Heroes Are Forged - The Hero's Forge Mission Discussion

How freaking hard is it to cut & paste "Kill X mobs of type Y" or "Collect A drops from type B mobs"?

Group content is and has always been an afterthought for the devs and this expansion does nothing to prove otherwise.

Yep. There should be as many missions for the group game as there are raids. Even having only 4 these past years has been woefully inadequate. They also should be their own thing, not mini-raids.

How hard do you think it is to pick 3-4 raid mechanics and make a raid? You know they reuse most or just mix them up a bit right?

I would say more missions than raids.
Group missions are for 100% of the player base. Raids are for a subset. Which means there should be MORE time spent developing missions than raids. People talk about making an easy copy/paste throw away mission, but why shouldn't group missions be interesting and compelling? Not just a 10 minute throw away job, or a poorly thought out raid encounter "lowered down" to "mission levels". They should be designed for 4-6 people in group gear. That should be the target audience.

DB isn't gonna add dev time to missions/raids, because they never do. The story of EQ is extract profit for everything else in the gaming portfolio, and only spend the minimum possible to keep the lights on. Thats not gonna change, so lets not talk about impossibilities. They only dedicate a certain amount of time to raids and missions, and 95% of that time is spent on raids. That ratio needs to change.

Ridiculous is the only way I could describe this, but a picture is more accurate.

Timed adds on 80s...okay DPS check I suppose, but also warping around roughly every 5 seconds.

Can we nerf this event already so that the average casual player can not get DT'd instantly on any 1 of 10 mechanics going on in this group mission? Below is a list of a few of them:

[54437] Melody of Pain
Restriction: Cannot Remove
Target: Caster AE
Range: 1000', AE Range: 700'
Resist: Unresistable
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: No
Casting: 0s
21: Decrease Current HP by 550550
22: Decrease Current Mana by 13000 (v417)
Text: Music slams into you and rips up your mind and body.

[54436] Mummy's Grasp
Restriction: Cannot Remove
Target: Single
Range: 1000'
Resist: Unresistable
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: No
Casting: 0s
Duration: 12s (2 ticks), Dispelable: No
21: Decrease Current HP by 375375 per tick
22: Decrease Current Mana by 4500 per tick (v417)
23: Inhibit Combat
24: Alter Vision: Base1=2 Base2=15 Max=0
25: Tint Vision: Red=224 Green=109 Blue=54
Text: A mystical disease creeps into your body and mind.

[54439] Sonic Bang
Restriction: Cannot Remove
Target: Caster AE
Range: 1000', AE Range: 90'
Resist: Unresistable
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: No
Casting: 0s
21: Decrease Current HP by 600000
22: Decrease Current Mana by 15000 (v417)
Text: A mystical note explodes!

[54434] Paralyzing Toxin
Restriction: Cannot Remove
Target: Single
Range: 1000'
Resist: Unresistable
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: No
Casting: 0s
Duration: 18s (3 ticks), Dispelable: No
21: Decrease Melee Haste by 75%
22: Decrease Movement Speed by 75%
23: Decrease Current HP by 270270 per tick
Text: Poison surges into your veins, slowing your movements.

[54435] Deadly Blast
Restriction: Cannot Remove
Target: Caster AE
Range: 1000', AE Range: 100'
Resist: Unresistable
Can Reflect: No
Focusable: No
Casting: 0s
21: Decrease Current Mana by 8000 (v417)
22: Decrease Current HP by 450450
Text: Cold, draining power slams into you.

Allayna nailed it right there.
Mobs teleporting every 5 seconds with 2 different effects that turn melee off (inhibit melee or 75% slow, plus a snare!). Imagine trying to play a melee in this group mission, cause you know, people in group gear can easily carry extra people through the mission....

Ignoring the damage rates on those effects too. Woof. What if the group of group players need to use .... gasp... a healer merc because their group composition isn't optimal?
lol

Honestly, the dev who made this "group mission" should be ashamed.

Perhaps they meant it to be a 12 person mission like Talendor.

Could not agree more.

Historically there have been "melee-friendly" and "caster-friendly" missions. This is a "melee-impossible" mission. With only two missions to choose from - what, exactly, was the goal here Darkpaw?

If you go into Heroes Are Forged with a melee group, even fully kitted with NoS raid gear, 98% chance you won't complete the mission. Go in with a pet-heavy caster group and a merc - Mission Complete. First try. All three achievements.

Surely, this was not the intent?

I'm not sure about that, but I believe that at least 1 mission per zone isn't an unreasonable ask. And I don't mean stripped down raids...I mean missions that stand on their own.

Someone said that the reason they make the missions like the raids is so people can follow the story. You want people to follow a story? Fine...make the missions the first part of the story and the raids the second part. Have the storyline start with and progress through the missions, and then...if people want to see how the story ends...they do the raids. That's the definition of "progression" and that's how it should work.

A post partisans quests mission for each zone would be nice to flesh out and finish the story of the zone.

The Lich screeches as it is harmed and teleports to a new location.

In a few months, my crystal ball predicts, this mission will be molo-able by a mage. There are a few dps-checks make it harder today, but with new LS spells and AA's a mage can do it alone.
Stage 1: large goo spawns adds every so often, it takes above 1.2 mil dps to kill the spawned add and switch back to big mob before next spawn. Soon enough a mage can do that without a big burn.
Stage 2: killing egg-sacks is helpful, but not absolutely necessary, spawned webmasters and regenerated queen will just prolong the fight.
Stage 3: Lich teleporting is not a problem for the pets, and a mummy with 90 mil HP spawning every 80 seconds is a similar dps check as with initial goo.
Final stage: If the reporting of the bard not casting Echo on the main tank are tru, then a mage can just molo it and ignore the auras.

Time will show. Just as Talendor mission can be molo'd today perhaps Heroe's forged will be molo'd too.

I'm not sure who you group with, but you clearly need new friends.

any good way to get sound proof? seems hard dont really understand how it works.

The two people called for the aura have to kite it away while they have the debuff on. If they get caught by the aura and the DD goes off the achievement is failed.

My wife and I just completed this mission last night. We are 121 and 122 with full NoS group gear. I 4 box and she 2 boxes, both without 3rd party assistance. It was definitely rough, although a lot of it was because we were boxing which makes the final boss way harder.

My suggestion adjustment wise would be to at the very least to reduce the frequency the lich shadowsteps, maybe 3 or 4 times at most.

Also, the egg mechanic isn't very intuitive. Keeping a slime alive from phase 1 to allow you to kill the eggs is something you would never do without already knowing. The same with setting up people ahead of time in the rooms to deal with the eggs, you would already have to know to do that. I don't think using pets was intended either, or the regen wouldn't be super high on the eggs. Its definitely doable as is but it doesn't feel like it belongs as is in a group mission.

Lastly, I would slightly reduce the spell damage for the final boss on mechanic fails OR make the golem require less work to activate. I would be fine with keeping the final boss as is entirely even, if reaching him was a sort of checkpoint and you had to trigger him via dialogue to continue.

Overall, it is definitely doable in group gear, but could use at least some adjustment to account for group players potential non-ideal group makeups. Also, if there are only 2 missions, I'm pretty sure most group players would like to be able to do both of them regularly.

Lich teleport rate should be nerfed, but probably at the same time HP increased. If he wasn't warping around a solo pally with a group weapon could burn him down without a mummy spawn.

So if a paladin can solo something then nerf the encounter, but if it's a mage or necro doing it then that's just called class balance?

Not remotely the same thing, and you know it. If we were gonna sidetrack to a class balance discussion I'd be more concerned with shifting most pally damage away from burst / undead because it'd be infinitely healthier for the class. (and game overall)

My point was merely that *without* the teleporting the lich is very squishy. The teleporting effectively adds like 100-400% extra HP depending on group comp.

Video of the event. Was my second victory, but first with the Sound Proof achievement.



I agree with most of the suggestions regarding the spider eggs, lich teleports and aura trigger. Specifically:

• You can probably just remove the items that drop, it's a noob trap that got me a few times till I got tired of trading and just ignored the mechanic and realized it wasn't important
• Just drop the spider web and let people go in and kill the eggs to avoid a spawn
• Make the lich teleport a few times a fight, not 10x or whatever
• Make the aura trigger happen some 10 seconds after the start of the fight instead of immediately

Beyond that, I'm disappointed that both missions challenger achievements equate to "Don't botch the mechanics". It's the perfect place to introduce a hard mode and for whatever reason it wasn't done.
I'd love to see a follow on set of content that added a couple missions from raids and included a hard mode with them.