Adepts

Rorne said:
... it's just hard to think of a simple system that accounts for and mitigates the large difference in prowess a few levels can make, especially for casters.
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I agree. I wish I had more to offer as to the specifics.

Regarding casters, there should be a spell cap. That is, no spells of greater level than the adept engage level may be casted for the duration of the engage.

Melee is more problematic, alas. As I mentioned above, there will always be twinks. The best way to counter this aspect, it you wanted to, would be to ensure that the further above the engage level the more severe the decrease in power. As of right now the proper range is 4 to at the most 5 levels below the adept. Scale the debuff in a way that, for a level 42 engage, a level 47 character would be on par with a 37 character. This would help to keep the encounters challenging.

I wish I could offer more specifics as to the % and the scaling. Frankly, I don't have the ability to test such things.

Thanks for reading,

Dernip
 
Just going to throw out a suggestion so feel free to shoot it down. Would it help if all of the adept fights were balanced around a 6-man encounter instead of 12-man? I totally agree that from the 30-52 range it is damn near impossible to find twelve toons unless you plan days in advance. Maybe we could leave the pounders/traek encounters as 12-man since they tend to get killed a lot more often than the lower level adepts.

This could definitely lead to an increase in competition for Adept mobs but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing considering how infrequently some of them are killed.
 
If you want to try to balance it for such a way that higher level people could join in, you could have an NPC near the Adept sell you a NO RENT set of gear that you would have to use in order to engage the Adept above its normal engage level.

If you could code in spells above engage level to not work as well, then you could have a way to balance in higher level people helping in the fight, while still making it non-trivial to get the loot.
 
Charley said:
Just going to throw out a suggestion so feel free to shoot it down. Would it help if all of the adept fights were balanced around a 6-man encounter instead of 12-man? I totally agree that from the 30-52 range it is damn near impossible to find twelve toons unless you plan days in advance. Maybe we could leave the pounders/traek encounters as 12-man since they tend to get killed a lot more often than the lower level adepts.

This could definitely lead to an increase in competition for Adept mobs but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing considering how infrequently some of them are killed.
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this is bad because it means permadown adepts due to 3 irl buddies with twink boxes, i vote no

for that matter if adepts are balanced around 6 man it means that one or two people with twinks would be able to duo/quad adepts
 
You can already do a ton of the adepts without 12 people even untwinked
 
Charley said:
Just going to throw out a suggestion so feel free to shoot it down. Would it help if all of the adept fights were balanced around a 6-man encounter instead of 12-man? I totally agree that from the 30-52 range it is damn near impossible to find twelve toons unless you plan days in advance. Maybe we could leave the pounders/traek encounters as 12-man since they tend to get killed a lot more often than the lower level adepts.

This could definitely lead to an increase in competition for Adept mobs but I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing considering how infrequently some of them are killed.
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oh and also the point of adepts when they were put in was to introduce new players to raiding -- and even today (well, 5 months ago or so when i had access to sod) i still encounter people who have never raided and who really appreciate and enjoy the current format and being told what to do
 
phroggonalog said:
this is bad because it means permadown adepts due to 3 irl buddies with twink boxes, i vote no

for that matter if adepts are balanced around 6 man it means that one or two people with twinks would be able to duo/quad adepts
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I don't understand why you think it would go from "these adepts are literally never killed" to "these adepts are permadown". Even then, I honestly think it would be better if the adepts were always killed when they are up rather than never killed.

Your second concern is a valid one that I hadn't thought about. It's been a long time since I have done some of these adepts so I am not too familiar with the difficulty level now. I do remember doing Notus of the Wind (sp?) with an 8-man group, 6 of which were twinked, and I don't think we got it below 40% in 4-5 tries. Maybe this has changed, though.
 
phroggonalog said:
this is bad because it means permadown adepts due to 3 irl buddies with twink boxes, i vote no

for that matter if adepts are balanced around 6 man it means that one or two people with twinks would be able to duo/quad adepts
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This is the best reason that they should stay a 12 man encounter. Not hard for a couple ppl to two box and do the encounter then, or grab 2 random toons (or another boxxer) and go do them. Planning a raid force in advance is better than perma down to 3 irl friends boxxing them for every loot they want and moving onto the next.

And beyond 32 really requires to have more than 1 group to to have success, even twinked. So that adds to the difficulty in getting those down. And most people bum rush the 30's/40's (robots anybody), and that adds to the challenge of finding ppl to do them. But their loots make the wait worthwhile, imo.
 
DernipDaGnome said:
That ends after the 32 adepts. After that it is very hard to gather the toons in the right level range until you get to the 55/57 adepts.
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We did everything up to Icefeather with 8ish characters all untwinked. We never got around to trying Tidefang just due to scheduling problems.
 
I cant imagine Tidefang being done by less than 9, twinks or no. That is a pretty decent fight at that level.
 
DernipDaGnome said:
Obviously, I tease & believe you. I am certain an organized group of experienced players could accomplish this. I merely propose making it easier for unorganized inexperienced players to see this [awesome] part of the game.
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Yeah and I agree with your sentiment I am just saying it is actually possible with under 12 untwinked characters. We did expect Tidefang to be where this stopped though.
 
darksabbath said:
This is the best reason that they should stay a 12 man encounter. Not hard for a couple ppl to two box and do the encounter then, or grab 2 random toons (or another boxxer) and go do them. Planning a raid force in advance is better than perma down to 3 irl friends boxxing them for every loot they want and moving onto the next.
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I think you are worrying about a scenario that by all accounts would never happen or be incredibly rare. Do you really think that Poopsock Pissbottle (yah I stole this from Gerick) and his two friends are going to spend weeks camping a single adept in the level 30-50 range when they can do basically nothing else with their characters while they wait for it to respawn? I just don't see this happening. The type of player that is obsessive enough to want to get every piece of adept loot is also the player that is not going to wait around at the lower levels when they could be getting to 65 and raiding.

Let's say that this does happen and the group ends up killing this one adept 4 times for loot. Let's assume the respawn for this adept is 3 days. Day 1 kill, Day 4 kill, Day 7 kill, and Day 10 kill. So they locked down a SINGLE adept for a grand total of 10 days. This also assumes that they beat others to the adept but since they only require a force of 6 now, there is going to be more competition. I just don't see this being a problem.

The fact is that adepts in this range are left up for weeks because it is near impossible to get the required number of people to attend. People want to level up their toons rather than wait around to kill an adept where the loot they want may or may not drop and they may or may not win the roll. I still maintain that it is better for there to be some actual competition for adepts rather than them sitting around untouched and unloved fpr long periods of time.

Edit: If you are really worried about one group of 3 boxers killing a single adept over and over again just add some randomness to the respawn timer. For example 3 days plus or minus 6 hours.
 
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I don't favor making these encounters 6 man for the exact reason Garick mentioned. I believe that this would make the encounters less inclusive. Expanding the engage range (with an overcap nerf to toons above the engage level) is the best way to let new players see this content and prepare new toons for the 55+ grind. It would be a shame to have the encounters difficulty nerfed. Plus, as I mentioned before, they are a great introduction to raiding.

Charley, though I disagree with you on the means, I am grateful for your input.
 
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