August 2011 ToH Feedback Thread

[Aevyn]

Exactly how are these monster trials tested???I overheard someone saying that said GM had tested it on non-reborn classes, and that all the monsters were beatable.??Unless the monsters were behaving way off of what was intended, I don't see how this could be possible.??Are these characters geared to the teeth vs. said monster, and the tester armed with all the monster knowledge???If so, how fair is that???Again, assuming this isn't already done, perhaps GMs who don't know anything about the monsters should do the testing???Also, when testing, is the fact that you can't storage taken into account???(And the fact that there are two trials, so you'll want a good amount of your consumables remaining.) What about difference in play-style/builds???I realize that certain builds will do better in TOH, and that's just how it's going to be... and I realize that balancing a monster trial is probably incredibly hard... but are both VIT -and- AGI builds taken into consideration???The first rounds, where you face a good 10 monsters, are -hell- if they all sit there and spam skills.??It gets to the point where there's so much spam my clicks aren't registering.??Anyway... long question short... I'm curious about the testing procedures.

And some suggestions:??Please don't use Stop.??At least not when there's more than 1 monster to deal with.??2 minutes, and for a good 30 seconds I'm supposed to just sit there???Use something like Close Confine that you can evade with Hide instead.??RO suffers a lot from position lag, and Stop creates a lot of frustration in my opinion.??Also, please consider how hardcore DEF kills certain classes ability to kill.??Again, I'm fully aware of the fact that my own Stalker build is very sub-par for TOH monster trials... but when I'm sitting on maxed out DEX with an OAB, using one of the highest % damage skills available to me... and I do ~1000-1500 damage per hit... and I have to do 50k damage (5 times...), I just have to give up and run.

The idea of giving monsters all these crazy customized behaviors is neat, but I feel it's being overdone.??There's just not enough time per round to consider strategies and observe monster skill usage.??At least not when they use 5+ skills each, and there's 10 monsters all using different stuff at the same time.??Perhaps tone it down, where each round has -one- tricky mechanic you have to consider?

And last but not least, some praise.??I very much appreciate the extra points that were added.??The PVP portion was also very smooth once it got going, good work on that.??TOH is a cool event in general, and as much as I find some portions frustrating (probably because of my poor choice of TOH class), I'll keep attending it.