18 replies to this topic

[Pardoux]

This creature has "native" stats of :-

 

Attack : 41066, Defence : 201788, Armour : 3032, Damage : 52408 and HP : 357911.

 

After the application of Dark Curse 225, Super Elite Slayer 175, Flinch 175 and Terrorize 175, the numbers become :-

 

Attack : 22021, Defence : 72139, Armour : 1970, Damage : 28104 and HP : 357911

 

Now, for a big guild, with large groups, and, if necessary, mercs, these stats are beatable. After all, the group only has to beat 72k defence (there's gear that will give me 40K Attack just with KE, Co-At and SH) and have defence > 22k and/or armour > 28k. Not quite, this beast also has pretty epic enhancements, but Demoralize will help us there.

 

1. Counter Attack does not work on the group creator (this has been confirmed by Hoof and he's looking into it at the moment). So, the easiest way of me boosting my stats and raising my 40K attack up to 57.5K is ruled out

 

2. In a small guild, with very few active players, getting a group is hard work and, getting a group with useful stat boosts is even harder, given how long it takes to form said group.

 

I've spoken to BG about the numbers for this SE and the response I initially got was that SE's are meant to be a challenge, to be "worked at". I totally agree with that, they SHOULD be a challenge - HOWEVER - but they aren't. 

 

A "challenge" is sitting down and working out a set that will beat the beast, either as part of a group or as a solo player. "Working at it" is exactly the same.

 

What we DO have tho, is that, because CA doesn't work in a group, I had to try to solo them. The only way, I found, to do that, was to rely upon specific buff activations. Having to rely on a percentage buff is not, IMO, a "challenge" nor is it "working at it".

 

As I've stated, Hoof is looking into the Counter Attack issue - and, if it does start working in groups, it will make the situation much better, but, for now, my proposal is either :-

 

1. Lower the SE stats slightly (I'm not asking for a WIN button here, just something that can be beaten without LUCK being a factor)

 

or, ideally,

 

2. Counter-Attack be made to work with groups.

[evilbry]

I personally don't see it as an issue, and would rather CA not work in groups.

 

Most people these days will just lock xp (if they care about it), and swing away waiting for the buff love. With groups you need to wait for people to join or get nice Mercs. even then it's a waiting game normally. Solo, you are just swinging until you kill it.

 

With that said, must be time for new Mercs and possibly a rehash of the old. That would help some of the smaller guilds you speak of.

[Pardoux]

I personally don't see it as an issue, and would rather CA not work in groups.

 

Most people these days will just lock xp (if they care about it), and swing away waiting for the buff love. With groups you need to wait for people to join or get nice Mercs. even then it's a waiting game normally. Solo, you are just swinging until you kill it.

 

With that said, must be time for new Mercs and possibly a rehash of the old. That would help some of the smaller guilds you speak of.

 

I get what you're saying Bri - and that's just what I ended up doing - swinging until the right buffs activated. 

 

BUT, is that what we've become ? - is that how the game goes forward ? 

 

Where now is the "skill" in developing sets to beat stats ? 

 

The only way for a small guild (i.e. one where there are insufficient members to boost the hitters stats sufficiently) to defeat this rascal is for the hitter to solo and hope - that's not a good development path IMO.

 

One response I got was, in essence, that's the advantage of big guilds. Well, yes, that's true - but do we want the game to be a world of multi-nationals ? - or do we still want some corner shops to flourish ?

 

As for new, more powerful mercs, yes please.

[Leos3000]

I see nothing wrong with this creatures stats. They are powerful, but beatable who said you should be able to kill every creature with out some real chance in dying? Not to mention if you fully buff up and use big pots and the best gear it's not very hard to kill it with out relying on luck....

As for ca in groups...BIG no from me the point of the buff is to help solo killers in exchange for using more stamina. Groups use a set amount of stamina every time no matter the combat and this is a big reason why ca does not work. So I see nothing wrong with either situation.

[Belaric]

Much to my great surprise I solo'd that bad boy when I had to. I was hunting the content to 1600 at the time so was in over the top all the potions to augment everything mode. Wasteful, but what the hell I was having fun! I had a group, but decided I wanted to save it for either the other SE or the Titan as I had no idea about their stats either, and as I also am in a small guild, getting new groups on tap is not always the easiest. Did have DC 225 distilled, was wearing gear that generated well over 50K attack pre counter attack being used (as I had ALL the Buffs on - I was Captain Christmas Tree), and did use  Flask of Death to minimise creature HP. With the newer shroud and zorgrom ultra attack sets it would be probably be easier now to get the required attack. Think I was using the Galdrin set at that time, as Ponamu had not yet been introduced. It came out right around then - but not before I had 4x forged both Galdrin pieces. Awesome. Maybe I got lucky with something somewhere as I think I 1 hit him to boot. Probably Piercing srike/crit hit happened. I do recall that the other 1600 SE seemed like a walkover in comparison to this guy. This one made me sweat, and then very happy when I got the kill.

 

I have no doubt if/when I go back to kill him again I may well find I was outrageously fortunate that first time around, but if no monsters are really hard then where is the challenge? I understand the point about it being sucky having to rely on a chance activation for wins, but has that not been with us in the past? Certainly to kill hooftest that was the case, and folk still happily went for it when given a chance!! I think lishka when she first came out was similar, and the dreadlord with his Soulless attribute I think caused folk to rely on Reflection etc. to kill him when he was new.

 

I don't think it is broke enough to need fixing.

[Pardoux]

 

I have no doubt if/when I go back to kill him again I may well find I was outrageously fortunate that first time around, but if no monsters are really hard then where is the challenge? I understand the point about it being sucky having to rely on a chance activation for wins, but has that not been with us in the past? Certainly to kill hooftest that was the case, and folk still happily went for it when given a chance!! I think lishka when she first came out was similar, and the dreadlord with his Soulless attribute I think caused folk to rely on Reflection etc. to kill him when he was new.

 

I don't think it is broke enough to need fixing.

 

As I said, I've already killed them both - and am working on a better suit - but the point of the thread is to try and stop LUCK being pretty much the determining factor in an outcome.

 

As for Hooftest, that's slightly different (and now impossible) in that folk were trying to complete a bounty on him which, if I remember correctly, a now-retired player completed after a LONG effort. Hooftest was "brownie points" for whoever got him - this is a game quest.

 

OK, folk don't need to do the quests, admittedly, but I do 'em all - so to leave this behind would have rankled.

 

I've already killed 'em now, so the stats change / CA change doesn't really affect me anymore (unless I wanna make the sets, which I'm thinking about) but the request was for future levellers arriving at that point.

 

Does it bother me specifically if either / both of my requests are actioned ? - not particularly - but BG asked me to throw the ideas out in a thread for feedback - which I've been getting. It seems, at the moment, 62.5% of voters (out of the, admittedly, VERY low poll) want one or both of my suggestions to be implemented though . Discounting my vote, that's still 57% for a change.

 

Hopefully more folk will comment and/or vote

[Maury Bund]

I voted leave it as is. I agree with Leos and Bri that CA should not work in a group environment as it is a trade off of stamina for power.  We had someone hunting it with groups yesterday and usually they were 15 or less players to each, with no mercs. Smaller guilds will just have to invest in the more expensive mercs (which there are WAYYY too many of the garbage mercs to sort through to find them) or ask everyone of significant level to help the team out and NOT wear an all epic set-up so that buffing the group members will actually make a difference.

[Pardoux]

I voted leave it as is. I agree with Leos and Bri that CA should not work in a group environment as it is a trade off of stamina for power.  We had someone hunting it with groups yesterday and usually they were 15 or less players to each, with no mercs. Smaller guilds will just have to invest in the more expensive mercs (which there are WAYYY too many of the garbage mercs to sort through to find them) or ask everyone of significant level to help the team out and NOT wear an all epic set-up so that buffing the group members will actually make a difference.

 

If counter-attack worked in a group, then the creating member would still have the stamina penalty. They'd lose stamina for creating the group AND for using Counter Attack ... 

[evilbry]

*grumbles about people who's fingers have a mind on their own*

 

Not sure how everyone came around to using Bri instead of Bry.. *blames a drunk paradox*

[gomezkilla]

 to invest in the more expensive mercs (which there are WAYYY too many of the garbage mercs to sort through to find them) 

I agree. It would be nice if searching for expensive mercs was more like scavenging in the cave. The more you pay, the higher chance for better mercs.

[Maury Bund]

How do you figure that? It is 20 stamina to make a group and if it takes 40 rounds of combat, it is still 20 stam for creator and 5 for each joiner. If CA were altered to take more stamina when creating the group, just for the creator, people would get around that by not casting until after the group was made.

 

Sorry, Bry. My spelink is atroachus to began wid

[Pardoux]

*grumbles about people who's fingers have a mind on their own*

 

Not sure how everyone came around to using Bri instead of Bry.. *blames a drunk paradox*

 

At least mine was only 1 letter wrong ... it's PARDOUX, not PARADOX (Hoof has always read it as paradox too tho)

[Pardoux]

How do you figure that? It is 20 stamina to make a group and if it takes 40 rounds of combat, it is still 20 stam for creator and 5 for each joiner. If CA were altered to take more stamina when creating the group, just for the creator, people would get around that by not casting until after the group was made.

 

Sorry, Bry. My spelink is atroachus to began wid

 

Sure, the group creation would still remain at 20 stamina, but the penalty for the group creator using Counter Attack would / should apply on however many rounds the combat took (as it does when used solo). Counter Attack shouldn't penalise other players in the group - and, ah, I see where some confusion is coming from now ..... 

 

When I say counter-attack should work in groups, I ONLY mean for the group creator, not for the whole group.

 

So, if I have 40K attack, and my group bumps that to 50K attack, my casting counter-attack would 

 

1) only boost MY 40K attack.

and

2) I would have the per round stamina penalty.

 

Is that any clearer ?

 

Sorry, having counter-attack apply to the whole group would be insane .. that really would be game changing.

[evilbry]

At least mine was only 1 letter wrong ... it's PARDOUX, not PARADOX (Hoof has always read it as paradox too tho)

oddly enough it was the fact I have switched to safari(for eldevin) that had your name wrong, it replaced pardoux as paradox.. I should really turn that setting off, and learn to proofread. 

[Belaric]

Pardoux,

 

I commiserated on the luck only front. Then said I could live with it. If we can statistically always work out how to always win safely against any monster. Bleh. In hunting - to gain levels, yes you should always have a way to create a set to win. Maybe not even just by 1 hitting. But 1 hitting is default now in game.

 

You are talking about a SUPER ELITE.

 

I'm sorry, but maybe some super elites should be able to tear our heads off and do the unmentionable down our necks. Until we get hard enough to take them on, or until we get lucky. Why is a SE being hard a problem?

 

 

 

Now.. if this thread is about extending CA to group attacks and using this one outlier of a SE as a reason to change that rule..... No.

[RJEM]

I've always understood CA not to function in group attacks because the 'sacrifice' of extra stamina for extra stats was not made. If, and I stress that's a big if, you were to allow CA to function for players in a group then I would suggest a 2nd tier of group would need to be created.

 

For argument's sake, a "CA-enabled Group" would cost 5 stamina to create, 10 to join, and CA would only function on players who had it actually cast on them - so mercs can't be boosted by 43.75% for free.

 

In fairness to Pard and others these situations are pretty rare, but pretty tough for those outside the larger guilds. Tough luck for us I guess - it's a game choice - but it's worth discussing.

[Mister Doom]

Honestly the stats are fine. SE's are meant to be the 'ultimate' level creatures in FS, we SHOULDN'T be able to defeat them 'solo' while we are at or around the same level of them.

 

WE are afterall not 'SE'...

 

Being able to whack at them and have a 'chance' is how it should be, until we achieve a certain 'level distance' above them. Obviously then we become more powerful than the creature 'stat-wise' and it then makes sense we can defeat it.

 

All being said though, I don't really play FS enough to care 'that' much either way, just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in...

 

 

 

 

Edit: 'Solo' guild player here and I smashed through these new SE's (for the quest) with relative ease...

[Crzy]

I vote to leave things as they are because groups don't use more stam per combat if I'm not mistaken. They only charge the initial 20 stam to create so even if the combat goes 100 rounds, it will only cost 20 stam, right? A 43.75% stat increase for no extra stam cost sounds like it would make merc hiring pointless.

[Pardoux]

I vote to leave things as they are because groups don't use more stam per combat if I'm not mistaken. They only charge the initial 20 stam to create so even if the combat goes 100 rounds, it will only cost 20 stam, right? A 43.75% stat increase for no extra stam cost sounds like it would make merc hiring pointless.

 

 

Wish you'd READ the thread, not just the first post before commenting

 

http://forums.hunted...342#entry787119

 

 

All the above being said tho, I've already soloed these SE's so my suggested change doesn't benefit me - I'm happy to leave them as they are given that seems to be the majority opinion now