Balor and Pitfiend mobs

[Diilicious]

can these creatures please be changed so they do something other than stand there throwing nothing but dispels for 15 minutes.

they;re supposed to be the leading creatures and yet they do absolutely nothing but the absolute most irritating thing they can do, would they really be content to just stand on the side lines throwing dispels forever rather than any other destructive spell they could have?

they're so boring...

[Astral]

I think I brought this up in the past at some point in a "What grind your gears" or "your most hated mob" thread... specifically the balors. I wouldnt mind if there was any counter play honestly. But there isnt. You cant KD them, you cant interrupt their casting (since it's an ability, not a spell cast), you cant counter spell, you cant silence. Nothing works. You ~will~ eat 2-4 mords by the time you kill them and that utterly blows in my opinion.

[High Primate]

Less dispel spamming on all spawns would be nice, frankly. It drives people away from dungeons.

[Ridiculously Circuitous Plans]

I wonder if the dispel spams are part of the coded behavior of these mobs, or if it is another one of the rather odd results often seen since the recent AI changes. Many times have I seen mobs get stuck in 'loops' of sorts, such as attempting to cast an offensive spell over and over after being blinded, even though they have no target and thus it keeps failing.

[Astral]

I wonder if the dispel spams are part of the coded behavior of these mobs, or if it is another one of the rather odd results often seen since the recent AI changes. Many times have I seen mobs get stuck in 'loops' of sorts, such as attempting to cast an offensive spell over and over after being blinded, even though they have no target and thus it keeps failing.

These balors behave this way from way before the AI update.

[BegoneThoth]

Some areas should be hard. If pit fiends need to spam dispels to make literal hell inhospitable to adventurers then keep at it.

[One Two Three Five]

Enemies spamming dispels here is less a 'hard areas be hard' thing and more a, ah..

Back when we had Weavemasters (infinite casting sorcerers), a lot, a lot, a lot of spawns around the midbie stage started spamming dispel to compensate. Once weavemasters were removed, it was a while before some spawns got changed back. I suspect these were missed in the reversion?

[Nitro]

Some areas should be hard. If pit fiends need to spam dispels to make literal hell inhospitable to adventurers then keep at it.

That's the thing though, it's not hard, it's just annoying as the balors do nothing but sit there obediently spamming dispels while you kill them, only necessitating another round of rebuffing.

[All The Sinners Saints]

9 times out of 10 the dispel spam does not increase difficulty in any meaningful way. What it effects is how fun the area is to travel to.

[Dr_Hazard89]

Have to agree. Dispel spamming doesn't make an area challenging. If we're going to go through the module and weed these out, I'd want to suggest we get rid of all the instant casting of multiple buffs too. They seem to go hand in hand, is why I bring it up. I don't mean to derail the thread, but the amount of times I've set up a calculated attack only to have my target instantly, become invisible and have dmg reduction and have spell immunity and have a damage shield and be hasted, and come out of it spamming dispels.

Ugh. If that's challenging, I'd rather just not go to that place, TBH. NPCs should follow the same rules as PCs. Where is my free sequencer staff/robe? Can I loot one of the infinite that seem to be in every dungeon?

I get it's "supposed" to be their buffs were up before I showed up, because players have buffs too. But I'm attacking them in their home, why would they be standing around with buffs on? Why didn't the buffs expire? I don't have buffs on when they attack me in my home. And worst of all, they don't 'appear' to have buffs until the very last second, and suddenly wham. All the buffs!

*Cough* /rant. Back to the dispels. This used to be a problem with the vanilla EDK, too. You would call down this epic dragon and it would ... cast dispel, over and over and over until it eventually died. It's terribly disappointing when it happens to your own summons. There is also the complete other side of this, where mobs that are supposed to be challenging (balors/pit fiends) will chain cast dispel on characters that just don't care, making them effortlessly easy to cut down while they waste their time trying to dispel buffs you don't even have.

[Mithreas]

Enemies spamming dispels here is less a 'hard areas be hard' thing and more a, ah..

Back when we had Weavemasters (infinite casting sorcerers), a lot, a lot, a lot of spawns around the midbie stage started spamming dispel to compensate. Once weavemasters were removed, it was a while before some spawns got changed back. I suspect these were missed in the reversion?

Technically, this happened the other way around.

We significantly increased dispels on monsters back when battleclerics were the go-to top tier build... which was a long time ago now. The intent there was to bring a bit more balance between mundanes and caster-fighters - the latter were stronger but more fragile if their buffs could be removed.

Infinite casters were a much later invention, focused on giving non melee types the ability to use magic as their primary weapon encounter after encounter without the need for mechanically-induced rest breaks. This absolutely interacted favourably with an environment with lots of dispels, which further increased the differentiation between caster types.

So you have effect and cause mixed up a bit there!

[One Two Three Five]

Right so the solution is to either fix it or bring back infinicasters then yea? do the latter

[Hunter548]

how about let's not

[Dr_Hazard89]

how about let's not

^

[WanderingPoet]

Right so the solution is to either fix it or bring back infinicasters then yea? do the latter

Agreed! For bringing back Favoured Souls, not Weavemasters

[Astral]

Right so the solution is to either fix it or bring back infinicasters then yea? do the latter

I think he was simply pointing out what really happened without trying to justify either infi-casters or dispel spamming mobs. Also hell no, infi-casters are terrible for the server, trust me I grandfather one

[Mithreas]

Oh, I love infinicasters, but then, I've always disliked the Vancian system, especially in a PW setting. (I'd extend that to all "X uses per day" abilities, not just spells... hence things like Rage going onto a cooldown timer).

That said, I don't set policy any more, and since the team wanted to revert back to the pure Vanican magic system, that's their call. It's certainly the case that balancing for both systems at once is basically impossible... had I stayed on, I would probably have pushed to complete the shift rather than reversing it, but there was definitely more work to do to make that happen.

But there's no doubt that introducing infinicasters was driven as much by my desire to introduce different magic user playstyles than it was about game balance. And part of that was to make "pure magic user" a more viable and interesting option in an environment where measures put in to control buff/melee types vs mundanes had the side effect of making magic users a lot more painful to play.

[nobs3]

For wizzards reading and preparing (same or new) spells would be a big change - instead of resting.
For sourcerers maybe a regular refresh of spells after a longer cooldown.
Instead of new casting classes.

[-XXX-]

Not sure about the balors in your neighborhood, but the ones I usually have the pleasure of encountering open up with an implosion.

[flower]

....

I like when fight is challenge.

When friend drags me to endless circling of Baator with infinite spams because it gives shitload of coins and xps while very low difficulty it immedietly turns me away from the game.

When there is a quest and twelve epics steam roll fully buffed trough hard monsters without any issue it is usually extremely boring and i ask myself what am i doing there even.

When i am forced to deal with NPC, which is equally warded as I am and i have to counter it prior i may také on it, it just begins to be a fun. What fun is killing npc mage which needs seven rounds to get fully buffed up itself to get same wards as you do?

Your argument you enter their home is irrelevant. Most dungeons are places of horror where non stop fighting takes place. They should be constantly ready / on alert. On top of that, the ones fighting -at home- should have advantages.

Well to the topic...balors in Baator often fought me in melee, after getting out one or two dispel spells. Not exactly just -sitting- there


Edit: I do believe Baator and Abyss should not allow resting!