Comments and Suggestions from first Playthrough of Mordor

[fuzzyhead91]

I tried out Mordor today, and have quite a few remarks. I played with a transferred character, level 105 dwarf guardian running non-raid armor.

I was surprised to find that mobs were immediately much more difficult than in the previous area. Avoidances were way up, my damage was down, and every fight was a challenge to survive. This may be because guardians do no damage anyway, but it was extra challenging and I died multiple times on seemingly trash mobs around the landscape. I am not running endgame raid gear. If Mordor were to go live tomorrow, I would expect many, many, players would be immediately turned off at the difficulty scale. Many people don't have T2C Throne gear, and without it I feel like coming straight into the region is suicide. It will be a necessity to get that 106th level prior to entering Mordor just to make the mobs approachable.

From killing what mobs I did, I did not get a single piece of armor or weapons. Maybe this is a new strategy in Mordor, but in other areas the mobs would drop at least an uncommon item here or there. Never anything worth saving, but still something. I would expect the same thing from an enemy working in a battle camp and forge.

The quest pathing was confusing, cluttered, and seemingly missing. I would go to a place where it said I was supposed to do something, but there was nothing there. Sometimes it was a couple dozen meters off, other times absent (several hatches I needed to open/close were just not there). I ended up just skipping many quests because I couldn't progress them in a timely manner. The locations of signal flags, for example, was not correlating between the map and their actual locations.

The region was a lot more populated with mobs than I expected. I was expecting something like after-battle Osgiliath, where the good guys have defeated the bad guys and the enemy is sparse and running away. But Mordor had many more enemies than I expected there to be after the fall of the Black Gate (especially around Udun and the forges).

These comments come after only a couple hours playing. I did not get that deep into the content, but after that time I was extremely frustrated with my character's performance and the difficulty of killing anything. I plan on rolling a new character up to 115 to see how that changes the gameplay.

[Mousehawk-]

I had T2C raid gear and the mobs were still difficult, I was also on my guard. The mobs could be scaled down a little bit I think, but not by too much

[Enurdal]

The mobs in Mordor definitely need to be toned down, and I say significantly. My rk couldn't kill more than two lvl 106-107 orcs at the same time, and his gear is more than decent...I imagine what struggle awaits more casual players. 50k morale on a normal (not signature) lvl 106 mob is way too much, and the difference is huge compared to previous areas, if you include their avoidances and defences. You don't want to discourage people from doing the solo content. Ohh and my Shadow of Mordor (Talion what have you done!!) debuff thing was around 10-20%, didn't even try to fight anything when it was higher.

Edit: Kind of reminds me of when you first enter West Rohan with your character, it gets better eventually but the frustration at the start is enormous

[siipperi]

The mobs in Mordor definitely need to be toned down, and I say significantly. My rk couldn't kill more than two lvl 106-107 orcs at the same time, and his gear is more than decent...I imagine what struggle awaits more casual players. 50k morale on a normal (not signature) lvl 106 mob is way too much, and the difference is huge compared to previous areas, if you include their avoidances and defences. You don't want to discourage people from doing the solo content. Ohh and my Shadow of Mordor (Talion what have you done!!) debuff thing was around 10-20%, didn't even try to fight anything when it was higher.

Edit: Kind of reminds me of when you first enter West Rohan with your character, it gets better eventually but the frustration at the start is enormous

Lol... Thats the whole point of this expansion. You cant pull 10 mobs at once. Its design decision to have it harder. Just able to take 2 mobs at once if one is average player with bad gear is totally ok. I have been fighting 3-5 mobs at once seems just fine. On guardian I can still fight vs 8 mobs (havent found more in tight space that I can keep aggroed).

[Mandura]

I don't get all that wining about the "huge difficulty spike"... Yes, mobs hit a little harder and avoid more of our attacks. Thats totally fine. Are we all too used to one-shotting everything on the landscape that we forgot how to play? Taking on multiple mobs at once now requires a tiny bit of effort as we can no longer roll our faces on the keyboard and succeed.

Hell, I could even kill lvl 114 mobs with my transferred lvl 105 RK while being in an area that had me at tier 9 shadow debuff. Was it easy? No. But was it fun? Hell yeah! Most fun I've had on the landscape in years.

Mordor is a dangerous place. And that's exactly how it should be.

[Onno]

Lol... Thats the whole point of this expansion. (...) Just able to take 2 mobs at once if one is average player with bad gear is totally ok.

I totally agree. It shouldn't be any other way. This is Mordor, after all.

I personally am really excited about what I've seen of Mordor so far.
Reminds me of the (good old) olden days of Angmar, with its ever-present sense of danger, when 2 or 3 regular mobs at once (or 1 Elite-mob) would be your demise.
Please, SSG, do not tone this down!
(Didn't expect this at all! I had really low expectations, but now I'm really, really looking forward to the new expansion.
I think I wasn't that excited about an upcoming expansion since ... after Moria, I think.)


(edit):

Most fun I've had on the landscape in years.

^ This!

[BotLike]

I don't get all that wining about the "huge difficulty spike"... Yes, mobs hit a little harder and avoid more of our attacks. Thats totally fine. Are we all too used to one-shotting everything on the landscape that we forgot how to play? Taking on multiple mobs at once now requires a tiny bit of effort as we can no longer roll our faces on the keyboard and succeed.

Hell, I could even kill lvl 114 mobs with my transferred lvl 105 RK while being in an area that had me at tier 9 shadow debuff. Was it easy? No. But was it fun? Hell yeah! Most fun I've had on the landscape in years.

Mordor is a dangerous place. And that's exactly how it should be.

This ^^

I am not interested for another faceroll landscape. Leave it hard and give mobs decent mechanics.
This whole expansion will be a solo mode for the first ~2 months anyway , so might as well keep it challenging , we'll have plenty of time to level up.
That said , it's not even as hard as it looks. Once you get new gear with light and bloated stats , landscape is closer to previous expansions. Feels more like rohan to HD.
Imagine if they nerf on top of that.
STOP QQ , go quest or get new gear from tavern and see for yourself.
Current gear will be obsolete , i am sorry if you thought otherwise.
Ow , and also , avoid playing with guard ^^ It will take ages , but that has nothing to do with Mordor landscape. It's the class that's broken and sucks ^^

[Enurdal]

Lol... Thats the whole point of this expansion. You cant pull 10 mobs at once. Its design decision to have it harder. Just able to take 2 mobs at once if one is average player with bad gear is totally ok. I have been fighting 3-5 mobs at once seems just fine. On guardian I can still fight vs 8 mobs (havent found more in tight space that I can keep aggroed).

I don't see what's so funny about it? Didn't say 10 mobs at once, said 2 normal landscape lvl 106 orcs killed my rk who has 23k morale 20k mits, hardly 'bad' gear. Imagine a player with purple gear and purple essences. Also, how long did it take to kill 8 orcs as guard? About 10 minutes I imagine...how long will it take for a guard then to complete mordor quests, at least until you get better mordor gear?

[Latanab]

Such a shame how low the player base has gone... So used to the easy landscape that they have now that they have forgotten how to play their class properly, and instead they just button smash and hope for the best. You can easily do this on a poorly geared character, you will just have to use your brain and read your skills, which many of the players in this game don't. Maybe it's about time they do.

[Theyaretakingthehobb]

So much false elitist here

If you are such a pro's play entire mordor without light of earendil gear,and tone down mob difficulty for those who want easier and more fun gameplay = everyone wins .

[Mandura]

So much false elitist here

If you are such a pro's play entire mordor without light of earendil gear,and tone down mob difficulty for those who want easier and more fun gameplay = everyone wins .

That's the thing, you can go all the way to lvl 115 using 105 gear without any problems whatsoever provided you have a basic understanding of your class. You can't just mindlessly press skills, you have to learn how to be a bit more effective than that.

[siipperi]

So much false elitist here

If you are such a pro's play entire mordor without light of earendil gear,and tone down mob difficulty for those who want easier and more fun gameplay = everyone wins .

Lets be honest, on udun that most comments are from, there isn't significant amount of shadow. I have done that area on my old gear every time and it works just fine, you get hit 500-3k depending on the mob and your mitigations. If mobs have 2x morale pool so what. On live 7-8 classes are capable of one shotting any normal mob. When I see comments from hunters saying they can't kill 2 mobs at once and my hunter with bellow 80k mastery will 2 crit kill these mobs I can't just but shake my head. Maybe player base needs to take their heads out of their collective asses and realize using low cut and set trap is not the most effective hunter rotation. It's 105+ level this is not starter zone, everyone should know more than basics of their classes.

[Theyaretakingthehobb]

That's the thing, you can go all the way to lvl 115 using 105 gear without any problems whatsoever provided you have a basic understanding of your class. You can't just mindlessly press skills, you have to learn how to be a bit more effective than that.

No,you actually can't


Or even if theoretically it's possible it would be so tiresome for average player it would be a final nail in this game's coffin .

Do note for Joe average it's about Fun,not proving something to someone .

On test server right now we can see maybe half of content that will actually be released,so you have no basis for you claim outside of chest-thumping how uber you are ,and how others " need to learn their class " .

Please feel free to post some video of you soloing stuff in +80% incoming damage zones with old gear ,i'm always open to learn something

[asudo]

Ok, some more thoughts on a couple of hours of play. Mordor is harder than previous landscape. I kinda like that. I went out with some impromptu small fellowships and we moved off road and into fortresses and did fine. Yes it is hard and you will die if you are solo and pull multiple mobs, so? I should note that I do not have any raid gear on my character. I was actually surprised at the number of camps that were NOT populated. Lore wise I thought that was explainable. What did cause me issues was that there did not appear to be any mobs that dropped hides nor were there any apparent scholar nodes. There were goodly numbers of ore and lumber nodes but I did not see a single scholar node in the general landscape. I see this area as small fellowship area where small groups will be needed to move through the landscape. The levels of the mobs is such that a pug group can take on mobs with little coordination so forming small or full fellowships should be easy to put together.

I found that there were a goodly number of quests in at least the first area. They were a little disjointed in location but that may in part have been because I was unable to finish many of them in the time I had. I went exploring and did not concentrate on completing quests to date. This looks like an interesting expansion that could take a while to work through. It is suffering through the usual beta glitches which I just took in stride.

[Belechael]

No,you actually can't


Or even if theoretically it's possible it would be so tiresome for average player it would be a final nail in this game's coffin .

Do note for Joe average it's about Fun,not proving something to someone .

On test server right now we can see maybe half of content that will actually be released,so you have no basis for you claim outside of chest-thumping how uber you are ,and how others " need to learn their class " .

Please feel free to post some video of you soloing stuff in +80% incoming damage zones with old gear ,i'm always open to learn something

I just reached level 106 with my hunter, who is very well geared, and I couldn't agree more with you.

To everyone who says that you can reach level 115 with 105 gear I call BS. With just one level all my ratings went down at least 10%, and I have the screenshots to prove it. That is I got 10% less mitigations, critical rating, critical defense, resistance, finesse, etc. Will do some tests against the same Udun mobs, but I fail to see how that can be fun for the average player, as you very well mention.

The whole difficulty needs to go down CONSIDERABLY for the next build.

[siipperi]

I just reached level 106 with my hunter, who is very well geared, and I couldn't agree more with you.

To everyone who says that you can reach level 115 with 105 gear I call BS. With just one level all my ratings went down at least 10%, and I have the screenshots to prove it. That is I got 10% less mitigations, critical rating, critical defense, resistance, finesse, etc. Will do some tests against the same Udun mobs, but I fail to see how that can be fun for the average player, as you very well mention.

The whole difficulty needs to go down CONSIDERABLY for the next build.

You can compensate loss of mitigation with mitigation essences. Mastery just takes dive initially but rises again more you level. Of course one would be a bit gimped in terms of critical rating but one don't really need it more than 18-20%. I would just unslot all armor essences, compensate 3 pieces with pure mitigations and rest 12 slots with extra finesse, morale and crit rating.

No whole difficulty should not go down. Mobs have 40k morale and hit about same as now in wastes. That seems perfectly balanced for first zone, we can't one shot them but certainly can kill them with ease.

[Mandura]

No,you actually can't


Or even if theoretically it's possible it would be so tiresome for average player it would be a final nail in this game's coffin .

Do note for Joe average it's about Fun,not proving something to someone .

On test server right now we can see maybe half of content that will actually be released,so you have no basis for you claim outside of chest-thumping how uber you are ,and how others " need to learn their class " .

Please feel free to post some video of you soloing stuff in +80% incoming damage zones with old gear ,i'm always open to learn something

Allright, here you go. Lvl 106 RK using only lvl 105 gear, fighting at varying tiers of the shadow debuff (up to t9) and facing one or multiple mobs.

As you can see the major thing that reduces my DPS is that mobs 5+ lvls above my own are deflecting the majority of my skills.

But since we're most likely going to be fighting mobs that are at most 3-4 lvls above our own while going through the quest lines this shouldn't be much of a problem. This just proves that even if you were fighting stuff severely above your own lvl you are still able to do it, provided you know what you're doing.

One thing worth mentioning is that the +incoming damage portion of the shadow debuff is currently bugged (for ranged and tactical damage) and actually gives you an additional 100% incomding damage ontop of what the tooltip says. So you're actually getting +190% inc damage at t9 as opposed to only 90%.

[DisplTru]

Lets be honest, on udun that most comments are from, there isn't significant amount of shadow. I have done that area on my old gear every time and it works just fine, you get hit 500-3k depending on the mob and your mitigations. If mobs have 2x morale pool so what. On live 7-8 classes are capable of one shotting any normal mob. When I see comments from hunters saying they can't kill 2 mobs at once and my hunter with bellow 80k mastery will 2 crit kill these mobs I can't just but shake my head. Maybe player base needs to take their heads out of their collective asses and realize using low cut and set trap is not the most effective hunter rotation. It's 105+ level this is not starter zone, everyone should know more than basics of their classes.

^The truth has been spoken!

Like seriously boys and girls, use your brain before blindlessly pulling half a zone and then complaining about dying.
Use CC or debuffs if you have them, think of a clever rotation and pull carefully. Btw my hunter is a BotV character that does not even have imbued LIs and is still using T7 essences and I had a great time questing the Udun quest zone.

[Vimrich]

I have enjoyed the more difficult landscape stuff but I think it is largely a bug with the shadow system, I think once you start to mitigate the shadow with Radiance gear... i mean Earendil... it seems to drop off significantly.

From the dev video I was kind of expecting there to be stuff close to the road which was easy enough for casuals to do solo and there would be optional stuff well off the road that significantly harder with good rewards. I didn't get that impression although I haven't got that far into it.

I think a lot of casuals will go into the foetal position if the difficulty level for the normal questing stuff remains as is, I had to bail out a number of strangers who couldn't do some of the stuff on their own.

[siipperi]

I have enjoyed the more difficult landscape stuff but I think it is largely a bug with the shadow system, I think once you start to mitigate the shadow with Radiance gear... i mean Earendil... it seems to drop off significantly.

From the dev video I was kind of expecting there to be stuff close to the road which was easy enough for casuals to do solo and there would be optional stuff well off the road that significantly harder with good rewards. I didn't get that impression although I haven't got that far into it.

That's higher level zone so base shadow effect is already high even if it's next to the road. Of course it goes a bit higher but on the other hand not all mobs are signatures, nor should you fight vs red enemies if you follow quest lines.

[Gandolf_TheOld]

The whole difficulty needs to go down CONSIDERABLY for the next build.

I disagree, I think the difficulty is good and should not be adjusted up or down. This is the front door to Mordor, the mobs are Mordors toughest and best; after all they survived the fall of Sauron. As for the 10% loss in some stats - Shadow debuff counter with Light of Eärendil comes on Mordor Amour

[gorma_eu]

I think some people confuse 'harder fights' with 'longer fights'. I didn't encounter any hard fights so far. My general expirience is, that fights are just way longer because of avoidences and I lose twice as much morale than before. But does it matter if I end a fight with 60% morale left instead of 80%?

[Gilean-EU]

Have to agree with OP here (although opposite comments were expected as always). "This is Sparta..err Mordor" -card is more or less useless as Sauron has already defeated when we enter, the great evil is gone. We fight confused, purposeless mobs, which SHOULD be easier if anything, not harder just because we are inside Mordor.

But that's not the point. Like was said earlier in this thread, the difficulty curve from 105-->106 is too hard for common landscape questing, which always should be easier than instances. I have tested only some hours around Udun with my live 105 hunter, that has capped crits/mits, and wastes jewelry, mixes flower/FI gear and decent essences (around 60k mastery), and my arrows seem to hit like wet noodles compared to Wastes. Mobs B/P/E quite a bit and every fight takes longer. That's ok, but my point basically is that for average joe who doesn't care too much about gear and just wants to experience Mordor expansion and have fun, the frustration hits hard quite soon after entering Mordor, when you kill slowly and probably get killed often. And when that happens, that average joe might think to try some other game instead.

[R_C]

Have to agree with OP here (although opposite comments were expected as always). "This is Sparta..err Mordor" -card is more or less useless as Sauron has already defeated when we enter, the great evil is gone. We fight confused, purposeless mobs, which SHOULD be easier if anything, not harder just because we are inside Mordor.

But that's not the point. Like was said earlier in this thread, the difficulty curve from 105-->106 is too hard for common landscape questing, which always should be easier than instances. I have tested only some hours around Udun with my live 105 hunter, that has capped crits/mits, and wastes jewelry, mixes flower/FI gear and decent essences (around 60k mastery), and my arrows seem to hit like wet noodles compared to Wastes. Mobs B/P/E quite a bit and every fight takes longer. That's ok, but my point basically is that for average joe who doesn't care too much about gear and just wants to experience Mordor expansion and have fun, the frustration hits hard quite soon after entering Mordor, when you kill slowly and probably get killed often. And when that happens, that average joe might think to try some other game instead.

I am a casual, most of the people I know are casual. Casuals want a challenge too. I've never met a casual that wasn't trying to be T2C ready.
I think Mordor is Fine as it is.
I think the average joe/jane casual will surprise you with the amount of difficulty they are willing to put up with. As the proper loot tables are introduced and gear starts dropping and being replaced they will be fine, in fact probably HAPPY, for struggling though it.
The loudest outcry might come from the RP community, I didn't see a single place that was worthy of a band performance.

[aocume]

I am a casual, most of the people I know are casual. Casuals want a challenge too. I've never met a casual that wasn't trying to be T2C ready.
I think Mordor is Fine as it is.
I think the average joe/jane casual will surprise you with the amount of difficulty they are willing to put up with. As the proper loot tables are introduced and gear starts dropping and being replaced they will be fine, in fact probably HAPPY, for struggling though it.
The loudest outcry might come from the RP community, I didn't see a single place that was worthy of a band performance.

So are you questing with your "casual" gear? Or using a T3 dps set?