Today I was instagibbed by.. *Help us Balance Random Elites*

[edge2054]

A lot of complaining going on about random elites.

So instead of complaining, lets please post the talents that seem to be the most problematic to help Darkgod to balance them.

Please include the monster type (brown bear for instance), what level your character was, what level the elite was (if you remember), and what talent or talents seemed to cause the instagib (or near instagib as the case may be). If you're playing on a difficulty with multiple lives, a screen shot of the monsters talents would be great too!!

If in question of what killed you, just take a screen shot of the combat log (click on message/chat from the death dialog and then hit control + m to bring it up after you're dead) and post it either straight into this thread or onto imagur with a link.


Your help is greatly appreciated


Now lets get some killshots!!!

[hamrkveldulfr]

Very low level doomed are always giving me a huge hassle. Endless shadow spawn, darkness, and gestures doing incredible damage close up, they have destroyed two of my adventurers before I could make it out of the second dungeon. I think keeping them tied to either range or melee till later levels would help very much.

[SageAcrin]

Drawing a Corruptor Orc Fighter in the Reknor Escape was basically impossible to deal with; I somehow lived with 2 HP and a dead Norgan, but that was largely luck and positioning that got me to do that. Their first action was over 70 damage to both myself and Norgan IIRC, with Blood Spray, and additional constant damage.

I've also had problems with Troll Archmages(generally too durable to take out easily, a threat at all ranges) in Trollmire and Psi enemies(even without Implode, a Kinetic Aura spike is over 100 damage, IIRC. Admittedly, the one Psi I've ran across since, that was more theoretical than something I got actually hit by, since I killed it before it could manage to Spike the aura.).

The aforementioned issues with Doomed happened to me as well; A Doomed *plant* nearly killed me at one point when I underestimated its potential. I also had a Paradox Mage...something, I forget... Quantum Spike me and, I believe, successfully enact instant death on me after the 85 damage the initial hit did(It gave the pulled apart message that is, I believe, when that instant death has successfully hit.).

Generally, it can be summed up as "mages and mage-like rares instagibbed me". Having said that, now that I've been running a lower Rare amounts plugin, I've had repeated meetings with later Rares in the game with my currently-L15 Berserker with only moderate danger. Not snoozefests, but nothing I couldn't handle. All of those situations were in the very earlygame, before L10 and usually before L5.

So basically I'm not talking about anything that hasn't already been nerfed in b41 commits(in some cases, during the change between b40 and b39, in fact, such as the Psi enemy that Imploded me.), but I figure I ought to report some cases for the sake of discussion. I'll post more if I see anything notably standout later.

[Torokasi]

Of the ones I've experienced Inevitable Death Syndrome to:

1) Stone Troll Anorithil - may have been able to hit and run except an enemy pulled up behind me and blocked retreat.
2) Stone Troll... Corruptor? Just blindsided and two-shot me, I think Drain+something else.
3) Large brown snake brawler. No, I don't know how this happened, yes, it should have been easy - and then I got dazelocked to death.
4) Grizzly bear mindslayer. Not sure what the loadout on it was skillwise, since I was also dealing with two doomed bears at the same time (Bearscape. Why do you ask?) but I am positive the mindslayer one was the dominant offense of the trio, and I couldn't really safely hurt it either.

In general my main impulse would be to simply push rares to the second set of zones - Old Forest and its ilk. This gives all builds time to find/buy/learn escape and management options, and while 3 and 4 weren't in the starter zones, 3 I could have (and should have) zapped on sight, while 4 was in a high-Rare zone.

This being said, when playing with rares, I've been choosing classes good at dealing with them (Mindslayer, Marauder). Choosing weaker classes would not be optimal with the current rare rate, at least with my playstyle.

[edge2054]

I also got instagibbed by a doomed (plant too ).

Between shadows and blast dazing me. Granted I was on an archmage so I decided not to post (no shields, so my hit points were under 200).

[donkatsu]

Just got my first instagib to a Doomed that hit me for 1200 damage with Dark Torrent at level 38. It was a crit, and they had a lot of crit multiplier from the Force of Will tree.

Also, Shell Shield on rares gives them around 100% resist all for 10 turns, which is not insurmountable but quite overpowered nonetheless.

[Argon]

Random elite - stone troll on level 2 of the Trollmire activates fearscape... how are you supposed to survive that when you are level 2? Maybe there should be level restrictions on certain talents, such as fearscape.

[ghostbuster]

Doomed are the the worst IMHO. They can hurt you without doing anything else. Just feed and wait for shadows to appear. So if the randelite already has strong racial powers (I met a luminous horror one), it is insanely difficult. A luminous horror zerker or mage would not be such a problem, as he would have to choose between striking you with light rays or using his class powers.

And please, completely avoid to generate randelites worm that talk. Never met one, but they (and their worms) are already extremely lethal, and giving them additionnal powers would be just insane.

[edge2054]

And please, completely avoid to generate randelites worm that talk. Never met one, but they (and their worms) are already extremely lethal, and giving them additionnal powers would be just insane.

Maybe elites and above shouldn't generate as random elites as a general rule? (Worm that Walks is an elite already, which is why I suggest this and I've also heard of random uniques spawning with additional talents, which could make carefully hand balanced NPCs like Borfast or Krator go from very challenging to completely unfun).

[Senteth]

I nearly died to an invisible stone troll on lvl 1 of the Trollmire right after beating my original starting zone. I entered the trollmire, saw nothing in sight, took three steps forward and suddenly started losing big chunks of hp and getting knocked back. If not for healing infusions and the fact that he burned up all his mana pretty quickly using invis, I would have been done for.

Maybe elites and above shouldn't generate as random elites as a general rule?

That sounds like a good idea. Maybe buff the experience they give you too

[Postman]

Maybe buff the experience they give you too

Pointless. As is there is too much xp in the game, especially for races with low xp penalties and players prone to exploring. In fact it could be a good idea to reduce xp across the board and compensate it reducing damage/attack of monsters. An alternative solution could be random buffing elixirs. In fact there are too few elixirs in the game, the only elixir without permanent effect I'm aware of is invulnerability...

[Grey]

Which is one elixir too many. Lack of potions is one of the game's strong points.

[PureQuestion]

Yes the Elixer of Invulnerability is typically quite useless since it's rare to find a situation where you need it but won't just die when it runs out...

[Soron]

Well, this is interesting. I came upon a mold in the infinite dungeon, sitting on the stairway on level 5, which had Call Shadows, Gesture of Pain, Hymn of Shadows, and a Chant. Its rarity was "unique", so it was the random boss on that level, but... I don't think those are supposed to have two classes.

I think what happened is the unique mold got affected by the rare code as well, hence picking up both the anorithil and doomed classes. I was able to kill it, but I was also pretty lucky in that it was immobile and weak. If that had been a unique-rare troll, for instance, that would've been bad.

Not sure if this has been fixed in svn or not.

[PureQuestion]

Randbosses have two classes. Randelites have one class. That's the difference between them.