Curse

FVC · Nov 11, 2005, 05:51 AM // 05:51

Seems that the people who are happy about today's change, where monsters run from area spells, are happy that it hurts the farmers. Well, it really doesn't. It hurts the legitimate PvE players.

Farming with a solo monk or warrior is, in fact much the same as before - a little easier, if anything. Monsters are running from things like Balthazar's Aura, but they come right back. And while they are running, they aren't doing damage, meaning it's actually a positive for the solo farmer - they can take on more things while selectively forcing the monsters to do less damage to them. It does take a little longer to kill some things but that is about the only drawback I can see.

Meanwhile, PvE is badly affected by this. Monsters are running from the simplest area spells, like fireball. Nearly any spell that does damage to multiple enemies - not just DoT spells - causes this behavior. (For some reason, some monster types don't seem to run at all... I've noticed this with nightmares for example, and I'm thinking it's because they are doing AoE damage of their own.)

When the monsters run from these spells, aggro is broken, they run around, and they retarget. What you are left with is either monsters continually running back and forth, in and out of the DoT area, causing much annoyance and frustration as you have to chase them down - or, monsters all retargeting after being hit with something as simple as fireball, leaving the warriors and heading for the casters.

You also have to seriously question the effectiveness of skills like fire storm, maelstrom and others which take large amounts of energy and yet will no longer do anywhere near their max damage in many cases.

I'm fine with changes - I always adapt! But I see some problems/issues with this change that I think should be addressed. Here are the 3 biggest problems that I see, and some possible solutions:

- Monsters run from spells like fireball and whirlwind, which do damage to multiple enemies at once but are NOT DoT spells. A player would not run from fireball and there is no reason for a monster to do so. SOLUTION: Monsters should not run from these type of spells. It makes no sense.

- Several DoT spells, namely fire storm, maelstrom, and searing heat are no longer worth the energy they require to cast, because their damage has been largely reduced due to monsters avoiding them. SOLUTION: Make DoT spells require less energy to cast across the board, OR make them have a larger AoE range across the board, OR monsters should wait longer before running out of them (perhaps even a random interval, with some monsters leaving quickly while others being "too stupid" to ever leave them

).

- All AoE spells cause monsters to lose aggro as a result of running. Of course, this will cause them to retarget. The high level PvE game (UW/FoW/etc.) is generally based upon warriors taking the aggro while the "squishies" keep their distance, then move in and cast. Having monsters constantly lose aggro (again, especially from simple things like *fireball*) will cause a lot of frustration while chasing monsters down and/or having them retarget everyone in sight. SOLUTION: monsters can run from the AoE effect but do not lose aggro, and will return to whoever they were fighting before the AoE was cast, once they feel "safe".

My real solution would be to just put it back the way it was, but that seems unlikely, so I thought of these other solutions. Really, though... this change was very poorly implemented and a little confusing as to what they were trying to accomplish here. Make farming harder? No, just a little bit longer. Make PvE harder? No, just more frustrating and annoying. Nothing is really harder, just a lot more tedious, therefore I feel this was a bad change.

Savio · Nov 11, 2005, 05:52 AM // 05:52

I'm going to scream if I see another thread about the update. And no, not in the +brave way. Closed.