Changes you don't like.

[Ergorion]

I don't know if this would be a start, but I can start to break down solo techniques that I've tried.

Illusionist/Necro: both rely super hard on dps from charmies to make up for shitty defenses and relative lack of heals. In certain circumstances, charmies can also tank to extend continuous rounds of damage dishing. Both slow and vampiric touch will be used to try to minimize time spent twiddling thumbs in between forays.

Invoker: mana shield/barrier used to maximize number of rounds they're able to stay in combat. Slow to regen that mana to minimize time spent twiddling thumbs in between forays. Damage mostly from spells but potentially melee though mitigtated by slow. More of a sustained effort deal as opposed to nuke them.

Healer/shaman: more of a guerrilla hit them and heal up tactic. Shaman with the more offensive cause spells to wear them down a bit faster.

I've never had success soloing high level mobs with warriors. And dark-knights have changed so much since I solo'd one anything I have to say would be irrelevant.

I feel like the illu/necro camp got boned because they have to spend more time resting in between forays. Whereas the invoker/healer/shaman camp got boned because they don't have the dps capabilities.

[Ergorion]

I guess, I don't know if damage per round is the best metric to use.

There would be damage per round, average number of rounds you're able to last per foray, and recovery time between forays.

I don't have specific numbers for those because I only have one level 50 right now and it's naked. But I feel like those are the values we should look at from the player side of things.

[Vanisse]

Sure. If you can give me both metrics that would be great. On a very general level, it's basically balancing:

If (mob regen) * (downtime ticks) >= (player damage), player won't win

If (mob regen) * (downtime ticks) < (player damage), player will win (eventually)

Once at second status, it's a matter of feeling out what kind of margin would be optimal for a boss mob vs. a lesser mob - that's what we would be able to find out from your current favorite bosses.

And yes, as you mentioned, those downtime ticks do rely on how much damage output the mob does and not just mob-side hp, buffs and regen. The issue is in reality pretty complex. But my objective would be to partially reduce regen so that it feels manageable.

[Merlandox]

Lorne, yes the chieftain should not be solo-ed. But if you make if such that even 5 man groups have trouble killing it, the sword is going to be unobtainable. I don't even see 5 PKs in my who list usually, much less 5 willing to group with me.

As vanisse said, I agree this is tough to balance.

It's different for each class actually. How are we going to test this

"damage per round, average number of rounds you're able to last per foray, and recovery time between forays."

What kind of creatures are we looking at? I don't mind doing it with my 50s.

[Vanisse]

I think just run around and fight a bunch of the mobs as you already do. Something like this could be helpful:

Mob name:
Your rank/class/race:
Are you (underequipped) (average equipped) (uber equipped)
Did it feel (too easy) (good) (too hard)
How much average damage did you do per round/tick?
Did you have to run away and sleep in the middle?
If so, how often and how many downtime ticks did you take each time?
Approximately how long did it take you to defeat the mob?

Actually, I should be able to estimate damage from the time taken to defeat so if you don't have damage stats that's fine if you fill out the rest.

[Ozaru]

great idea Vanisse, I'll post what things I fight to help with the data collection

[Davairus]

It looked fine to me, and it even looks lower than before in general (Daryth and Aarngrim are notable example of mobs that regen less now than they did before the change). However, I've decided I'm just going to listen to the unrest the change has caused. To be quite honest, I don't see why we should suck up mobs regenning 50 hp a tick either. That seems like it would have the potential to be a very frustrating mechanic, and I think getting out-regenned by mobs - especially stationary mobs - should only be a problem for people who are doing something stupid like win by suiciding level 1's over and over.

Consequently, all standing/resting mob regen has been halved. Its still decided officially by the builders, but we are halving whatever they've set, which will probably be the defaults for the most part. The sleeping regen remains as it was, so if you have pets to recuperate you can rest easy knowing that those won't be affected. If there are any further problems let me know.

[Merlandox]

Thanks dav. Appreciate you hearing us out.

[Sevaush]

Vanisse, I checked out a few creatures. I went back to try Daryth.

Mob name: Daryth
50/illu/quasit
Pretty well equipped
good
I think 160
Did you have to run away and sleep in the middle? sleep up twice
If so, how often and how many downtime ticks did you take each time? 8hrs
Approximately how long did it take you to defeat the mob?

It took me 3 attempts, so prob around 15-20mins. Illusionist have it somewhat easier with sheer dps from the mobs. I'm not sure how others would rate it. Maybe it is a little easy for a frost burnt? I'm thinking other classes will have a harder time with Daryth.


The other mob...

Captain of Solace
50/Illu/quasit
Pretty well equipped
I think 70 or lower ( My illusions were hardly hitting)

I gave up fighting him after two attempts. He is hitting me like a truck. I can't solo him. It doesn't make sense for him to be harder than Daryth. Or maybe he does, I'm not sure.

If i'm not wrong, the Captain of Solace is having a higher regen than Daryth.

It this useful?

[Davairus]

You are saying he is hitting you like a truck and yet you blame the regen? wtf mate

[Ergorion]

I don't think he was blaming regen. I think he was observing the captain with a higher rate of regen than the captain.

[Nycticora]

the captain was intended to be soloed by classes like invoker and warrior so it would make sense that his regen is low / correct and it may be intended that an illusionist with poor defenses can't solo him. That would be one of the mobs we specifically looked at.

It doesn't sound like Daryth is too hard to me, is there some reason we think Daryth's regen is too high? Is he raging or something?

The captain is supposed to be somewhat hard to solo and take a long time because he has pimp eq, is nowander so he doesn't hunt, and is in a safe justice-protected area.

[Nycticora]

someone should post a log of soloing the captain of the guard and include armor class values

it would be great to see it from someone who doesn't think regen is too high and also someone who does and look at the differences

[Nycticora]

nevermind guys no need, we found the bug with regen

[Davairus]

I've taken the time to investigate regen today and found that the formulas we gave out as defaults to builders were just insanely wrong. We can't use these formulas to determine mob regen. They are just completely unacceptable.

With players, hit points per level and regen are both based on the same system. You have a roll which determined by your class (so berserkers get more hp than invokers for instance), a constitution bonus, and then levelling up means you have more hp and better regen.

we find this formula to be essnetially the following

level * ( dice between 1-20 + constitution bonus)
warriors dice has 11 sides and mage sides has 6


With mobs, it should be the same. And it kinda is and it isn't. The creators of ROM 2.4 have left us with an unfortunate incoherent mess. I suspect what they were trying to do was toughen up the game to make it require groups of 3 to rank, but they literally annihilated the beautiful simple mathematics underpinning the game in the process. While I would like to be able to travel back in time and fix this, but I just can't, and I can't fix it immediately today without alienating you guys from the gameplay of AR.

What I will do however is I will revert the change and present you with new mobs to fight that have fair hp and regen. I will follow up about that on the forums at a later date. We will make Abandoned Realms great again

edit: found out it was from stock rom. also found original formulas. they are weird

[Sevaush]

I was just helping you guys test out fighting certain mobs from a player's perspective and giving the input as per Vanisse's guidelines. Doing my part is all. I really could care less if I can solo the Captain of Solace. I picked him because I sort of knew he was tougher than what I expected and I had trouble not only as an illusionist, but with my other toons.

[Vanisse]

Thanks for the feedback Sevaush, and thanks for looking at the code Dav.

Regarding Daryth, he has a decent chance of raging or roaring if already raged when you are fighting him. But let's see, with the reverts he is probably fine now.

[Nycticora]

I checked, rage shouldn't be affecting Daryth's hp regen so after Davairus' change it should be good again.

[ivindel]

I am curious as to the reason why rod of mind spectres is changed to anti good. So now goodies got nothing against stone giants?

[Nycticora]

that makes a lot of sense actually