U33.2 aggro mechanic

[nokowi]

those are not mutually exclusive. And--what if I craftily pull a mob by making it see me, or using noisemakers that reveal my position, then bluff-assassinate?

I was expressing my preference, and I have no issues with you having yours.


We always had a mechanic where you could throw something into the ground and pull 1 mob.

You used assassins trick to accomplish much the same thing (select target, button).

I don't feel this mechanic was necessary to have on assassins trick.

[Saekee]

test: assassinate a mob standing next to another, both facing the same direction. (they are facing, say, 9 O'Clock and I am at 6 O'Clock). The idea here is that the mob does not see their friend get assassinated. Maybe hears them when they slump to the ground.

I tested this on a CR2 mob (osgood's basement normal) on my level 16 Prowler assassin. I was invisible. The second mob reacted instantly and spotted me. HS/MS around 50. CR2.

So please adjust this in your analyses Torc. If they are not facing their friend who slumps, why should they react so quickly, if at all?

[Raederle]

0> That is the plan. There is still a bit to do here and we'll actively be making changes until we feel both systems are working well.

1> So I was hoping to get feedback on bluff difficulty.

3> Rogue traps haven't been touched in to long. /agreed. Can't give you a time frame on this yet, to busy with stealth/aggro stuff plus reaper and unannounced "stuff", but it's on my list.

5> So I'd love some more details here. Is this dungeon alert you have an issue with or monster perception in general even when no alert is present? The issue I've currently been investigating is outside the dungeon alert system, and it seems that sometimes monsters looking for me while I'm stealth-ed will sometimes get a position update on me that seems....illogically accurate. Seems to happen more often if I actually move far away to which is counter intuitive as well. I'll figure it out eventually but if you know a location that this happens 100% let me know.

6> Assassinate was original designed for unaggro'd monsters. Still, looking at this from two situations....
A> Using assassinate in active combat with my party ...
B> Monsters are hunting me in stealth ...

-Torc

All of this has been done on Helllen, 18rogue 2fighter, Sarlona.

First, I do suspect that the DDOWiki is correct in declaring that bluff gets harder over time. Over the weekend I did another The Tide Turns, and I could shiv Ahraatz-Ri regularly during the first half of the first phase of the fight, and sometimes in the second half of the first phase of the fight, but by the second phase of the fight, it never landed any more. This was with an 18 higher bluff skill than right after the patch, when I didn't see shiv stick at all. I've seen that with other bosses as well since the Dec 23rd patch though less obvious with shorter fights. Right after the patch I had squawked that shiv was now broken, but with these refined results I think that impression was based on a much higher bluff requirement, coupled with some gradual immunization mechanism. The code might be worth a review to find what's buried in it towards that. I doubt it came up much before the much higher requirements.

1 - Bluff Difficulty
Pre Dec 23 patch, I was 20th level, maxed bluff skill, Backstabbers gloves for 13 bluff, 22 cha and no other enhancement etc improvements for a bluff of 51. I never really failed it in epic normals or hards. Post Dec 23 patch, I was failing almost every bluff attempt in epic normals and hards. So I geared up, and made L18 gloves of 17 Bluff and 8 insightful bluff for a total of 25 not 13. I also started using greater heroism scrolls full time. At skill 67 I was succeeding on epic normals, but failing about 1 in 3 on epic hard in The Tide Turns against CR 30. That's when I posted that 70% chance not to get slaughtered at max gear and good cha didn't cut it. Finally I went over to Fatesinger, and picked up 3 ranks of Allure. At skill 72-73 I was succeeding almost all the time.

I think that's too high a requirement, and this is epic 20th hard. Epic Elite I would likely be back to failing fatally all too often, to where a group would prefer I didn't try (I'm not soloing epic elite on a first life). I don't see how a first life dex based rogue is to get any higher at these early epic levels, and think the requirement should cut by at least a quarter. Sure, require 15 skill levels and good gear, or fewer and stellar gear. But don't require top skill, top gear, and a fate twist just to be viable in hards, let alone elites.

3 - traps. They did seem to be working earlier this fall. The broke somewhere in the middle of it. That's when I made gloves of disabling with insightful disable, which didn't help, thinking it was me and new arrival in epics. It wasn't me.

5 - FINGER OF GOD. I broke off questing to play with this for 5-10 minutes several times. In The Tide Turns good example spots are on the ramps above the first room, with first the pack in stealth waiting by the bookshelves, and then the pack beyond them behind the door, and then again the pack up the curvy ramp in the center room there. With every pack I could race down, hide around a corner, wait those 10-15 seconds and BOOM, finger of god and here they come. Race further, around 1-2 more corners, behind walls or large posts on the arcade, 10-15 seconds and BOOM. After 4-5 sets of this I bit the bullet and took them out as a pack. Later just to confirm I went to Lordsmarch plaza and tried it in Undermine, where I played around with the groups that pop up. Assassinate one, race off with them in search mode but unspotted, hide half the plaza away at the top of a staircase, and BOOM finger of god. Jump down while they're racing over, move another 100 yards away ducked behind small walls, and BOOM finger of god. This repeated 5-6 times, until I gave up and killed them all.

To summarize, it's not the general alert, but rather a pack's hunter mode after aggro via pull or assassinate against one member. It's specific to a pack, and doesn't apply to any but the aggroed pack.

6 - A --When mobs are high HP (low it's not worth the dps loss) I regularly re-stealth, assassinate 1-2 mobs in the pack surrounding our group's tank, go back to killage, after cooldown re-stealth, move 90 degrees around the outside of the cluster to mobs focused solely on him, assassinate, go back to killage. rinse repeat. So assassinate works fine as it has all this last year on mobs fixated on the tank. Imo that's good and makes him all the more valuable. I do make darned sure he realizes half my dps comes from his tanking.
B -- What I was asking for was option B, where they're in "wandering around looking for disturbance mode". They're not assassinate-able if they're roaming around looking for me, even if I'm totally unspotted. Any use of the assassinate skill is treated as just a single non stealthed attack, even if no red eye.



I know this will all take work to get it right. And it will leave the stealth game a harder one than pre patch 33 (where yes, no notice of assassinations done in plain sight was too easy) which is OK as long as the penalties on difficulty and risk and extra time required don't climb to "gods I should just get with the program and play an AE killa" levels. But I do think that in the early to mid heroics ranged toons have it quite hard already, before losing single pulls from the endless series of mob clusters that seem the standard in current quest design. At epic levels IPS makes that more trivial, but I play heroics and am one of the many players dabbling with DDO who are years away from reaper mode. First we have to want to last that long. So this is a separate plea to not bork up the heroic play for the sake of an end game many won't see.

[NaturalHazard]

imagine the sheer outrage it would cause if a lot of the foes we faced where smart enough to realize hey we cant catch this guy most of us are already half dead lets pull out our ranged weapons and spread out so he cannot just hit us all with one blast?

they want to make them smarter no?

Its like we always face massed infantry so pull out the artillery, and even better its super mobile artillery.

[Enoach]

Feedback on bluff...

Base Level 21 Quest Spinner of Shadows on Elite
Both of these attempts were behind a pillar out of sight.
CR45 Mob - Based on Calc Bluff Resistance (45 + (1.5 * 23)) = 79 [Rounding Down]. Bluffed, pulled him around corner, paralyzed and killed him 99 + 8 = 107 (28 over)
CR49 Mob - Based on Calc Bluff Resistance (49 + (1.5 * 23)) = 83 [Rounding Down]. Failed Bluffed, pulled all. 99 + 14 = 113 (30 over). Now one difference is this mob was a Champion.

2nd Attempt
CR49 Mob - Based on Calc Bluff Resistance (49 + (1.5 * 23)) = 83 [Rounding Down]. Failed Bluffed, pulled all. 98 + 9 = 107 (24 over). Not a champion

As a not both CR49 mobs were Drow Priestess

Base Level 24 Quest A Cabal for One
CR49 Mob - Based on Calc Bluff Resistance (58 + (1.5 * 26)) = 97 [Rounding Down]. Failed Bluffed, pulled all. 99 + 8 = 107 (10 over). Not a Champion.


What doesn't make sense is that I was able to pull the CR 45 Drow in Spinner's and it isn't even my highest over.

Now at level 30 I'm not fully decked out having only a 99 Bluff (when I remember focusing chant) and 100 when I remember to use the Spider Mask Buff. But either I'm off on using CR to equal Creature Level or some other factor is coming in place as you can see my base bluff alone should have been enough in all of these situations to be able to pull based on the calculations above.

I think the formula they are using for elite is (CR+(1*QL))*1.5, which is the same as (CR+QL)*1.5, although it wasn't very clear in the initial post.

So for EE Cabal, the score needed could be 126. It's definitely north of 109 from my testing in that quest.

That might explain why your expected and actual results are not in agreement. Or maybe someone made an error in mathematically expressing what they wanted (still unclear) and the scores ended up too high instead.

Thanks.

If that was the case then the 45 Drow in the 23 Would be a 102 which is why I succeeded with 107, but the 49 should have been 108; both of my rolls 113 should have still succeeded but Champion might have adjusted and the 107 would have failed.

If a level 24 quest on Elite CR58 trash is going to take 126 to bluff that seems rather high to me especially since that is the lowest CR in that quest.

[blerkington]

If that was the case then the 45 Drow in the 23 Would be a 102 which is why I succeeded with 107, but the 49 should have been 108; both of my rolls 113 should have still succeeded but Champion might have adjusted and the 107 would have failed.

Yes, that's interesting. Maybe in addition to being too high it's also not working in some cases. I could believe champions have some additional resistance but that doesn't explain the second case.

imagine the sheer outrage it would cause if a lot of the foes we faced where smart enough to realize hey we cant catch this guy most of us are already half dead lets pull out our ranged weapons and spread out so he cannot just hit us all with one blast?

they want to make them smarter no?

Its like we always face massed infantry so pull out the artillery, and even better its super mobile artillery.

You're right. The AI is spectacularly dumb about dealing with AoE attacks like bursts and cleaves and that's part of the reason those builds do so well in game. It's funny how little attention is being given to this while time is being spent on further hampering a much less efficient style of play involving single target pulls.

Real challenge to such builds would involve a less lemming-like AI response, no more fast movement when under DA and/or target caps for AoE abilities. We'll see if any of these things ever happen; my bet is that they will not.

Thanks.

[NaturalHazard]

Yes, that's interesting. Maybe in addition to being too high it's also not working in some cases. I could believe champions have some additional resistance but that doesn't explain the second case.



You're right. The AI is spectacularly dumb about dealing with AoE attacks like bursts and cleaves and that's part of the reason those builds do so well in game. It's funny how little attention is being given to this while time is being spent on further hampering a much less efficient style of play involving single target pulls.

Real challenge to such builds would involve a less lemming-like AI response, no more fast movement when under DA and/or target caps for AoE abilities. We'll see if any of these things ever happen; my bet is that they will not.

Thanks.

lol they run repeatedly through static spinning blades let alone cleaves and bursts.

[Jasparion]

0> That is the plan. There is still a bit to do here and we'll actively be making changes until we feel both systems are working well.

1> So I was hoping to get feedback on bluff difficulty. I can easily believe bluff resistant may be a little to aggressive, but we are trying account for itemization and encourage players to many throw a few enhancement points bluffs way. Madness... I know... given this has been free beer for so long. The formula for bluff resistant is the creatures level + (1 * quest level). Hard multiplies this # by 1.25, and elite 1.5. This may seem a bit much but our thinking is currently that "solo pulling" is a pretty powerful ability so we're trying to calibrate how much of a commitment a player needs to give to do it reliably.

How about you create the most powerful Assassin Rogue the game allows, and gear it up however you like.

I will play a 1st life Warlock with random gear.

Then we can run dungeons separately and compare "pretty powerful abilities". You can even choose the dungeons.

It seems very much like a forest for the trees issue. There is a very specific focus taking place, which is completely ignoring the big picture.

[wonko_the_sane]

1> So I was hoping to get feedback on bluff difficulty. I can easily believe bluff resistant may be a little to aggressive, but we are trying account for itemization and encourage players to many throw a few enhancement points bluffs way. Madness... I know... given this has been free beer for so long. The formula for bluff resistant is the creatures level + (1 * quest level). Hard multiplies this # by 1.25, and elite 1.5. This may seem a bit much but our thinking is currently that "solo pulling" is a pretty powerful ability so we're trying to calibrate how much of a commitment a player needs to give to do it reliably.

-Torc

So this doesn't seem to be working. Or maybe it's my math that's not working. Here's what I experienced:

Went into heroic slavers on elite with a level 10 rogue equipped with a freshly crafted Persuasion ring of Bluff +12. This brings my bluff to 28. Tried to bluff various CR 13 Slavers. Failed multiple times with rolls 10 or lower. Succeeded with rolls of 17 or higher. Did not roll any 11-16s.

The DC for the Slavers against bluff should be creature level of 13 + (1.5 since it's on elite * 10) = 13+15 = 28. With the ring equipped I should not have failed any of these rolls. Unless my math is bad.

What's going on?

[BigErkyKid]

solo pulling is used while soloing. this is used mainly for sneaky types of builds that don't want to fight groups of mobs at once or fight as few mobs as possible to progress through the quest. we aren't talking warlocks here. it may be slow, but it is pretty powerful when you can pull mobs one at a time and pick them off controlling the environment like that. this isn't something that is used in groups usually because players zerg quests and don't have time to wait.

I know perfectly well the theory. Now in actual gameplay there is exactly one instance where I used this and saw other people use it to great effect. One!

If they don't want people cheesing reaper they can just change it there or what not. But this aggro thing was the least of the problems in ddo right now. There are far more game breaking problems. For example, the fact that even though this change creates crazy alerts and bunches of mobs, it actually speeds up runs for some powerful builds. Thus highlighting massive differences in power; differences that are not in favor of the so called powerful bluff pullers.

I will probably find myself agreeing with tilomere, and that's something. Look at that other list of powerful "features". Those are among the things that are making the content easy, not bluff pulling.

As I said, the fact they felt the need times with this while leaving plenty of more powerful cheese in demonstrates how out of touch with the game we are playing they are.

[BigErkyKid]

I think the fear here is that we'll see embarrassingly early solo completions of some quests on 10 skulls from ranged builds with stealth and bluff.

Sneak + bluff + perch = win.

That is why SSG has decided bluff is such a powerful skill all of a sudden and its use needs to be so sharply curtailed. Pity about the rest of the game.

Thanks.

This is likely what is happening. If they brute force any more anti solo mechanics into reaper it will explode.

But then, instead of saying truthfully things for what they are, they pretend it is something about the game that they are fixing. Not fooling anyone, it is just embarrassing to see.

[Enguebert]

test: assassinate a mob standing next to another, both facing the same direction. (they are facing, say, 9 O'Clock and I am at 6 O'Clock). The idea here is that the mob does not see their friend get assassinated. Maybe hears them when they slump to the ground.

I tested this on a CR2 mob (osgood's basement normal) on my level 16 Prowler assassin. I was invisible. The second mob reacted instantly and spotted me. HS/MS around 50. CR2.

So please adjust this in your analyses Torc. If they are not facing their friend who slumps, why should they react so quickly, if at all?

Some additional info about assassination aggro. When you do a successfull assassinate , there are 3 possibilities :

1) If you assassinate a foe and nobody is close to the target, nothing happens, and you are safe
2) If the victim has friends at "average" distance, and more friends at short/average distance of first friend : Instantly, the first friend and all other friends (chain reaction !) knows there is someone hidden and start to attack in the void.
You can sneak away, but it seems those foe are "active" and you cannot assassinate them
3) If the victim is at "close" distance, (and more friends at short/average distance), it is worse : they instantly SEE you (even if you are still hidden). Even if you sneak away (after corner,...), they magically knows where you are and run towards your position and attack you


What need to change :
1) mobs should never automatically see you. It should be based on listen/spot check. Spot only if they see they friend dieing, otherwise only listen
2) chain reaction should be toned down. And should not go trough wall/doors !!
3) Stop having all foe reacting the same way to one incident. If something happens and activate the mobs, they should individually react, not have everyone aggro on the same target when there are 4 people in the room !

[blerkington]

This is likely what is happening. If they brute force any more anti solo mechanics into reaper it will explode.

But then, instead of saying truthfully things for what they are, they pretend it is something about the game that they are fixing. Not fooling anyone, it is just embarrassing to see.

Yeah, you're spot on here. And this is one part of Turbine's/SSG's communications style which really irks me. Their apparent inability to be straight with us about stuff like this. And there are so many examples of this it's not funny.

Instead of that, they try to peddle these ... stories instead. But it's happened before, and since they apparently think that's an appropriate way to deal with their valued customers, it will happen again. Because, why not?

Thanks.

[NaturalHazard]

This is likely what is happening. If they brute force any more anti solo mechanics into reaper it will explode.

But then, instead of saying truthfully things for what they are, they pretend it is something about the game that they are fixing. Not fooling anyone, it is just embarrassing to see.

this reaper thing better be amazing and have great results, its already messing with the rest of the game. Sure we are not sure the aggro change was due to reaper but it would not surprise me at all, and it lead to angering people and messing with a style thats not zerging quests and getting max xp-lootz per minute, the shooting everything from long range while the enemy just stands dumbly around was cheesy and losing that is a bonus but the rest is really silly. I do like how ever that they open doors. I don't really mind the rednamed named champs so much but really we could of gone without them and it would not of made anyone angry, but it did **** off some players and to what gain really? Reaper isn't even here and its already messed up the game in a way that was not really needed.

[BigErkyKid]

Yeah, you're spot on here. And this is one part of Turbine's/SSG's communications style which really irks me. Their apparent inability to be straight with us about stuff like this. And there are so many examples of this it's not funny.

Instead of that, they try to peddle these ... stories instead. But it's happened before, and since they apparently think that's an appropriate way to deal with their valued customers, it will happen again. Because, why not?

Thanks.

The reason for this is amateurish communication policies. For all the time I have been paying a bit more attention to DDO (last 2-3 years of my playtime) I have witnessed how DDO appears to be second order to whatever is happening in turbine/SSG. I have the impression that there are no devs truly devoted 100% to DDO. More like devs on different projects that spend some time in DDO. This became even more evident when they decided to make Severlin producer of both LoTRO and DDO.

I don't think DDO has worked, for most of its life, even with the resources it was generating. Obviously this is all speculation, but I feel that DDO has probably lost part of its own revenue to infinite crisis, or whatever other projects they were developing. And if it hasn't and I am wrong (and maybe DDO has drained LoTRO instead), then I feel that the budget has been small anyway.

While Cordovan has seemed to grow into the job, and the devs sometimes do surprise me with genuinely interesting stuff, most of the time I am under the impression that they know little about the game. From them acknowledging they never checked Holy Sword stacking on live or apparently a test server (they thought it was giving +1 crit range, instead of stacking), to Steelstar thinking that the scaling of wave and ki bolt are sufficient. From a producer not knowing about furyshotters, to the new loot in tower of frost, a nice quest with absolutely rubbish loot. Added to several loot disasters in the last 5-6 updates.

We then have a store filled with outdated options that are an embarrassment. And classes, feats, enhancements, and epic destinies so outdated that they have grown life of their own and sometimes come to bite us with not WAI synergies.

All that to say that I think that DDO is not receiving any serious attention. Bad communication policy is just something that happens when you are managing something that appears to be of second order of importance. I don't feel this is a main project in SSG, as I didn't feel it was a main project in turbine. I don't see any enthusiasm, good grasp of the game, I don't see ambition in the content created. We are given the bare minimum to keep us busy. Someone pointed out that in a whole year we have received ~6 new quests (or any other ridiculously low number). This was coupled with zerg fest ridiculous grinds, again to keep us busy with the bare minimum.

I really hope that someone in SSG realized that it has been a mistake to divert attention from working products, like DDO or LOTRO, to the new shiny thing. Let it be IC or mobile games or whatever other BS. After years of half arsing DDO (and even LOTRO), SSG/Turbine has created a reputation of sloppy development. So by the time the new shiny comes out (if it ever does), I will be extremely skeptical.

Then again, seeing the high rotation in the commanding posts, probably this matters little to the people making decisions.

[janave]

Ideally, AI should be affected by "Battle Moral" states, some tougher monsters or brutes may charge into our groups, makes good sense, trying to avenge his buddies. The rest should roll vs a save vs fear or shaken, and try to distance/cover itself from the group, as long as its an intelligent enemy.

Ideally, monsters would both horizontally and vertically spread out (much like in older content), where mob packs dont look like they were "brushed" there with some fancy new 1stroke/1job editor. I honestly dont think a procedural DDO works , much of the game quality is in the "hand built" feel and attention to detail.

One reason i prefer vertical dungeons, is that they make better use of encounter design than the flat ones, even tho the best would be to have both within an area, and some other interesting mob spawn encounters.

Bluff is a skill, most skills add something stacking or otherwise unavailable elsewhere. Some of them passively contribute to character effectiveness, eg: spellcraft. I think active skills should be generally better than passive skills, then they should be compared to similar effects, how readily those are available, cooldowns, costs, saves/nosaves, side-benefits[debuffs, extra dmg, cc], etc.

Then, after you have a strong idea where bluff is in the "powerstack", make it useful for those who invest in it, and workable for those who best benefit from it.

A) Leave it as is, and reduce the resistance significantly.
B) Buff the skill so it does actually worth the investment. (and help with future build/item support to get most out of it. )
C) Both ?
D) Neither

[NaturalHazard]

The reason for this is amateurish communication policies. For all the time I have been paying a bit more attention to DDO (last 2-3 years of my playtime) I have witnessed how DDO appears to be second order to whatever is happening in turbine/SSG. I have the impression that there are no devs truly devoted 100% to DDO. More like devs on different projects that spend some time in DDO. This became even more evident when they decided to make Severlin producer of both LoTRO and DDO.

I don't think DDO has worked, for most of its life, even with the resources it was generating. Obviously this is all speculation, but I feel that DDO has probably lost part of its own revenue to infinite crisis, or whatever other projects they were developing. And if it hasn't and I am wrong (and maybe DDO has drained LoTRO instead), then I feel that the budget has been small anyway.

While Cordovan has seemed to grow into the job, and the devs sometimes do surprise me with genuinely interesting stuff, most of the time I am under the impression that they know little about the game. From them acknowledging they never checked Holy Sword stacking on live or apparently a test server (they thought it was giving +1 crit range, instead of stacking), to Steelstar thinking that the scaling of wave and ki bolt are sufficient. From a producer not knowing about furyshotters, to the new loot in tower of frost, a nice quest with absolutely rubbish loot. Added to several loot disasters in the last 5-6 updates.

We then have a store filled with outdated options that are an embarrassment. And classes, feats, enhancements, and epic destinies so outdated that they have grown life of their own and sometimes come to bite us with not WAI synergies.

All that to say that I think that DDO is not receiving any serious attention. Bad communication policy is just something that happens when you are managing something that appears to be of second order of importance. I don't feel this is a main project in SSG, as I didn't feel it was a main project in turbine. I don't see any enthusiasm, good grasp of the game, I don't see ambition in the content created. We are given the bare minimum to keep us busy. Someone pointed out that in a whole year we have received ~6 new quests (or any other ridiculously low number). This was coupled with zerg fest ridiculous grinds, again to keep us busy with the bare minimum.

I really hope that someone in SSG realized that it has been a mistake to divert attention from working products, like DDO or LOTRO, to the new shiny thing. Let it be IC or mobile games or whatever other BS. After years of half arsing DDO (and even LOTRO), SSG/Turbine has created a reputation of sloppy development. So by the time the new shiny comes out (if it ever does), I will be extremely skeptical.

Then again, seeing the high rotation in the commanding posts, probably this matters little to the people making decisions.

Red haired step child?

[lppmor]

I completely agree that solo pulling was not working as intended. But instead of fixing only solo pulling, the change affected everything. You can't even sneak through mobs anymore, running the risk to go red alert as soon as ONE mob sees you. This has nothing to do with spoiling solo pulling.

My question to the devs:
Any chance to add this change only to Reaper? (I mean, technically speaking, maybe this can't be split)

[Qhualor]

I know perfectly well the theory. Now in actual gameplay there is exactly one instance where I used this and saw other people use it to great effect. One!

If they don't want people cheesing reaper they can just change it there or what not. But this aggro thing was the least of the problems in ddo right now. There are far more game breaking problems. For example, the fact that even though this change creates crazy alerts and bunches of mobs, it actually speeds up runs for some powerful builds. Thus highlighting massive differences in power; differences that are not in favor of the so called powerful bluff pullers.

I will probably find myself agreeing with tilomere, and that's something. Look at that other list of powerful "features". Those are among the things that are making the content easy, not bluff pulling.

As I said, the fact they felt the need times with this while leaving plenty of more powerful cheese in demonstrates how out of touch with the game we are playing they are.

I wont doubt that part of these changes has to do with Reaper, but this is something that needed to be addressed across the rest of the game too. players have been cheesing the agro mechanics for a very long time. Bruntsmash videos, players showing off how they invis solo runs, mobs turning and not moving while ranged bluffed taking away their threat to hit back, mobs spinning when more than 1 player beating on it successfully bluffs, mobs standing around as their friends get picked off one by one. the unintentional side effects from these changes are going to take some time.

what your post, just like many others, shows is your favor of less teamwork and more zerg. bluff pulling should be a viable tactic used intended more for the stealth builds. maybe niche, but for it to work properly and be a viable tactic for these builds, changes need to be made. as long as zerg and xp/min dominates in the game, bluff pulling will mostly be a solo thing. it wont work in groups.

[BigErkyKid]

I wont doubt that part of these changes has to do with Reaper, but this is something that needed to be addressed across the rest of the game too. players have been cheesing the agro mechanics for a very long time. Bruntsmash videos, players showing off how they invis solo runs, mobs turning and not moving while ranged bluffed taking away their threat to hit back, mobs spinning when more than 1 player beating on it successfully bluffs, mobs standing around as their friends get picked off one by one. the unintentional side effects from these changes are going to take some time.

what your post, just like many others, shows is your favor of less teamwork and more zerg. bluff pulling should be a viable tactic used intended more for the stealth builds. maybe niche, but for it to work properly and be a viable tactic for these builds, changes need to be made. as long as zerg and xp/min dominates in the game, bluff pulling will mostly be a solo thing. it wont work in groups.

You are wrong, I don't favor " less teamwork and more zerg". My writing just reflects the fact of the game as it exists right now, not in some imaginary world where "bluff pulling" is powerful, and it needs to be addressed.

Fact is that, aside from LE tempest solo runs, pulling is not needed nor desired in the rest of content. Mobs turning around favored disproportionately builds that are less tanky, and aside from cheesing a few encounters, again it was not powerful overall in the game.

Addressing bluff pulling and stealth tactics with the new aggro is attempting to balance characters against content starting in the wrong place. The builds and archetypes using it were niche, flavor, and far from optimal. The solution has caused more problems than it solves.

As for teamwork, I would favor a game a la "Commandos" if it was up to me. That is, where we cannot simply face roll any dungeon an encounter, and having a scout check out corridors, taking alternative routes, thinking that if we just step in its death with certainty, is the common place. This would be a better teamwork game.

But we don't have it. So my comments are based on what we do have. Based on the REAL game, this change has been an absolute disaster so far. It does not address the real issue, which is that we are too powerful wrt to content. It has never been a problem of people "bluff pulling" to victory. The problem with teamwork has always been people face rolling to victory, and this changes to aggro have done absolutely nothing to change that. And while they don't address balance wrt content, they surely have screwed a very niche role of stealth.