 HP Damage every other swing or more.

Spiders did damage in the 50 to 60 range.

Ogres damage was meaning full, but by the time I cleared up the action enough to check the logs it had cleared out, I think it was around 200 points damage

The Earth Elementals swatted e a few times for the low 100's.

Thanks, this is great information. That relative damage from ranged vs. melee makes more sense, though it looks like there are some individual monsters we'll need to look at still. (We did some ranged changes where we expected some of them might pop up with too much damage.)

On this character I had to go into my primary epic destiny and into full tank mode, but this is EE and I have no problem with that.

As a tank the damage from most mobs was noticeable and I had to keep an eye on my health, using Lay On Hands, Pots and cocoon I was able to keep my character up long enough to kill 100 plus mobs.
The human melee mobs seemed to hit my character a bit to often in comparison to the other mobs. I was hit 3 out 5 or 2 out of 3 swings each doing 100 HP damage, which in dealing with mobs in 1 and 2s was okay but 4 melee mobs at once spelt trouble.

The quest was slow because I was pulling mobs in 2 and 3s, the problem was a lack of DPS in tank mode.

For this character it would be a monumental task to complete this on EPic Elite, and I have absolutely no problem with that. Some flavor of the month build probably has huge advantages over this build so that comment has to be taken with a grain of salt.

I clearly felt if the mobs maintained their level of damage (or doing slightly more) than a well conceived tank and smash party could easily complete this quest. However I am not sure how scaling effects this quest at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Annihilyght]

It's only March, we can beat this.

Lol...unexpected, simple, and yet I found it quite amusing!

[Vargouille]

I looked Real Hard at some DCs and tested in various means and ways.

As far as I can tell, it is all exactly as we expected except there was something I was unaware of (and Temple of Elemental Evil is the first time I'm in charge of statting monsters, so we're getting through this together).

Monsters in Epic Elite get a special bonus to save against magic, and only magic, while they are healthy. This doesn't affect non-magical effects. There's a similar but smaller bonus on Epic Hard.

"Magic" in this case means all spells, and possibly some other abilities/effects that we've explicitly marked as magical over the years.

This starts at +6 to saves, drops to +4 once the monster is hurt at all, and then to +2 when between 50% and 75% health. Below 50% health they receive no bonus.

For Temple of Elemental Evil, since this wasn't planned around, we're simply excluding this bonus. We don't want to blindly change what others have done in the past (and make all existing Epics easier), so we'll see what happens going forward after Update 25.

- Temple cultists, CR 53, saving 60% of the time, had 63 DC when I tested those.

This does mean that without Dungeon Alert, the highest saves on Temple Cultists should still be 56. Which, if you were testing with a 63 DC, that would mean you only succeed ~40% of the time. As that's precisely what is reported here, it sounds like we're now all on the same page. (Some earlier posts had seemed to suggest that all the DCs were in the 70s, which didn't jive at all with what we expected.)

[Monkey-Boy]

Monsters in Epic Elite get a special bonus to save against magic, and only magic, while they are healthy. This doesn't affect non-magical effects. There's a similar but smaller bonus on Epic Hard.

Is this affecting the whole game? And why oh why was this added? DC casters haven't been OP since 2011.

[Monkey-Boy]

You definitely didn't have any dungeon alert during these times, and they weren't explicitly buffed in any way (if you target them, no effects on them)? And yes, our current expectation is that if you have a standing 77 DC that "Temple Cultists" would fail 95% of saves, which is why these questions are being asked here.

ZERO Dungeon alert.

[Vargouille]

Is this affecting the whole game? And why oh why was this added? DC casters haven't been OP since 2011.

This was added in 2012, at the same time Epic got multiple difficulties.

[Monkey-Boy]

This was added in 2011, at the same time Epic got multiple difficulties.

it explains why you can always finger that mob with 4 HP left and steal the kills from melees . . .

Removing this from the rest of the game would break it all the hell, it also explains why my DC80 Stunning fist is no-fail in EE horns when a DC80 Necro (steroids, bard song, etc . . .) isn't anywhere close to no fail.

Was this a publicly know thing of is this the first time it's been revealed and I just haven't been paying attention?

[Kambuk]

Description for Energy Burst (Draconic T4 ability) now says it's a Fort save rather than a reflex save.
Possible explanation for save issues is other spells are for some reason target a different save than they used to?
However things with evasion were still evading Energy Burst so it may just be a tooltip issue.

Kambuk

[LeoLionxxx]

it explains why you can always finger that mob with 4 HP left and steal the kills from melees . . .

Removing this from the rest of the game would break it all the hell, it also explains why my DC80 Stunning fist is no-fail in EE horns when a DC80 Necro (steroids, bard song, etc . . .) isn't anywhere close to no fail.

Was this a publicly know thing of is this the first time it's been revealed and I just haven't been paying attention?

First I've heard of it, as well as the save-boosting effect when dungeon alert is active (Maybe there should be a description in the icon?).

[Wizza]

This does mean that without Dungeon Alert, the highest saves on Temple Cultists should still be 56. Which, if you were testing with a 63 DC, that would mean you only succeed ~40% of the time. As that's precisely what is reported here, it sounds like we're now all on the same page. (Some earlier posts had seemed to suggest that all the DCs were in the 70s, which didn't jive at all with what we expected.)

Honestly, I don't think that a CR 53 AND melee mob should save 60% of the time on their weak save of one of the highest Evocation DC that you can achieve on a Sorcerer.

Besides, what about all the other saves? Gargoyles, Dretches, Hezrous, Salamanders, Red named bosses (ellies, endbosses)?

This was added in 2012, at the same time Epic got multiple difficulties.

We would have liked a notice, a release notes. Not your fault but still.