Tower of Orthanc : playable ?

[ofMiceandHobbits]

About the Rock-toss.

What we think how it works:

The ruffians selfbuff with corruption. When the corruption is active they gain new skill - Mark.

Mark is put on random raid member.

Marked target is being attacked by rock-toss from the trolls.

Rock-toss is aoe knockback.
______________________________ _______

Correct. The boss fight differs slightly in terms of the "mark" that the boss gives out, but you've got the idea there from the trash on his rock throw.

[jwbarry]

I checked into the giants Gathered Rage.

It is tiering down as it's supposed to when the correct event happens. Looking at it during the midst of everything else I can see how the fx to indicate it get lost, they do play but they're not overwhelmingly obvious. I'll see what I can do about swapping those out to something a bit more obvious.

There are about 6 or so different events that cause a giant to tier up. All but one of them can be countered and prevented during the course of the fight.

There are 2 events that cause a giant to tier down.

Reading through the notes you guys have, you've identified the primary source of intended tier downs but have misattributed it instead to do a tier up or do nothing.

[Shiara]

We took down Lightning CM last night, and everyone was still alive and reasonably full health with 50k or so to go on the boss. Then an elhudan exploded and took out 6 of us, literally two seconds before the boss died.

The only rezzer left being an LM who initially didn't realise he was the only rezzer left, he got up a minstrel who got the deed completion but the minstrel's AOE rez after, which brought up the other 5, was probably just outside that 30 second window for them to get the deed.

So just so you know, that "rule" is still senseless, stupid, and possibly even bugged, as I have never seen the "second" person or group of people to get rezzed get any sort of deed update, only the first person/group. All the way back to BG actually, as I recall, when we were helping random pug people or friends take down the Lt. HM for the deed and had to choose which one of them to rez to get the deed if more than one was dead at the end, as we knew only the first one to be rezzed would get the deed.

Pox on the person who thought that "rule" was fair, halfway game-realistic, or even remotely fun or challenging.

PS, the max dps on those first agers are terrible and have been bug reported.

[Fin.]

I checked into the giants Gathered Rage.

It is tiering down as it's supposed to when the correct event happens. Looking at it during the midst of everything else I can see how the fx to indicate it get lost, they do play but they're not overwhelmingly obvious. I'll see what I can do about swapping those out to something a bit more obvious.

There are about 6 or so different events that cause a giant to tier up. All but one of them can be countered and prevented during the course of the fight.

There are 2 events that cause a giant to tier down.

Reading through the notes you guys have, you've identified the primary source of intended tier downs but have misattributed it instead to do a tier up or do nothing.

Imagine scenario when there is 7 rage count, after 10s you look at the counter and there is 9 rage. I don't know how it is for other kins, but for us it was definitely almost impossible to tell whether in those few seconds happened 2 events that increased rage by 2 // or happened 3 events that caused rage go up and 1 event that caused it to go down.

[Tarmas_Eldar]

Jwbarry may well be my favourite dev. He's clearly committed to what he does, comes up with original and interesting mechanics and engages with the forum community like no other dev.

You can feel a 'but' coming, right?

I don't like your raids dude. The fights, especially the challenges, don't feel like fights, they feel like intricate dances where we are required to learn every step perfectly and execute it without flaw. There's little to no room for different strategies, for extemporisation, for innovation. You do it right or the boss uses their I WIN button and you wipe to start again. You do it RIGHT, the one designed way, or you don't do it at all.

Orthanc is, like Ost Dunhoth, a beautiful piece of design. And like Ost Dunhoth, it's mostly not fun. Perfect the dance, do it once for the deed and then don't go back.

IMHO, of course.

[Ellery01]

I'm in total disagreement with you about OD and Orthanc. It may appear that way at first, but I'm positive that Orthanc will, like OD, be surmountable with quite a few different strategies. I loved OD and I'm loving Orthanc so far

As far as the Fire and Frost twins, I don't know all 6 ways their rage buff goes up or how to teir it down, but our own time in there has indicated that the rage buff goes up: Every 30 seconds, when someone dies, when someone lowers their mitigation debuff teir by 5+. We've only found killing grims to decrease it by 2 so far. Additionally, it appears they do the shadow distributed AOE hit every 2 rage they gather. So if you're doing things perfectly, it'd seem to happen every minute.

Hope that helps someone be less frustrated!

[swordmonkey]

I don't like your raids dude. The fights, especially the challenges, don't feel like fights, they feel like intricate dances where we are required to learn every step perfectly and execute it without flaw. There's little to no room for different strategies, for extemporisation, for innovation. You do it right or the boss uses their I WIN button and you wipe to start again. You do it RIGHT, the one designed way, or you don't do it at all.

So what do you want? People said skirms would be perfect because each fight is different. Sadly, each skirmish ended up running exactly the same(other than icy crevasse) and it was boring. A little challenge is good. Look at any mmo, you have to choreograph your moves out perfectly, learn the mechanics of the fight and execute(at least on harder difficulty). We have it easy compared to the "other game."

Anyway, thats not the problem. Bugs are . FYI JWB the gates to acid also bug out. Howerver, you can walk through them lol.

[godsservant1]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!










WHen we ran Saruman last night, we had all 12 people up at the end of the fight. Saruman went through his last drama before he punted us off the tower. Well most of us. A couple of peeps stayed on the top of the tower, most of us went flying into oblivion and 3-4 of us got defeated by the fall off the tower. THe 3-4 who were defeated by that fall did not get their deed done. This does not make any sense. I was the minnie in there and I could not rez them because they were not in the portion of the instance as I was (still defeated waiting for a rez). They put in a ticket, but there was no real communication to them.

This I believe is unfair and not a good design. I would think it was a bug seems how some of us went flying too but didn't get defeated and obtained the completion of the deed.

[Seoras]

Dude, spoiler warning or redaction for people who haven't done the fight yet and don't want to know how it ends perhaps?

WHen we ran Saruman last night, we had all 12 people up at the end of the fight. Saruman went through his last drama [and some people] did not get their deed done. This does not make any sense. I was the minnie in there and I could not rez them because they were not in the portion of the instance as I was (still defeated waiting for a rez). They put in a ticket, but there was no real communication to them.

[Lestache]

Jwbarry may well be my favourite dev. He's clearly committed to what he does, comes up with original and interesting mechanics and engages with the forum community like no other dev.

You can feel a 'but' coming, right?

I don't like your raids dude. The fights, especially the challenges, don't feel like fights, they feel like intricate dances where we are required to learn every step perfectly and execute it without flaw. There's little to no room for different strategies, for extemporisation, for innovation. You do it right or the boss uses their I WIN button and you wipe to start again. You do it RIGHT, the one designed way, or you don't do it at all.

Orthanc is, like Ost Dunhoth, a beautiful piece of design. And like Ost Dunhoth, it's mostly not fun. Perfect the dance, do it once for the deed and then don't go back.

IMHO, of course.

I agree that the last couple raids have been beautifully designed, but I also think that the fights themselves are fairly well-designed as well. In addition to running OD with my kin, I also ran parts of OD with other kins from time to time, and I saw three different approaches to beating the Poison boss, 2-3 different methods to beating Gortheron, multiple methods of dealing with Ivar trash (and even some differences in the Ivar fight itself)...

I certainly have my own opinion as to which of the various methods I saw were optimal, but different approaches actually did work.

Orthanc is too young to make such a call on, I think. As far as most of us know, only one challenge mode has even been beaten, and only one other T2 boss has been beaten (w/o challenge, and that only by two kins). I think it's a little early to say that the challenge modes only have one way to beat them when (to my knowledge) nobody has beaten 4/5 of them. Even the seemingly insanely difficult trash before the acid boss probably has multiple methods by which to beat it - I'd be willing to bet that the way we did it was probably different from the way the other group(s?) did it.

Sure, the newer raids (BG, OD, Orthanc) are far more punishing than previous raids were, but as long as the T1/T2/T2-Challenge dynamic exists for the raids, I think it's a good thing that T2 & T2-Challenge require near-flawless execution (especially Challenge modes); having a raid on farm is fun, but personally I feel that it's more fun if I still have to actually pay attention even after we've "perfected" the strat.

[Moripopori]

once ya get married, ya ll figure out, theres just one way good trainin...

we ve always had choices in OD
the trees - crosstankin or not
frothmar - keep him central or aside, risk the toss or not
gortheron - massive dps or massive croud control

orthancs been live for a week now, i can hardly say i ve discovered all solutions... id proudly call meself an ambitioned player an i like the orthanc challenges so far...

[Corienne]

WHen we ran Saruman last night, we had all 12 people up at the end of the fight. Saruman went through his last drama before he punted us off the tower. Well most of us. A couple of peeps stayed on the top of the tower, most of us went flying into oblivion and 3-4 of us got defeated by the fall off the tower. THe 3-4 who were defeated by that fall did not get their deed done. This does not make any sense. I was the minnie in there and I could not rez them because they were not in the portion of the instance as I was (still defeated waiting for a rez). They put in a ticket, but there was no real communication to them.

This I believe is unfair and not a good design. I would think it was a bug seems how some of us went flying too but didn't get defeated and obtained the completion of the deed.

The Saruman Tier 1 deed is definitely buggy. We had no one dead upon completion but at least one person did not have the deed update. The GM was of course not helpful b/c "it's not a known issue."

I appreciate the difficulty of the raid but the bugs are terrible and illustrate not enough testing in beta and a pretty blatant rush to release.

[Rhino-Man]

After some investigation we discovered we were a little aggressive in the known issues relating to challenge resets.
The Acid Wash (Acid wing) and Pinnacle of Orthanc (Saruman) challenges reset properly, you will get the challenge again upon the bosses entering combat after a reset.
The Conductivity (Lightning) challenge is however broken and not properly re-bestowing.

I don't have an eta on a fix.

JWB - You might want to update the Known Issues thread with this information, as many people reference that thread but may not read all of your comments.

Thanks!

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...dated-12-16-11

[Faileon]

Anybody noticed that the Lightning Ring Skill does not work? It's suppose to be -400% inductions, -200% attack duration, but it does nothing for my hunter, when applied

[Crell_1]

Anybody noticed that the Lightning Ring Skill does not work? It's suppose to be -400% inductions, -200% attack duration, but it does nothing for my hunter, when applied

Worked just fine on our mini. Did your hunter happen to be a ring-bearer as well? You cannot apply ring skills to other ring-bearers.

[Faileon]

Worked just fine on our mini. Did your hunter happen to be a ring-bearer as well? You cannot apply ring skills to other ring-bearers.

Nope. I had no ring. Buff from red ring was working fine every time, but I never had the lightning buff working on me.

[godsservant1]

Dude, spoiler warning or redaction for people who haven't done the fight yet and don't want to know how it ends perhaps?

my apologies.... fixed

[godsservant1]

Anybody noticed that the Lightning Ring Skill does not work? It's suppose to be -400% inductions, -200% attack duration, but it does nothing for my hunter, when applied

I think the poison ring is bugged too i believe.

[MrKeks]

Nope. I had no ring. Buff from red ring was working fine every time, but I never had the lightning buff working on me.

Had no effects on my mini aswell...

[mrfigglesworth]

Had no effects on my mini aswell...

Our hunter swears after multiple times of having it put on him that the skill actually INCREASED induction by 400%.

[Comma44]

Anybody noticed that the Lightning Ring Skill does not work? It's suppose to be -400% inductions, -200% attack duration, but it does nothing for my hunter, when applied

I /bugged it. We tried it on a mini and a hunter, neither had any change to inductions. That fire ring sure is hot though.

[Hirion_of_Dale]

Thank you for following this thread Jwbarry with many helpful clarifications. I am, however, a bit confused about which of these holds true (if not them both, actually):

The Acid Wash (Acid wing) and Pinnacle of Orthanc (Saruman) challenges reset properly, you will get the challenge again upon the bosses entering combat after a reset.
The Conductivity (Lightning) challenge is however broken and not properly re-bestowing.

And in the Known Issues:

Raid - Tower of Orthanc - Challenge quests: Conductivity, Acid Wash, and Pinnacle of Orthanc not re-bestowing to players after wipe.

Being through Orthanc in the first tear and now looking to take on T2, this issue will be rather defining on where to start, so if anyone, developer or other players, know if these challenges reset or not, I would highly apprieciate their advice.

[kukka69]

Being through Orthanc in the first tear and now looking to take on T2, this issue will be rather defining on where to start, so if anyone, developer or other players, know if these challenges reset or not, I would highly apprieciate their advice.

Acid challenge quest works, if you wipe first time just run back to the Boss and you will get it as soon as fight begins. Fire&Frost challenge quest works, after wipe just run back and start fight, you will get it. Lightning works only one time, after wipe you will not get the challenge quest back, so kill him with one try You will get the challenge chest without quest and right now it is impossible to do lightning without challenge coz of bug, gl

Shadow challenge works, just run back and start fight and Saruman too.

[Hirion_of_Dale]

Acid challenge quest works, if you wipe first time just run back to the Boss and you will get it as soon as fight begins. Fire&Frost challenge quest works, after wipe just run back and start fight, you will get it. Lightning works only one time, after wipe you will not get the challenge quest back, so kill him with one try You will get the challenge chest without quest and right now it is impossible to do lightning without challenge coz of bug, gl

Cheers. Glad to have confirmation that the others will still work; I guess Lightning will no longer be first on our agenda

[Comma44]

Cheers. Glad to have confirmation that the others will still work; I guess Lightning will no longer be first on our agenda

You'll still get the loot for it (2 chests) just not the quest/deed completion... yes that means first ages. I'd actually recommend doing lightening first... it's arguably the easiest to figure out and the trash won't feel like a raid lock of its own unlike acid trash.