📝 Let's chat about elite creatures 👹

Greetings, glorious testers!

We've made some changes to elite mobs this weekend, and we’d like to hear your feedback on 3-star elite mobs and other elite creatures 🚨 from this weekend's test! 🚨

Here are a few key points we’re curious about:

How does the overall difficulty of 3-star elites feel?
Do elite creatures feel manageable, overwhelming, easy, or just right?
How do you approach these encounters— solo, or in a group?
Are there any encounters with 3-star elites where their mechanics or stats stood out as particularly fun or frustrating?

This feedback helps us find the fun and ensure the challenge feels rewarding. Whether you’ve tackled just one or many, we’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Comments

Xenotex

3 star difficulty should be about mechanics, get rid of that sponge damage stuff, it's just terrible. A good point of reference are the abominations in Sephilion, they can corner a group in bad positioning and wipe an entire group. Fun mechanics to avoid if you know what you're doing.

Liniker

I like the high HP and long TTK, even tho in PvP TTK is absolute trash right now being just 3 to 4 seconds, in PvE its good being in the longer side

what we are missing is hard hitting mechanics and treat/aggro management which is pretty much non existent right now, with a group of 8 theres no challange doing 3 stars, and they were meta due to the xp per hour grinding them

Amar

I won't speak to combat mechanics but more to density. Currently it feels like unless you're in a party there are places that you just can't even engage in. I would expect this more in named POI and dungeons but not necessarily so dense out in the open world that there's no way to engage the area. At the end of the stress testing the other day I just rode clear out to the tropics since I was level 25. Everything out there was completely untouchable even then solo. I'd like to think that a observant clever adventurous solo can find a path of picking a manageable fight avoiding an obviously deadly one and picking another manageable. A wall of 2 or 3 star elites is kinda boring and becomes well if I stay here I'm just going to die... gotta go get my guildmates and come back but nobody is on. I'm actually very curious to see how you deal with agro on the stealth of rogue when it's introduced, done right that would address everything I just said. However right now I find my ranger just riding through areas of the map as fast as I can instead of looking for content.

Amar

apocrisy

If you accidentally pull a guardian in highwaymen hills as a group of 5/6 and you commit to it, it'll take you the same time it takes to kill onyxia in classic world of warcraft with gear/level appropriate players, this was before the change, 1 week ago, if you made them have more hp then it probably beats most WoW encounter lengths.

The damage sponge is too much, lower their HP if they got no special mechanic. If they got something the group needs to play around then sure make them take more time, it's a more active gameplay, just sitting there shooting arrows semi afk that deal 20 dmg to a guardian for 8 minutes ain't fun gameplay.

Okolo

I have 2 issues with the current iteration of 3 star mobs that fall under the frustrating category you're asking about. First being that most 3 star mobs that have properly nasty abilities spam them faster than a rotation of 2 people with interrupts on 30 sec cd can handle. Mostly thinking golems here.

Second issue being that I don't think you should ever be on a main road and get aggro on a 2 or 3 star mob. Wander off the path and by all means, that's the risk you take, but not on a main road. Events blocking roads or POI's being attacked by mobs during events should be 1 or 0 star unless flooded by players and escalated that way.

Edit: forgot about the 3 star wolves and borks. I'd categorize those under overwhelming if you come across them solo, as those are just f-ing stupid right now. There is no escaping them. They patrol such a large path, so quickly, that even on a journeyman mount they come rocketing up from behind and eat your mount in 2-3 hits.

nerdnav1984

1. Increasing HP of elites does not increase challenge, it just makes them HP sponges and boring.
2. The shield, tanky type of npcs are also boring, they are just tank and spank types that take forever to kill. Cut down on their defense and add some mechanics that actually make them interesting/challenging to fight, perhaps they stun, knock back or something but god I literally just groan each time I see one pulled, just because it will take 4x as long as any other enemy, not because they have any challenge.
3. the caster types that randomly target a party member and nuke them, sometimes instant killing them is just punishing not challenging. It is far better if there are mechanics that individuals can avoid like the Carphin mages and zombies where its personal responsibility to move out of the bad stuff on the ground ect. Else it is just punishing for classes that have no on demand interrupt, they are reliant on someone else to save them from being one shot and it doesn't feel good. But also making sure most classes have access to some interrupt would be great, but until then, stop with the random targeting, more with the ground stuff that individuals need to avoid.

Nicko

Vaknar wrote: »

Greetings, glorious testers!

We've made some changes to elite mobs this weekend, and we’d like to hear your feedback on 3-star elite mobs and other elite creatures 🚨 from this weekend's test! 🚨

Here are a few key points we’re curious about:
How does the overall difficulty of 3-star elites feel?

ANSWER: Feels like a bigger damage sponge then the 2-star elites.

Do elite creatures feel manageable, overwhelming, easy, or just right?

ANSWER: Depends on the creature really. Some you can solo, others you need a whole group for. But overall, with at least half a competent group, they feel barely managable. With a competent group they're a walk in the park.

How do you approach these encounters— solo, or in a group?

ANSWER: Im a bard and I prefer to approach these with a group, for sure.

Are there any encounters with 3-star elites where their mechanics or stats stood out as particularly fun or frustrating?

ANSWER: The ones with telegraphed abilities that you dodge out of. I've mostly been doing pugs to level so the ones with mechanics where you gotta kick certain abilities are just impossible to organize, the ones with telegraphed abilities are always fun. Its probably just dragon that actually has visually telegraphed ones right now but there's been others I thought pretty close. Like the desert minotaur berserkers jump attack.. forget its name, cut something.

This feedback helps us find the fun and ensure the challenge feels rewarding. Whether you’ve tackled just one or many, we’d love to hear your thoughts!

MindsEye

The 3 star ⭐️ mobs just are no longer worth attacking. For the time and effort to bring one down, You do not get enough experience and drops are another story. They hit like a truck, like the overtuned elemental elites that at level 9 can one shot geared level 25’s so you wont receive futher feedback on elementals and NOBODY attacks them and they stay away from them and they usually anchored on a road OR UNDER WATER at calphim or near the crater in the water north of Miraleth. The star elites defense seems less, but it feels like you buffed an elemental that EVERYONE avoids as the health pool is crazy huge so a party will avoid these not-worth-attacking elites as you get more experience per minute grinding some other easier mob. Simply put I am going to treat them as the elementals and AVOID them… so you wont get further feedback on these elite mobs. You may as well buff the elemental elites to one shot all levels, as I am sure not going to attack something not even worth my time, which you have done. You added mobs to my “Ain’t worth attacking list” given time and effort, they simply are to be ignored for something easier to kill as a group.

LordPax

Bullet Sponge = bad
Mechanics = good

Make 0, 1, & 2 star mobs more prevalent and enjoyable to fight. Turn current 3*s into 2*s. Then, make a handful of unique named 3* mobs that are super strong, but equally rewarding.

Blood_Raven

Vaknar
How does the overall difficulty of 3-star elites feel?
Short answer: underwhelming and way to easy.
Long answer: Adding more HP to the 3 stars does nothing other than just make the fights last longer. This is not the answer. (I have heard you don't want us telling you how to fix things just let you know there is a problem. If true I just cant do that, I have always felt to complain about something without a solution is wrong) What needs to happen is the monsters need to do more damage. Right now My wife and I can duo two 3star elites without any real danger of dying, she is a tank and I am a cleric. Granted the fights take a long time but death no... we can even do three 3 stars but that gets a lot harder. If the monster damage was increased enough we could not take two of them at once.

Do elite creatures feel manageable, overwhelming, easy, or just right?
Short answer: Very easy
Long answer: when you take what I said in the first question and add it to a group fighting 3 stars it is no wounder that they pull five+ 3 stars at a time. Again even a full group should not be able to do this. 3 stars are suppose to be really really hard.

How do you approach these encounters— solo, or in a group?
Short answer: I have fought 3 stars in lots of different ways from solo to full group.
Long answer: The only reason to fight 3 stars in a group is to get better exp, since a full group can kill them a lot faster you get more exp per hour. If that was not the case I would just duo or solo them.

Are there any encounters with 3-star elites where their mechanics or stats stood out as particularly fun or frustrating?
Short answer: yes
Long answer: Any mechanics that let the monster do more damage or hit random people in the group increases the challenge and difficulty of the encounter and this is a very very good thing. I like the added mechanics to the creatures and you guys should add more and create lots of different mechanics looking at ways to challenge the group and kill the group, other than just out damaging the healing or ignoring the tank. Add damage across the board from all the monsters making each step harder to fight. Don't just increase the Hit points that does not make the fight harder. Do things like you have done with the rolling goblins, the beam from the golems, the wounds and disease from the zombies, etc.... things I have not seen are knockdowns, trips, silence, knockbacks etc.... come up with different ways to threaten the players when fighting 3 star elites.

Added comments.
1) I know I keep saying this but make all the monsters do more damage. This way you can spread the difficulty more instead of trying to relay on 3 star elites. If one star elites were as deadly as 3 stars are now you could have more options when it comes to encounters instead of always having to go to 3 stars to make it semi difficult (if we can even call 3 stars semi difficult). I also worry about power creep in the future. making the 3 stars weaker and weaker as time goes along.
2) In my view a person might be able to solo a 1 star if they are the right class for the monster, have good gear and know what they are doing. Duo's should be able to kill 1 stars but not 2 stars. a group should be able to handle 2 stars. A group vs a 3 star should be very hard, something you only pull one of and are not always going to come out of the fight without a death, perhaps even a wipe if folks messed up.

Thank you for reading and asking us these questions. Hopefully you make the game as hard a possible and give us that sense of danger when we go out to fight. Your all doing a great job so far!

KHman1

As I see it right now it just seems like hp bloat and damage sponge. Some mobs seem to have different mechanics, but there is a work around. If the mobs had an AI mechanc to switch to this if targets is this or move around if this situation. Alot of the mobs while being tough a times or just a time sink can be easily tackled while watching a video on your phone.

Azherae

I fully admit that I haven't even bothered to fight them but having read a post slightly above (plus some other data gathering):

Please don't make this just 'oh they hit harder and hit people randomly sometimes'.

I can assure that I'll dislike every possible implementation of that. Everything already sounds super boring as-is.

In a game like Ashes, making mobs like these just 'hit harder' is the worst outcome for me. If they do it in a roundabout way, it's sometimes okay, but generally not even that feels good after a bit. Give me the puzzle to solve of 'how to not get deadlocked/prevented'.

Making them mostly hit harder will just move the entire engagement window down however many gear-tiers/character levels are required.

But, ofc, as mentioned, my group hasn't even bothered yet, so my input now amounts to 'No, don't make it bad, make it good!' which I realize is possibly quite useless.

Gundel

Currently the health and dmg being added to 3star mobs actually make it not worth taking the mobs on as they don't give enough XP/items/quality to compensate for the effort invested.

I want mobs to be higher value in every sense of the word 3 stars should be challenging/ rewarding if teams can farm it. In its current form most mob AI and abilities are weak or not engaging, very few monsters abilities are threatening, and then its more annoying rather than enjoyable.

Make the mobs fun with their abilities and challenging, but reward players with windows of using cc abilities, along with giving high rewards for the time/challenge.

xenith_terrek

Vaknar wrote: »

Greetings, glorious testers!

We've made some changes to elite mobs this weekend, and we’d like to hear your feedback on 3-star elite mobs and other elite creatures 🚨 from this weekend's test! 🚨

Here are a few key points we’re curious about:
How does the overall difficulty of 3-star elites feel?

Do elite creatures feel manageable, overwhelming, easy, or just right?

How do you approach these encounters— solo, or in a group?

Are there any encounters with 3-star elites where their mechanics or stats stood out as particularly fun or frustrating?

This feedback helps us find the fun and ensure the challenge feels rewarding. Whether you’ve tackled just one or many, we’d love to hear your thoughts!

as of last night on the stress test realm, 1 star elites were almost one-shotting people with basic attacks.

Frankly, I feel elites were fine the way they were minus the insane health pool on 3-star elites.

Neurotoxin

I feel like increased stars usually correlates to the same ol' tricks, but with way more HP and damage output. During that last weekend it felt like it wasn't too different after compared to before, but that also gets the asterisk that players were still extremely well geared up by that point.

I feel like 1, 2, and 3 stars probably need increased variety of abilities they can use, and even adjustments to the patterns of what they're already using to attack more optimally or aggressively. Likewise they probably need to mean more, like a 3 star seems like the kinda gravitas that should only have one in a group rather than a group OF 3 stars. A Captain among Champions. Likewise 2 star groups should be broken up to feature a tough 2 star Champion with their Elite underlings. In doing this, 1 stars could be made tougher and a bit more rewarding. I like seeing the Goblin Shaman with a pack of Creepers, or the Alpha Wolf with the other wolves hanging around near it, those feel meaningful. 3 star enemies as far as the eye can see seems kinda like saying "we're giving you level 40 challenge enemies but they're rated 15 levels lower for you" and it kinda waters down what it means to be a 3 star creature.

Vindor

Excluding particular mechanics, mobs are way too easy, which is aggravting the huge problem of mobs scarcity.
Makes them way harder and let them gives more XP. As it is the levels makes no sense, at level 5 you can duo level 13 mobs and 1 star level 9.

sciffer2014

I just started playing on phase 2 of Alpha - I'm currently level 15 bard. Here's my thought. But before just a first impression on the system.

First impression

First off, the fact that there are part of the map where all mobs have a 3-star elites rating seems weird to me. I understand that it means that this spot is hard but I would rather get notification I've enter a dangerous area rather then discovering that all mobs have 3-stars rating.

Personally, I would like to see some kind of fog of war (FOW) surrounding elite dens like Oaks and Citadel. Maybe also have this FOW have an impact on player stats like if you are too low lvl for the zone everything you do, and every xp you receive is halve. If you are too high level, those zone could humble you by bringing your stats down to a relevant level for the area as well. Kind of a way to prevent some abuse around those zone.

Then monster within that area could get like a specific notice like a dead skull to notice player they have enter a dangerous area, but the rating of the mobs within that area could follow a more normal rating system, so not every enemy would receive a 3 stars rating. When you enter a zone where everything is 3 stars it kind of lower your expectation of what a three star should give in term of gear and finding a boss or a minion inside that area kind of makes it weird.

The rating system could be a little bit more linear.

1-star could be like harder then usual;
2-star could be like group boss - or exceptional enemy;
3-star could be like raid boss - or area boss ;

How does the overall difficulty of 3-star elites feel?

It really depends where you are and what you're fighting. Sometime you've camp where the 3-stars are hp sacks and you almost just ignore then enemy and sometimes you just wonder why you can kill so many so easily.

As I said previously the 3-stars system for an entire area feel like it makes the rating system kind of irrelevant for those said area. Also, I don't think I've met that many 3-stars mobs outside of those zone or when I did they were usually just weird creature like the zombies near Miraleth. But so far, they mostly felt "Meh" not really bringing the kind of danger feel the highest rating should bring.

Up to this point the system seemed like incomplete for me.

Do elite creatures feel manageable, overwhelming, easy, or just right?

They do feel manageable, as previously stated, the rating system seemed incomplete because you are judging an entire area rather then specifics encounter which is... kind of unusual. Also, that does make some of them easy and other overwhelming but overall I think those zone are at a right difficulty level.

When I was in HH, the boss did felt harder and more compelling to kill. What made it weird is when I started moving to Oakenbane Keep, where all mobs were 3-stars and there, the notion of difficulty associated with the rating started to feel like a distant memory.

Also, I do believe there might be a lack of overwhelming mobs. Since you cannot really differentiate boss from normal creature by the star-system in some zone it does create a sense of ease, when you are at the right level for the zone, which kind of lower the expectation for some encounter.

How do you approach these encounters— solo, or in a group?

Mostly group, but it does depend on where they are and how powerful I feel. Sometime I just try them out in the wild because I'm curious but most of the time I avoid them when I'm not in a group. Once again, I do feel like the rating system is kind of all over the place and not that much of a great indicator overall.

Are there any encounters with 3-star elites where their mechanics or stats stood out as particularly fun or frustrating?

Zombies dive ! I did love it and felt as a torero when I first encounter the zombies near Miraleth. It did also felt like I was doing a really simple kiting - but that is because I'm a range character and that zombie is kind of the perfect match for my character mechanics. The opponent did felt like a stars and an half difficulty level just because they had some many HP but it was fun.

Sergeant in citadel - They are HP sacks and with the faster respawn we were just keeping them on us during the fight. I do not think however those kind of mobs should go out of style. They are kind of a good dps test for your group. We were a bad group for citadel, and those mobs made it clear to me. We were able to fight the lighter mobs even if they had harder mechanics but those mobs kept us humble - at least if you took time to notice

Rockyfour

Only really frustrating part about elites is the glitchy path finding imo. Hopefully will be ironed out for release.

When your grinding and mobs start popping out of nowhere is pretty toxic too.

iLikeFanGoing

So far I have enjoyed most of the Elite mobs with one exception, Zombies Thaumaturges. The healing debuff doing damage when you heal someone is just too easy to exploit for people outside your group. With the amount of ground spells and clutter from abilities it's impossible to see which makes it just not fun to engage with. Just today I lost 3 of my best gear pieces on my cleric because some random (not in my group) got a zombie debuff and stood in my team when I was healing them, which killed him and corrupted me. I know its an alpha and I'm not keeping any of this stuff anyway, but still very demoralizing.

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