Shadow Haven feedback thread

[Stickybuds]

Just started exploring and wanted a place for me and anyone else that wants to post feedback on this new zone. I want to give myself time to test and explore more before i post any kind of "review" but I wanted to go ahead and bring this up.

The shissar arcanist are using the nukes Chaotic Destruction and Ether Flame. I feel these two nukes are way too strong for NPCs (Especially just trash NPCs) to be using at such a low tier lvl. I feel sorry for anyone in KD gear that runs into them. They also cast Ancient: Core Fire which may be too OP for this lvl as well.

Take a look at the player Jozsef for example - webtools/magelo/character.php?char=Jozsef
This person is in T3 avg gear, and has 15khp on magelo. A single chaotic destruction would one probably one-shot a KD geared player while the other two spells will certainly ruin their day if they are not 100% hp.

Regards,
Sticky

[Vaion]

Thanks for the feedback. I adjusted the spells that the wizard and necromancer shissar use. After the next reboot, they will not use any spells that are > level 69.

[TheBloodmoon]

I had the same call-out Sticky ... thanks Vaion for looking into it.

My other concern is mostly an aggro radius issue. There's a lot of little buildings around the zone, giving the zone a fun dungeon crawl feel almost .... but it's also causing a large amount of adds to pile up. I noticed that adds seem to aggro through walls often, making what would appear to be a single pull, end up being a pull of 4 or 5. Add in the occasional wandering mob, and you can end up with 8 mobs on you pretty quickly.

Not sure if that's fixable or not.

[Vaion]

I'm not sure if I can really do anything to fix the aggroing through the walls. I can lower the aggro radius, but it won't prevent the wall aggro =/

[TheBloodmoon]

Yeah I know that's more a matter of zone geometry than anything else. I figured the only solution is to reduce aggro radius, but assumed that was more of a bandaid than an actual fix.

[Stickybuds]

spent some time in here past few days and here are my thoughts.

Loot and items...
Some really cool items, glad to see some lower versions of some of those really cool high tier clickies. Stuff like AE heal clicky for priests and def disc ring for tanks. The stats with the aug slots puts this gear around T2 imo.

I like how there are cheap type 11s available in this zone with same tier lvl focus of T1 and such, however I think they are too cheap at only 15 crystals each making it very easy to pick up a focus effect you are missing and put it in any slot you wish. I know that is the idea to be able to customize the gear how the player wants and I do like that, I just think the risk vs reward is too easy compared to other ways to obtain the foci. Might suggest raising this to 25? (the novice augs in the vale are 50 each and have "chaotic" type focus).

All the drop rates seem to be just fine imo, even the automation parts.


Zone difficulty...
I'm not sure if this was ment to be a solo/group zone, or a raid zone. And if this is supposed to be between KD and SSRA, or between SSRA and ToV. But here are some data i collected using Mary who is very over-geared for this content. For all these I was using only Mary and her self buffs putting her at about 50k hp and 14k ac.

50khp, 14kac
Shadow Haven -
Minis - aprox 1000 max dmg hits
big names - aprox 1600 max dmg hits

SSRA -
Minis - 585 max hit
big names - 975 max hit

Tov -
minis - 781 max hit
big names - 1625 max hit

The dmg output puts it at around T2 lvl, which imo the gear represents. However there are some other factors to consider regarding the difficulty of shadow haven vs SSRA or ToV.

Shadow Haven is an "outdoor" zone (i know you can't selos in there but lets just call it that for now) where as SSRA and ToV are "indoor" zones. The main difference here is agro through walls and LoS. Walls are "real" in dungeons zones like Lguk, or ToV or Sleepers, etc. You (typically) don't agro stuff through walls in those zones, and you can hide from AoEs by avoiding Light of Sight with the mob. Shadow Haven does not have "real" walls. There are a ton of building in this zone with narrow walk ways between the buildings. Trying to walk anywhere is an agro add fest. I even tried to put myself in a noobs shoes and tried to safely pull and clear using pacify and fade but it was a nightmare compared to pulling in say SSRA or ToV where as in ToV there is room to split and in SSRA mobs are far apart enough from each other that you can single pull or in spots where they are meant to chain agro you have room to split them.

I think a reduction in agro radius would help but also maybe a reduction in some of the mob density in some sections of the zone as well to reduce so much chain agro.

The repop in the zone is really fast. Nice for me since I can kill them so quickly and the zone isnt that large but seems like its too fast for the tier lvl that it is aimed at. I think at the current repop rate appropriately geared toons might have trouble keeping keeping a "camp" clear. I do like the quick repop and hope it stays, maybe just add a couple more mins to it?


Boss fights...
Going to try and not reveal too much about these fights. So far the only 1 I haven't done is the Lorekeeper and I may just wait till the fix for the caster nukes since trying to clear his room is a death sentence even for Mary.

Warlord - whoa...this guy is crazy. My 1st attempt I was met with a 48k nuke (96% of my hp) and then another 11k which also made me FD, I stood back up right away but was hit was another 11k before i could lifetap my hp back. I brought in sticky to heal me for the 2nd attempt. I tried to hide sticky in the room before him and heal but the AEs still hit him and killed him. after sticky died i just clicked my donor bp to finish him off b/c i was not going to make it otherwise and i needed him for my kill quest =p
I tried to dps him slow at 1st thinking the nukes were maybe based on dmg to him but that does not seem to be the case. I'm sure if I had less hp pool the nukes would have hit me for less as they are prob based on a % of your total HP but between 1600 melee dmg, a massive 48k nuke, and 11k nukes that also force FD you this guy seems too strong for this tier lvl. I don't think any of his mechanics should be changed really, thats cool stuff, but the dmg just seems too high.

Arcanist Vssryth - his nuke also looked to be based on a % of my total hp pool but in addition to him summoning his adds i think his nuke is a bit too high of a % as well. I'm sure this fight will be easier once the caster nukes are fixed but still think its a lot to handle with his adds + his % based nuke. maybe reduce it by 10-20%?

Heretic Lssratnxh - thought this fight was just fine.

General Tskarthiz - thought this fight was just fine. Cool mechanic =)

Lorekeeper - will edit once Ive fought him.


All in all been enjoying the zone and excited to see what the final quest will reveal =)

Regards,
Sticky

[Vaion]

Thanks for all the feedback Sticky.

I'll take a look into everything and make any necessary adjustments this weekend since I'm super busy this week with work and designing some upcoming content (4th of July and DS Tier 3 )

And I'm fairly sure all the bosses that you mentioned that hit for the high numbers are all HP % based attacks. I'll double check, but I'm pretty positive that is how I set them up.

[Nilbus]

upcoming content (4th of July and DS Tier 3 )

I like how this kinda just got slipped in there, that and the new gargoyle... o.0

[Sian]

upcoming content (4th of July and DS Tier 3 )

I like how this kinda just got slipped in there, that and the new gargoyle... o.0

This is an art that he masters perfectly well Can't wait to test that new stuff hehe, sounds

[Stickybuds]

FYI the arcanist are still casting CD and ether flame