Tiers 9 through 11 balancing (See post #4 for current status)

We noticed pretty much immediately that this was doable when we started Tur`ruj, so we mentioned it to Marza and we told not to do farm trash for tomes. However, there's not really any solution to make such respawning trash drop tomes fairly without being farmable. Thus, it'd be either make against the rules to farm trash for tomes (still not fair or equitable, but better), or remove tomes from trash entirely for some other distribution method. Really, this was inevitable. It doesn't make it less disheartening, but it was obvious this was coming ever since FWF first showed they had more dakka than the darksun orcs there like a year and a half ago.
 
So, while there's other things going on, let's go ahead and open up the can of worms that are the Thazeran's Tower Lower Wing timers! There's a lot of upset-ness, so we should talk. We'll start this talk by saying how the staff feels about lower thaz, and then I'll present my case as to why we feel that way. Since this will include information you probably don't have, I hope you'll read it before you respond.

(1) The difficulty of the zone fills a need for content... or well, did when there were all those guilds trying to get into Tier 10. The minibosses and bosses for the lower wings really do fit into the Tier 10 gearcheck part of difficulty. However, they really fall on the lower end of Tier 10... Think more like Animation of Sil`rel`din and Enchanter Apprentice Klikil. The minibosses, for that matter, aren't really that tough, either. The lower wing bosses are going to require some planning and coordination, too, but they're still lower on the gearcheck and higher on the "you need to dodge and execute" side of things. These kinds of fights are perfect for guilds trying to made the Tier 9 to Tier 10 jump.

(2) The rewards are pretty great. Where else can you get opuses at Tier 10? Spires basement? Granted, the tomes are fairly low chance off minis and really high chance off bosses, but hello... opuses! Besides, the itemization of loot for the lower wings was done and re-done with a very heavy-handed consideration towards the myriad suggestions of "there needs to be (type of item) in the Tier 9-11 range" that flooded the Suggestions and Request forum 4-12 months ago. Chances are if you don't think there's an item to fill that slot/role you need, then it's sitting on some lower thaz mob waiting to be looted.

(3) This zone is very wipe-friendly. You can bind your character right outside the zone. That's not an exaggeration; you can bind close enough to Thazeran's Tower to click into the zone without taking a single step. Furthermore, there's a corpsecall at the feet of all four deacons. You don't have to go fetch those corpses... ever!

(4) The timers aren't that bad. There's some misunderstandings about the length of the timers, so let's clear that up. First, the timers *start* at 90 minutes and increments every so often as part of the script controlling the health of the Deacon. Second, the death of the miniboss increases the timer by 15 minutes (or up to the maximum 90 minutes if you kill the miniboss within 15 minutes of starting the wing). Third, if you are fighting the boss, the timer does not increment; hence, the timer is effectively paused during any boss attempts.

(5) The respawn is pretty friendly. If you're new to the zone and struggling to start a wing or kill the miniboss, you have the option of resetting the wing (and consequently, the timer) and starting over. That is partially because if you don't kill the miniboss, the wing respawn timer is like 1 second or instant or something. Now, if you kill the miniboss, you can no longer reset the wing, but the respawn timer for the wing is only about 2 days, way less than the about 5 days if you kill the boss. Side note: while Lower Earth seems to be the most popular wing, it's also the biggest and longest, so don't expect the other wings to be as long.

(6) The Dev-Team (also me) is really still excited about the zone. If you're planning to do the zone, please /petition to let us know. Sure, contact us in IRC and whatnot, but definitely /petition that. If you're planning to do lower thaz this coming Thursday, /petition and tell us now, and we'll try to be there to watch. There are reasonable concerns that since it's virgin content for the most part that there will be a few buggy things and a few things that need to be balanced for difficulty. If there are Devs watching, things can get done pretty quick.

(7) The zone doesn't end after the lower wings. Speaking personally for a moment, I was fortunate enough to have a hand in pieces of REDACTED, and that part is more awesome with respect to REDACTED than any other encounter in SoD. ****ing awesome.


So, that for the most part covers it. I'd really like to hear what you think, especially since the complaints I hear most often of "it's too hard" or "you only have 70 minutes to do it" or "it'll just break" are ones we've already addressed or would love to address.
 
4 must be fairly new? When we were making attempts on the earth boss we only had 2 or 3 attempts before we were out of time. I'm sure we'll go back there someday, but we were stomped pretty hard by the earth boss.
 
The timer thing is fairly new, but it was in before the first bona fide wing boss attempt. The timer is stopped during the boss attempts themselves, but it resumes after a wipe. When it was realized that the timer could run out when a boss was right about to die and cause what would be a winning attempt to fail, making that scenario not happen became a pretty high priority. The result of having wipes on the boss effectively extend the timer by a couple minutes each is a small benefit that mostly affects groups that are learning the encounter. Win-win?

I was really excited when I noticed CW had actually attempted Vordrek the Earthen. Unfortunately, nobody noticed for days. Given that the fight was brand-spanking-new for you, there's a lot we can't yet know about what worked and didn't work for sure. I know that for this fight specifically, I was involved in a lot of testing of the mechanics and suspect they worked pretty much as intended, but I can't know for sure.

For that reason, I reiterate point (6) above that you should toss in a petition and let us know if you plan to be in thaz. Give us as much notice as possible. We'll keep our mouths shut and not tell other guilds you're planning on being there so they don't try to get there before you (/deadpan).
 
With as much as people already notice (and sometimes complain) about people like Tarutao pushing for people to do new content, you can be pretty dang sure that the GM-Admin will happily have his boomstick out to keep radio silence on your intentions to raid Thaz. You might not want to underestimate the eagerness of staff to see you doing it.

For a story of a similar situation: Oozu, Tarutao, and I were randomly on late one night and decided to put together some Nadox fun. During that time, we managed to progress from the second beacon to the spiritist (7th boss) for the first time. It didn't take long to get and retain staff attention. They were quite excited to see the new things happen, especially as new things don't happen often. So yeah, I'd say you can trust them to be looking out for your best interests there.
 
Some of this will not go live until the patch, other parts are live now.

(1) Enchanter Apprentice Klikil's HP has been increased by about 5%.

(2) Enchanter Apprentice Klikil's common loots have received a minor boost in quality (and I hope, a bit more desirable).

(3) The blue-con versions of Conglomeration have had their AEs delayed by about half a second on average. This really is plenty. Kill them faster or die.

(4) Iskkath's Experiment has had its HP increased by about 2.5%, melee damage decreased by about 2.5%, and the onset of the AEs he does have been delayed by an amount of time that is the equivalent of removing the first 2 AEs.

(5) The Devastating Blow mechanic for Dread Captain Ilithka has been removed. This mechanic was not a normal Devastating Blow, and while it's really interesting on paper, how it worked was just too opaque and left the fight feeling mysteriously easier or harder on any given attempt without any clear reason why. It has been tentatively replaced with a Cowardly Strike mechanic. Given the mob's damage output, I suggest you make sure that people aren't taking multiple Cowardly Strikes in a row. Also, the trigger to make Phase 2 start at 30% is now fixed.

(6) While Ilithka was a little too hard (including the weird dev blow), the other mob in duo was not really too easy but way too forgiving. Researcher Velnir's "you screwed up" nukes are now 50% more damage and aren't affected by LoS. Do the fight right, and this won't be a problem.

(7) The NPCs "Spirit of the Tribe" have been updated to more accurately reflect the intended droprates of Opus1s and Opus2s of the upper three Tur`ruj tribes. The end result is a small increase to Opus1 drops for Tar`loc, an exactly equal decrease for Opus2 drops for Tar`loc, no change whatsoever for Ok`tar tribe, a small increase to Opus1 drops for Ju`bor, and a very large increase to Opus2 drops for Ju`bor.

(edited to fix the typo that made it sound like opuses were removed from Ok`tar tribe)
 
I really really really like this in depth explanation about what is changing in these fights. Vague "this fight has been changed in some way, figure it out" comments were frustrating. Things like this are amazing and good. I personally appreciate the extra effort put into it/them.
 
Thanks, it's good to hear that people are reading this thread and getting the information I'm trying to provide. I just hope people agree with the Klikil item changes.

The Ilithka changes may be met with a little resistance, but I went through and made the emotes for Phase 2 of that fight be a little more clear instead of a "oh look our tank died right at the end again" thing. The theme of the duo fight is "spellcasters communicate and act as a team or die". The changes I've made to the fight reinforce this theme.

Also, as long as we're not trying to be particularly unclear, there are 2 spells you can't do a whole lot about with Ilithka. For starters, she's a shadowknight, so you're going to eat a harmtouch on engage probably. No, I don't think that's a problem. Also, she has that rare trash weapon equipped, and that weapon can proc on the tank. No, it doesn't drop if you kill Velnir first.
 
So, I hear someone dared venture into the lower fire wing at close to on-tier...

...oh, look, changes/tuning!

Here's some stuff that has changed.

(1) The roamer that goes all the way into the miniboss room no longer respawns after being killed.

(2) The ball of fire conga line ... gone.

(3) Two other small trash mobs have been removed. (What can I say? The wing is really small in size. There might have been a little too much compensation for that, and these three changes help a ton.)

(4) Flamelord Koltar (the miniboss) has gotten numerous number-based changes. The fight itself has the same mechanics, so the fight works basically the same, but the feel and difficulty should be a lot more appropriate.

(4a) The timing of the adds and the timing of the non-constant AE have been tweaked. These changes, along with a few added and adjusted emotes, have been implemented to make the fight a little more melee-friendly. Details won't be provided. Read your emotes, and watch for adds.

(4b) The damage of the non-constant AE has been adjusted. You still mitigate the damage in the same way, but the degree and rate of how much it's mitigated have been adjusted. These changes can't be described with percentages; they are based on a nonlinear formula I did some curve-fitting for.

(4c) The HP of Flamelord Koltar has been decreased by slightly over 16%. Oh look, an actual number.

(5) We've made a few changes to Tashkal the Molten that probably won't mean much to anyone without knowing the fight. We'll be able to tune more when it gets attempted, but we were able to get some information from this attempt that gave us a better starting point for the boss tuning. I'm (sadly) more excited about this fight than the lower earth boss.

------------

Oh, and I failed to mention! The timers in the wings no longer increment while you are engaged with the miniboss (in addition to the wing boss)! This is not just the fire wing; this is all four of the lower wings. Yay!
 
Came across some mysterious crashes during the Flamelord Koltar fight an hour or so ago. They came shortly after someone was emoted/rooted, at which point the raid was meant to flee from that person. People loaded back in right next to the miniboss and were immediately aggroed and picked off one-by-one. No acknowledgement or explanation was offered by the staff member who was apparently observing us. People lost heart quickly and abandoned the zone. Very underwhelming experience. :(
 
You didn't let people know you were doing Thaz? I can virtually guarantee you didn't, 'cause Taru would've then heard, maybe been there (on Tao or Tarutao), told me to log on and try to scum into the raid, then passed the word to the devs who would probably leave their parents' funerals to watch that raid.

I strongly suggest letting them know so that this doesn't happen. You should know this. If you did, then it had to just be a fluke that you didn't have 5+ staffers there watching and praying for your success.

Half of the talking I do with Tarutao (my twin brother IRL) involves him wishing people would do Thaz, and I have to listen to him talk during WoW raids.
 
I petitioned as we were porting in and received a thank you response from Dev Taryth. Although I'm not sure anyone watched us raid as we received no staff feedback from either of the crashes which appeared to happen at exactly the same sequence in the fight. Because of that we called the raid early. Thanks anyways, please let us know if/when its fixed, as we would like to back afterwards.
 
I was out to dinner with friends and heard about it 2 hours and 30 minutes later, according to IRC timestamps. I have notices from Jarh and Dev-Taryth.

I hate to say too much this early, but I know there are members of the Dev Team looking into the issue, are fairly sure they've found the issue, and (thankfully and with great relief) are fairly sure the issue is a new one neither related to nor specific to Thazeran's Tower and could have happened elsewhere.

Since the issue is actively being worked on while I type this post, I will remain this vague for now. When the issue is resolved, it'll probably be a good excuse for me to try out my new access to put patch notes on the front of the website. (I've had authority to do so for over 3 years now, but only since this thread started have I had a reason to do it, so my lack of access went unnoticed by all of us on staff for 3 years. I hope you enjoyed this amusing parenthetical anecdote.)
 
Tao edit: Removed part of the post that was way outdated information. See a later post for more accurate information on the status of the Dread Captain Ilithka and Researcher Velnir encounter commonly known as either Spires Duo or Spires Twins.

Oh, and in a not-Spires matter, I hear someone figured out that bug with that magician class tome that in bizarre situations was having zones crash (in particular, CW in Thaz this week)
 
So, welcome to "I really hope this works and cannot test it"-ville... Ok`tar Tribe...

Long story short, the respawn timer for failed attempts should now be shortened to approximately 2 days. That's half of the good news!

Does it work? I won't know for a couple days. That's half of the bad news.

Making this shortened respawn timer required re-writing the whole damn tribe's scripts from scratch in our new scripting language... so while I've done my best to recreate the Ok`tar Tribe almost exactly. I was able to test, albeit limitedly without a raid of 18 people, everything but shortened respawn timer, so you may notice a few inconsistencies here and there: spell particle effects, emote colors, spelling/grammar fixes, and possibly a new bug or two. That's the other halves of both the good and bad news. Report back anything that looks different but doesn't look absolutely blatantly intentional (cough "vulernerable" -> "vulnerable" cough).
 
Tarutao said:
Oh, and in a not-Spires matter, I hear someone figured out that bug with that magician class tome that in bizarre situations was having zones crash (in particular, CW in Thaz this week)
Click to expand...

Just wanted to make sure this was seen. The crash was not Thaz-specific but was related to a bug with the magician tome Elemental Embodiment. This issue will require a patch to fully resolve. There should be a patch tonight.

As to the perceived lack of support from staff by the posters above, it is too bad no one was available this time but a petition is still the best way to get our attention. Dev-Taryth did indeed pass along the message as he promised but was unable to watch himself. Perhaps he could have been more clear to you. But a Dev answering a petition is already out of the norm and was intended as a courtesy. I personally recall at least two previous attempts on this specific boss by your guild without issue. A bit of patience and other petition might have saved everyone a headache. This game has both unprecedented access to and support from its staff.
 
so tonight we did thaz. And just wondering if the Water wing mini boss is on par. He was hitting our shielded tank for 7500. normal melee. If this is intended to be a tier9-10 jump zone. I am wondering if this is working as intended?
 
Maybe, that's not enough information to go on. Was that a single hit? Was that a round of melee? Was that two rounds of melee? Was there an emote? Were there adds up? Did anyone else see a message about a devastating blow or something? Have you used Jayla's Insight on the miniboss and every add in the area to try to figure out if there's something you're doing that is empowering the mob?
 
Tao said:
Glad to see Spires Duo done with the Ilithka phase 2 working properly.

The "whirling slashes" AEs in Ilithka phase 2 have been lowered by around 10%. Read your emotes to figure out phase 2, and what this means will make sense.

The "you screwed up" AE from Ilithka no longer triggers in phase 2, but don't get complacent! Read your emotes to figure out phase 2, and the reason for this change will make sense.

After Ilithka does her thing in phase 2, the delay before she does it again has been increased by 10 seconds.
Click to expand...

The above is a quote of the parts of post #154 of this thread that remain true of Spires Duo. It took some doing, but Velnir should be functioning a bit better now.

The twisted mana should no longer respond to bracer procs, chest procs, weapon procs, clicky spells, et cetera. This is both a matter of not triggering the "you screwed up" AE from Researcher Velnir as well as not taking damage. Also, multi-elemental spells like Frostflame and Cryotoxin ... well, they were already a bad idea, so I guess not much changed there.

Researcher Velnir's abilities and spells other than the "you screwed up" AE remain unchanged from 2 years ago.
 
about thazz mini.

We did do the Jaylas insite and it didnt give us nothing more than the normal reporting of res type etc. And there was no emote no db of any type. We tried killing the adds and not killing them and damage remained the same. Anyone else have any other thoughts or input?
 
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