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

The phase I was talking about as "ae phase" is it will periodically do "earthquakes" similar to mountain king just with amped up Dmg where it is really hard to heal during and I just had to eat beads or use life tap clicky (Halloween quest and vah back unfair bargain) to stay alive. Which I think would be difficult for a more "on tier" raid as I have around 7.5k hps unbuffed with maxed spell ward and Mage elemental form and all four class books to back it up to all help mitigate spell Dmg where for instance a necro (enac) or wizard (deetuth) using as comparisons I am not trying to call anyone out sit at (6.5k) and that would still be considered overtiered for that wing/event.
 
Also, Tao if you ever want to talk it out more in depth through irc or vent just let me know. Thanks again for all of your effort and time pursuing this.
 
The earthquakes in the Vordrek the Earthen fight do a bit of damage, and you'll want to make sure groups are topped off right before it, but unless it's not working properly, a 6.5k hp character should have plenty HP to spare even if they take full damage from the earthquakes. That said, it's a lot of damage and it serves as a bit of a gear check to keep undergeared players from surviving long into the fight.

Also, most people in the raid probably aren't taking damage from other sources at this time unless they've done something wrong or the raid is pushing through boss damage faster than they're handling mechanics (a concern for a Tier 13 raid that a Tier 10 raid won't have unless they're being intentionally reckless).

That all said, if you want to share more specific details about your experience with this particular mechanic, I'd love to give it a look to see if perhaps it's doing more damage than intended (something like doing 5 waves instead of 3).
 
I think it would be worth looking into. For arguments sake I sit buffed at 10k hps, most of us casters were topped or very close to this event and I finished at or under 20% so could assume that I lost around 30% from the earthquake. That is 7k Dmg AFTER 5% to tears, 20% from spell ward, 10% from class tomes ( I am assuming that it is unresistable damage) if my math is correct I have 35% reduction. That means that I took roughly 10.8k base damage and I do not think a 6k hp caster could live through that unless they had a hot rolling and the hot tick hit in-between waves of eq damage. I am at the office now and do not have access to the logs but I can see if I can find exact Dmg and waves later.
 
Most of the bosses in the Lower Thaz (and thaz1 especially) have way too many hit points in general as they were able to run T13 raids with mages spitting out rods, Tear of Elael clickables, 20-24FT, etc dry or really low.

Some general feedback I have here is...

Lower Thaz Water
The wing trash either (icy defenders in particular) doesn't work correctly or is really poorly balanced for what an actual raid this tier would have for an enchanter. We used two enchanters (one has CE4, mistborn tome, Overpowering Calm 4 and the other has CE3, mistborn tome, Overpowering Calm 3) and an actual enchanter this tier would maybe have just CE3, probably not mistborn tome or any overpowering calm to remove duration mitigation.

I don't know if it's intended for these to respawn in 5 minutes after you figure out a way to finally make them stay dead and not turn into puddles that slowly heal and then turn into the golem again, but they intefere with the actual boss fights by patrolling into the boss rooms when they do, and you can't kill them permanently again once they respawn again. This is a problem because they are level 63-65 mobs which mitigate mez duration.

So the bosses...

The mini, Lorash'Dal, comes with a bunch of pofrost human trash mobs. 12 I believe. On even tanks this tier they still hit pretty hard I imagine. They all activate at once. These are all even cons and mitigate mez bigtime. We had to have Tevinter (maxed out mez power enchanter) mezzing the golems that roam in while I played Nublim and mezzed most of the pofrost humans inside the room. These things would probably not be quite as horrible if they didn't all activate at once as I think an ontier raid would just splat immediately, but even so there's still that enchanter trying to mez even con mobs problem with duration mitigation being horrible without class tomes that an enchanter this tier will most likely not have.

As for how hard he now hits and whether that's balanced for the tier, I have no idea as I was not playing a tank or healer. Jraul or Crynel would probably be someone to ask about that.

The bosses are the twins again, Xadrak and Kadrax like they used to be in old LT water. These have an enormous, enormous amount of HP. Ran our T13 casters out of mana. The mechanics all work correctly aside from this. No idea again whether how hard they hit is balanced to the tier but the puddles and wisps (and I assume the things at low hp) all seem to work correctly.


Lower Thaz Earth

No idea about how hard the trash is but I think since other, actual on-tier guilds have done up to the mini and have actually killed him, it's probably doable.

As for the boss, Vordrek the Earthen... seems to work fine. But as Shimone said the Earthquake AE dropped 20% spellward, 5% Mountain King tome, 7.5-10% elemental embodiment tome mages down to 20%ish when they have around 7k HP unbuffed. That is probably way too much damage for the intended tier. Again no idea how hard he hits because I didn't play a tank or healer for this. This was a pretty good fight. I like the mechanics.

Lower Thaz Fire

No real complaints about the trash. I think it may be fine but again, I did not play a tank or healer and can't make that call.

The mini died pretty fast to our T13 raid so it may or may not have enough HP. I don't even know what the mechanics are. We really just powered through.

The "event" clear before the boss. It's like claw commander's new trash clear, probably too many mobs. It would probably be better if if it had less mobs but were timed once you engage with mobs activating over time.

The boss itself is pretty interesting. With the frogs and phoenixes. Only thing that may need adjusted is HP and how hard he hits since everything else seemed to work.

Lower Thaz Air

This is a lot more of a mess than the other wings. The respawning mobs in the wing (Arc Keepers) may need to be on a longer timer for an on-tier guild (probably like 10 minutes instead of the 5 it is now) in order for them to be able to do something in the wing. Also, these Arc Keepers didn't work correctly and we basically powered through them to avoid being blown up.

Neither of the bosses worked 100% but we were able to kill them. I'm not sure if the mini is supposed to stun you before he spawns those whirlwinds but that seems kind of bad since you have to move immediately afterwards.


Thaz1

All of the bosses have way too many hit points causing us to essentially have to actually stop and med as long as possible (due to a mechanic with the portals and elementals phase preventing you from medding however long you want) in between bosses. This was with using 2 of the best clerics in the game, one of the best shamans in the game, and Lleoc's cleric which is nearly Top 5. The casters DPS all had 9400+ mana.

The air portal boss in this as some have said is really, really bad. Not only does he go invulnerable from time to time preventing what little damage you can use on him from keeping up, but it's nearly impossible for a player to tank him (Jraul has like 11K HP unbuffed and dropped sub 10% or just died) but the mana drain is brutal and melee can't do much of anything here. It's also very hard to avoid the whirlwinds due to the ones in the sky having poor visibility.

The water boss did not lag me after he spawned, and neither did the earth boss.

Water portal boss only seems to do his abilities once (broken loop?) and didn't always activate his low hp ability. Has too many HP though also, as noted.

Earth portal boss mostly seemed to work correctly but his knockback can sometimes not knock people off.

Fire portal boss works perfectly but may hit too hard (was demolishing Crynel who is easily a solid high T12 to T13 tank)
 
Comments from someone in an on-tier guild that has attempted the Water wing a few times.

Lower Thaz Water
The wing trash either (icy defenders in particular) doesn't work correctly or is really poorly balanced for what an actual raid this tier would have for an enchanter. We used two enchanters (one has CE4, mistborn tome, Overpowering Calm 4 and the other has CE3, mistborn tome, Overpowering Calm 3) and an actual enchanter this tier would maybe have just CE3, probably not mistborn tome or any overpowering calm to remove duration mitigation.

I don't know if it's intended for these to respawn in 5 minutes after you figure out a way to finally make them stay dead and not turn into puddles that slowly heal and then turn into the golem again, but they intefere with the actual boss fights by patrolling into the boss rooms when they do, and you can't kill them permanently again once they respawn again. This is a problem because they are level 63-65 mobs which mitigate mez duration.

Agreed, pretty huge pain.
So the bosses...

The mini, Lorash'Dal, comes with a bunch of pofrost human trash mobs. 12 I believe. On even tanks this tier they still hit pretty hard I imagine. They all activate at once. These are all even cons and mitigate mez bigtime. We had to have Tevinter (maxed out mez power enchanter) mezzing the golems that roam in while I played Nublim and mezzed most of the pofrost humans inside the room. These things would probably not be quite as horrible if they didn't all activate at once as I think an ontier raid would just splat immediately, but even so there's still that enchanter trying to mez even con mobs problem with duration mitigation being horrible without class tomes that an enchanter this tier will most likely not have.

Confirmed. We were scratching our heads before the fight thinking what we were supposed to do, thinking we missed something. When we zerged it, our slightly above tier ringer warrior died as soon as resilience wore off. For the reasons listed above, we found water probably not worth our time.

In general, we've found earth pretty enjoyable and balanced.

Thanks for Thaz work done so far, fun zone!
 
Yeah, I'm gonna spend a little time scratching my head at the Vordrek the Earthen earthquake mechanic. It shouldn't be doing the damage being described on its own. I don't see a reason in the script it would be do anywhere near that much, in testing it hasn't behaved unpredictably, and it didn't appear to be doing more damage than intended when I watched <Prophecy> attempt the fight.

Any details you can provide on what you experienced would help.
 
if this game still had a lot of people playing, i think lower thaz might suffer from emberflow syndrome, where people kill the bosses just for the tomes and not really care about the loot. also, if you need the 4 shards every time to do thaz1, then definitely this.

overall though A+ would beta test again maybe
 
Here's my thoughts on Thaz and some of the issues brought up so far. I'm in <Prophecy> btw.

Earth: Trash requires us to pay attention, but is not overly difficult. We do have people die to DB's and stuff though every clear, but usually it's not too many and I think is probably more us screwing up tbh.

Mini - he's good, except he won't drop a pipe for me. Also about 50% of the time we get lag spikes close to the start of an AE phase which is super bad news and results in multiple people being very dead. Dunno if that is related to the script of the fight itself or if its just bad luck from the server.

Boss - His melee damage towards the tank seemed like it was as it should be, no red flags there. As for the AE's, our best geared caster is probably Malafixo who has a little more than 5.2k HP unbuffed. All of our casters sit in the 4.8-5.2k range, with about 10% spell ward. Our healers are in the 5.5-6k range, I am at 6.2, with about 10% spell ward. I'll leave it up to others to decide whether we are on tier geared or not. But if the casters aren't topped off before the AE starts, 1 or 2 of them dies every time. With a hot rolling, everyone still ends up under 30, many around 10%. Heaven forbid I had to heal the tank and didn't have time to prepare for the AE and I end up with 2 people left to heal. We have geared up a little since our last attempt on this mob, but 200 HP isn't really that huge of a difference so /shrug. I don't have logs of the fight but maybe the other AE that he does throughout the fight still is rolling during this phase too?

Water - For mezzing purposes, my enchanter has CE2, and overpowering calm 1. I should have a CE3 item but we don't kill some mobs very often, and when we do they don't drop the gear I want anyways. Our other ~on tier enchanter has CE3 and OC1. So that's the level of mez bonus I'd say is fair to expect on tier. Certainly not mez-master Tevinter level.
The golems are annoying, but I don't think we've fully figured them out yet so I will hold comment on that, other than that mezzing all 4 requires the enchanter to do literally nothing except spam mezzes, or one gets loose.

Mini - we've only had I think 2 attempts on the boss and they have not lasted long at all. One we got steamrolled by Lorash'Dal because he activated right at the start of the fight and it all was over in about 4 seconds but that got changed so yay. The other time I died about 15 seconds in to the adds, and the rest of the raid died within a minute. I don't know what Lorash'Dal did, because I was dead. He might have smashed people, or maybe tanks stood under his nuts and laughed at him so he ate them.

Air - the Arc Keepers did not seem to be functioning in any way that we could figure out. Sometimes they died quietly, sometimes they picked 6 completely random people to nuke for 18k, or 21k, or 50k. Walls didn't matter, distance didn't matter, aggro didn't matter. 6 people had their heads a splode. We settled on burn and cross your fingers that nobody died. This was maybe a month ago though.

Mini - we sucked, we died, nothing to see here.

Fire - no attempts yet, but I think we are hoping to give it an attempt soon, so feedback will be on the way!

Sorry if this is rambling, just wanted to give some perspective from a roughly on tier guild. I know we had people watching us for most of the time, and we all appreciate the work you've put in to it.
 
Here's my thoughts on Thaz and some of the issues brought up so far. I'm in <Prophecy> btw.

Boss - His melee damage towards the tank seemed like it was as it should be, no red flags there. As for the AE's, our best geared caster is probably Malafixo who has a little more than 5.2k HP unbuffed. All of our casters sit in the 4.8-5.2k range, with about 10% spell ward. Our healers are in the 5.5-6k range, I am at 6.2, with about 10% spell ward. I'll leave it up to others to decide whether we are on tier geared or not. But if the casters aren't topped off before the AE starts, 1 or 2 of them dies every time. With a hot rolling, everyone still ends up under 30, many around 10%. Heaven forbid I had to heal the tank and didn't have time to prepare for the AE and I end up with 2 people left to heal. We have geared up a little since our last attempt on this mob, but 200 HP isn't really that huge of a difference so /shrug. I don't have logs of the fight but maybe the other AE that he does throughout the fight still is rolling during this phase too?

With great loot comes great farming. your characters lack charms. Charms use to be one of the most important parts of your gear and people have been able to relax a bit as of late.


Air - the Arc Keepers did not seem to be functioning in any way that we could figure out. Sometimes they died quietly, sometimes they picked 6 completely random people to nuke for 18k, or 21k, or 50k. Walls didn't matter, distance didn't matter, aggro didn't matter. 6 people had their heads a splode.

Slaariel figured this out and fixed it. he saw us doing air wing and fixed this issue.

Mini - we sucked, we died, nothing to see here.

So did we the first time. second time we just powered through

Fire - no attempts yet, but I think we are hoping to give it an attempt soon, so feedback will be on the way!

Mini is rather easy. definitely should try it out. the boss gauntlet is harder than the boss. and
/spoileralerton the fucking frogs are cool.
 
If Prophecy's raid wasn't getting destroyed by Vordrek's earthquake AOE, then the only thing I can think of is that it's percent-based and maybe subject to no mitigation. Which would probably work fine.
 
also a full clear of lower thaz + thaz1 yielded 1700 platinum, equivalent to one tier 7 inner prison boss
 
A lot of raid zones around tier 8-9-10 only yield that per raid. It seemed low to me too after tier 6-7 zones were making the guild rich while raiding there.

Undercity, Yclist, Most of ToT including Farhags / Generals / Eternal Well - all very bad in the way of platinum dollars.
 
It'd be nice to see all raid zones be buffed up to a bling bling level of platinum and high end gem drops. Players have bills to pay!
 
If Prophecy's raid wasn't getting destroyed by Vordrek's earthquake AOE, then the only thing I can think of is that it's percent-based and maybe subject to no mitigation. Which would probably work fine.

if ypur talking about thazz earth boss, its definatlly a time based event from what we saw. we definatlly was getting wrecked by that AE, I just chopped it up to being a little undergeared for it seeing how the AE took everyone to 11% or below after it was finished.
 
We (Resurgum) tried Voidrek again the other day. We realize the boss is supposed to be harder than the mini, but I feel he has an absurd amount of health for the amount of earthquake dmg and general chaos in the fight. We got him to ~60% on a pretty good attempt, pretty sure healer mana wouldn't come close to finishing him with his current health even if we execute nearly perfect.
 
guess which item is from tier 13 and which is from tier 10

nYUf30n.png

HMaamws.png
 
crownk prophecy bard finishing t10
ok ok ok so I know prime is a pita fight... But while were attempting the fight once in a while the orbs were supposed to be messing bug oitand they don't reapear is t also that's the hardest part of the fight and targeting them on the fly is damn near impossible would anyone consider fixing tthis and possibly put a different orb like green orb red orb ect
 
Back
Top Bottom