Lavascale balance

H

Hasrett

Dalayan Beginner
I think Lavascale's difficulty might need some looking at. His drops are good, but not incredible, and the DPS he dishes out to the tank seems out of line with the rewards he offers. I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way, since as far as I can tell, he hasn't been killed since I returned to SoD a month ago.

Last night we tried him with Balthor tanking, 65 paladin fully relic'd with over 9khp and 1800+ ac, in defensive, with the AA spell shield reducing the AOE's damage substantially. With two healers spam healing him and his own self heals and group HoTs going, he died before the shaman could land malo and slow. The second time he lasted a little longer with the shaman trying to patch heal, but he just got stuck in a loop doing that.

Our 8-man group wasn't exactly a raid force, and I don't know that we were expecting to win, but we had a decent amount of healing pouring onto a top tier non-warrior tank, and he just ate it. Hard.

In terms of damage output and whatnot, LS still seems to be balanced about the way he was prior to the decrease in the raid cap to 18. IIRC he hit for around 1100 then, and I think that's what he was hitting for last night (Didn't see what he hit Balthor for, but he was hitting a 8khp 1450ac rogue for 1000-1100). Judging by the rewards he offers, and the fact that no one actually hunts him, I'd suggest that Lavascale's damage output be lowered by 10-20% to put his difficulty on par with his rewards.
 
He must be pretty damned hard because I always see him up while kiting in RSP. I have only seen his loot table on Wiki, but from the looks of it, he just is not worth the effort at the moment. I think a change would be nice and might even draw more people to use RSP for something other than a way to get to FG.

Felyn
 
Spiritplx said:
He must be pretty damned hard because I always see him up while kiting in RSP.
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you always see him up because his drops are garbage, and no drop garbage at that.

Though, the skullcage is decent until Agonizer helm I suppose.

Hasrett said:
IIRC he hit for around 1100 then, and I think that's what he was hitting for last night (Didn't see what he hit Balthor for, but he was hitting a 8khp 1450ac rogue for 1000-1100)
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I have no idea how many melee's you brought with you, since you did not list them, but aux tanks should cut this number down significantly. Granted, most melee's at that tier will get eaten by the AE. Were you using a bard with PoT4? Raid specifics are generally a good idea when looking to get a mob altered.

Hasrett said:
I'd suggest that Lavascale's damage output be lowered by 10-20% to put his difficulty on par with his rewards.
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would probably be reasonable, however...

Hasrett said:
With two healers spam healing him and his own self heals and group HoTs going, he died before the shaman could land malo and slow. The second time he lasted a little longer with the shaman trying to patch heal, but he just got stuck in a loop doing that..
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A basic raid setup consists of 5 healers. 2 clerics, 2 druids, 1 shaman. normally. I used to rock him fairly often when I was leading raids for Defiance just after 2.0 changes went in with a far weaker tank (loccy, before he was geared or AA'd), and with a rag-tag group of level 63-65's. Just range the AE and dont worry about healing the melee. Spam heals on tank. Honestly, it sounds like you brought balthor and just were looking for a free kill and an easy win.

He was hard for the subpar loot he dropped, but at the time I didnt exactly consider him overpowered. A minimal tweak may indeed be in order, but you're presenting this mobs difficulty based on a half assed attempt with less then half a raid force. Not exactly the best information to disect when looking for a mob to be tweaked.
 
I think Has is saying more along the lines of difficulty != rewards. Basically the loot is sub-par for how tough he is or he is too tough for the loot. I don't think we expected to win easily (if at all), but it shoulda lasted longer than 20 seconds. Heh
 
kukov said:
I think Has is saying more along the lines of difficulty != rewards. Basically the loot is sub-par for how tough he is or he is too tough for the loot. I don't think we expected to win easily (if at all), but it shoulda lasted longer than 20 seconds. Heh
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I'm aware, and addressed both of your points in my post and even agree that a tweak could be in order.

I'm simply stating that if you would have brought the required ammount of healers you would have lasted longer than 20 seconds, and that if you, or anyone, for any reason, is looking to get a mob tweaked, it would probably be in the posts best interest to list raid specifics, such as group makeup and player gear tier wise +/- to the mobs difficulty.

Making a post to tweak a mob, where the only reference points are two shoddy attempts where you "did not expect to win", is not a good data pool for the developers to draw from when adjusting mob difficulty.
 
Fair points, Cinn.

Yes, it was a halfassed attempt, and no, we didn't expect to win. I brought this up because the mob's difficulty is out of balance with its reward. The loot is on par with some of the stuff you can get in HHK with a 4-man group, and that stuff is droppable.

A long-time goal on this server has been to balance risk and reward in order to encourage people to try out all the different content. I think Lavascale's average lifespan speaks to the fact that something needs a little tweaking, whether it's a deacres in his DPS or (and I should have included this in the first post) an improvement in the drops.
 
Hasrett said:
A long-time goal on this server has been to balance risk and reward in order to encourage people to try out all the different content. I think Lavascale's average lifespan speaks to the fact that something needs a little tweaking, whether it's a deacres in his DPS or an improvement in the drops.
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I agree.

If I am remembering correctly his AE used to be the main annoyance in the fight. I dont recall exactly how much it hit for, but if the AE was toned down it would allow more aux tanking, and for a longer and hopfully sustained period of time. This would reduce the mobs melee dps and, in theory, balance the mob as a begining tier raid mob set for an 18 man raid force with standard gear and player makeup.

Though, a possible tweak in basic melee damage output may also be in order.
 
Not sure if you guys are taking into consideration the ease of hitting this guy. He himself may be a touch harder than other raid mobs that drop same tier loot: but there's literally NO clearing to the man; just port in and gank him. I could be wrong, but I'd assume that's a factored into the overall balance.
 
Some of his loot is arguably sub par to Starfall 2 items though which doesn't seem right. Isn't he supposed to be an entry raid level mob like Gnok?
 
He was killed pretty frequently pre-2.0; he might simply be a case of a mob that got harder with 2.0 and didn't get enough attention to get fixed.
 
Widan said:
Some of his loot is arguably sub par to Starfall 2 items though which doesn't seem right. Isn't he supposed to be an entry raid level mob like Gnok?
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He's below Gnok, yes.
 
Thinkmeats said:
He was killed pretty frequently pre-2.0; he might simply be a case of a mob that got harder with 2.0 and didn't get enough attention to get fixed.
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IIRC, that was about the same time that his loot went no-drop as well. Before that change, he used to die all the time by higher-tiered folks for the cash value of his drops. After that change, as people have pointed out here, he was too difficult for people who could actually use his loot.
 
We were just breaking into SE when we tried Lavascale a few times. We took out Lavascale with a 5300-5500ish unbuffed WAR tank with probably 5 healers. Three clerics, druid, and shm we had for at least one of the times we killed it. We did fail a few times. It is a pretty rough fight. While the drops can be upgrades for the people taking it out.. I do think the difficulty of the encounter doesn't deliver in rewards. The head is debateable. It's nice and can last you until Agonizer.. if you don't have Enforcer's helm or Faralak's helm, two mobs that are probably far easier to kill in terms of how hard they hit. The back piece isn't really bad but it sure isn't great when it's a rough fight for a tier 3ish guild of 15-18 in raid. I can't even recall all the rewards from Lavascale. We've downed it twice and stopped because it just wasn't worth it. The first time it dropped 2x back pieces. The other time 1x of back and I know 1x of something else.. I know it wasn't the helm or my sk would have got it at the time. Whatever it was, it sure wasn't anything worth remembering. For all I know it might have been 2x back again.

Yeah sure Lavascale and even AWT are nice raid targets with no need to clear trash, but neither fight is really worth the trouble. I can't say whether AWT is really worth us going after at this point to get the face piece for our tanks. It has whipped us the few times we've tried, granted we haven't tried since we broke into SE and now into HoM and somewhat Torment. Not knowing what drops the really good stuff just ahead of us in the raid scene, AWT's face piece is by far the best our tanks can use and they don't have it. Maybe we tried too early. Maybe it's now in our range and we can go kill it. But something tells me we should have done killed it and moved on by now if 4 forsaken can kill it(ZHAK TANKING FOR CHRIST SAKE) and 18 of us couldn't. Maybe it has already been looked into and tweaked since we tried it. So many maybes.

I don't know why you guys were even bothering with Lavascale, but if a 9k 1800 AC buffed tank is dropping to it in under 20 seconds, even with just three healers, and even with just two of those healing while the shm slowed etc, Pal tank either sucks hard for tanking, or your healers just were not on their A game. I'm assuming this was an Exodus squad, with about the same numbers you'd use for Plaguefang. I don't see any reason whatsoever for you failing as quickly as you did except due to lack of skill at the time of the fight, or maybe it's just harder than I remember and even at your tier you'll need more healing. But, fact remains, we kept a nearly 7.5k 1300 ACish buffed war up with 4-5 healers, no relics to be had, and we're pretty far from your tier of raiding. Something has got to give if three healers with at least 6k mana each I'm sure, probably more like 6.5k+, with relics galore, probably all that good casting speed incr 7 and whatnot, can't keep up a 9k 1800 AC paladin tank on a low tier raid mob. Are you sure no one was drunk or half asleep when you tried it? Too many boxers perhaps? Any cleric healers at all?

Anyway, I have to agree that the encounter should be tweaked in some form. At first I rather staff worry about the bigger fish to fry, but you know so much attention has been put towards the high end scene of raiding that the low end has been left out to dry other than the recent extra nameds in SE to compete with DHK. I'm not even sure they should bother because right now the low-mid tier raid game isn't overrun with guilds like the high tier raid game is, hence there's more than enough content to go around, and one overpowered mob over in good ole sun peaks just doesn't seem all that important to worry about right now until new up and coming raiding guilds require it. Or maybe, it's fine just the way it is considering we did down it afterall. It was rough, but we did down it and there were upgrades to be had. Sooo I don't know. Whatever. I'm stumped as to why you guys failed so quickly. Whether you could have won or not, who knows but come on, something has to give here. I can't believe Lavascale took you down because he's overpowered when we took him out as a bunch of noob geared noobs.
 
Not that it probably matters to you guys much, but we 4 char'd lavascale pretty frequently with zhak tanking, a bard, and a cleric / shaman. I don't think he is out of line tbh, Balthor tanks just as well as Zhak does, although his resists probably aren't as good. A bard makes a big difference in this fight.
 
Zhak said:
A bard makes a big difference in this fight.
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Indeed! Without a bard this fight was a sure loose when I was in Revelation (a guild who was at the appropriate tier for killing him). Positioning is just as key. Out of curiosity have you tried pulling Lavascale to the FG zone line so you can use the tunnel to sneaky cast and hide healers?
 
JayelleNephilim said:
Indeed! Without a bard this fight was a sure loose when I was in Revelation (a guild who was at the appropriate tier for killing him). Positioning is just as key. Out of curiosity have you tried pulling Lavascale to the FG zone line so you can use the tunnel to sneaky cast and hide healers?
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You can hide healers near his spawn point. There's a rock you can hide behind to avoid the AE.
 
We used to use that rock... but then it somehow stopped working, lol. We were told that it had been changed so that it no longer worked. :tinfoil: In any event, it seemed to work out best by the zoneline in comparison. So, we just stuck with that strat, hehehe.
 
JayelleNephilim said:
We used to use that rock... but then it somehow stopped working, lol. We were told that it had been changed so that it no longer worked. :tinfoil: In any event, it seemed to work out best by the zoneline in comparison. So, we just stuck with that strat, hehehe.
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oh that's possible. I haven't done lavascale since his loot went no drop, since besides the helm, it's some of the worst raid mob loot at that tier =/
 
Zhak said:
Not that it probably matters to you guys much, but we 4 char'd lavascale pretty frequently with zhak tanking, a bard, and a cleric / shaman. I don't think he is out of line tbh, Balthor tanks just as well as Zhak does, although his resists probably aren't as good. A bard makes a big difference in this fight.
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No offense Zhak because I respect and appreciate your feedback, but just because you can 4 box a mob with the level of gear you have, doesn't really mean something is balanced risk vs reward for the people that the content is actually intended for. Now that's just a generalized response, I don't really have any direct comment on this particular mob yet, except that we aren't going to balance a mob's drops based on whether someone 2 years ahead of a mob can kill it with a limited number of people.
 
Xeldan said:
No offense Zhak because I respect and appreciate your feedback, but just because you can 4 box a mob with the level of gear you have, doesn't really mean something is balanced risk vs reward for the people that the content is actually intended for. Now that's just a generalized response, I don't really have any direct comment on this particular mob yet, except that we aren't going to balance a mob's drops based on whether someone 2 years ahead of a mob can kill it with a limited number of people.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure back when Zhak did it, they were just barely pushing into OP. I remember when Lavascale was put in, Venerate had an open raid comprised mostly of Venerate characters including Coltaine, when we were mostly DHK-tier geared, and we wiped horribly. Legacy came in and proceded to wipe horribly, killing him with 80% of the raid dead the second try.
 
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