____Encounter Suggestions____
Lair of the Mad Dragon: Final boss,
- for a T1 this is an absurd encounter. The larger adds come so often that the dps spends most of their time dealing with them; the boss goes down very slow. Then, towards the end of the fight, a pack comes in with two mass AoE healers (Erineyes) whos heals apparently have no cool down and almost no cast time. It should be a simple matter to burn down the healers, but the pack is dense enough that it becomes hard to isolate them without ending up targeting something else. Even if you do manage to get them isolated, the heals they drop are so fast they are overly difficult to interrupt. This fight is considerably harder than many of the T2 battles, and it has very little to do with the boss itself.
- Suggestion: Reduce general "large" add spawn by about 1/3rd, remove one of the two Erineyes from the big pack and/or give them a cast time.
*- Munkey81 brings up some valid points, but I still feel that the base # of adds should be reduced to bring this encounter inline with other T1 content.
- CN: Draco "fisting" AoE should have faster activation time. This would do two things, 1) it would increase the difficulty of the fight for those slow to react, 2) it would reduce forced dodge landing onto another AoE circle 1/10th of a second too early.
-Wight AoE indicators should appear earlier in their animation, dodging when it shows up is currently dodging too late.
Frozen Heart: First boss
- encounter takes too long, reduce HP and adds to side passages to reasonable levels.
Abomin Skirmish (60 skirm): final chest needs to drop a 60 scroll, all of the drops in this skirm are level 60. While you are at it, make this skirm worth doing, and reduce the # of times it needs to be done for daily credit as it is particularly long vs. reward.
__ general __
- Loot rules need updated; party leader should be able to select level of (non enchant) loot that would require rolls, as well as selecting whether need is available as a roll option. This should only be able to be modified outside of a dungeon, or upon initial entry and should be view-able by all players in the group.
--- once this is fixed party members kicked during loot rolls should still have a shot at getting loot to avoid ninja party leaders.
- immunity from dodging slightly too short (or at least hit and miss, seems to be shorter than others sometimes), often get forced into another AoE and just eat it without being able to react.
- dodging in a PvE environment for all red-area affects = fine. Dodging out of all spell effects in PvP.. not so fine. Players should be able to dodge some lobbed spell effects (shards of ice), and delay released spells (Sing) but not other, more direct spells (RoE, FF, BtS) . Nor should the dodge immunity carry beyond the actual dodge animation for PvP purposes. (Added after Tancred's Comments)
- Attributes should not affect GS, there are various viable builds for classes. Currently not following cookie cutter, results in lower GS. On my recovery spec'd DC I am BiS in all slots, and am out GS'd by folks who barely have basic T2 drops, drake seal items, and rank 5 enchants.
- attempting a dodge when stamina is too low should still interrupt cast/fight animations. Getting stuck in an AoE due to being in the middle of a long encounter/daily animation and not being able to do anything about it is not enjoyable. This is also an issue with bastion, as many players don't know that you are casting it (or don't seem to) and dodge the heal when not divine. End up targeting thin air and nothing one can do about it, though an improvement on what others see during bastion cast may help in that regard.
- as najirion mentions in
his thread there needs to be some kind of "punishment" for abandoning a pvp encounter. Personally I feel that this should be levied any time a player leaves with less than a 400 point difference.
- GS based PvP queues: don't put 6k-9k GS players against 13k-16k GS players. High GS players don't want them on our team, low GS players don't want to be wiped out buy us in a landslide.
__ Class Changes ___DC: _
Powers:
Prophecy of doom: sometimes completes animation as target dies, but don't get "credit"; should not be so stingy. Should get credit as soon as the spell lands on the mob if it dies at that point or after.
Prophetic Action: minor time reduction, with max level being 35 seconds rather than 40.
Forgemaster Flame: Heal does not currently proc all associated heal feats
Feats:
Holy Resolve: great saving feat, good for pvp. Cool Down is too long when comparing to other classes survival feats and abilities. Reduce to 2-3 minutes.
Initiate of the Faith: Completely worthless, 5 points in this feat will grant less than 1 point in weapon mastery in most cases. Very close in "best" cases. Rebuild this feat completely.
Restoration Mastery: assuming an average defense of 2k (kinda high tbh), that's 100 armor per stack. I generally have not seen this feat stack above 2 that I have noticed. If it does it is not incredibly likely. This puts the gain from this feat (at max) at less than a single enchant. Generally I notice it being about .3-.4% mitigation modification.. garbage. Good uptime, but garbage at max.
Cycle of Change: Completely inaccurate tool tip, does not behave at all like tool tip describes.
Sovereign justice: Weak, heals DC for sub 650 HP when geared, at a 25 second cool down. Initially this was alright due to it being an additional heal that could potentially trigger other events/feats. However this was patched out and is no longer a reasonable 21 point feat. Needs to be buffed considerably.
_TR: _
Powers:
-Cloud of steel: overly effective dismount tool for at will. Increase damage, reduce # of charges available, and decrease rate of fire. Damage increase should be enough to maintain its current PvE utility.
_CW: _
Powers:
- Oppressive force: Base daze time should be increased by _at least_ .5 seconds.
________________________
(will update, )
good game so far guys, but still some cleaning house to do
Comments
alot of the unintentional nerfs DCs will be receiving seem to be coming from adjustments to things that were not performing as intended.
The only direct nerf that does not bear this mark at all is for hammer. A 40% damage reduction to the only daily power that DCs have that does any kind of reasonable single target damage. Most builds will never touch the single point damage of other classes, even with this daily.. and yet.. nerf bat.. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Devs wont give DCs proper burst healing for PvP purposes, nor let them do any kind of damage... The mitigation feat tree (bottom path) has too many garbage feats in it and doesn't feel like a proper mitigation tree... This leaves only the middle feat tree for any non-pvp build, and with hammer nerf top tree doesn't feel like it qualifies for pvp either.
The sunburst modifications feels problematic in that DCs only feel like they have 3 powers, winding up our daily quickly as a fourth keeps us feeling productive. The class feels stale with at wills, the tab ability doesn't offer the same rush/alteration that most other classes get from it.
the feat Sovereign justice was acting like an encounter supposedly. It's a reactive heal, so what if it activates feats that are supposed to be activated by heals? What is the point of this "fix"? Were DCs too hard to one shot in a survival build? The class that has no ability to reject CCs, stealth, or provide any form of constant mitigation? I'm not saying DCs are bad at surviving with a proper PvP build, but they certainly don't have the passive survival of GWF, or GF; nor the active survival of the CW or TR. So yes, comparatively they aren't great at survival. I run a survival based DC in PvP, heavy deflect/defense/HP modded. He has 30k HP does no damage and has pretty unimpressive heals, the abilities I use on him are mostly buff/debuff style. He has pretty good survival, but he wont keep anyone alive nor will he ever kill anyone. Sov. Power on my heal spec heals for about 650.. not impressive.. why not let it trigger effects?
At this point in the game DCs need to be given reasons to be wanted in parties, party buffs shouldn't come with a penalty of having to give up somewhere else to do it. I have heard that we are sometimes brought along in parties just to reduce the consumption of potions and for no other reason. I am having a hard time arguing against this kind of thinking right now.
One improvement would be to make spirit link a part of the divine mechanic rather than a feat selection, some form of buffing that DCs can perform without giving up on healing somewhere else.
I've been running this **** place trying to help my friend Wrath get his stupid STUPID GF helm that never drops.
We like to take
Myself(TR)
Wrath(GF)
2 CW's
1 DC
Strat: TR and 1 single target dps CW on Dragon. GF, DC, 1 CW on add control
Zone in, no one aggro the dragon at all, except for the TR and the CW. Have them pull the Dragon to the very far left of the map. Lets call it the West side.
If it takes 4 minutes to move the dragon so be it, its not a dps race, and placement is key.
Once pulled to the Western most side. The TR and CW begin full dps, avoiding his aoe's as they are very simple to do so, and getting hit by them generally results in death.
The Add Group: You should position yourself in the center of the room, close enough so the DC can continually put Seal on the Dragon and heal the dps if they end up taking hits from imp spawns. Seals on the dragon will help bring the Imp spawns to your add group. The add group will continually be moving towards the "people" type NPC's, its best to try and stay in the middle, as you can aggro everything in the room generally without moving too much. Having a good DC in this fight is pretty clutch, as his Seals on the spawns, and on the dragon make it very easy to bring the adds to the add group. I recommend having the CW in your add group, use Entangling on Mastery, icy terrain, steal time and shield. There control is more needed then the dps, a good GF, and CW with this combo will easily be able to burn down the adds fairly quickly.
By the time the Eriynes(sp?) spawn, the Dragon should be around 30-40%. At this time, the add group is just fighting the adds, and waiting for the dps to finish off the dragon. With a higher geared group you should be able to burn them down, but as its T1, generally the people going are lower geared, and unable to lock/dps them down fast enough, and thats ok. WHen the dragon dies the 2 dps come help out and finish them off.
Of the many times I've done this fight. 1 major problem I've noticed with newer players.
Standing in the AoE. If you get hit by the Dragons AoE's, you either die, or are so low on health, and generally an imp will spawn and kill you, or the Dragon will do his Roar --->stunning the group, meanwhile hes casting his line of sight spell on you, or casting another aoe on you, thus killing you.
For the add group, same thing. Avoid the aoe's. The warlocks that spawn, have a small circle type aoe, that will shoot you up in the air, and knock you prone, and it seems everytime this happens, the dragon will do his roar, stunning you, and the warlock is casting the same spell on you while your stunned, in turn killing you.
Dont stand in aoe's..its very easy
I guarantee if you do this strat, you will laugh at how easy this dragon is and wonder why you ever died on him in the first place.
I personally really enjoy this fight. Take a good DC and a good DPS, those two can generally float the group if the CW is even half a brain.
Gl!
It's not that there aren't clean strats for it, but rather that it is a harder fight than the majority if of T2 boss fights.. in a T1. The gearing required/party considerations required to ensure the healing adds are taken care of are well beyond the efforts required in T2 dungeons in most cases.
During the childsplay marathon the PWE employees ran it.. and whiped probably 10 times, with gear that had all perfect enchantments. This is a T1 dungeon.
If the pwe employees had perfect enchants and whiped even once, it sure is a testament to why they cant seem to figure out any class mechanics/balance.
This fight is a drool fest for mediocre players in T1 gear...
Well, good news. You can stop running it for the hat now.
Yah =( Its a shame what they did to that set. I dont play a GF, but doesnt there power diminish with there shield? So in theory, this set bonus would literally do nothing if they are constantly being hit, because there power will continue to drop thus negating any bonus damage the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> set now has to offer?
Dont agree to any of the changes, also as far as i know lair of the mad dragon is one of the few not broken instances concerning skips and exploits, i always enjoyed it more than any other dungeon, except it was hard to get a group.
don't agree with any of the changes? Why? Maybe some feedback?
I agree that it's nice that mad dragon's lair isn't an exploit farm. That doesn't mean it's in-line with T1s as far as difficulty or mechanics.
Most of the other suggestions have nothing to do with "challenge", I feel you are just being difficult for the sake of it.
Mad Dragon Encounter : Has already been nerfed hard, played it with couple of twinks too with beginner gear and if you explain tactics every team can do it. Also why does every dungeon have to be exactly as difficult as the other? (T1) Ideally you want to have the dungeons become slightly more difficult and rewarding and mad dragon was very good to prepare people for karrundax, which is a joke now though.
Loot rules: All need or all greed is fine for me, dont want to have party leader sneakily interfer there. If you dont like it just go with guild/ friend list groups.
Immunity from dodging too short: Everyone knows dodges are really really powerful, i can get out of any situation with just 1 well timed dodge, if its too short for you you might want to try to not just dodge but also consider the direction you dodge to. Stamina builds so fast any longer immunity time would be game breaking and boring in my opinion.
Attributes should not effect GS: I like that i can differentiate the different class builds/ gear builds people use at the high end segment by their GS. I think its funny everyone seems so concerned about GS because i am not, maybe try to work on your skill and people will invite you again.
Attempting to dodge when stamina is too low should still interrupt: For me its a very important skill and fun factor to know exactly when i can use a certain encounter or daily with a longer animation or charge time. Also this makes it neccessary to decide when to dodge and when to wait.
GS based pvp queues: Absolutely against it, there has to be motivation to climb up the GS ladder. The problem is we dont have pvp rankings and no rewards in the first place.
Prophecy of doom: Never had this problem, probably because i dont use that encounter when the mob has like 5hp left.
Also dont use it too often because the animation time is too long, maybe that can be fixed.
Prophetic action: Where is your exact reasoning for the -5 seconds? Im using it for pvp sometimes and 40 secs is really good, because its so unpredictable.
The other feats are just way too subjective to discuss, seems to me you want to just buff the cleric class in general. Am i right?
Maybe read some guides or ask me for some hints, cleric class is fine right now in pve. (Upcoming patch is something else and not discussed)
mad dragon, you mention progression.. great.
so.. delves..
Cloak -> Crag (fine so far) -> Mad dragon (wait, what?) -> Idris (easier than mad dragon) -> Wolf (easier but harder than idris) -> Lair (T2, still easier) -> FH (T2, easier boss mechanic) -> SP (Finally one that's a bit harder or on the same level) -> Spider -> Karru (currently a joke) -> DV (not worth doing thanks to CN) -> CN
so.. progression.. broken atm thanks to dragon
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"all need or all greed is fine with me" - agreed, so why can't the leader enforce an all greed party rather than risk ninjas?
Immunity to dodge: it's been my experience that I can mostly dodge onto a red zone and the immunity be right there to catch me if needed. I have also had times where I do the same thing and get blasted, it seems to be imprecise. I do believe that certain spell effects should not be dodge-able, or just portion ally dodge-able to fit older D&D rules. In short, a dodge nerf in PvP would be a good thing, there's simply too many effects one can dodge out of (not things like sing, slow-burn AoEs should be dodge-able). However it is very frustrating to dodge away from a PvE circle and just manage to barely slide onto the next one and be blasted while immunity is completely ignored.. then other times immunity works..
GS: I don't have any trouble getting invites from people who know me, skill isn't an issue. I am frequently brought along by the top guilds on the server, and some have tried to recruit me. The problem is that when I am pugging with people I don't know, they are liable to pull a 12k+ GS DC over me even though I have better gear (and in my opinion) a better build. People announcing their GS in zone does not tell you what their build is, that's not a useful indicator at all. If you mean you can inspect them and see their GS and compare it to their gear and from that determine their build.. sure... or you could just check their attribs since you are already on that screen.......
Dodge-interrupt: I just can't agree, knowing when to pop abilities in an encounter is important but it shouldn't be the choke hold it is currently. Especially as a healer class, you don't want to wait on a "what if" AoE in CN.
In regards to prophecy: I'd be fine with an animation reduction, I just don't think it's usable on trash right now because if something is going to die in 2 shots.. and you cast it in between the first and the second you are gambling on a majorly long recharge time. Even if the spell lands on the mob at half health it may die before the spell takes effect. The whole mechanic of insta-refresh + AP is setup to be able to use it on trash + sniping, but the animation time for both the cast and "set time" makes this awkward and nearly unusable for this purpose.
"The other feats are just way too subjective to discuss, seems to me you want to just buff the cleric class in general. Am i right?"
Not at all, I want feats on tiers that are comparable.. you shouldn't have a **** feat on a tier.. each tier should have feats that make you think "which do I want to give up, which matters to me more".. not.. oh, I can get .3% crit out of this 5 point feat.. or 1% crit out of 1 point in this feat... 5 points in a skill that gives .3%-.4% mitigation is laughable. There are too many feats that are simply not worth looking at. Each feat should be worth having in its own right, maybe not for every build but feats (for every class) should not be a complete waste. Right now there are several.
You seem to think I have a problem playing the game, you are wrong. I am BiS and I farmed every single piece, I have cleared every bit of content. I have a PvP and a PvE DC that do fine. That doesn't mean I dont' understand that there are gameplay issues that should be adjusted.