Update Discussion: February 20, 2019

[Sims]

The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?1998-Update-Notes-February-20-2019&p=14432#post14432

Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.

[INXS]

That's quite a beefy update, long read but lot of goodies in there. Thanks !

[ProfessorCat]

I'm VERY excited to see thorns are a more viable tactic, and the thorns skills get more thorny mods! Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself.

Just logged in to see toxic flesh and phoenix strike didn't get any thorns love. Maybe it was forgotten?

[Vish]

Today is FullMoon so for the future plans try not to update game before fullmoon, first offering for ancient pagan good then updating game and it will be working from start (no need to delay

back to topic:
Good Work with Fire Magic and Shamanic infusion i like it much :) Sh is much more nice skill now :) and "newbies friendly" "P

[cr00cy]

Shamanic infusion easier to levl up? I just recently almost maxed it out :(

Nice changes overall. One question thugh - I recently wanted to craft new set of gear, and realized that coated Yellow crystals can't be used in crafting. Is it intended?

[Deldaron]

Love the update! I have noticed at least a couple "puzzle" style locations which is one of my favorite aspects of PG and I'm glad to see more of those. I noticed there are new racial slot items with more useful buffs (at least for rakkie) which is much appreciated and the new potions from the ratkin are interesting. The new mobs are neat and while I haven't used it I like that there is a more combat util based gadgeteering item now.

One this I am especially grateful for is that the "daily" quest is a 3 day reset and not a proper daily. I really find dailies to be cumbersome in MMORPGs as they seem to penalize you in comparison to other players for not being able to log on every day. 3 days is a nice compromise in that regard.

Precognition is fantastic - was wondering how that would play out when I read the update and I think the little visual is a great way to display incoming mobs. Great for waiting if you're farming an area and kiting if you're trying to avoid being overwhelmed.

Also cr00cy I believe there is a way to un-coat the crystals making them harmful again, but usable in crafting.

[mrwarp]

Shamanic infusion easier to levl up? I just recently almost maxed it out :(

Nice changes overall. One question thugh - I recently wanted to craft new set of gear, and realized that coated Yellow crystals can't be used in crafting. Is it intended?

You should be able to double-click a coated crystal to uncoat it for use. There may even be a right click option for it as well.

[DamageIncorp]

Will calligraphy be getting an overhaul since the percent based buffs are now weaker?

[Yaffy]

The damage formula change is something I'm pretty conflicted about. On one hand it's great to make it simpler to avoid future issues and so it's more obvious how it works to players, but on the other hand I feel like it might be a bit too simple now and it takes the fun out of theory crafting a bit. That's just a personal thing for me though.

One issue I have with the damage formula change for sure though is the effect it has on modifiers that increase damage from a specific damage type. Because of the change, many boosts to damage type bonus are weak now and I feel like it hurts the game's balance overall. Additionally, these damage type bonuses were a major reason to make specific builds around a certain damage type.

For example, spring fairy armor is incredibly weak armor wise, but it gave a large bonus to elemental damage due to this bonus being at the end of the damage formula. This bonus was very important to lightning damage builds such as Hammer/Mentalism, which didn't have great damage in the first place due to not having great bonuses on mods, and was a fair trade off for having very low armor. Now however, spring fairy armor is incredibly weak and hardly worth the armor trade off at all. Because of most of Hammer/Mentalism's damage mods being % based, the bonus from spring fairy armor doesn't stack at all and it seriously hurts the idea of using it as a damage build. This is just one example as well, tailoring's enhanced elemental damage, abilities dedicated to boosting damage types like Way of the Hammer, and skills like calligraphy are also much weaker as well as the builds based around them.

If this change in the damage formula is to persist, I would like to ask that some of these increases to damage types be buffed to compensate at the very least. % damage bonuses on armor should be increased very heavily, and abilities dedicated to improving damage should be increased by a decent amount as well (So it's worth using them in the middle of combat rather than just another attack).

I think the only thing that legitimately might have deserved this nerf was Werewolf's mod for crushing damage on skulk, and that was only because it was a ridiculously high modifier. Otherwise I think these elemental damage bonuses were very healthy for the game overall.

[Oxlazr]

A lot of the changes aren't particularly relevant to me, so I won't comment on them, but I do want to quickly jot down my first impressions of the new dungeon while it's fresh in my mind.

Overall, the place is pretty good. It seems a little over-tuned, but given the patch-notes I'd expected it to be so. The place is varied and requires a diverse strategy to fully explore at the appropriate level (given I died often enough by the way of not being prepared in any capacity), though even so I feel the poison damage was far too high from the vipers on the first floor.

On the second floor, my only two issues were the chain stuns (I forget which monster does this) and the cave sections, where the monsters tend to blend into the background.

Beyond that, it's hard to gauge if the dungeon would be useful for its intended level range without actually trying to progress through it with a level 55 character. Having some sort of option to purposefully lower your level could be handy to that end (though I doubt many people would use it).

[DamageIncorp]

Agree with Yaffy.
Well explained.

[Erthiel]

I was wondering if Hammer and Buckle Artistry were considered for this change? There is a lot of hammer mods which add % dmg based on rage and such. Also Buckle Artistry buckles don't seem to be as interesting anymore since there are many kinds of normal belts which do much more interesting things than add some percent of dmg.

[s5669111]

:):):) good stuff

[INXS]

Yeah I have to say past 3 months Hammer skill has been dismantled, as Yaffy saying with my fairy spring armor I got very low armor, Hammer skill has high aggro and the latest update my hurl lightning went from 2300 to 1500, hammer epic doesn't even hit for 3000 on a 60 sec cool down, while wolf's hit now for 4000-5000 every 30 sec. Game becoming more unbalanced and some skills becoming merely road kill in the grand scheme.

[Citan]

We'll be revising more damage-type-mod gear and recipes in the next update. (Well, not the next quick-fix update, which is tomorrow, but the next "real" update.)

A warning about those damage-mod recipes: I expect we'll increase the potency of those recipes, but due to technical limitations we usually can't convert old equipment that already uses those recipes, so they will probably be stuck with the old (current) values. So unfortunately you may need new gear to get the updated effects. I'm sorry about that, preemptively; we try to update all gear "in-place" when possible, but sometimes it's just too expensive (in terms of dev time).

Edit: hmm, it may be possible to do conversion for those recipes -- I'll have to see. The items don't store what recipes were used on them, so I have to write "sleuthing" code that analyzes the item and tries to figure out what happened to it. "Oh, it has +3% fire damage and it's missing 60 enhancement points, I think I know what happened here..." That sort of code gets really ugly really fast, and usually causes more problems than its worth. But given the small number of recipes involved I may be able to do it. I'm not sure.

At the very least, you should hold off on using those recipes on new items.

[spider91301]

I just wish sword damage base potions didnt require pemphredo eyes there not easy to get in bulk other skills that require less expensive/mats have it way easier I might have to ditch sword to this nerf its way over the top

Sword wasnt op to begin with and now this happens I chose sword cuz I thought it was the least likely to get effected by nerfs -_- and now I have been proven wrong

[Yaffy]

We'll be revising more damage-type-mod gear and recipes in the next update. (Well, not the next quick-fix update, which is tomorrow, but the next "real" update.)

A warning about those damage-mod recipes: I expect we'll increase the potency of those recipes, but due to technical limitations we usually can't convert old equipment that already uses those recipes, so they will probably be stuck with the old (current) values. So unfortunately you may need new gear to get the updated effects. I'm sorry about that, preemptively; we try to update all gear "in-place" when possible, but sometimes it's just too expensive (in terms of dev time).

Edit: hmm, it may be possible to do conversion for those recipes -- I'll have to see. The items don't store what recipes were used on them, so I have to write "sleuthing" code that analyzes the item and tries to figure out what happened to it. "Oh, it has +3% fire damage and it's missing 60 enhancement points, I think I know what happened here..." That sort of code gets really ugly really fast, and usually causes more problems than its worth. But given the small number of recipes involved I may be able to do it. I'm not sure.

At the very least, you should hold off on using those recipes on new items.

Thanks for the post Citan, hopefully you can figure out a nice way to fix up those items, but don't worry too much if it's a huge hassle. Maybe an alternative could be something that removes crafted bonuses like those and gives back the enhancement points? It would make players lose the crafting materials, but those aren't a super big deal if it ends up being easier.

Incoming wall of text I wanted to share about damage type bonuses...

Bonuses to damage types were typically very small, but they scaled very well because it didn't matter how well geared of a player you were. Whether you did 100 damage or 1000 damage, a 5% boost increased your damage by 5% (In most situations). This meant these bonuses would be consistently helpful. It also added an interesting element to figuring out what gear you wanted because a 5% bonus would negligible if you could just grab a much easier base damage mod, but when you were highly geared a "universal" 5% damage increase could mean a lot of extra damage, especially if you exhausted all the mods you could get.

Currently, elemental damage bonuses are very comparable to base damage modifiers. They give extra damage to a wide set of abilities (Based on damage type rather than skill), but they don't scale well. At best it scales with flat damage bonuses at the cost of being a bit more awkward to use, but the availability of flat damage bonuses varies a lot for different skills.

Because these bonuses don't scale with player strength naturally anymore, it's important to have these bonuses scale heavily with player level. However I think that the new damage formula might make things hard to balance, because in order to be comparably as strong as they used to be, the bonuses need to be very high.

For example, a fully modded Hurl Lightning from hammer could hit for around 1181, only using mods for Hurl Lightning, base damage increases for hammer, and the universal "More damage to enraged enemies".
262 *3.66 + (262* 1.85 - 262) =1181
Previously, a full set of enchanted Spring Fairy armor could add 36% more lightning damage, which would multiply the whole formula. This resulted in 1607 damage.
(262 *3.66 + (262* 1.85 - 262)) *1.36 =1607
Now however, due to the formula change, the bonus now only adds a bit under a hundred damage.
262 *4.02 + (262* 1.85 - 262) =1276
And now to prove my point, if we took the 36% lightning damage bonus and changed it into base damage, we get the exact same damage.
262 *3.66 + (262* 2.21 - 262) =1276
And since in this case, elemental bonuses = base damage, we can do the math to figure out what base damage equivalent would make it do the same damage before the change.
262 *3.66 + (262* ( x+1.85) - 262) =1607, x=1.62

So because of the new damage formula, in order to be around the same in terms of effectiveness, a set of spring fairy armor enchanted with lightning damage would have to give around 162% bonus damage. This is split between the chest/pants/shoes and the enchanted lightning on the chest/pants, which might mean giving each piece of the set something like 30% bonus damage and having the enhancement add a similar amount. This is just one case obviously, and it only looks this bad because Hurl Lightning doesn't naturally get any flat damage bonuses (The elemental damage = base damage comparison wouldn't work if you were using a shocking masquerade mask for example), but it shows just how big of a change the damage formula is and how much numbers need to increase to be around where they were before. I think it's safe to say that the damage formula change has cut the effectiveness of these boosts from 3-4 times.

The real question is, as the developer would you be willing to give body armor what is essentially 30% more base damage? I know one purpose of the patch was to reduce player damage overall, but compared to the other overall nerfs to % modifiers the damage boost would still be something around 24-27%. One issue is that while those numbers would be fair for a player with good gear, 30% base damage would be a substantial amount for a player with no bonuses. I personally believe this might be fair, because crafting spring fairy armor is a huge pain to craft and therefore a new level 70 player would probably acquire some modded armor before going straight into crafting it.

This isn't limited to equipment either of course. Skills such as Way of the Hammer which are focused around increasing damage are affected in the same way. If the effectiveness of it has been cut by 3-4 times, then you can say Way of the Hammer's 15% boost is more like a 5% damage boost for well geared players, which is way too low for a 10 second buff. However, unlike a full set of enchanted Spring Fairy armor, you probably don't want to increase it to a 45% boost because it's very easy to get. In cases like these, the damage formula change makes it a lot harder to balance these skills. Skills like bruising blow are much weaker as well, but aren't as badly affected since it does damage even if its main purpose is the debuff. In these cases you might want to change the buff to flat damage, add an additional effect, or maybe make the mods for the skill improve the damage buff by a decent amount so it scales with how well geared players are if the player puts mods into the skill.

Anyways sorry for the wall of text, but I hope it gives some food for thought. I personally believe it might be a bit simpler to keep elemental % bonuses separate from skill % bonuses because it makes it a lot easier to balance. Plus, having at least another layer of multipliers to damage allows for more design choices. If you want to keep the new formula though, then a lot of things based on it definitely need to be rebalanced.

[cr00cy]

I just wish sword damage base potions didnt require pemphredo eyes there not easy to get in bulk other skills that require less expensive/mats have it way easier I might have to ditch sword to this nerf its way over the top

Sword wasnt op to begin with and now this happens I chose sword cuz I thought it was the least likely to get effected by nerfs -_- and now I have been proven wrong

Well... every skill was affected, not only sword, so I'm not sure what are you complaining about.


Yaffy - I agree that Skulk needed nerf, this thing was way over the top.


So I got some time to play around with new update, here are my thoughts:

1) I didn't felt much change to my damage to be honest (I'm playing Wolf/unarmed). Skulk still gives crazy damge bonus, even though (at least according to tooltip) its lower than before, its still enough to 1-shot most mobs.

2) New dungeon seems fine overall. The thing I like abotu it is that it has it's.. lets call it 'theme'. You go in, you explore for a bit, and you know what you are dealing with and how to preapere. I think mobs on upper level deal a bit too much damage with they dot's, it might be good to tune it down. Ratkin's are mostly fine, imo. Even though they high evasion is annoying, fact they are concentrated in single area makes exploring this dngeon much easir. You know that if you want to fight them, you need some accurace.

One complain I have, is that Necro Shaman's root last a bit too long. Overall, this dungeon seems to favor ranged classes over melee, but then again, ranged always have advantage over melee so it's not that bad.

I was hoping for some more lore there, maybe some puzzles and secrets to explore. I know there are this braziers, (I wasn't able to figure how to ligth last one...) And those leavers (I used all of them but didn't noticed anyting happening...). But they are kind just sitting there, without any explanation.

About other changes:

Damage formula - like I siad, I didn't noticed much difference in my damage output, but then again I fought only in new dungeon. Today I'll try some higher lv mobs, see how it will go.

Elite mobs HP change - to be honest, I would prefer if they damage went down. Many fights with stonger mobs feel like they are luck-based, since you cna get killed extremally fast if mobs crit few times. Right now, we are encuraged to focus on burting down mobs as fast as posisble, which I think is not good thing.

@Edit

Ok, I ran a bit in Tover view/Amaluk Valley cave in Gazluk (aka Worg Cave). Pefore last patch using Skul+ Barrage or Bite, I coudl easly one-shot Barghest rooms (Bargest+2 wolves). Now, They surrive with around 10-15% health, so my damage is noticably lower.

Not that I mind, it's give me chance to use other skills.

Hoever, I noticed that there is not much difference when it comes to damge of my DoT's. I picked all mods increasing Trauma damage I could, to make bleed build. Sanguine Fangs dot's seems to be doing similar amount of damage, not sure about Mamba Strike, since its tooltip don't show effects of % increase on it's trauma damage. I will test it on dummies later on, but I don't expect much change here. Before update, elemental boosts were only thing affecting this type fo additional damage - so it was always Flat dmage * Elemental % increase.

So, this seems like nerf to direct damge, but neutral change for Dot - based builds. One coudl argue its indirect buff, since thy are now slightly stronger comapred to directd amge, but then agin elite's HP got lower, so thsi might balance things out.

I'll attempt to solo Pask at some point, see how it will go. I was able to do it before patch, unless I got swarmed, or got unlucky with crits (please nerf crits, they are too much).

One more thing - Patch notes mentioned soemthign about buffing mods that give skils small amount of healing, but I don't think any of wolf/unarmed mods were buffed - or it was change so small I didn't noticed.

[DamageIncorp]

I also feel like sword was in an ok spot compared to other melee skills. It is definitely considerably weaker now.
Maybe a boost to calligraphy will help.
Lycan still is overpowered.

[Ranperre]

Pretty much 100% of the stuff I say publicly (in global and on the forum) involves complaints. So...

I just wanted to say that you guys (devs) have continued to prove that I was correct in choosing this game. When you try and convince someone to play it, "early access mmo" gets some people to immediately turn off. However, the fact remains that you guys are dedicated to making this a wonderful game and the content part of this patch proves as much.

...

Shame on you for completely decimating hammer though. Shame.

[zirker]

Damn Yaffy always posts those wall of texts someone should make a bot that examines the text of a Yaffi's comment and makes a TL;DR version. Cool to see citan giving some love to more niche mods such as the reflection ones.

[Daguin]

Sad that Fire Bolts was changed. Would rather have seen Fire Wall get completely nixed instead of revamped, or Defensive Burst. Glad there was a little damage love for the skill overall. Excited to explore new content, but haven't had a chance to get in yet.

[spider91301]

The damage formula change is something I'm pretty conflicted about. On one hand it's great to make it simpler to avoid future issues and so it's more obvious how it works to players, but on the other hand I feel like it might be a bit too simple now and it takes the fun out of theory crafting a bit. That's just a personal thing for me though.

One issue I have with the damage formula change for sure though is the effect it has on modifiers that increase damage from a specific damage type. Because of the change, many boosts to damage type bonus are weak now and I feel like it hurts the game's balance overall. Additionally, these damage type bonuses were a major reason to make specific builds around a certain damage type.

For example, spring fairy armor is incredibly weak armor wise, but it gave a large bonus to elemental damage due to this bonus being at the end of the damage formula. This bonus was very important to lightning damage builds such as Hammer/Mentalism, which didn't have great damage in the first place due to not having great bonuses on mods, and was a fair trade off for having very low armor. Now however, spring fairy armor is incredibly weak and hardly worth the armor trade off at all. Because of most of Hammer/Mentalism's damage mods being % based, the bonus from spring fairy armor doesn't stack at all and it seriously hurts the idea of using it as a damage build. This is just one example as well, tailoring's enhanced elemental damage, abilities dedicated to boosting damage types like Way of the Hammer, and skills like calligraphy are also much weaker as well as the builds based around them.

I mean at least now its not so complicated and its more lazy friendly not to bother crafting the other junk now im half serous on that note dont have to think as much since the buffs pretty much do nothing anymore

[Murk]

The Molten Veins ability seems a bit short lived. If it is going to live on the main ability bar, then you want to get your money's worth. That could mean activating it 6 times a minute. Somehow feels a bit high maintenance. I'd prefer a 20 second run time with less damage, or a longer cool down of 30 or whatever makes sense. I may not have used it enough yet though.

[Yaffy]

Damn Yaffy always posts those wall of texts someone should make a bot that examines the text of a Yaffi's comment and makes a TL;DR version. Cool to see citan giving some love to more niche mods such as the reflection ones.

I'd love to make my posts shorter, but I feel like if I don't explain in heavy detail it might not get taken seriously. I mean it's one thing to say "Change this because it's good/bad", but it's another thing to explain with evidence why something it's good or bad. I feel like I have more success convincing others with my posts when I lay out the math behind my reasoning.

Plus, Citan even said it himself before. I was complaining about dangerous weapons being overpowered, and he said that he was tired of hearing of people just saying it was overpowered without explaining where they were getting all the overpowered damage numbers from. Then I made a 2000 word post in response and he seemed to like it a lot more.

[spider91301]

I'd love to make my posts shorter, but I feel like if I don't explain in heavy detail it might not get taken seriously. I mean it's one thing to say "Change this because it's good/bad", but it's another thing to explain with evidence why something it's good or bad. I feel like I have more success convincing others with my posts when I lay out the math behind my reasoning.

Plus, Citan even said it himself before. I was complaining about dangerous weapons being overpowered, and he said that he was tired of hearing of people just saying it was overpowered without explaining where they were getting all the overpowered damage numbers from. Then I made a 2000 word post in response and he seemed to like it a lot more.

A on key explanation wish there was a like system on this forums christ thats a good reason lol better then my half ass answering in global why sh** sucks

Hints to necro

[Erthiel]

Elite mobs HP change - to be honest, I would prefer if the Damage went down. Many fights with stronger mobs feel like they are luck-based, since you can get killed extremely fast if mobs crit a few times. Right now, we are encouraged to focus on burting down mobs as fast as possible, which I think is not good thing.


I agree with this.

[spider91301]

Yep in a nutshell but meh if you dish out good single target dps in gk your basicly screwed its all about the build really kinda wish buckle artistry wasnt just for hammer

[INXS]

Was running from Rahu to Gazluk portal and at one point of my run was confused had to stop and look, seems like Pask got rid of some boulders, heh. Looks like lot of empty space maybe some more houses could be added?

[Illmaster]

Where in Rahu is the entrance to the sewers?
It may have been the bourbon I was drinking last night but I was having a hard time finding it.

[Yaffy]

Where in Rahu is the entrance to the sewers?
It may have been the bourbon I was drinking last night but I was having a hard time finding it.

It's at the docks, on the wall.

[Illmaster]

It's at the docks, on the wall.

Would it be weird if I told you that I love you?

[Vish]

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/File:Rahu-sewer-map.png

Love me more than him :P

[Illmaster]

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/File:Rahu-sewer-map.png

Love me more than him :P

https://i.imgur.com/aOtU7Wl.jpg

[spider91301]

Where in Rahu is the entrance to the sewers?
It may have been the bourbon I was drinking last night but I was having a hard time finding it.

Past the docks hug the wall to the right

[spider91301]

The day I have to give up sword and shield this song will be playing in the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJXa3POWRCU

[SassySusie]

I have also sent this in as a bug but maybe I can get another Lycan who is seeing the same thing as I am. So I have been hunting in Amaluk Valley Cave/Tower View Cave and have found that my Skulk + Werewolf bite only kills up to three mobs now. It never used to be like this, Like the mod on my gloves say "Werewolf bite hits ALL enemies within 5 meters" not just three or less. Before this patch I never had a problem with going into a room in this cave hitting skulk, bite and everything was dead. Now if there are more than three skulk and bite do not kill any of them... It actually only does about half health damage to them and so which means instant death for me. Now I am curious whether this is intended to work this way and the Mod is worded wrong... Or if that particular combo is bugged or just plain broken. Has any other Lycan seen this same thing? If you have not noticed then go out and try it please... of course level appropriate mobs, but just make sure there are more than 3.

[Yaffy]

I have also sent this in as a bug but maybe I can get another Lycan who is seeing the same thing as I am. So I have been hunting in Amaluk Valley Cave/Tower View Cave and have found that my Skulk + Werewolf bite only kills up to three mobs now. It never used to be like this, Like the mod on my gloves say "Werewolf bite hits ALL enemies within 5 meters" not just three or less. Before this patch I never had a problem with going into a room in this cave hitting skulk, bite and everything was dead. Now if there are more than three skulk and bite do not kill any of them... It actually only does about half health damage to them and so which means instant death for me. Now I am curious whether this is intended to work this way and the Mod is worded wrong... Or if that particular combo is bugged or just plain broken. Has any other Lycan seen this same thing? If you have not noticed then go out and try it please... of course level appropriate mobs, but just make sure there are more than 3.

This is not a bug. This is because the damage formula change has moved the "Skulk causes your next attack to do X% more damage if it is a crushing attack" mod. Instead of being at the end of the formula and multiplying all the damage, it is now combined with all other % boosts to damage, such as "Werewolf bite damage +X%". This also applies to anything else that increases specific damage types by a percentage.

Although it's not new, also keep in mind that hitting 4 mobs causes you to hit for 75% damage to all four, rather than 100%. You should be doing less damage after the patch no matter how many targets you're hitting, it's just that the additional 25% damage reduction on top of the damage formula change is what's stopping you from one shotting them. If you're hitting more than 4 your damage gets reduced even further for each additional target until you have 25% damage at 8 or more.

[Murk]

Although it's not new, also keep in mind that hitting 4 mobs causes you to hit for 75% damage to all four, rather than 100%. You should be doing less damage after the patch no matter how many targets you're hitting, it's just that the additional 25% damage reduction on top of the damage formula change is what's stopping you from one shotting them. If you're hitting more than 4 your damage gets reduced even further for each additional target until you have 25% damage at 8 or more.

Is this the same for all AOE skills such as archery multi shot, knife fighting fan of blades/Tundra spikes etc?
What about bramble skin/molten veins and phoenix strike, fire shield etc, does it apply here too, where a mob is hitting you for a bounce back. I would guess not.

[Yaffy]

Is this the same for all AOE skills such as archery multi shot, knife fighting fan of blades/Tundra spikes etc?
What about bramble skin/molten veins and phoenix strike, fire shield etc, does it apply here too, where a mob is hitting you for a bounce back. I would guess not.

It applies to all direct damage from AoE attacks, but it doesn't apply to thorns damage. Thorns was already really good for mass farming before, but now it's even better with all the buffs. It also doesn't affect secondary effects applied by AoEs, including DoTs, slows, stun,etc.

Also if you're curious, the scaling for AoE attacks is:
3 enemies or less: 100% damage
4 enemies : 75%
5 enemies : 50%
6 enemies :40%
7 enemies :30%
8 or more enemies : 25%

Or at least that's what it was when they implemented the AoE nerf. I don't think it's been changed.

[spider91301]

I have also sent this in as a bug but maybe I can get another Lycan who is seeing the same thing as I am. So I have been hunting in Amaluk Valley Cave/Tower View Cave and have found that my Skulk + Werewolf bite only kills up to three mobs now. It never used to be like this, Like the mod on my gloves say "Werewolf bite hits ALL enemies within 5 meters" not just three or less. Before this patch I never had a problem with going into a room in this cave hitting skulk, bite and everything was dead. Now if there are more than three skulk and bite do not kill any of them... It actually only does about half health damage to them and so which means instant death for me. Now I am curious whether this is intended to work this way and the Mod is worded wrong... Or if that particular combo is bugged or just plain broken. Has any other Lycan seen this same thing? If you have not noticed then go out and try it please... of course level appropriate mobs, but just make sure there are more than 3.

Good its about time lycan be put down and get there daily dose of nerf no favoritism

https://i.imgflip.com/2ui87e.jpg

[SassySusie]

Nice to see the only thing you got from that was Lycan was nerfed... Its okay you don't get it that everyone got nerfed, maybe its just because you can't read. I dont give a crap we got nerfed, I just honestly did not understand it and was looking for advice.

[INXS]

Yeah most of the skills got nerfed hard some not so much, sad that i got to give up playing 2 skills now and once again game enforcing the policy "not to have fun and play with skills i find fun and enjoy" but with skills not nerfed to shit.

[spider91301]

Nice to see the only thing you got from that was Lycan was nerfed... Its okay you don't get it that everyone got nerfed, maybe its just because you can't read. I dont give a crap we got nerfed, I just honestly did not understand it and was looking for advice.
Oh I know my sword got nerfed its just I hated how lycans could aoe the shit out of stuff and instant kill crap it was a long time coming.

Me hating to be in any animal form to the point of refusing to usem didn't help much ether and because of this I ended up hating seeing them hitting harder then me with aoe killing a pile of crap without alot of effort made me kinda salty all in all even if I got nerfed as well it is more then worth it been kinda getting to the point of being sadist over how much im loving this at least this is semi progress in balancing crap I am sure eventually the balancing will be perfected over time and I am totally fine with waiting for it


Also on a side note skulk or whatever the hell makes that smoke sht with lycan was getting annoying maybe them being nerfed will decrease the amount of people actually using lycan which in turn decrease the amount of times of me having to see that annoying ass smoke that clogs the hallways of gk and me not being able to see sht


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfcEHOrhJmQ
https://goo.gl/oiutNS

[Mbaums]

It's really hard to gauge the HP changes but I admit the demand of phlog has lead me to train swarms of orcs onto my group. After many long GK runs I have realized...
I'm not sure what is expected out of a group with 3+ people with near perfect gear, diverse damage types, voice chat and familiarity with the spawns and other group members. This is an ideal group and most people don't have that luxury. There were occasional individual death and there was thought put into pulls/moving the group. The successes in my group feel earned and not, "the game changed from under us, and now we are OP".


The damage type dealt by the rhinos in GK makes them relatively easy. They might be the only mob in there without crazy/non physical spike damage. I am looking at 76% knock back resistance, so this absolutely colors my attitude towards them. Still, I think they could use a little more HP. Unless the idea is, they are hard because they hang out with Keen Observers, but I think their difficulty should be independent of that. The reflecting spiders in GK are perfect. The other NPC changes don't feel any different, so I think that means the changes were good.

All of the DPS types in my groups seem relatively unchanged. The order of who is on top seems to be the same.

I did have a pick-up group where the group was not always full and we just had a lot less damage coming from builds in progress. This group required such different game play and when we added 1 person with super-DPS, it really made a noticeable difference. Most of the comments from people say damage dealt is the the GK show stopper, and I think I agree with that. But only because there is only one level 70 dungeon. When you do re-visit GK and adding lore NPCs, maybe lower first floor Orc dmg and keep the 2nd floor the same. One possibility is just decrease the 1st floor Orc non-physical crit damage by ~5-10%, because that is what is melting faces. It's a small change but I think it would be celebrated. Wargs remaining dangerous is fine by me.

[spider91301]

It's really hard to gauge the HP changes but I admit the demand of phlog has lead me to train swarms of orcs onto my group. After many long GK runs I have realized...
I'm not sure what is expected out of a group with 3+ people with near perfect gear, diverse damage types, voice chat and familiarity with the spawns and other group members. This is an ideal group and most people don't have that luxury. There were occasional individual death and there was thought put into pulls/moving the group. The successes in my group feel earned and not, "the game changed from under us, and now we are OP".


The damage type dealt by the rhinos in GK makes them relatively easy. They might be the only mob in there without crazy/non physical spike damage. I am looking at 76% knock back resistance, so this absolutely colors my attitude towards them. Still, I think they could use a little more HP. Unless the idea is, they are hard because they hang out with Keen Observers, but I think their difficulty should be independent of that. The reflecting spiders in GK are perfect. The other NPC changes don't feel any different, so I think that means the changes were good.

All of the DPS types in my groups seem relatively unchanged. The order of who is on top seems to be the same.

I did have a pick-up group where the group was not always full and we just had a lot less damage coming from builds in progress. This group required such different game play and when we added 1 person with super-DPS, it really made a noticeable difference. Most of the comments from people say damage dealt is the the GK show stopper, and I think I agree with that. But only because there is only one level 70 dungeon. When you do re-visit GK and adding lore NPCs, maybe lower first floor Orc dmg and keep the 2nd floor the same. One possibility is just decrease the 1st floor Orc non-physical crit damage by ~5-10%, because that is what is melting faces. It's a small change but I think it would be celebrated. Wargs remaining dangerous is fine by me.

Honestly considering I didnt get to hard and its still doable to do what I normally do I could careless about how they edit enemy damage or health

[SassySusie]

Also on a side note skulk or whatever the hell makes that smoke sht with lycan was getting annoying maybe them being nerfed will decrease the amount of people actually using lycan which in turn decrease the amount of times of me having to see that annoying ass smoke that clogs the hallways of gk and me not being able to see sht

Okay I am full time Lycan well with a side of Bat..... I will always be lycan because thats what I like no matter what nerfs come out. But I have to agree... there was a day skulk was not this big black fog.... I wish we could go back to that because the big black fog is annoying even to me as a lycan, especially trying to see through it to do an attack. But will I stop using it... umm nope because of the damage buff it gives.

[spider91301]

Also on a side note skulk or whatever the hell makes that smoke sht with lycan was getting annoying maybe them being nerfed will decrease the amount of people actually using lycan which in turn decrease the amount of times of me having to see that annoying ass smoke that clogs the hallways of gk and me not being able to see sht

Okay I am full time Lycan well with a side of Bat..... I will always be lycan because thats what I like no matter what nerfs come out. But I have to agree... there was a day skulk was not this big black fog.... I wish we could go back to that because the big black fog is annoying even to me as a lycan, especially trying to see through it to do an attack. But will I stop using it... umm nope because of the damage buff it gives.

Lol at least you agree to the smoke thing and if it does good dps I wouldn't get rid of it but still its annoying as hell

[INXS]

So where's Hammer skill +60? On gloves.

[Temjiu]

So where's Hammer skill +60? On gloves.

great. Add that to all the other "mandatory" Hand mods and my odds of getting a decent pair put together just shot up astronomically.

Any chance we could switch that to something else? chest perhaps? most the chest mods seem mediocre so far, wouldn't mind a huge direct damage bonus on it.

[Tagamogi]

I wanted to add some thoughts on the Rahu sewers. I only explored the northern half of the dungeon so far, plus most of the SW quadrant, so it's likely I'm missing some important stuff still.

Quick summary: The atmosphere is great but the difficulty seems high for a level 60 solo dungeon, and the loot seems lacking in a few spots.

I'm going to wrap the rest in spoiler quotes because it's kind of long and contains some spoilers for people who haven't been there yet.


Difficulty
I initially duo'd with my husband, him at max skills in Gazluk keep gear, me as 55-58 rabbit / 65-66 psychology, ~ 476 health / 334 armor, in nearly all yellow level 50 gear courtesy of the last couple holiday events. As expected, we didn't really have any difficulty with the regular mobs unless we did some really stupid stuff. My dps against the mobs at the top seemed fine and I think I would have done fine soloing that area.

When we got to the ratkin, I felt they were doing a lot of damage to me - when I had two on me for a brief amount of time, I almost died. Since we were usually getting two or more ratkin each pull, I suspect I really don't want to solo this place with my current build and level.

I later brought another character to solo: 62 cow / 67 druid, ~ 625 health, 742 armor, primarily level 60 purple gear. I did largely ok, and managed at one time to bring down 6 ratkin that just kept showing up one after the other, but also died multiple times to a 3-pull of ratkin.

The difficulty of the sewers feels too high to me because I have previously done all 3 of the solo Gazluk caves (minus Murklinger) on that same cow character, only obviously slightly lower level and possibly slightly worse gear since I think some of my current gear came from the caves. I hadn't brought the rabbit to Gazluk before, but I tried the Tower View cave with her yesterday and I did great. I died a couple times initially while I was trying to figure out how my skills worked solo, and then was able to carefully do the entire cave without a further death, including the Hound.

So, the presumably higher level Gazluk caves feel much easier to me than the sewers. I guess it's possible the caves are too easy, but eh, I like them and I can still die there if I'm not very careful. I don't think my problem with the sewers is the health of the mobs there or even their damage - I think the problem is the spawn rate. In the Tower View Cave, I can carefully pull so that I will get at most 2 mobs at a time. In the sewers, I have mobs spawning on top of me and wandering into call range of the mob I'm currently fighting, so it feels I have no reasonable way to control pull size. I haven't learned the new precognition ritual yet but since I have mobs spawning right in the area that I cleared 5 seconds ago, I'm not really sure where I'd try to backup anyway if I see a new spawn coming.

I'm generally not fond of high spawn rates - I acknowledge it's great if there are lots of other people around but otherwise it just feels frustrating to me if I have mobs spawning right behind me, so if I reach a dead end, I have to reclear what I just killed a very short time ago. (I don't much care for the lower yeti caves for the same reason, although I love the Animal Nexus - maybe because that one is just one straight line with no backtracking unless I die.)

I'm not really sure if the difficulty or spawn rate really needs to be changed. It's doable solo, just takes more effort than I'd expected. It's nice for duoing and smaller groups, and I kind of enjoyed watching some level 70 people get smacked down for not paying attention and pulling 10 mobs at once. But ... I don't really see myself going there to solo at level 55. And especially not at level 60 because the Gazluk Caves are definitely an option then. Of course, I've done the caves dozens of time now and it's good to have another option. :)

Oh - the sewer bosses seem fine since they are intended for groups. My husband and I duo'd the spider together, although he came very close to dying. We had a group of 3 against the snake master and wiped miserably because we weren't really prepared for the adds. I think we would have managed to kill him with another attempt or two, but when we got back, there were more people killing him, so he went down easily.

Loot
I love the loot from the ratkin area. Lots of new and exciting stuff, and I love having barrels with random loot and really like the new cheese enhancing potions.

I also like being able to butcher the treants for wood, nice touch. ( I wonder, since ratkin are intelligent, shouldn't we be able to extract their skulls for phrenology analysis?)

I really don't like the mobs with no loot. It always feels to me that I wasted my time clicking on the corpse if there's nothing on it anyway. When we first went to the caves, it felt like we'd killed at least 20-30 mobs before I got any loot at all because most slimes don't drop loot and my husband got lucky on the round robin and looted the rats, while I got lootless slime after lootless slime. I was frankly sulking by the time I finally collected a single snake scale.

The slime and snake area at the top feels like it really needs some reason for people to want to go back there - ground spawns or unique loot or additional mobs that can drop something cool or ... something. When I went back with my cow, I mostly just grabbed the key and didn't bother exploring the rest of the area since I already knew there was nothing exciting there and the cartography xp wasn't worth the hassle to me. Difficulty-wise, the slime area seems great for 55-60 but since I primarily got no loot or some white junk, it just doesn't quite seem worthwhile.

Likewise, the water crystal area seems a bit boring because I haven't gotten anything I recognize as shiny important loot from it yet.

I'm not so excited by the gear drops which I think is primarily because of the Gazluk Caves again. I know where to to get lots of easy 60-65 gear, so getting hard 55-60 gear is just not as cool.

Atmosphere
I very much like the atmosphere of the place. The infinite slimes look awesome, and the water crystal area is really pretty. I like it that the different areas have different themes, and I'm always happy to run into more goblins to chat with (and I loved the "take the OTHER right" directions :D ). I also like the big dungeon design with lots of places to explore.

Miscellaneous
I don't like the druid-only stuff. When I initially encountered the swirly leaves and the book, I thought there was some exciting mystery out there that maybe I could solve with the aid of the goblin research or by learning a new spell or something like that. When I brought my other character and discovered that it just seems to be a druid-only thing, I felt pretty let down since my main character will never be able to read that book and learn that bit of lore. ( Of course, I haven't done the whole dungeon yet, and if there's a way later for non-druids to eavesdrop on a bit of the druid lore, that would be great.)

The standing water is a very neat touch, but I was surprised to discover that some of my abilities didn't work in water. Healing Sanctuary makes sense maybe, but Bun-Fu Blast? Really? I definitely feel for the fire mages here. There are generally enough spots to keep my feet dry but it takes some effort. (Which isn't bad, just ... different.)

The treant at the top only dropped a single key for our two-person group, so we had to go back later to get a second key. This might get tedious for larger groups? I'm also wondering - if someone is soloing the area and comes to the treant room after someone else already killed it and it hasn't respawned, how will they know to come back there for the key later? I'm possibly overthinking this.

I like the design of the dungeon and how it's very fast to reach different places from the entrance if you know where you are going and have the key. It's very nicely done. It's also nice that the sewers are right in Rahu, for easy selling and going back in.

[Sasho]

Quick summary: The atmosphere is great but the difficulty seems high for a level 60 solo dungeon, and the loot seems lacking in a few spots.

I heard this from a bunch of different people in game, but I strongly disagree.

If you think the Sewers is hard, try soloing in Labyrinth in Ilmari which is another "level 60 dungeon." The Sewers is a joke by comparison, and the devs were quite fair in their labeling the Sewers a solo dungeon. Keep in mind too that the sewers also has the layout of a full dungeon and not a simple cave in Gazluk. A lot of the Gazluk caves don't have bosses or even unique elites, but the Sewers do, so I'd expect its design to be more complex (hence the keys and maze layout).

As far as loot goes, I don't know what to say. I'm doing the 1000 kill task for the second time and I think in my 20+ hours in the Sewers I've come across 3-5 yellow items. I haven't farmed anywhere else really so I don't know if: the drop rate was lowered throughout the game, the Sewers just has a bad drop rate, or I'm just really unlucky. But outside of wanting yellows, the loot inside is quite good and diverse in its innate bonuses.

Atmosphere: I like really it. It's not often my wife comes over and compliments how a room looks because she's one of those "good graphics = good game" people, so I know if she says "ooh! that looks pretty" then I trust the game has done a good job. My only criticism is how ridiculous it looks when vipers are spitting acid at me. It's kind of an eye soar that half my screen is blinded with green spit frantically spewing left and right. The mobs are really unique looking and I like the fact that I now have a place to level up anatomy in Rodents and Plants. Prior to this patch I thought I'd never get plant anatomy up to 50 for the synergy bonus, but now that is looking very positive.

----

Side note: Has anyone else felt like Armor got nuked? I have about 800 armor and I feel like it's near useless and gets dissolved in 3 hits. I don't remember being so fragile before the patch, so I'm wondering if it's just me and the fact that I've only been in stronger dungeons lately.

All in all I'm loving the patch.

[Mbaums]

...
Something the mobs do just CHEWS through armor. It makes mitigation coming from sources other than armor very important. That and the stuns are a blessing and a curse. It kind of seems designed to make sure people don't aoe like crazy.

And I've found that the zone respawns faster when there are a ton of players inside vs when it is empty. It's great but I imagine if persists for end game group dungeons, it's going to get real ugly quick. More dedicated pulling spot/more safe rooms would be welcomed! But it's a really hard thing to perfect with 25 meter screaming.

[ErDrick]

Does not want us to run in and gather up 10 mobs and AE them, so gives them a stacking stun ability that will stun you for 10-12 consecutive seconds if you try that( and also nerfs AE damage vs multiple targets)...makes sense, I can understand the point of that.

Puts 10 of those mobs in the same room, makes them social and also call for help in such a large radius that other mobs outside said room will probably also join the fun...wait what? This is where I'm lost.

Removes utility ability that 2 skills had ( hookshot and spider pull) to safely singly pull one mob out at a time ....body pulling still works but not very well against ranged mobs that root you. I'm actually not sure if body pulling is intended to work or they just haven't figured out how to stop you from doing it yet. Logic tells me they don't want us doing it since they removed the skills that did it for you.

Can I deal with it anyways? Sure, is it fun?...Not particularly.

Negativity aside though, I like the layout of that dungeon.. I like the new mobs and the new skills. I especially like the new precognition skills, but they need to have a buff icon so you don't have to check persona every time you die to make sure it's still active. ( it also needs to last longer then 5 seconds, skill says 6 seconds but persona-general says it's 5...either way needs to be more like 10 or 15 ).

I also don't think a solo level 60 in average gear( 2-3 mods, not optimized for specific builds) can survive this place.

Also if I remember correctly, players are almost unanimously against mob evasion ( rats all have it) and mob critical hits. ...nothing like missing a 40 second cooldown ability randomly. Critical hits might be a little easier to stomach btw if there was a combat log so you at least knew why you died. I'm still of the opinion though that monster damage scales way too high for critical hits to be reasonable, though. It would be reasonable if their damage wasn't already extreme.

Sorry i said negativity aside then added more negative stuff .. needs to be brought up though.

[Yaffy]

Also if I remember correctly, players are almost unanimously against mob evasion ( rats all have it) and mob critical hits..


Mob evasion isn't so bad. Sure it can be annoying, but it affects different players differently. If you're built around big nukes then it's a pain, but if you're not it's not as big of an issue. Plus, if it would be a problem for your build, you can build accuracy, which is pretty easy to get. The new belt modifiers make it very easy to get +12 or +15 accuracy, which is all you really need for most enemies. It is kind of a huge pain in the ass though for ghosts if you miss your stun and have to wait 15+ seconds for it to come back though. That's pretty stupid especially considering how early you can bump into ghost enemies. By the sewers though you should have plenty of options.

The real issue I have with evasion is that accuracy doesn't even work against some forms of evasion. For enemies that passively have evasion like the rats in the sewers it's fine, but if an enemy gains evasion through a buff or a debuff on the player, then accuracy doesn't do anything. This makes accuracy worthless in locations like Dark Chapel or certain enemies, and I've been bug reporting this problem for every patch for ages. It's gotten to the point where I'm not even sure if this is intentional or not. Outside of Ratkin this makes accuracy pointless to build past level 20 except for very specific cases (Ex. Projectile accuracy vs Gazluk Infiltrators only if you use ranged attacks). I really wish I could just get a slap to the face telling me "It's intentional" or "We know about it." so I can shut up about it since it bothers me so much.

Mob critical hits though? I totally agree. Mitigation against it is very hard to get if not impossible for most skills, so it feels heavily limiting, especially as someone who loves playing tank. I don't mind the game being more difficult or having more variance in combat, but critical hits are a very poor way of doing so. I've already made a post about why they're bad mathematically, so I'll save making another giant wall of text.

It might be a lot of work, but I'd much prefer if mobs had a list of different attacks with an equal chance of being randomly selected. This would make combat more random in a fun and interesting way. Even if it was just "Basic attack" and "Slightly stronger basic attack". It'd be much easier to balance (You'd have to be trying on purpose to make it as bad as critical hits right now) and less swingy. There's also a lot of opportunity to have some fun too, like maybe having one of the random attacks apply a stacking debuff, so an unlucky player has to play around being massively debuffed if the enemy decides to use it 10x in a row. It would certainly be more fun than just outright dying at least.

[Fhen]

I also don't think a solo level 60 in average gear( 2-3 mods, not optimized for specific builds) can survive this place.


That would be me. :)

I can go in and do some stuff but not really sustain a proper crawl in any way. I'm in that bracket of players who has struggled to get decent modded gear for their level (around the 50-60) as I mostly solo and can play a fair bit but not dedicate my life to it. I was also surprised to see lots of stronger players go blasting past me often when I was in there hoovering up all the mobs with little thought for anyone else. I think I misinterpreted the "solo" part as the game doesn't do instancing right?

I know there was a mention of helping getting equipment for the 50-55 range so maybe this will help. I could be going about the acquisition of items all wrong of course. :)

Overall even though I have a skill at 70 and one in the 60's my gear clearly wasn't up to snuff which shows how important it is I guess. It wasn't solo friendly to me anyway but maybe it wasn't aimed at me.

[Niph]

I was also surprised to see lots of stronger players go blasting past me often [...] I think I misinterpreted the "solo" part as the game doesn't do instancing right?

There is no instancing, but stronger players are in Rahu sewers only because they are capped in content, and it's new. In a released game, there doesn't seem be any particular reason a high level player would do that.

The "solo" part means only few mobs are elite. With some balancing it can be tuned so you can crawl through it solo or in a duo, as intended.

[Tagamogi]

Before I start my wall of text: In the sewers, has anyone else had mobs just poof on them as soon the mob died, without leaving a corpse? It only happened to me four times over several hours but it felt pretty weird.



If you think the Sewers is hard, try soloing in Labyrinth in Ilmari which is another "level 60 dungeon." The Sewers is a joke by comparison, and the devs were quite fair in their labeling the Sewers a solo dungeon. Keep in mind too that the sewers also has the layout of a full dungeon and not a simple cave in Gazluk. A lot of the Gazluk caves don't have bosses or even unique elites, but the Sewers do, so I'd expect its design to be more complex (hence the keys and maze layout).

The Labyrinth is designed to be a group dungeon, so I don't think it's a good comparison to the Sewers. I think better equivalents would be how the Goblin Dungeon feels around level 30, or how Kur Tower feels at 40ish. I haven't done those in a rather long time, so I picked on the Gazluk Caves instead. I think you are right that the Gazluk Caves may not be the best comparison since they are shorter and simpler. Thinking back on the Goblin Dungeon - yes, I die in there a lot, but I also tend to go in the early 20s and I'd expect to steamroll the starting section by 40. The nice thing about the Goblin Dungeon is that even if you die a lot, reaching individual chests makes a fun and rewarding mini goal. Kur Tower doesn't have chests but it always felt like the zombies are dropping lots of stuff, so as long as you can kill a few at a time, you are in pretty good shape and likely to get upgrades.

In the Sewers, it feels like the easier mobs don't drop much that is worthwhile, while the harder mobs are ... hard. I spent another 4 hours or so with my cow there last night and I definitely had fun. I felt like I had a pretty good hang of the place by the time I finished and mostly stopped dying but I was 65 cow / 70 druid by then, with what I consider to be a very strong and tanky build and nice gear. If the main audience for the sewers is supposed to be 55-60 with, say, orange gear, I think it's too difficult for them without grouping.

I don't think there's anything hugely wrong with the Sewer mobs - they just maybe hit a touch too hard, stun a bit too often, root for a little bit too long... I spent some time in the water area and thought those mobs were pretty reasonable. The poison slugs there possibly do a bit too much damage - I took a lot of damage from them since I didn't bother with poison resist - I figured since I outleveled and outgeared the place by 5-10 levels, I should be fine without it.

My main problem were the ratkin:
The ratkin stun seems a bit excessive. It felt like my main strategy consisted of loading up Toxic Flesh + Brambleskin and then standing about stunned while the ratkin melee hopefully killed themselves on my damage shield. Since I was pretty tanky, standing around wasn't normally too dangerous but I remember one lovely time when I was stunned and low on health and managed to heal myself just as the stun wore off. I was then immediately restunned and the ratkin killed me before the stun wore off and I could cast another heal. It was pretty frustrating, and I imagine this situation would come up pretty often for someone not tank-geared.

I'm unclear why I was sometimes taking a lot of damage and sometimes not. I assume that's a function of the crits, but without a combat log, I don't know. It felt like my armor usually got shredded within the first couple seconds of me fighting multiple mobs, but then it was kind of variable whether I took corresponding health damage or not.

For my last hour in the dungeon, I ran out of food and decided to try fighting with some sewers-obtained cave cheese and ratkin bleu, combined with a ratkin digestive. Surprisingly, that didn't feel notably more difficult than fighting with my level 40-50 food buffs. The digestive took care of my power needs, and I didn't notice a change in health regen. My theory is that damage is happening so fast that health regen doesn't make much of a difference anyway.

I didn't think evasion was a problem here. The buff from the goblins is really nice but even when it wore off, I felt the ratkin were doable and much less difficult to hit than, say, the ranalon in the ranalon den. Of course, relying on damage shields as my primary dps source helped here, but it still didn't feel like the ranged ratkin were doing a ranalon-style chain evasion on me.

The necro-shaman and ratkin blaster combo is pretty cruel. They both do large amounts of range damage and one roots you, so you can't do anything but stand there and get hit. If a third mob happens to wander by, too, the death trap is pretty much complete. I found it hard to get these fights right - I obviously tried to get them solo or at least pull the shaman and blaster back, but the long root meant that sometimes I couldn't avoid a fresh add coming my way.

I found a ratkin respawn detection potion and used it: I think it helped me avoid some trash by encouraging me to move faster if a new mob was going to pop nearby but I'm not sure it actually helped me avoid death. Usually when I got dangerous adds in a fight, my current mob called for help or something had popped behind me, out of my sight range. ( Incidentally, many thanks to the devs for making the respawn spots so glaringly obvious even I can't miss them!)




As far as loot goes, I don't know what to say. I'm doing the 1000 kill task for the second time and I think in my 20+ hours in the Sewers I've come across 3-5 yellow items. I haven't farmed anywhere else really so I don't know if: the drop rate was lowered throughout the game, the Sewers just has a bad drop rate, or I'm just really unlucky. But outside of wanting yellows, the loot inside is quite good and diverse in its innate bonuses.

I like the base gear stats, it just feels like the gear drops are rare enough that I'm unlikely to get the base gear I want with a reasonable number of mods. I want to say I got maybe 3-4 purples in my time last night, and definitely no yellows. A fair number of oranges, at least.



Side note: Has anyone else felt like Armor got nuked? I have about 800 armor and I feel like it's near useless and gets dissolved in 3 hits. I don't remember being so fragile before the patch, so I'm wondering if it's just me and the fact that I've only been in stronger dungeons lately.

Well, the ratkin melee's info says they do heavy armor damage. I've been assuming that's why my armor's getting shredded. I don't think it's a problem outside the sewers, unless you noticed it there too?


Totally unrelated to the above: Since I previously whined about the druid lore, I just want to say that I really enjoyed doing the Sewers quests on my druid, and I loved the rewards, especially for the treant quest. I was only objecting to them from the perspective of a non-druid who likes to read everything.

[Yaffy]

Side note: Has anyone else felt like Armor got nuked? I have about 800 armor and I feel like it's near useless and gets dissolved in 3 hits.

It felt like my armor usually got shredded within the first couple seconds of me fighting multiple mobs, but then it was kind of variable whether I took corresponding health damage or not.

The Ratkin miners have an attack which does high armor damage. I would estimate the raw damage value is around 250 damage to armor. If you fight multiple they will all start combat with this attack and delete your armor very quickly. It doesn't do any damage to your health, just armor. Mitigation does affect it, so you might not really notice unless you pull more than one.

[Mbaums]

Before I start my wall of text: In the sewers, has anyone else had mobs just poof on them as soon the mob died, without leaving a corpse? It only happened to me four times over several hours but it felt pretty weird.


I've seen that. I wrote it off as a fast respawn related bug when the zone is heavily populated. But it could be the corpse fell into the wall and being untargetable it just auto poof maybe. The mummy boss (Bhruti? ) under Gazluk by the super teleportation pad is known to do that when he dies by a wall.

[Fhen]

There is no instancing, but stronger players are in Rahu sewers only because they are capped in content, and it's new. In a released game, there doesn't seem be any particular reason a high level player would do that.

The "solo" part means only few mobs are elite. With some balancing it can be tuned so you can crawl through it solo or in a duo, as intended.

I think the bigger issue was just running past me and killing all the mobs, sometimes not even burying the corpses. I'm not sure how it worked in AC for example as I never played it as much as other MMO's but if I ever come across someone in a dungeon trying to slowly work their way along I'll go elsewhere or wait. Just common courtesy really. It's not just this dungeon though where it happens of course.

[HardRock]

What if instead of skulk producing a smoke screen that pisses everyone off the players avatar became slightly more translucent? Its the same concept of camouflage making you hard to see but it actually makes you hard to see and not just obscure everyone's vision. Could take it a step further and they just become invisible to everyone. Not only are they camoed at that point but graphic draw would be reduced also. As if a very short lived potion of invisibility was built into each use of the skill. Untill damage was taken from an AOE or they dealt damage

[Yaffy]

I just wanted to say, although I have been pretty negative about the damage formula change in regards to elemental bonuses, one thing I very much like about the change is how it affects "Bonus damage to vulnerable targets".

I always thought the vulnerability mechanic was a kind of neat idea. It gives incentive to strive away from a completely rigid rotation in combat due to the randomness of it, and it adds an element of reaction time to combat too (Although it's not terribly strict). However before this patch, the bonus damage you got from this wasn't affected by the vast majority of damage bonuses, so it was completely worthless once you got basic gear. Now the bonus damage to vulnerable targets is multiplied by percentage bonuses, meaning it can be very powerful which is what it should have been like to reward players who are more flexible with their rotation.

If anyone uses skills that has bonus damage to vulnerable targets, it's worth checking them out now. Some of these bonuses can make these attacks stronger than typical nukes. For example Riposte on sword has higher damage than Decapitate (If you hit a vulnerable target) and better mods with a significantly shorter cooldown, so if you are willing to focus on the vulnerable mechanic it is worth checking out.

One thing I'm a bit iffy about with this though is that it makes Staff and Psychology significantly stronger, since they have the ability to cause vulnerability more often, especially staff. Psychology is already an extremely good skill when soloing, and now it's even better. Staff can now do really good damage which wouldn't be a problem, but staff has decent tanking power with very little investment, so you might be very strong due to the ability to tank and do very good damage at the same time. Both of these skills are also a lot better at grouping too if they can force vulnerability for other team mates, which is actually really cool, but it also makes both skills even better. Psychology could totally use it because it's not nearly as strong in group play, but for staff I think it's a bit much. It's not a terribly huge concern, but I just wanted to state my thoughts about these two skills since they have even more draw to them now.

[spider91301]

Meh hammer users that are bching about it should ether start from square one with a new skill or take a vacation for 1-2 years till it gets fixed

[Illmaster]

What if instead of skulk producing a smoke screen that pisses everyone off the players avatar became slightly more translucent? Its the same concept of camouflage making you hard to see but it actually makes you hard to see and not just obscure everyone's vision. Could take it a step further and they just become invisible to everyone. Not only are they camoed at that point but graphic draw would be reduced also. As if a very short lived potion of invisibility was built into each use of the skill. Untill damage was taken from an AOE or they dealt damage

I really like this idea. Total invisible might be a bit much but I love the translucent idea. I hope Citan seriously considers that.

[Citan]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, please keep it coming! A few notes:

- We will be making small tweaks to the new dungeon's spawn rate. But the dungeon is designed with the expectation that you have at least the 3-second spawn premonition. It may not sound like it would help, but it helps. You need it!

- (tagging Yaffy in particular here, though lots of this is general.) There are no known open bugs with accuracy or evasion, meaning all old reports were closed as Fixed or Invalid. I do believe at least one actual bug report of yours was addressed in the past few months, where others were closed as invalid reports because they conflate different mechanics. There are lots of weird systems in the game that aren't connected.

- For instance, "Miss Chance" is not the opposite of accuracy. Miss Chance is a separate chance for you to miss. It can't be avoided in any way at this time -- only something that gave you a negative Miss Chance buff could counter it, and there's nothing like that. So there's no way to avoid the Darkness debuff in the Dark Chapel, and that's by design. (This also applies to player abilities that apply a Miss Chance to enemies -- right now the debuff from Cloud Sight is completely unavoidable, even on Elites and Bosses.) You can differentiate Evasion from Miss if you are watching carefully, because the floaty "EVADE" will be replaced with "MISS".

- Projectile Evasion is not the same thing as Ranged Evasion -- only literal projectiles (such as missiles) are evaded by projectile evasion. Attacks like Flamestrike are ranged attacks without a projectile. Ranged Evasion is a new stat that covers all types of ranged attacks. (And may eventually replace Projectile Evasion -- not sure yet.)

- Accuracy buffs now show up on the Persona screen, so this is an easy way to make sure that the buffs are at least buffing the appropriate stat.

- Skulk smoke screen: we'll try to find something else for it when we next look at the Werewolf skill. We can't currently do translucence for wolves (the shader won't do it), but we can probably find something else.

[Yaffy]

- For instance, "Miss Chance" is not the opposite of accuracy. Miss Chance is a separate chance for you to miss. It can't be avoided in any way at this time -- only something that gave you a negative Miss Chance buff could counter it, and there's nothing like that. So there's no way to avoid the Darkness debuff in the Dark Chapel, and that's by design. (This also applies to player abilities that apply a Miss Chance to enemies -- right now the debuff from Cloud Sight is completely unavoidable, even on Elites and Bosses.) You can differentiate Evasion from Miss if you are watching carefully, because the floaty "EVADE" will be replaced with "MISS".


Thank you very much for telling me this. Now I can finally rest knowing that this is intentional. A big reason why I thought it was unintentional was because accuracy seemed like a very underused mechanic at higher levels and I thought Dark Chapel's darkness mechanic was supposed to encourage people to build accuracy. The new Rahu sewers do give more validity to accuracy at least.

This is a bit of a bummer though because I was hoping to build accuracy to build around stuff like Lord Sedgewick's curse and alcohol that decreases your accuracy but increases your evasion. It was my original idea for my unarmed build to create a sort of crazy drunken boxer type character. At least I know not to plan for it anymore at least. Thanks Citan, and sorry for the overly numerous bug reports.

[Illmaster]

- Skulk smoke screen: we'll try to find something else for it when we next look at the Werewolf skill. We can't currently do translucence for wolves (the shader won't do it), but we can probably find something else.

That's fair. How do you feel about turning the wolf completely light gray? Or, if it is possible, invisible with a gray or black outline?

[HardRock]

Could wolves just go total black. no reflection or special light effects, just the darkest black possible. Or shrink their size down/ adopt a crouched stance.

[Golliathe]

I want to say I think the sewer is pretty well perfect in terms of difficulty. I love that mobs stun so you can't just yolo in there and solo easily even as a perfect geared lvl 70. It was a bit of a shock getting used to that massive anti armor hit but it seems fine in the end. I think it is refreshing to find an area in the game that can break 1100 armor in the blink of the eye and be challenging without being stupidly hard.

In contrast to what someone else said I personally love the necro rats using root. Way too many games favor melee over ranged and it is nice to see at least one area in the game where melee gets punished (most of my attacks btw are melee range).

I love to see higher tier content in games make you fight smarter (instead of we're higher level so now we have more hp/damage). I love that the only solution I have found to those necros is to hit the sprint button and jump right up there on the platform (hoping I get rooted next to them).

*There are two shitty things I would like to note about the sewers*
1. There is no vendor.
2. There are way too many white item drops for a dungeon when compared to say winter nexus/dark chapel. It isn't right to get less money per hour farming a level 50 dungeon when compared to a lvl 60 dungeon.

There is one thing that needs to get nerfed immediately.

Treants can be butchered to get a twig thing that you can break down for carpentry xp. I would humbly ask that you require 60 carpentry to break them down (because maybe it's a level 60 dungeon). It is a huge exploit to allow people with no carpentry skill to go in there and farm treants for a few days and suddenly have 50+carpentry skill. Considering that these mobs are very popularly hunted, slow spawning, low in number and not super easy to kill I have no problem with the amount of xp you get for the break down.

If you could do the same thing for tailoring for example no one would ever grow cotton again to gain tailor xp.



Boo on the Shaman Infusion changes. I worked so hard to have that skill at 50. Now it is a complete joke to level up and everyone has it. You ruined something that was pretty unique, rare, and powerful.

I love the new belts! I always wear a +accuracy belt and it feels like you can in some cases actually fight evasion with accuracy now. The other day I killed 7 ghosts at once on the Gazluk teleport pad and that would not have been possible without the extra accuracy from the belt stacking with my shield attack buff.

Also... Thank you for nerfing wolf. Sorry no offense but there was no reason they deserved to keep the power like that for so long after everyone else lost full aoe dmg. Welcome to the back of the bus.

[Tagamogi]

I love to see higher tier content in games make you fight smarter (instead of we're higher level so now we have more hp/damage). I love that the only solution I have found to those necros is to hit the sprint button and jump right up there on the platform (hoping I get rooted next to them).

I like fighting smarter, but I think the additional damage and tank ability required is currently a bit high for an average level 60. I don't think I could use your solution to the necros - unless we are thinking of different locations, I'd get multiple adds that would kill me. (I tend to slowly and carefully body pull and then move back when I can so that hopefully I just have 1-2 rats beating me up at a time. It works, but is slow and subject to occasional wipes from wandering mobs.)



1. There is no vendor.

Recall Beginnings and zone into Rahu? I'd love to see a vendor in the goblin area too, but the Sewers strike me as one of the dungeons closest to a vendor.



Boo on the Shaman Infusion changes. I worked so hard to have that skill at 50. Now it is a complete joke to level up and everyone has it. You ruined something that was pretty unique, rare, and powerful.

Yep. I had one character at 50 and a second at 37. I'll admit my sadness at wasting my time leveling that far was pretty well cured though when I realized how easy getting from 50 to 60 was.

Personal gripes aside, I think the skill works better now. It was intended as a newbie-friendly introduction to augmentation. I think with the new xp table, it becomes much easier and more fun for new players to enchant their gear as they level and to learn new recipes in time to be useful to them. I think the new xp table is maybe a bit too easy but for a skill aimed as beginners, I think too easy is better than too hard. I also like the skill better at higher levels now: I'd rather spend my time deciding what recipes I want to learn and then farming a rare component like snake hide for a recipe I actually want to use on my gear than to farm up an infinite supply of cat eyeballs to cast the same throwaway recipe over and over until I level.

There might be room in the game for a rare and difficult prestige skill but I don't think shamanic infusion was ever supposed to fill that slot.


I've seen that. I wrote it off as a fast respawn related bug when the zone is heavily populated. But it could be the corpse fell into the wall and being untargetable it just auto poof maybe. The mummy boss (Bhruti? ) under Gazluk by the super teleportation pad is known to do that when he dies by a wall.
Very belated thanks for that confirmation. I was having some crazy theories like maybe me being an animal made the mobs disappear. ;) I had one fight where I killed 3 mobs and only one of them poofed, so it seems to me that if it was fast respawns, the other two mobs should have been affected, too. Or I should have seen a corpse for a half second or something...

I'd run into problems with Baruti before but assumed he was bugging out because we kept wiping on him after killing him 0-2 times. Good to know - thank you!


One last thing about the sewers I forgot to mention before: I really appreciate the mycology and skinning/butchering options there. My problem with my two alt characters has always been that I was able to level up their combat skills pretty quickly, but they were pathetically unable to actually collect anything useful in the 60+ zones. Some of the mushrooms in the sewers are still a bit too high for me to pick but if the new level 50 content has some mushrooms, too, I think that would close the gap.