Game Mechanics: Mobs too buff.

[h0tr0d (shaere)]

Correct me if I am wrong but in classic mobs tripled not quadded more. I have run into this before with sky mobs doing more dps then they did in classic quadding every time with extra attacks or procs, they just are more difficult. Innoruuk tripled 400 with a bash. I remember mobs did not quad until what Vindi, Idol and AoW? I remember the insane hp velious mobs had, and the quadding thing, the ch chain coming into existence. If for some unknown p99 reason mobs are quadding to make it harder then they shouldn't be doing it every single round. They should be making their checks for double attack also or dual wield or whatever just like players, not quadding automatically every round.

But the bottom line is these mobs should be not be doing this amount of dps. One could say the Avatar of War was the father of the ch chain. Necessity dictated that the ch chain come into existence because you couldn't kill him without. No one went into sky in kunark with a 7 cleric ch chain. To use the final bixie Bazzt Zzzt as an example. If she quads 860 with a kick, poison dot proc and draco dot aoe you are needing 6 minimum clerics for a ch chain if you tried a straight tank n spank. I'm not even factoring in ac not helping mitigate correctly or perhaps I should say as it did on live. I remember the AoW chain being what 7ish clerics? Maybe more? Granted Velious added armor and options for guilds, made em stronger but as it stands now on this server you need a 7 cleric ch chain, more to be safe on a 60 warrior with defensive to keep up heals on Bazzt zzzt. That is essentially having heals to cover the same dps as you did for the AoW since we were all still 60. And guilds on live weren't using a ch chain like that back then because the ch chain came into existence to deal with the insane dps and omg hp mobs had in velious.

I don't want the player remarks on "other guilds killed the bixie" or give me stories about riposte disc chain (that we used for VS on live) or mage pet armies or 80 man raids for the bixie. The fact remains these mobs dps should not be as much as they are, its near AoW level. Ac mitigated more on live, abilities such as dodge block worked better (I can show u ss of me fighting KoS through enrage and the abilities firing) plus the mobs here get extra attacks and hit for more. Bazzt zzt should not be a 7 cleric ch chain when you fight her like AoW. No way in hell.

[Treats]

Comparing Bazzt Zzzt's DPS with the Avatar of War is just silly. Those two are not even close. The tactic of using a CH chain to make up for round damage was used long before AoW.

Assuming both Quad:

Avatar of War - 1154 + Flurry = 9232 + kick/bash possible per round
Bazzt Zzzt - 860 = 3440 + kick/bash possible per round

You should be able to keep a 60 Warrior with Defensive up on Bazzt Zzzt no problem even if he quads with four or five clerics. It Bazzt max hit EVERY time it would still take her 3+ rounds to kill the tank. Difficulty seems pretty close to classic from what I can remember, Plane of Sky was pretty fucking brutal. Heal better I guess? I don't know.

[greatdane]

That's not really the point of his post. I do seem to remember that quadding came in with Velious, and Vindi was most people's first experience with it.

Lots of mobs quad here, including in the lower level. It seems that any mob coded as the monk class can quad, like war boned skeletons, skeletal monk and such. It makes them absurdly powerful for their level. I don't remember that being the case, and while I don't specifically remember that it wasn't, I'm skeptical that a level 20 skeleton should be able to one-round for 4x 50 and a 35 damage Tiger Strike or whatever.

[Pescador]

I would have to agree that mobs such as skeletal monks are ridiculously strong for their level. I don't remember it being that way in classic, but I don't have any hard evidence to support that fact.

[h0tr0d (shaere)]

Treats that is exactly my point. You cannot keep up a 60 warrior with defensive with 4 or 5 clerics. She can effectively two round that 60 warrior. It isn't exact but it doesn't take 2 rounds and that that tank is toast. You hit the nail on the head when you said this

Comparing Bazzt Zzzt's DPS with the Avatar of War is just silly. Those two are not even close.

But yet there it is. Essentially we have 5k hp tanks in game high end, max hp gear. Ac is crap so warriors don't mitigate the same here but the fact remains if I recall you could use a 7 cleric ch chain for AoW on live. On here I am telling you you need a 7 cleric ch chain to be safe with the bixie boss or OOA. Because even a 6 cleric chain is risky, you have to HOPE she doesn't hit near max and most times she does. Defensive only mitigates it to 531 or so max hit, but she quads every time with a kick, poison proc dot for 100 and every now and then may get a flesh rot in.

I understand tanks were a little beefier in Velious. But they didn't go from 5k hp to 10k. There is no way you should need a 7 cleric chain to keep up a 60 war with defensive on Bazzt Zzzt. She was not the AoW of kunark era. I appreciate Pescador's ignorant attempt at sarcasm but all you hear from those people is no ss no proof. Unfortunately I didn't play classic anticipating project1999 and a 3rd grader response when those of us who actually played back then and fought these mobs say "It wasn't like that". I am not sure what the deal is but it is not classic or near. If they were buffed specifically to prevent someone from killing them because it was felt they were 'too easy' that is ridiculous. We didn't need 60 man raids in sky with a 7 cleric chain for a tank on Bazzt Zzzt. My comparison to AoW was not that the dps was the same because it wasn't. My point was that if you used a 7 cleric chain for AoW on live and have to use a 7 cleric chain here then that is too much dps for Bazzt ZZt for example. Effectively if you use a 7 cleric chain for 2 mobs then the dps from them must be around the same, no? I have had this issue before and posted about it with different mobs. The Spiroc Lord having stonespider stun here, yet the Spiroc Guardian does not death touch.

[Treats]

Here is a thread from 2001 Velious era:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5488

Eh, so we move on to the sixth isle, aka Wasp Isle, or Bee Isle, or Bzzzt Isle. Basically, there's just three aggro mobs on the whole isle. Kinda. They split, like on the fourth isle. Except these are the splits from hell. They're all just the same graphic as the n00b wasps in GFay. Except they're far meaner. Some are level 55 and triple for 500, some are level 60 and quad for 700, some of them when they die split into three bees that double or quad for 1800, depending on what level they are when they spawn, but only have about 2k hp, and then they split when they die. Add the confusion of them all being just standard bees (minus two giant bixies for the boss mob and the mob right before it), and the fact that they all have very similar names (Bzzzzt, Bazzzat, Bizzzat, Bzzzt Zzzt, etc.)... well, it's madness. And you have to kill them in a very specific order or you're screwed. Because the boss mob is level 65, Death Touches, quads for 850, has a disease AE DoT that covers the entire isle... and if she spawns in the wrong place, she'll be camping the only safe spot on the isle, making CR impossible, and she'll despawn in 60 minutes, ending the raid because there will be no possible way to move on. Well, she's a mean bugger, like I said. Dunno how people managed pre-Kunark, as she's meaner than Trakanon IMHO (Death Touches, quads for 850 as opposed to doubling for 625, AE DoT eats away HP a tad slower but is harder to resist, etc.). Must have been the Zerg Rush of all Zerg Rushes to keel her off back then.

She quads, trust me. It's just that most casters don't have enough hp to make it to the fourth hit. I was walking funny for the rest of the day after this.

So time to pull the Hand. Hand, as you can tell, is kinda aggro. The Eye is not, but it will assist. And the last isle is quite small. Eye is basically a Venril Sathir clone that can Death Touch and has more HP. Hand is... evil. Quads for like 850, Death Touches, Grav Fluxes, and procs a lifetap. VS is easy to take care of because he can only lifetap on a person if they don't have a rune, and since VS only doubles for 350, it's easy to keep one up on the main tank. But a mob that quads for 850 and DT's? Um, ick. So we try to pull just the Hand to the seventh isle, as people always do. We try to use a revive trick to get him over. No dice. Jumping? Nope. Aggroing near the corner of the isle? Didn't quite work. So we had this rather impressive Eye of Zomm fleet go after him. Loth missed it, as he was the first to die. But I was bound to the Hand's sight at the time... and seeing about eight eyes coming right towards you is rather humorous. Everyone would buff and heal those he aggroed on, to maintain aggro... but, well, we learned something today. Apparently Verant didn't like the idea of splitting those two by pulling the Hand to the seventh isle. Hand doesn't leave his isle at all anymore. He would try to leave the isle, but run up against an invisible wall at the edge, sliding back and forth trying to get to us, but being unable to. Needless to say, this complicates things somewhat. We only had 15 or so keys to key over to the last isle... but the Hand is KoS (the Eye isn't but will assist), so there's no way we can summon people over. So those 15 would have to kill the Hand alone, and possibly the Eye if he adds, which would be likely. Um... hell, the Hand isn't even worth killing in the first place. His drops are only needed for the final quests, all of which need a rare-ass drop off the Eye for a reward that's very very outdated and probably won't be used. Hand drops the same loot as the Noble and Overseer, so he literally isn't worth killing. Of course, I wanted to kill him, just because. But having both up on the last isle is... um... bad. I've already thought of two ways around this little problem (both will allow us to kill both Hand and Eye), but both methods require some serious forward planning, so they couldn't be done at the time. Oh well.

I suppose its possible they could have introduced quad's with Velious. If you think about it though they would have had to go back and retune EVERY mob level 60 and higher adding that damage and testing difficulty. It was just so rare to see it back in the Classic/Kunark era. Only high end guilds were doing Trak/Talendor/PoSky/Gore/VP back then, a very small amount of the total population.

Suppose you could take a time machine into the Kael arena to fight The Avatar of War with the same raid force/gear. They would get absolutely flattened. He would decimate the entire raid force in a matter of seconds with a 7 cleric CH chain. The Avatar of War was not even killed on live with an actual PC tanking until a few days before Luclin was released if I remember right. This was only even possible after MONTHS of farming in Temple of Veeshan. He was killed prior to this, but that was using "The Frozen Moses."

[Moonface]

Originally Posted by Heebee [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm not sure what you're talking about - we were killing AoW with warriors doing the tanking many months before Luclin.

Lol.
Where's Heebee on Eqplayers.com?

[Trystych]

Bumping this. We have combat logs of Bazzt Zzzt doing 1150-1250 dps to a defensive warrior in the best gear currently available. This mob hits for max extremely consistently and with very low delay (an issue all npcs island 6 and higher share). Right now the amount of healing required to keep a tank alive in this encounter is obscene and comparing it to AoW should be ridiculous.

A few guides with conflicting information were clearly used to develop plane of sky and the harder recounts from both were used, islands 1-5 are reasonably accurate to live with a few exceptions. Islands 6 and higher are very much overtuned still and do not make for an enjoyable raid experience.

1) Efreeti mobs spawning inside the ramps making them difficult to pull without pets.

2) Island 5 not having the safe spot it should. It did when sky was first released on p99, but it was removed. Our raids on live many times camped out at the edge of the island near the port in area to continue the next day without spirocs jumping us until pulled (without invis). Changing this would lower the barrier of entry to this island for less powerful guilds.

3) Eye of Veeshan melee damage should be 170 making it a rune evasive tank fight similar to VS. The guides conflict here and the higher was chosen, the one that says the fight is easy is correct, this was a reward mob for getting so far. I have seen eye of veeshan on p99 kill thunder spirit pets pretty much instantly because the AE proc which happens on nearly every swing cannot be avoided without riposte tanking rotations.

4) The bees, the unsplit bees should have low MR and be fairly easily mezzed or even charmed by a lvl 60 enchanter as a method of crowd control. The split bees should not be mezzable or charmable. Killing island 6 on island 6 is like heroic mode the way it works now. All of these bees hit for max very often and with extremely low delay, the combination makes them harder than they should be.

5) Memblurs / atone. These spells should not have any effect in Plane of Sky, but they do. Blur spells in general on p99 seem unresistable, a problem in that it works a little too well - like on the kunark dragons for instance.

6) Spiroc Lord Stun - Yes, he could stun your tank on live, but not near the frequency he does on p99. TR has seen 3-4 tanks stone spider stunned at a time before. Having the tank wear max MR gear with a bard singing MR song was not required to keep this npc agro on a singular tank in 1999.

7) Recently triggered NPCs are not always despawning after the 80 minutes is up. Which could be used for malicious end if someone decided to crack open some bees on say island 1 and jump off. We ran into bees splits alive on island 2 with a fully spawned series of azaracks and no raid having been in there in the timeframe to do so. Keeper of Souls can exhibit this behaviour too.

8) Keeper of Souls should be triggerable by any of the 6 griffons/pegasus on island 4, currently only the 3 griffons can do so.

This information is all available from the 3 or so popular plane of sky guides, the problem is they conflict with one another for whatever reason. My guild on live was not super fantastic but had little difficulty clearing sky during kunark with mediocre gear and less than a 35-40 man raid force of max level players. It would be nice for the content to work like that here as well so sky didn't feel like such a drag.

[Lazortag]

Originally Posted by Trystych [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

4) The bees, the unsplit bees should have low MR and be fairly easily mezzed or even charmed by a lvl 60 enchanter as a method of crowd control. The split bees should not be mezzable or charmable. Killing island 6 on island 6 is like heroic mode the way it works now. All of these bees hit for max very often and with extremely low delay, the combination makes them harder than they should be.

I can't say anything about the rest of your post but currently this is working as you describe. The unsplit bees are fairly easily mezzable by a 60 Bard (it lands probably 60+% of the time which is normal for a level 55 mob), while the split bees are immune to mez. Unless things were changed I don't see how this is an issue, except for the bees possibly doing too much damage, but I don't have any information on that.

[greatdane]

Suppose you could take a time machine into the Kael arena to fight The Avatar of War with the same raid force/gear. They would get absolutely flattened. He would decimate the entire raid force in a matter of seconds with a 7 cleric CH chain. The Avatar of War was not even killed on live with an actual PC tanking until a few days before Luclin was released if I remember right. This was only even possible after MONTHS of farming in Temple of Veeshan. He was killed prior to this, but that was using "The Frozen Moses."

I do remember Frozen Moses, and AoW wasn't legitimately killed until the end of Velious. The 2001 quotes seem to settle it. I'm still skeptical about the low-level quadders, but that's not really for this thread.