Edowen
09-09-2005, 05:33 AM
<DIV>I just went to The Hideout to try today's patch with my 50 Monk. She wears a couple of pieces of legendary gear and wields legendary weapons, but everything else is treasured. She has no Adept IIIs and no Master Is, just mostly adept Is and app IVs and a few app 1s (this is aside from the Master IIs she got from training tonight). In other words, she is representative or slightly better geared than the average player.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>My test was conducted after reading the boards and chatting with some other established players on the server. What I wanted to discover was whether it was still true that soloing was very much more difficult than it has been on Live, or even for most of the revamp (skipping the first several days). A few groups would be enough to confirm (or not), assuming the results were consistant.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Unfortunately my experience matched what people were saying. As of this patch, I doubt more than a very few people would want to solo The Hideout. I did not die, but was deep into the red zone on every encounter. I was forced to use my heal (three minute timer on that) on the very first encounter (three double-down blues, for heaven's sake). I tried to play smart... pouring on the offense as much as I could, using the balanced stance and the self-root defensive buff (can't remember the name atm)... and that was the best I could do. Before yesterday, I could take groups in the first room and rarely hit the orange zone. That felt about right... they were supposed to be solo-able and weaker than me. Now I have to wait between groups to be sure my heal is up, and wonder why mobs that are weaker than me and supposed to be soloable take every bit of my skill and a bit of luck to beat. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In thinking about possible causes, I am wondering if agility could be broken. When I went through the forced /respec after logging in, I chose to enhance my toon's agility every time that choice was offered. Yet, her avoidance (as displayed on the details tab of the personna window) never increased. After that, when I did buff Spider Stance, her avoidance did go up about 2%, so it appears that the value does update at least sometimes. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The other thing I noticed is that Irgul has about 15% (maybe a bit more) greater hitpoints than she had last weekend. She has not upgraded her gear, though she did ding 50. If health has been added to offset lower avoidance and mitigation, I would like to say please, this is not a good thing. Monks are supposed to be fast and agile fighters. They are supposed to beat mobs not by wearing heavy armor to survive being hit or landing devastating blows by swinging a huge weapon, but by avoiding being hit in the first place and hitting their opponents over and over again when others would miss. Giving us more hit points so we can survive being hit more is basically making us be more like other fighters and less like a distinct subclass. Wasn't one goal of the combat revamp supposed to be making the subclasses more differentiated?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I did not expect to feel so disappointed, but I do. I admit I am one of the people who has not been very enthusiastic about the combat revamp in general, but I have so much respect for many of the devs I have met or seen via testing, and have been so impressed by some of the creative and beautiful content they have created, I guess I just had faith that the combat revamp would eventually work out okay. Maybe its the timing - after the revamp felt mostly completed and with so few days remaining before it goes live - but now I don't know what to expect. Certainly I no longer just believe it will be good. Somehow, that makes me feel sad.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Edowen</DIV><p>Message Edited by Edowen on <span class=date_text>09-08-2005</span> <span class=time_text>09:38 PM</span>