Tiers 9 through 11 balancing (See post #4 for current status)

The yellow ones never gave us issues it was always the blue, and from my experience 1ae'ing vs multiple all ended the same way...wiped raid. I will see of the guys would like to give it a few goes and see the fight again and will pay attention more closely or you can watch if you are around for better understanding.
 
Excellent. Hopefully a critical eye on a serious attempt or two can help make sure that encounter is where it needs to be, then I can move on to Duo and Akarn.

Then that'll just leave the possible tweaks to HP on Klikil, Void Worm, and Experiment as well as the discussions about "timers" regarding the Lower Thaz wings and Tar`Loc and Ok`Tar tribes in Tur`Ruj.

Oh, man, light at the end of this tunnel!
 
Tarutao said:
Oh, man, light at the end of this tunnel!
Click to expand...

oncoming_train.jpg
 
CW has killed Mindful and Experiment several times recently. Mindful feels the same as always, aka appropriately on tier, but Experiment I think has been buffed too much. Here's an old Experiment win parse with main CW raiders at the time.

Iskkath`s Experiment on 4/28/2012 in 112sec.

Total
--- DMG: 468286 (100%) @ 4181 dps (4181 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 420140 @3751dps

Nuchre
--- DMG: 84854 (18.12%) @ 903 dps (758 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 31216 @329dps

Baxters
--- DMG: 61262 (13.08%) @ 583 dps (547 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 303 @303dps

Raxton
--- DMG: 60631 (12.95%) @ 551 dps (541 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 21949 @215dps

Tahn
--- DMG: 54030 (11.54%) @ 587 dps (482 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 27281 @310dps

Guevemui
--- DMG: 43753 (9.34%) @ 417 dps (391 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 30135 @295dps

Dunkoc
--- DMG: 37592 (8.03%) @ 369 dps (336 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 25221 @265dps

Burglecut
--- DMG: 30121 (6.43%) @ 282 dps (269 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 9502 @93dps

Gankuag
--- DMG: 26984 (5.76%) @ 241 dps (241 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 86658 @774dps

Sema
--- DMG: 26523 (5.66%) @ 239 dps (237 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 50784 @498dps

Iliangur
--- DMG: 19614 (4.19%) @ 185 dps (175 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 29622 @288dps

Omegared
--- DMG: 10572 (2.26%) @ 147 dps (94 sdps)

Noobs
--- DMG: 4333 (0.93%) @ 117 dps (39 sdps)

Qpee
--- DMG: 3265 (0.7%) @ 31 dps (29 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 43983 @431dps

Jarh
--- DMG: 2642 (0.56%) @ 25 dps (24 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 27694 @272dps

Prettybird
--- DMG: 2110 (0.45%) @ 21 dps (19 sdps)

Dymon
--- DMG to PC: 35792 @407dps

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And here's yesterday's win with our From Accounting department crew plus a few CW ringers. We had to sit our From Accounting department main tank Brao for Drolkrad because keeping up an on tier tank is not possible when healers are on fumes after 60seconds. Previous parses of this guy typically lasted 80-110seconds, so engaging nearly OOM was doable, that's not so doable now especially if the tank needs a ton of healing, so ringing it with a fully decked and tomed T12 tank is the only way to win.





Iskkath`s Experiment on 7/12/2013 in 249sec

Total
--- DMG: 1640032 (100%) @ 6586 dps (6586 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 853996 @3430dps

Galsan
--- DMG: 260833 (15.9%) @ 1052 dps (1048 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 48462 @204dps

Raxton
--- DMG: 248700 (15.16%) @ 1003 dps (999 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 41484 @174dps

Aelias
--- DMG: 195487 (11.92%) @ 791 dps (785 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 32088 @134dps

Artimas
--- DMG: 157438 (9.6%) @ 635 dps (632 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 11831 @50dps

Drolkrad
--- DMG: 145787 (8.89%) @ 585 dps (585 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 216217 @868dps

Lowako
--- DMG: 142889 (8.71%) @ 574 dps (574 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 40334 @169dps

Radu
--- DMG: 78817 (4.81%) @ 318 dps (317 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 51300 @215dps

Avalien
--- DMG: 78655 (4.8%) @ 317 dps (316 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 5577 @23dps

Tevinter
--- DMG: 51713 (3.15%) @ 208 dps (208 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 52734 @221dps

Syltros
--- DMG: 50171 (3.06%) @ 202 dps (201 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 75349 @315dps

Omegared
--- DMG: 45473 (2.77%) @ 186 dps (183 sdps)

Marshak
--- DMG: 35974 (2.19%) @ 360 dps (144 sdps)

Grizzlefang
--- DMG: 35492 (2.16%) @ 143 dps (143 sdps)

Huslie
--- DMG: 23896 (1.46%) @ 323 dps (96 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 61400 @903dps
--- Special: X

Rixiah
--- DMG: 21389 (1.3%) @ 88 dps (86 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 50838 @213dps

Nuchre
--- DMG: 20340 (1.24%) @ 2542 dps (82 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 13152 @774dps
--- Special: X

Guktore
--- DMG: 15571 (0.95%) @ 63 dps (63 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 26671 @112dps

Jarh
--- DMG: 10438 (0.64%) @ 43 dps (42 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 38412 @161dps

Arshtat
--- DMG: 6768 (0.41%) @ 28 dps (27 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 24931 @104dps

Dian
--- DMG: 4694 (0.29%) @ 19 dps (19 sdps)
--- DMG to PC: 63216 @265dps

Nevermore
--- DMG: 4576 (0.28%) @ 19 dps (18 sdps)

Dirtyrandy
--- DMG: 3704 (0.23%) @ 15 dps (15 sdps)

Galsan`s pet
--- DMG: 690 (0.04%) @ 25 dps (3 sdps)

Raxton`s pet
--- DMG: 537 (0.03%) @ 32 dps (2 sdps)

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Not to be off-topic, but this is good stuff. Lovin' the provided parses and related opinions; they seem exactly what's needed. Please continue this awesomeness.
 
So, there's a number of fights that have had really minor tweaks and been looked at, but there's nothing else I can do with them until I see them done on-tier. That's why there's been a lot of not much going on for over a month now. That said, there's still three fights in Spires that warrant my attention at least preliminarily.

Iskkath's Experiment -- this fight is meant to be a bit of a puzzle in execution. At tier 12, you can keep the tank and raid alive indefinitely with healers at effectively zero mana, and so this fight is just a matter of waiting for the mob's HP to reach zero. Hence, the information gained from and pertinence of overtiered raid parses for this fight is exhausted, so there's really no more data I can glean from CW at this time. Ideally, at around tier 11, it would take effort and mana from the healers to keep the tank alive while killing Iskkath's Experiment, and this would create some sense of a time limit on killing the mob as the healers run out of mana. Is this the case with raids that are progressing through the zone? I don't know yet; I haven't seen it myself to know, so let's discuss some possibilities from the vantage point of encounter design and balance.


--Possibility A--
This fight is doable with an on-tier tank with on-tier healers running on effectively zero mana. Furthermore, this fight is doable with an undertiered raid running on fumes.

In this case, the fight needs to be changed in a way that makes it undoable undertier without changing how the fight goes on-tier. The most convenient way to do this is with some sort of hard enrage timer. These are pretty uncommon in SoD, and they usually take lesser forms of "you have X amount of time after doing Y to do Z" like with Nexus of the Ward and Conglomeration. Other options are probably available in the case of Possibility A, though.


--Possibility B--
This fight is doable with an on-tier tank with on-tier healers running on effectively zero mana. However, this fight is not doable with an undertiered raid running on fumes.

This case is the bittersweet situation where the fight is tier-appropriate but the spirit of the fight is lost, and the fun interesting things get lost to "it was cool as an idea" purgatory. (See Gru`niet Tribe). Other than possibly a minor reduction to the boss's HP to shorten the fight, we leave the fight alone... and that's only if the HP reduction would not make the fight doable undertier.


--Possibility C--
This fight is not doable with an on-tier tank with on-tier healers running on effectively zero mana. Furthermore, the fight isn't really doable with an on-tier tank without massive healer engagement.

In this situation, we adjust the melee output of the boss downward and make no other changes until we reassess the situation.


--Possibility D--
This fight is not doable with an on-tier tank with on-tier healers running on effectively zero mana, but as long as the healers have mana, they can keep the tank up. However, the fight lasts longer than the healer mana does, and the tank dies and the raid wipes.

This is basically our "just right" situation, but with a needed downward tweak to the boss's health pool. That said, this fight by its nature lends itself to a wide variance in how much damage a raid could do based on the pre-fight preparation of each member of the raid and how the DPS expend their resources and cooldowns. Hence, finding the appropriate amount that the HP would need to be decreased will require some amount of "watch and tweak".

If you're unfamiliar with the fight, the previous paragraph probably sounds meaningless. I won't be the first to spoil the fight in this thread, so unless someone wants to put up a massive spoiler warning and decide to open discussion of this encounter to specifics and the craft of stratcrafting. Figuring out the mechanics of this fight when I first did it was a joy, and I've heard that a couple guilds since FWF have been able to enjoy that experience as well, so I'll leave it to others that are non-staff to decide if the mechanics of this fight remain a guarded secret.


--Possibility E--
This fight is not doable with an on-tier tank with on-tier healers running on effectively zero mana, but as long as the healers have mana, they can keep the tank up. The boss dies not long before mana would run out and the raid would wipe.

This is the ideal situation to aim for. We still much recognize that the pre-fight preparatory phase would have to be pretty well managed, though.


.... This post is long enough. I'll touch on Duo and Akarn later.
 
At the risk of being flat out spoiler-y... the information on the wiki regarding the three spells used as debuffs by The Void Worm are a bit outdated. The number of disease counters for those three spells is not 9 as stated. The correct number is 32 (and is up for consideration, but I'm pretty darn happy with this number at this time).
 
So, since someone actually tried The Void Worm, let's discuss!

First, I'm really happy with the 32 disease counters number. I think that's good.

Second, the tank damage... it was a bit high. The damage from the tank-specific lifetap has been lowered a little, and the melee damage of the mob has been tweaked to put it a little lower and a little smoother. The tank is already taking spiky damage since he's going to get hit by every lifetap, so we'll avoid going spiky on spiky here.

Third, the amount of debuffs going out... I think this is at a good spot right now on paper, but I'm a little worried that there might be more debuffs happening than intended. There's a level of panic involved in realizing you've just gotten the debuff, and so the issue experienced here could just as easily be a misperception as a "not working as intended" thing. I won't know until I'm able to watch the fight once and focus on specifically that aspect.

Fourth, the concern about the debuff being able to hit the tank. This is where there will be some amount of variation in how much damage the tank takes based on the rest of the raid. That said, do this strategically, and even if you don't achieve the minimum lifetap damage the tank receives, the next best amount is still very doable and not too much higher, so I'd say this does not warrant a "don't let that hit the tank" change following the adjustments two paragraphs up.

---------------------

I'm a little worried about the exact numbers, but I'd compare this to a marksmanship contest. I judged the wind and made a first shot. I'd say I hit the target, but now I've been able to adjust my scope and make a second shot. It should be much better, but understand that I may have overcorrected or undercorrected, and some minor tweaks may be in order.
 
Unless there's someone doing the content, there's no progress. That said, I've been away for 3 days, so I need to go see if anyone's tried The Void Worm since we tweaked it.
 
We killed twins the other day with our alt crew plus a few ringers. Felt really hard and took us 4 or 5 wipes. Seems harder than Saitha to me which may explain why sacred band skips it on their way to saitha. I would recommend lowering the hps back down somewhat.
 
*stands corrected*

I have some information about Iskkath`s Experiment... I still want to see the fight done with my own eyes, but there's still some good information I can glean from even things like how long the fight lasted, what characters were in the fight, and what characters died when. I'll post more about this one soon, but I think I know what I want to tweak.

-------

Lower the HP on Twins? I haven't really had much input about that fight, but my limited understanding was that the problems were in relation to how much damage was going out and not really the length of the fight.

Do you really think lowering the HP of the bosses is the way to go? If so, does that mean you think the fight itself is just fine but too long? These aren't meant to be rude or condescending questions; I genuinely want to understand.
 
I think lowering damage would probably be a more elegant fix but hp tweaking seems like the more commonly used change. We ran some beefy clerics nearly oom (rixiah, guktore, vitali) to squeak a win. Admittedly our dps wasnt great but our tanks were. If less damage was going out we could heal for longer so ya that would fix it too.
 
Well, you have the opportunity to ask for specifics and for what you want and/or think would be best. I didn't change the HP on The Void Worm, but I changed the AE not to double-hit, how strong the debuff is, melee damage, and the tank-specific nuke damage.

Ask for what you really want.
 
Updated the State of Play Post.

I've removed The Void Worm and Tar`loc Tribe from the list. Other than a re-tweak to tank damage from The Void Worm, those two are fine. Tar`loc Tribe and Ok`Tar Tribe are fine as they are. I might consider a tweak to Ok`tar at some point, but the difficulty level of the tribe is fine.

I'm still waiting to see Conglomeration and The Ancient Guardians done in person. I think both of these fights are ones that little adjustments in the raidstrats would solve, but I'm open to tweaks in timers of AEs on Conglomeration and maybe to something in the The Ancient Guardians as well.

Since SB did Iskkath`s Experiment, I've got a little more information on the fight, and I'm currently toying with (1) lowering boss melee damage by about 2% (2) increasing the boss's HP by about 2% (3) delaying the onset of the boss's AEs equivalent to 2 AEs to give some time for everyone "to prepare". That should allow for a little easier time avoiding player deaths in the first minute of the fight and overall lower the duration of the fight while providing just an ounce of tank surviving and leaving the flavor of the fight intact. That's just my current thought, but I think it's a good set of adjustments.

Spires Duo... I posted about this earlier today, but to be more specific, the script for Dread Captain Ilithka is a bit terrifying in ways only Zaela could be terrifying. I think I've got a handle on what's going on, but I could use input on what specific parts are killing the raid. Researcher Velnir looks the same as when I last did him over a year ago, and even that is easier than the original version of Researcher Velnir. For that matter, while I could just be missing something, I don't see anything that confirms the complaints I've heard that Velnir is invulnerable until Ilithka is dead. So yeah, I need some candid input.

Klikil... ehh... *procrastinate*

Akarn... This fight is not meant to be done in one cycle. Way-over-tier sure why not, but on-tier, this shouldn't be a one cycle fight. Group heals like your life depends on it for certain and land a heal right before the end of a cycle are definitely going to be the lynchpins of this fight. This fight is definitely a strong gear check for everyone's HP and burst heals and burst DPS. If I'm reading between the lines as well as I hope I am, this could still be a 2 cycle fight on-tier. Are people trying to squeeze this into one cycle still and creating for themselves a lot of frsturation? Are people trying to do this in 2 cycles and just not able to survive for that long? I don't really know yet.



-----------------

Edited to add: I forgot to mention that the timer on the Tar`loc tribe has been increased by 40 seconds. This is not a change of balance or intended consequence. The timer was just 29 minutes 20 seconds, and I think that's from a typo that is now fixed. For the same reasons, the Ghan Tribe timer has been increased by 40 seconds (to 45 minutes) and the Kal`tan Tribe timer has been decreased by 1 minute 40 seconds (to 75 minutes).
 
Small derail here. Recently did a few Turruj tribes and someone said the books were taken off trash. Was a reason ever given for this? I may have missed it if so. But alone books being taken of the trash is disheartening.
 
Trash no longer drops tomes, but more/ higher chance for tomes to drop on boss kills was added
This was done, I think, because people were farming tribe trash for tomes.
 
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