Sooo (mission difficulty)

Why is it that I couldn't solo w/henchies the Rilohn mission (after 20 tries w/ all different henchie/hero builds), but the next missions Moddok crevice was a veritable 'cake walk' with the same henchies? I'm not looking for a 'flame fest/noob quest here), I just thought the difficulty of the missions was awfully 'skewed' here............


SR

I master'd that with henchies by setting up a curse necro with ss/ss. At the end I just disabled all his skills, targeted the boss, and used spinal manually. That plus my IDS = dead boss in about 15 seconds, with minimal damage to the group. Another idea is to bring winter on a ranger. You'll notice there's an environment effect that increases all earth damage by 50%, so just change it to cold.

In my opinion it's good that some missions take some forthought and planning on how to build for that specific mission. It would get boring if everything could be master'd with the same build of 8 heroes/hench.

I agree that it didn't scale well.

The complaint wasn't that the mission was too hard, it's that it was harder than the mission after it. Logicly, the missions should get harder as you go on.

I found the drought mission to be a lot of fun and pretty hard, the caverns after were a cakewalk...

***Spoiler***


















Why did "the hunger" suck so much? From all the build up I thought he'd be at least as hard as the drought... but the fight was EASY.. I stood under the bridge (archers couldn't hit me) ignored the hunger's damage, and killed the general.. then beat on the hunger.. he was hitting me for like 50 (dervish) and had no special skills.

I ended up just soloing him with a monk farming build because my heroes kept getting wiped by sandstorm. I really wanted masters - didn't feel like joining a pug though.

I said it before, and I'll say it again: this mission needs only one skill to make it easy - Winter. It causes the double damage effect to null.

We (my wife and I) got lucky with that, because we went into the mission not knowing what to expect, but we had set up Acolyte Jin to use Winter, and Master of Whispers to use Spinal Shivers. We beat it with masters easily.

I found all of the missions before the Realm of Torment to be of similar ease to hench. Interrupts are your friend.

Quote: Originally Posted by Quintal

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Rilhon Refuge + Zhed Shadowhoof + Maelstrom = OMGWTFBBQPWND!

[skill]Maelstrom[/skill]

Maelstrom interrupts spells cast within it. The drought is too stupid to move out of it and since he is an ele....pretty much all his spells are interrupted.

GG Mr Drought.

However, yes, I agree...some of the mission difficulties are a little out of place. Another example is Consulate Docks and Venta Cemetary. Another is the penultimate and final mission.

Quote: Originally Posted by Lost

WTF? Consulate docks was great! I really enjoyed the action. Tip, bring a prot. monk and a meteor shower ele. All these large huging mobs are just screaming to get nuked. There is the part with the archers on top of the stairs, take your nuker, cast prot. spirit on him: BBQ PWNAGE

*cough* *cough*
we,re not talking about the docks here.

I did this mish master with a group. was rly easy.

Quote: Originally Posted by darkdawn

This was a very easy mission. Took us a very short time to master it and with no problems. We were running two MMs, two Paragons, a warrior, and acolyte sos. as an interupter. With Dunkuro and a generic healing henchie for the monks.

Quote: Originally Posted by Celestial Beaver

I mastered Rilohn first time with heroes henchies using the same builds I regularly use:

Me: Ele Searing Flamer
Sousuke: Ele Searing Flamer + 2 interrupts
Olias: MM + 1 hex removal + 1 interrupt
Drunkoro: Healing + 2 interrupts + 1 enchant removal
Derv hench
War hench
Healer hench
Para hench

No special tricks. We just charged in and attacked. A couple of the party were insta-killed by the boss but they were always rezed before the boss could do another instakill.

As for Crevice - I don't understand everyone's concern over the archers at the end?? I took the same build above and we just nuked the archers on the right, then the archers on the left. Then we attacked the bosses (actually the stupid minions ran and attacked the bosses while we were still killing archers lol). I had to do this mission 2x b/c the bonus is finicky and I did not do it right the first time. Both times the final fight went the same way and no one ever died.

I think the key to winning with heroes is to make sure you have setup some good builds that make efficient use of the hero AI's strengths. If you give them normal human player builds they will not be as effective.

Hero AI Strengths:
Quick reflexes - make all your heroes /Me and give them 1-2 interrupts each. If you spec 8 or so into Inspiration they can use the interrupts as effective e-management.
Multitasking - fits in with the above suggestion. Give them 1-2 interrupts or hex/enchant removal. Heroes are godly at watching the entire battle while performing their main fighting duties. The instant they see an enemy casting or enemy enchantment/hex they will use the given interrupt/removal skill without missing a beat in their attacks.
Attention to detail & ease of targetting - Give heroes boring tasks that require constant micro-management. Jagged Bones or Death Nova or Blood Ritual on a MM is great because he will do the boring task of watching all his minions and casting JB or DN when any of them get low on health. He can do this much better than a human can. He can also watch the party energy and slap down a Blood Ritual on any party members that need it. He is also incredibly good at using skills that have no effect unless certain conditions are met.

Spend some time specing your heroes or visit the Heroes & AI forum for some good builds and the missions will become much easier.

Quote: Originally Posted by darkdawn *cough* *cough*
we,re not talking about the docks here.

I did this mish master with a group. was rly easy. Quote: Originally Posted by darktyco

^ I agree about Docks: it's incredibly easy when you take your Tyrian/Canthan char there, but henching it when you're a lvl 12 dervish is a pain (lvl 12 + lvl 15 henchies vs lvl 24 bosses: there's something wrong with that IMO).

For the refuge, another skill may help you: broad head arrow.

All you have to do is to neutralize the boss: I actually found easier to get masters than for crevice (crevice was not hard either but it took my a couple of tries to kill the runners, even with Deep Freeze / pin down).

i though the hunger would be much better but i just owned him

My ranger went in with heros and henches only -- killed everything remotely hostile and 'liberated' all five pump stations but did not switch the levers because I wanted Masters. We literally turned around to face the Hunger -- and got owned in two hits of something.

Still trying to figure that out..........

It was probably his stone daggers. I remember seeing them hit me for something like 150 a piece.

I wish my elementalist could hit like that.

Regarding the original post, yes, I agree, Nightfall in general seems to have a blatant issue with mission balance. Not each individual mission, but the fact that you can go from one mission that's easy as cake and you beat it first try, to a mission where you get totally killed in about 15 seconds, then back to another mission that's so easy it's boring.

Not saying that each individual mission is too hard, just that some missions require very specific skills to counter certain enemies/obstacles, and even when you have those skills equipped (which usually only comes if you read guides or play through the mission and die once to learn the hard way), it can still be tricky. That's alright, only you never know when to see it coming. You'll finish a mission that a blind monkey could do, only to be hammered into the ground the next mission. After you overcome the problem and finish said mission, you find that the next mission is back to blind-monkey difficulty again. lol.

Who here can honestly say that the final mission was the hardest in the game? I can think of at least 3 other missions right now that make the final mission look like you're fighting a big fluffy bunny of kindness.

As a whole, I love Nightfall, but it has to have some of the worst difficutly balance I've ever seen in a game. I can't for the life of me imagine how it all went through testing and everyone gave it a thumbs up, saying "Yep, this is all well balanced!". It seems like multiple mission teams were developing them all at the same time, and weren't communicating with each other on how hard to make each mission.