Hounds trivialized

[Arjen]

"Hound Damage Over Time and Vulnerability effect stacking now has an internal five second cooldown, which will prevent stacks from accumulating more quickly than intended."

So we can just solo everything now with no danger? Cool.

(I'm all for the water fixes).

[dogsoldier]

I am pretty sure that the Tier 3 Doom Fey Brilliant Champ hounds will still be a challenge. The internal cooldown was (from my understanding) to prevent the glitching that would cause the DoT to stack many times in just 1-2 seconds. I don't think it even comes into play under normal circumstances, just when they are bouncing in water or something.

If anything solo'ing just got harder due to the "hound not knowing what to do until someone moves" thing that was easy strategize solo, but more difficult in group.

And grouping may be a little easier since someone cannot as easily accidentally (or intentionally) glitch a hound away from the party in adjusted level 7+ quests (with the DoT).

[Karthunk]

"Hound Damage Over Time and Vulnerability effect stacking now has an internal five second cooldown, which will prevent stacks from accumulating more quickly than intended."

So we can just solo everything now with no danger? Cool.

(I'm all for the water fixes).

The quoted sentence literally says "more quickly than intended".

[Kayze]

So we can just solo everything now with no danger? Cool.

You always could.

The statement you quoted is just part of how they addressed the infinitely-falling-through-water bug. Prior to the fix, hounds would apply their DoT every time they respawned from falling into water. Since DoTs deal their first tick of damage on application, this quickly led to multiple instances of damage in a very short amount of time, leading to unexpected deaths.

[Arjen]

They don't apply their DOT at all now on spawn and then die before they have a chance to do so.

[vageta311]

They don't apply their DOT at all now on spawn and then die before they have a chance to do so.

So basically if you can kill it in less than 5 secs there is no DOT? The only time I've seen a hound last longer than 5 secs in any quest is if it's bugged out and can't be attacked, so yes TC is correct that they're trivialized.

[Steelstar]

"Hound Damage Over Time and Vulnerability effect stacking now has an internal five second cooldown, which will prevent stacks from accumulating more quickly than intended."

So we can just solo everything now with no danger? Cool.

(I'm all for the water fixes).

This is a backup fix in case some other system beyond the water/falling recovery system causes Hounds to rapidly teleport to their home position. With the Water bug, each return home would trigger a new stack of the DOT+Vulnerability, allowing it to build up much more quickly than intended. While we put in a fix for the Water bug, this fix means even if a Hound ends up in a state where it's rapidly teleporting home, players can't get a new stack added faster than once every 5 seconds. In normal gameplay, this adjustment should not have any effect whatsoever.

[Episkopos]

Considering the general consensus on the forums pre-patch, this will be a welcome change for most. Even more so when you factor in deaths on Hardcore which were directly related to the hounds bugging out. Of course, there is always the option of not playing on Hardcore if you find the changes unacceptable. Which is pretty much the same response folks got when the shoe was on the other foot....

[Kayze]

So basically if you can kill it in less than 5 secs there is no DOT? The only time I've seen a hound last longer than 5 secs in any quest is if it's bugged out and can't be attacked, so yes TC is correct that they're trivialized.

They will still spawn and apply one stack. It just will not apply another stack if it somehow gets respawned within that 5 second window.

[Karthunk]

They don't apply their DOT at all now on spawn and then die before they have a chance to do so.

They do apply the DoT. I've just fought five hounds so far and all gave DoT stacks. The stacks just don't build up at the massive rate that they were before.

[slarden]

I joined a few groups today and all were extremely vigilant/concerned about the hounds. They are still tough, but I haven't seen any buggy behavior which I view as a good thing.

[jskinner937]

Try Hard Devils Assault on level 8 (which is an adjusted to a level 12 quest). The hounds do not go down so fast.

[Seph1roth5]

Unfortunately there's no difficulty levels or anything for the OP to change if he wants a harder quest.

[PurpleTimb]

Unfortunately there's no difficulty levels or anything for the OP to change if he wants a harder quest.

Ah, so the OP is already doing all the quests at Reaper 10? You're right then, I guess he can't get a harder quest. </sarcasm>

[LiquidZombie]

Unfortunately there's no difficulty levels or anything for the OP to change if he wants a harder quest.

But he doesn't want a harder quest for himself. He wants a harder quest for everybody else.

He also doesn't understand what "cooldown" means. A cooldown isn't a delay before something happens, it's a delay after something happens (to prevent it happening again too quickly).

[Amorais]

It literally says right there in the description of the fix, the hounds were bugged. I guess since your obviously soloing R10 there's no longer a challenge for you?