Difficulty Scaling=Good. Corruptions on Mobs=Good. Airstrikes=Bleck.

[Tralfazz]

I've been playing a little on both Treebeard and Shadowfax, mainly to try out the difficulty settings. I've been playing with difficulty set to Deadly (0) on both.

Mobs are definitely tougher, as in they do more damage to me and take more time to kill. I enjoy playing this way and I'm looking forward to more of it.

The corruptions which randomly appear on mobs make things more challenging. Maybe the corruptions shouldn't appear on mobs below some designated level because most (maybe all) classes don't get corruption removal skills in the very early going. Other than not being able to react to the corruptions the way I know I should, and will once my characters have corruption-removal skills, I enjoy these extra mob buffs.

The airstrikes (some players call them "nukes") are just terrible. I don't mean they make the game more challenging. I mean they are immersion-breaking and extremely random in effect: They are either meaningless as you just move your character out of the area of effect when it appears or impossible to avoid (if your character is stunned or netted or whatever) and the requirement to move has nearly no impact on some characters (Blue Hunter) and is seriously disruptive to others (Lore-master). Yes, you need to plan for the eventuality of airstrikes, and this does impact decision-making so I understand how some people enjoy them as a challenge. But besides the big silly =BOOM= which has no place in Middle-Earth outside of an encounter with Gandalf, they are completely random. I took two different characters through the same narrow, twisty cave area and one of them experienced only a single airstrike in the process of killing at least 30 mobs in that cave while the other got blasted at least 15 times, sometimes more than once fighting a single mob. But really, the worst part is the... I want to use anachronistic although I'm sure that's not the best word... =KER-BLAAM= that appears out of nowhere, I hate it every time it happens and not because it's tactically challenging.

Yes, I know I can drop down to Dangerous but besides the overall reduction to player vs mob scaling the mobs I fight won't generate corruptions anymore. I just want to lose the airstrikes.

I wonder how other players might feel if Deadly (0) were changed to just remove airstrikes, with airstrikes occurring only for players set to Deadly (+1) or higher.

[Strider5548]

I've been playing a little on both Treebeard and Shadowfax, mainly to try out the difficulty settings. I've been playing with difficulty set to Deadly (0) on both.

Mobs are definitely tougher, as in they do more damage to me and take more time to kill. I enjoy playing this way and I'm looking forward to more of it.

The corruptions which randomly appear on mobs make things more challenging. Maybe the corruptions shouldn't appear on mobs below some designated level because most (maybe all) classes don't get corruption removal skills in the very early going. Other than not being able to react to the corruptions the way I know I should, and will once my characters have corruption-removal skills, I enjoy these extra mob buffs.

The airstrikes (some players call them "nukes") are just terrible. I don't mean they make the game more challenging. I mean they are immersion-breaking and extremely random in effect: They are either meaningless as you just move your character out of the area of effect when it appears or impossible to avoid (if your character is stunned or netted or whatever) and the requirement to move has nearly no impact on some characters (Blue Hunter) and is seriously disruptive to others (Lore-master). Yes, you need to plan for the eventuality of airstrikes, and this does impact decision-making so I understand how some people enjoy them as a challenge. But besides the big silly =BOOM= which has no place in Middle-Earth outside of an encounter with Gandalf, they are completely random. I took two different characters through the same narrow, twisty cave area and one of them experienced only a single airstrike in the process of killing at least 30 mobs in that cave while the other got blasted at least 15 times, sometimes more than once fighting a single mob. But really, the worst part is the... I want to use anachronistic although I'm sure that's not the best word... =KER-BLAAM= that appears out of nowhere, I hate it every time it happens and not because it's tactically challenging.

Yes, I know I can drop down to Dangerous but besides the overall reduction to player vs mob scaling the mobs I fight won't generate corruptions anymore. I just want to lose the airstrikes.

I wonder how other players might feel if Deadly (0) were changed to just remove airstrikes, with airstrikes occurring only for players set to Deadly (+1) or higher.

Agree the 'air strikes' are immersion breaking for sure, but I do like the concept of landscape mechanics. I would appreciate if they would make things more interesting, as it is now deadly+ is still way too easy after you get past level 20. Replacing the visuals of the 'air strike' and adding more mechanics would be the way to go imo.

That said, I could care less about the difficulty sliders if it meant they'd spend those resources on actually giving us proper itemization and a decent challenge with group content on the legendary servers.

[Shariva]

I wonder how other players might feel if Deadly (0) were changed to just remove airstrikes, with airstrikes occurring only for players set to Deadly (+1) or higher.

Honestly, I could do without the airstrike/firebomb/whatever you call it, all together. As you said, it is totally immersion breaking. That won't change with another difficulty setting. But the main reason for me is that it is extremely disruptive to certain classes. You mention lore-master. I would like to add warden to that list.

I tend to level my classes in the way I tend to use them later on. For warden, I tend to level in blue line. I simply refuse to level as DPS and then switch to what I want. Warden is an avoidance based tank. This ###### designed airstrike is an unavoidable attack. THis means as a warden you need to hotfoot it out of the area. Or try to tank your way through it. As a blue line warden, you basically bore the mobs to death. But I found I need to deal with about 5 airstrikes nearly each fight. Seeing the airstrike does around 30% damage, after three hits, it's back to the rez circle. And start again. If you hotfoot it out of the area of effect, you will get even more airstrikes. Factor in a self-healing mob (that will always heal during the airstrike, so no chance to intrrupt), and you're looking at a fight that could essentially go on forever.

I also play a blue line hunter. The differance is very telling; if I get one airstrike a fight, I am somewhat suprised. From two or more airstrikes in a fight, I am dumbfounded. I even found that with a lore-master the airstrike doesn't happen as often as I have it on my blue line warden.

Personally I think this airstrike should be removed all together. The difficulty of the mobs in landscape as it is already very close to what it was all those years ago. I think that would be enough and can be adjusted with the slider. No need for a big 30% damaging attack every 2 seconds (exxegeration, I know).

[Arabani]

Airstrikes are precisely the reason why I won't play on the increased difficulty if it ever comes to regular servers.