Bosses - epic warding and extra melee damage vs class

[-firecracker-]

An example of an area where things have got a little extreme:

Quite a while ago we saw the first bosses (Aragorn and WK - not sure if WK actually has it now?) be introduced with weapons that would ignore epic warding. I remember speaking to Turril about this on discovery and if my memory is correct said that only these 2 bosses would probably ever have this 'feat'. Seemed fair enough - the two big faction bosses having an advantage over all others.

Sometime after that we started seeing bosses do extra physical damage vs PM (maybe anything critical immune?). I forget which bosses these were - maybe Eomir was one (he is now), but basically this meant that if you got hit, the normal damage would be applied, then a 2nd amount of unresistable damage would also be applied - was about 60-70 so not a small amount. I think this was something put into place vs DR tanks solo'ing stuff with WW and heal spam, but am not sure. There are quite a lot of these bosses around now.

But today, there are now some bosses with both these 'feats', namely Elrond (maybe others). So imagine ~90ab/ac, kd spam, hips with probably unspottable hide unless using TS, kd psionic attack, mords disjunction, a weapon that cuts through epic warding as well as an extra 60-70 unresistable physical damage when landing a hit. As said in the other thread there is also a respawn of 3 minutes in that room so are constantly mobbed by npcs, as well as Elrond respawning to full rest status before you can kill him the first time.

Maybe fixing the respawn alone would help things here, but IMO I don't think any boss should have both these 'feats'. Both are pretty player unfriendly, but like I said are probably individually fine on occassional bosses like Aragorn and WK. But Elrond is already uber enough with his high ab/ac, hips (which makes SD tank flat footed and lose conceal bonus?) - so at current server party sizes is probably off limits. An AC tank gets cut down in just a few hits as they have low HP and vs hips spam and 90ab gets hit too often, a DR tank just won't work and a conceal tank will probably get hit/kd'd when flat footed from hips spam and die just like the AC tank.

How about removing one of these feats (or both) from Elrond and any other boss that has both?

[Rodriquez]

yeah, I agree with you firecracker

[-firecracker-]

I have to bump this thread because things got even worse for PMs, epic warding is on the verge of being totally useless, more and more bosses seem to have this silly 'extra damage feat' and now PMs are turnable...this is making the PM class unplayable or is that the intention? Remember the PM class is not the issue - the issues lies with certain combinations of other classes coupled with PMs - by changing the PM class results in alienating any toon that happens to have 10 PM levels.

[Terrorble]

Looking at both epic warding and PM bonus damage now.

[-firecracker-]

Good stuff 

[NLawson]

I must admit I would have thought the bonus damage would be removed before the turning thing was put in (though I totally agree PMs should be turnable).

Then again, I never saw the point of it in the first place. There had to be a better way to balance the class than to give the majority of bosses extra damage, and a good few a get-through-warding-free card.
Good to know it's being looked at - you did a good job balancing the spell changes so I have high hopes that this will be nicely balanced as well.

[Rodriquez]

Good to know it's being looked at - you did a good job balancing the spell changes so I have high hopes that this will be nicely balanced as well.

Same here, Terroble 

[pinkpuff]

PM's shouldn't be turnable unless they receive all of the other benefits of being undead as well. Adding nothing but negatives isn't a very endearing move.

[-firecracker-]

Hey Terrorble, great work you've done here, epic warding is now a useful feat but at the same time bosses like Aragorn can still kick some ass...you have managed to create a good medium between epic warding and silly boss damage...so at least epic warding counts towards something but yet a boss will kick some ass as once epic warding drops...good work (only tested vs aragorn balance appears very good...