Curse

Gaile Gray · Aug 04, 2007, 01:57 AM // 01:57

Karlos is correct. We do listen and we definitely care. The discussions and concerns about Mallyx were included in this week's Community Summary, which went out a few hours ago. You can be sure that a number of dev team members will be reading your thoughts about this.

Redfeather1975 · Aug 04, 2007, 02:02 AM // 02:02

Mallyx should be made into a fun and challenging puzzle fight.
You do all the fighting to get to him, and it might be a nice change of pace to do a type of battle that is fun and relies on creative problem solving skills.

BTW, I don't mean sitting down with him and playing Rubik's cube...although that would be totally radical.
/me goes back into time machine and returns to the 80s

Karlos · Aug 04, 2007, 04:27 AM // 04:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Karlos is correct. We do listen and we definitely care. The discussions and concerns about Mallyx were included in this week's Community Summary, which went out a few hours ago. You can be sure that a number of dev team members will be reading your thoughts about this.

Thanks for pushing for it along with the discussion on the wiki.

I think we as players should recognize a few things:

a) Mallyx is flawed, and the flaw goes beyond Summoning Shadows' irritating recharge time. The amount of labor and toil is too much compared to other elite missions and challenges and the reward fairly mediocre (I find the prospect of getting a gold inscribable Zodian Sword/Longbow after 2 hours of work far more scintillating than getting Mallyx's Inspiration after 8 hours). The recent change to the rewards of Urgoz and the Deep made DoA inferior to them in terms of effort vs reward.
b) ANet is currently shipping out GW:EN. There is little chance that they would spend a lot of time reworking the entire encounter at this time as most of their resources are pooled into making sure GW:EN is out the door in great shape (which is where their resources should be).
c) What that means is, I do not expect a major overhaul of Mallyx at this time. Next time I see a game update mentioning DoA I'll be very excited, but I won't expect the whole thing to be reworked right now. However, I am still hoping I can kill him fair and square in his citadel once before GW:EN comes out though.

Let's wait and see what the fix will be.

Kashrlyyk · Aug 04, 2007, 04:55 AM // 04:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karlos

....I feel he is fundamentally flawed (not killed once by the player base as the encounter was designed in over 8 months, 7 hours of playing time to get to him each time the quest resets) and I really wish they would get down to the core of the issue. As I said in the thread, I am tired of finding ways around his glitches.

But let's keep this civil. They care, and they are listening.

Yes, they are listening, but again they start working on it after several months, nearly a year! No, wait, there is GWEN. So right now they basically aknowledged there is a problem, and sometime between now and the shutdown of the servers, they might fix it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gaile Gray

Karlos is correct. We do listen and we definitely care. The discussions and concerns about Mallyx were included in this week's Community Summary, which went out a few hours ago. You can be sure that a number of dev team members will be reading your thoughts about this.

This sounds like this is the first time, you included that issue.

Hyper Cutter · Aug 04, 2007, 05:31 AM // 05:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by JONO51

Maybe they could make the 17 previous mobs seperate to the citadel part, ie, a different part of the quest. So you run your cookie cutter build, go back to gate of anguish, then can chage build and be taken through the door to the citadel?

I like this one.

Shanaeri Rynale · Aug 04, 2007, 06:33 AM // 06:33

It's good to see this get some focus from the designers, but like Karlos i'm not holding my breath for a fix pre gwen. But hey, surprise us...

One of the major sources of frustration is it takes over an hour to get to him, just to test a theory out. 2 or 3 attempts can easily last 4-5 hours by which time the team is well and truely fed up. It's easy for the devs to test as 1, the know how he works(they coded it) and 2, they can just teleport in and fight him no matter where

I too thought about how to stop him casting Summoning Shadows(balling like in Final Assault was one idea, using aoe scatter was another), but why should we waste time trying to fight him, when it's clear and confirmed the entire thing is bugged and based on how unfun it is, and the distinct lack of success for non glitch methods for 8 months fundimentally broken to boot.

Mallyx should be re-worked to still provide a challange, on the level of Urgoz, Kannaxi or Rotscale but to leave as is just in my view damages Anets reputation for elegant and responsive game design.

I believe four things could be changed in order to still leave Mallyx a challenge, but also increase the fun and ease of dealing with him. These are:

1. Reduce the mobs required to kill to get to him by 60-75%. No one wants to spend an hour just to be wiped in 2 minutes, trying something that might work once in a blue moon. Or, as above split the quest into two parts.
2. Increase the cast and recharge time of summoning shadows to something like 3 seconds and 45 second recharge
3. Allow his skills to be diverted or disabled,by skills such as diversion or distracting shot
4. Gid rid of some of Mallyx's green drops, replace them with items that can normally only be found in halls drops. i.e make the reward equal to the challenge. If people still want to try the original design leave that for HM(double chest drops for those that do so)

gerg-nad · Aug 06, 2007, 09:52 PM // 21:52

What a long thread...whew. I am trying to beat Mallyx as well. We attempted it again last night and are testing our ideas. Unlike many I am not trying to alter the build, changing primaries, as these are the toons I have at DOA.

I have a few ideas, based on all I have read and what I have experience works. I think there are a number of subtle hints in what Curtis writes as well as numerous unknows.

I know a number of folks are testing ideas and not saying much until they are successful, but you should tell the commmunity as it will help everyone learn from the failure.

I will give you a couple of things I think may be important:
1. Where you fight him in the room. There may be a place where he does not have to use Summon Shadow because he is where he want you, especially relative to his position.
2. Spirits in the room. He tends to want to bring them up again and this may be leverage to an advantage, as it take lots of energy and time to do that.

I have done it 5 or 6 times now and all 4 of my toons are stacked up at Citadel, since the nerf. Before this I have done it dozens of times. I still enjoy the challenge of DOA as I have completed all the quests numerous times both on normal and hard mode. Not being able to complete Citedel is leaving me unfulfilled.

Now I am tending to stay to the shorter missions as of late, like Gloom or City, just to have things a bit more bitsize. I am generally losing a bit of interest in GW as its becoming more of a grind. All 8 of my toons have completed all 3 chapters and I have helped many guildies through as well. I like the idea of interacting with people and elite missions and things like ventrilo/TS allow that. I tend to spend a lot of time looking at builds, but find this more like work and sometimes a grind than fun. I think there are alltogether too many skills and it makes the game very complicated. This last part is of my post is a bit of a commentary so I appologize for that.

Racthoh · Aug 06, 2007, 10:52 PM // 22:52

I have to ask others... what is taking over an hour to just get to Mallyx? Today was the first time for me ever trying to get to Mallyx and we were plowing through the groups with considerable ease and speed with five heroes and three humans. After about 20-25 minutes we were against the last group but wiped from a nice big lag spike that kicked myself and our human monk for a good 30 seconds before the reconnect option was given. Subsequent attempts were plagued with more spikes so all we were doing was building DP.

Is there more after the 18th group that isn't listed in the wiki or is there something I'm missing here?

Snow Bunny · Aug 06, 2007, 10:55 PM // 22:55

With the Para build I've been running Racthoh, we certainly need at the very least 45 minutes, normally an hour. We've got a couple Para damage buffs and the two ele spikers....but not really anymore than that.

GloryFox · Aug 07, 2007, 12:49 AM // 00:49

Racthoh don't mind me asking but what build were you running. On average it takes about 1 hour to get to Mallyx give or take 15 minutes from the start of the High priest beginning his casting. This time might also include the time it takes to move the priest out of harms way.

Also out of curiosity would it be possible to run a continuous knockdown style build on Mallyx? I was discussing the idea with a friend but we are unsure if we can even afford the skill slots to do it.

Just a wild thought... We even have a non enchant non conditional applying SIN build that could run continuous knockdowns but getting the Assassin to Mallyx... now thats a neat trick..

Racthoh · Aug 07, 2007, 05:58 AM // 05:58

We had three paragons, two rits, one monk, a warrior, and a ranger.

I was playing SY! (I'm r4 Kurzick), TNTF! (r9 Sunspear) spammer on my paragon, specced highly in motivation for Mending Refrain and Finale of Restoration. The two heroes were chaining Defensive Anthems at 14 leadership for 10 second duration. Goren with 16 axe using a pretty standard build except we couldn't use Eviscerate in anticipation for Mallyx so opted for Cleave instead.

One rit was restoration but Razah runs it poorly at best and was usually sitting with very little energy based on vent chatter. I can't remember if our human monk was using Word of Healing or LoD. The other rit was running channeling with splinter/barrage, and the ranger with a barrage setup of some kind. Don't think the ranger was all that effective considering the groups are spread out fairly.

yesitsrob · Aug 07, 2007, 08:30 AM // 08:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

We had three paragons, two rits, one monk, a warrior, and a ranger.

I was playing SY! (I'm r4 Kurzick), TNTF! (r9 Sunspear) spammer on my paragon, specced highly in motivation for Mending Refrain and Finale of Restoration. The two heroes were chaining Defensive Anthems at 14 leadership for 10 second duration. Goren with 16 axe using a pretty standard build except we couldn't use Eviscerate in anticipation for Mallyx so opted for Cleave instead.

One rit was restoration but Razah runs it poorly at best and was usually sitting with very little energy based on vent chatter. I can't remember if our human monk was using Word of Healing or LoD. The other rit was running channeling with splinter/barrage, and the ranger with a barrage setup of some kind. Don't think the ranger was all that effective considering the groups are spread out fairly.

One Paragon actually had Angelic Bond, though when we get round to doing it again I will be bringing Defensive Anthem. I also realised his spear wasn't maximum damage after >_<.

I ended up using a rather gimped low-enchantment bar, I still had veil which I will also ditch next time just to make the 3-wave group at the end a bit easier.

The Resto rit wasn't too bad really, he was able to keep recovery up most the time (which helped with the blinds

), it was the fact he used Expel on Hexes on recharge which is what took so long for certain hexes to drop when I asked him to do it. I did have to disable WoW which I decided would be useful when it came to fighting Mallyx, if we could find room for a ward...

50% miss rate from Def Anthem, 50% WoW miss rate, 50% Ward Miss... that's a pretty solid chance that he won't hit you except with his unblockable attacks

On the ranger I will drop Barrage, taking out more than one enemy at a time hurt us in some situations, giving us some undesired pretty huge fights, though they were rather fun.

- BHA would be nice, would help in taking down the monks a little faster (not like they really took us that long anyway)

Things were pretty smooth for the most of it. The Dream Riders scared me more than anything, but they themselves didn't do much damage - Power Blocking my rather gimped healing bar for defeating Mallyx wasn't nice though.

I honestly want to ditch the Ranger Hero I had for another Paragon, better DPS and more utility that wouldn't hurt us if we had it - I kind of missed having Lyrics and Aria of Zeal

giving me tons of energy.
_

Also lol at taking 1 hour to do this - we checked Wiki a lot while we were doing DoA since we'd never actually done it before. Some of the "methods" and builds people use to do the areas are truly sad. These Necrotic Traversal Tricks etc .. ergh. To be quite honest, based on what I've read here and about Mallyx - and how terribly awful most groups are that go to fight Mallyx, I don't think he will be at all impossible. Just needs more imbagons.

yesitsrob · Aug 07, 2007, 08:57 AM // 08:57

Double Post Epic Forum Lag Thanks

4thVariety · Aug 07, 2007, 09:53 AM // 09:53

The problem is that everybody is so used to the old build that they never considered the new one yesitsrob is suggesting. And even then most people just won't have the right character to join the Imbagons

the solution is easy, in 24 days all that will count is this rack

everything else is useless or no longer considered 'envogue' enough to go for.

Mallyx/DoA will no longer be visited by the same kind of treasurehunters than now. the real problem then will not be one of "not having the right players" but rather the remaining players "not having the right characters". There are many people with sufficient skills when it comes to DoA, the only reason they can't play anything at anytime is that they have not the right class present. Pulling all classes through the game and give them the right equipement/skills for the high power quests is tedious at best and especially undesirable when they collect titles or upgrade their hall, like they will do from september on. Instead of playing the highlevel content you initially wanted, you end up doing low end stuff over and over

Most people only have one or two characters in DoA, that is their timelimit. Their skill limit is higher but they are barred from Mallyx purely based on the fact that they play the wrong class. No patch can change that property of the ape. Neither today nor tomorrow. We would need a weird "Elite-PvE" character slot to adress that, or the ability to shift our character from main class to main class in these certain Elite areas, that require special skills and tactics.

Right now being an Elite Player is not enough, you have to be an Elite player with the right class, or enough time to have at least 5 classes anywhere. The latter is a minority too small to create even a single level for. The rest will hatemail Anet to the grave for that. Accessibility is the issue not exploiting the Ai or patching it straight.

Karlos · Aug 07, 2007, 10:33 AM // 10:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Racthoh

I have to ask others... what is taking over an hour to just get to Mallyx? Today was the first time for me ever trying to get to Mallyx and we were plowing through the groups with considerable ease and speed with five heroes and three humans. After about 20-25 minutes we were against the last group but wiped from a nice big lag spike that kicked myself and our human monk for a good 30 seconds before the reconnect option was given. Subsequent attempts were plagued with more spikes so all we were doing was building DP.

Is there more after the 18th group that isn't listed in the wiki or is there something I'm missing here?

I think the short answer would be that you are just way better than the rest of us. Your first time in the Citadel and you got to group 18 in 20-25 minutes? Impressive. I find it hard to believe though.

I'd like you to elaborate on how your 5 heroes handled the 5 Greater Dram Riders while 2 Dryders were nuking them. While protecting and healing the Priest. Something is not adding up. I know of a way to do that in 30 minutes, but not your first time in.

The build you posted later does not the proclamation of 20-25 minutes make much sense. How were you killing things fast enough? I assume Goren was not tanking (since you can't get him to hold corners) so how was Splinter barrage working?

Post a screen shot with /age and the door open (not necessarily Mallyx killed). If you can open the door in 25 minutes with more than 2 heroes in your party, you should be running DoA instead of Mallyx.

zwei2stein · Aug 07, 2007, 10:34 AM // 10:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by 4thVariety

Right now being an Elite Player is not enough, you have to be an Elite player with the right class, or enough time to have at least 5 classes anywhere. The latter is a minority too small to create even a single level for. The rest will hatemail Anet to the grave for that. Accessibility is the issue not exploiting the Ai or patching it straight.

DoA is open to more classes than you think:

Ranger: BiP vith symbiosis, etc.
Necromancer: BiP, SS
Mesmer: SS, SF Nuker
Dervish: Earth Tank
Warrior: Earth Tank
Ele: Earth Tank, SF Nuker
Monk: All those monky jobs.

All other classes (P, Rt, A): While not really suited for it, they can make decent earth tanks each with his own flavor. In fact, i would love to see Rt/E tank (suplementing earth skills with restoration weapons and self heals, using ashpots etc ...)

Milennin · Aug 07, 2007, 11:16 AM // 11:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

DoA is open to more classes than you think:

Ranger: BiP vith symbiosis, etc.
Necromancer: BiP, SS
Mesmer: SS, SF Nuker
Dervish: Earth Tank
Warrior: Earth Tank
Ele: Earth Tank, SF Nuker
Monk: All those monky jobs.

All other classes (P, Rt, A): While not really suited for it, they can make decent earth tanks each with his own flavor. In fact, i would love to see Rt/E tank (suplementing earth skills with restoration weapons and self heals, using ashpots etc ...)

That still doesn't make it more fun. About half of the classes is supposed to run Earth tank...the other half Searing Flames nuker and one class to heal/protect/bond/whatever.

yesitsrob · Aug 07, 2007, 11:50 AM // 11:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karlos

I think the short answer would be that you are just way better than the rest of us. Your first time in the Citadel and you got to group 18 in 20-25 minutes? Impressive. I find it hard to believe though.

I can confirm that Racthoh is good at the game. But we had 5 heroes here... he was the main source of our damage mitigation for sure. A lot of it can be attributed just to how ridiculously imbalanced the Paragon SS skill is. And SY! was also pretty good with Focused Anger. Though if I'm being honest here, it's not generally about Racthoh being good, it's about most people that try it being down right terrible.

Quote:

I'd like you to elaborate on how your 5 heroes handled the 5 Greater Dram Riders while 2 Dryders were nuking them. While protecting and healing the Priest. Something is not adding up. I know of a way to do that in 30 minutes, but not your first time in.

We died to that group once. Though it was due to myself (the monk) getting power blocked twice, apart from that they weren't an issue at all. We took the Terrorwebs out first, then killed all but 1 of the dream riders, then finished the titans off before killing the last dream rider to trigger the next wave.

The only enchantment we had was protective spirit, which I didn't use vs them, so their shatter was useless, their mirror was useless, they _only_ actually had power block and power spike to do anything to us, power block could be nasty, that's really about it though.

Quote:

The build you posted later does not the proclamation of 20-25 minutes make much sense. How were you killing things fast enough? I assume Goren was not tanking (since you can't get him to hold corners) so how was Splinter barrage working?

Apart from warriors what is really going to compare to Paragon DPS when taking on single enemies? They all had Aggresive Refrain and a fair amount of GFTE and also splinter weapon. Considering the fact that things generally weren't balled the splinter probably wasn't as great as it could have been.

Goren was obviously not tanking, but really... we didn't need a tank, that's for pick up pve groups that have to lure the priest way to have any chance of doing this. snap. Throughout the entire Domain of Anguish (with exception of Veil) we used our warriors for DPS because that is what they are best at.

Quote:

Post a screen shot with /age and the door open (not necessarily Mallyx killed). If you can open the door in 25 minutes with more than 2 heroes in your party, you should be running DoA instead of Mallyx.

He has a screenshot of it, but not at the last group I don't think. Although you can only really take my word for it here he is very accurate in the time it took us.

You absolutely immensely underestimate just how much defense our build had, the Terrorwebs Searing Flames would largely go unnoticed. Really that area was about myself (the monk) not getting power blocked, which wasn't hard, as the only monk I didn't really find myself needing to cast that much since we simply didn't take a lot of damage. Sadly, as the forums prove, people are so stupid that they think Paragons are useless in PVE, and think SF Eles, Tanking and bad monk builds with 8 copies of rebirth are the way forward.

As far as our own damage goes we had 3 paragons, a warrior, a splinter weapon and a barrage - Paragon DPS is only really matched by warriors and I can safely say we did not lack damage at all.

We would have defeated the last group on one of our trips if it was not for the fact we both lagged out.

I'm thinking/hoping we'll give it another shot tonight so will do this. You'll probably be quite surprised. And chances are it will be with 5 heroes.

Here's a Screenshot Rac took and put on his forum: I believe it's taken with the group with 5 dreamriders and terrorwebs, or what's left of it anyway:
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/8697/zhellixfh2.jpg

Also keep in mind, we are gearing our build to fight Mallyx, we have no enchants, no conditions, and no hexes. I can confidently say that if we changed things to optimize ourselves vs these 18 waves then we'd do it with absolutely no issues at all

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

DoA is open to more classes than you think:

Ranger: BiP vith symbiosis, etc.
Necromancer: BiP, SS
Mesmer: SS, SF Nuker
Dervish: Earth Tank
Warrior: Earth Tank
Ele: Earth Tank, SF Nuker
Monk: All those monky jobs.

All other classes (P, Rt, A): While not really suited for it, they can make decent earth tanks each with his own flavor. In fact, i would love to see Rt/E tank (suplementing earth skills with restoration weapons and self heals, using ashpots etc ...)

With the changes to it that make it easier on NOrmal mode it's open to practically any realistically viable class in PVE, as long as the players aren't horrible. I'd probably not bring mesmers, but I wouldn't bring mesmers to most pve places by choice.

Running Earth Tanks on warriors is just truely truely sad, more often than not we've used Melonni (running Conviction, Mystic Regen, and Vital Boon + attack skills) as a frontliner.

The cookie cutter builds for DoA are _extremely_ fool proof. And for the most of it totally unnecesarry if you know 1 or 2 other compitent players.

Honestly the comment you made on the paragon not being suited there, so laughable. About the only things that have really remained consistent in our trips to DoA are Paragons and monks.... although we've done City with only 1 monk too.

Shanaeri Rynale · Aug 07, 2007, 04:52 PM // 16:52

This usually happens in long running threads. People identify an issue, work at it, and then it kinda turns sour, giving Anet the perfect reason to start ignoring it.

For example, the precise time it takes to get to him is kinda Irrelevant in the scheme of things. It's builds that will actually finish the job that are important.

Paragon buffs, and rit spirits would seem to have the best chance of success. However AN stated that Mallyx can be beaten by any profession.

There was also an update to the Mallyx wiki page which says All Calls. It is my understanding that the encounter was balanced with players needing a lot more time invested to achieve victory that was used by our Alpha testers in a 2 hour play session once a week for a couple weeks. The in-house testers spent a lot of time testing DoA. Much more than the Alpha testers. In fact, we would not have gone live with the DoA if the internal testers were not able to properly test Mallyx let alone get to him. They never would have signed off on that

As we know, when DoA was first implemented there was a bug that stopped the door from opening once all the mobs were killed. So clearly a bug crept in from when it was signed off, to installation. This is also the case now where summoning Shadows is also bugged in live.

Could it be that there are further errors that have somehow happened that prevent the builds AN made Mallyx weak against from actually working? It does seem odd that in 8 months, no team has successfully killed him, the way Anet intended.

I see from the wiki thread that a fix is hopefully due out soon. I really hope it's more than just a stop the current bug, but a complete revamp of the Mallyx encounter to make it more fun for the players.

As stated above time is running out for DoA, Gwen riches beckon and it would be sad to see the pinnacle of DoA to be regarded by the player base as a no fun failure, because of a few bugs and a design that has shown not to be fun for the players.

Hopefully the next few days will reveal some answers..

gerg-nad · Aug 07, 2007, 05:11 PM // 17:11

I have been playing DOA many months now and have seen many more new players to the area lately. Personally I find it much more enjoyable to play this GAME when you have fewer choices in skill bar and just worry about playing the game and your skills/profession well than all this talk and research into the skills and classes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by commentary

If you just look at one player class with the amount of choices you have you have say of 45 skills just by random you have
45!/(8!(45-8)!) over 215 Million combinations. I hope with GW2 they simplify some of this so we can just play the game.

I know we are trying a few radical ideas with Mallyx now, but I would have to say it does not rely on Paragon or any particular class. The hardest part of DOA now is getting a decent team together.

Quote:

Originally Posted by commentary

After a run last night in Gloom, I have decided not to run with PUG unless they get on Vent/TS, as a number of excursions and miscommunications caused numerous unneccessary delays and party deaths