Temple of Elemental Evil: Round 2 Feedback!

[mikarddo]

They already do get +AC and +fort, obviously not that absurdly high, at least on orange and red DA.

The +16 to ac is worth less than +1 dc to saves though never mind +28. +200 prr would be much more reasonable in comparison to +28 to dc yet still be less. Infact it looks alot like the 16 ac bit is from back when ac was also on a d20 roll and simply by oversight has not been adjusted to the new system where prr has all but replaced ac.

[Wizza]

On EE, without the special anti-magic (aka -6), Dretches, Hezrou, and Goristro have at least one save type below 50 (or even below 40 for the one with only one sub-50 save, or multiple saves below 50).

Kelno has a 53, Falrinth has pretty awful saves across the board (but is a Boss). Even Zuggtmoy has a below 50 save. These are all bosses who may have some other special stuff going on (especially the two end bosses).

These aren't all the same "weak save" type for each monster, and some of these are significant bosses that that we expect to provide some trouble.

Every human monster has at least one save at 53 or lower in Temple of Elemental Evil. (This was relatively easy to check since all humans are in one place.)

(Of course, this kind of detailed information isn't something we're going to normally spend much time giving out - we do want you guys to discover some of this on your own - but under the circumstances I wanted to spend some extra time looking at these guys to check for oddities.)

Your reported saves are not what I experienced in game.

At the time, I played with the anti-magic buff and even if Zuggtmoy was supposed to have 56 save to Reflex, it seemed (and was) way more. I literally had to resort to no-save level 2 spells, Ruin and Electric Dot. I'm talking with Solid Fog and Waves on her, so I was supposed to have more than +15 DC over her saves. This was absolutely not the case.

The same goes for the Dretches and Hezrous, with debuffs on them they would save most of my stuff. Red named elementals not even worth mentioning, saved 95% of my spells (again, just Waves of Exhaustion, no Solid Fog since they were Immune but probably wouldn't have changed much). Could it be Solid fog and Waves bugged not granting the -saves?

Prefect fight, I had way too many screenshots but decided to delete them. The entire fight was like this. I'm not exaggerating.




This is me in the endfight part 2, got absolutely frustrated with the saves of Zuggtmoy:




I don't get your "but is a boss". I didn't see any special buff on these bosses, other than the usual Epic Ward. What do you mean?

[moo_cow]

SNIP

Is that -15 counting curse? If not then you may be able to hit him 10% of the time instead of 5

Edit: miss read the boss. Thought it was the Zuggtmoy boss.

[Blackheartox]

Due to the saves thing bugging me of what moo and wizza reported, i went in to test myself.
This is a experience from a 3x completionist with maxed gear maxed char, all items used to boost char, only thing that could be done to have more bursty dc is swaping all my ap to harper., trd primary build to sorc and swaped to exalted to get kinda bigger enchant dc.
Took couple pscreens but i can provide a video when im back home to my orignal pc with proper feedback.

But so far, i dont know, we can reach the dcs needed as sorc players, but the investment is crazy.
So crazy that its mindblowing and entirely not worth it considering the ammount of debuffs needed.
So, i tried to test what dcs would make the hold on archers at start and couple mobs later.
I was casting spells randomly debuffing him til he rolled a 1 so that those can be counted as debuffs.

First of all generally some melles have spike will save, as i could not hold em no matter what i tried, some i could hold with almost 95% sucess rate with 80 enchant and 5 debuff but some i could not hold til i went extreme mode.
Keep in mind the mob i tested for didnt have full saves from 100% hp due to lantern ring causing damage

Some mobs i could not hold at all with those numbers until i put a solid foq and casted a ottilukes (melles in first door to the left) for a total of 90/91 enchant dc.
I got insta green alert there, just going near the room so i could not do it different.

I then reenterd killed most mobs to the right of the starting area and started testing what i need to do to land a hold on 1 archer that i left to live.






I had to use curse, hypno curshing, foq and 1 stack of ice savant to land the debuff in that pscreen, i took it a few seconds later after the ice and hypno crushing will debuffs passed tho (inability to pscreen properly on this pc) which makes the needed dc check to pass the will save extremely high.
80 base spell save +4 from curse, +7 from crushing since he failed the save since i was casting it til he rolled a 1, same as curse, 3 from hypno, 10 from mind foq and 1 from ice savant overall saves debuff.
This is a total of 105 will save, i could had held him on 100 but i noticed he saves and breaks free on i assume rolled 19/18s or i was extremely unlucky and he rolled only 20s

Keep in mind, this is a character with maxed tome, all enchant feats taken, max charisma from destiny, maxed char gear, max enchant gear, max desteny all twists used for charisma, while using taken cookie, shipie cha, amarath charisma yugo pot, abishai cookies, influence 3 charisma potion, store potions and only not having acess to bard 2 charisma.
Its as max as you can get.
And you cannot hold properly, take into account that this is not 50/55 will save that we are talking about since my enchant is 80 and with debuffs potentialy 90/94 but a very oddly bigger number.

Oddly enough i killed the same mob with 67 necro dc wail. (no item, i just wanted to try what it will do but cna round it to 70 due to ice savant and crushing debuffs which would be correct that saves are under 50 or around 50)





In this pscreen, i used every single debuff to hold em, and what happend is that they saves after a few seconds and all went rampage mode on me, but another hold coupled with foq ice storm, and hypno crushing managed to keep em away from me.




We are not talking about a will save of 50, under 50, or 55+ but much higher since i needed "87-92 dc coupled with debuffs" to land holds on most mobs.

ITs doable, but you cannot expect someone without acces to basically everything to do this.
I dont know, i can adapt, but many wont be able to.

And easiest to adapt is to just tr to a barb or paladin.

Dont misunderstand this post here btw, im just pointing out that it is not worth to spent 1 sp pot per encounter as sorc.
Esp with how many shrines we have in temple.
Basically i see this as a nerf to dc casting, but a buff to melles/shiradi casting.
Another thing, i tested this on 1st april and i see those saves absurd as they are still live on lammania 5 days before release of this pack.
I really hope this is not some kind of april fools joke.


Also, mind if i ask, why did my account for the 2nd time got downgraded from premium to f2p after logging to lammania?
I know support will fix it, but can you guys pretty please add this to known issue since many players report it?
Like a big thread with a warning before loging to lama that you risk downgrading of account on live servers.
And ty for reading in hope you do not put this mess on live servers

[Eth]

Please list all quests where this happens and where it happens (the above about Thrill of the Hunt is a very good example), and I bet we can get the devs (after Update 25 is released) to look at this.

Do not ask for it be a blanket change, because it is not a blanket problem.

Just of top of my head:
- Fashion Madness - the huge wave before you progress into the sewer area, instant red
- Fire on Thunder Peaks - after 2nd dragon beatdown when the huge Magma elementals spawn with 2 waves of undeads, instant red (can be cut to yellow/orange if you time the regular waves, still stupid)
- Temple of the Deathwyrm - it's barely possible to do a 6 phylactery kill without getting red alert (since every prson in a portal gets 4 extra shadows, which raises the treshold to high
- Thrill of the hunt - end fight, instant red
- Friends in low places - end fight
- WGU - when you go outside, the fight before opening a gate
- In the Belly of the Beast, instant orange when blademaster wave spawns, can get red quickly if you dont kill fast
- Bastion of power (problem being aggro of mobs that are on top)
- A new invasion - ambushes are instant yellow

[Full_Bleed]

Var, can you guys change how energy drain works?
I mean when i look at it, i use it as a way to debuff the mob, but with the when full hp etc mechanic when i use energy drain and try to use it as mean to instakill i wil cut enemys hp and actually give him saves if he was alrdy being beat down making my spells harder to resist.

Should be an easy fix. Have it hit for 1pt after drain.

[Wizza]

Just of top of my head:
- Fashion Madness - the huge wave before you progress into the sewer area, instant red
- Fire on Thunder Peaks - after 2nd dragon beatdown when the huge Magma elementals spawn with 2 waves of undeads, instant red (can be cut to yellow/orange if you time the regular waves, still stupid)
- Temple of the Deathwyrm - it's barely possible to do a 6 phylactery kill without getting red alert (since every prson in a portal gets 4 extra shadows, which raises the treshold to high
- Thrill of the hunt - end fight, instant red
- Friends in low places - end fight
- WGU - when you go outside, the fight before opening a gate
- In the Belly of the Beast, instant orange when blademaster wave spawns, can get red quickly if you dont kill fast
- Bastion of power (problem being aggro of mobs that are on top)
- A new invasion - ambushes are instant yellow

Why even bother. No matter what you say, insta Alert does not exist in DDO.

[Blackheartox]

Should be an easy fix. Have it hit for 1pt after drain.

I havent checkd how lantern ring interacts with energy drain, if its damaging after the drain leaving the mob damaged, then yea its al ok

[IronClan]

Right, because DDO has no quests with encounters that give you instant alert, even if you killed absolutely everything that far.

Right because a handful of wonky dungeons where you can still anticipate alert and deal with it prove anything.

I don't know of a single instance that can't be mitigated with a moments forethought. Every single one of the over touchy easy to set off alert quests do so for obvious reasons that the player base has already LONG SINCE figured out how to deal with.

People who have a vehement anti DA reaction are people who want the game to play in a base lowest common denominator way without even the most basic thought or tactical approach. They are literally unhappy with DA because it disallows mindless run to the end playstyles that have in the past caused the game to hemorrhage players, and would literally be the end of the game if they reverted back to that.

[Wizza]

Right because a handful of wonky dungeons where you can still anticipate alert and deal with it prove anything.

I don't know of a single instance that can't be mitigated with a moments forethought. Every single one of the over touchy easy to set off alert quests do so for obvious reasons that the player base has already LONG SINCE figured out how to deal with.

People who have a vehement anti DA reaction are people who want the game to play in a base lowest common denominator way without even the most basic thought or tactical approach. They are literally unhappy with DA because it disallows mindless run to the end playstyles that have in the past caused the game to hemorrhage players, and would literally be the end of the game if they reverted back to that.

Please, enlighten us how to deal with Thrill of the Hunt Red alert in the endfight.

[Tinco]

nothing to see, had wrong quest in mind.

[The_Human_Cypher]

Everquest II has myconids. Just sayin'.

http://massivelyop.net/2015/04/01/ev...lance-updates/

[Firewall]

...
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.

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

Sounds to me like the original "Hard to Kill" mechanic which was planned to counter the overpoweredness of Instakills back then has accidently made it to the live servers even though Eladrin said they would drop it:

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...ll-gt-Haunting

...
Hard to Kill was intended to be a system that would put some restrictions on death spells, dropping once the enemy was reduced to half health, in an attempt to promote teamwork between casters and the rest of the party. We intended for this to turn death spells into an "execute" sort of mechanic - the party could take the monster down to half health, and then a Pale Master (or other caster) could finish it off.

The system turned out to be too restrictive, and we're planning on making changes to it.

In the Hard to Kill thread, there was a suggestion to use a system similar to the change we made to Saves vs. Poison. We considered this internally - giving players and monsters a bonus to Saves vs. Death Magic* (but not physical death effects like Assassinate) if they were at high health, and a penalty if they were low on health (on death's door!) This would not have included the "don't fail saves on a natural 1". Monsters on different difficulty settings would have had different save bonuses.

This would have kept the desired "let people do something in fights, prep monsters with Improved Sunder, and stuff like that", but we decided that it would have excessively harmed casters with low to middling DC's, who would go from being able to occasionally land a death effect to ending up in a situation pretty similar to the original Hard to Kill.
...

[Eth]

I havent checkd how lantern ring interacts with energy drain, if its damaging after the drain leaving the mob damaged, then yea its al ok

Just checked on live, the light damage kicks in before the drain, so the mob is at full HP after the drain. Sucks.

[Kambuk]

Please, enlighten us how to deal with Thrill of the Hunt Red alert in the endfight.

I usually invis past the cages and activate him from as far from the cages as possible, then re-invis and run and fight just in the end bit behind the cage with the prisoner.
Might get 6-8 howlers attacking you when their doors open but not all of them and only green or maybe orange alert.

Did this last week on EE no problems.

Kambuk

[Blackheartox]

I usually invis past the cages and activate him from as far from the cages as possible, then re-invis and run and fight just in the end bit behind the cage with the prisoner.
Might get 6-8 howlers attacking you when their doors open but not all of them and only green or maybe orange alert.

Did this last week on EE no problems.

Kambuk

If you have sneaky skills you can do the fight with no alert as well.

On sidenote, you can always kill the doggies with spells.
But that always felt ploiterish, so dunno what to say, a bad mechanic with a bad way to solve the issue

[Tesrali]

I usually invis past the cages and activate him from as far from the cages as possible, then re-invis and run and fight just in the end bit behind the cage with the prisoner.
Might get 6-8 howlers attacking you when their doors open but not all of them and only green or maybe orange alert.

Did this last week on EE no problems.

Kambuk

you shouldn't have to do that

[Tesrali]

Just of top of my head:
- Fashion Madness - the huge wave before you progress into the sewer area, instant red
- Fire on Thunder Peaks - after 2nd dragon beatdown when the huge Magma elementals spawn with 2 waves of undeads, instant red (can be cut to yellow/orange if you time the regular waves, still stupid)
- Temple of the Deathwyrm - it's barely possible to do a 6 phylactery kill without getting red alert (since every prson in a portal gets 4 extra shadows, which raises the treshold to high
- Thrill of the hunt - end fight, instant red
- Friends in low places - end fight
- WGU - when you go outside, the fight before opening a gate
- In the Belly of the Beast, instant orange when blademaster wave spawns, can get red quickly if you dont kill fast
- Bastion of power (problem being aggro of mobs that are on top)
- A new invasion - ambushes are instant yellow

haven't we made that list before?
feelin de ja vu

[Tesrali]

Right because a handful of wonky dungeons where you can still anticipate alert and deal with it prove anything.

I don't know of a single instance that can't be mitigated with a moments forethought. Every single one of the over touchy easy to set off alert quests do so for obvious reasons that the player base has already LONG SINCE figured out how to deal with.

People who have a vehement anti DA reaction are people who want the game to play in a base lowest common denominator way without even the most basic thought or tactical approach. They are literally unhappy with DA because it disallows mindless run to the end playstyles that have in the past caused the game to hemorrhage players, and would literally be the end of the game if they reverted back to that.

The only hemorage was like 4 months after MOTU or something? Can't remember... DDO oracle shows it though. We lost a 1/3 of the player base.

Anyway...
Some quests "i.e., Precious Cargo" don't have DA.
DA disabled in firepeaks / wyrm / fashion madness, wouldn't change anything.
It would be a big QOL improvement for those quests!

Zerging also isn't "mindless."

[Monkey-Boy]

Zerging also isn't "mindless."

And tactics are for the weak.