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Demonflame needs to be fixed.
hushiforum
Posts: 27 Arc User
Period.
A (very powerful) friend and I (on a very powerful character) decided to run Demonflame for fun since it's the featured adventure now. I'd run it many times in the past and, after Luther Black's end fight had been balanced in the past, I thought it would be a-okay.
How wrong I was!
Not only was the fight against the Left Hand utterly ridiculous, it glitched spectacularly -- just like it used to, which was supposed to have been fixed long before now -- and made it difficult to target the Left Hand, then almost impossible to actually hit it, though of course it could hit us. Hard.
In fact, too hard. Harder than it should have. Jack Fool I was prepared for, but Left Hand? What's this nonsense? Of course, it was made much harder than it had to be due to the glitch making it impossible for us to attack it, when it would randomly fall into the floor. That should have been fixed over a year ago, and last time I went through, it seemed to have been fixed. What happened?
That doesn't even begin to discuss how you've utterly fuffed up the Luther Black fight. He summons too many monsters -- all of whom are incredibly hard-hitting, moreso than they should be -- and he himself, despite being labelled (Weak) on our run-through, was capable of more than any 'weak' super villain should ever be. When he can one-shot a character as powerful as the ones we took in, with my experience of years and an extremely well-built character, there is a problem. This is the same endfight I have soloed more than a few times before. I hadn't played through Demonflame in a while because I got sick of it -- ran it a few too many times -- after a little balance was added to it, but apparently you've done something to upset that balance, and I'm not pleased.
Before you ask, no, we weren't at any advanced difficulty because my friend who came along had never done it before. So we were doing it on Normal. And please don't chime in with 'well I ran it and I had no problems' or 'your character must be weak' because obviously this isn't the topic for wiener-waggling. It's probably a collection of glitches we met up with, and that's why I'm bringing it up here. I know the Left Hand used to glitch like this terribly, and I thought it had been fixed. Apparently it has not. The Luther Black fight also used to be ridiculous like this, then it was reasonable, and now it's even more ridiculous than when I had a serious problem with it.
If you're going to make this the featured story, you've got some work to do on it. People aren't going to play through this casually and enjoy getting effectively black-flagged on the last lap. If this were Elite difficulty, sure. I enjoy a challenge sometimes. But this wasn't a challenge, it was a frustrating exercise in futility and also an unprecedented spike in difficulty to the point of being 'SNK hard'.
Also, I've said this before, years ago, and I'll say it again: don't put the respawn point in the final Luther Black fight so far from the actual room. It's nothing but an attempt to add artificial difficulty, but in reality it's just annoying to the extreme since it only wastes time. If you're even defeated so much as once or twice, you might as well just give up and wait for the clock to run down. Either extend the timer or make a closer respawn point.
If you like a super-challenge, no problem! Set your difficulty to Elite. But for those who want to run through on Normal? It's not happening. Please fix these problems. It's about as exasperating as coming up against Ao'qephoth in an alert who, I might add, is still for all intents and purposes invincible.
I really love Champions, and I've even introduced a number of people to the game since coming to it. I always support it and probably always will...but Demonflame has been FUBARed again, and I really wish you'd just fix it and then stop mucking about with it.
A (very powerful) friend and I (on a very powerful character) decided to run Demonflame for fun since it's the featured adventure now. I'd run it many times in the past and, after Luther Black's end fight had been balanced in the past, I thought it would be a-okay.
How wrong I was!
Not only was the fight against the Left Hand utterly ridiculous, it glitched spectacularly -- just like it used to, which was supposed to have been fixed long before now -- and made it difficult to target the Left Hand, then almost impossible to actually hit it, though of course it could hit us. Hard.
In fact, too hard. Harder than it should have. Jack Fool I was prepared for, but Left Hand? What's this nonsense? Of course, it was made much harder than it had to be due to the glitch making it impossible for us to attack it, when it would randomly fall into the floor. That should have been fixed over a year ago, and last time I went through, it seemed to have been fixed. What happened?
That doesn't even begin to discuss how you've utterly fuffed up the Luther Black fight. He summons too many monsters -- all of whom are incredibly hard-hitting, moreso than they should be -- and he himself, despite being labelled (Weak) on our run-through, was capable of more than any 'weak' super villain should ever be. When he can one-shot a character as powerful as the ones we took in, with my experience of years and an extremely well-built character, there is a problem. This is the same endfight I have soloed more than a few times before. I hadn't played through Demonflame in a while because I got sick of it -- ran it a few too many times -- after a little balance was added to it, but apparently you've done something to upset that balance, and I'm not pleased.
Before you ask, no, we weren't at any advanced difficulty because my friend who came along had never done it before. So we were doing it on Normal. And please don't chime in with 'well I ran it and I had no problems' or 'your character must be weak' because obviously this isn't the topic for wiener-waggling. It's probably a collection of glitches we met up with, and that's why I'm bringing it up here. I know the Left Hand used to glitch like this terribly, and I thought it had been fixed. Apparently it has not. The Luther Black fight also used to be ridiculous like this, then it was reasonable, and now it's even more ridiculous than when I had a serious problem with it.
If you're going to make this the featured story, you've got some work to do on it. People aren't going to play through this casually and enjoy getting effectively black-flagged on the last lap. If this were Elite difficulty, sure. I enjoy a challenge sometimes. But this wasn't a challenge, it was a frustrating exercise in futility and also an unprecedented spike in difficulty to the point of being 'SNK hard'.
Also, I've said this before, years ago, and I'll say it again: don't put the respawn point in the final Luther Black fight so far from the actual room. It's nothing but an attempt to add artificial difficulty, but in reality it's just annoying to the extreme since it only wastes time. If you're even defeated so much as once or twice, you might as well just give up and wait for the clock to run down. Either extend the timer or make a closer respawn point.
If you like a super-challenge, no problem! Set your difficulty to Elite. But for those who want to run through on Normal? It's not happening. Please fix these problems. It's about as exasperating as coming up against Ao'qephoth in an alert who, I might add, is still for all intents and purposes invincible.
I really love Champions, and I've even introduced a number of people to the game since coming to it. I always support it and probably always will...but Demonflame has been FUBARed again, and I really wish you'd just fix it and then stop mucking about with it.
Post edited by hushiforum on
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Then came the final boss. I'll tell you right now that my friend here has STOMPED every other enemy we've faced together. He knows the fights well enough that he can solo them when I do something stupid to get myself killed. That being said, we both got DESTROYED during the Luther Black encounter. It was utterly ridiculous. There were targeting issues similar to the Left Hand debacle, the summoned creatures did HUGE damage (I was getting one-shotted) and let's not forget that if you die you can't get back in the boss room.
This abysmal ending cut short what was otherwise a very entertaining adventure and prevented me from being able to see the resolution of the story. As a relative newcomer to CO, I will say that I enjoy the game for the most part, but when something is as literally BROKEN as this adventure is, it sours everything. Please do check on this as soon as posssible. Thank you.
When I tried a month or so ago, he constantly summoned Scythehands. It wasn't so bad at first. I was using a nice AoE attack to hit the mobs and him at once. Once his health hit a quarter or two thirds, he started casting that buff on the Scythehands. And again. And again. And again... Non-stop really. The Scythehands got bigger than Grond in the blink of an eye, and they ROFLSTOMPed me.
After the fourth retry, I quit. Haven't tried it since.
Which is too bad, I liked Demonflame before.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Fix it!
It's otherwise a really fun way to play even if the rewards are lackluster compared to alerts and running normal missions. I liked having a compelling story line that culminated instead of a mish-mash of quests in an area, or alert-grinding.
Are the other Adventure Packs broken? I'm worried about wasting time on them too.
Funny enough, we did encounter a bug last week doing it, tho. Luther sank into the floor, and I was the only one that could hit him for a bit.
Seems like the big trick is just killing the growing summoned mobs before they get to mega-d size and start roflstomping everyone.
RIP Caine
Now, each time (must be 7-8 times now with a whole range of builds), I provoke him just enough to hold his and his spawns' attention. The more damage you do to him, the more scythehands he seems to spawn. Also, killing scythehands only seems to land you with more of them (and bigger).
Basically I just ensure they chase me around for five minutes at the opposite side of the room from the demon key. One time, he spawned only a single normal size scythehand. The most has been three, including two giants, but they aren't too hard to dodge.
I am not bad at punctuation!
MMORPGs are just bad at recognizing non QWERTY.
I've always done the mission with 3 or more people however and never experienced any of these issues before. I know that the mobs of Luther Black get massive, but I've never had any trouble doing the Left Hand.
In fact the only odd behaviour I have witnessed so far is Luther's odd death he seems to summon a shield then randomly flip out and die.. then the cutscene comes (with the annoying King of Edom Avatar bobbing his head up and down >_>!)
I know bits of it need to be fixed however.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
I haven't tried it again, but apparently all you really need to do is waste time until the demon gets done with whatever he's doing. I agree that it's a really bogus ending to a mission, but if that's the gimmick for completing it, it's not really "broken." It just has a really sucky gimmick at the end.
But I think most people, myself included, just looked at the mission title "Defeat Luther Black" and assumed the wrong thing.
Not all characters can block the attacks successfully; it's a question of finding the best way for your build of keeping Black and his spawns busy.
As for the bugs with the Left hand, I've never experienced any myself so I can't comment. He's tough and some builds really have to use a lot of imagination to defeat him, but that applies to practically any boss. I had one alt that took ten attempts to find a way to get the better of Heebie Jeebie while another downed him in a single foray.
What I might add is that when an NPC gets stuck and you can't target it, non-targeting area attacks (sphere AOEs) still cause damage. And they sometimes destroy the cause of the sticking; though based on the description, they wouldn't destroy anything in the case of the Left Hand.
I am not bad at punctuation!
MMORPGs are just bad at recognizing non QWERTY.
Good luck! [^_~]
If you're trying to give advice on something, please don't waste your time or mine.
I am not bad at punctuation!
MMORPGs are just bad at recognizing non QWERTY.
Get in line.
The forum for bugfixes accepts petitions every third Thursday starting two weeks after the heat death of the universe. As to when those actual fixes will hit live? Pfft. Don't hold your breath.
As it is, people have told you how to negotiate the mission(s) in question AS THE GAME STANDS NOW.
E-peening about how "I already know." and "Don't waste your time." accomplishes nothing.
If this was true, you wouldn't be complaining about how "hhhaaarrrddd" the missions are.
The simple fact is, in the final mission YOU DO NOT ATTACK LUTHER BLACK. PERIOD.
Doing so pushes him to go all "King of Edom" on you, at which point you get one-shotted.
Doctor! It hurts when I do this!
Don't do that!
Devs! It hurts when I attack Luther Black!
Don't do that!
Capisce?
Getting snippy about it (to people who are honestly just trying to help you) accomplishes nothing worthwhile.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert
A Prootwaddle is one of the weirder player-character races in "The Fantasy Trip", Steve Jackson's first published role-playing game.
I've been in a situation where they get ridiculously large, causing lag spikes etc, I was on my FF Gadgeteer and I was glad Death Ray still worked...
As for Luther Black himself, the fight seemed to be pretty straight forward, I actually found he was put into a state of "stun" when I removed all his HP, multiple times.
It does need fixing, and I noted that on non Elite levels the Knight creatures have both Shadow Form and Lightning Reflexes..O_o?!
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Good idea. The Demon Key doesn't need to survive anyways. Oh wait.
Attacking and reducing Black's hp to temporarily stun him is the best way to win the fight.
We wouldn't be having these problems if bugs were squashed when they first appeared.
So I guess yeah, now you shouldn't attack Black at all except just to agro him. Until this piece of content that's a pretty big part of the game gets fixed that is.
That particular fight probably added at least half an hour to the run time.
I could see how frustrating for some toons who'd be unable to finish that final fight in a decent amount of time.
Or simply grab aggro on him and keep him distracted from the Demon Key. I've soloed him this way. I've grouped against him this way. Keep Luther's attention (just don't try to beat him down), and beat the minions down before they empower.
See my note above about bugfixes.
"Champions-Online and Star Trek Online contained hundreds of hours of mediocre content!"
and "nothing was polished".
--Jack Emmert