Hi @nitocris83 , I don't know if anyone closed RC today. I tried the sister boss for almost 2 hours with no success. The damage from the bloodflight is too high and you don't have time to harvest even standing directly under the light doesn't work. A lost day of RC.
Unfortunately, the recent Reaper's Challenge being CR has muddied the waters here a bit. To clarify, my aim in this thread is to fix the bugs in the fight and tune it appropriately for its base level difficulty. [..] That may or may not solve the issue with Reaper's Challenge, but that is a separate issue and actually handled by a separate designer.
Should we make a separate thread for RC Castle Ravenloft? (This is not automatically clear to us players, to us any CR instance is CR, just with extra modifications - that's info only you devs have.)
It looks like Sif has already created a new thread specifically for Reapers Challenge. I was mainly calling out the distinction to hopefully filter out additional info from Reaper's Challenge CR and to differentiate for anyone following along that the current thinking is that the damage of 'regular' CR's bloodflight is a little overtuned, while the Reaper's Challenge version seems to be significantly overtuned from the example video given. I've asked our QA team to evaluate both regular and RC damage values for bloodflight with the damage reduction I'm making, though I won't be the one to make the RC specific adjustments.
Some additional things to clarify to remove any potential confusion. When a player steps into a Pool of Decay they receive a DoT, which could give the illusion of 'invisible' pools since the damage source is a Pool of Decay when you're far removed from it. There is a red aura that should emanate from the character for the duration of that DoT, though it's possible it's getting culled on occasion. Our FX artists are looking into this.
The lanterns at the edges of the arena do not, and have never, removed the Bloodflight (bat swarm) soak mechanic. If it appeared that it did at some point in the past, it was either convenient timing that it ended as you entered the light area or you encountered a beneficial bug of some kind.
When I raised the base damage of the Sisters, the damage that Bloodflight and Pools of Decay were doing became unmanageable so I lowered them to their current levels. I will look at further reducing the damage that Bloodflight is doing to maintain a pressure moment for the group, but one that is more manageable. The super high damage numbers that you're showing from your log are likely after group members in the stack had died, causing that player to take the full magnitude of the power.
I'll also look into the issue of Pools of Decay not drawing, which may be the mystery damage/deaths that people are experiencing, though that wouldn't explain the inability to revive.
After trying todays version of RC for more than three hours, I have made the following experiences:
I personally have not whitnessed mystery onehits. The hits that can be confusing are the Dots from the Pool of Decay AFTER they leave the Pools. The reason is simple: the pools do not do damage by itself but apply a Dot that does damage each 3s it is active. It was always like this but was not worth to notice before the damage got raised. Thus resulting in some weird damage out of nowhere. The other damage source out of nowhere is Gaze of Doom, which again is a Dot and is applied on a RANDOM person and appears often with Whispers of Deception - the stun and ghost. It may happen that the sisters cast them twice in a row, applying the Dot short after each other. Does Gaze of Doom really shall be applied on random people and not the tank only?
While the mechanics have not changed, the damage increase has uncovered certain problems:
When the knockback happens while the current sister casts Pools of Decay on the landing spot, the player cannot avoid the application nor at least the first dot hit because of being pruned after the knockback. Together with the faklling damage, this often results in an instant kill or on being killed on the second dot.
The person with the book can get targeted by the Whispers of Deception stun. If that happens, the other sisters are happy to cast Pools of Decay directly below the book wearer. Once the book wearer get out of the stun, the dot from the Pool of Decay applies once and due to the time to move out the pool at least once more (after leaving the pool). With its current damage, this results in getting killed.
The healer can get the Wispers of Deception. While stunned the Gaze of Doom Dot cannot be cleased, dealing often enough damage to kill a dps.
The bloodflight (bats) deal UNAVOIDABLE damage. Thus defense and damage resistance buffs are not applied. It seems that Awareness and Critical Avoidance is applied though. The 90-Awareness and 90-Critical Avoidance multipliers then create crazy amounts of damage resulting in no way of countering the damage. If all 4 stay in one spot and the bloodblight crits, then a decent tank will still take ~450k damage and the dps will be instakilled through taking 700k damage. The bloodflight from Strahd does unavoidable damage too, but is only around a quarter of the one from sisters!
Additionally there still seems to be weird things going on with casts of the same power twice in a row and the order of things getting cast. This seem to be triggered often after Wail of Suffering misses its target (due to moving out of range).
Certain attacks still have very unnoticeable animations. Bloodflight and Blood Craze are two of them. Due to the unpredictable order of enemy attacks and bloodflight applying its damage shortly after it is cast, the mechanic is hardly predictable and counterable.
There seems to be a bug when people go too close to the gate and get aggro from one sister. The sister is the 'killed' when trying to get through the gate which immediately creates the Portal of Power for the dps check ...
It is possible to kill the spectre sisters first and lastly the sister of Sprite. This bug made us succeed the RC version!
The Bat Swarm is a soak, intended to be shared with nearby allies to survive.
This quote is interesting. There is an old rumor that the damage can be avoided all together by either ~~going close to the lanterns~~ (nvm already answered) or by stopping using any encounters. However, over all the years I haven't heard of any reliable test results that have proven or disproven the rumors, because the damage of the bats seem to be not applied from time to time regardless of line of sight. May you shred light into the rumors? And also, if there are no ways to avoid the damage, what may cause bloodflight to not deal damage at all sometimes?
It's literally impossible. It doesn't matter what you do as soon as the bats come out everyone is dead and nothing you can do. This is the first reaper I've failed to complete and it wasn't because the group was bad or because the mechanics weren't followed or anything. There was 1 combat log that states the tank was hit for 2 million damage. Like seriously how can you avoid that? There isn't a player in the game with 2million hp. Please fix this.
2
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
It's literally impossible. It doesn't matter what you do as soon as the bats come out everyone is dead and nothing you can do. This is the first reaper I've failed to complete and it wasn't because the group was bad or because the mechanics weren't followed or anything. There was 1 combat log that states the tank was hit for 2 million damage. Like seriously how can you avoid that? There isn't a player in the game with 2million hp. Please fix this.
It would help greatly to know what power does that? Lassor is asking for details, not a generic "fix this". For all we know, it could just be the tank failing to clear the stack debuff.
There used to be two pillars in the arena on the side everyone tanked at. The only thing I can think of on why the laterns worked is that maybe the line of sight from the pillars is affecting it. The mechanic used to be to stand behind the pillars and break line of sight for a few of the mechanics in the fight. That isn't the case anymore since they were removed due to the fact that when the sister used to teleport around she would sometimes stick into the pillar and be frozen stopping her from doing anything and she was still able to be attacked by players. This allowed players to skip the second sister's fight. I think the soak mechanic wasn't supposed to be a soak since the damage was always too high on it. When the fight was built we had tanks who had mechanics which they could reach 10 million hp shields at the time or they had a 4 second cooldown on an ability that gave themselves 2 seconds of being invulnerable to damage while taking all of the parties damage. Highly likely this was to combat those tank mechanics which is why the damage is off the charts when ramped up. Recommend the soak mechanic be changed to a similar one like ToMM or MSVA.
Guild Leader: Under the Influence Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
This is baffling as everyone else seems to be confirming that this behavior no longer occurs. Did she chase the dps for an extended amount of time and successfully attack them, or execute an attack and then turn back to you?
In that one attempt, the sister wouldn't stop chasing the dps. I should note that this happened only once, and for the rest of the time if a sister initially targeted a dps then I was able to take aggro back once they finished a move set. Having done many more runs where it didn't happen, I think it was just a blip and the sister's aggro is working as intended now.
The damage on the soak does not trigger until ~4 seconds has elapsed. I suspect the following:
Damage from invisible damage pools being attributed to the soak
Distractions and panic during the fight making it seem like the damage was instantaneous but it's functioning correctly
It could be the dot from the pools, but from what I was seeing and hearing on my end the arrows appeared and the instakill was immediate. I'm not sure if something different was happening on the targeted dps's end. Could latency cause the soak to appear to happen immediately?
It's literally impossible. It doesn't matter what you do as soon as the bats come out everyone is dead and nothing you can do. This is the first reaper I've failed to complete and it wasn't because the group was bad or because the mechanics weren't followed or anything. There was 1 combat log that states the tank was hit for 2 million damage. Like seriously how can you avoid that? There isn't a player in the game with 2million hp. Please fix this.
It would help greatly to know what power does that? Lassor is asking for details, not a generic "fix this". For all we know, it could just be the tank failing to clear the stack debuff.
I doubt it's the stack -- I know this poster and the people in the group. The tank is one of the best in the game, if not the best player. He knows about the stacks and how to remove them. They pulled in 15 different players -- all end-game elite players who know the dungeon and their classes, as well as the interactions between classes. If they couldn't complete it, then the vast majority of players are going to be unable to complete it. This isn't "new" content -- this is just stupifyingly bad content.
I'd like to offer some feedback after trying to do RC CR for 8 hours (and not getting past the 3rd Sister). I had to edit the YouTube links to get the post through.
Overall, it's a fun dynamic fight, a significant improvement over what it was before, both for the book carrier and for everyone else.
This is baffling as everyone else seems to be confirming that this behavior no longer occurs. Did she chase the dps for an extended amount of time and successfully attack them, or execute an attack and then turn back to you? You should know if she was getting in range to attack because the damage would likely be overwhelming for a dps.
I have the Sister of Spite on video chasing barbarian dps after he got and lost aggro. I used Smite hard taunt, barb runs around "in the orange", she did Pool, missed Wail, hit Wail, chains, Smite, hit Wail, chains on me (while barb still has them), Gaze on me and, finally, barb turns yellow and she gives up on him. I don't think this happens often.
That isn't the case anymore since they were removed due to the fact that when the sister used to teleport around she would sometimes stick into the pillar and be frozen stopping her from doing anything and she was still able to be attacked by players. This allowed players to skip the second sister's fight.
This still happens. It's the only reason I got to see the 3rd Sister.
The lanterns at the edges of the arena do not, and have never, removed the Bloodflight (bat swarm) soak mechanic. If it appeared that it did at some point in the past, it was either convenient timing that it ended as you entered the light area or you encountered a beneficial bug of some kind.
That was how some people did RC CR before the changes. Even though the damage from the Bloodflight was manageable back then. I don't think the lantern bug still works reliably, and there was another bug, when the bats just wouldn't do any damage (they do now). /watch?v=laxsAcdMMDo&t=182s /watch?v=XbPAsVPnyTo&t=405s
No arrows, no damage: /watch?v=fDykCexwyEo&t=1465s
I have invisible Bloodflight on video, but sif has already posted one. This was happening more often than not. It can also show the arrows *after* killing someone. The Bloodflight also jumps to a close target after the kill, not sure if intended.
I think there can be invisible pools as well, but not 100% sure.
I've seen the Sister do the 1-shot attack without animation, but only caught it on video next time, when the animation got cut shortly after the start (have logs too). It coincided with the Drizzt companion doing his noodle slaps.
No animation 1-shot before the changes: /watch?v=XbPAsVPnyTo&t=265
Sometimes a Sister will follow a player to the campfire, after he resurrects, but she leaves shortly.
After getting Soulforged revive, you might end up in the empty boss arena (solved by /defeatme). Eventually our instance got bugged and we got the empty boss arena after entering as a group (not solved by /defeatme). Someone also mentioned that Soulforged could break the instance during the Strahd fight, something about losing the sword.
Something was preventing the Soulforged from working sometimes in CR RC, but I'm not very sure about it. Maybe the book or the pools.
After being revived by the Soulforged, I reliably could not regain the aggro with the hard taunts for 10 seconds or so. The same happened in the Tuern RC, but doesn't seem to happen in other non-RC dungeons.
I can't recall if this happens in this fight, but Soulforged can also revive multiple times per second, adding death stacks and injuries. It happens reliably during the wipe on the last boss in the Tomb of the Nine Gods and on the hypo (or maybe blackhole, they come together) in the Vault of Stars. This is very undesirable, as you end up with 4-5 death stacks, unable to be revived again.
Book cleansing power doesn't remove the ghost from the carrier on the 1st Sister, but our carrier mentioned that it works on the 2nd.
Some mechanics have very unlucky interactions.
As mentioned in this thread, being knocked back into the pools at the start has to be avoided. This is impossible if the pools are cast right before the knockback (it seems unreasonable to expect players to wait for the cast before phasing the Sister). Knockback through the pools puts a dot as well, even though you arc over them visually.
Gaze of Doom can tick on the tank right before the 1-shot, draining the stamina and removing the block.
Pools under the tank at 10 stacks are nasty as well.
The Gaze of Doom mechanic is rather hard to figure out. It's a dot with the brown eye icon, put on a random player. Can be cleansed, ticks every 3 seconds, does 200-300k damage per tick in RC. It might be possible to look away from the Sister to avoid the damage, but we haven't tried that.
Our group's experience is if someone got the bats, they and anyone near them died. But if they left the group and went to the lights, they lived, and everyone else lived.
For the last several months that's changed and one of two things happen: someone gets the bats and dies immediately, or, someone gets the bats for a few seconds, then someone else dies. Like one character got the animation, but the other character got the effect.
Anyways, it's hard-wired into us that when someone gets the bats, they get as far away from the group as possible and go to light.
There's a lot going on here, so let me try to give a brief overview of it all.
Changes that have already been made internally:
Gaze of Doom damage reduced by 20%
Pool of Decay damage reduced by 12.5% on initial hit and damage ramped values for subsequent hits reduced by 25%
Whispers of Deception is now cleansable
Fixed an issue where Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power) would fail to remove the Hold from Whispers of Deception.
Deception's Rebuke (Tome power) is now a targeted power instead of a sphere around the player with a range of 100'. Additionally, it will now also cleanse Gaze of Doom.
Fixed an issue where The Consort of Rage's Essence of Rage was granting far more Critical Chance to herself and nearby allies than was intended. She now gives an elevated Critical Chance of 10% to herself and nearby allies.
Changes that are being considered:
Bloodflight will either be kept as unavoidable damage at a reduced magnitude with no ability to critically hit OR it will be converted to 'regular' damage, retain the ability to critically hit, and retain the same magnitude. Both of these options will see its effective damage reduced in the area of 50%. Damage reduction will vary based on player stats.
Issues that are being investigated:
Bloodflight not rendering (video proof)
Bloodflight's damage occurring in parallel with the damage indicator appearing (video proof)
The sister's not respecting aggro. I have no video proof of this yet, but enough people have brought it up that I believe it is still a problem in some edge cases. It would appear the last fix I made resolved the vast majority of cases where this problem would appear.
Issues that have been brought up that I believe were not tested with the latest patch:
Bloodflight targets the Tome carrier
What started this conversation in regards to invisible damage I believe can be safely attributed to Bloodflights not rendering and confusion around Pools of Decay and Gaze of Doom damage.
If I didn't mention an issue that was brought up then I either believe it is lower priority and not worth investigating at this time in parallel with these more important issues or it lies outside of the scope of what can be fixed within the confines of this encounter. If you think I'm overlooking something important then by all means bring it up again, but I don't have the time to respond to each person individually.
Can we expect further dungeon changes to get to Live faster? I'd rather have new bugs for a week, than the old bugs for a month longer and then the new ones for a month.
Do you acknowledge the issue with the absent/cancelled animation here and in other fights?
The sister's not respecting aggro. I have no video proof of this yet, but enough people have brought it up that I believe it is still a problem in some edge cases. It would appear the last fix I made resolved the vast majority of cases where this problem would appear.
Can we expect further dungeon changes to get to Live faster? I'd rather have new bugs for a week, than the old bugs for a month longer and then the new ones for a month.
Do you acknowledge the issue with the absent/cancelled animation here and in other fights?
The sister's not respecting aggro. I have no video proof of this yet, but enough people have brought it up that I believe it is still a problem in some edge cases. It would appear the last fix I made resolved the vast majority of cases where this problem would appear.
Our group's experience is if someone got the bats, they and anyone near them died. But if they left the group and went to the lights, they lived, and everyone else lived.
For the last several months that's changed and one of two things happen: someone gets the bats and dies immediately, or, someone gets the bats for a few seconds, then someone else dies. Like one character got the animation, but the other character got the effect.
Anyways, it's hard-wired into us that when someone gets the bats, they get as far away from the group as possible and go to light.
The bats in the Strahd fight have always been 'run to the light to lose them'. That seems always to have worked and is a nice touch to the Strahd fight.
Bats in the sisters fight.. I can't really remember seeing those before? So they seems to be a new addition and seems to follow the usual Hypothermia 'group up to share damage' rules.
The bats in the Strahd fight have always been 'run to the light to lose them'. That seems always to have worked and is a nice touch to the Strahd fight.
Bats in the sisters fight.. I can't really remember seeing those before? So they seems to be a new addition and seems to follow the usual Hypothermia 'group up to share damage' rules.
There was never a difference for us. Bats always appeared in the sisters fight and going to the light always worked. In fact, whenever we had someone new in the group, that was the advice we gave: get bats, go to light. It always worked. For years. So the idea of grouping up for bats? Not a chance. So weird we never experienced that.
I can't recall if this happens in this fight, but Soulforged can also revive multiple times per second, adding death stacks and injuries. It happens reliably during the wipe on the last boss in the Tomb of the Nine Gods and on the hypo (or maybe blackhole, they come together) in the Vault of Stars. This is very undesirable, as you end up with 4-5 death stacks, unable to be revived again.
This might be a visual bug, as the highest number of revive sickness stacks I have seen is 9 during a TOMM, before perma death. However, the visual bug would not only include the stacks but also the getting back up animation.
There was never a difference for us. Bats always appeared in the sisters fight and going to the light always worked. In fact, whenever we had someone new in the group, that was the advice we gave: get bats, go to light. It always worked. For years. So the idea of grouping up for bats? Not a chance. So weird we never experienced that.
Curiously, where are those light areas located? For Strahd the candles are the spots, but for the sisters?
0
arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Is there any reason why bats work differently for the different bosses? It would make sense to unify what they do, so as not to confuse the player. (I haven't done the reworked fight)
Can we expect further dungeon changes to get to Live faster? I'd rather have new bugs for a week, than the old bugs for a month longer and then the new ones for a month.
Do you acknowledge the issue with the absent/cancelled animation here and in other fights?
Disregarding the dig about breaking things...
I have no bearing on when things get released, that is up to our QA team and Build Producer to determine. That being said, I'm doing everything in my power to get these changes live next week.
I've been talking with our Animators about the animation issue that's been brought up and I don't believe that's anything isolated to this fight and is instead a larger systemic issue. That issue is highly unlikely to be fixed in the short term. Luckily, it seems to be a very rare occurrence and in the case of the Sisters is easy to counter. If you have 10 stacks, she's coming for you.
Is there any reason why bats work differently for the different bosses? It would make sense to unify what they do, so as not to confuse the player. (I haven't done the reworked fight)
I have specifically avoided talking about Strahd because I haven't looked "under the hood" with him to confirm or deny the mechanic of the candles removing the Bloodflight. Since you brought it up directly though, a quick glance seems to indicate that such a mechanic does not exist and likely there was something else going on.
The candles just happen to be in spots where the bats can't hit. @rjc9000 found it when the dungeon launched, same as the pillars that got removed from the Sisters fight which would block damage from the Chains mechanic. He said for the candles, Line of Sight is blocked to the center of the arena. I can't personally 'see' that in my mind's eye but I trust him to know what he's talking about.
"We have always been at war with Dread Vault" ~ Little Brother
I've been talking with our Animators about the animation issue that's been brought up and I don't believe that's anything isolated to this fight and is instead a larger systemic issue. That issue is highly unlikely to be fixed in the short term.
I have been thinking along the same lines for a long while. As an old programmer: I suspect you have some kind of message passing system in the engine, and that message passing system is dropping messages on and off. Maybe those messages go as UDP packets that are not verified for delivery? Just long-shot guessing.
We have seen odd incidents like dungeon scripts not progressing properly, forcing abandoned runs. Last time for me was in ToNG where the challenge/riddle event where you have to carry the rocks never got the 'event complete' message so we got stuck(I have seen that happen twice). I also remember a similar event that got stuck in CR once, the animation where Strahd is sitting on his throne.
It does not happen often enough that it is really annoying, but it seems to be a persistent problem and is more noticeable in some zones than in others.
This will be my final post in this thread unless something dramatic changes in QA or player testing. Here's the list of changes that I've made, which I'm hopeful will go live next week:
Gaze of Doom: Damage reduced by 20%
Pool of Decay: Damage on initial hit reduced by 12.5% and damage ramped values for subsequent hits reduced by 25%
Whispers of Deception is now cleansable
Fixed an issue where Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power) would fail to remove the Hold from Whispers of Deception
Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power): Changed to a targeted power instead of a sphere around the player with a range of 100'. Additionally, it will now also cleanse Gaze of Doom
Fixed an issue where the Consort of Rage's Essence of Rage power was granting far more Critical Chance to herself and nearby allies than was intended. She now gives an elevated Critical Chance of 10% to herself and nearby allies
Bloodflight is no longer unavoidable damage, meaning that player defensive stats will be applied to determine the damage received by the player
Fixed an edge case where the Sisters could cast the same power twice in their rotation if they became shielded from another Sister in spectre form
Fixed an issue where one of the Blood Crazed Spawns adds was getting stuck at its spawn location and not entering the fight
Fixed an edge case where the warning indicator for Bloodflight could be displayed on the wrong target
Fixed an edge case where the Sisters could temporarily ignore the aggro target
In the case of the warning indicator issues with Bloodflight, the changes I've made were more theoretical as I was never able to reproduce the issue myself. I'm hopeful that the changes I've made will fix the problems there, but its entirely possible that those will need to be revisited.
This will be my final post in this thread unless something dramatic changes in QA or player testing.
Since this is related, if the fight resets enough times, and someone leaves the queue group, and you get someone else in, when you attempt the first boss fight (sisters) there is a chance that the instance will be completely empty (as in no sisters are there to fight), and regardless of how many times you reset, you won't be able to proceed and you will need to completely shut down the instance and re-queue.
This quote is interesting. There is an old rumor that the damage can be avoided all together by either ~~going close to the lanterns~~ (nvm already answered) or by stopping using any encounters.
For me stopping using any powers did actually work during mod15 (not sure if it's still possible now), the only problem is you have to release all buttons instantly after the arrows appeared on you. This is how I survived Bloodflight before one of dps has tell me about candles
The candles just happen to be in spots where the bats can't hit. @rjc9000 found it when the dungeon launched, same as the pillars that got removed from the Sisters fight which would block damage from the Chains mechanic. He said for the candles, Line of Sight is blocked to the center of the arena. I can't personally 'see' that in my mind's eye but I trust him to know what he's talking about.
why do you have to ping me while I checking on [redacted]
The candles themselves do not indicate where line of sight is blocked. The candles are just placed at the edges of the arena and presumably are there for flavor.
There are these pillars at the edges of the arena that have a small corner/alcove jam yourself into. As long as you're not playing a fat Dragonborn, this corner barely blocks line of the sight to the center of the arena.
The candles are conveniently close to these pillars, which is where I think the confusion is happening.
@lassor#2420 Sisters can disappear which makes impossible to complete dungeon
If one player disconnected during the battle and returned in the game after the sisters combat failed, then the sisters completely disappear. There are no way to return sisters back if this bug happened, so players must exit the dungeon.
How to easily reproduce this bug: Enter the boss battle without group and right after that close the game. Then log in from this character again and you will see that sisters disappear (even after the combat restart).
Comments
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1263729/reapers-que-castle-ravenloft/p1?new=1
Ah, where do I report this issue then? Castle Ravenloft in normal mode isn't the issue, yes.
Edit - looks like Sif did make a new thread for RC: https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter#/discussion/1263729/reapers-que-castle-ravenloft/p1
Some additional things to clarify to remove any potential confusion. When a player steps into a Pool of Decay they receive a DoT, which could give the illusion of 'invisible' pools since the damage source is a Pool of Decay when you're far removed from it. There is a red aura that should emanate from the character for the duration of that DoT, though it's possible it's getting culled on occasion. Our FX artists are looking into this.
The lanterns at the edges of the arena do not, and have never, removed the Bloodflight (bat swarm) soak mechanic. If it appeared that it did at some point in the past, it was either convenient timing that it ended as you entered the light area or you encountered a beneficial bug of some kind.
- I personally have not whitnessed mystery onehits. The hits that can be confusing are the Dots from the Pool of Decay AFTER they leave the Pools.
- While the mechanics have not changed, the damage increase has uncovered certain problems:
- When the knockback happens while the current sister casts Pools of Decay on the landing spot, the player cannot avoid the application nor at least the first dot hit because of being pruned after the knockback. Together with the faklling damage, this often results in an instant kill or on being killed on the second dot.
- The person with the book can get targeted by the Whispers of Deception stun. If that happens, the other sisters are happy to cast Pools of Decay directly below the book wearer. Once the book wearer get out of the stun, the dot from the Pool of Decay applies once and due to the time to move out the pool at least once more (after leaving the pool). With its current damage, this results in getting killed.
- The healer can get the Wispers of Deception. While stunned the Gaze of Doom Dot cannot be cleased, dealing often enough damage to kill a dps.
- The bloodflight (bats) deal UNAVOIDABLE damage. Thus defense and damage resistance buffs are not applied. It seems that Awareness and Critical Avoidance is applied though. The 90-Awareness and 90-Critical Avoidance multipliers then create crazy amounts of damage resulting in no way of countering the damage. If all 4 stay in one spot and the bloodblight crits, then a decent tank will still take ~450k damage and the dps will be instakilled through taking 700k damage. The bloodflight from Strahd does unavoidable damage too, but is only around a quarter of the one from sisters!
- Additionally there still seems to be weird things going on with casts of the same power twice in a row and the order of things getting cast. This seem to be triggered often after Wail of Suffering misses its target (due to moving out of range).
- Certain attacks still have very unnoticeable animations. Bloodflight and Blood Craze are two of them. Due to the unpredictable order of enemy attacks and bloodflight applying its damage shortly after it is cast, the mechanic is hardly predictable and counterable.
- There seems to be a bug when people go too close to the gate and get aggro from one sister. The sister is the 'killed' when trying to get through the gate which immediately creates the Portal of Power for the dps check ...
- It is possible to kill the spectre sisters first and lastly the sister of Sprite. This bug made us succeed the RC version!
This quote is interesting. There is an old rumor that the damage can be avoided all together by either ~~going close to the lanterns~~ (nvm already answered) or by stopping using any encounters. However, over all the years I haven't heard of any reliable test results that have proven or disproven the rumors, because the damage of the bats seem to be not applied from time to time regardless of line of sight. May you shred light into the rumors?The reason is simple: the pools do not do damage by itself but apply a Dot that does damage each 3s it is active. It was always like this but was not worth to notice before the damage got raised. Thus resulting in some weird damage out of nowhere.
The other damage source out of nowhere is Gaze of Doom, which again is a Dot and is applied on a RANDOM person and appears often with Whispers of Deception - the stun and ghost. It may happen that the sisters cast them twice in a row, applying the Dot short after each other. Does Gaze of Doom really shall be applied on random people and not the tank only?
And also, if there are no ways to avoid the damage, what may cause bloodflight to not deal damage at all sometimes?
Just fyi: There is an old thread which goes into the details of the Sister of Fury hunt. It is quite similar to the sister fight in CR.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1244042/boss-mechanics-t3-hunt-sister-of-fury
Yule (Barb): 72k : Siren (TR): 78k : Torun (DC): 73k : Siren OP (OP): 76k : Siren SW (SW): 78k : Modern (F): 80k : Cherry1 (CW) : 68k Siren HR (HR): 78k
It could be the dot from the pools, but from what I was seeing and hearing on my end the arrows appeared and the instakill was immediate. I'm not sure if something different was happening on the targeted dps's end. Could latency cause the soak to appear to happen immediately?
Oops! I didn't mean to do that!
Overall, it's a fun dynamic fight, a significant improvement over what it was before, both for the book carrier and for everyone else. I have the Sister of Spite on video chasing barbarian dps after he got and lost aggro. I used Smite hard taunt, barb runs around "in the orange", she did Pool, missed Wail, hit Wail, chains, Smite, hit Wail, chains on me (while barb still has them), Gaze on me and, finally, barb turns yellow and she gives up on him. I don't think this happens often. This still happens. It's the only reason I got to see the 3rd Sister. That was how some people did RC CR before the changes. Even though the damage from the Bloodflight was manageable back then. I don't think the lantern bug still works reliably, and there was another bug, when the bats just wouldn't do any damage (they do now).
/watch?v=laxsAcdMMDo&t=182s
/watch?v=XbPAsVPnyTo&t=405s
No arrows, no damage: /watch?v=fDykCexwyEo&t=1465s
I have invisible Bloodflight on video, but sif has already posted one. This was happening more often than not. It can also show the arrows *after* killing someone. The Bloodflight also jumps to a close target after the kill, not sure if intended.
I think there can be invisible pools as well, but not 100% sure.
I've seen the Sister do the 1-shot attack without animation, but only caught it on video next time, when the animation got cut shortly after the start (have logs too). It coincided with the Drizzt companion doing his noodle slaps.
No animation 1-shot before the changes: /watch?v=XbPAsVPnyTo&t=265
Sometimes a Sister will follow a player to the campfire, after he resurrects, but she leaves shortly.
After getting Soulforged revive, you might end up in the empty boss arena (solved by /defeatme). Eventually our instance got bugged and we got the empty boss arena after entering as a group (not solved by /defeatme). Someone also mentioned that Soulforged could break the instance during the Strahd fight, something about losing the sword.
Something was preventing the Soulforged from working sometimes in CR RC, but I'm not very sure about it. Maybe the book or the pools.
After being revived by the Soulforged, I reliably could not regain the aggro with the hard taunts for 10 seconds or so. The same happened in the Tuern RC, but doesn't seem to happen in other non-RC dungeons.
I can't recall if this happens in this fight, but Soulforged can also revive multiple times per second, adding death stacks and injuries. It happens reliably during the wipe on the last boss in the Tomb of the Nine Gods and on the hypo (or maybe blackhole, they come together) in the Vault of Stars. This is very undesirable, as you end up with 4-5 death stacks, unable to be revived again.
Book cleansing power doesn't remove the ghost from the carrier on the 1st Sister, but our carrier mentioned that it works on the 2nd.
Some mechanics have very unlucky interactions.
As mentioned in this thread, being knocked back into the pools at the start has to be avoided. This is impossible if the pools are cast right before the knockback (it seems unreasonable to expect players to wait for the cast before phasing the Sister). Knockback through the pools puts a dot as well, even though you arc over them visually.
Gaze of Doom can tick on the tank right before the 1-shot, draining the stamina and removing the block.
Pools under the tank at 10 stacks are nasty as well.
The Gaze of Doom mechanic is rather hard to figure out. It's a dot with the brown eye icon, put on a random player. Can be cleansed, ticks every 3 seconds, does 200-300k damage per tick in RC. It might be possible to look away from the Sister to avoid the damage, but we haven't tried that.
Our group's experience is if someone got the bats, they and anyone near them died. But if they left the group and went to the lights, they lived, and everyone else lived.
For the last several months that's changed and one of two things happen: someone gets the bats and dies immediately, or, someone gets the bats for a few seconds, then someone else dies. Like one character got the animation, but the other character got the effect.
Anyways, it's hard-wired into us that when someone gets the bats, they get as far away from the group as possible and go to light.
Changes that have already been made internally:
- Gaze of Doom damage reduced by 20%
- Pool of Decay damage reduced by 12.5% on initial hit and damage ramped values for subsequent hits reduced by 25%
- Whispers of Deception is now cleansable
- Fixed an issue where Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power) would fail to remove the Hold from Whispers of Deception.
- Deception's Rebuke (Tome power) is now a targeted power instead of a sphere around the player with a range of 100'. Additionally, it will now also cleanse Gaze of Doom.
- Fixed an issue where The Consort of Rage's Essence of Rage was granting far more Critical Chance to herself and nearby allies than was intended. She now gives an elevated Critical Chance of 10% to herself and nearby allies.
Changes that are being considered:- Bloodflight will either be kept as unavoidable damage at a reduced magnitude with no ability to critically hit OR it will be converted to 'regular' damage, retain the ability to critically hit, and retain the same magnitude. Both of these options will see its effective damage reduced in the area of 50%. Damage reduction will vary based on player stats.
Issues that are being investigated:- Bloodflight not rendering (video proof)
- Bloodflight's damage occurring in parallel with the damage indicator appearing (video proof)
- The sister's not respecting aggro. I have no video proof of this yet, but enough people have brought it up that I believe it is still a problem in some edge cases. It would appear the last fix I made resolved the vast majority of cases where this problem would appear.
Issues that have been brought up that I believe were not tested with the latest patch:- Bloodflight targets the Tome carrier
What started this conversation in regards to invisible damage I believe can be safely attributed to Bloodflights not rendering and confusion around Pools of Decay and Gaze of Doom damage.If I didn't mention an issue that was brought up then I either believe it is lower priority and not worth investigating at this time in parallel with these more important issues or it lies outside of the scope of what can be fixed within the confines of this encounter. If you think I'm overlooking something important then by all means bring it up again, but I don't have the time to respond to each person individually.
Can we expect further dungeon changes to get to Live faster? I'd rather have new bugs for a week, than the old bugs for a month longer and then the new ones for a month.
Do you acknowledge the issue with the absent/cancelled animation here and in other fights? https://files.catbox.moe/z0p8ea.mp4
Log: https://pastebin.com/raw/wFx34SUj
Video starts at 21:28:54.5 or so.
Bats in the sisters fight.. I can't really remember seeing those before? So they seems to be a new addition and seems to follow the usual Hypothermia 'group up to share damage' rules.
This might be a visual bug, as the highest number of revive sickness stacks I have seen is 9 during a TOMM, before perma death. However, the visual bug would not only include the stacks but also the getting back up animation.
I have no bearing on when things get released, that is up to our QA team and Build Producer to determine. That being said, I'm doing everything in my power to get these changes live next week.
I've been talking with our Animators about the animation issue that's been brought up and I don't believe that's anything isolated to this fight and is instead a larger systemic issue. That issue is highly unlikely to be fixed in the short term. Luckily, it seems to be a very rare occurrence and in the case of the Sisters is easy to counter. If you have 10 stacks, she's coming for you.
We have seen odd incidents like dungeon scripts not progressing properly, forcing abandoned runs. Last time for me was in ToNG where the challenge/riddle event where you have to carry the rocks never got the 'event complete' message so we got stuck(I have seen that happen twice). I also remember a similar event that got stuck in CR once, the animation where Strahd is sitting on his throne.
It does not happen often enough that it is really annoying, but it seems to be a persistent problem and is more noticeable in some zones than in others.
- Gaze of Doom: Damage reduced by 20%
- Pool of Decay: Damage on initial hit reduced by 12.5% and damage ramped values for subsequent hits reduced by 25%
- Whispers of Deception is now cleansable
- Fixed an issue where Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power) would fail to remove the Hold from Whispers of Deception
- Deception's Rebuke (Tome Power): Changed to a targeted power instead of a sphere around the player with a range of 100'. Additionally, it will now also cleanse Gaze of Doom
- Fixed an issue where the Consort of Rage's Essence of Rage power was granting far more Critical Chance to herself and nearby allies than was intended. She now gives an elevated Critical Chance of 10% to herself and nearby allies
- Bloodflight is no longer unavoidable damage, meaning that player defensive stats will be applied to determine the damage received by the player
- Fixed an edge case where the Sisters could cast the same power twice in their rotation if they became shielded from another Sister in spectre form
- Fixed an issue where one of the Blood Crazed Spawns adds was getting stuck at its spawn location and not entering the fight
- Fixed an edge case where the warning indicator for Bloodflight could be displayed on the wrong target
- Fixed an edge case where the Sisters could temporarily ignore the aggro target
In the case of the warning indicator issues with Bloodflight, the changes I've made were more theoretical as I was never able to reproduce the issue myself. I'm hopeful that the changes I've made will fix the problems there, but its entirely possible that those will need to be revisited.why do you have to ping me while I checking on [redacted]The candles themselves do not indicate where line of sight is blocked.
The candles are just placed at the edges of the arena and presumably are there for flavor.
There are these pillars at the edges of the arena that have a small corner/alcove jam yourself into. As long as you're not playing a fat Dragonborn, this corner barely blocks line of the sight to the center of the arena.
The candles are conveniently close to these pillars, which is where I think the confusion is happening.
Sisters can disappear which makes impossible to complete dungeon
If one player disconnected during the battle and returned in the game after the sisters combat failed, then the sisters completely disappear. There are no way to return sisters back if this bug happened, so players must exit the dungeon.
How to easily reproduce this bug:
Enter the boss battle without group and right after that close the game. Then log in from this character again and you will see that sisters disappear (even after the combat restart).