An oppinion of Winters Roar

T

Typhoeus

Dalayan Beginner
Hi everyone,

First of all I respect all the work that has gone into this server - I think its a cool and unique idea.

I currently only have one objection to this server, and it is the difficulty to obtain experience. Let me eleborate.

I am a mage. Ever since I hit lv 50+, groups have been very scarce, I'm talking possibly one decent exp group a week, with atleast 4 hours a day actively looking for a group. I believe this is due to a lack of numbers on the server and therefore a lack of people to group with. I know this is an unavoidable problem, because you can't possibly magically make people start playing.

The only other option to obtain experience is to solo, which in theory, should be easy for a pet class lv 50+. It is not. I can barely if even solo a blue, and when I do, the exp is very very minimal. I believe I get the same exp in a group of 6 people killing the same monster, and of course 6 times slower.

Also, just today me (56 magician) and a 60 necro were duo'ing in SV, and we were both taken out by a blue mob (one of the beastmaster guys), and other mobs were giving us extreme difficulty. I don't see why 2 pet classes should ever have problems with a blue mob - it should be solo'able by one person with moderate difficulty.

Basically I cannot do anything in the game right now because a) I can never find a group, and b) I can't solo effectivly. I see no point in me playing anymore (I don't know what to do).

Please post your feedback to this issue.

Thanks,

Typhoeus
 
I used to play a magician on Live until LoY, and what I've seen here is that the beginning levels of a mage are much, much easier. At level 14, I was able to solo 3 mobs at the beginning of Shrouded Isle (with the new pet aggro changes, which I absolutely adore). That would have owned me on Live. However, pets don't seem to increase their power significantly throughout the levels. They still miss a lot. HP seems a bit lower, especially since mobs hit a lot harder.

Since pets can no longer be expendable tanks, they probably could use some revisiting.

Necros shouldn't have as much of an issue as magicians. Necros can do a lot more, including a snare spell. As long as the mob doesn't summon, necros should be able to solo just about anything with relative ease. Mana intensive, maybe, but that's what the Lich line of spells is for. Mages have none of those useful spells. All they can do is heal pet, nuke, and gate.


Typ, not sure how well this will work here, but have you ever tried chain-casting earth pets? Start casting the pet spell, when it is almost complete, do a /pet get lost (when your pet is close to death), summon a new one, and send it at the mob. The root should stick (unless you're fighting an Akhevan or something) and you save lots of mana that way.

FYI: If earth pets can't last that long to do efficient damage, they need to be looked at. That was one of the major strategies I used as a magician. That, and aggro kiting with a water pet. Which was quite interesting, let me tell you. :)
 
... do you ever play a necro on WR WITH resist change?.. cant you see whats wrong with Necro? Yes necro owns at mana generating, but huge problem is RESIST CHANGE, whenever you go in Lich mode to build up mana, next you need to lifetap or lifetap-over-time, bond of death being resist sometime, lifetap isnt always full drain anymore. Yes snare is pretty nice, but sometime resisting too (thx patch), with resist you have to run in some distance to take less hit and hurry to FD, and hope to clear aggro, (yay some mana loss there, generating mana again)

Any of you see whats wrong with resist change? Take a close look, carefully think on it. (taking example of my lvl 31 mage spells)

A. Nuke - Shock of Spikes (lvl 24, 110 mana, around 176 dmg), resist bout 50% of the time on Dark Blue con mob.
B. Heal Pet - Renew Summoning (lvl 20, 100 mana, heals 162 with Heal Increment 1), no resist at all.

Now here a scenario when a lvl 31 mage fighting a named blue con mob, that hurting a bit more than regular mob (say mob hitting 40's, pet hitting 31's same health dropping speed), mage's health at 40%, mana at 110, mage's pet at 20% health, mob at 30% hp. The mage only have 1 choice of those 2, nuke (A) or heal pet (B) (assume both will be successful cast, no fizzle). Pretent you are like "oh shit", make fast choice, pick A or B, VOTE!

Im owning at mage, lvl 31, leveling fast, fek nukes, i only nuke when im FM and enough hp.

Again... Mana on Player/Pet >>> Mana on Mob
 
I had the same problems at your level typ. I strictly grouped then but that was when Dragon Necropolis actually had people in it. You may find it easier to take some of the DN mobs now than akhevans since they are a lot more predictable dmg wise. You wont find a slime that hits for 100 then the next slime of the same species hit for 170.


I will try to get you into a group though.
 
The resist change is not that bad. necros HAVE a resist debuff for all the resists they use. Lifetap no longer gets partial resists anymore (Thanks patch) Guess you missed that, didn't you?
 
I can solo with agroo kitting. I mean i leveled up a shaman just for a SoW bot so I could get agroo, run around, and let the pet beat on it. But even then, it takes a hell of alot of time for the mob to die, and when the pet eventually does get agroo, alot of blue mobs will rip the pet apart really fast. On top of that, it takes a hell of alot of mana to keep agroo over the pet. Usually one malo and a nuke will keep it for long enough, but thats alot of mana, on top of the pet heals I might have to do.

Also I don't think chain casting earth pets would work good, because the pet spell takes a significant amount of mana to cast, and alot of blue mobs will chew through the pet really fast, not to mention none of the pets would be getting burnout, so the dps would be atrocious.
 
I, to be honest, don't get these gripes about resists. Math tells me that resists should be incredibly mimimal against blues as long as you are not fighting mobs especially resistant to your type of spells.

So does testing.
 
Chain casting earth pets should work, that's my point. Plus, I still think pets miss too much. On my little newbie mage, a level 12 earth pet missed a swarmer beetle 8 times in a row, and hit it twice for 15, which I think is its max. My personal opinion is that pets should be hitting more often.
 
The resist change is not that bad. necros HAVE a resist debuff for all the resists they use.
Click to expand...

Scent line spell only debuff FR/DR/PR, /clap you think you knew necro. it wont help darkness and root to land.

With a help of friend submiting picture.

Without scent
debuff_yo2.bmp
and then with Scent of Shadow on
debuff_yo.bmp
YO

*edit*- nm, im tired.. you all not listening..
 
My ranger's root and snare land 8/9 times out of 10 on blue mobs. My cleric has no problem rooting or stunning blue mobs. My shadowknight can count on darkness and lifetap to hit at least 80% of the time, as can my own necromancer.

In my eyes, there are no issues with resists, and I think it's you that's not listening. I wonder can psychosomatic conditions be transfered to an in-game character from its player. o_O
 
Wiz said:
I, to be honest, don't get these gripes about resists. Math tells me that resists should be incredibly mimimal against blues as long as you are not fighting mobs especially resistant to your type of spells.

So does testing.
Click to expand...

Wiz, my mage is 31 and ever since shock of spikes was memmed, it's resisted about 40 or 50% of the time, just like the other guy said. It's a real issue, not contrived. And yes, I am talking about blues.

Moreover, what's with low blues resisting *anything* more than maybe 10% or less. They resist twice that or more. Test all you want, or I could go parse my logs maybe. But it is, again, real and not imagined. Most of my mage's time has been in Crystal, btw - if that matters.

On to the necro Scent line of spells: a) they take too much mana and b) get resisted a lot =). Rather unwise to even mem the spell. Then again, it was that way on live, so I just got used to it. I'd rarely mem the thing and just recast whatever dot I was attempting. Food for thought. Enjoy the meal.
 
The problem is no longer resists in my opinion. The problem is viable low blue experience for 51-59. I hunted DN with a mixed group from level 47-60. I was getting .5-1% of an aa per kill on rats. We killed approximately 35-40 an hour. In 3.5 hours, I got 1 aa. None of the mid 50s came close to leveling. Basically, it seems to take a mid 50s about the same time per level now that it takes a 60+ in a good group, 5-7 hours per level of pure grinding. This is lower than live (unless you have some help), but its much higher than it used to be for mid 50s. There is such a disparity when you go from DN to Seb with that same group that its fairly impossible withouth a 60 tank and a high cleric to level normally. With so few of the key classes, many are getting frustrated. I personally would rather see 50-59 be as fast as aa exp, since 60+ is pure grind, and so is aa. Anyway, I don't see why the push to slower exp is necessary for a custom server, at least, at mid 50s, and with current state of difficulty finding a balance group, if you can find a group at all. I would love to see a fungus grove-like zone with good consistent soloable experience. Soloing currenlty is such wretched exp it's not worth the headache. At least when entrance of Seb was good exp, it made the risk worthwhile to solo/duo. Anyway, faster = funner in my book (to a point).
 
I'm not having a resist problem anymore, I do notice that some mobs resist more than others, like the golems in Blights seem to resist a lot more than frogs in seb. I'm just assuming they have higher MR and I believe you said that NPC resists should work a lot more like PC's giving PC's more of a chance to resist.

Anyway, my 2cents.
 
yvin said:
The problem is no longer resists in my opinion. The problem is viable low blue experience for 51-59. I hunted DN with a mixed group from level 47-60. I was getting .5-1% of an aa per kill on rats. We killed approximately 35-40 an hour. In 3.5 hours, I got 1 aa. None of the mid 50s came close to leveling. Basically, it seems to take a mid 50s about the same time per level now that it takes a 60+ in a good group, 5-7 hours per level of pure grinding. This is lower than live (unless you have some help), but its much higher than it used to be for mid 50s. There is such a disparity when you go from DN to Seb with that same group that its fairly impossible withouth a 60 tank and a high cleric to level normally. With so few of the key classes, many are getting frustrated. I personally would rather see 50-59 be as fast as aa exp, since 60+ is pure grind, and so is aa. Anyway, I don't see why the push to slower exp is necessary for a custom server, at least, at mid 50s, and with current state of difficulty finding a balance group, if you can find a group at all. I would love to see a fungus grove-like zone with good consistent soloable experience. Soloing currenlty is such wretched exp it's not worth the headache. At least when entrance of Seb was good exp, it made the risk worthwhile to solo/duo. Anyway, faster = funner in my book (to a point).
Click to expand...

These are very good points, resists are not the problem at all to me (not the reason I started this thread). The underlying problem resides in lv 51 - 59 mob difficulty and exp gain (Risk vs Reward) and mage pets being a little underpowered.

I am trying to get this issue across in a constructive way so there is a better chance that these issues will be looked at.
 
I fought in the Barrens with a 25 mage this morning. I was able to kill a rockhopper with a fire elemental pet.... I nuke, run, pet attack. When my pet gets agro, I nuke and run again. My pet died with the hopper at about 5% health or so and I was able to land another nuke on him to kill it. I had about 50% health left and almost no mana. I don't know if I got lucky or not, but he was red. I like the idea of using the earth elemental for root, but the fire elemental seems to do a lot more damage and holds agro better if I need it to......
 
haloboycs said:
Scent line spell only debuff FR/DR/PR, /clap you think you knew necro. it wont help darkness and root to land.

Without scent [ximg]http://ventuz.homestead.com/files/debuff_yo2.bmp[/img] and then with Scent of Shadow on [ximg]http://ventuz.homestead.com/files/debuff_yo.bmp[/img] YO
Click to expand...

So Root and Darkness both check against Magic resist, OH HOLY WOW LET ME GET MY GUN.

If you have any problems with Root or Darkness spells being resisted by blues, I can say with 100% certainty the problem is not on the mobs' end, but on yours. For Christ's sake, I was in Silent Lands all afternoon without a resist debuffer, and I think I had a grand total of two Devouring Darkness resists, and one Fetter resist. I snared every single mob that wasn't immune which came our way, and rooted about a third of them out of neccessity.

Go get some Charisma gear. What do you have, double digits?

As for pulling with Darkness and getting a resist. . .well, duh. You have one of two options. Stand there and take a few hits while your pet pulls it off, or feign. What do you want, another alternative?

I'm trying, man, I'm trying really hard to figure out what the problem is, but things are going absolutely fine for me, except XP in 62, which is abysmally slow.

And, by the way, a duo of 56/60 should not be in Spirit Valley, no matter their classes. The pulls are too slow and the mobs are too high HP/damage to sustain anything more than a certain Wizard or a certain goddamned Bard.

Take that duo to Necropolis, it'll be much more profitable.
 
Wiz, my mage is 31 and ever since shock of spikes was memmed, it's resisted about 40 or 50% of the time, just like the other guy said. It's a real issue, not contrived. And yes, I am talking about blues.
Click to expand...

my 29 wiz never has troubles with resists...unless he's casting on reds...which i only do if in a group anyway.
 
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