OFFICIAL M17: Tower of the Mad Mage Feedback

asterdahl · July 2019

Feedback: Tower of the Mad Mage

Greetings adventurers, Asterdahl here! This thread is for providing bug reports and feedback on the upcoming trial: the Tower of the Mad Mage.

The Tower of the Mad Mage is the final showdown with Halaster and requires item level 24,000 to enter. As always, we're looking for both bug reports, and any feedback you may have. Good luck adventurers!

Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs

For posting feedback and bugs, please follow the following format to ensure your feedback and bugs are seen clearly and processed in a timely manner, thank you!

Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:

<font color=cyan>This text will display in cyan.</font>
<font color=red>This text will display in red.</font>

Examples:
Bug: The visual effects for Halaster's arcane blast don't play when I am looking away, but I still take damage.

Feedback: Our group can't survive Heatwave.

thefabricant · July 2019

asterdahl said:

Feedback: I can't survive Halaster's heatwave ability. I'm a rogue with 350,000 hit points, 80,000 defense, 62,000 deflect, 59,000 crit avoidance.

Then I recommend inviting a healer to the group :P

ramesh84 · July 2019

Trial's first impression is extremely positive, please keep it as "one of our most difficult trials to date", there is already plenty of easy trials all around

chemjeff · July 2019

24,000? You're kidding right?

arazith07 · July 2019

chemjeff said:
24,000? You're kidding right?

This is designed to be challenging for end game. It IS Halaster after all, one of the most powerful mages in all of Faerun.

vorphied · July 2019

24k isn’t unreasonably difficult to hit.

For characters without high-ranked enchants it means using more of the newer equipment even when the bonuses are sub-par, but with the ratings going up (another 12k, I think?), we may need to swap some pieces just to meet the new caps without overhauling enchants yet again.

djnasty93 · July 2019

Are my toughts right? That they are going to add new equip that add % of damage + new companion gears, to 'fill' new caps?

I hope so, even if any ranged class its goin to be a lot more efficent in basic lomm runs than a slow movement melee class, ranged classes got a worst equipment than melee classes, they miss +3% damage New Shirt, because they have no % dmg boots (endurance boots doest stack with 3% damage shirt) so every ranged class (dragonborn) its 3% under others.

Any toughts to boost Cavalery Warning Mount Emblem set to give more stuffs? (add stamina, more power, run speed or take combat advantage when use legendary mount power)

claudiodn · July 2019

edit
wrong chat.

finmakin · July 2019

Hello folks,

I have some feedback I'd like to mention about this Trial.
Let me begin that the Dev's who are responsible for creating this trial did an awesome job, finally a fight I (and think many more with me) have been longing for a long, long time.
Besides this (after a couple of day's trying out this trial) I have come up with the following idea, something Dev's could take into consideration..

I have ran this trial as Tank and as Healer..
As tank I got quite some heavy incoming damage to deal with (big ball) which is doable if you have been properly set (and worked) up your Tank..

As Healer it's a different story to deal with when a Tank get these incoming amount of damage… Since the whole fight is very dynamic with a lot of forced movements as group, its regurally difficult to pinpoint the Tank in the crowd for performing effective healing on him / her.

So, I came up with the thought that it should be possible for leader to attach a special icon on the tanks (even if its a simple downwards arrow) so everyone can see (especially the healers) where the tanks are located at all time in the fast pacing movements in this trial..
Actually its the same principle when a tank gets his Defense debuffed by the giant skeleton in ME, or endboss fight in MSP, but only placed on tank by leader..
This saves up a powerslot as replacement for Bonds of Virtue

my 2 cents..

ramesh84 · July 2019

vorphied said:
24k isn’t unreasonably difficult to hit.

For characters without high-ranked enchants it means using more of the newer equipment even when the bonuses are sub-par, but with the ratings going up (another 12k, I think?), we may need to swap some pieces just to meet the new caps without overhauling enchants yet again.

The good thing is that's actually not that hard at endgame to reach offensive caps, I'd just buy a second choke chain and with that 2 + pearl ring basically missing 10k CA only, new companion gear will help to close that gap for sure.
An healer has to stack same stats as before, while a tank has a more complex job, but they don't need old % gear.
What needs to be taken into account for dmg dealers is to build a bit tankier, the more you die the more you stack revive sickness stacks and reduced dmg from its debuff means a sure wipe during dps check phases.

thefabricant · July 2019

This dungeon, I like.

katamaster81899 · July 2019

Yes, this is finally a dungeon that is fun and challenging to play. I think maybe it will need to be tuned down a SMALL amount (maybe 10-15%, that is it). I am worried it will be much harder when the revive sickness bug is fixed.... but we will see then.

Seriously though, I have NEVER been this excited for an upcoming mod. This shows a lot of promise, and is really motivating me to get my char back into tip-top DPS shape like I used to be when I was really active, instead of just playing casually like I have been recently.

I think that a lot of players will complain that it is too hard, and I just hope that this doesn't force the team to make the dungeon easier. As a software engineer myself, I know that sometimes pushback from customers can put a lot of pressure to change things, but please, please, PLEASE do not nerf this trial into oblivion. This is finally fun, finally challenging

One bug is
Watcher bonus doesnt reset in ToMM when the person dies

finmakin · July 2019

chemjeff said:
24,000? You're kidding right?

Dev's should make a special version of this trial especially for you.
Lets say... on Cloaktower difficulty ?????
I see you in PE chat when Mod17 comes alive, with a BIG bucket of popcorn beside me..

utookmynick · July 2019

finmakin said:

So, I came up with the thought that it should be possible for leader to attach a special icon on the tanks (even if its a simple downwards arrow) so everyone can see (especially the healers) where the tanks are located at all time in the fast pacing movements in this trial..

Until that happens (if ever), why not bind a key to target and cast a specific power? Like what we used to do before for Exalt, Bane and Divine Glow.

Unknown · July 2019

This content has been removed.

katamaster81899 · July 2019

pariswinters#7118 said:

asterdahl said:
Feedback: Tower of the Mad Mage
Greetings adventurers, Asterdahl here! This thread is for providing bug reports and feedback on the upcoming trial: the Tower of the Mad Mage.

The Tower of the Mad Mage is a final showdown with Halaster himself, and requires item level 24,000 to enter. It's also one of our most difficult trials to date, so make sure you've prepared yourself before you face him. Normally you'll have to complete the Lair of the Mad Mage and the new M17 story in order to enter the queue; however, on the preview shard you can purchase the "Bane of the Mad Mage" from the preview only tab of the Wondrous Bazaar in order to enter.

As always, we're looking for both bug reports, and any feedback you may have. Good luck adventurers!
Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs
For posting feedback and bugs, please follow the following format to ensure your feedback and bugs are seen clearly and processed in a timely manner, thank you!

Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN. If you are replying to another user's post, asking a question, or just engaging in general discussion, please do not color your posts, general discussion is welcome and we will read all of it, regardless of color! You can use BBCode to color your text:

This text will display in cyan. This text will display in red.

Examples:
Bug: Halaster's annihilation sphere sometimes flickers around his body instead of staying in his hand before he throws it.

Feedback: I can't survive Halaster's heatwave ability. I'm a rogue with 350,000 hit points, 80,000 defense, 62,000 deflect, 59,000 crit avoidance.

I can't survive any of the mechanics in this dungeon, the heatwave gives no indication that there is even somthing you can do, and the storm also gives no indication of a mechanic, there is no LORE in Battle Tactics either. The orbs he throws kill me instantly. my thoughts are that possibly there is new gear which will add enough max HP to overcome this. 25k cleric 350k max HP 90k defense 70k deflect 80k crit avoidance

There is an indication for the heatwave. He will say something about warm weather, and then you will see very light flames on the ground. You can survive the heatwave by grouping up, using some debuffs, and having the healers heal fast.

The storm does have an indication. There is a small outward purple wave on the floor before it is triggered. You can avoid it by moving as far away as possible, or by grouping together and debuffing.

The orbs he throws are meant to be taken by tanks, and only tanks. If you are taking those hits, then the tanks aren't holding aggro, the tanks are dead, the tanks aren't properly managing their stacks, or you didn't bring enough tanks.

Looking at the new gear, I don't think that is the solution. The solution to this is to learn the mechanics, really well. You are going to fail a lot of runs learning. My guild has been doing training runs daily to learn the mechanics, and we have gone from not even being able to get to 50% on first phase to consistently beating the first phase, and are beginning to get the hang of the second phase as well. We are now starting to work on the third phase, and trying to get our first two phases even more consistent.

Honestly, this is the most fun thing I have played in neverwinter in a LONG time. It's finally something that requires my full attention, is challenging, interesting, and can't be facerolled mindlessly.

I still think that maybe it is a *touch* hard, especially considering that the res sickness bug is what is making it playable at the moment. I'm wondering if perhaps when that bug is fixed, minor adjustments to difficulty will need to be made here.

Additionally, I had a potential suggestion regarding how to treat the different phases. I think that maybe a tiered reward system would be nice, so that players who maybe can't complete all 4 phases, but only the first one or two phases, get a reward. Essentially like copper, silver, gold system we have in place now for other content. I think that beating the first phase alone is still not trivial, my guild was not able to get that consistently until tonight, and that was only achievable once all ten players were in discord, and the tanks figured out how to consistently manage the stacks so that neither one of them would die from the big blue balls of killing. So, groups that kill phase 1 will at least get some rewards (not as good of course), and not feel like they are being shafted by this raid, and groups who can kill all 4 phases will get the best loot, as the sure deserve for beating this amazingly fun and difficult content

A bug I noticed: Our tank got stuck on some books somehow while taking one of the big blue balls. He had to use /unstuck to be able to move again.

Also, I want to give a shoutout to Lassor - I have never seen a dev so engaged with the users testing the content, and he really seems to care about how this content is being perceived, and how players are interacting with it. Whenever we are running it, he is teleporting in, observing, and joking around with us the whole time. He also seems to be more in touch with what the playerbase wants than any of the other devs I have seen in a while. So thank you Lassor, this trial is amazing so far and it's pretty obvious that you're one of the main reasons for that!

finmakin · July 2019

utookmynick said:

finmakin said:

So, I came up with the thought that it should be possible for leader to attach a special icon on the tanks (even if its a simple downwards arrow) so everyone can see (especially the healers) where the tanks are located at all time in the fast pacing movements in this trial..
Until that happens (if ever), why not bind a key to target and cast a specific power? Like what we used to do before for Exalt, Bane and Divine Glow.

I have Always done that, and still doing by placing Bonds of Virtue on a tank, but I have a weird habit to stay close to tank (as I am a tank myself in 1th place, Heal is at this moment secondary for me) for dropping a Paladin sigil on tank (if it's needed) as example.
The reason I came on this thought is because this trial (which I love to the bone, great work Lassor) is very dynamic one with a lot of movements, therefore it would be handy to see where the tanks are by a placed icon on them.
Not only for healers, but also for squishies because they don't want to be close to tank when the big things comes… Especially in this trial.

arcanjo86 · July 2019

utookmynick said:

finmakin said:

So, I came up with the thought that it should be possible for leader to attach a special icon on the tanks (even if its a simple downwards arrow) so everyone can see (especially the healers) where the tanks are located at all time in the fast pacing movements in this trial..
Until that happens (if ever), why not bind a key to target and cast a specific power? Like what we used to do before for Exalt, Bane and Divine Glow.

would be tactical for paladin tanks to use bubble +immunity feat to deal with halaster blast a nd time daily power to be casted when he cast his ball?

Unknown · July 2019

This content has been removed.

thefabricant · July 2019

https://clips.twitch.tv/HorribleCallousMilkCorgiDerp

Here is the combat log:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/326032679029964800/599349581427507200/ToMM_Win.act
And an overview:

This dungeon is awesome, please sir, can I have some more!

thestia · July 2019

I was unable to use reroll tokens or AD to reroll the rewards chests in ToMM. Considering the enormous loot table, I hope this gets fixed before it hits live!

viraaal · July 2019

Can you turn down the brightness of the electricity around the outside of the room in phase 3, as its very bright, and when I am playing it turns my room into a mini night club, with flashing lights everywhere.

Halaster used multiple mechanics at the same time, such as disentigration wave and heatwave, teleporting the boss, where he then continued to use his other mechanics while being untargetable outside of the arena.
Video here: https://clips.twitch.tv/HonestPricklyHorseradishUncleNox

micky1p00 · July 2019

The latest patch ups the difficulty. Even with content that aimed only to the very few, it could be over-swinging, in the correction of what was neglected for so long. There aren't that many players left...

Too easy and people are bored and leave, too hard and people will get frustrated and will not attempt again after numerous attempts, considering it futile if no progress achieved.

I would suggest adding tiered rewards, keeping whatever is planned there for completion, perhaps even adding a leader-board. But adding a significantly smaller yet still viable reward for getting over some threshold, for example passing phase 2.

This will create incentive for people to keep attempting, and less discouraged. What otherwise seems unattainable for them even if someone did succeeded. Ofc the difference in rewards on each stage should be significant, otherwise it will be "farm to first reward" HAMSTER

thefabricant · July 2019

As of the current patch, the boss has too many hitpoints during phase 2. On the previous successful attempt, the boss had:

26m HP. During the run today, we removed:

48m hp and the boss still had 90% of his HP total. Here is a video of the fight:

https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyTolerantDuckSwiftRage

katamaster81899 · July 2019

thefabricant said:
As of the current patch, the boss has too many hitpoints during phase 2. On the previous successful attempt, the boss had:

26m HP. During the run today, we removed:

48m hp and the boss still had 90% of his HP total. Here is a video of the fight:

https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyTolerantDuckSwiftRage

Pfft, are you saying that you can't deal 500m damage per phase Sharp? What a noob.

obsidiancran3 · July 2019

Please keep this at the level where players like Sharp find it challenging and interesting.

But, the key is the rewards.

The rewards for hard content have to be appropriate for the effort required to get them, and I don’t have a problem with the rewards offered for ToMM. I just hope they remain relevant for the next 12 months.

Then the difficulty will be worth mastering, not just for the sake of it.

thefabricant · July 2019

katamaster81899 said:

thefabricant said:
As of the current patch, the boss has too many hitpoints during phase 2. On the previous successful attempt, the boss had:

26m HP. During the run today, we removed:

48m hp and the boss still had 90% of his HP total. Here is a video of the fight:

https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyTolerantDuckSwiftRage
Pfft, are you saying that you can't deal 500m damage per phase Sharp? What a noob.

I heard you couldn't beat it on easy mode @katamaster81899 :P

katamaster81899 · July 2019

thefabricant said:

katamaster81899 said:

thefabricant said:
As of the current patch, the boss has too many hitpoints during phase 2. On the previous successful attempt, the boss had:

26m HP. During the run today, we removed:

48m hp and the boss still had 90% of his HP total. Here is a video of the fight:

https://clips.twitch.tv/IcyTolerantDuckSwiftRage
Pfft, are you saying that you can't deal 500m damage per phase Sharp? What a noob.
I heard you couldn't beat it on easy mode @katamaster81899 :P

You trying bring DPS GF's on your run, and tell me how that makes the DPS Checks :P

All things aside, no I couldn't beat it, at least not yet, and I'm fine with that - gives me something to work towards.

ph33rm3 · July 2019

I'm scared. Hold my hand?

hustin1 · July 2019

I'm not sure if direct links to posts works or not so I'm just copy-and-pasting my thoughts from the player feedback thread. Suffice to say that I feel very strongly about this. It is in response to a post asking why I might have a problem with BiS-only content.

My gripe is twofold:

1. Introducing BiS content while not introducing any new less-than-BiS content. I'm well aware of most of the mechanics in the new content (though the cocoon one is still a mystery to me) and I've run all of the newest content. However, I also regularly hear from alliance members who can't run the newest content and are limited to simply grinding. Where am I going with this? Remember when Lostmauth and Tuern first went live? There were **TWO** versions of them: epic and non-epic. Players not yet able to run the epic versions could run the non-epic ones to learn the mechanics while getting lesser rewards. The devs did this up through Svardborg, and then they got lazy -- or more likely, someone made a policy decision that they would no longer make "learning" versions of new BiS content. I submit that you can trace a lot of the toxicity that arises every time new BiS content comes out directly to that decision.

2. This ties into my second gripe: what the community does every single time new BiS content comes out. Because the "stakes" are so high, much of it winds up getting locked into invitation-only private channels. While I regularly get invited to these channels, it still really rubs me the wrong way. Reading guides and watching videos can only take one so far. At some point everyone has to learn by doing. How are most players supposed to learn the mechanics if the lion's share of the runs are being organized in channels they aren't even aware of? And when runs are advertised in LFG, how are they supposed to learn when 90% or more of all LFM requests are demanding *experienced* participants only? I'm sure some will reply here that "well, I regularly take on people new to the dungeon/trial", and I have no doubt that you'll be telling the truth. Now go spend a little time watching LFG when new content comes out and tell me that what I'm describing is not in fact the norm rather than the exception.

So -- you want a BiS trial called TOMM? You have to call it *epic* TOMM and you should also have to accept the existence of a NON-epic TOMM that lesser players can run to learn the mechanics for the day that they can run eTOMM. That's what I expect and what I think everyone else should demand. This is what *should* have been done for ToNG, CR, and everything else.

And *that*, my friends, is the true test of Whether One Is An Elitist. Can you accept the existence of nTOMM along with eTOMM? Of nCR along with eCR, or nToNG along with eToNG?

No longer creating "learning" versions of new top-tier content is, in my opinion, tearing this community apart. You need to start doing so again.

thefabricant · July 2019

For anyone wanting to attempt the trial, sume's video is a very good go to in order to start learning it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3IbdsueVpo

OFFICIAL M17: Tower of the Mad Mage Feedback

Feedback: Tower of the Mad Mage

Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs

Comments

Feedback: Tower of the Mad Mage

Formatting Your Feedback and Bugs