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[PC][Dragon] Lair of the Mad Mage Problems
c1k4ml3kc3
Member Posts: 1,257 Arc User
Please note that this topic was opened when dungeon was overly buggy and at the 1st day. Although there are still some bugs, the gameplay solutions are rather prominent now. Please navigate to the section with The Bore Worm if you want to talk about those issues.
OLD ISSUE (keeping it for posterity):
First of all, there is an ongoing joke that this instance is called "Lair of the Mad Lags". I agree to that and this only seems appropriate to mention since this dungeon ate 20+ of my Scrolls of Mass Life.
Now on business.
Dungeon is calmly manageable up to the 1st boss named Arcturia.
http://imgur.com/JH0RGaL
Her skills are
- Draining Brambles
- Cocoon of Death
- Necrotic Strike
- Festering Swarm
- Life Drain
- Transmogryfying Swarm
- Miasma
- Necrotic Smash
She is positioned in a room that has a set of four lanes in each corner. In each corner there is a point of spawning location for Bonedust Mimics. These so called Bonedust Mimics are worse than mosquitoes. If Bonedust Mimic reaches a small platform at the center of the reservoir(well, fountain, whatever), they will spawn a so called Butterfly Golem.
Bonedust Mimics tend to have around 200.000 HP (or so it seems, someone please check this), whilst Butterfly Golems tend to be a complete waste of time and effort to even kill or attack.
The problem with Bonedust Mimics comes from their spawning time, which tends to be too fast in some cases.
Spawning also seems to follow a somewhat randomized pattern. One lane can spawn one mimic, another lane can spawn three mimics. They have a very short route, too, and move relatively fast. There is no rule sometimes as to what makes them tick at which times. Only one rule that exists and is respected is Arcturia's spawning of Bonedust Mimics at HER specific HP pool, after which Mimics keep on spawning infinitely.
To counter Bonedust Mimics each person usually takes one part of the room, one corner each.
- At-wills more or less won't kill them.
- Encounters can kill them with anyone who has over 130.000 power and a good build. Encounters then enter the state of reset and cooldown.
- Daily powers can instakill them for the most part.
Problems arise with Healers and/or Tanks who usually can't really kill Bonedust Mimics as fast. On top of that, the Bonedust Mimics can't be controlled by any method aside from standing in front of them that can slow them down by around 5%.
Sometimes Bonedust Mimics spawn whilst Arcturia is casting Cocoon of Death.
Cocoon of Death has no visible Red Circle nor is Area of Effect shown. Cocoon of Death has no counter-spell or method to avoid that I'm aware of, aside from a Resurrecting Daily. I was not able to confirm whether intense healing had any effect on the explosion, as lag usually took care of the entire team prior to any proper testing. As far as testing goes, having a healer is a must for this fight notably for the sake of countering Cocoon of Death.
Main problems are
1. Bonedust Mimics tend to have either too much HP or tend to move fast. One of these needs to be adjusted, at least.
2. Bonedust Mimics tend to spawn in irregular pattern, leaving at least one or two players completely unprepared for the Bonedust Mimic Train.
3. Bonedust Mimics tend to be harder to kill if you play as a support class, and DPS classes already have to deal with their corners.
4. Butterfly Golems have way too much HP and can jump, a lot. Their attacks are called "Leap", "Necrotic Claw" and "Bite". Leap tends to do quite a bit of damage which doesn't seem like a lot if it is just one Golem, but if there are five of them it can get pretty messy.
5. Whenever Arcturia casts any spell, there is no visible q to tell us when to prepare. Even newly introduced rune traps in Master Expedition can still be avoidable in a fraction of a second, but Arcturia's AoE can't. First hit is almost always going to happen. She seems to cast these at random, too, as she can be facing one player and then attack another one at another place on the map. For this she uses AoE spells which I assume are "Festering Swarm" and "Transmogrifying Swarm". She can also cast these during 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Bonedust Mimic spawns, as well.
All of the things said above lead me to believe that Bonedust Mimic spawnrate and speed are broken. It also makes them very hard for people who do not have a lot of Power/Damage, thus also leading me to conclude that people who could somewhat use Control to push away these Mimics actually can't do it as these Mimics are Control Immune. Bad choice, so DPS is a must!
I will note that she doesn't seem to be too hard as far as Bosses go, nor mobs seem to be too hard to deal with. Problem is that room will get full very fast, by the time she is on 50% hp and it is a big difference dealing with 3 Butterfly Golems or 10.
I am sure that Cryptic does not want to leave such a bitter taste in people's mouth, so spawning rate of Bonedust Mimics really needs to be adjusted as I am 100% sure that anyone without 130K Power will have a rather hard time of killing just one mimic, let alone three in a row whilst being a DPS class. I can't speak for SUPPORT classes and I am sure that one of them will fail to kill one of the Mimics.
I can propose that one of the corners gets turned off per one spawn time. Each spawning corner would switch between three locations to spawn, so people would need to move from one area to another area quickly. This means that three DPS classes would rush to kill newly spawned Bonedust Mimics. This leaves HEALER role completely free to help anyone who has problems in the meantime, and leaves a tank to deal with any potential issues at the time.
Every and all cases of Bonedust Mimics being spawned should leave Arcturia immovable, in a casting position, without being able to cast AoE spells on any player who is already defeating the Bonedust Mimic.
OLD ISSUE (keeping it for posterity):
First of all, there is an ongoing joke that this instance is called "Lair of the Mad Lags". I agree to that and this only seems appropriate to mention since this dungeon ate 20+ of my Scrolls of Mass Life.
Now on business.
Dungeon is calmly manageable up to the 1st boss named Arcturia.
http://imgur.com/JH0RGaL
Her skills are
- Draining Brambles
- Cocoon of Death
- Necrotic Strike
- Festering Swarm
- Life Drain
- Transmogryfying Swarm
- Miasma
- Necrotic Smash
She is positioned in a room that has a set of four lanes in each corner. In each corner there is a point of spawning location for Bonedust Mimics. These so called Bonedust Mimics are worse than mosquitoes. If Bonedust Mimic reaches a small platform at the center of the reservoir(well, fountain, whatever), they will spawn a so called Butterfly Golem.
Bonedust Mimics tend to have around 200.000 HP (or so it seems, someone please check this), whilst Butterfly Golems tend to be a complete waste of time and effort to even kill or attack.
The problem with Bonedust Mimics comes from their spawning time, which tends to be too fast in some cases.
Spawning also seems to follow a somewhat randomized pattern. One lane can spawn one mimic, another lane can spawn three mimics. They have a very short route, too, and move relatively fast. There is no rule sometimes as to what makes them tick at which times. Only one rule that exists and is respected is Arcturia's spawning of Bonedust Mimics at HER specific HP pool, after which Mimics keep on spawning infinitely.
To counter Bonedust Mimics each person usually takes one part of the room, one corner each.
- At-wills more or less won't kill them.
- Encounters can kill them with anyone who has over 130.000 power and a good build. Encounters then enter the state of reset and cooldown.
- Daily powers can instakill them for the most part.
Problems arise with Healers and/or Tanks who usually can't really kill Bonedust Mimics as fast. On top of that, the Bonedust Mimics can't be controlled by any method aside from standing in front of them that can slow them down by around 5%.
Sometimes Bonedust Mimics spawn whilst Arcturia is casting Cocoon of Death.
Cocoon of Death has no visible Red Circle nor is Area of Effect shown. Cocoon of Death has no counter-spell or method to avoid that I'm aware of, aside from a Resurrecting Daily. I was not able to confirm whether intense healing had any effect on the explosion, as lag usually took care of the entire team prior to any proper testing. As far as testing goes, having a healer is a must for this fight notably for the sake of countering Cocoon of Death.
Main problems are
1. Bonedust Mimics tend to have either too much HP or tend to move fast. One of these needs to be adjusted, at least.
2. Bonedust Mimics tend to spawn in irregular pattern, leaving at least one or two players completely unprepared for the Bonedust Mimic Train.
3. Bonedust Mimics tend to be harder to kill if you play as a support class, and DPS classes already have to deal with their corners.
4. Butterfly Golems have way too much HP and can jump, a lot. Their attacks are called "Leap", "Necrotic Claw" and "Bite". Leap tends to do quite a bit of damage which doesn't seem like a lot if it is just one Golem, but if there are five of them it can get pretty messy.
5. Whenever Arcturia casts any spell, there is no visible q to tell us when to prepare. Even newly introduced rune traps in Master Expedition can still be avoidable in a fraction of a second, but Arcturia's AoE can't. First hit is almost always going to happen. She seems to cast these at random, too, as she can be facing one player and then attack another one at another place on the map. For this she uses AoE spells which I assume are "Festering Swarm" and "Transmogrifying Swarm". She can also cast these during 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th Bonedust Mimic spawns, as well.
All of the things said above lead me to believe that Bonedust Mimic spawnrate and speed are broken. It also makes them very hard for people who do not have a lot of Power/Damage, thus also leading me to conclude that people who could somewhat use Control to push away these Mimics actually can't do it as these Mimics are Control Immune. Bad choice, so DPS is a must!
I will note that she doesn't seem to be too hard as far as Bosses go, nor mobs seem to be too hard to deal with. Problem is that room will get full very fast, by the time she is on 50% hp and it is a big difference dealing with 3 Butterfly Golems or 10.
I am sure that Cryptic does not want to leave such a bitter taste in people's mouth, so spawning rate of Bonedust Mimics really needs to be adjusted as I am 100% sure that anyone without 130K Power will have a rather hard time of killing just one mimic, let alone three in a row whilst being a DPS class. I can't speak for SUPPORT classes and I am sure that one of them will fail to kill one of the Mimics.
I can propose that one of the corners gets turned off per one spawn time. Each spawning corner would switch between three locations to spawn, so people would need to move from one area to another area quickly. This means that three DPS classes would rush to kill newly spawned Bonedust Mimics. This leaves HEALER role completely free to help anyone who has problems in the meantime, and leaves a tank to deal with any potential issues at the time.
Every and all cases of Bonedust Mimics being spawned should leave Arcturia immovable, in a casting position, without being able to cast AoE spells on any player who is already defeating the Bonedust Mimic.
True Neutral
Left the Game due to heavy Damage Control & Missing Spanish Language
Post edited by c1k4ml3kc3 on
8
Comments
But outside of the mimics and the cocoon, we were confronted to an ultima red blast that instakill us, each and every time. It's not really hard to figure out that mimics that reach the butterfly vortex convert into on-steroids golems, so we spread on corners to kill them.
With a really high-geared team, we could defeat the mimic phases, and have like only 1 golem, so adds were not a problem. But each and every time, there was a red blast which would instakill us, out of nowhere, in random pattern, and without any indication. It's not the cocoon thing, it's just another a big instakill for everyone (or almost, since sometimes someone randomly survives it). By instakill, I mean can't resurrect people and can't use scrolls.
That's what drove me nuts. We were doing the mimic mechanic fine, we grouped up when someone was cocooned, and we had no issue dealing damage to Arcturia when she's available to be hit. But each time, on every try, we got a random party-wipe with no indication. Truely amazing design right here.
But yeah mimics are easy enough to figure out, but I think most min queue il groups would have a rough time killing them fast enough. I know for me if my encounters decide to not crit I can not solo them.... but yeah the cocoon and the msyter blast no clue....
I have seen lots of people saying the colours in the corners mean something, however I think this is just a way for people to be able to assign corners to players
The mechanics from what I have seen are:
Mimics spawn at 75%. When you have killed 4? mimics the phase ends. Every mimic that hits their platform spawns a bone golem. The chests spawn in a loop until the correct number is killed. Acturia then transitions into her cocoon move. I think the number of golems up affect the strength of the cocoon/blast. The red blast people are referring to is part of the cocoon phase and again I think is down to golem numbers.
I have seen plenty of groups survive both phases by calling out that they are in a cocoon. They will instantly lose a chunk of their health so need to use a potion/stone to get back up to full/or get healed. The healer then needs to join that person (maybe others stack too to share the damage, not clear yet!). Every time I have seen people get to the cocoon with minimal golems and stacking on the cocooned player the healer has kept the team alive. When there are multiple golem however this cocoon move seems to be a team wipe. I have yet to see a team beat this as once the second wave of mimics spawn the waves seem to happen way too frequently. I am sure a BiS 24k team with 4 DPS and one healer could beat this, but this is surely not by design
I think if they slightly reduced either mimic speed/health and there was a set point of her health where they spawned this fight would be manageable. At the moment it looks like pot luck on mimics (If you hit your crits, have encounters up or have a daily you can probably kill one.
It could be there may be more mechanics we have not discovered, but cryptic historically always give pretty big clues about mechanics
The mechanics seem very similar to the taken king in destiny where 4 ogres spawn in corners of the map periodically and each player has to kill an Ogre before it reaches the middle and consume an orb. These were a serious DPS check and weaker teams would 100% fail at this. You also had to save your super and special ammo for these. You then have to all group up on one player and shield from an unblockable attack and then rinse and repeat every 25% of boss health
This dungeon to me overall seems too hard for a 20k item level. We are getting back to the days of looking for 3 x 24k Barbie must have this and must have that. It seems the boss difficulty level is set to be extremely challenging for even the most geared and coordinated teams. If this is the case push the requirements up to 23k il.
The problem we had was the 1 shot skills. I am not sure if there is some weird stat problem like someones says, but mod 16 was created to avoid 1shot skills that you cant avoid, so I think this random unavoidable 1 shot has to be fixed.
If the cocoon phase is avoided with all sharing damage that is ok like hypothermia, but seems that sometimes it doesnt work.
Also, sometimes the golems do incredible dmg. Even with defense and critical avoidance capped they hit me for 200k sometimes when they charge.
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I haven't seen wild insta-kills, but I do believe that these can occur as I had a few runs where Arcturia simply bugsup and whole instance needs to be replayed.
I agree with the proposition of having mimics spawn only at a specific HP, as people are somewhat familiar with Nostura's design and the necessity for slow burn. In this scenario, slow burn until AP is manageable.
As a Wizard I always had Arcane Empowerment during the Mimic spawning. However, at some point they just kept on spawning and it was impossible to manage the sheer amount of mimics. This happens at around 50%-60% HP in my experience, too.
Apparently, we did the best whenever we completely ignored all subsequent mimics and just went to dps Arcturia. Problem is, she becomes invulnerable and starts spawning mimics at an increased rate, sometimes more, sometimes less, so it is unpredictable.
As far as the design goes, if the team @ Cryptic wanted to stray away from powercreep meta where people were chosen based on their skills more than their attributes, then this very dungeon, this shining example of a first test, first boss is the very definition of the necessity for power creeping necessity (and having enough dps/power to actually manage Bonedust Mimic sequence).
This makes for a very, very narrow gameplay and a very narrow choice of skills/options to choose from.
On top of my head, three TRs with one DC and OP are ideal here as their encounters can hit rather high.
Another ideal group is composed of two wizards, one TR, given that wizards can manage ranged attacks on Mimics and thus help out DC/TANK scenario.
Yet another ideal group is composed of four Barbarians and one tank, which brings us back to the starting point where we have to conclude that MOD16 didn't do squat in changing the player dynamics and this narrows down to the choice of weapons and damage attained-per-weapon point invested. Once again some classes seem to benefit from weapon damage more than the others and it is already starting to show right here on the first boss in new dungeon.
What I've noticed was only during 1st day after release.
Issues that seem to have been fixed/addressed after this topic was opened are as follow:
- Mimics do not randomly spawn two or three in a row
- Mimics do not have random stats, but are designated per corner *each corner different stats* (as a tank/healer you want to take Green corner as this is where easiest mimics appear, or so I'm told my more experienced runners)
- Arcturia won't unleash hell upon players without proper animation anymore. Each spell will have animation now.
- Mimics tend to come at regular pattern. Those with more HP have less movement speed.
I can safely conclude that Arcturia phase does not have any issues in terms of mechanics anymore!
-----------------------
PROBLEMS WITH THE BOREWORM
New problem seems to be with the amount of Golems spawning @ Boss 2 known as The BoreWorm. This boss seems to have a very hard time dropping any important or good items, as the best I've got were blue bracers. I think that this is inappropriate and sends a very bad message to the playerbase.
Firstly, I've beaten this dungeon over 10 times now and I haven't got anything worthwhile from the BoreWorm who seems to be very eager in devouring all my Scrolls of Mass Life during the Golem phase. Given that I was not running with the most of optimal parties, I intentionally went with irregular compositions as not only 2OP or 1OP/1DC is mandatory.
Golem phase was beaten with 2SW and in various other player compositions even with 110k power. Of course, it took a lot of time, but that's not important as the dungeon was beaten.
Please bear in mind that I went with people who were not fully optimized for going into such dungeon.
However, the biggest problem I've seen comes with healers who do not know about the BoreWorm AoE phase, as they tend to run amok when Golems appear. They forget to heal party members. And this happens even with some of the best healers whenever they pick up golem aggro, somehow.
Logically, the number of Golems are a bit too much, especially since they spawn twice in the instance, out of which one is mandatory @ 50% BoreWorm hp pool.
These Golems proved to be too much due to their numbers more than anything else, since the constant AoE in combination with falling rocks seems to already exhaust people who play this game casually. If one tank can take one golem, and three dps can take the other golems, healer should be free to do a bit of healing as this is what that point in the run is all about since BoreWorm attacks can't be avoided.
Incidentally, I can see this being countered by going in circles and running away in circles whilst healing anyone with AoE. Arguably, most people won't do this and will instead tend to stand in one place and try to outheal all damage numbers.
This is still somewhat happening as OP class can give a lot of temporary HP to people!
Lastly, although with time people might learn how to utilize a better strategy, I still think that golems are a bit too much for the current dungeon stage.
1. My first proposition is to reduce golem spawn ratio to four(4) instead of six(6), as my experience suggests that this way they should be more manageable even in lower party compositions.
2. My second proposition is to increase drop rates for the 2nd boss The BoreWorm, or make him drop at least one mandatory Black Opal, since having either zero(0%) for any drops or getting a silly emerald that any monster can drop even on first levels is rather insulting after going through all that trouble and definitely leaves a bitter taste.
> I tried this dungeon the 1st day with 3 different 22k teams of players I've known for a long time and all 3 we couldnt do the 1st boss successfully. All the issues you describe we we're having, along with horrible lag.....it mad me so mad I haven't tried to even do the dungeon again, though my friends did the next day and said it was a lot better and they actually we're able to beat it.
> may give it another shot.....
Might be the IL is not dmg issue.
You do need some punch do keep up with the mimics.
But it's not that bad, give it another try. Try different parties with people that don't quit after a try or so.
My stats are a bit rusty, but you can attain around 170-180-190k power with min-maxing and pots.