Damage Type Immunity

[Salukey]

First, let me say that I have not competed all of the new areas in the fae realm having only spent a few hours completing beginner quests.

I'm curious as to how many mobs in the game, or especially in the new zones have complete immunity to certain damage types. I've noticed that certain mobs require stun to take full damage, the shouters in the ice cave headed to fae realm are immune to several damage types. But now the new zone has at least two plant mobs that are entirely immune to nature damage.

Do only nature damage types suffer in this way, or will any other pure damage builds experience the same.

I guess it is a way to prevent people building full damage buffs and not making the most of the dual skill nature of the game and the creative build options available. But, I would really prefer if it was slightly less severe. Even a 90% damage reduction to that type of damage would seem more reasonable than complete immunity.

This seems to kill build options rather than make more feasible options. Kinda bummed out with my current build now and the amount of effort involved with gaining exp, buying unlocks and skills and crafting gear. I'm too afraid to level a new build expecting that it will eventually be unusable in a necessary fight/dungeon/quest. So after my recent return to the game, I've spent more hours looking up skills on the wiki and trying to find a new path forward than playing the game.

[BetaNotus]

I haven't written this down anywhere yet, but it might help?

- 22 of 136 Bosses listed on the wiki have Immunity. Darkness (22), Poison (6), Cold (6), Acid (4), Trauma (4), Nature (4), Fire (3), Psychic (2), Electricity (1), Piercing (1), Slashing (1).
- There are 8 Plant Anatomy creatures listed on the wiki. 5/8 are Immune to Nature. 4/8 are Immune to Psychic.
- 14 of 31 creatures in the Fae Realm listed on the wiki have Immunity. Poison (4), Nature (3), Cold (3), Psychic (2), Fire (2), Electricity (1), Darkness (1).
- 6 of 18 creatures in Gazluk listed on the wiki have Immunity. Cold (2), Electricity (2), Darkness (2), Acid (1), Psychic (1), Poison (1), Trauma (1).
- 10 of 43 creatures in Gazluk Keep listed on the wiki have Immunity. Darkness (4), Acid (2), Psychic (2), Crushing (2), Piercing (2), Slashing (2), Cold (1), Poison (1).

[Salukey]

Thank you BetaNotus, that is very in depth and I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I suppose I should be grateful that I'm just now experiencing strife with this issue. I also feel a bit silly not having realized so many mobs have total immunity to damage types. I suppose most people intend to have multiple skill loadouts or a very diverse array of skills on their main loadout?

[Celerity]

I don't think just a couple of the non-elite plant mobs having nature immunity is too big of a deal since there's lots of different sections of the fae realm each with different mobs you can fight if you need exp and if it's for a quest you can always group up.

What has bothered me in the past and is reflected from BetaNotus' post is the sheer amount of darkness immune mobs you encounter at the lower levels which essentially only applies to necromancy. When every single undead mob is immune to darkness and darkness is the damage type of your basic attack, aoe, root, heal and fear it becomes nearly impossible to use necromancy in areas such as serb crypt, elt crypt, borghild and kur tower. Very outdated information but when I was first leveling in 2015 there was a huge content gap for me after the goblin dungeon (which also has random undead in it) since I couldn't do kur tower or borghild because of the undead darkness immunity. I should have skipped to the yeti cave but I couldn't get in because I was too much of a noob so I ended up going straight to the wolf cave. I'm not sure this is any different nowadays but at least the zombie has become a lot better and that deals crushing.

Another skill which gets punished is ice magic, which almost the entire yeti cave is immune to and all winter fae, both the winter nexus bosses and fae realm ones. Most kur tower mobs also have it tagged as very ineffective. This means you're essentially locked out of doing 3 of the dungeons in the game, unless a group is fine carrying you do doing 0 damage. All of these dungeons are around the lvl 40 area meaning there is a serious gap for ice magic too. You can of course just rely entirely on your other skill but I'm of the opinion that if you can do the content with just 1 skill then you're clearly overleveled/overgeared for the area or you're being carried which isn't indicative of normal play.

While on the subject, I also don't understand why fire magic is supposed to suffer from mobs being resistant to it as a drawback for it's high damage literally written in the skill description, yet it's given 3 cold abilities and 1 crushing and ice magic is all cold damage except for 1 electricity ability. I'm also pretty sure there's similar numbers of mobs that are cold resistant and fire resistant and actually far more that are cold immune compared to fire immune.

[poulter]

This has been a game mechanic (& a good one) since 'forever'. Players get exposed to the concept very early on: brain bugs and psychology :)

It drives players to develop their skill sets and is why many vets carry 2 or 3 sets of gear and swap around depending on the mob type.
Bottom line is that no single solution or approach works 100% of the time - which makes for a much more interesting game.

Ice magic: Preferred skill for pulling (or soloing) in Lab and GK

Fairy Realm: Using a Fire DOT spell as an opener makes things much easier
Winter Nexus: See above

Bard: Removing sonic damage and changing it to nature - try not to use it in FR

[Glythe]

This has been a game mechanic (& a good one) since 'forever'.

That does not mean it is a good mechanic. Anyone here remember a little game called Diablo II? The developers of that game promised there would be no immune type mobs. And then later they came out with an expansion pack which broke their promise and ruined countless characters. That one change made me want to quit the game within a week.

Almost everyone in PG knows Necromancy sucks. Most people can not tell you why exactly but overall it is a combination of pets in this game being pretty trash (no offense) and because there are so many darkness resistant bosses.

How much fun is it for a new player to have fire magic and have trouble killing fire mobs that are highly resistant to that damage type? They probably can not even use the correct skill to determine resistances. Skip ahead to max level and look at farming ~35 ice hearts. You want to get those for an ice mage obviously but the mobs that drop them are immune to cold damage. That in my mind is a terrible mechanic. It might be totally fine if physical damage users like sword, shield, unarmed, etc were forced to farm physical immune mobs for some kind of 'mark of war' or something they had to turn in to their trainer.

The reality is that there is one level 80 zone. You have to farm that zone to get the jelly to train your level 80 skills. Having just one zone AND essentially making a large number of classes ineffective is bad design. And while you could in theory use mods to change damage type of druid you will be gimping yourself while doing so. You do not have spare mods to change a power's damage type when another class just gets +% damage with an effective power. As much as this game often reminds me of Everquest there is really quite often one good zone for leveling at any particular point in the game. Because there is only one level 80 loot zone (and really one level 70 dungeon) it can be a game ruining experience to find that the character you have been leveling for three years is now completely worthless. Is that the type of experience Citan wants for PG?

I would be 100% ok with the Fae realm having sections of resistant mobs living in a certain biome. Everyone should know what I am talking about here and the brain bugs in serb are a perfect example. If you want to fight them you go northwest and if not you stay away from that part of the map. Here again is a problem for the Fae realm because overall the spawning seems pretty random. You cannot go to a specific part of the map to avoid mob xyz for the most part. This gets complicated even more with certain mobs spawning at night/day.


I don't think just a couple of the non-elite plant mobs having nature immunity is too big of a deal since there's lots of different sections of the fae realm each with different mobs you can fight if you need exp and if it's for a quest you can always group up.

Another skill which gets punished is ice magic, which almost the entire yeti cave is immune to and all winter fae, both the winter nexus bosses and fae realm ones. Most kur tower mobs also have it tagged as very ineffective. This means you're essentially locked out of doing 3 of the dungeons in the game, unless a group is fine carrying you do doing 0 damage.


What bothers me about this in general is that there are certain skills which seem to be very good anywhere. Where is the zone that features physical immune mobs as the norm? There's one boss as far as I know : Zuke. Typically when you get to high level in a challenging MMO you will find mobs that challenge every class. From what I have seen in Project Gorgon there are very few mobs that challenge physical based characters. This is not exactly fair design when considering the Diablo II exmaple. That game featured ice, fire, physical, etc., immune bosses.


To make a long post short it is one thing to have mobs you need to farm be immune to your damage (cold mage farming ice hearts) and another when fire mages need to farm phoenix that have the damage type very ineffective vs fire. When I quit playing Everquest there were at least 6 different high level zones I could go farm xp in but in Project Gorgon there is only one end tier zone. Anyone who uses poison/cold kind of gets the middle finger in the best zone to farm/xp.

[alleryn]

As far as ice magic and necromancy go, perhaps this is intended? After all you can't even acquire either of those skills without defeating a high level boss, so unless you are getting carried you're already past the troublesome areas when you learn those skills.

[Celler]

I kind of like the fae zone with multiple types of immunity, I do have multiple builds and gearsets though even if they are not fantastic.
It's a zone for all lvl 70 - 80 folk so I feel it's OK that many skills fall down here and there.
Also I feel that a game which allows characters to use all skill lines would be weird if a certain 2 skills could in effect dominate.

I do kind of agree though that hiding the lvl up items behind monsters that are immune to that type of damage is a little grim for those that are a little more limited in there options.

Though perhaps folks are not really supposed to be soloing the pheonix mobs anyhow whilst looking to get to lvl 80.

Also from a lore point of view you would expect high lvl fire creatures to be immune to fire whilst also expecting that to be the place to get good fire reagents.

Also physical damage is not really a damage type more a category of damage types, physical covers,piercing,crushing,slashing at least I'd of thought. That is a lot of immunity really.
It would be like having elemental resist and being immune to elec,fire and ice etc. It's too much I feel. Or perhaps I misunderstand.

[Celerity]

It drives players to develop their skill sets and is why many vets carry 2 or 3 sets of gear and swap around depending on the mob type.
Bottom line is that no single solution or approach works 100% of the time - which makes for a much more interesting game.
This is true for individual mobs and at the end game for sure. I personally love carrying around multiple sets and switching them up depending on what mobs I'm fighting but the issue is when it applies to entire dungeons worth of mobs and especially if they have absolute immunity versus very ineffective. You don't have the same flexibility to swap your builds around since you're more limited on your money, inventory space and ease of gathering gear at lower levels. There's also a massive disparity between skills, most physical skills you will never have to switch until you reach zuke in gk and then that's just 1 boss in 1 dungeon near the endgame, yet skills like necromancy would have you switching so often you would never get the chance to earn any experience for it in the first place. Everyone I know who uses it at endgame simply power leveled it there and so bypassed all these issues you would face if you leveled it as a noob. And everyone I know who used it as a noob switched to a different skill along the way, me included. The skill I switched to happened to be ice magic which had similar issues but by that point I already had the means to craft my own gear, without which I would have been stuffed once again.


As far as ice magic and necromancy go, perhaps this is intended? After all you can't even acquire either of those skills without defeating a high level boss, so unless you are getting carried you're already past the troublesome areas when you learn those skills.
It's possible to obtain necromancy with a group of lvl 20s, although I'm not sure many do and that certainly wouldn't be enough to power level your other skills. Also seems like poor game design to designate certain skills as power levelable only.

[Glythe]

There is one 'bad' fight in the game I've ever swapped out while playing shield : Zuke. And somehow you can still stun him with shield bash and push him back with fight me you fools. You have to swap out skills in the new zone for poison/ice/fire and some of those damages are terrible in other places too that have been previously mentioned. If we're going to have a game where it is the norm for mobs to rave resistances to the point of immunity it would be a lot more fair if some mobs were immune to all physical. Every class should have some bad experiences here and there or should have an increasingly negative experience as levels go up. Many MMOs give mobs more and more physical immunity as you get closer to max level. Project Gorgon could address this theoretically by having armor go up dramatically at higher levels but it isn't exactly the same as sword/archery have access to a lot of piercing.

What is the advantage of Ice/Fire/Nature dmg when there are physical skills that have 1 bad fight in the whole game? That in my mind is the perfect example of poor balance. What would be better balance? If the new zone is supposed to mess with everyone why not have the non elite trolls 90% immune to physical and the elite ones 100% immune to physical. Take that suggestion as a raw idea for balance not necessarily a specific plan.

What evens out the differences when you have to choose between two competing classes? If you had to start over again tomorrow (ignoring normal class start options) would you choose Ice over Crushing/Piercing/Slashing? Very likely you would not if for no other reason than because physical always works and many class options often completely fail. Is that good game design?

That is a very nice list BetaNotus but is there another zone in the game with nearly 50% immunity to one damage type (excluding zones with low mob variety)?


For every other zone in the game immunities seem fine. The fact that you can not use electricity on cold elementals is acceptable when they are pretty rare overall in lower level dungeons. Later on you need one of 3 damage types to zap portals in Winter Nexus. The portals requiring one of three skills is a really neat game design element and is overall a lot more fun than just "immune to damage x". To compensate for needing such a specialized skillset the portals die basically from one attack. I feel like punishing dungeon elements is one thing and having open world immunities is a completely matter.

[alleryn]

. The fact that you can not use electricity on cold elementals is acceptable when they are pretty rare overall in lower level dungeons.

Just a quick FYI i believe you are talking about a bug that was fixed in the Dec 20 (2019) patch:
"Fixed a bug that caused Electricity Elementals and Cold Elementals to have the same damage-type vulnerabilitites/strengths"

[Citan]

Damage-type immunities are an important tool in my game-design toolbox. I started to write out an explanation, but it's turning out to be way too long. (I'm trying to post more on the forum, but my posts always take hours and I can't afford to stop working for hours... which is why I normally just lurk.) I'll try to organize my thoughts about immunities and turn it into a dev-blog at some point.

For now, I'm not going to talk about immunities in particular, but I wanted to say a few things about damage types in general.

The most important thing to know is that monsters' damage-type vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and immunities aren't particularly balanced yet. More content will smooth out some of the imbalances, and other imbalances will be fixed by changing monster types, but most of that type of thing will happen in late beta. In the short term, I'm mostly taking a hands-off approach because I think micromanaging this aspect of game balance would be bad. Here's why.

Damage-type stats are broken up by "monster type" to make it easy to learn and remember their resistances. You can learn early on that skeletons are weak to Crushing damage, and that is true with both a level 1 skeleton and a level 125 skeleton. However, I haven't made level 125 content yet, so I don't know how many skeletons are going to be in it. If a lot of level 120 content takes place on Skeleton Island, then that sounds like a big buff to Crushing damage! But I won't know minutia like that until we get there.

This kind of problem happens on a micro scale all the time: I look at an existing area of the game and say "hmm, there needs to be more herbivores here," and just like that, I'm subtly altering the "balance" of damage types based on how many of each type of monster spawns there.

I change other types of things all the time (like ability damage, or specific gear mods, or whatever). But I feel like damage-type resistances are more broadly relevant than that. It feels like "player knowledge" that should be respected. If you've learned that skeletons are weak to Crushing, and you leave the game for six months, when you return and discover that's changed, it feels a little insulting, like the game didn't respect your previous learning. Actually, you wouldn't think twice about one or two little changes, but if the damage types are different every time you come back to the game, that just feels demoralizing somehow. There's a difference between "all the mods for Sword have been revised... again" and "all the monster damage types you learned over 200 hours of play have changed... again."

So I don't want to constantly change monsters' damage type vulnerabilities. And right now isn't the time to focus on them. I'm struggling to explain why... how about this: imagine the game's balance as a tree. Its roots are the core game rules, the trunk is made up of all the combat skills, and the branches are all the game's dungeons and areas. The specific monsters in each area are leaves on those branches. Right now, not all the branches exist yet, and parts of the trunk are missing, and some of the roots are kinda scraggly... they may need to be replaced. Focusing too much on the leaves now seems shortsighted.

My current plan is to make only a few surgical changes during beta, just fixing whatever is really broken. In late beta when I know more about the shape of the game's balance, I can do one big revamp of monster damage types. (Of course, I'm not planning to stop creating content, so things will likely get out of whack again pretty quickly... but it'll at least be at kinda balanced for a little while. Balance is hard.)

---

Anyway, what concrete info can I give you? I can dredge up a lot of minor design goals -- the most obvious one is that Darkness and Fire damage are supposed to have more resistant/immune monsters than other damage types. But even those ideas aren't locked down and could change.

There is one important over-arching design goal that won't change: I want the game to HEAVILY encourage players to have two damage types in their build, not just one. They can have a "main" damage type, but they should also have a secondary damage type that can be used in a pinch. Or barring that, some friends. I'll be keeping that goal in mind as I balance the game. (I have lots of reasons for that design goal, which I'll try to go into in a blog post, but suffice it to say that it isn't likely to change.)

I also wanted to warn you that if you're choosing a damage type because very few monsters are resistant to it... I didn't do that intentionally. It may or may not be something that sticks around. By the way, I also haven't intentionally made lots of monsters resistant to Nature damage. That just happened organically, and I expect it'll work itself out in the level 100 area, which is full of demons.

I'm open to making strategic changes to vulnerabilities right now, if a few surgical changes would make a big difference to game balance in the present moment. (I don't know what those surgical changes would be, off hand, but I'll be lurking if you have opinions.) Otherwise I'm content to wait until more of the game's content is added before making lots of broad changes.

(And I've spent over three hours on this "short" post and I need to get back to work! I have edit-itis and I could spend many more hours trying to make this really concise and clear... but hopefully this is at least coherent! Forcing myself to stop editing.... now.)

[Niph]

I'm open to making strategic changes to vulnerabilities right now, if a few surgical changes would make a big difference to game balance in the present moment.

With Cold Elementals being now immune to cold, in Gazluk you can be attacked by 3 different types of monsters that are immune to cold damage, and some root you (elementals and skeleton casters). I used to handle it with psychology, but now with Cold Elementals that are found everywhere added to the mix it's no longer manageable. I suggest to make one of these mob types resistant only.

[Celerity]

In response to Citan, I think even just something as simple as fewer absolute immunities and instead ineffective/very ineffective would already go a long way.

EDIT: After some more thought I've come up with some specific examples:

I support Niph's idea, it doesn't make sense to me that the skeleton ice mages are immune to cold just because they use it, for comparison skeleton fire mages aren't suddenly immune to fire just for using fire magic and with ice slicks and ice elementals already immune and much of the rest very ineffective to cold in gazluk, I think it's fair to change immune -> very ineffective.

I honestly think that yetis should go from immune -> ineffective against cold. Logically they're still living beings even if they're resistant to the cold with their fur, and gameplaywise being locked out of both kur tower and yeti cave makes getting exp in the 40s difficult for ice magic. This is better than changing kur tower, since you would have already had to clear kur tower to get ice magic and it fits with the theme of not being able to use the skill in the dungeon you acquired it similar to necromancy.

Lamia boss in Winter Nexus for a total of 3/5 of the bosses being immune to cold should also be changed. Winter fae being immune makes sense unfortunately but with so many it just feels absolutely crippling. Other lamias aren't cold immune so I guess lore is despair puck was enhanced by winter fae but I don't like it gameplaywise.

Necromancy is a harder one to say but maybe some changes to borghild or the necromancer's courtyard in kur tower could help? There are still skeletons in both but maybe making ghosts/ghouls/faces of death just ineffective/very ineffective against darkness. Noobs would still have issues getting to the necromancer's courtyard but it could be something I guess? I think serb and elt crypt being immune is fine since elt crypt is insignificant and you would have already cleared serb crypt to get necromancy. Other dungeons are also available at the same level as serb crypts such as carpal tunnels and ranalon den.

Poison and nature could probably do with some changes but I didn't/don't use those damage types enough to comment. I guess some thoughts would be I don't understand why manticores and wasps are immune to poison just because they use it themselves but not sure how badly that affects gameplay which I think is main concern.

If you want an example of where I think the resistances are good, look at fire magic, only 3 bosses in the game immune to it; Vagreef the fireproof, bonfire puck and the ancient fire elemental. This isn't nothing and there's certainly far more where it is very ineffective, but the ones that are immune are quite spaced out and reasonably obscure/optional. I think gk in general is also very well done with both Zuke's physical immunity and the golem's psychic immunity. It's not overdone and with the layout of the dungeon it's also not a requirement to do either of those bosses in any particular run. The rest of the mobs that are immune as far as I'm aware are only the electrical traps put down by the tacticians and the non-elite skeletons and gargoyles, which not only are limited throughout the dungeon but are also all relatively weak and so between your group members, easy to kill. I think it's also much more forgivable to put the immunities at higher levels because by then you should be able to have more flexibility, although I can see how it could still be crippling for a new 80 if they don't have the money to uncap their other skills, so it should still not be overly present. I also like the winter nexus spy portals since it's their entire design to be immune to most of types of damage but then get killed in 1 shot. They also only feature in a group dungeon which is good since it means you just have to come up with 1 of the 3 damage types they are weak to between your entire group and several side bar skills such as stake the heart and fish gut are also capable of achieving it.

And just to be clear, where I think it is bad is when either an entirety/majority of a dungeon or multiple bosses in a particular dungeon are immune. Especially bad if there are no other alternative dungeons at that level.

[Glythe]

Thank you for taking time to respond Citan.

If anything I just wanted to maybe help you be aware of what's in the game and where it could feel like a potential problem. Knowing that you intend for everyone to have 2 damage types is important. I personally like to build for 2-3 types because of places like winter nexus; it is almost gamebreaking if you go in there with a 6 man group and no one can kill the portals.




And just to be clear, where I think it is bad is when either an entirety/majority of a dungeon or multiple bosses in a particular dungeon are immune. Especially bad if there are no other alternative dungeons at that level.

I support most of what Celerity said and overall I agree the game would feel a lot more fun as a whole if most of the immunities changed to highly ineffective in the low and mid tiers (and maybe for certain open world mobs - like some of the fae realm things; overall it feels like there is just too much immunity there). If you wanted mid tier bosses to be a bit tougher you could maybe give them a new attribute that makes them immune to certain types of moves - roots/snares/stun based on their resistance set without making them "physical immune". As a suggestion Zuke should probably become immune to unarmed positioning moves as well as stun from things like stun punches or shield bashes. I think most people would have no issue with lvl 80-100 bosses having immunities as that is the type of thing that makes different skillsets interesting.

One idea I hope at some point that gets implemented in the game is critical weaknesses along the lines of what you might see in Dungeons and Dragons. Using cold on a white dragon is a really bad idea but using fire is excellent and deals double damage. For mobs that have an immunity it would make the game a lot more interesting if having an immunity meant they always had a critical weakness you could exploit. In the case of the Fae Realm maybe bees and plants should gain a critical weakness to fire.

Some skills feel terrible to play because everybody ends up being immune or super resistant as a function of resistances not being in a balanced spread. I know we do not have the full game and cannot see everything you have planned. Overall it gives me a lot of comfort however to know that you know there is an issue and you plan to address it eventually.

[Mbaums]

A bit ago I was running ice magic+mentalism and when the highest zone I could do was Rahu/Ilmari, it rocked. Once I moved to Gazluk, it's possibly the worst combo imaginable. It felt like everything was resistant to something I did! But I think thats fine. Its a hard rock-paper-scissors balance that I think I first noticed in the Carpal Tunnel. I agree with the player knowledge thing, that its kind of untouchable. But I do think immune and resistant can be wiggled if you do choose to switch anything up. The solution I kind of expect to be taken is having ~2 options for zones at each of the pre-100 levels with different resistances being used.

I do like the idea of having fire magic being balanced by having its resistance being more common place. But if darkness is in the same boat, I'm not sure that the balancing it around mob resistances argument makes sense. Just b/c darkness can't deal anywhere close to fire's damage, unless there is going to be a "darkness magic" skill, which sounds metal.

[Glythe]

I do like the idea of having fire magic being balanced by having its resistance being more common place. But if darkness is in the same boat, I'm not sure that the balancing it around mob resistances argument makes sense. Just b/c darkness can't deal anywhere close to fire's damage, unless there is going to be a "darkness magic" skill, which sounds metal.

I saw a mention of it somewhere else that fire might be getting another nerf in the future. I just want to say I think against bosses fire is really quite nerfed already. The difference in how fire was before and how it is now is really devastating. It is quite terrible to have the boss do its rage attack over and over and over again. The class that really feels the pain here is Battle Chemistry as it is kind of built to do 3 aoe bursts and slowly burn the enemy to death. Fire has some gigantic hits that Battle Chemistry does not. Bears are one of your worst enemies as a chemist because you are forever getting their rage attack; Fire is a completely different show here because setting them on fire is an added bonus and not really the main event so to speak.

As a whole Fire really breaks the ability of your team to control a monster's rage unless you have some people who are very strongly slotted to prevent rage. When you fight certain bosses this is can turn into a "we aren't going to fight that boss" situation.


Looking at immunities specifically I really want to ask a question about a specific mob: Baruti.

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Baruti

Effective: Acid
Ineffective : Piercing, Nature, Crushing, Slashing, Fire
Immune: Darkness

First let me interject with a praetermitto and say I don't even want to mention this guy's curse.... but that curse was enough to make a fiend want to quit the game if I was unable to fix it. That for me in terms of game design is a big red flag that this might be too much. Curses should matter and we often see that red text and expect to face roll the content; but maybe you could take a look at this boss some day in the future.

Curses aside I would like to see this boss get a slight revision for balance purposes. I think it would be a good idea to update this boss with Holy damage from priest as an effective damage type. This would play well with the lore for holy being good against undead and the quest line in the new preston cave.

I also do not think the Fire resistance for this boss is appropriate. Maybe there is a lore reason for it or maybe you just want fire and darkness - the two most resisted damage types to not have an easy time. If that is the case then it totally makes sense. Or maybe as a compromise you could make fire direct damage ineffective and the burning indirect damage component be "normal".

From a D&D perspective I get that slashing works against a mummy and crushing is bad. Why is Fire bad in this case? It's dried out enemy wrapped in bandages. This reminds me of a bad elemental resistance profile when the Ice elementals in the past were immune to electricity but took damage from cold. You can do whatever you want in your game for resistances but people kind of have an idea of how certain monsters behave largely to D&D and similar games. Trolls are weak to fire (sometimes acid too). Mummies are usually weak to fire but I seem to recall a note that greater mummies have fire resistance due to some of the preservation mechanics involved in their creation.

This is not a case of : I want my damage to be effective vs this boss but more of a "huh?" moment. I do not want to ever fight this boss again unless a friend of mine is cursed and is begging for help.

Turning back at the topic of immunities I decided to completely ditch fire as a skill with the level 80 content. The damage in my opinion is not worth the rage cost. Even though there is great synergy with Battle Chemistry / Fire it doesn't make sense to me to try and play a single damage type - except for mowing throw low tier content. When I returned to the game and found new content waiting my Ice Magic was only level 55 and my fire Magic was fully researched. I plan on finishing fire to 80 for comparison and testing purposes but I think it will be safer as a whole to always have two damage types or maybe even "conflicting" damage types.

It might be a very healthy thing for the game overall if players get a message sooner that putting everything into one type is a really bad idea. Maybe we could get a new zone in Eltibule to teach this to new players. Maybe there could be a "sulphur lake" cavern added to that zone that is a level 40ish area. If I were making a new area I would have it be essentially a place with all the mobs fire immune.

[Glythe]

I do like the idea of having fire magic being balanced by having its resistance being more common place. But if darkness is in the same boat, I'm not sure that the balancing it around mob resistances argument makes sense. Just b/c darkness can't deal anywhere close to fire's damage, unless there is going to be a "darkness magic" skill, which sounds metal.

I saw a mention of it somewhere else that fire might be getting another nerf in the future. I just want to say I think against bosses fire is really quite nerfed already. The difference in how fire was before and how it is now is really devastating. It is quite terrible to have the boss do its rage attack over and over and over again. The class that really feels the pain here is Battle Chemistry as it is kind of built to do 3 aoe bursts and slowly burn the enemy to death. Fire has some gigantic hits that Battle Chemistry does not. Bears are one of your worst enemies as a chemist because you are forever getting their rage attack; Fire is a completely different show here because setting them on fire is an added bonus and not really the main event so to speak.

As a whole Fire really breaks the ability of your team to control a monster's rage unless you have some people who are very strongly slotted to prevent rage. When you fight certain bosses this is can turn into a "we aren't going to fight that boss" situation.


Looking at immunities specifically I really want to ask a question about a specific mob: Baruti.

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Baruti

Effective: Acid
Ineffective : Piercing, Nature, Crushing, Slashing, Fire
Immune: Darkness

First let me interject with a praetermitto and say I don't even want to mention this guy's curse.... but that curse was enough to make a fiend want to quit the game if I was unable to fix it. That for me in terms of game design is a big red flag that this might be too much. Curses should matter and we often see that red text and expect to face roll the content; but maybe you could take a look at this boss some day in the future.

Curses aside I would like to see this boss get a slight revision for balance purposes. I think it would be a good idea to update this boss with Holy damage from priest as an effective damage type. This would play well with the lore for holy being good against undead and the quest line in the new preston cave.

I also do not think the Fire resistance for this boss is appropriate. Maybe there is a lore reason for it or maybe you just want fire and darkness - the two most resisted damage types to not have an easy time. If that is the case then it totally makes sense. Or maybe as a compromise you could make fire direct damage ineffective and the burning indirect damage component be "normal".

From a D&D perspective I get that slashing works against a mummy and crushing is bad. Why is Fire bad in this case? It's dried out enemy wrapped in bandages. This reminds me of a bad elemental resistance profile when the Ice elementals in the past were immune to electricity but took damage from cold. You can do whatever you want in your game for resistances but people kind of have an idea of how certain monsters behave largely to D&D and similar games. Trolls are weak to fire (sometimes acid too). Mummies are usually weak to fire but I seem to recall a note that greater mummies have fire resistance due to some of the preservation mechanics involved in their creation.

This is not a case of : I want my damage to be effective vs this boss but more of a "huh?" moment. I do not want to ever fight this boss again unless a friend of mine is cursed and is begging for help.

Turning back at the topic of immunities I decided to completely ditch fire as a skill with the level 80 content. The damage in my opinion is not worth the rage cost. Even though there is great synergy with Battle Chemistry / Fire it doesn't make sense to me to try and play a single damage type - except for mowing throw low tier content. When I returned to the game and found new content waiting my Ice Magic was only level 55 and my fire Magic was fully researched. I plan on finishing fire to 80 for comparison and testing purposes but I think it will be safer as a whole to always have two damage types or maybe even "conflicting" damage types.

[Coglin]

. First let me interject with a praetermitto and say I don't even want to mention this guy's curse.... but that curse was enough to make a fiend want to quit the game if I was unable to fix it. That for me in terms of game design is a big red flag that this might be too much.

Now I and some folks in my circle LOVE this boss encounter for the exact reason you say "your friend" hates it and wanted to quit. If a single individual mob ruins his experience so much, why not ignore the mob? Get level appropriate assistance, or a minor panacea, and remove the curse, then move on. Petitioning to ruin my experience for the sake of "your friends" thin skin seems a bit excessive. I dislike the "threat of quitting the game if you do not make a change I want" way of going about things in a discussion on the forums.

I enjoyed the need for my groups great adjustment in this mobs case.

[poulter]

I guess one person's feast is another person's poison.

I like that there are bosses in game that you have to 'respect' and can't steamroll /walk all over.

As for Fire, it is my first choice skill for grinding in FR and I have soloed 4 bears at once using Fire /Druid (in level 70 max-crafted gear).

[Glythe]

Now I and some folks in my circle LOVE this boss encounter for the exact reason you say "your friend" hates it and wanted to quit. If a single individual mob ruins his experience so much, why not ignore the mob?

First let me say I could have just chugged a MP I have in my alt's bank to fix myself but I would rather not as that is kind of expensive. I plan on never fighting that boss again as it is not worth it. You have very high risk with lots of effort required and a meh reward. For the same effort/time you could just take 2 elite 80 players into GK to kill beaky, loot the showers chest/staff and kill the mini boss downstairs with no chance of a curse.

For game design to make sense you need to have risk balanced with reward. You have to kill that boss three times in a row to get 1 set of drops. That is part of what I have issue with the encounter. Why bother when you can get more on average out of Fae Realm elites?

Second it is important to note that bosses are often capable of moving out of their warning zones. This seems like a critical design element to be addressed during the beta. Yes I agree people often get very overconfident with bosses and tend to ignore the warnings. But it does not seem fair/just for someone to be able to get a curse who is normally very respectful of bosses.

My friend (no quotation marks needed) got this curse without getting the boss warning which doesn't seem exactly right. A similar thing happened to a guild member in the Rahu Sewers where the rat king was moved about 50m out of place so you would find him blocking the path (instead of being in a 'boss zone' corner).

[Glythe]

Looking at immunities specifically I really want to ask a question about a specific mob: Baruti.

http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Baruti

Effective: Acid
Ineffective : Piercing, Nature, Crushing, Slashing, Fire
Immune: Darkness



In case I failed to mention it before I wanted to emphasize the part about this boss that is so messed up. Acid in Project Gorgon Does not do health damage. So this boss allows you to deal effective health damage to his armor only. To me this is the complete picture of a broken monster experience.

1. He must be killed 3 times in a row without losing aggro when one spawns again.
2. He has no effective health damage type.
3. His curse is completely insane.

I get the game design thing where you want monsters to be immune to darkness/fire. But this is a mummy; a monster who is covered in flammable bandages. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall D&D greater mummies being resistant to fire so that is the only way I can accept that resistance.

[poulter]

Personally, I enjoy the mechanics of the Baruti fight, but as you point out, the rewards do not make it worthwhile farming it.
With a group of 6 people who know the mechanics and have adequate gear, failure to take down this boss is rare.
I often use archery or fire during the fight, but a spider /druid poison build works well.

Regarding effective /non-effective damage types:
For years I have treated this as + or - 25% damage (not sure if the % is still accurate)
The % is important for lower geared groups (or for new level cap runs - think: running of GK in level 60 gear), but for those in decent modded gear it equates to 1 or 2 more hits on the mob before it dies.
As long as you manage the mob's Rage this is not much of an issue.

[alleryn]

Acid in Project Gorgon Does not do health damage. So this boss allows you to deal effective health damage to his armor only.
Not true. Many (maybe all) acid abilities deal armor damge, but at least some also deal "normal" damage:
*Battle Chemistry's Acid Bomb deals ONLY armor damage
*Warden's Aggressive Deterrent deals ONLY armor damage
*Crossbow's Acid Bolt deals ONLY armor damage
*Sigil Scripting's Acid Sigil deals mostly armor damage. (e.g. Aid Sigi 4: Sigil uses long range attacks that deal 30 Acid damage plus 60 armor damage over 15 seconds
*Acid Arrow deals equal amount armor damage and normal damage: e.g. Acid Arrow 6 - 142 damage + 142 armor damage
*Spider's Spit Acid deals some armor damage, but mostly normal damage: e.g. Spit Acid 5 - 216 damage + 98 armor damage -- treasure effect to boost armor damage, but also to deal Health Damage over time

Just wanted to mention this, because i've heard before that all acid damage is armor damage, and this is a misconception.



He has no effective health damage type
True, but he it's not like every damage type is ineffective. He has "neutral" damage types too: Pyschic (which even has a lot of "Damage Health" abiilites that bypass armor (though apparently armor still absorbs some "Damage Health" damage from what i hear, not sure if this is a bug or not), Cold, Electricity, Trauma, and Poison.