O
old.Wildfire
Guest
During the development of Shrouded Isles, we've been testing out the many high level encounters (levels 65+) that can be found in the expansion. As you may know, we've run many controlled tests using the SI beta community to get feedback for the way that players fight these high level monsters.
Since much of Shrouded Isles involves such high-level monster encounters, we have recently taken a long look at the way the numbers work when players fight monsters that are level 65+, and we uncovered more than a few problems. First and foremost, as any mage knows, it is almost impossible to land a damage spell against an epic monster. As any tank knows, it is almost impossible to hit for more than one or two points of damage per attack. In fact, because of these problems, the only way to damage such monsters was to cast a damage-add spell on players engaging in melee - even mages cast damage adds on their own weapons and go up and melee attack the monster. This is because damage adds also have a bug where they are completely unaffected by monster level - leaving players in a situation where they hit a monster for 1 point of damage, but get 30 or more added on.
The end result of these bugs is that the only way to kill a high level monster is to rush it with dozens, if not a hundred or more, of players, all swinging at it in melee combat, most with damage add spells. This is definitely not the way it should be working - in fact, some monsters are tuned to not "like" melee damage and are extremely resistant to it (such as the dragon AI); which is why dragons are so rarely slain. Others, like Legion, are more tolerant of melee damage, which is why Legion is slain more often than the dragons.
Now that we know what the problems are, we're going to try to fix them. So, we're making the following changes on Gaheris, the end result should be that mages will be able to land spells on epic monsters for real damage, and tanks should actually be able to damage monsters with weapons for more than token damage, and if all goes well, you won't need such a huge group to take them on. Please note that these changes are for testing only right now:
- increasing the chance for mage spells to hit epic monsters, and actually do damage.
- increasing the chance for melee attacks to hit epic monsters, and do more damage.
- capping the bonus damage that damage adds do to epic monsters (although they will still help while fighting them). Please note that this should not change the way that damage adds work against normal (i.e. almost all level 64 and below) monsters.
Please note that since most level 65+ monsters have to be attacked by large groups of players in order to do much damage at all, pet casters will aid these groups by adding their pets to the number of attackers.
Finally, remember that these changes are, for the moment, on Gaheris only, where we will be scheduling many high-level encounters for testing. We may (in fact probably will) change this system around more than once before it hits the live servers. If you're interested in testing these encounters out, then charcopy your favorite high level character to Gaheris.
Since much of Shrouded Isles involves such high-level monster encounters, we have recently taken a long look at the way the numbers work when players fight monsters that are level 65+, and we uncovered more than a few problems. First and foremost, as any mage knows, it is almost impossible to land a damage spell against an epic monster. As any tank knows, it is almost impossible to hit for more than one or two points of damage per attack. In fact, because of these problems, the only way to damage such monsters was to cast a damage-add spell on players engaging in melee - even mages cast damage adds on their own weapons and go up and melee attack the monster. This is because damage adds also have a bug where they are completely unaffected by monster level - leaving players in a situation where they hit a monster for 1 point of damage, but get 30 or more added on.
The end result of these bugs is that the only way to kill a high level monster is to rush it with dozens, if not a hundred or more, of players, all swinging at it in melee combat, most with damage add spells. This is definitely not the way it should be working - in fact, some monsters are tuned to not "like" melee damage and are extremely resistant to it (such as the dragon AI); which is why dragons are so rarely slain. Others, like Legion, are more tolerant of melee damage, which is why Legion is slain more often than the dragons.
Now that we know what the problems are, we're going to try to fix them. So, we're making the following changes on Gaheris, the end result should be that mages will be able to land spells on epic monsters for real damage, and tanks should actually be able to damage monsters with weapons for more than token damage, and if all goes well, you won't need such a huge group to take them on. Please note that these changes are for testing only right now:
- increasing the chance for mage spells to hit epic monsters, and actually do damage.
- increasing the chance for melee attacks to hit epic monsters, and do more damage.
- capping the bonus damage that damage adds do to epic monsters (although they will still help while fighting them). Please note that this should not change the way that damage adds work against normal (i.e. almost all level 64 and below) monsters.
Please note that since most level 65+ monsters have to be attacked by large groups of players in order to do much damage at all, pet casters will aid these groups by adding their pets to the number of attackers.
Finally, remember that these changes are, for the moment, on Gaheris only, where we will be scheduling many high-level encounters for testing. We may (in fact probably will) change this system around more than once before it hits the live servers. If you're interested in testing these encounters out, then charcopy your favorite high level character to Gaheris.
