Kurn's Tower, Breaching the Void (Heroic): Combat

[Reahov]

<p>Please express your thoughts on general mob difficulty and boss fights/strategies.</p>

[Hecula]

<p>Name fights were pretty straight-forward. Some simple but obvious cures needed but no real scripts or anything. We felt that it was a rather easy zone.</p>

[Pexsus]

<p>I don't know if I can adequately describe how dissappointed I am with this zone.  After more than a year of staring at this tower and knowing a zone was going to go in there the only challenge we are given is control effects and knockbacks?!</p><p>About the only plesant thing I can say about this zone if that it isnt chock full of trash in an attempt to delay progress through the zone.  It actually felt like there was simply enough trash.  But, naturally, half the trash has kickbacks, fears & stuns which makes me want to never do the zone again.  Seriously, using control effects on a fight here or there is one thing, it adds to variety but when you use them as much as you have here... it reaks of shoddy design.</p><p>The names are your usual lack of imagination snooze fests.  The first named summons a few adds, the second has a group wide MASSIVE kickback and some control effects, the third and fourth names seem to fall over from the breeze when you walk in the room.  Then we get to the "boss".  The only challenge in this entire encounter is the fact that the mob slaps 2 percentage-based dots on you.  If your healer gets stunned/ported and you cant hit a pot your group dies.  Yep, that's it.  That's the stunning climax.</p><p>I seriously hope this zone is in early alpha.  There has to be more to this zone than this.  If this zone goes live even remotely like it's current condition I cant even begin to imagine the feedback you are going to get.</p><p>Summary:</p><ul><li>Control effects are not fun.</li><li>Control effects are not challenging.</li><li>Control effects used on a large scale accomplish nothing but animosity.</li></ul>

[Freliant]

<p>Pexus, could you please post the quality gear that your group had, and their raid experience if any. That shows us from what angle you are looking at the zone from.</p><p>Also, compared to Crucible, is it harder or easier?</p><p>Remember to go to the x2 if you are mythical and well geared. That will be the challenge for raiders, not this zone, which was stated to be slightly harder than crucible.</p>

[Pexsus]

<p>I did this zone on my guard which is my alt.  I do have a mythical, I do have 3 pieces of the raid set and the rest was T2 shard armor.  I expect that some zones will be easier for me than some, the point I was trying to make is it simply isnt fun.  Maidens has more complex and interesting fights than Kurn's Tower.</p>

[Freliant]

<p>Ok, sounds good to me. Group makeup and experience can do alot to a zone, either brining it up or down in difficulty.</p><p>If the zone is indeed at the difficulty you state, then a little more would be good. But just a little more... we don't want it to go overboard either. I will get a better handle when I do a run-through.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Ok, sounds good to me. Group makeup and experience can do alot to a zone, either brining it up or down in difficulty.</p><p>If the zone is indeed at the difficulty you state, then a little more would be good. But just a little more... we don't want it to go overboard either. I will get a better handle when I do a run-through.</p></blockquote><p>Difficulty scaling would be entirely dependent on reward scale.</p><p>This zone implemented at the difficulty raiting mentioned by the devs responsible was failsauce from the get go.</p>

[Kordran]

<p><cite>Pexsus wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>I seriously hope this zone is in early alpha.  There has to be more to this zone than this.  If this zone goes live even remotely like it's current condition I cant even begin to imagine the feedback you are going to get.<p>Summary:</p><ul><li>Control effects are not fun.</li><li>Control effects are not challenging.</li><li>Control effects used on a large scale accomplish nothing but animosity.</li></ul></blockquote><p>The pervasive use of control effects seems to be something that the current crop of designers have really latched on to, and I'm not sure why they think it makes for fun or challenging gameplay. Using them ocassionally as a penalty, sure. But the widescale, pervasive use of them doesn't mean "challenge", it means "annoyance".</p><p>I remember back in the good ol' days, healers would complain about the fact that there was "nothing to do" but heal and that they were bored. So in came more encounters with DoTs, detrimentals and eventually curses. But SOE seems to have taken the ball and just run with it, so now healers can actually end up spending more time focusing on clearing detrimentals and curses than they do actually healing the players in their group. While I know healers enjoy doing more than just spamming their heals, the cure-fest that are some zones is just annoying to them (at least the ones that I've talked to).</p>

[Hecula]

<p>This zone was cake compared to Crucible. No fights are even as tough as the Master in difficulty. I am also dissappointed that we waited 1.5 years for this. It's a beautiful zone but very short - I seriously think it can be done in 30 mins or less. No real thought involved in killing it all - just a zone full of stuff.</p>

[Freliant]

<p>Ok, just did the zone. Very nice look to it, and the fights were straight-forward. It does feel incomplete. The named on the second level dropped Timed Explosives, but the mobs (void zappers) that they work on, are not in the zone yet... or they didn't spawn.</p><p>I feel the scripts are still being worked on, so commenting on its difficulty at this stage is not that good.</p><p>The final named is interesting... definately a cure fight. Someone has to stay outside the aoe arcane stun range and cure the healer... other than that (and the healer being on top of curing everyone in group) it was a pretty standard fight. We had to do it 5 times before we got him down, since we didn't realize what was happening initially, and tried using the timed explosives on the final named.</p><p>Everything but the final named falls along the rate of "easier than crucible". The trash did have more hp than crucible bit a bit, and there was definately more of them linked together, but it was an otherwise simple deal to get through them.</p><p>Zone felt exceedingly short... But I guess in a certain way... that is how it has to be... after all, the tower is not that high up...</p>

[Kander]

<p>I am still adding some cowbell to the bosses. There will be some other interesting elements soon, that are taking a bit of time.</p><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p><p>I will definitely look at removing some of the control effects, there may be a few too many.</p><p>Oh, the explosive charges are from Munzak's Bastion and dropping as a bug.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p></blockquote><p>Sure, just keep in mind, many of us have mastered all the current TSO zones, and we'd very much enjoy seeing one of the new zones provide a new challenge.</p>

[Freliant]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p></blockquote><p>Sure, just keep in mind, many of us have mastered all the current TSO zones, and we'd very much enjoy seeing one of the new zones provide a new challenge.</p></blockquote><p>Kurns x2 might be right up your alley.</p>

[Elanjar]

<p>edit: hadnt run other zones yet, decline to comment at this point</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p></blockquote><p>Sure, just keep in mind, many of us have mastered all the current TSO zones, and we'd very much enjoy seeing one of the new zones provide a new challenge.</p></blockquote><p>Kurns x2 might be right up your alley.</p></blockquote><p>Perhaps if it has a 24 hour reset time.</p>

[Xethren]

<p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I am still adding some cowbell to the bosses. There will be some other interesting elements soon, that are taking a bit of time.</p><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p><p>I will definitely look at removing some of the control effects, there may be a few too many.</p><p>Oh, the explosive charges are from Munzak's Bastion and dropping as a bug.</p></blockquote><p>Glad to hear Kander thank you. Keep the x1 version for 'everyone' and the x2 version not for everyone.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Xethren@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Glad to hear Kander thank you. Keep the x1 version for 'everyone' and the x2 version not for everyone.</p></blockquote><p>Only if the x2 has the same lockout as the heroic one...</p><p>WoE is great and all, but its every 5 days...  Leaving well, not enough.</p>

[Noaani]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Xethren@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Glad to hear Kander thank you. Keep the x1 version for 'everyone' and the x2 version not for everyone.</p></blockquote><p>Only if the x2 has the same lockout as the heroic one...</p><p>WoE is great and all, but its every 5 days...  Leaving well, not enough.</p></blockquote><p>Between WoE and Kurns you have 3 nights a week where you can run a x2 instance. If you run it on alts on alternate nights, you have 6 nights a week of running x2 instances.</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Between WoE and Kurns you have 3 nights a week where you can run a x2 instance. If you run it on alts on alternate nights, you have 6 nights a week of running x2 instances.</p></blockquote><p>Possibly, but its already one hell of a juggling act with mains/alts and the WoE timer, another one thrown in will be chaos without a [Removed for Content] scheduling application.</p><p>Truth is, I'd like some more challenging 6 man content, something allong the lines of PoF, but new stuff.</p>

[Bratface]

<p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I am still adding some cowbell to the bosses. There will be some other interesting elements soon, that are taking a bit of time.</p><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p><p>I will definitely look at removing some of the control effects, there may be a few too many.</p><p>Oh, the explosive charges are from Munzak's Bastion and dropping as a bug.</p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Well I don't have a mythical, I have T2 and fabled epic, I am a good player but I am not raid geared at all. Everything I have is shard or quested/collection. Everyone in my group is pretty much geared the same as I am.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We had a good time with the first floor, we did not have any aoe classes but it still went well, no deaths except when I stepped in front of the exhaust thingy....oops!</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The named was hard-ish, it is too much curing, constant unrelenting curing, I hesitate to want to go back bcause of the unblievable amount of detrimental effect we had on us constantly, it really turned me off. I don't mind some but this is insane for a group zone, we never had a second of combat without a detrimental effect (or two) on us that I can recall.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The corpses did not update the quest for the zone (in honor of the fallen? not sure about exact name) the corpses glowed but did nothing when we tried them. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So far I like it except for the detrimental overkill, I am looking forward to doing this when it is fixed, it got late so we never killed the first boss, but we will try again because it doesn't feel liek we have no chance to succeed, it feels like we just have to figure it out and it will get done, which is a nice change from knowing you just can't win an encounter.</span></span></p>

[Klaktar]

<p>Knockbacks are not fun, or challenging, or funny. They just annoy people. It's on par with this new fad of reactive debuffs that completely kill your damage. Not cool. Also, this zone is a joke. A group of people in mastercrafted gear with adept spells would mutilate this zone. Get off the WoW hand-the-players-what-they-want bandwagon and go back to designing this game to be legitimately GOOD.</p>

[Bratface]

<p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Oh another thing that I shoud add is that the detrimental snares totally ignored the Wardens Nature Walk AA, it landed every time and was not reduced.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It's been so long since I was snared that I forgot what it was like, I </span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">rarely</span></span></span><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> have a snare hit me in the years I have had the Nature Walk AA.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: tahoma, arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Knockback is not fun, it's not just a hassle having to run back to the mob but in SOE's infinite wisdom they gave us healers buffs that root us, like Gale, so when we get knocked back we have to click off the buff and then run back to the mob, not fun at all and it makes a nice buff totally useless, just like all of the TSO zones where we are on the move constantly so a buff, no matter how nice it is, that roots you in place is unusable.</span></span></p>

[Kander]

<p>I made several changes, they should be on test tomorrow. </p><p>Thanks to some of you for the constructive feedback.</p>

[Valdaglerion]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Kander wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I may up the overall difficulty, but the zone is really supposed to be for everyone. People with mythicals and raid gear will not find a challenge here. Its meant to be short and fast, yes.</p></blockquote><p>Sure, just keep in mind, many of us have mastered all the current TSO zones, and we'd very much enjoy seeing one of the new zones provide a new challenge.</p></blockquote><p>Hey Kander -</p><p>Perhaps what is needed is 2 scales of the zone only for T8.</p><p>(1) Normal zone: scaled appropriately for a majority of the players that everyone can enjoy</p><p>(2) Difficult zone: scaled appropriately for raid geared, mastered groups</p><p>Change the loot tables to percentage basis so the loot difference between the zones is a lower percentage chance of good loot dropping in the normal zone.</p><p>You could also add a flag to the Difficult zone so that once a toon has completed the Difficult zone they receive a flag that lowers the percentage drop rate on the normal zone even further so if they attempt to trivialize the content for farming nothing above treasured drops.</p><p>That would keep the content from being farmed and trivialized protecting the economy of the game while providing a good challenge alternative to the raiding community.</p>

[BleemTeam]

<p>Having a spot of difficulty with Telvorsinn, the named in the North room. Seems maybe I already know my answer, but I think maybe I didn't have enough DPS. Then again my group wasn't horrible. They seemed to keep insta-refreshing a 45k ward over and over. It was literally every second and it also took every debuff off every target. Furthermore, the encounter would reset maybe every 30 seconds.</p><p>Like I said, maybe I am missing something... Any light shed would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>

[Raetsel]

<p>We had a group of 5 to try this zone. Only 4 people finished the access quest to bypass the rock that blocks the way. Since this zone is a grp zonein we managed to zonein all 5 ppl.</p><p>Eventually at least 2 of the group got booted out of the zone again. These ppl got spammed with "You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired." for like 50 times.</p><p>Noone in the grp had a timer (not even the minimum timer). So unfortunately we were not able to test this zone.</p><p>Trying the x2 zone resulted in the same thing.</p><p>According to the log:</p><p>You have entered Kurn's Tower: Breaching the Void.</p><p>This instance will expire in 3 days.</p><p>You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired.</p><p>You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired.</p><p>You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired.</p><p>You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired.</p><p>You may not enter an instance created prior to when your previous instance's minimum lockout timer expired.</p><p>...</p>