Temple of Elemental Evil: Round 1 Feedback

[redoubt]

Like I said, if you're using 60 PRR for light then that 200 for heavy is misleading. A cleric with only H. armour +30 sheltering item will be at 79(19 BAB) and will have a max dodge of 6 in shadow plate(2 base, 2 ship and 2 augment), that vs your wizard that can be in wraith form wont look so bad. To get 200 in heavy you really need to work for it, 64 base with 28 BAB, 30 item, 36 PLs, 10 feat, 25 fighter/paladin stance only gets you to 165, add 12 from bladeforged or 10 from necro set and 5 from MoD ring and you're at 180-182. Could add shields for Vanguards I guess but there's also nothing stopping your wizard from getting that Tor tower and masters touching it for similar gains.

Cleric in full plate can also wear a tower shield (or large at least.) They have the divine power spell as well for full BAB. If they are a melee cleric then they will likely run in something that grants more PRR. These are all available to even a pure cleric:
Warpriest enhancements
Wall of Steel +3/+6/+10 Physical Resistance Rating
Sanctuary For 20 seconds, you gain +20 Sacred bonus to Physical Resistance. (Activation Cost: 10 Spell Points. Cooldown: 1 minute)
Legendary Shield Mastery, an Unyielding Sentinel's tier 2 ability, improves PRR by 5 per rank when wearing a shield. 3 ranks total, higher ranks require (Improved) Shield Mastery.
Heed No Pain, the Unyielding Sentinel's level 4 innate ability, improves PRR by 10 and grants 20 additional physical resistance while in Unbreakable stance.
Improved Combat Expertise, a Legendary Dreadnaught's tier 2 ability, improves PRR by 20 when Combat Expertise is active.

My Vanguard was at 202 at level 27 last life. This include 3xPDK and 2xDivine for 15PRR from past lives. That would knock the number down to 187. BUT!!! if I ran in US instead of DC, it would go up by 30 in Unbreakable and another 20 from improved CE (don't have to twist legendary shield mastery anymore which opens that twist to improved CE), so I'd be up to 237 without the past lives. I'd say that leaves room to drop to 200 as a good tank number.

Light/robe armour wearers are rangers, rogues, monks, sorcs and wizards, everyone else can get med or heavy. Rangers, sorcs and wizards can all range things so this debuff already has an easy counter for them available. Rogues I already covered and monks are in a similar boat to rogues.

Medium is the worst of both worlds.
1. No evasion.
2. not much increase in PRR/MRR
3. Big loss in MDB.
But you are correct. It is available.

Not all Rangers are ranged fighters. Tempest does fall under ranger. I've had a few melee rangers, but never a ranged ranger. Another example is the one I listed early. I'm building a Druid/Rogue/Ranger that is a melee wolf with full trapping skills. This build does not range and has been wearing light armor to maintain evasion. That said, I am very seriously looking into dropping Quicken to take heavy armor proficiency and going heavy armor instead. Even without the shield.

Bladeforged/warforged can hit 230 without too much hassle, BF are already really strong and this would just make them stronger for no reason. Champs are meant to be circumvented with smarts not gear, quest knowledge or PLs to help even out the play experience between players.

I do get that it affects low PRR/HP toons more than high PRR/HP ones, heavy armour on live right now I'd put in the over performing category. Rogues in light or robes on Lamannia are performing fine though, it's just the toons that haven't seen their passes yet that might be falling behind.

I already said PM and forged could likely all get there. I'm actually okay with that. Then again, I'm okay with tanks being tanks. I'm okay with rogues being glass cannons with amazing dps. I'm okay with buffing non-monk archers to a competitive level. So its possible we just don't have the same game goals and that is okay.

I am not okay with the toons without their passes falling farther behind... again, just one person's opinion.

[Powerhungry]

but the red named earth elementals in part 1 had way to many hp - on EN it took me over 5 minutes to beat them down. (on a well geared completionist that soloed Dagan at level 20).
However, the red named cleric they were guarding (Komag?) had way to few hp - under 3k. I killed him in 2 hits.
4 massive hp bags followed be a gimpy cleric.
He should have a massive arsenal of spells to use and enough hp and self healing to get a chance to use them. Blade barrier, greater command, flame strike, cometfall, firestorm, energy drain, implosion, destruction, etc...
Rather than making the enemies 'tougher' by giving them hundreds of thousands of hp, make them craftier and smarter. Give them resources and let them use them. 4 red named earth elementals we have to kill. OK. so we have to solve some puzzles in the area or the just respawn. or we have to break/purify every altar/vase/urn, etc.. They have to be prepped and separated (a la Shroud part 2). they have to be prepped separated and killed in their own area (random each time thus they'd have to have names to tell them apart - even thing 1 and thing 2 or red fish blue fish). So many ways to make the player have to be smarter rather than just develop carpal tunnel from mouse clicking 80,000 times to kill and elemental.
Just my opinion on the little bit I saw.
Also the red named medusa's stone gaze was almost instant from the time the visual/audio tell tale was activated. Might need to increase the time from cue to activation just a bit (or shorten its duration).

Spent a bit more time in there today with my dex based rogue assassin. (still on EN)
Figured out how to deal with the earth elementals - much better and what I get for not searching out everything.
The cleric is still way underpowered though.
While not a min/max build my assassinate DC of 55 succeeded less than 50% on EN. Epic normal is where you might expect a 'casual' player to run and they would use a build and equipment similar to mine. The success rate of 50% is rather lower for a DC55 (IMO).

[Powerhungry]

Per my previous post, which I couldn't edit, I ran a level 26 third life pure rogue assassin (DEX based) (dc 55 assassinate).
Please fix the mapping. With the number of portals and doors in there, if the map blacks out every time, it will ruin the quest (not break it, just seriously dampen the experience). If I've been there, it should stay cleared of FoW (fog of war).
There are several enemies (harpies mainly) that do not activate until/unless they see you. Makes playing an assassin impossible for those encounters since they have to see me to activate and then I can't assassinate because they see me.
Found one chest that I couldn't open (or pick) and there was nothing around it (sorry, didn't /loc it, my bad) but it was in the initial area of the earth temple.
Place is huge.
Like what I see so far (minor complaints).
Make the loot worth it (Jedi mind trick - you want to make an awesome dagger...)

[lordalberonn]

I haven't been on Lam but I do have one question. How close is the original 1st Edition AD&D adventure's map to the in-game map? I still have that old module in my bookcase. lol

I also remember a trap in the PnP adventure: you ended up in a pit where 12 giant rats would enter at a time per (round?) until 144 rats came in there. That's a lot of rats chewing on you. Did they keep a variant of this trap in the adventure?

[davmuzl]

Pretty sure what you're looking for there is a different game. This is DDO. It's based Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition/3.5. Know what one of the defining features of 3E is? Bad guys are built on and follow the same rules as PCs. Stop encouraging them to move even further away from that towards some WoW/Neverwinter ****.

3rd Edition rules?! That's why NPCs can instant cast dancing balls? That's why you would laugh at an NPC with 2k hp or less(what players will have)?
Neverwinter is a bad game and one of the reasons are the annoying red markers on hte floor. Nobody wants that in the game. Never played WoW so I can't say anything about that. We have similar mechanics in the game already and they make the combat interesting because it forces the player to react rather relying on their defense that reduces the damage to less then 10% and then pressing their instant heal in case they actually get close to dying for whatever reason.
And even if they moved "towards some WoW/Neverwinter", interactive combat is not a bad thing to have in the game. Better that than the whole "we have to keep the players grinding" idea that MMOs in general have to move away from.

[Marten]

I haven't been on Lam but I do have one question. How close is the original 1st Edition AD&D adventure's map to the in-game map? I still have that old module in my bookcase. lol

I also remember a trap in the PnP adventure: you ended up in a pit where 12 giant rats would enter at a time per (round?) until 144 rats came in there. That's a lot of rats chewing on you. Did they keep a variant of this trap in the adventure?

I posted the DDO Maps Here. I will answer your question there as well.

[glavin99]

Hi

I am 52. I life long gamer. I was never more excited about an update.

I have gone to Lammania and never had a decent 7th lvl so I copied a 3oth lvl. Tough but I loved it.

Ran though the low level with my 3oth lvl just to see the map. Very true to the original on the main floor.

I hope Zuggy is in there but never seen her yet.

Great job I don't envy you.

Dave McGrat

[Cordovan]

A Champion has killed Round 1 with a disintegrate. Round 2 has risen from its ashes!

Thanks, everyone, for the great feedback.