Wurms in ToV bugs

wycca · #1 07-18-2014, 12:49 AM

The white wurms (of various names) have the wrong ae loaded on them (at least in HoT, please check west tov). They have some really friggin nasty 1k AE that is not classic. They should have these 2 spells - http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=1487 and http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/s...tml?spell=1489

Please look at these alla's beastiary pages for the wurms and pay particular attention to the discussion on resisting them as well, even with 200ish-300ish+ CR/FR we're not resisting these things enough. There are posts from classic era that discuss needing 200 CR/FR/MR for these specific mobs, which we have (plus bards), but we're getting owned with them. Practically no resists, and on a 1k AE that hurts. I really think its an indicator of the resist system being borked in general as there is clearly a resist system pattern emerging. I really think it works well up until about lvl 60 mobs...then falls apart =P. Here are the various pages to peruse (the red dragons have more resist commentary but they're quite clearly talking about both cold and fire wurm ae's) -

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=6318

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=7030

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=6710

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=6708

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/npc.html?id=7024

PS - Might verify the other ae's are right on the red wurms.

Push -

This is a problem on the white wurms also. Quite simply, you can't push them at all, they just sorta sit there, becomes a problem when they can cheal and gate. For some reason you can push the drake mobs.

**Alunova** · #2 07-18-2014, 02:02 AM

Here are a few quotes from classic pages that are linked as snippets for development (Will have to look up the source)

"With cold resist over 200, you will taking full dmg on the aoe's during the fight, the likely hood of partials and resists are decreased with this mob."

"guarding the entrance is Zemm quads for 550+ and has a bad AE. happily I stat he con warmly to me as well but behind him is a room with two dragons side by side. These are the guards of testing halls and the are hard as hell...not too many HP's but they have a 1000 PBAoF cold based spell"

"has a 1k dmg AE fire based nuke (or was it 1500dmg I can't remember) and hits for 300s to 400s"

"This guy has 2 different set of Aes one is easy to resist the other is not. Rain of Fire is the easy cause I resisted it about 30% of the time with 140 FR. These guys hits for 330 MAX,
Just want to add even with resists over 200, you will still take 400 dmg on the aoe every now and then, but you will take many more partial dmg and will out right resist this aoe with high fire resist."

There were many changes to ToV early on. Both fire and cold AoE's have a -100 resist check (on the weaker AoE, known value, you can pull it straight out of the Velious spell file), which would have a higher impact with a 255 resist cap (255 - 100 vs: 400 - 100)

wycca · #3 07-18-2014, 04:47 AM

Well, what I found in common with those notes is that there is an easy to resist AE and a hard to resist AE. The (0) check and the (-150) check AE's match that.

I cannot find any reference on Alla's to a 1k AE - all of the wurms in the beastiary have the same AE's, always 300/350 max, and with the 0/-150 checks. All the commentary on the wurms backs this up in other spots too. They did frequently change stuff, so who knows, but some of these guides/commentary are dated quite early in Velious and stretch thru PoP. I do have to question the accuracy of the guy who remembers a 1k AE when he also thinks it may have been a 1500dmg AE =P. That's quite a difference. The below links and above Alla's posters do sometimes fudge the AE values a bit, ie 300-400, 400ish, etc. Most of the links I have are from healers, and as a healer, I'm more playing attention to relative hp bar movements and not to exact dmg amounts, so I'm not sure this is such a sin. Healers would comment on a mob with 1k AE dmg when there isn't really anyone who does that (trak comes close) I would think - because that's enough to 2 or 3 shot most casters, especially sub 60 ones (posts below reference lvl 53+ on casters, so they were quite clearly there contributing).

Resist commentary is all over the place, so it is tough to feel out exact rates, but you can get an overall impression. My overall impression is that lvl 55+ with resist gear got noticable resists, at 60 with 200+ it seemed like the 0-resist check AE wasn't a big deal, but you still took the -150 check AE more frequently. There are no comments about everytime or almost-everytime, which has been our experience on P99 with lvl 60 and 200/300ish. Granted, we don't have a ton of scientific testing, but I'm sure as a developer you can arrange some better AE testing than we can with a much larger sample size. I know that the resists in general are of much concern to every guild testing as none of us feel the resist system is working right.

This is my favorite link to support the 300/350 aes this is an all-around amazing asset IMO to compare HoT mobs to classic, this guy has some great info in chart form -
https://webcache.googleusercontent.c...&hl=en&ct=clnk

This talks about how easy it is to do HoT with 18 people - those wurms are not easy with 18. I don't see any mention of a 1k AE (which is pretty unique in all of kunark/velious and would bear mentioning) - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10916

Discussing farming it with 2-3-4 groups. Also, discussing the AE (400 max) in last post - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10854

Discussing resists and AE's. Multiple mention of 300/400dmg ae's max, discussion of resists being important - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8938

Discussing resist rate of new resist system (going from 255->500 I believe), please note specifically how easy they said it was to resist the AE's still - ie no real changes - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12362

Good discussion of HoT further down on page 1, including resists in general, the last post has some choice quotes about 200 resist vs. lower. Also about levels being your best friend - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12362

2nd page of the above thread - some good discussion on levels and resist gear for resisting stuff. Good discussion on the AE dmg as well in several spots, confirming my original post.

Please see post #3 discussing the wurm ae's - http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11788

Plase see post #9 discussing appropriate resist amounts in HoT -
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?t=12556

Please see post #24 discussing low 50's eaten up with good resist gear, which implies higher levels are not -
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/showthread.php?p=116048

Conclusion - I cannot find any evidence of a 1k AE on these guys. Additionally, I can find plenty of evidence of a max AE in the 300-400 range. This supports my original post.

Resists
Lastly, in reading these above posts, the resist experience they are describing does not match our experience on p99 at all.

P99 -
Difficulty resisting much of anything at lvl 60 with 200ish non-bard resists and 300ish bard resists. Classic discussions made it seem that lvl 55+ with good resists weren't complete lost causes and could contribute. Not sure I'd even consider bringing someone lvl 55/56/57 to HoT on p99 unless we just had enough healing to heal every AE proc'd.

Classic -
Levels mean everything, providing noticable differences. For gear - the commentary/guides discuss resists in one of two ways - in terms of unbuffed resist gear (generally 100-120 is what is discussed) or in terms of buffed resists (200 is the oft cited value in all of these areas). They speak of the AE like it's not a huge deal and that there is value in having resist gear/resists in the 200-255 (classic cap) range, noticable dmg reduction. They also discuss levels, pretty much low 50's are up shit creek, but there are several mentions of being lvl 55+ for resists, etc. Ie if youre over 55 you can start seeing noteworthy resists.

In general, resists seem to matter at lower values/levels than on p99 and seem to provide increased resists, judging from classic comments, than we are seeing. This seems to jive with our experiences (and others) elsewhere. The resist system on p99 seems to progressively become worse and worse as mob levels increase over -1.

Push

Ugh @ going back through and re-read all of those links. But one or two posts in those links clearly talked about pushing wurms being necessary and working well. I wanted to note these mentions because it supports my push comments, ie that we cannot currently push the wurms at all and that this behavior is not classic. Is this a hitbox issue or is someone messing with push code?

**Alunova** · #4 07-18-2014, 02:23 PM

I typed up a whole reply then lost it ;P

Basically there were many changes in the first few months and everything you linked is from late 2001 - 2002 and later. Some of the changes included huge increases to the boss HP's etc. Since we are not going with the initial weaksauce ToV bosses there is no reason not to change the spells. I already changed the fire AOE's last month for this reason, I just forgot about the cold AoE's. They were likely changed at the same time. There is a 1000 PBAOE spell that still exists with the same name that is unused, which gives behind the scenes evidence that it was changed.

Here are some of the references to the original spell:

February 2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/200106020...shtml?zone=116

http://web.archive.org/web/200203011....shtml?id=6318

As far as resists, even the easy one with no resist mod hit 70% at 150+ resists. If you add the -100 resist check that can be directly translated to 70% hit chance at capped resist for the harder AoE. If the resist code is changed it will not include changing the spell files, since these are known values, it would be rebalanced in the code upgrade itself. All in all, I have no idea what you are pushing for on resists. Do you think you should be resisting more or less? No matter how high your resists were there was always a chance of getting hit by even the lesser AoE's.

Here is the mid 2001 spell data after the first set of changes I'm going to be using that show the original spell resist mods.

Rain of Cold
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 300
Recast Time: 12
Resist: Cold Resist Adjust -100
AE Duration 7500
AE Range 300
Interruptable: Yes
Target Type: PB AE
Spell Type: Detrimental
Duration: Instant
Cast by other: Someone Calls forth a circle of frozen shards above you.
Cast on you: Frozen shards slice into your skin.

Wave of Cold
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 350
Recast Time: 12
Resist: Cold
AE Range 200
Interruptable: Yes
Target Type: PB AE
Spell Type: Detrimental
Duration: Instant
Cast on you: A blast of cold freezes your skin.
Cast on other: Someone 's skin freezes.

Wave of Heat
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 200
Recast Time: 8
Resist: Fire
AE Range 200
Interruptable: Yes
Target Type: PB AE
Spell Type: Detrimental
Duration: Instant
Cast on you: A blast of heat sears your flesh
Cast on other: Someone 's skin sears.

Rain of Molten Lava
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 300
Recast Time: 12
Resist: Fire Resist Adjust -100
AE Duration 7500
AE Range 200
Interruptable: Yes
Target Type: PB AE
Spell Type: Detrimental
Duration: Instant
Cast by other: Someone calls forth a circle of lava above you.
Cast on you: Lava sears your skin.

Flame Jet
1: Decrease Hitpoints by 100
Recast Time: 8
Resist: Fire
AE Range 150
Interruptable: Yes
Target Type: PB AE
Spell Type: Detrimental
Duration: Instant
Cast by other: Someone breathes a jet of flame.
Cast on you: Your body is engulfed in a jet of flames.

Acid Jet
1: Decrease HP when cast by 50
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 20 per tick
Recast Time: 8
Resist: Poison
AE Range 200
Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No
Target Type: PB AE Spell
Type: Detrimental
Duration: 3.0 mins @L1 to 5.0 mins @L2
Cast by other: Someone breathes a jet of acid.
Cast on you: Acid begins to eat at your flesh.

Thunder Blast
2: Decrease Hitpoints by 75 per tick
3: Decrease Mana by 75 per tick
Recast Time: 8
Resist: Magic
Range: 200
Interruptable: Yes
Short Buff Box: No
Target Type: Single
Spell Type: Detrimental
Source: Live 12/19
Classes: None
Duration: 1 ticks @L1 to 6.5 mins @L65
Cast by other: Someone sets loose a torrent of lightning.
Cast on you: Your body is electrified as the lightning strikes you.

wycca · #5 07-18-2014, 05:22 PM

Thanks for the response.

So the 1k ae on the cold wurms is removed or is staying in until some later patch classic patch (say summer 2001 era patch)? Wasn't 100% sure from reading your post. It makes sense that it was in place then removed - your spelldat and that post do seem to confirm this. A 1k AE makes these white wurms harder than Trak in some ways IMO - they must've definitely had some weird concept of what is a balanced AE back then. I wasn't in HoT until Luclin myself, so I only got to see the final version first hand, and it appears most of these guides and the other posts are starting sometime around August 2001 (which is about the time the chatty masses hit ToV I'd imagine).

As far as the resists, I just think that p99's resist system doesn't scale quite right in checking mob lvl vs. pc lvl. Where do I think it should be? I'm not sure if we can get a 255 classic cap, but based on reading all the posts linked above, and the ones from the Kland thread, as well as Vulnerio's links about the different dragon fears, here is what I'd expect (using wurms as an example given their level/ae's) - Lvl 55 with good resists (ie 200 buffed) should probably be taking dmg about like a lvl 60 does right now with 200-250ish buffed. A lvl 60 with 200-250ish buffed should be taking less than they do, and a lvl 60 with a bard should probably be able to shrug off the lower check AE and get decent resists (I'm pulling 50-60% resists out of my arse) on the -100/150 check since having 300-400ish resists is not classic.

In the ac thread, where you talk about the difficulty of Velious mobs for our guilds (who have 3+ years of Kunark, much more lvl 60's, resist gear, epics, clickies, etc than any guild, even an uber, on live had), and how we can't even beat Kland (despite having readily available strats and bodies), along with a bunch of other mobs....I think the culprit has alot to do with the resist system. Yes, we all have some really bad raid habits from so much Kunark, and we will gel/tweak, but there seems to be a huge gulf here. I mean, we can walk up and kill Doz 1st attempt with 37 (and we can prolly do him with under 30). But these are all AE mobs for the most part that we are having so much trouble with. It's less obvious on indoor mobs that there is a resist problem because much of the strategy on these mobs is to wall the AE - but the problem is still there. The warders in ST for example, that acid/FR AE (also used by nex in VP? - whom rumor has it nobody bothers to put resists on for due to the insane difficulty in resisting it) - we just can't resist it at all hardly. It's somewhat masked when it doesnt hit the whole raid, but that AE just melted face even with bards in group. Velious was known as the bard expansion and blue diamond/diamond gear sets were mandatory with a resist cap of 255 - I'm just saying I see a pattern when it comes to resists. A pattern that fits even with some of our kunark mobs - ie my own experiences resisting Trak's ae (hes a red con, albiet lvl 63), and what I've heard of that acid/FR VP ae. I have absolutely no idea what the % of resists should be, but I know that our guild, and some of the members in IB and TMO that I've talked to, think that resists in general are off - too difficult to resist AE's as NPC level vs. pc level scales up.

Sorry I'm harping on this, but I'm guessing its easier to tweak the resist system than it is to individually balance Velious mobs to be beatable (ie like lowering Kland's level to 66 from lvl 70 - which did help with fear when you have 350-400ish MR, but he's still very problematic obviously, being able to land slow may help with this, but still).

PS - Can't tell you how much I appreciate all the time you put into this and how insane it must be to dig all this classic stuff up, try to figure out what is legit and what isn't, compare patch times/dates, etc.....and then sit here and discuss/argue it with us here.

heartbrand · #6 07-18-2014, 05:29 PM

Really not trying to flame here, but we've had no issue in Nihilum with Kland, so I think the issue might be with your execution, not the mob.

**Alunova** · #7 07-18-2014, 05:59 PM

Quote:

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

I'm guessing its easier to tweak the resist system than it is to individually balance Velious mobs to be beatable (ie like lowering Kland's level to 66 from lvl 70 - which did help with fear when you have 350-400ish MR, but he's still very problematic obviously, being able to land slow may help with this, but still).

Lowering his level was not based on adjusting difficulty individually, it was bringing him in line with all other Velious bosses. Level impacts more than just resists, he almost never missed in melee and was more resistant than he should have been. I adjusted the level to match all other velious bosses using values that have already been tested (which were inflated by his level) so that if/when resists are changed, there is uniformity so that it can be adjusted in the code without going back through every boss in the game. 255 and 500 are just numbers, you can cut the impact of each point by half and have 255 behave exactly the same way as 500 does now, although it will make resist mods more effective. This is why I want it to be uniform to make this change possible if one of the source developers finds a way to do it.

The Klandicar you fought was still level 70 since there has not been a patch.

**Alunova** · #8 07-18-2014, 06:23 PM

Quote:

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

The warders in ST for example, that acid/FR AE (also used by nex in VP? - whom rumor has it nobody bothers to put resists on for due to the insane difficulty in resisting it) - we just can't resist it at all hardly.

Nexona's AoE has a huge negative modifier. We did not create this, it is a known value from classic.

Resists were never 100% even without mods, which is not saying the resists are worthless, they help against most spells, but they did not make you immune. There are many AoE's with huge negative resist checks in Kunark and Velious. This is not even remotely debatable, you can load the trilogy client and look at the spell file. We did not make these values up, this is how it was. The only thing we can debate is the impact of resists in general, using unmodified AoEs.

As far as the white wurms, I'm removing the AoE since we are skipping the original changes. There is very little information to go on and many feel having ToV easily clearable the first few weeks would damage the server more than just skipping to the adjustments made right after release.

wycca · #9 07-18-2014, 08:30 PM

Thanks for the switch on the white wurms.

I'm not debating the spell data, I'm debating how often they're landing if cast by yellows/red cons.

Regardless we'll be doing more testing and will continue to evaluate our experiences with resists. I think we'll be in WToV or NToV for the next week or two, so should be some decent data gathered.

wycca · #10 07-20-2014, 03:24 AM

Not necessarily related to wurms, but did some more testing tonight w/Eashen. Alunova was nice enough to test resists using certain resist values.

Consensus was resist system seemed to be scaling just fine and that the values weren't terribly unreasonable. I think I'd be alot happier if the 370CR results you saw were closer to 320CR results, and the 250CR was closer to 200CR, but I do know that Eashen was manageable to kill. Just concerned about obtaining those levels of resists (ie BIS resist gear) and bard requirements on a raid.