Mod 8 New Skirmishes Feedback/Questions/Bugs

cromejohnsen

Hello everyone,
over the last days i did some of the new skirmishes and here are my impressions of the new 15 min Fights.

Prophecy of Madness:
1) Incursion lets you fight against portals spawning enemies which get stronger after a while. I did not find closing those portals very hard, so my friend and me just brain Afk smashed the enemies that were spawning. Is that supposed to be the mechanic or can we really hope to get something more challenging from the portals? If you do not close them they do not spawn any mobs.

2) The enemies in the Skirmish are not too strong and can be tanked by a Gwf with medium sized gear (around 2k gs). They do hit hard against lower equipped characters and do not have to few hp (some elite Mobs around 500k). I think the skirmish was not made towards 3k+ ppl who are mostly the ones testing all the skirmishes atm.(and probably the ones claiming it to be too easy.)
Yes Prophecy of Madness is somehow a "hit as hard and fast as you can" but it also has no ItemLvl requirement and is made for new characters trying to get some gear.

3) In both variants some 5 min phases do not sound like a long time in which you are trying to win, but trust me they feel like a whole day. Maybe after reaching Gold reward within the time limit, you can make the group advance towards the next phase?

4) Madness, it is a nice mechanic which makes the player stay inside of the blue pillars to get rid of the stacks. You either stay blinded and can not do anything or run into the safe (Daze Free) Zone. I think the penalty for getting more than 20 stacks should be raised because as of right now no one really suffers that much from having more than 50 stacks. Most classes can still run around at full HP and auto attack enemies to death even without getting into the blue pillar once.

5) Also both variants do not necessarily need a tank which is probably why most ppl. feel that this Skirmish is too easy. Rf to Point 4 which would make parties start using a tank or at least think about taking one into account instead of another DD.

6) The final Boss Balor is in both variants too weak. Yes he does spawn adds, but compared to the Boss fights in Kessel or Epic Shores of Tuerm (which is btw. disabled on preview right now , why is that?) he is probably way too weak.
He has much less HP and deals very low dmg, which again does not require a tank (at 2k + probably not even a heal) at all. Does he have any kind of special abilities ? Because most of the time we killed him in under 30 seconds without a tank and heal at around 2,5k Itemlvl.

7) Loot: I think it is really frustrating seeing your team scoring 3 times Gold reward during the whole skirmish and then only lvl 1 Blue rings.
Also it is not quite fair for someone who did absolutely nothing towards those 3 gold rewards to be joining at the end of the 2nd phase to get some free loot.
Another thing is the Regeneration Ring. How is that ring supposed to be any good ? It only works in combat, but well Regeneration doesnt work in Combat at all. So what is the real purpose of this ring?
Is there any "+4" Ring that can drop from both skirmishes at all?

Bug: When i opened the chest at the end of the skirmish just to see an epic +3 ring (which would grant me the invulnerability for 0,88 sec every 30 sec) and i looted it, all i received was an epic ring +3 which would somehow grant me Regeneration.
Also inside of the chest was a blue Crafting material for Black ice which i also did not receive but instead got nothing.

8) I think it is good that you removed the Damage done or damage received tables, which would sometimes lead to discrimination against some classes and players contributing nothing to a small amount towards finishing the objective.

Throne of the Dwarven Gods

1) Corruption of the Throne: Defending the clerics is a mechanic we already know from Tiamat. Somehow the Big bony guys can not be taunted because they will turn around after 1 sec and start running amok at the cleric. You can however push them away or even use the DC encounter Geas on them. I think this should be changed. Make them CC immune, but let tanks be able to taunt them.
If a DC decides to use geas on a Bone guy he will stand around doing nothing at all, which will make him obsolete for the entire first phase and there will not spawn any more of as long as 2 of them are alive.

2) Again in both variants of this Skirmish the mobs are not really too strong. They can deal quite some dmg but also have enough Hp making them acceptable at lower ItemLvl.

3) Also, as mentioned above: In both variants some 5 min phases do not sound like a long time in which you are trying to win, but trust me they feel like a whole day. Maybe after reaching Gold reward within the time limit, you can make the group advance towards the next phase?

4) Corruption of the Throne: The second phase requires you to protect the clerics and use the Hulks to charge against the shield which protects the Final Boss. It is a little bit harder than the first phase and i think acceptable for the lower geared characters.

5) In both scenarios the Final Boss is too weak. Again you do not need a tank to kill him, and he does not really have any kind of special ability which would make him more fearsome than his companions. Rf. Prophecy of Madness:6)

6) Mind Flayer Infiltration: The first phase is quite tough, probably the hardest one of all Skirmish phases because you are actually running against time, and all the damage/heal/tanking in the world does not help you. It is not easy pulling the Hulks towards the Prison gates, because the either stop halfway if one half of the room is already freed from captivity or take a little bit too long to respawn. Maybe make them spawn a little bit faster.

7) Mind Flayer Infiltration: The second phase is like the entire Prophecy of Madness. Its a Killing Fest in which the add waves spawn quite slow after the former one was eradicated. Also the mobs spawning have only 1-2 elites in it which are no match for a 5 man party.
Make more adds Spawn over the course of the 5 min and again maybe skip the rest of the phase once Gold rewards has been archieved.

Well thats probably it for now.
If i do more testing i will let you guys know it.
Thanks for reading and have a good day.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

thefabricant

The skirmishes need to be made a lot harder, with my 2.6k ilvl cw I am able to solo clear them and get gold quite comfortably, there is no challenge in these skirmishes and they need to be made more entertaining. I shudder to think what they will be like for bis teams. Furthermore, the moment you hit gold, the objective should swap to whatever the next objective is. I get easily bored sitting around for 3 minutes with objective complete and nothing to do. The length of the skirmishes have been artificially increased and they aren't fun.

rayrdan

i agree with everything the op said but the problem for me its bigger: this is really the mod with the lowest bugdet possible.
as you said skirmishes should first of all end at gold but they are artificially increased in lenght. they are too simple, THE BOSSES DONT EVEN ATTACK (arcane reservoir one is harder just sayin).
The demogorgon encounter is another one room skirmish, a bit harder but guess what: the boss there was another joke walking around that room like the people in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmmtQwUZz0).
no new combat zone, i cant stop asking myself what mantol derith is there for...why should i go there i dont even know.
And come on....one room skirmishes? really? one is a gaunt old dungeon (the last room of it)....
3 heroic encounters in old zones....3? with repolished imp and yeti? because those are imps and yetis no matter how you look at them.
oh forgot..9 quests written by salvatore...like 20 minutes gameplay

you know im right, there is so little there is not even the need to test..it just goes live in 2 weeks...how it can be different? there is nothing. This week not even a patch. But hei maybe its only me, maybe im mad dont feel afraid to make me notice it.

lwedar

rayrdan said:

i agree with everything the op said but the problem for me its bigger: this is really the mod with the lowest bugdet possible.
as you said skirmishes should first of all end at gold but they are artificially increased in lenght. they are too simple, THE BOSSES DONT EVEN ATTACK (arcane reservoir one is harder just sayin).
The demogorgon encounter is another one room skirmish, a bit harder but guess what: the boss there was another joke walking around that room like the people in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmmtQwUZz0).
no new combat zone, i cant stop asking myself what mantol derith is there for...why should i go there i dont even know.
And come on....one room skirmishes? really? one is a gaunt old dungeon (the last room of it)....
3 heroic encounters in old zones....3? with repolished imp and yeti? because those are imps and yetis no matter how you look at them.
oh forgot..9 quests written by salvatore...like 20 minutes gameplay

you know im right, there is so little there is not even the need to test..it just goes live in 2 weeks...how it can be different? there is nothing. This week not even a patch. But hei maybe its only me, maybe im mad dont feel afraid to make me notice it.

I would have agree. This is going to be a super small mod. Not a big deal if they keep fixing old bugs but running HEs over and over and over is gonna get old fast

rayrdan

They dont have makes sense.... In 2 of those 3 HE i have to prevent demons to reach portals to go back to their world....
Why should i kill them? They are acting nicely -.-

hawkfr

rayrdan said:

i agree with everything the op said but the problem for me its bigger: this is really the mod with the lowest bugdet possible.
as you said skirmishes should first of all end at gold but they are artificially increased in lenght. they are too simple, THE BOSSES DONT EVEN ATTACK (arcane reservoir one is harder just sayin).
The demogorgon encounter is another one room skirmish, a bit harder but guess what: the boss there was another joke walking around that room like the people in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pmmtQwUZz0).
no new combat zone, i cant stop asking myself what mantol derith is there for...why should i go there i dont even know.
And come on....one room skirmishes? really? one is a gaunt old dungeon (the last room of it)....
3 heroic encounters in old zones....3? with repolished imp and yeti? because those are imps and yetis no matter how you look at them.
oh forgot..9 quests written by salvatore...like 20 minutes gameplay

you know im right, there is so little there is not even the need to test..it just goes live in 2 weeks...how it can be different? there is nothing. This week not even a patch. But hei maybe its only me, maybe im mad dont feel afraid to make me notice it.

I totally agree with you ! All I can see in the skirmishes/HEs/demog is only a grind content: there's not much new. I think the big joke is that "repeatable vs replayable" post they made few weeks ago. The only thing I can see so far on preview is a repeatable content, doing the same thing over and over in the same room, or old map !
I think the most disappointing thing is the demogorgon. (I know we didn't see the finished version , but hey, there's almost nothing to do !). The fact that we have less than 2 weeks to test the demog is ridiculous. I don't see why they took it out at the first time. Even tho it wasn't really finished, we could still give feedback and help finding bugs. How do they want proper feedback or pointing out the bugs if we have less than 2 weeks ?! And a demogorgon party (if it's like last week) is long as hell to make and organize. So I'm afraid, the demog on live will be buggy, and/or far too easy like current skirmishes, or really hard, like Tiamat at the beginning of mod 6 when it was just impossible !

suicidalgodot

But all that work put into all da new armour... ? ;^/