U42 Preview 3: First Sharn Raid

[Cocomajobo]

Disclaimer

Everything seen on the preview server, Lamannia, is not final and is subject to change or removal before live release.

Masterminds of Sharn is expected to feature 2 Raids. One will release with Update 42 and the second will make it's way to live in a followup patch sometime after (just like the release schedule for the two Mists of Ravenloft Raids: "Curse of Strahd" and "Old Baba's Hut"). This preview contains the first Masterminds of Sharn Raid currently named "Too Hot to Handle". Players can gain access to this by speaking to "Lord Poincelot" in the center of the test dojo and then purchasing the "Masterminds of Sharn" adventure pack in the DDO Store. The questgiver and raid entrance can be found in "Alcorin's Forge" the raid staging area public space located within the Cogs. Players can either traverse the Cogs Explorer area to reach Alcorin's Forge or they can speak to the "Cogs Guide" in the clifftop tower district of Sharn in order to teleport directly there (NOTE: The Cogs Guide will NOT transport you to Alcorins Forge until you have discovered it yourself in the Live release of Update 42. This is a preview only immediate unlock of the teleport location).

Quest Known Issues

• None! Let us know if you find anything!

[Eldried]

Ran it with 7 people on Normal. Was harder then last lamania, espescially cause the big skulls we had last lam were smaller versions now that were acctual creatures that attack you. And they sometimes hover over the Lava which makes them harder to handle. And they keep respawning.

Interesting mechanic with the traps, but the puzzles were never a big issue in my opinion, so now its even easier to handle them(Once)

Another problematic thing was the new fire dot you get from the trash and boss? Not 100% sure where it comes from and where you are save from it. When Raid completes the trash despawns which is nice.
Also some new circles on the floor cast by Boss/mobs? that needs to be avoided.

All or most save spots seem to be fixed and you can't make the trash follow you into the lava anymore and get them to despawn.


A still annoying thing is at the beginning when we kill the second trash wave before the shrine(to fast? not sure) the fire barrier does not go down and we have to restart(we waited several minutes and it did not go down). That happened 3 times.... VERY annoying.

[Noircere]

The mind-controlled workers in phase 2+ run as fast as a full barb/monk/druid, making them faster than other melees. Is this intentional?

[Unsinful]

I was a part of that 7 person run that Eldried was also in. I agree that the raid was certainly harder than the last time it was on lamannia with a lot more things you have to be focused on and avoid.

KT when it was new seemed so simple. Go from island to island killing the dragon and handling trash carefully. It took a day to see the first LE completion and even to this day pugs (on ghallanda) are posted for LH as opposed to R1 for raids like Baba and Strahd. Few guilds go for R1 runs if they involve any non-guild members at all. I loved KT and think its an awesome raid that requires the right amount of teamwork and coordination to complete and pushing the skulls up is no simple task, but the lower difficulties are accepting enough to allow people to complete without too much frustration.

I have more of a problem with Too Hot to Handle than I ever had with KT. Despite Killing Time’s difficulty it was doable even by a pug on a lower difficulty on release. Too Hot to Handle seems to exclude a good chunk of the endgame raiding community from completing it even on normal with its current scaling. The devs have stated that they want to endgame of DDO to be raids a few times now and this raid looks like its going to be the most exclusive raid yet. Even to step in on normal and have a hope of completing you will need to be able to think and react under extreme pressure whereas in the past with Strahd/Baba/KT you could sort of brute force your way through lower difficulties. I think that the people that like to hang out at cap and run raids with their friends on lower difficulties will end up skipping this raid for a while.

Nice job fixing all the safe spots throughout. I feel we are missing a massive mechanic because the amount of fanatics spawning and the amount of trash that spawns was absolutely crazy for normal. At one point we had so much trash alive that anytime the forgewraiths used their firebreath like attack there was almost nowhere to stand where you could avoid it. Maybe consider making it more clear when more fanatics were spawning. Last lam there was a dialogue every time you got new spawns and this time it seemed to be buggy. Sometimes the boss would have his dialogue and you could hear the DM but other times you saw the dialogue flash on screen but with no audio and it was hard to catch up to the sprinting fanatics once they were out of their spawn.

Here are some damage numbers i experienced on normal.
All damage is from normal difficulty with fire energy sheathe and 120 MRR:
Flying skulls that the boss throws hit for 700-800 evil damage. Very high considering how many there are and how often this ability is seen. There seems to be ways to block them however.
New skull mobs hit for 300 fire and 300 evil damage in very rapid succession. Also seems very high considering sometimes they hang out in places where you can’t hit them with anything but ranged and the occasional spell. Seems to be unavoidable damage (no save and no way to block the damage types completely)
Bosses new DoT hit for around 400 fire and 400 evil damage at 5 stacks on a 120 MRR toon and ticked every 3 seconds like a typical dot. Seemed ok to deal with as long as the healer can identify who has the dots
Bosses’ actual attacks seemed better this go around i.e. he wasn’t 1 shotting anyone standing near him at least on normal.
Red Circles (like blue in strahd and KT) hit for 6,000 fire damage and were easy to avoid but if you are not moving and focused on several other things this will instakill you.

The raid looks absolutely beautiful and I wouldn’t change a cosmetic thing about it.
I do have a few suggestions however:
Despite me saying its hard DO NOT make this raid any easier. Perhaps consider making some of the damage from the dots and skull enemies more avoidable so that you reward players who take the time to move around and dodge tactfully as well as giving people more than 1 second to react. (It was the hardest thing i’ve Ever had to heal on normal and I healed R5 Killing Time)
Consider giving us a second shrine or allow us to go back to that first shrine somehow after we’ve entered the final room. There is very little fighting before that shrine and the last phase is the majority of the raid. On a healer favored soul (with 8k sp) i found myself dipping into the SP pot stash before the boss even hit 50% (granted we were low on dps but i also had less people to heal and we had a second healer).

I was not a happy camper at first after completing the raid. I wanted a challenge (and boy did we get one) but I couldn’t get over the fact that this was one of the two raids that we are getting with sharn and it was this difficult for a group of endgame raiders who play the game to push content to its limits. I had to pretend like I was in someone’s shoes who isn’t in an endgame raiding guild and what I saw was a raid that was so brutal and punishing that I didn’t want to go and do it again. Please consider doing something, be it gear or raid tweeks, or some third thing, to make this raid a little more accepting of the diverse endgame of DDO (at least on normal and hard. Make elite and reaper as hard as you want and I will support you).
There is a lot of time and effort that went into this raid and I would hate to see it and the gear that comes with it left behind because people got frustrated trying to even complete normal.

[Noircere]

It is difficult to tell unlit red signal crystals from lit red signal crystals. Please change the starting unlit state to black.

[HastyPudding]

It looks like the suggestions and comments made in the previous raid preview were utterly ignored. I'm rapidly losing faith in the development of this expansion.

[Xyfiel]

I ran the raid early this morning in a pug of six people. Four of them had just tried it so there was some experience. I had watched it on a stream.

We had some dps issues in the preshrine area because a Giant kept healing itself when the floor went to fire. Expected since only six of us.
We got through the initial phase with minimal issue. Fvs healing wall in the middle plus my Bard temp hit points and spot healing. The leader handled the puzzles and we killed and healed fine.
The boss phase everything went chaotic. Some was down on the boss. I got instakilled by skulls while coming off the stairs. I didn't see them in time. I got killed again as soon as I got raised. First thing I did was use inspiration song on myself and I died before it completed. Later I died again under 10 seconds from being raised. All three from skulls I had no chance against. I hear there is a way to block them so maybe this won't be an issue. The rest of the group just died slowly one by one and couldn't heal/raise fast enough. We did get decent damage on the boss.

All together the fact of being six people and still learning the mechanics we wiped early. Wasn't fun at all. Stand in circle of healing so you don't die while a few people do the raid is reminiscent of the Titan raid. Doing puzzles multiple times is a boring time sink. I hope some good strategies come out soon.

[Ladywolf]

I worry that there is not much reason to bring an arcane caster as it’s just as good if not better to bring a dc healer with turn undead (and heals) plus a dps, instead of an arcane plus a healer

[HastyPudding]

I worry that there is not much reason to bring an arcane caster as it’s just as good if not better to bring a dc healer with turn undead (and heals) plus a dps, instead of an arcane plus a healer

It doesn't help that the raid is filled with A LOT of magic damage, which means low MRR classes (like monks, rogues, and arcanes) will have a difficult time in this raid even staying alive.

[Iriale]

The fact that the devs forget to create roles for all the archetypes in the raids is already a bad habit ... they tend to forget that there should be other things than dps and healing in a raid.

Although I worry even more that the raid is so difficult. Normal should at least be accessible to all kinds of players. To make only top-ten players have access to this type of content is to forget the immense mass of their clients, and it is to enlarge the already abysmal power gap between the top players and the rest, since not only tops will get their loot before, but they will be the only ones who will get it.

To this day the pugs of killing time are still scarce and not very animated. People are not about the work of making a raid with so many chances of failure. Pugs still fail mainly in hard. This speaks of bad game design directly. Designers should encourage, and help, that the most delayed players were joining this type of content for the lower difficulties, instead of frightening them with excessively difficult content even in normal

How far have you come, SSG workers, in your desire to focus on the hardcore that you forget that the renewal and longevity of the game rests in more players joining the hardcores?

[Lynnabel]

The fact that the devs forget to create roles for all the archetypes in the raids is already a bad habit

What roles do you think this raid currently excludes?

[Iriale]

What roles do you think this raid currently excludes?

Read the posts previous to mine. I'm not the only one who thinks about it. Do you really not think that an arcane is a waste here? Or that classes with low mrr are going to be a nuisance rather than a help?

In truth I think you devs are doing a good job in the history and development of the raids. They have dynamic and interesting environments. (In general, the development of content is being your strong point, you know that I do not like the current trend of the loot, but you do well or very well with the quests) But in the raids you devs tend to focus too much on dps and healing, forgetting that there are classes that are not good for either of these two roles and need other types of challenges.

Excessive red names challenges, excess of trash of specific types (such as undead or constructs, which cause that only certain classes can deal with them, while the others are neither good with this class of trash nor with the bosses), and excess damage that the characters of lower defences by the nature of their classes can not evade with an intelligent play, are recurrent things in the last raids. Imo, Lynn, these are details that you should look at. It is very frustrating to join a raid and then see that you are almost useless; that your position would be better covered by another class.

You devs have not made the big mistake you made with DOJ in your day, where there is only one type of role, the dps, but even so... I feel that in the raids there are roles represented very sparingly and an overemphasis on dps and red (purple) nameds.

thanks for reading my concerns

[Lynnabel]

Do you really not think that an arcane is a waste here?

I played a pure wizard DC casting Deep Gnome during a few of our internal playtests, and had a great time instakilling the running Cultists before they hit the lava. I think as more of the raid is discovered and understood, the available roles will shift.

Or that classes with low mrr are going to be a nuisance rather than a help?

I was capped at 50 MRR - the overwhelming majority of the magical damage is avoidable. Speaking of avoidable, I definitely accidentally ran myself off the ledge to my immediate death, and I can safely recommend to not do that.

[Iriale]

I played a pure wizard DC casting Deep Gnome during a few of our internal playtests, and had a great time instakilling the running Cultists before they hit the lava. I think as more of the raid is discovered and understood, the available roles will shift.



I was capped at 50 MRR - the overwhelming majority of the magical damage is avoidable. Speaking of avoidable, I definitely accidentally ran myself off the ledge to my immediate death, and I can safely recommend to not do that.

ok, we'll see when the raid arrives at the live servers and I can discover all the tricks by playing it repeatedly. I have not had too much time to test it extensively in the playtest, but I have gathered the impressions I have described above, and since I can see a trend in this direction in the raids designed in recent years, I was a bit worried (certainly in killing time the magic damage was not avoidable xD).

I hope that in the end it will be a great experience for all the classes, and that the devs will take into account the excessive emphasis that I have mentioned before for future raids.

[Lynnabel]

the impressions I have described above

To be pretty blunt, sometimes, public feedback we get says one thing but means something else entirely - or is based off of incomplete or just incorrect information. That's why we really want as many people as possible to get firsthand experience inside the actual encounter.

[Iriale]

To be pretty blunt, sometimes, public feedback we get says one thing but means something else entirely - or is based off of incomplete or just incorrect information. That's why we really want as many people as possible to get firsthand experience inside the actual encounter.

it seems good to me, but you also have to recognize that given the past tendency of the raids (already more than confirmed in the live servers), these first impressions give us a little fear. And more considering that if we do not talk now, then it will be too late.

There is also the issue that the raid seems even more difficult than killing time, which is still a raid not popular in pugs for that reason. It could be another false impression because of my lack of familiarity with the raid, but ...

But as I say, I trust your words and I'll wait to see the raid better. Overall, I liked the environment and the development, I also want to say that.

[SpartanKiller13]

I worry that there is not much reason to bring an arcane caster as it’s just as good if not better to bring a dc healer with turn undead (and heals) plus a dps, instead of an arcane plus a healer

Instakilling Cultists, Undeath to Death on bigger things, Arcane Pulse on biggest stuff? That seems like what I'd be after on an arcane.

[HastyPudding]

I was capped at 50 MRR - the overwhelming majority of the magical damage is avoidable. Speaking of avoidable, I definitely accidentally ran myself off the ledge to my immediate death, and I can safely recommend to not do that.

Avoidable? I didn't have a chance (or a group) to test out the raid on the 3rd preview, but I sincerely hope the random skulls that shoot out in waves from the boss are avoidable, because the last time they made a dive bomb towards anything that moved at speeds to make an Olympic sprinter blush with shame. Also, I fail to see how you can avoid 400+ fire damage ticking off every two seconds, and that was on normal, or on reaper 1 being one-shot by those moving skulls for over 2,000 damage (that was on the 2nd preview, where I was on my spellsinger bard with 100 MRR, fire sheathe, and an absorption item). Judging from what people have already said in this thread, the damage was not lowered (and in some cases it looks to be increased).

Sorry, but I'm extremely skeptical about your statement.