Castel Ravenloft first boss fight

themoore · December 2021

The Bat swarm does not give even 1 beat of time to reach the street lights on the first boss (instead of 3 like supposed to)
And sudden deaths with no reason, no debuffs, no dopplegangers, no read puddles, no boss, nothing just sdudden deaths out of the blue.

I do like it is harder tho but you should fix it so the mechanics work.

@nitocris83

datarider · December 2021

not surprised

cryptic hamster dev recently "fixed" this fight. all that ppl wanted was for the sister to hit the person with most aggro, nothing else. but he went out of his way to "rework this fight". what a hamsters

next time dont ask for "fixes", if you can manage

and it was manageable

rockster · December 2021

I wondered why I died and never resurrected with my soulforged, just bang - dead, out of the blue. Was quite a surprise when it happened. I was sort of confused. Another enjoyable dungeon potentially ruined.

lassor · December 2021

The Bat Swarm is a soak, intended to be shared with nearby allies to survive.

I'm going to need more information about these 'sudden deaths' as this is the first I've heard of it and this wasn't experienced in in any of our internal test groups or when I watched players do the fight on Live after the changes went through. Did you see anything in your logs about what killed you? Do you happen to know what phase of the fight you were in? Better yet, do you have a video?

Also, I'm not sure where this notion came from the fight is 'reworked' as no new mechanics were added to the fight. While it is true that the damage of many powers that were previously trivial was increased and will result in more pressure on the tank and the group as a whole, the length of the fight was significantly reduced as a counterbalance.

admiralwarlord · December 2021

Lassor is right, in the first boss he works as the mechanic known as hypo, unlike the last boss where you have the option to protect yourself on the candles.

oberonsghost · December 2021

I thought the mechanic was when you get bats make it to a lamps on the left side to make them go away.

I find when the person with the book gets doppleganged and looses all aggro on the ghostly sisters frustrating.
This happens too often.
Also, the person with the book is out on their own so when they get bats they just die getting no time to react to the mechanic.

To me the fight does feel like its been reworked.

The parts I would most like to work are the active sister obey aggro rules so the tank can be useful.
The most important thing for me though is in the portal phase. When a sister dies and the portal appears, it needs to be set at Hit point level to make getting passed the first boss actually possible for normal players.

Seen a lot of abandons because the dps was not there to kill the portal in time.
Even with everyone saving their artefacts mount powers and dailies for that one phase.

(Please note I am not blaming the dps I just don't think the balance is right for the entry item level.)

lassor · December 2021

oberonsghost said:
I thought the mechanic was when you get bats make it to a lamps on the left side to make them go away.

I find when the person with the book gets doppleganged and looses all aggro on the ghostly sisters frustrating.
This happens too often.
Also, the person with the book is out on their own so when they get bats they just die getting no time to react to the mechanic.

To me the fight does feel like its been reworked.

The parts I would most like to work are the active sister obey aggro rules so the tank can be useful.
The most important thing for me though is in the portal phase. When a sister dies and the portal appears, it needs to be set at Hit point level to make getting passed the first boss actually possible for normal players.

Seen a lot of abandons because the dps was not there to kill the portal in time.
Even with everyone saving their artefacts mount powers and dailies for that one phase.

(Please note I am not blaming the dps I just don't think the balance is right for the entry item level.)

Either you have not played the dungeon since the changes I made went live or you're stating that two of the issues I fixed are still occurring. Can you confirm when you last fought the Sisters?

If anyone else wants to add feedback to this thread, please ensure you've actually fought the Sisters since the most recent changes.

rockster · December 2021

I don't know what caused me (and everyone else) to die (and not get resurrected into the bargain, it was the same effect as when we are in a reaper and there's supposed to be no revives and you just die instantly even with a soulforged enchant - boom you're dead) I just died and dealt with it and it's not my habit of recording every run I do just in case something goes wrong and I need evidence later so at least in my case there is no video. But may I say respectfully that it's extremely annoying that these dungeons are constantly being tinkered with at your end and altered and if there are fundamental changes to how it operates - including damage dealt to players - it really is a rework isn't it. All people were asking for was for a bug to be fixed and now we have more changes to things which people had no issue with.

lassor · December 2021

rockster#6227 said:
I don't know what caused me (and everyone else) to die (and not get resurrected into the bargain, it was the same effect as when we are in a reaper and there's supposed to be no revives and you just die instantly even with a soulforged enchant - boom you're dead) I just died and dealt with it and it's not my habit of recording every run I do just in case something goes wrong and I need evidence later so at least in my case there is no video. But may I say respectfully that it's extremely annoying that these dungeons are constantly being tinkered with at your end and altered and if there are fundamental changes to how it operates - including damage dealt to players - it really is a rework isn't it. All people were asking for was for a bug to be fixed and now we have more changes to things which people had no issue with.

Well now we're starting to get somewhere, you didn't mention before that your entire group died at the same time. I also interpreted your comment about Soulforged not working to simply mean that you didn't automatically revive but were still able to be revived. This is the type of information that is helpful in trying to diagnose what a problem might be.

It sounds to me like the Portal of Power killed the group with its group wiping power. I assume you know that failing to kill the portal will wipe the group, so it sounds like it triggered when it shouldn't. Did this happen once or on multiple occasions?

pitshade · December 2021

The candles don't stop the hypo effect at Strahd. It's just that they are positioned in such a way that there isn't LOS to the middle and the attack 'fails' because of it. It used to be possible to do the same thing with the Chains mechanic at the Sisters fight before the 4 square pillars got removed to stop people doing this.

oberonsghost · December 2021

I am in the fight now and i stand by my statements.
The portal health does seem improved on the sisters now.
Hypo goes away when at a lamp.

lassor · December 2021

oberonsghost said:
I am in the fight now and i stand by my statements.

To confirm, you're saying the following?

The sisters are still ignoring their aggro target
The book carrier is being targeted with the Bat Swarm soak mechanic

abbadonn · December 2021

lassor#2420 said:
The Bat Swarm is a soak, intended to be shared with nearby allies to survive.

I'm going to need more information about these 'sudden deaths' as this is the first I've heard of it and this wasn't experienced in in any of our internal test groups or when I watched players do the fight on Live after the changes went through. Did you see anything in your logs about what killed you? Do you happen to know what phase of the fight you were in? Better yet, do you have a video?

Also, I'm not sure where this notion came from the fight is 'reworked' as no new mechanics were added to the fight. While it is true that the damage of many powers that were previously trivial was increased and will result in more pressure on the tank and the group as a whole, the length of the fight was significantly reduced as a counterbalance.

I just finished attempting this boss fight with my guild and we got destroyed by that hypo. Literally had no time to do anything. Just instant death...

rockster · December 2021

lassor#2420 said:

rockster#6227 said:
I don't know what caused me (and everyone else) to die (and not get resurrected into the bargain, it was the same effect as when we are in a reaper and there's supposed to be no revives and you just die instantly even with a soulforged enchant - boom you're dead) I just died and dealt with it and it's not my habit of recording every run I do just in case something goes wrong and I need evidence later so at least in my case there is no video. But may I say respectfully that it's extremely annoying that these dungeons are constantly being tinkered with at your end and altered and if there are fundamental changes to how it operates - including damage dealt to players - it really is a rework isn't it. All people were asking for was for a bug to be fixed and now we have more changes to things which people had no issue with.
Well now we're starting to get somewhere, you didn't mention before that your entire group died at the same time. I also interpreted your comment about Soulforged not working to simply mean that you didn't automatically revive but were still able to be revived. This is the type of information that is helpful in trying to diagnose what a problem might be.

It sounds to me like the Portal of Power killed the group with its group wiping power. I assume you know that failing to kill the portal will wipe the group, so it sounds like it triggered when it shouldn't. Did this happen once or on multiple occasions?

No, it wasn't the portal of power, we weren't up to that part yet and I'm more than familiar with that mechanic. It's obvious it's about to happen because the sister has to be killed first. It was something unexpected which happened before that, I have no idea what it was because I was just fighting the first sister with everyone else and then bang I was dead and we all died. (edit: I'm not sure, but I don't think we all died at exactly the same moment, I think it was like a chain where we all died one after the other, but it happened so fast I can't be sure, the memory is too faint for me to be certain.) I'm sorry I can't offer more info. It only happened the once, after that people immediately abandoned and I haven't had it in the queue since. Regarding the soulforged, what happened was the same as when you're in reapers and there are no revives, you die and everything goes black, you don't revive yourself and you don't have the chance to be revived by anyone else, there is no counter while you lie there, you're instantly dead as a doornail. Just insta death. The moment I got hit by whatever it was I was fully dead and had no option but to release back to the campfire despite having the soulforged and it hadn't been used prior. That was what threw me at the time, I just wasn't expecting it. I'm used to bouncing back.

oberonsghost · December 2021

Its at this point a naked Aragon normally posts a video on youtube showing everyone how easy it is to complete.
But hey I'm only a 47k tank so I'm pretty irrelevant anyway.

lassor · December 2021

rockster#6227 said:

No, it wasn't the portal of power, we weren't up to that part yet and I'm more than familiar with that mechanic. It's obvious it's about to happen because the sister has to be killed first. It was something unexpected which happened before that, I have no idea what it was because I was just fighting the first sister with everyone else and then bang I was dead and we all died. (edit: I'm not sure, but I don't think we all died at exactly the same moment, I think it was like a chain where we all died one after the other, but it happened so fast I can't be sure, the memory is too faint for me to be certain.) I'm sorry I can't offer more info. It only happened the once, after that people immediately abandoned and I haven't had it in the queue since. Regarding the soulforged, what happened was the same as when you're in reapers and there are no revives, you die and everything goes black, you don't revive yourself and you don't have the chance to be revived by anyone else, there is no counter while you lie there, you're instantly dead as a doornail. Just insta death. The moment I got hit by whatever it was I was fully dead and had no option but to release back to the campfire despite having the soulforged and it hadn't been used prior. That was what threw me at the time, I just wasn't expecting it. I'm used to bouncing back.

The reason I suspect the Portal of Power is because it's the only mechanic in that fight that *should* function to kill a player without the option to revive. It could be a case that something is triggering that power to fire off before the phase begins. I have to assume that it's an edge case, otherwise the forums would be on fire about it and so far I've only heard the two reports, neither of you seem to have seen it a second time.

There could be something else going on, but that's where all of the arrows are pointing towards with the information I currently have. That power would kill the group simultaneously, but if they are indeed dying one at a time then I might be barking up the wrong tree.

mentinmindmaker · December 2021

I did two attempts at sisters yesterday, without succeeding. This used to be a routine kill.

Playing a cleric for this.

This was normal CR, not RC CR.

There were three points that caused issues:
* The hypo hits WAY too hard. When we grouped up to handle the hypo, the group got massacred. I was throwing everything I had at it: Group was tight, Hallowed Ground, Healing Word and potions for myself.
It actually seemed like Hypo do less damage if you run away from group, we need to explore that a little bit more. That would be opposite of how Hypo works otherwise.
* I was hit with some 40-50% hp attacks out of the blue. As a healer I was standing a bit away from the boss and the melee ongoing there, I was not in red and I did not see any signaled attacks coming my way. I just got hit. This happened several times.
* The hitpoints on the sisters might be a tad overdone now. Fights are rather long x 3. Or was this our dps being low?

While I am all for challenging content: Remember RADQ got entrance requirement of 30k. For most RADQ zones we get worried if we have people at 40k IL in group.

IMO RADQ entrance requirements should be set to 40k. Cryptic should find something else to offer the 30k people, it is meaningless to let them into dungeons where they are mostly completely useless. I had a ToNG run where we could not get past Withers(!), two dps at 30k in group. They were below me(full heal-spec cleric) in dps...

erevel09 · December 2021

There is something really weird going on during sister fight. Tried it during today's Reaper Challange (difficulty was up, with no arti, no mounts, no revive), so not sure how it relates to normal version. But here it is:

I got oneshotted by something with 700k damage as dps. Combat Log said it was Pool of Decay, but I was not in one and had no debuff icon. I was book holder too. It seems that sisters spawn some invisible pools around the area. How? Why? Not sure.
There seems to be some strange DoT that might be related to this too, as I was not in Pool of Deay in later tries and still got damage dealt, that thankfully our healer was able to heal. (200k per tick)

Also while being book holder I was picked as a target for doppelganger. The bats killed the rest of the party with one or two ticks, but it seems the bats were not targeting me.

Note: while that dungeon is making problem for every single party regardless of difficulty or group composition and there seems to be some weird glitches happening all the time since that sister fight change, I suggest to disable that dungeon for Reaper's Challange. Really, it is no fun. Today's one as far as I can tell, with normal teams is not doable.

Edit: Got some logs for you from Bat mechanic (I think it is one, forgot the name of it a long time ago). And yes, I get it's critical hit and Reaper's Challange, but why is it so damn strong?

Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 1421663 Unavoidable Damage to Sammy with Bloodflight.
Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 990605 Unavoidable Damage to Tealc with Bloodflight.
Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 2773094 Unavoidable Damage to ShiroiRyu with Bloodflight

That is done while they were stack. Can't find the 4th one, but pretty sure it's the about the same.

thomasisalone · December 2021

erevel09 said:
Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 1421663 Unavoidable Damage to Sammy with Bloodflight.
Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 990605 Unavoidable Damage to Tealc with Bloodflight.
Critical Hit! Sister of Rage deals 2773094 Unavoidable Damage to ShiroiRyu with Bloodflight

This is a specific problem to the RC with the damage being so high. In the standard fight it's quite a difficult soak, but that's fine. However, in RC it's an impossible soak to survive. This has to be a bug/overlooked. The soak does an insane amount of damage, too much for even the tank to survive - I can get over 1.2 mil hp with 90% def, awareness, and crit avoid when I use dig in - I cannot survive it.

Bear in mind that the hypo in ToMM doesn't do this much damage with only 2 people in it! This has been a problem in the past for Reaper CR. The only "strategy" is to dps the Sisters quickly enough that they can't do their soak, which isn't ideal. With that sort of damage per tick, it isn't possible to mitigate it sufficiently (especially considering mounts, artis, and dailies can be disabled for the challenge) or the healer/heal comps to really do anything about it. It needs to be at least halved in damage so there's a chance to react and respond.

lassor · December 2021

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.

erevel09 · December 2021

I would add 3-5 seconds delay with damage being done by bats mechanic, simply so that people could react in time. Many times someone is a bit further away from the rest of the group and when they get bats it's in most cases instant death, even more so in Reaper's Challange.

Can't say much about normal version of CR now as I didn't run it yet, but seems to me the damage done in by pools needs to be reduced by about 12-20% so it's not that punishing and damage done by bats by surely close to 40-50%. It's meant to be taken by 4 people in the team, so the book holder can keep doing his/hers part, but if it hits like that it is really hard to keep everyone alive.

About the invisible pools: I noticed that in some a bit higher areas some parts of those pools are not visible, while other pieces are. Maybe this can be related. Like it goes under texture or something.

pitshade · December 2021

The invisible pools have been a thing since the dungeon launched in mod 14.

sagakaiyume · December 2021

Normal CR, each sister goes down in about 1 minute, so don't see much issues. Completed it a handful of times, no issues on the aggro, damage the sister does is manageable. Only times seeing deaths were the swarms on the book holder. The mobs that spawn at the end aren't too bad to handle, seems about right.

rockster · December 2021

Just as a sidenote, I was with a group earlier tonight attempting to do CR RC and in the sisters fight sometimes the soulforged worked (was supposed to be no revives though so it shouldn't have) and sometimes it was just insta death with soulforged not doing anything which is what I would have expected. But one very weird thing at one point was that everyone else had died and I was the last person there, I then got one-shotted by something, died and bounced back from the soulforged and looked around and there was nothing in the entire area at all except the scenery. Not only had the players all gone, but there were no sisters, no effects or pools, nothing. Just the empty map all quiet with me in it standing there alive. I just stood there looking around for a few moments while the others were outside the arena, and then I had to kill myself (defeat me) to leave. Normally I would have just put myself in the way of something to get hit on purpose so I died but as it was completely empty I had to do it myself to get out.

thomasisalone · December 2021

lassor said:
Either you have not played the dungeon since the changes I made went live or you're stating that two of the issues I fixed are still occurring. Can you confirm when you last fought the Sisters?

Thanks for being active in responding @lassor !

I just fought the Sister's again now. There are two issues - first, I had full aggro of the second sister, but she still chased a dps, so I don't think the fix is fully working; 1st sister is fine though. Second, the issue is the with the soak is it's coming way too quickly so there's no time to respond to it. The fight is more mobile now so dps will get separated by blood pools. If they're separated and get the soak then it's over. There should be ~5 seconds or so to respond. The damage is also very high. I had a solo hit of around 2 million by myself. If that's split between 4, that's 500k each which is nearly a dps's health (might even oneshot them still because that's with all of my mitigation)

tiltawhirling · December 2021

I'm actually quite tired of this nonsense.

When it's a reaper, there's little chance for anyone to finish it. Right now, my guild leader and elite TRs are trying, but still can't finish the sisters' boss fight. If they can't, what hope is there for those of us that aren't the heavy-hitting classes (e.g., CW).

ARC, you really screwed the pooch on this one. I see no good reason that a completion has to be *THIS* hard.

sagakaiyume · December 2021

@tiltawhirling#1261 The sisters fight I went with my guild, 2 barbs, cw and myself a fighter dps, no tank, we got through the first boss but it was messy. Only ones left at the end was the CW and DC healer. The saving grace is that sisters are quick burns and mobs aren't hard to take down, just they hit a ton so need to go down instantly.

We gave up after that not wanting to bother, likely skipping CR until they start balancing the RCs.

tiltawhirling · December 2021

lassor#2420 said:
The Bat Swarm is a soak, intended to be shared with nearby allies to survive.

I'm going to need more information about these 'sudden deaths' as this is the first I've heard of it and this wasn't experienced in in any of our internal test groups or when I watched players do the fight on Live after the changes went through. Did you see anything in your logs about what killed you? Do you happen to know what phase of the fight you were in? Better yet, do you have a video?

Also, I'm not sure where this notion came from the fight is 'reworked' as no new mechanics were added to the fight. While it is true that the damage of many powers that were previously trivial was increased and will result in more pressure on the tank and the group as a whole, the length of the fight was significantly reduced as a counterbalance.

Why don't you try getting on and playing the game yourself? Then you might have some idea of what we're up against.
The tanks are getting hit with damage in excess of 7 million in three hits doing damage over time. Surely even you can see that's excessive.

tiltawhirling · December 2021

sagakaiyume#0847 said:
@tiltawhirling#1261 The sisters fight I went with my guild, 2 barbs, cw and myself a fighter dps, no tank, we got through the first boss but it was messy. Only ones left at the end was the CW and DC healer. The saving grace is that sisters are quick burns and mobs aren't hard to take down, just they hit a ton so need to go down instantly.

We gave up after that not wanting to bother, likely skipping CR until they start balancing the RCs.

What they need to do is take this OUT of the queue - especially the reaper queue - until they change it to make it difficult, but still possible for an end-game group.

lassor · December 2021

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. My interpretation of people's messages is that the damage of Bloodflight is a bit strong but manageable currently by stronger characters at the base level difficulty. My adjustment down will likely be in the 20-33% range. 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.

pitshade said:
The invisible pools have been a thing since the dungeon launched in mod 14.

This may simply be a case of FX culling, which would be an easy fix. I've asked our FX artists to take a look.

thomasisalone said:

I just fought the Sister's again now. There are two issues - first, I had full aggro of the second sister, but she still chased a dps, so I don't think the fix is fully working; 1st sister is fine though. Second, the issue is the with the soak is it's coming way too quickly so there's no time to respond to it.

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. The Sisters share combat logic, so if one sister can do it, all three can.

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
Something else, likely to drive me to the brink of insanity

admiralwarlord · December 2021

I just tried an RC and it's impossible (for those not as skilled as me) to get past the Sisters. The damage from a sister casual hit is close to 200k hp and the blood pool damage is too high for you to stay on it any longer. As someone has already commented, the player who has the book has to have immunity against Batswarm, as he is never close to the group; do it like in VoS where the Tank never turns ice, it looks simple and works.

Castel Ravenloft first boss fight

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