How did you die?

[0ldschool]

Red Rain on *hard*, fighting trash in an alleyway until out of nowhere BAM I'm in the land of lost souls. Apparently exploding constructs can do ~ 500 fire damage at this difficulty.

Yes, they do. They will one shot Garret the Sainted almost every time, he's died many times in that alleyway with me I learned quickly to keep my distance and move away when I see their detonation sequence animation start.

EDIT: I have a reflex save in the 90's and Improved Evasion and it doesn't help at all.

[GeoffWatson]

My character died at level 20 in Epic Hard "Another Man's Treasure". We had been farming it for items, and seemed easy.
I got taken down by a griffon in the last room (to negatives), but the other players didn't have healing, only repair spells.
So a few seconds later, the griffon hit me again, and I died.

I think that's it for me for Hardcore.
I got the level 20 cosmetic, which looks good, but the Reaper and 5000 favour goals look too difficult.
I've seen characters die due to lag, or getting stuck on loading screens, so I suspect the odds of getting the other rewards are too low to spend that much time on.

[Loranth]

Found out there are rooms in the ship where if you walk, well...

Should have probably brushed memories in non-HC server first but thats not fun. Rediscovering things is fun!

[Tscheuss]

Found out there are rooms in the ship where if you walk, well...

Should have probably brushed memories in non-HC server first but thats not fun. Rediscovering things is fun!

The Danger Room will kill you. Also, the mage cannon in Proving Ground stateroom can hurt you badly if active.

[TylerOfOrien]

My character died at level 20 in Epic Hard "Another Man's Treasure". We had been farming it for items, and seemed easy.
I got taken down by a griffon in the last room (to negatives), but the other players didn't have healing, only repair spells.
So a few seconds later, the griffon hit me again, and I died.

I think that's it for me for Hardcore.
I got the level 20 cosmetic, which looks good, but the Reaper and 5000 favour goals look too difficult.
I've seen characters die due to lag, or getting stuck on loading screens, so I suspect the odds of getting the other rewards are too low to spend that much time on.

I'm really sorry to hear that. Grimvauld the warforged with the bastard sword, has been begging everyone to help him ransack 'Another Man's Treasure' and 'Kind of a Big Deal' for weeks. It really sucks to hear that there were casualties.

I ran AMT a few times with him too, but quickly got the vibe that it was a pointless risk. I saw those red griffons easily hitting for 250 damage a hit even on hard. They always aggro-ed the person with the fewest hit points first, no matter where they stood in the room and most of the time that was me.

So sorry to hear you story.

[AlcoArgo]

Level 4 (holding 5). Killed by a trap that I thought I had jumped over.

[stak]

Was killed by traps protecting levers to open the door to the end fight in Sacred Helm.
Was on a lvl 5 teifling warlock, soloing it on elite.

Just lost my lvl 15 warlock to a crowned mummy guardian in wiz king....that one hurt

[Nevilian]

Completed the level 6 House K quest and was looting the chest.

right before the servers closed, got stuck, an enemy I had somehow overlooked charged, crit, splat, sadness.

100% my fault but it hurt being stuck looting and getting crit, my tears will be extra salty tonight.

[bls904c2]

death by traps and lag 6 toons down endless more to come

my all time favorite lag death is ire stone inlet i just lit the torch went to jump off ship and was in air hovering there screaming no at the screen till boom just hovering there. 2 minutes later just hovering there side of ship lag slows enough to teleport me to land of souls and had to force shut down and restart the client

[Braegan]

Died a few days ago in WW Elite part 3. Solo'd my way to level 5 as a half-orc monk, got to the part with the levers and the drop down and I got a little cocky and got smoked trying to "Charge" the Kobold side.

And, that's probably the extent of my HC journey, lol. It was fun to try and I'm glad I saw it and started playing again. But, I think I may tr someone and get a feel for the game again back on live servers.

[nazgul748]

First death, level 17... got Kaboomed.

Second death, level 16... that first time I got exploded by Kaboom was an accident. It will never happen again. Yeah, I got Kaboomed again.

Not running Undermine anymore.

[TylerOfOrien]

First death, level 17... got Kaboomed.

Second death, level 16... that first time I got exploded by Kaboom was an accident. It will never happen again. Yeah, I got Kaboomed again.

Not running Undermine anymore.

This reads really funny. Hope your next life is undermine free.

[nazgul748]

This reads really funny. Hope your next life is undermine free.

Believe me it was. Got 1750 favour, hit level 20, and Tile is happily retired to Three Barrel.

[Kotharsjach]

So after playing on the HC server for a month now, I have had 3 deaths total.

First death was hubris. After making it to lvl 19 in the first week, there was nobody in my level range to group with. Able to 1 shot aoe with acid well, eldritch tempest and meteor swarm I started trying to get some gear to start on epics. After ransacking lost as sea on elite for the int googles, I decided to try for the int cloak out of wraithcallers instead. Tried hard, smoked it, went for elite, died in the portalable hole from a 3 stack evil dot after hitting my panic button. While, to some degree, I bemoaned the fact that it is BS you can't use negative energy burst in a public area, I swallowed my pride, and admitted it was my fault. Came out of that with a new rule, never try to solo elite or reaper, however easy it might seem.

2nd death was at lvl 22, and this was carelessness. First of all I ran content I was not very familar with, 2nd of all I assumed a EN quest wouldn't be dangerous especially for a tanky build, and 3rd I realized too late that the 15% arcane spell failure on a a heavy shield combined with a teleport scroll was not a good source for a panic button.

3rd death was Pure lag. And this is the great failing of hard core. When a 15 second lag spike can strike at any point, without warning, the entire concept of perma-death fails. Don't try to tell me the lag was on my end, when the whole party lags, it's clear, it is not. Had I not been lagging, I would have had at least 20 ways to prevent my death, actually scratch that, in this particular instance, I never should have taken more than 10% of my HP bar in damage. It isn't that it isn't preventable, just take any quest, imagine a bad pack of reapers and champs and then ask your self, if I afk for 15 seconds, would I survive this? If the answer is yes, then that is the difficulty you should run on HC. Classic example, at one point I was able to run feast or famine on epic hard, with ease, I happened to be running it on EN, to farm for relics, a 20 second lag spike hit, I tried teleporting out, spaming heals, nothing worked. So I disconnected asap, waited 5 minutes and logged back in. My soul stone was sitting on the floor.

So now looking at a 4th attempt, I'd need a build that auto regen's through lag while being fairly durable to start with, Es wlk anyone? Taking into account Hubris and carelessness, I need to run things on hard, when I could be doing R2, purely to avoid murphy's law and lag spikes. So a continued foray into HC requires me to run a build I don't care for on a difficulty setting that's face-roll boring, or to simply let someone else take the risks and carry me. This, is distinctly, unfun. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the positive aspects of HC, and there were many. But if HC is going have any degree of permanence, the lag issue needs to be addressed, I for one am done with HC and any future HC events until some answer is in the works for this.

[Fedora1]

So after playing on the HC server for a month now, I have had 3 deaths total.

I would assume you got a couple of the cosmetic rewards (L20 and 1750 favor). I don't remember the requirement for the reaper reward, did you achieve that? And just guessing you were still working toward the 5000 favor?

Thankfully I have not had anything worse than a few quick rubber band 1-2 second spikes, or when your swings are 2-3 seconds behind (like 4 swings to smash a barrel, or swing 3-4 times at a mob that go whoosh whoosh whoosh and suddenly you realize they are not actually standing there but are 10 feet away shooting at you with a bow.

[Deathlylife]

3rd death was Pure lag. And this is the great failing of hard core. When a 15 second lag spike can strike at any point, without warning, the entire concept of perma-death fails. Don't try to tell me the lag was on my end, when the whole party lags, it's clear, it is not. Had I not been lagging, I would have had at least 20 ways to prevent my death, actually scratch that, in this particular instance, I never should have taken more than 10% of my HP bar in damage.
'Snip'
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the positive aspects of HC, and there were many. But if HC is going have any degree of permanence, the lag issue needs to be addressed, I for one am done with HC and any future HC events until some answer is in the works for this.

I had a similar experience with lag, was at 4.4k favor when a 5 second lag spike hit while I was timing a trap. I stopped mid jump and hovered in the air directly in the trap. Saw the damage roll in and took multiple hits to kill me but could do nothing in response. undead aura? not ticking. Quicken neg burst? nope. Quicken teleport to market? nope. Just watched my character slowly die.
2nd attempt was at 3.9k favor when a 5+ second lag spike hit in a wilderness. This character was capable of solo zerging elite quests in this wilderness area but was dragging along a full group even though I was always way ahead of them in quests and basically soloing. I like putting up lfm with 'piking welcome' to help people out. Well a lag spike hit in the wilderness and I watched my elite capable solo build slowly get chipped away while standing there. Cleave, GCleave, EK Cleave? nope. Neg Burst? nope. Quicken teleport to market? nope. Just watched my character slowly die.

I agree that there are many positive aspects of HC and greatly enjoyed meeting people from other servers. But the rewards for HC and the leader boards are not really any reflection of a players skill but rather their luck of not getting lag or getting lag only when it doesn't matter. If the game did not lag I would have already got 5k favor twice and would have 2 characters on the favor leader board. (Third attempt I made a bad decision so that character deserves their death lol). Now on my fourth attempt because I really want the 5k favor reward but only since I have the time to continue pursuing it. SSG needs to take a serious look at various instances of lag death across all servers when it is reported and find a solution if they are to do Hardcore again with leader boards and extreme commitment rewards. Nothing against those people on the leader boards now but there are some really good players that should be on the board but are not due to lag deaths that would have never had happened in a functioning game server.

[Kotharsjach]

I would assume you got a couple of the cosmetic rewards (L20 and 1750 favor). I don't remember the requirement for the reaper reward, did you achieve that? And just guessing you were still working toward the 5000 favor?

Thankfully I have not had anything worse than a few quick rubber band 1-2 second spikes, or when your swings are 2-3 seconds behind (like 4 swings to smash a barrel, or swing 3-4 times at a mob that go whoosh whoosh whoosh and suddenly you realize they are not actually standing there but are 10 feet away shooting at you with a bow.

I was lvl 30 decked out in the cherry picked BIS non-raid cap level gear for my build, I was short exactly 1 item from being fully geared. I had just started cranking out 10k+ rexp a day and was all set to sprint to the 100k reward. The lag spike hit me at the worst possible moment in the worst possible quest I was planning to run that day. It was a 1 in a million chance that came to fruition. IMO any other form of death is preventable, the lag death only if you follow the guidelines I posted above. In reaper, it's hard to run R1 and be able to survive a 15sec afk vs a bad pack of champs, so in my mind anyone who makes the top tier of the reaper rewards is going to have to have a certain degree of luck, or just be behind the guy who dies during the 1/million. And if we are talking the 1 in a billion chances when a very bad spike can kill you on lower difficulties, that drops the difficulty and builds that are viable even further.

The silver lining of this is that my main has been hamster wheeling heroics and i'll be able to transfer a very usable alt with ED's mostly maxed and all the new shiny loot from the latest content,

[Kotharsjach]

Well a lag spike hit in the wilderness and I watched my elite capable solo build slowly get chipped away while standing there. Cleave, GCleave, EK Cleave? nope. Neg Burst? nope. Quicken teleport to market? nope. Just watched my character slowly die.

This makes me really sad. On my third go around I only spent 4 days in heroics but i'm fairly sure I ran into you right after you acquired your cosmetic worthy greatsword. I always figured you would go out in a glorious blaze of combat surrounded by your fallen enemies, it's of small comfort that in the end only lag could take you down. I've been telling my party members for a week now that only lag can kill me now, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened.

[Hafeal]

Terag has passed into the great unknown amidst the ruins of Threnal ... a Reaper of great strength appeared through walls after acquiring a jewelled key and death was the calling card.

No lag. No stutter. Not a one shot.

Just looking another way and getting hit, moved backed to party, got a heal, but just not quite enough fast enough to defeat the Reaper.

Sad ... but time for a second effort!

[TylerOfOrien]

I had a similar experience with lag, was at 4.4k favor when a 5 second lag spike hit while I was timing a trap. I stopped mid jump and hovered in the air directly in the trap. Saw the damage roll in and took multiple hits to kill me but could do nothing in response. undead aura? not ticking. Quicken neg burst? nope. Quicken teleport to market? nope. Just watched my character slowly die.
2nd attempt was at 3.9k favor when a 5+ second lag spike hit in a wilderness. This character was capable of solo zerging elite quests in this wilderness area but was dragging along a full group even though I was always way ahead of them in quests and basically soloing. I like putting up lfm with 'piking welcome' to help people out. Well a lag spike hit in the wilderness and I watched my elite capable solo build slowly get chipped away while standing there. Cleave, GCleave, EK Cleave? nope. Neg Burst? nope. Quicken teleport to market? nope. Just watched my character slowly die.

I agree that there are many positive aspects of HC and greatly enjoyed meeting people from other servers. But the rewards for HC and the leader boards are not really any reflection of a players skill but rather their luck of not getting lag or getting lag only when it doesn't matter. If the game did not lag I would have already got 5k favor twice and would have 2 characters on the favor leader board. (Third attempt I made a bad decision so that character deserves their death lol). Now on my fourth attempt because I really want the 5k favor reward but only since I have the time to continue pursuing it. SSG needs to take a serious look at various instances of lag death across all servers when it is reported and find a solution if they are to do Hardcore again with leader boards and extreme commitment rewards. Nothing against those people on the leader boards now but there are some really good players that should be on the board but are not due to lag deaths that would have never had happened in a functioning game server.

You guys are complaining about how lag makes the HC tournament unplayable, and yet you both reached most of the rewards available? This sounds like a contradiction. You both even made it close to 5k, which is one of the mega rewards that is supposed to be practically unattainable. Lag sucks and I won't say its ok, but infrastructure can't be perfect and it seems like everything is around where it should be for a first try. Remember this is the first HC tournament EVER.

Maybe SS can look into a higher speed server for the next one (if there is a next one).