Dreadspire Keep re-balance

[Lillu]

Starting a new thread here so we can discuss in one place what changes should be made to the zone to make them more solo friendly.

Please post any suggestions you have to make these encounters a challenge, yet enjoyable and doable for the majority, without having to have a coding degree for MQ2.

Since the content isn't new I guess no harm in sharing some spoilers on these evil encounters and how they supposed to work. This way, maybe it's easier to overcome the encounters and it's also a good base to suggest changes.

# Master Vule:
On engage spawn 12 Sentient Watchers (Gargoyles) around the room. At 95,90,85,80,75,70,65,60,55,50,45,40% one of them will turn red and the players must Depop that one. If they fail to Depop the Watcher in 60s, then the Watcher will wipe hatelist and path to the center of the room and sacrifice his life for Vule. Vule will then gain 25% HP and 50% DPS.
Vule will be HP locked at 94,89,84,79,74,69,64,59,54,49,44,39% until the gargoyle is either Depoped or sacrificed.
At 35% Vule will knockback all players into back of the room except the main tank. If anyone except the main tank comes within 100ft of Vule then Vule will Life tap 100% of their HP onto himself*100 (50kHP = 5Mil). Ranged/Spell casters must take him down to 20% in which he will stagger and fall to the ground (similar to normal vampires).
When vule is Staggered on ground, players must stake him 50 times in 30s. If you fail to do that then he will regenerate to 40% HP and reset on the Ranged stage again (@35%). Each time he regenerates Vule will also gain 25% DPS and drain 35% Mana from the raid.

# Dorvias N'Keth, The Archpriest of Hate:
At 95, 80, 70, 60, 45, 35% HP, He will spawn different Hate disciples (Hate, Fear, Agony, Dread, Pain, Torture) up higher in the zone. These disciples will be doing a "ceremony" that lasts for 60s. If both disciples are not slain within the 60s, then Dorvias will gain 35% DPS and will gain an AE ability.
While Disciples are spawned, Dorvias will be HP locked at -5% (90,75,65,55,40,30).
Hate Ceremony: Every 30s for 6s Increase DPS by 50%
Fear Ceremony: Every 30s Stun All hatelist for 6s
Agony Ceremony: @Failure Set Max HP and increase DPS by 35%
Dread Ceremony: Cast on all clients: Blight of Hate (8269)
Pain Ceremony: Every 30s Mana drain all hatelist for 50% max Mana
Torture Ceremony: Every 30s Nuke all hatelist for 50% max HP
On Death of Dorvias make sure to heal all mobs of the Blight of Hate curse.

# Khasva Vei`Ras:
On engage, spawn 2x Vampire Soulseeker's in the room on each side. Every 30s each soulseeker will spawn a Vampire soul that will mark 1 client as their destination. If the soul gets within 10ft of the client, then the client is DTed and a "Deathwalker Vampire" spawns in their place.
Deathwalkers will stagger and drop at 50% and must be staked 5 times before they can be killed. If they are not staked, then they gain 15% DPS.
Every 45s Vei'Ras will place a Mark upon himself and players will have to click the crystals around the room depending on which Mark he uses. Each time a crystal is clicked out of order then spawn 2x Deathwalker Vampire. Players will have 35s to click the crystals.
Mark of Strength: Red > Green > Yellow > Blue > Purple; If Failed then increase DPS by 25%
Mark of Blood: Green > Red > Purple > Blue > Yellow; If failed then increase HP by 25% and DPS by 10
Mark of Dread: Purple > Yellow >Red > Blue > Green; if Failed then drain Client list mana by 50%
Mark of Agony: Yellow > Purple > Green > Red > Blue; If Failed then drain Client List HP by 50%
At 85, 65, 45, 25% Vei'Ras will call for assistance from his Master. This will spawn 8 adds in the hallway that will roam into the room. Players will have 2 minutes to kill all 8 adds. If any adds are still up after two minutes, then Vei'Ras will absorb their power increasing his HP by 10*Number of minions and DPS by 2*Number of Minions. Additionally if any adds die in front of Vei'Ras he will gain 10% HP and 2% DPS.

[Muergan]

Hey I never tried dovias and beyond as a single player because trying to have your raid follow you through the tight corridor to find the spawned mobs just isn't going to happen. Mainly anything that is timed like that and requires you to split your characters up to manually control on different screens is tough. Also making clear emotes when things are supposed to happens let's us use MQ better. And for example in vistrinda event the eggs have no name so the only way to do it is by using the nearest NPC key to target which is wonky at best. So giving an interaction point a physical target with name or mob id would help a lot.

Now I'm also speaking from a non donored but highly geared point of view. A person with full donor can probably just send 1-2 toons and kill stuff but people like me stopped playing because we couldn't use donor DPS to overcome the mechanics that are in place. Also making smaller group things like the zone off of causeway is harder without the full support and people trying to box 6 in a highly interactive event. Like the Christmas dungeon used to be raid and it was doable and fun for me but in group only form it's a pain and not enjoyable.

[Niixnec]

One of the biggest issues I had with the zone was having to do all the mobs to get to the next one each time. For someone who has limited time, killing mobs that don't drop anything that could be used only to get a chance to fight something new was not appealing.

Vule -- only being able to use ranged damage limits the damage that can be done, either adjust the HP or damage modifier so you don't need an army of Wizards or donor Ranger to handle this part. Allow Enchanter/Mage/Shaman spells to make a bigger difference with the damage. Maybe adjust the number of stakes needed so it could be done on one or two characters. 4x Wiz, Ranger, 2x Nec, 2x Mage and still takes time to take him down as don't really have donor items for range on these characters (T8-T9, good selection of clicky items).

Dorvias - Maybe lower HP/AC of spawned mobs. When doing single ran it with two different sections one for Dorvias and one that ran around to do spawned mobs, do have group CoH so only have to run 1 character around.

Khasva -- never did solo as by the time I cleared the others either ran out of time to play or did not feel like trying to figure out mechanics of fight. Did kill a few times with others but the different clicking order along with the spawns and the main fight never really interested me to try solo as I still run alot of characters manually, at least special items, AA's that sort of thing.

[Tysin]

Dorvias - the only way I could do this was to split my raid into three.
My pally takes Dorvias.
One group with my SK sits in the hall near Vasella.
This auto across if adds spawn here.
My Warrior sits in Maestro area. He issues the stop attack/restart when adds spawn. I usually run around with him and check the three spawn locations in Maestro area if no insta agro. If it's insta agro, alt tab/find my SK and start attacking.
If the SK has no agro, and Maestro area is empty, I know adds are down the ramp towards Vule.
This takes several seconds to do. I then need to manually get each toon to attack, as I've hit back off on MQ. Then move to next add.
The only times I wipe on this encounter (rare now I've done it so much) is when I take a while to find the adds, and don't kill them. As soon as Dorvias powers up, it's over. I can hold on a little while with defensive disciplines, but since my MTs are spread out, they don't get summoned when the first drops. The squishies do.
My suggestion would be to either give a short amount of extra time to kill the adds so you can find them (5 sec) or leave the timer but reduce the power up Dorvias gets.
To beat the adds, I MUST use clickies to do burst damage, like the T8 melee rings (I think from elemental twins), T2 epics, etc. Without burst dps, I won't kill them.
Fyi - I'm using 18 toons for this.

[Tysin]

Vule feedback:

Stage 1 of the encounter is fine. You need 2 tanks (one for ramps) and then an MA, so definitely not single group capable without a lot of donor gear. In which case why come here?
Stage 2 of the encounter is where it goes pear shaped. Needing to back off before the push back, then have everyone range attack is difficult. mQ handles this clumsily.
Add to that there's not a lot of high level (eg T8 or 9) arrows or range items which are summonable, without donor gear.
Casters are reasonably worthless given the mana drain. No pets makes mages and necro a bit gimped. I think generally casters could be boosted to make their spells more worthwhile. They're a lot weaker than melee. DPS is very slow.
Dropping the hit points or upping spell dmg would be handy. My priests are usually oom and run out of heals before he drops to 19%, so it's down to discs, donor items and clicks.
The lifetap amount is a huge penalty and generally means the encounter is over. A few toons cross that line by mistake and he's 100% health, with the dps boost to happen etc, it's a wipe incoming. Huge penalty if your mq doesn't respond in time.
Stage 3 - is fine. It's a lot of earring farming for 18 toons, but if you can get from 34 -19%, this bit seems easy for mq with the right macro.

[Xero]

Dorvias N'Keth, The Archpriest of Hate:

This fight was made a LOT easier with the introduction of the group summoning crimson bull, everyone may not yet have it though. Running around is still annoying, but it's manageable. To make it less annoying, maybe all the adds spawn in the same room as him? Could still make it random spots within the room, although the room is small.

Master Vule:

Most the fight is just character management, until the end. Eventually, with enough gear one can just power through it. Starting though, that mana drain at the end is GG. Maybe reduce it's effectiveness? Or allow pets to survive? Probably would be easier for the player to have pets survive though since they do their own thing, NO MQ2 required!

Khasva Vei`Ras:

This one is probably easier then Vule (Gear wise to solo box) just more management with crystals tossed in. No idea how anyone could do it without mq2 doing a lot of work though. Maybe increase the time between crystal calls and more time to click them?

Other then that, I think what was said makes sense. The zone is a bit long with lots of doors to click, and having to start from the start every time to get to Khasva can be tedious. Good thing for Call of Hero!

[shannix]

No idea how anyone could do it without mq2 doing a lot of work though. Maybe increase the time between crystal calls and more time to click them?

DSK3 is mq2 zone, hand playing is a hell in this zone, i managed to pass vule one time hand playing but couldn t do khasva solo hand playing.
dsk3 would be 5 or 6 hours against 1h20 to clear vt, and 15 minutes to kill vt last bosses so i never farm it.

Usinea

[Nizzy]

Khasva - Yeah something has to be done with the crystals. With out writing a script to do it for me there was just no way we could figure out how to do with one person.

Throwing in Vasella Fireblood as well. While I can do it on my own I usually have at least one wipe or two. The constant debuffing and vampires on top of vampires can get out of hand. I actually made my secondary warrior specifically for this fight.