Epic Storm The Beaches - why is it so hard?

[Amorais]

I don't really understand the difficulty scaling on this. Getting OHK by an invisible ballista bolt from a ballista that isn't even rendering, while behind a building...on normal difficulty, why? None of the other quests in this series are close to being this difficult. I can imagine yeah fair dues on Elite or something but on Normal?

Damage on my pet wolf - 1,013 - instant death
Damage on me - 499 - sliver of health left

Second bolt hit me - invisibly for 265 piercing and 467 demolishing - instant death - remember this bolt was completely invisible to me when it hit
Damage to my wolf - 1,065

Seriously? Normal difficulty? Come on guys....get this quest scaled properly, it is zero fun dying like this.

[Saekee]

people just range them from below where the ballistas cannot really hit you

[ahpook]

people just range them from below where the ballistas cannot really hit you

Or agro them from below and let them blow themselves when they try to hit you from a bad angle.

In other words, cheese the encounter. So yes they are stupid and they should be altered to be reasonable and meaningful.

[Artos_Fabril]

people just range them from below where the ballistas cannot really hit you

This is why they OHKO in epic. Because in heroics people just range them from the water.

[Fauxknight]

Taking out or CCing the mob manning a ballista will prevent it from firing.

Personally I generally just kamikaze each ballista station. Destroyed ballistas don't fight back.

From an RP standpoint you'd expect the players to take control of a weapon that powerful and use it on the pirates and other ballistas.

[boredGamer]

I don't really understand the difficulty scaling on this. Getting OHK by an invisible ballista bolt from a ballista that isn't even rendering, while behind a building...on normal difficulty, why? None of the other quests in this series are close to being this difficult. I can imagine yeah fair dues on Elite or something but on Normal?

Damage on my pet wolf - 1,013 - instant death
Damage on me - 499 - sliver of health left

Second bolt hit me - invisibly for 265 piercing and 467 demolishing - instant death - remember this bolt was completely invisible to me when it hit
Damage to my wolf - 1,065

Seriously? Normal difficulty? Come on guys....get this quest scaled properly, it is zero fun dying like this.

You got hit TWICE by a ballista? I don't think I've ever gotten hit once by a ballista. Also, it's a castle wall mounted ship destroying ballista. Don't fight it that way? There's a number of ways to not directly fight those ballistas.

There is casual mode for a reason if normal is too hard?

[Baahb3]

You got hit TWICE by a ballista? I don't think I've ever gotten hit once by a ballista. Also, it's a castle wall mounted ship destroying ballista. Don't fight it that way? There's a number of ways to not directly fight those ballistas.

There is casual mode for a reason if normal is too hard?

What a dumb response. Thanks for your thoughts Mr. Awesomesauce.

The OP made a clear point. 1000 points of damage on a level 20 quest, on normal is not expected nor should it be. You can do ToD, a level 20 RAID, on normal and not get hit by that type of single hit damage. There is no damage instance in anything around that level on a single hit.

Yes there are ways to deal with them but if you come out the southern side of the structure, you could have aggroed the far platform with 3 ballista on your swim in, thus the invisible bolts while you are dealing with the other sea-side platforms. And if you are not familiar with the quest the sudden 1000hp damage hit is very out of the realm of normal for that level and difficulty range.

To both points from the OP, the ballista need to have some sort of range limit and the damage should not be what it is on Normal. As to your foot in mouth comment about Casual, the damage is still ~150 Pierce and ~250 Demolishing. Still way over damage specs for that level range and difficulty setting.

[boredGamer]

What a dumb response. Thanks for your thoughts Mr. Awesomesauce.

The OP made a clear point. 1000 points of damage on a level 20 quest, on normal is not expected nor should it be. You can do ToD, a level 20 RAID, on normal and not get hit by that type of single hit damage. There is no damage instance in anything around that level on a single hit.

Yes there are ways to deal with them but if you come out the southern side of the structure, you could have aggroed the far platform with 3 ballista on your swim in, thus the invisible bolts while you are dealing with the other sea-side platforms. And if you are not familiar with the quest the sudden 1000hp damage hit is very out of the realm of normal for that level and difficulty range.

To both points from the OP, the ballista need to have some sort of range limit and the damage should not be what it is on Normal. As to your foot in mouth comment about Casual, the damage is still ~150 Pierce and ~250 Demolishing. Still way over damage specs for that level range and difficulty setting.

And yet there is insta death everywhere. Yeah, I'm amazing for not assaulting a castle wall straight on.

[Saekee]

I find that the issue is not so much the ballista damage as their capacity to zero in on you even if you are stealthed.

Ultimately, the quest should not be about battling ballistas as using a small commando force to take out the leader and then dismantle the ballistas somehow while avoiding/defeating the mobs around there. If I were to design the quest, I would do it like Blown to Bits where one needs to set charges by each ballista to take it out. Ranging a ballista with a hand weapon is kind of silly.

[Oxarhamar]

I’ve liked the quest on epic

Sure it’s painful to get hit but the whole idea is avoiding that

[kmoustakas]

Or agro them from below and let them blow themselves when they try to hit you from a bad angle.

In other words, cheese the encounter. So yes they are stupid and they should be altered to be reasonable and meaningful.

Generally speaking, whenever they try to come up with a 'new and exciting mechanic that promotes teamwork and tactical play' this happens. My reasoning is probably because the ones who come up with these fun and exciting mechanics are designers and not players.

So yeah, you figure out the cheese and you're good 99%

[cdbd3rd]

Or agro them from below and let them blow themselves __ when they try to hit ...

When a missing "up" typo makes the best chuckle of the day.

[droid327]

I find that the issue is not so much the ballista damage as their capacity to zero in on you even if you are stealthed.

Ultimately, the quest should not be about battling ballistas as using a small commando force to take out the leader and then dismantle the ballistas somehow while avoiding/defeating the mobs around there. If I were to design the quest, I would do it like Blown to Bits where one needs to set charges by each ballista to take it out. Ranging a ballista with a hand weapon is kind of silly.

That's what the Spymaster route is for. Sneak around from the backside, take them out one by one.

Or just avoid aggroing them and swim around to the underwater entrance, then circle around from the back

[Bonulino]

Another curious point about the quest is that the ballistae fire on their own stronghold in an attempt to kill the intruder. In real life, this would lead to the destruction of your own castle. It would make more sense if mobs of pirates came up to get you.

[Enoach]

I think the perspective is these are designed to blow up ships - See the dialog on why they want these destroyed

I agree that the targeting from such long distances is a result of an agro system that grabs attention across the dungeon too easily.

ideally the approach should be to sneak up on the groups and disable those manning the ballista and not necessarily target the ballista

As these have splash damage, don't hide when being shot at, instead put distance between where it hits and yourself - jump off/run far far away.

There are optimal paths to minimize exposure to ballista damage. But overall I've found "hit & run" to be a very effective strategy since these do have slow load/fire movements.

[Abilbo]

I don't really understand the difficulty scaling on this. Getting OHK by an invisible ballista bolt from a ballista that isn't even rendering, while behind a building...on normal difficulty, why? None of the other quests in this series are close to being this difficult. I can imagine yeah fair dues on Elite or something but on Normal?

Seriously? Normal difficulty? Come on guys....get this quest scaled properly, it is zero fun dying like this.

Without trying to be super rude, its a ballista, it should one hit you.

The best course of action, as someone stated above, is to go the spy master route, clearing all the way to the top, and then jump down on to the castle, and clear the encounter there. Depending on the class and style you play, you should have several options for clearing. If you are ranged, just stand on the castle walls, and shoot the Monsters 1 by 1 until all of them by the ballista are clear. The ballista will NOT fire back at you if there is nobody to shoot it. If your a caster, instant death spells or NON-AOE spells are you go to, as once again, you clear all the monsters, then blow up the ballista. Melee have it worse, as they have to go to each ballista location and clear the trash one at a time, without "accidently" hitting the ballista while doing so.

As far as the 2nd bolt killing you, there are 2 locations where there are multiple ballista, and all of them might shoot at you if one of them gets triggered.

[krimsonrane]

Ranging a ballista with a hand weapon is kind of silly.

[droid327]

Melee have it worse, as they have to go to each ballista location and clear the trash one at a time, without "accidently" hitting the ballista while doing so.

Or go the other way...the ballistae arent that tough, and they take a while before they start firing. You can just try to charge and take out all the ballistae first, before they can start shooting you, then clean up the trash mobs

[Cordovan]

Epic Storm the Beaches has long been an outlier when it comes to damage output from those Ballistas. It is worth keeping in mind that the actual mechanic as intended is to have you sneak or otherwise manage your way carefully to the ballistas, then destroy them. So, they are intended to essentially one-shot you, since you aren't supposed to put them into a position to get one-shotted if you are doing it right. Using CC from a distance on the NPCs, for example, is a way to prevent the ballistas from firing. That said, this ideal hasn't quite matched the reality of either how the ballistas work (they find you awful easy sometimes), nor how players actually want to play that quest.

[DYWYPI]

Saekee, is meaning using light handheld weapon, e.g. projectile weapon (bow and arrow) to totally demolish a massive armoured siege ballista body at over 300 metre is rather farfetched. You could render it inoperable if you cut the ropes or wrecked the winch, but that pea-shooter wouldn't turn it into tiny splinters.

It'd be like a stinging insect attacking a zlanbeast: a mere nuisance. That's why he suggested explosives and tamper tactics.