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

From our understanding the lower thazz wings are tier 9-10 so then if t10 is not a good indicated it must be t9 which is even more broken.

Tao edit: In order to keep this thread on-topic, part or all of this post has been moved to the "Channeling" thread in the Balancing Discussion subforum.
 
Tao edit: In order to keep this thread on-topic, part or all of this post has been moved to the "Channeling" thread in the Balancing Discussion subforum.
 
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Edit: Also, T10 is not a good indicator of that fight.

Let me take a moment to clarify this. It's a decent indicator of where the fight *should* be. The fight in its current form does not accomplish this based on 2 specific oversights that are currently being evaluated.
 
Not a whole lot to report at this moment, but at least three pretty big "oops"es have been fixed:

(1) The respawn rate of the Deacon of the Four NPCs in Thazeran's Tower have been fixed. While this sadly means that the nearly instant respawn rate experienced that one time recently shouldn't happen again, the inverse possibility of the respawn rate being 21 days that was indeed possible and thankfully never happened has also been fixed.

(2) One of the two aforementioned issues with the Tashkal the Molten fight has been fixed. This issue very thankfully did not affect the fight in any way the night it was killed, so we'll leave my really big personal "oops" as a secret hidden forever lost in time. I'm really relieved to have been able to fix it before it affected anyone.

(3) A comparably significant fix has been made to Commander Evrek Ok`tar. He should no longer be suddenly ignoring the tank. That was not intentional. Edited to add: Credit where it's due, this was a fix by Lead Developer Slaar, but I'm taking half of the credit for having heavily commented code.
 
Tao edit: In order to keep this thread on-topic, part or all of this post has been moved to the "Channeling" thread in the Balancing Discussion subforum.
 
Tao edit: In order to keep this thread on-topic, part or all of this post has been moved to the "Channeling" thread in the Balancing Discussion subforum.
 
Tao edit: In order to keep this thread on-topic, part or all of this post has been moved to the "Channeling" thread in the Balancing Discussion subforum.
 
When can we expect Gruinet to be fixed? In order to do the tribes past it we much pop the boss, and basically ignore it since it is bugged. If you are not going to fix it soon can you please just depop it and keep it down?
 
When can we expect Gruinet to be fixed? In order to do the tribes past it we much pop the boss, and basically ignore it since it is bugged. If you are not going to fix it soon can you please just depop it and keep it down?

Unless I'm mistaken, the newest iteration of the Gru`niet Tribe boss encounter is now Live. This fight is outside the bounds of this project (being Tier 12 according to the player wiki at the time of the start of this thread), so I've been hands-off with it beyond the most minor of tweaks.

That said, the last thing you want is for me to take over this one. The fight would be Mirror Golems on steroids.
 
Ok, who is in charge of it and I can contact them, because as of Monday night I do not think it is working as intended.
 
Ok, who is in charge of it and I can contact them, because as of Monday night I do not think it is working as intended.

Yes, Jesus and you can contact them from your bedside on your knees!

Just kidding, a little humor here. I hope it gets looked at for you guys. Good luck Shim!
 
Really? That was meant to be an overall improvement to the item given the tendency of the DoT not to run its duration. I'm not upping the proc rate; that's just not on the table. That said, if people would prefer the old proc, I'm not against putting it back.

I'd like a couple more opinions on it before I change it again, though... preferably including some from people that are using the item.

As the first person to get this item and for this being the fourth change/nerf to the item... You made it even worse then it all ready was. So change it back to the dot or increase the % (You won't, I get it). Few thousand strikes from secondary item and under 40 procs, max buffs, 40% haste for over 2 hours blah blah it doesn't matter. Just change it back to the previous state or delete the item fully.

Reminds me of when someone mentioned Illustrious greaves on this forum and the dev thought it was funny to change it to -500 mana for two weeks. Why change it at all when you're so willing to change it back, yet you won't add 1% to the proc?
 
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/facepalm ... *mumbles to himself 'always check to make sure your changes went in properly'*

It should be set to the old proc again (requires a patch to take effect).
 
So, this is winding down to a close, actually. It's been quiet recently since the things that have been changing haven't required a whole lot of input, but there's been stuff happening. Let's recap.

(1) The Void Worm has had more minor tweaks. We're in the minor tweaks phase now, so that's good. The AE damage might need a further tweak, but we'll see. It might be too high, or people might be dispelling too slowly. I'll have to have eyes on the fight to see, but at least it's pretty close now.

(2) A couple fights seem like I can put the "Done!" rubber stamp on them (Conglomeration, Iskkath's Experiment, Spires Duo). We can always re-evaluate later when another guild comes to do them on-tier, but I think they're about right now.

(3) Sanctum... really didn't need work. However, getting flagged for sanctum was a bit out of line. No, not the kill. No, not that every had to have the flag. The problem was the massive amount of time new guilds would have to spend in Inner Prison to get the ritual frags. Back when there weren't other zones to raid in, it was a reasonable time investment to get your guild a set of all the ritual spells. Nowadays, it just means backfarming IP. This is similar to archaic spells, but those frags can be farmed from other zones, and the ritual spell fragments don't make sense dropping elsewhere in my opinion. So, the droprate of the ritual spell fragments that drop from trash (not the ones that drop from bosses) has been increased.

(4) The Temple of Elael... the zone itself has a couple fun encounters, but accessing the zone is a bit more of a headache than was intended. From a vantage point where you see everything, the whole quest to access the zone seems really awesome. From a player's vantage point where you only see the parts where the NPCs are interacting with you (and not other players that might play while you're offline), it could be unclear. Also, nobody went with goblin faction instead of orc faction, so farming items from the orcs in tears of elael wasn't really an option. So, let's elucidate a little bit.

In order to open the zone for your raid, you need to do a quest that requires some faction grinding. The quest NPC then requires you do farm like 20 items for him in order to open the zone. The zone is then open for you and your raid for a set amount of time, and the zone has basically zero trash (the item farm to open the zone takes the place of trash for this raid content). When the zone closes, the quest NPC will offer the quest to open the zone again for 40 farmed items regardless of whether you were involved in the raid that did it with 20 items or not. The third time the zone would be opened would require 60 items, and so forth. This proved to be frustrating for players that went once with a requirement of 40 items then found themselves needing to farm 100 items in order to go back without an understanding of where those numbers came from. This was also frustrating for players that saw an indefinitely escalating number of items required to open the zone.

These issues needed to be addressed in a two-fold manner. First, we had to break tradition and decide to explain the process in a bit more detail publicly (that's what this post is doing now). The way the NPC interacts with multiple players/guilds/raids without doing things specifically per player/guild/raid for the farming quest warranted this explanation in a way most things are better done through quest dialogue or NPC emotes themselves. This explanation also needed to point out that there does indeed come a point where the farmed item requirement gets to be "too much", and that there's a means within the quest itself to reset the requirement to 20 items but only once the "too much" threshhold is met. Second, the "too much" threshhold needed to be lowered. It used to be either 200 or 220. (I forget whether you had to farm the 200 or whether you could reset it once the requirement was 200). It's significantly more reasonable now. If this is all really unclear, this thread is a great place to ask questions.

(5) The Ok`tar Tribe and Ju`bor Tribe seem to be working well now and dropping items properly. The Ju`bor Tribe is a pain in the neck to do, but it is also without rival in tome drops (always a class tome 3 and often both an opus1 and an opus2).

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So, that really just leaves two parts that require work still: Akarn and Lower Thaz. Akarn is still a mystery to me. At least it's the last such fight in spires to work on. Lower Thaz is really 8 encounters and trash sets that all have to be evaluated as "wing up through miniboss" and "wing as a whole including boss". They all also have their own devs working on them, kinda...

Lower Earth -- This wing is pretty polished and basically great. I'm a little iffy on one thing about the boss, but so is everyone else, and we're waiting to see it in action before we start changing it. (I have faith in the dev that made this wing, but I leave out the disclaimers that water/air have since I was involved enough with this wing to be trusted to make fixes to things I feel aren't working as intended.)

Lower Fire -- This wing is the only one that's been beaten. There's plenty of room to argue that CW didn't deserve the win, but they're also way overtier and would probably have killed the boss on their second attempt if that one thing that should have killed them had been working. A lot of work has gone into this tribe, and while there's still some questions about tuning specific trash mob HP and AE damage numbers, this wing is pretty close to just right, I think.

Lower Water -- This wing has had a couple guilds try it. The miniboss was intended to delay becoming active (similar-ish to failed golem), but it wasn't delaying, so the fight was indeed WAY too hard. That's been fixed, so the fight is now possible, and the difficulty of the fight can be properly evaluated. The trash is working as intended. Beyond that, all I can say is that the dev that made it retains all devvery rights, so I'm not touching it.

Lower Air -- This wing still has the smell of "new" on it so strong that even I don't know jack about it to the point that I'm still allowed to raid there. The dev that made this wing also retains all devvery rights to it, so I'm not touching it or jeopardizing my "can raid there" status for it. If you wanna give lower air a try, invite me along!
 
(5) The Ok`tar Tribe and Ju`bor Tribe seem to be working well now and dropping items properly. The Ju`bor Tribe is a pain in the neck to do, but it is also without rival in tome drops (always a class tome 3 and often both an opus1 and an opus2).

Ju`bor is the hardest tribe in the zone to clear, and I'm okay with that. It requires very good splitting and offtanking and mezzing and skill based things. I would suggest upping the reward to two class 3 as they are very coveted. Of the nine tribes, 5 of them drop Class 4's, 4 drop Class 3's, this would even it out to 5/5.

Also, the 1.5 hr timer is pretty questionable. I'm still not sure it's possible to beat it in that amount of time. FWF only ever beat Ju'bor because the zone crashed mid-clear which reset the timer.
 
Is this the case now or just with the old half-broken version that we did that time when we discovered that the timer had broken afterwards?
 
I'm guessing he means now because we played around with it a bit recently and it's still really rough.
 
(3) Sanctum... The problem IS the massive amount of time OLD guilds have to spend in SANCTUM to get FROM ENTRANCE TO PAST CUSTODIAN. Back when there weren't other zones to raid in, it was a reasonable time investment to get your guild TO MOBS YOU WANTED TO KILL. Nowadays, it just means backfarming.

Any further thoughts on making A Final Ward Clickie or port?
Maybe We could challenege the Nexus of the Ward and kill it from 100% and it opens a portal that takes you to the final ward or custodian area?

(4) The Temple of Elael...

Does the final events of this this zone drop loot that is equal to Which Mob/Teir?
Most loot looks uniquely made but does it Compares to Saitha loot or higher?

Lower Water -- This wing has had a couple guilds try it. The miniboss was intended to delay becoming active (similar-ish to failed golem), but it wasn't delaying, so the fight was indeed WAY too hard. That's been fixed, so the fight is now possible, and the difficulty of the fight can be properly evaluated. The trash is working as intended. Beyond that, all I can say is that the dev that made it retains all devvery rights, so I'm not touching it.

fight worked great and both mini and boss seemed well turned.


EDIT: Also curious if any dev interest is there in watching and debugging Overgrowth fights that havn't been completed yet.
IE. -> Kara`Kadar - middle teir raid mob fish in the zone. (adds and add dmg werent working right)

-> Eniva the Troubadour - Each class type is given a color Red(tank) Blue(healers/necros) , Yellow(DPS)
- When Yellow ppl try to reset their charges by going to the Red Tank to make a ORANGE
color .. the charges dont reset even after you die. and when you reengage for round 2, you are insta killed

**** -> Prime Warden Jenrok - Jenrok aoe damage while the 50% Memories add is active is WAYY to much.
- AOE Damage from the Memories when its active is WAY to much.
- Memories wisp has WAY to much HPs
- Rest of fight worked great but when this add comes active you basicly just Die without a chance. If the dps during this phase could be lower'd it would be still t13 and actually doable.
 
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I have not experienced all of this yet but here is my review thus far;
Earth
Mini -> fun and balanced
Boss -> the ae phase is pretty rough could used toned down some it brought almost the entire group down in the 10-17% range or lower.

Fire
Mini -> pretty easy
Boss -> fun

Thaz 1
General statement that all of the bosses had about 2-3x the amount of hps that I would feel to be "balanced". I ran through a full mana bar 3 times plus some in this event which would put it 4+ mana bars for casters a tier or two lower. I also think that after you beat a boss the elemental a of that type should no longer come out of the portal.

Fire
Too many hps the tank and ae Dmg seamed pretty reasonable but with lesser tanks I could see this being very difficult.

Earth
Probably my favorite boss. Really liked this part if the fight.

Water
The start lagged me terribly, but luckily stopped. The adds can be tricky with size and hit boxes.

Air
This is just dumb. Have ww's in the air that you can't see until they hit you is poor design. Forcing a tank to stand there and eat them/dodge is bad. Also, the gflux and then summon mechanic is bad especially when it takes Jraul from 100% to <10 or dead every time. Melees are basically useless as there are way to many ww's for them to even think about melee ing. This guy should have at a minimum 50% drop in health and probably 1/3 to 1/2 as many ww's spawn. Or may it so the ww's are targetable and kite able or mez able or something.

Overall though it has been a fairly fun and enjoyable experience. Keep up the good work.
 
Pegging a zone/encounter/loot at a Tier is always a difficult prospect, but if I had to do so for Temple of Elael, I'd say late Tier 10 through mid Tier 11 from start to finish with loot that is about the same, but that's always difficult to grasp based on just the stats/script of the fights (partilcularly when the second boss has only been killed twice). I'm also not sure how to interpret "post-Saitha". Would that mean that they're similar to Tur`ruj Basement, or are you wondering if the zone ramps up in difficulty at a rate that rivals sanctum?

Overgrowth and anything in sanctum starting with Nylastra`zara is beyond the scope of this thread.

I suppose I'll put my responses to the rest of the things in the previous two posts by encounter.

Thazeran's Tower lower water wing miniboss, Lorash`dal -- I'm glad to hear the feedback. We're limited in the amount of data we can gather about the difficulty tuning of the fight from an overtier raid stomping it into the ground, but we did get some good information, and that's good.

Thazeran's Tower lower earth wing miniboss, Warder Dagrath -- good to hear. It's had quite a number of on-tier raids do it, so it's been polished pretty well. We look forward to being able to do that with the rest of the content there.

Thazeran's Tower lower earth wing boss, Vordrek the Earthen -- I genuinely don't know what you mean by "the ae phase". I mean, I know the fight very well, but nothing in that fight reads "the ae phase" to me. I understand a general sense of not wanting to spoil the encounter for others that may soon get to experience it first-hand with the excitement of "new content", but I need some more to go on.

Thazeran's Tower lower fire wing miniboss, Flamelord Koltar -- Hmm... that's discouraging to hear. I'll give it another look.

Thazeran's Tower lower fire wing boss, Tashkal the Molten -- I'm glad it seemed fun to you. I'm also *really* glad the changes to the frogs didn't cause the zone to crash when engaged with more than 6 players.

The Lower Ward event, in general -- This is a bit of an odd encounter in that it's, well... very long. Any groups not taking advantage of mod rods and mana potions on cooldown will be at a significant disadvantage, for certain. That said, the tuning of the difficulty of this encounter is pretty difficult in that you can't really make direct comparisons to any other fights with it. It might very well be way too hard. It might not be. In either case, thank you for the information your raid has provided us (and your post's subsequent critique) to try to use for comparison to tune this fight.

The Lower Ward event, fire portion -- If the damage is in a good place, then lots of the more difficult tuning aspects (and there's a ****load of them) are probably in good places. That's good to hear. Adjusting the HP on the primary mob is honestly one of the later things that needs to be handled in a difficulty tuning situation, so I'm taking this critique as "good news".

The Lower Ward event, earth portion -- Yeah... that part is awesome, and I'm sad that I didn't get to experience your reaction to it.

The Lower Ward event, water portion -- Even when this was being tested back in March, we knew that the things we were doing as elemental sub-boss introductions were going to be quite laggy. However, during testing, that lag did not persist beyond the introduction and into the sub-encounter. I hope that what you're describing is this same experience.

The Lower Ward event, air portion -- After three fairly positive reviews, we finally hit the "virgin content bomb" wherein we find something that probably wasn't meant to be quite as hard as you experienced. You guys gave the devs a lot of things to look at now that all of the lower wings and The Lower Ward event have been awoken from 8 months of waiting!
 
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