Forays: A Review.

Ictinus

I've been keeping half an eye on this thread as time allows. Unfortunately a lot of what was suggested @Astarod isn't practically possible for a variety of reasons. 

That said: I empathise and agree with a large portion of the feedback on foray tuning. It's on the list for some work (as discussed in our 2020 plans post), but nothing concrete to announce yet.

Minifie

Were people using iwings to cheese forays or just escape timer death/quick way back? 

Armali

Something I noticed about the big mobs is that a lot of battlerage afflictions straight up don't work on them for some reason.

Here's an example:

Krizal's aura of weapons rebounding disappears.

Krizal psychically slams her mind into Borgron, captain of the fortress's, deadening Borgron, captain of the fortress's reactions. 

[aeon]

H:7052 M:6919 E:35608 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:00.41-

Krizal takes a long drag off an enamel bubble pipe.

H:7052 M:6919 E:35608 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:00.66-

Borgron, captain of the fortress sinks his blades into the flesh of Krizal, opening wounds that instantly fester with poison.

BORGRON IS ON KRIZAL!

H:7052 M:6919 E:35608 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:00.93-

Krizal eats a gypsum crystal.

H:7052 M:6919 E:35608 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:00.94-

Krizal takes a drink from a stone vial.

H:7052 M:6919 E:35608 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:00.95-

You have recovered balance on all limbs.

H:7052 M:6919 E:35628 W:29096 kdbex ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:01.67-

H:7052 M:6919 E:35628 W:29096 kdbex ([borgron] [9%] [38]) 09:28:01.76-

You are not fallen or kneeling.

You already have your breath summoned, Wyrm.

You rip into Borgron, captain of the fortress with your massive, deadly claws.

H:7052 M:6919 E:35588 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [8%] [44]) 09:28:01.77-

Krizal has writhed free of her .

H:7052 M:6919 E:35588 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [8%] [44]) 09:28:01.88-

Borgron, captain of the fortress sinks his blades into the flesh of Krizal, opening wounds that instantly fester with poison.

BORGRON IS ON KRIZAL!

H:7052 M:6919 E:35588 W:29096 kdbe ([borgron] [8%] [44]) 09:28:01.98-

From help battlerage:

 * Aeon         - The denizen attacks at 66% normal speed for 6 seconds.

Borgron's normal attack rate is 1s, so aeon wasn't doing anything. I remember reviewing a log and seeing that the weakness affliction also wasn't reducing the damage done by Aran'kesh. Clumsiness, stun, and amnesia all seem to work, but it's frustrating knowing that half of our primary bashing toolkit isn't usable here, turning these fights almost into pure artefact gates - you either have enough to tank or you don't.

Sobriquet

When I asked about Brage i was told the afflictions had a -chance- to proc as I was seeing clumsiness not affecting werewolves in LHG. 

Phaestus

Aeon will no longer be ineffective against mobs that attack faster than a certain speed, due to buggy math (this is the sort of thing that you should file a bug about, really). Off the top of my head, I believe all battlerage afflictions should affect all mobs, minus a few exceptions where mobs will heal while still inhibited.

Armali

With all due respect, I've filed lots of bugs and they set unattended, or they will be returned with a 'not a bug' comment. Posting on the forums where admin have already posted seems the best way to get clear, concrete answers on these issues.

Cooper

Phaestus said:

Aeon will no longer be ineffective against mobs that attack faster than a certain speed, due to buggy math (this is the sort of thing that you should file a bug about, really). Off the top of my head, I believe all battlerage afflictions should affect all mobs, minus a few exceptions where mobs will heal while still inhibited.

This has been filed as a bug, along with other similar battle rage abilities. Makarios has stated that the big battlerage stuff is not supposed to work on boss mobs.

Phaestus

Cooper said:

Phaestus said:

Aeon will no longer be ineffective against mobs that attack faster than a certain speed, due to buggy math (this is the sort of thing that you should file a bug about, really). Off the top of my head, I believe all battlerage afflictions should affect all mobs, minus a few exceptions where mobs will heal while still inhibited.

This has been filed as a bug, along with other similar battle rage abilities. Makarios has stated that the big battlerage stuff is not supposed to work on boss mobs.

Ah, yes, you're correct that abilities that stop attacks completely (i.e. stun, charm, fear) can't be used against certain denizens. Aeon is intended to work, however, as are the others.

Phaestus

Armali said:

With all due respect, I've filed lots of bugs and they set unattended, or they will be returned with a 'not a bug' comment. Posting on the forums where admin have already posted seems the best way to get clear, concrete answers on these issues.

I'm just going to direct you here

Caelan

And here I was hoping for a solid Rick Roll...  1/10 boss man. ;-)

Amelyn

Have you removed the dragonquest foray? It have'nt been up for about 10 hours?

Achilles

Amelyn said:

Have you removed the dragonquest foray? It have'nt been up for about 10 hours?

I'm convinced it's been gone the last few days.

Saonji

There was a pretty noticeable bug with it that a lot of people were abusing.

Minifie

Fixed a bug where we noticed people were having fun.

Astarod

Why did @Ictinus buff Borgron? He was fine before for duos. Now he just damages me out (with a full set of runes) in less than a minute. It used to be a game of whether you would run out of mana or not before bleed. Now it just seems to be straight DPS. After you guys added the tentacle, we can't flybash. He blocks any form of other bashing and his 1 second attack prevents getting any reprieve via leaping, and or flying. 

Do you guys test these forays when you alter them yourselves? Can you, unartied, beat your own forays? I'd like to see you try.

Akri

Astarod said:

Why did @Ictinus buff Borgron? He was fine before for duos. Now he just damages me out (with a full set of runes) in less than a minute. It used to be a game of whether you would run out of mana or not before bleed. Now it just seems to be straight DPS. After you guys added the tentacle, we can't flybash. He blocks any form of other bashing and his 1 second attack prevents getting any reprieve via leaping, and or flying. 

Do you guys test these forays when you alter them yourselves? Can you, unartied, beat your own forays? I'd like to see you try.

Not just Borgron. Icosse, the thrall and Horald all became substantially harder suddenly. Sometimes tripling in dps they did compared to when we tried a week earlier.

Santar

Seriously what the fuck is wrong with our admin team? Why are you clowns making everything in the game so insufferable?

There's not even patch notes or an announce to go with this nonsense. Just shadow changes that result in people getting group wiped.

Astarod

Akri said:

Astarod said:

Why did @Ictinus buff Borgron? He was fine before for duos. Now he just damages me out (with a full set of runes) in less than a minute. It used to be a game of whether you would run out of mana or not before bleed. Now it just seems to be straight DPS. After you guys added the tentacle, we can't flybash. He blocks any form of other bashing and his 1 second attack prevents getting any reprieve via leaping, and or flying. 

Do you guys test these forays when you alter them yourselves? Can you, unartied, beat your own forays? I'd like to see you try.

Not just Borgron. Icosse, the thrall and Horald all became substantially harder suddenly. Sometimes tripling in dps they did compared to when we tried a week earlier.

The Thrall obliterated our team. #WasFunBeforeThe"Bug"Change

Reyson

Well, lyres used to be a viable defence against certain-class thralls. Runewarden wasn't slowed down by lyres at all, or by clumsy, from what I saw, and you have to hold them at < 20%, so I'm not really sure how you're supposed to be able to do that at the moment. Even IF you can bring it that low (which is a tall order), holding it there looks pretty impossible right now. 

Santar

I am one of the most tankiest people in the game and I failed the fortress foray 3 times before beating it. Why did this need to get made even harder?

Why don't you guys just go ahead and give Aran'kesh tentacle so we can just stop worrying about forays altogether?

Kog

I've got logs of all my fights vs Borgron with duo, and I run pretty consistent setups for it. I'll be able to compare the numbers pretty accurately once @Nephiny and I have time- I think a changelog SOMEWHERE would be huge, especially since Borgron also seems to be ignoring Xylthus now. I spent some RL money to get that card so we could alternate crowd control to make it run more smoothly. Hopefully he just shrugs it off in groups bigger than 3 or something..?

Astarod

Kog said:

I've got logs of all my fights vs Borgron with duo, and I run pretty consistent setups for it. I'll be able to compare the numbers pretty accurately once @Nephiny and I have time- I think a changelog SOMEWHERE would be huge, especially since Borgron also seems to be ignoring Xylthus now. I spent some RL money to get that card so we could alternate crowd control to make it run more smoothly. Hopefully he just shrugs it off in groups bigger than 3 or something..?

I used to be able to duo it no problem, three became harder because of the increased damage, and well... not having a lot of Xylthus cards. I went from about 100% completion rate to like, 33% completion rate if I had a severely artied person tanking. 

Veldrin

Santar said:

I am one of the most tankiest people in the game and I failed the fortress foray 3 times before beating it. Why did this need to get made even harder?

Why don't you guys just go ahead and give Aran'kesh tentacle so we can just stop worrying about forays altogether?

They need to stop balancing against people that are artied up so we don't feel like we have to spend money just to engage with the content of the game Arties are supposed to give us an edge, doubt any of us would think the edge would be able to actually try the content

Sobriquet

We did Icosse as a group of 4 couple of days ago and finished it, Elon's Thrall was manageable. The only issue we had we me being over zealous and causing us to die and go back, but we did it.

I wonder if the old bug of the mobs getting stronger over time is still there rather than the Admin actovely making things harder. That would be my guess. 

Reyson

Borgon was definitely buffed in a span of under four-ish hours, from what Akri and Crixos reported, when Proficy Rakdos and I got utterly smacked around by it. 

I managed to get the line for Icosse, and others did, too, up until last week, but it was completely unmanageable. This isn't a gradual-change difference, we're taking about doable to completely and totally unstoppable. Huge speed increase, immune to stuns and clumsy, hitting through lyres. 

Santar

Andraste and I killed Borgron about an hour ago. 

Bear in mind, we did it as a 2 player party(monsters scale down a lot), and both of us are pretty extreme. We used a lot of class buffs/cards/etc and still barely won. Both of us got into red at least once.  The fight lasted like 8 minutes. 

Even one less artie or ability probably would've wiped us. 

Cooper

AFAIK forays scale with the level of the highest person in your party, so taking someone like Minifie or Proficy is going to result in a bad time.

I think the automatic scaling is what needs looked at. It should really cap at 99 or 100.

Or I might be wrong and that is how it works already, if so, my bad!

Kog

So, he didn't ignore Xylthus this time, which was nice. However, here are the percent damage done to me. In 'old', I had 10k health exactly, in dragon with dragonarmour, resist rings, trans thermology, a full set of runes, and frost. My defense set was identical in 'new', however I had 9343 max health. Here are the hit ranges for each of his attacks:

Room AOE:

-- OLD: 8.1 to 10%

-- NEW: 17.1 to 22.0%

Legs slash:

-- OLD: 5.2 to 6.2%

-- NEW: 12.1 to 14.1%

Fire DSL:

-- OLD: 2.5 to 3.2%

-- NEW: 6.7% (I only got hit once by this before dying)

Poison DSL:

-- OLD: 5.5 to 6.6%

-- NEW: 11.3-13.7%

Bleed DSL:

-- OLD: 2.9 to 3.8%

-- NEW: 5.9 to 7.3%

Most attacks seem to have doubled in damage. I did not check his attack speed, since I don't have timestamps in my logs. I have no idea why these changes were made if the intention of forays is to provide a way for people to generate renown- this one is no longer doable by anyone at my level of artefact investment or below, and I have level 2s for defensive. Bringing more won't work either, as with 4 he seems to be immune to Xylthus (so no hindering early), and his aoe attack hit me for 33%+ each time instead, meaning our entire group of 4 was killed basically at the same time.

Here's to hoping this is another bug, like with the Foreman, because as it stands this isn't particularly practical.

Achilles

So to summarize it sounds like only Aran'kesh is remotely doable.  

Admin has ~3 months of foray data to look at now, I'm sure the distribution is like Aran'kesh/Dragonquest/Mirror Tower/Fortress/Margam/Barrow in terms of completion %.  They should just look at the completion rate and tweak it based off that (With a goal of say 50%).  Or just change adventure 9 into individual foray bonuses based on difficulty, otherwise people will just camp the ones that are doable (which might only be Aran'kesh now?).  

Can also look at all the other adventures being completed, like Mhunna is only worth 50, can't be crit'ed and has an entourage.  Not hard but takes more time than other 50ish renown denizens.  

The data will tell which ones are the best ROI of time for players, adjust it off that.

Axios2

Aran'kesh is doable but still quite hard now, maybe not so much on damage alone but on timeframe too. Astarod and I completed it with less than a minute on the timer earlier today (this with me abandoning the harpoons and fighting as well near the end), and I just failed it due to the timer with Halos and Lyndee, though Aran'kesh was at less than 1% health, grrr.