Vampires = Death

I have been battling this problem on 14 for some time now. I had hoped that as my Sorceror closed in on level 509, this problem would abate -- but that is not the case. Vampires apparently are the Kobayashi Maru of javatar. Stay and fight, and you will die. Run like hell, and you will most likely die after getting the crap drained out of you.

My sorc launches burning air, and gets 3 1/2 to 4 vamps per slot. The healer launches WoD, and gets 1 to 2 per slot. Then both immediately die or die and get drained... or worse, get drained, die and then suffer a second death from roll over damage that lands after they get raised. (yes this has happened once)--

There needs to be a way to take these guys down in one fell swoop (BA in other versions did the trick) or you have to tone them down so that a group has some chance against them. Additionally -- they are waaay too common on 14. I see them about every run. It needs to be about 1/3 that often.

Keep up the good work. I am loving the game so far. This needs to get tweaked, tho --IMHO.

JF

From my experience in other versions of avatar the sorc spell 'burning air' has always been the most effective spell to use against this encounter. The healer spell 'word of death' has always been stronger than the wizard version as well (pure class advantage we always assumed). The effectiveness of these spells vs Vampires didn't get dependable until around character level 450 or so, in which case only 1-3 would usually be left out of a huge gang of 20+ (sometimes you got them all with burning air but not with word of death). At character level 509 (spell level 255) both burning air and the healers word of death could clear the Vamps and only Orcus would be left (if it was an Orcus & Vampires encounter) to beat down.
My current group are just babies compared to Jake's but I just came back 3 weeks ago. From what I have heard in game from Jake and what he has described here, I would tend to agree that an adjustment is in order, either tone down the vamps or boost the effectiveness of the spells. Granted, a party is not ALWAYS going to get the surprise round but (imho) more balance is needed.
Steve

Jake,

I will investigate this issue and get back to you. It will most likely be the middle of next week before I have much time, unless something shakes loose at work or on the home front. I will post here when I figure out what is what.

I will make a quick and dirty fix to this issue tonight. Expect it to go live around 1800 EDST.

This is not going to be the final version, just something to hopefully give you a chance to clear the encounter, at least once in a while.

Yesterday's fix was delayed by personal issues. Got it done and it is now live. Vamps are pretty much bad asses. You either kill them quickly, or die to them quickly. They should now be clearable with the correct spell at least most of the time.

Let me know how this works out for you.

After many encounters -- I am running about 70% clearing the room with a single burning air. Sometimes BA leaves a damaged vamp or two which the healer can clean up.

Interestingly enough, dispel undead is now failing about 20% of the time against Eidolans, which has taken some getting used to. I assume this is intetntional?

20% maybe a bit high-- but yes this is what I wanted.

Sample size is small

But last night and this morning running 14,15

I was attempt failing on eidolans probably 50% of the time.

Unless you added some monster that doesn't dispel and mis id's as eidolans-- whatever you did is actually worse now.

really? I turned DOWN their resistance to dispel...

There are mobs that mis ID as Eidolans, and some of those are not dispel-able. However, I did nothing to increase their frequency-- so it is either a permutation on random number generation, or I did something wrong. Keep me posted as the sample size increases.

I tested the vamp thing a bit... and I may have overdone it. I cleared all vamp encounters with a single BA 100% of the time. This was not my intention, and I may have adjusted this a bit too far in favor of the player. Expect to see something soon making a very subtle adjustment in favor of the mobs.

Eidolans are still more resistant to dispel than I would want. I will be looking at this tonight.