Doesn't work if you are in a pet group. For normal cacti, they ignore the pet and dot the pet owner. For the named in OT (I've killed a few) they turn around to AE the group if a pet is making them face the other way.
We just tried with 2 groups mostly raid geared on Test without knowing about the crazy dots and he wrecked us twice. Combine that with the rez bug at 110 (no xp returned) and that was a very crappy experience.
There's currently a problem once you reach level 110- people are not getting their XP back on rezzes, which means each death is essentially losing you 5% XP.
The cacti are definitely some of the toughest mobs I've fought in OT. The scorpion I fought may have been even more difficult. This makes me very nervous to even try any of the cactus named mobs since they have the same dot on top of another dot or dd.
I was spam healing a 107 shadowknight with 210k hp/5400 ac with Mantle running and three merc healers on Needle and barely managed to keep her up the whole time.
For added fun, it looks like the npc mechanics in Overthere (cactus dot, cat snare, rhino nuke, etc) also land on you through DA.
Sounds to me like everyone has gotten a little too used to face rolling content and having everything handed to them. You're complaining about a 60k dot at 105, when we have dps that are pushing 300K+ in burns? Really? I went into OT with my warrior day of release with just his Merc and tested out all the mobs. Every single mob I was able to molo using a 2hander....I had to use duel wield for the Cactus, mighta been easier with a sword/board but I wanted to test the limits. Tanking brand new red con content with a 2hander....I would hardly call overpowered. As far as Charasis and having these "impossible" 4 pulls.....Again, you folks have gotten a little too used to having everything handed to you, not needing an enchanter, not needing to split, face rolling everything content. Its a little harder and you might actually have to be present in the group in order to win. I wish they would leave it as is. The problem we have this dumbed down content is because you people constantly complain about how hard everything is. Not more than 10 hours after expansion released, multiple raids have already been beaten. This shouldn't happen.
Because I don't troll the forums and post every single day crying about everything that makes my opinions invalid eh? Doesn't change anything however. The new content isn't any harder than the old content.
The two biggest issues I have seen with OT named mobs. 1. Some names can't not be pulled well. The Cactus, Saber, an Iron golem, and the cocatrice all put on serious dots or will nuke well outside a normal casting range. I had a series of fights with Saber last night. The first round I was taken out early after the 4th add joined in and I couldn't keep up with single target bard mez.The 2nd round, I tried to pull him to a safer spot, but by the time my bard returned to the area, he was already doing the up-downs in the purple club. Saber on the other hand was still over the hill nuking away. He ended up killing my bard and clr merc and had a nuke/dot on my wiz merc before he even reached camp. I think there was a previous expansion release which had some named caster mobs casting on initial agro and not stopping which made pulling an issue. This could be a similar issue. 2. The lag or latency of information exchange seems to be making these named mobs harder. On several named fights in OT over the last 2 days, I have noticed several times where my boxed bard will have his hps drop below 10% (or purpled club) but on my paladin's screen, he is still at full hps. This issue may be exaggerated a bit due to harder / longer dots or because the game servers have been having reoccuring 2-6 second lag spikes for the last 3 months.
I'm not having any issues with the OT on my box team. But, I have experienced the rez bug. I think that was happening before this expansion. for reference - all my toons were pretty much max xp at 105 (not aa, just regular xp). When my war dies, pretty much everyone dies. sometimes I don't wipe, but it is pretty much a wipe. My war had 2 oranges in xp, my shaman was full xp. how could this be? I have been noticing it in the past month or so. It's like when I do call of the wild, then rez that corpse, I don't get xp after the rez.
I agree with some of this, although as a raid geared enchanter rolling with raid gear tanks, I don't have an appreciation of what a group only player is going through. From my experience, I have enjoyed the challenge. I did want to challenge you at one thing. You compared 300k dps versus a mob doing a 60k dot. That really isn't a fair comparison. Mobs have millions of hit points while players do not. 60k dot on a player with less than 200k hp is pretty severe. At the very least they should make the dot curable. Also, as a head's up in Skyfire zone, watch out for the vampires. They have a nasty AE drunk attack that was pretty difficult for me with 150 alcohol Tolerance. I spent at least 5 minutes at max intoxication before the effects started to tick down. As far as I know, this is the first time I have seen trash mobs with a drunk attack.
For the record, I'm fine with the effects at the power level they are. I don't think they're hard, exactly, just annoying. However, if they're ignoring shielding and landing through DA, that seems like they're broken.
It's been two days. There are 5 new levels to gain. 8000 AAs (at least that's the rough count for monks). New spell ranks. New gear. New augments. New strategies. And some known bugs which produce a significant drop in power immediately upon leveling to 106. I know plenty of you are already 110. I highly doubt you've maxed out your AAs in this time as well. Surely you haven't obtained your Rk2 spells yet, and only a handful of people have the Rk3 versions. No, you shouldn't need to max out your character to compete in the expansion, but you've barely scratched the surface of the expansion. Give it time.