Feedback - Kurn's Tower Named fights

[CuCullain]

Ran this zone for the first time last night with 2 different raids and have some feedback for you.

First named mob: The fight itself is pretty good, doesn't take to long to figure out and the mechanics are challenging while not being overwhelming.

One thing I think could use some tweaking:

1. The Shield curse happens to frequently and is perhaps to rough. In one raid we where ok with a Zerker tank, in another we where not with a Pally tank. I think the biggest difference is the Zerker force had a Brigand with TS and the pally raid did not. If I am correct I believe the TS was delaying the curse enough to make it managable, while not having it made it unmanagable. I'd recommend increasing the normal gap between the shield curse going off and/or doing something to the curse to allow players more time to cure it (perhaps a 75% or 50% shield reduction instead of 100%).

Second named mob: The fight is relativly simple, but it is a giant pain in the butt. We figured out how to do it, but the mechanics and split second timing are yet another example of how not to do raids anymore. These type of encounters are why people are sick of raiding and not having fun raiding eq2 anymore. Please stop using these type of ideas, you will not make it past the next expansion if you continue to do so.

Two tweaks

1. Give the players more time to get to the right grates

2. Give the healers more than 2 seconds to cure the dot we have to move to.

3. Change the color of the warning text to red or better yet just simply remove that effect

I know we want them to be challenging, but annoying and frustrating don't have to be included. We have three fail conditions in this fight and 1 alone is bad enough.

[Oskoss]

Well we took the first name down, but ran into some problems with the second. We are moving from grate to grate so avoid the arcane, but where do you go when you get the blue text, saying time to fly? As tanking, I would always get punted even if I lined my back up to the larger wall.

[Agaxiq]

you will never get punted while the grates are spewing.

[Dasein]

One small change I would like to see made to the first fight is to give a bit more feedback concerning the debuffs. First, I'd like to see a more visible indication of which color debuff you've got - a screen color change would work best. Also, make the bubbles a bit brighter, as it can be hard to spot them against a darker background and with all the particle effects going off. Finally, add some indication that you are safely in a bubble. A simple message on the screen should be sufficient here.

[FimisOrbe]

Ileene's Fight works now flawless, but its boring as hell.

The last Named is funny. Love the fight with the possess of the Pet, atleast not as annoying as Gozak fight!

[Geothe]

Dasein wrote:

One small change I would like to see made to the first fight is to give a bit more feedback concerning the debuffs. First, I'd like to see a more visible indication of which color debuff you've got - a screen color change would work best. Also, make the bubbles a bit brighter, as it can be hard to spot them against a darker background and with all the particle effects going off. Finally, add some indication that you are safely in a bubble. A simple message on the screen should be sufficient here.

There is a message when you are safely in the bubble,  I cant remember exactly what it is, but it appears in your chat box.And colored screens aren't needed at all (and would probably make finding the right bubble a lot tougher).  EVERYONE should know how to look at their debuff bar, especially if they are in that zone.  If your debuff is red.. go to the red bubble, if blue, go to the blue bubble.  Pretty simple.

On the second name..  I think there needs to be a bit more of a delay from when you see the grates lighting up and before the actual arcane hits.  Movement is very tough and the smallest bit of lag can be fatal there.. especially since the arcane stifles you as well when it hits. Like another 2 or 3 seconds between the visual and the actual Arcane AE hitting would be fine imo.

[LardLord]

I like the second named.

The blue text was getting bugged for us (relogging seemed to fix it, at least for a couple pulls), but it didn't really matter.  You basically move to a safe grate and then immediately move to a place where you can avoid the KB (either along one of the two "walls" or "under" one of the four pillars) once they stop steaming.  Since you actually have to do your job while moving, it makes for a pretty good "adrenaline rush" fight.  Honestly, it'd be even better if eventually all four grates started steaming, so there would be a fairly rigid DPS check (as far as I can tell this doesn't happen, unless it just takes forever).

Unfortunately, if it gets nerfed, it will probably turn from an "adrenaline rush" fight to the type of tedious (but not at all difficult) fight that made me hate the second wing of VP.  The fact that it requires a fairly quick reaction time is critical to making the fight enjoyable.

This x2 was supposed to be a lot harder than WoE, wasn't it?

[Banditman]

The problem we ran into with that second name is that the grates don't always render when they are going "active".

We had people who could easily see them going active, and others who never saw any difference in the effect on the grates.

Any graphical effect tied to a fail condition should be very simple and be drawn at ANY graphics setting, including the very lowest.  This does not appear to be the case for this effect.

[Vlahkmaak]

We had a color blind wizard - I noticed he kept running between the bubbles and running around like a chicken with his head cut.  After several attemts to figure out why it was so hard for him to figure out red and blue circles (literally ran right between them at one point turned around and ran right back between them) I sent him a /tell and asked if he was color blind.  Turns out he cannot see the colored circles at all: I hear yellow might be a better solution for people with color blindness -Maybe you could consider adding a geometric shape red is a pyramid/triangle and blue remains a semi sphere.   Any one else have a color blind person in their raid force run into this issue?  I ahd to sit him out of the fight for the good of the raid force - as an advocate in RL for kids with disabilities this was not something I enjoyed doing in the least bit.  Gonna be working on a way for him to get to the right place if changes cannot be made to the event.

[Oskoss]

Agaxim@Unrest wrote:

you will never get punted while the grates are spewing.

What do you mean by this? Will you still get punted if you stand on the grate with the bubbles?

[Lader]

i think he means you wont get kb while a grate is active (i.e if you go near it you get the arcane). I cant be positive but im pretty sure people were getting kb at any time, even if the portals were active.

[CuCullain]

Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I like the second named.

The blue text was getting bugged for us (relogging seemed to fix it, at least for a couple pulls), but it didn't really matter.  You basically move to a safe grate and then immediately move to a place where you can avoid the KB (either along one of the two "walls" or "under" one of the four pillars) once they stop steaming.  Since you actually have to do your job while moving, it makes for a pretty good "adrenaline rush" fight.  Honestly, it'd be even better if eventually all four grates started steaming, so there would be a fairly rigid DPS check (as far as I can tell this doesn't happen, unless it just takes forever).

Unfortunately, if it gets nerfed, it will probably turn from an "adrenaline rush" fight to the type of tedious (but not at all difficult) fight that made me hate the second wing of VP.  The fact that it requires a fairly quick reaction time is critical to making the fight enjoyable.

This x2 was supposed to be a lot harder than WoE, wasn't it?

Was supposed to start as similar to the last WoE fight and get a little harder from there.

I agree with some of the other posts above, making the bubbles more obvious might help.

[Kordran]

Agaxim@Unrest wrote:

you will never get punted while the grates are spewing.

That is incorrect.

[Noaani]

My only suggestion for this zone as it is now is to change the knockback on the second named from what it is now to a curse with a 4 second duration that punts the target if/when it expires.

This adds a little more flexibility to the encounter, adds in different possible stratagies, and replaces the small luck portion of the encounter with communication based player skill.

[CuCullain]

Noaani wrote:

My only suggestion for this zone as it is now is to change the knockback on the second named from what it is now to a curse with a 4 second duration that punts the target if/when it expires.

This adds a little more flexibility to the encounter, adds in different possible stratagies, and replaces the small luck portion of the encounter with communication based player skill.

With AAs and gear your remove curse is arround 2s casting time, giving the couple healers in the fight 2 seconds to remove an affect in a mobile fight is a bad idea. Couple that with the over use of curses in general and no thank you.

[Tehom]

I loved the second named fight too, although admittedly our crit mit was so high he couldn't crit anyone, so I can't really say how much of a gear check he was - I just loved all the hopping around and the knockback.

My real complaint is the loot in the place. So far, the only thing I've seen that -anyone- would use is the ring with beneficial casting haste from the second named (didn't drop for us, just been looking at links). I know the zone isn't supposed to drop absolutely amazing stuff, but things that'd fill weak slots would be keen, like charm slots for non-avatar folks, or logical upgrades to the super-rare items from heroic zones. Like put in an upgrade to Essence of Mastery, Najena's Ring of Readiness, etc. They wouldn't be really overpowered because the zone is currently pretty darned difficult, and as long as they're slight logical upgrades off -heroic- gear, who would really complain? Heck, put in logical upgrades to Shard of Hate loot, like a leather-wearable Rune Etched Helm before druids can, you know, be at a gozak kill, equivilent items to Ring of Repulsion, etc. I don't think many people would argue any of those would be overpowered for Kurn's Tower. Just adding a lot of effects like mana well, runic barrier, greater bane procs, or similar to existing items in there would help a touch.

The zone doesn't have to be candyland, but I think it could be itemized with a few chase items to really give people incentive for going. Zones without pattern/armor drops inherently have to have better quality items in order to just make up for lack of quantity of drops with progression, after all.

[YeldarbSpiritbla]

LOL at raiders that complain about difficulty...

The fights are great, don't change them. Although using shapes in the detrimental is a great idea for color blind people, well said. There is a couple of items you can use in the second fight, easily obtainable by anyone, that makes the kb a non-issue. Use your brain. Haven't tried the third named yet after any changes because we had complained about the trash mobs, but that is being worked on? or already solved...

We also had a couple of people complain about the bubbles not rendering as well. Although I had High Performance settings on and I could see them plainly... don't know what that's all about.

BTW the second named drops the best charm slot piece in the game for casters short of avatar charms. I have to admit though, we haven't seen all the drops yet.

[Desna]

I was actually disappointed with the heroic version of Kurns...with all the talk and wonder around Kurns Tower, I was hoping for it to be more in line with the Guks or a hair below Ferzhul in difficulty...and we breezed through it all within a half hour, as if it were an Obelisk of Ahkzul run instead. Kind of anti-climatic considering you needed an access quest to get in.

(Technically we spent 43 min in the instance, but that was because we were looking for the quest updates.)

I haven't gotten the joy of going into the x2 yet, but definitely looking forward to it, I hear it's pretty challenging. Though this just kind of points out how misleading the heroic Kurns is in this aspect as well.

[Tehom]

YeldarbSpiritblade wrote:

BTW the second named drops the best charm slot piece in the game for casters short of avatar charms. I have to admit though, we haven't seen all the drops yet.

Admittedly I haven't seen most of the loot yet, but we've seen a lot of items, and most of it is pretty terrible. One thing to remember is that the items need to be chase items that offer meaningful upgrades for people to have incentive to do the zone, since you don't get the sort of upgrades-by-default that armor patterns provide in WoE and the like. I love the fights, don't get me wrong - I just think in its current state it'd be done maybe a few times for people for the one item someone's alt might use from the zone, and then they'll be done. I think it's healthier that the zone gets a lot more use than that, because I considered it genuinely enjoyable, just really unrewarding.

[Volimor]

We've entered here twice now and had several problems with this zone.  First the first time we ran it, it seemed to flow smoothly for the first named, with the exception of the blue and red bubbles.  First time we went in there it always seemed one of the colored bubbles always spawned right on top of the fire pits in the center of the room.  This was not good, becuase if the pit went off it was a wipe.   Now it seems like that was fixed or just a fluke of nature. 

So we went in again last night.  First name was going smoothly until the bubbles spawned again.  This time they were spawning ontop of the trash that was either respawning or being summons.  Now the walking spawn that is only a ^^ herioc isn't a deal is not the issuse anyone in the raid is able to kill it, but the issuse is when you have 4 mobs from a group one being a ^^^ x2 and three ^^ x2 in the group makes this fight extremly hard and next to impossible to win.  We wiped 6 times to the bubbles spawning right on top of the trash respawns, until we finally got a pull where it didn't happen.  Now I am not sure if the trash is a fail safe or what not, but if its just another fluke you should probably look at it again.

The next named.  Now I don't normally ever scream fix this mob, but several things aren't right here.  If you get the message time to fly its no warning period your flying, and it seems anyone close to you is flying too.  As for the arcane bubbles that is easy to figure out, but I think that dot needs to tick just a little slower, not by much just enough where it can be cured before the tick hits for tanking purposes.    I will say however I do not enjoy this zone tbh.  I will run it to run it and get the aa, but once i kill it or most in my guild kill it it will be one of many zones you all put in that aren't worth or time, becuase you've managed to take the fun out of it.

I know you want to make zones more difficult for progression wise, but when the strats to killing a mob, aren't fun or enjoyable, its more of an annoyance than anything else.

[Lader]

I agree. TSO raid mobs are simply not fun, theyre tedious. KOS, EOF, and some DOF mobs have been fun. TSO is like Venril Sathir on every encounter. Having one person initiate a fail condition on every mob sucks the fun out of raiding. You can make mobs challenging without making them annoying.

[YeldarbSpiritbla]

Lader wrote:

I agree. TSO raid mobs are simply not fun, theyre tedious. KOS, EOF, and some DOF mobs have been fun. TSO is like Venril Sathir on every encounter. Having one person initiate a fail condition on every mob sucks the fun out of raiding. You can make mobs challenging without making them annoying.

There are ONLY 5 mobs in TSO with one person fail conditions... Seriously, do you even raid? 4 of them are zone bosses...

[Apos]

YeldarbSpiritblade wrote:

Lader wrote:

I agree. TSO raid mobs are simply not fun, theyre tedious. KOS, EOF, and some DOF mobs have been fun. TSO is like Venril Sathir on every encounter. Having one person initiate a fail condition on every mob sucks the fun out of raiding. You can make mobs challenging without making them annoying.

There are ONLY 5 mobs in TSO with one person fail conditions... Seriously, do you even raid? 4 of them are zone bosses...

I don't dislike TSO fights, but I think you're forgetting some just because they are basically trivial after you have enough practice. Gynok, Mynzak, Anashti, Zarrakon, Tyrannus, Uktap, Switchmaster, Grummus (haha well sort of), Ykesha, etc. And they probably were counting things where individuals can mess up spectacularly and wipe you, like naga or curing on kultak/stalker or whatever. I don't see the point behind a lot of that stuff when it's so easy to get around and it seems like the net effect is me spending a minute explaining what to watch out for to a new raider.

Aaaaanyways, back to the loot. It's pretty awful. I mean if they are upgraded like 10x over I'll feel bad about transmuting the items I world disco'd, but no one's alts would have used this stuff. I mean seriously, at least the cloaks from aiden or whatever upgrade people using like signature stuff or whatever or people that don't have cloaks from ozyk, or other fill ins for weak spots, but nothing coming out of the new x2 at all did that. Not even a little. Slap like a few percent base increases on this stuff and call it a day.

[YeldarbSpiritbla]

Gynok, Mynzak, Anashti, Zarrakon, Switchmaster, Ykesha. Ok, 6, I missed Mynzak because he's trivial.

Tyrannus - The only people that have to kill the add are people that do so without thinking about it. 20k hps, woo.

Uktap - If you're doing this fight correctly, the sapper is a non-issue. You don't even have to worry about the sapper at all. We don't even know the sapper exists any more.

Grummus (haha well sort of) - Yeah, well, if we're counting avatars, then include Valor too, but Grummus is like, move to where you already are...

The curse cures and such are just doing your job. If you can't do your job, you shouldn't be raiding. The naga picks 4 people so it doesn't even fit the criteria of a single person wipe situation AT ALL.

The Ykesha fight is just stupid. It's absolutely the worst fight of any expansion ever. It's the dumbest setup of circumstances ever devised. Yes, let's pull a mob 10 times to get the exact set of things to happen to even be able to have a prayer. 100% based on luck. If everything happens perfectly the first 2 minutes, you've won, if not, you lose. This doesn't even count the fake pulls to set up the mobs... terrible.

[Apos]

Yeah my point wasn't that they were difficult or even a factor almost at all, just they were overused and included in things where there doesn't seem to be any reason for it (Grummus for example), where it adds basically nothing to the difficulty. And to use the ykesha example, I really don't think warbeads add a whole lot of difficulty to the fight compared to, oh I dunno, the banish. Just seem unnecessary and kinda silly to me, like a dev was trying to prove to his boss he put a lot of work into an encounter by showing what abilities it had or whatever even if in practice it does more or less nothing.

[Noaani]

Faush@Antonia Bayle wrote:

With AAs and gear your remove curse is arround 2s casting time, giving the couple healers in the fight 2 seconds to remove an affect in a mobile fight is a bad idea. Couple that with the over use of curses in general and no thank you.

The knockback should not be triggering while the grates are active, which would mean the healers need not cure the curse (if implemented) at the same time as a move is needed.

Also, the knockback happens too frequently for the healers to be able to cure them all, so they would have to chose who to cure, or even if they cure anyone.

[Tehom]

I got to see the last two named fights in the zone the other day. You know, I actually really love the fights in this zone - the twins fight is kinda fun, and I thought the last fight is a blast with Kurn and all that. New loot we see continues to be disappointing though - we got a wrist from the last dude which is kind of an item midway between Veksar1 priest wrist and Tyrannus wrist - 7% damage (normalized I think, not base) increase on crit heals. Things like that should probably at least have a few beneficial casting haste or reuse on em.

I guess I'm mostly looking for an excuse to run the zone often just because I enjoy it - it'd be sorta depressing to have a pretty fun zone and no real reason to go there beyond just getting discos on things you transmute.

[GeneralChaos]

Named 1: Please stop trash respawning, having bubbles spawn on top of 2 x2 mobs isnt fun. We had the encounter break when a few people got charmed(bubbles overlapping) and got no loot.

Named 2: The KB is too often and too short notice, id suggest make it one person only with 5 secs to do sommat as with everyone dodging grates its hard to not kb someone else. I would suggest making it so that its not instant death if you arnt facefirst in a wall, e.g the encounter gives everyone fae glide and have a porter from bottom to fight while mob is engaged. That way you are out of the fight for 15-20 secs but not dead with a wait for lift. The arcane is fine as it is tbh, maybe slightly longer time to react.

[Mabes]

I'd reccommend adding an uncurable detrimental (that the other group members can see in group window, and call out who has it) for the knockback warning of 2nd named.  Too often the message would pop up, like after you're already flying off the platform.

[CuCullain]

Finally convinced enough guilders to try this zone again tonight. I wanted to try it with the adjustments and see what happens.

Group Makeup (all w/ Mythicals, A3+/mostly Masters, a lot of fabled raid gear, all experienced in raiding)

• Zerker (MT)
• Templar
• Defiler
• Dirge
• Coercer
• Assassin

• Conjy
• Necro
• Illusionist
• Troub
• Inquisitor
• Ranger

1. First named - Bubbles work a lot better now and the 10% adds seems good to. Can't think of anything else I would correct for this fight.

2. Second Named - We may not fully 100% understand this fight yet, but I think we are pretty close if not. The reduction of the damage that the arcane does is better, can't say at this time if it needs to be lower.. probably is fine as is. The detrimental knockback icon is either buggy or confusing. I think this mob has 2 knock backs, 1 that warns you with text and another that is the debuff icon. What I do know is that you can get knocked back w/o the icon and w/ text and w/o text and w/ the icon. So either it is two different knockbacks or the warning is buggy. Which leads me to the knockback in general.

Something needs to be adjusted with this knockback. Sometimes you hit one of the east/west walls and stop, other times you hit them and then shoot to the side and off the platform. I have seen people launched off the side when their back was against one of those pillars and the mob was directly in front of them.. Something just seems out of wack with it and I don't know of any consistent way to avoid bad luck side launches.

Again I guess this comes down to your target audience.. the first named is a little easier than Aiden, the 2nd guy seems to be much harder even if you can figure out a way to remove the "luck" factor to the knockbacks.

Unfortunatly it is becoming more and more difficult to get people to do this zone. Sure you can take the first guy no problem, but the second is a pretty big pita with little motivation to clear him.

Changes I would suggest to the 2nd fight

1. Make the knockback only occur if you gett he detrimental effect and make it so that if that person gets their back to a wall they are safe.

2. Extend the script a little so that people have a few more seconds to get to a grate and a little more time in between bubbles.

3. Change the color of the bubbles so it stands out a little more.

4. Reduce the mobs melee resistances, as it is now you almost have to have a Brigand to get him debuffed enough for melee DPS and even tanks to hit him a reasonable amount. W/O a Brigand we had both the tank and an assassin at the +weapons dmg type cap and they still connected less then 50%, even 40%.

5. Might not be fixable.. if you die sometimes the large amount of bubbles animation is still present on 1 or more grates, people had to turn alt models off and on to fix it; ala Trak)