Talk: Quizzical/Sorted

Vizunah is only difficult if you don't have MM (preferably two). O_o I've personally made my other heroes into minion masters if I didn't have 2 necro heroes for this one. :P I'm surprised to see it so high on this list. So what are hero restrictions, if any? Because if none, then this is one of the easiest Masters in my books, even with the other team being all AI. On the other hand, Dzagonur and Gate of Madness are the two "nightmares" that I refuse to even attempt HM with h/h. Eternal Grove is a given just because of the split, but not that hard with two people and half a brain each, so it gets #3 from me. RoseOfKali 19:04, February 19, 2010 (UTC)

MMs, or semi-MMs in the form of something like Discord :> --- -- (contribs) (talk) 19:26, February 19, 2010 (UTC)

Of course. Exploding meat shields and spike pwrs for the afflicted rits? Yes, pls. RoseOfKali 19:35, February 19, 2010 (UTC)

Please note the assumptions that go into making the list, in order to have an apples to apples comparison. It was one player, three heroes, and the rest of the party henchmen. The player was of a class that didn't match up very well with the mission. No putting attribute points into a secondary profession (which rules out Sabway and Discordway). No peculiar gimmick gear that isn't widely useable (which rules out 600 and 55 builds). No use of PVE only skills except for Nightfall skills, and the only class-specific Sunspear skill was the one for the primary class of the character. No consumables. No use of titles that grant bonuses, apart from Lightbringer rank 4. Must get both mission and bonus in the same run, or master's reward, depending on the campaign. Start dropping assumptions and you change things considerably.

In sorting missions, I used a combination of how often I failed the mission and how close it subjectively felt like I was to wiping on other occasions. I did implicitly tweak the failure numbers, putting far more weight on what happened after I had figured out my strategy, and little weight on what happened in the first few attempts. Because I grouped with other players about half of the time, this skewed things somewhat as well. Failures that had nothing to do with skill or strategy, such as due to getting disconnected from the server, were discarded entirely.

Some missions are "randomly" hard, as in, seem easy much of the time, but then suddenly I'd wipe without warning, and after making no obvious mistakes. If a mission were set up such that half of the time you win and it seems easy and half of the time you wipe, without regard to the skill of the player, I'd rate that mission as very hard, because I couldn't reliably beat it.

I'll go into a bit of detail on missions mentioned above. Vizunah Square is easy if you have four players and twelve heroes. I'd argue that having several players makes Vizunah Square easier by a bigger margin than any other mission in the game. It's much harder with one player, three heroes, and twelve henchmen and the restrictions above. It's also much harder if the one player is melee, as having to move around a lot to fight mobs makes it much harder to distribute damage evenly between your party and the henchmen party due to their AI of how they do or don't follow you. I had, in total, 18 failures in that mission, in spite of about half of my characters clearing the mission with a group, and nearly always succeeding in the grouped attempts. That figure of 18 failures is second only to 52 in Eternal Grove, with only one character able to win solo subject to the above restrictions.

In fact, I dare say it's essentially impossible to reliably win Vizunah Square subject to the above restrictions and an unfavorable choice of your own character. A foreign character starts from the foreign quarter, and the henchmen party from local quarter doesn't always hold out very well. Occasionally they'll wipe completely before you get there, and Togo dying means mission failure. More often they take several deaths before you get there, meaning they're out of rez signets, won't get rez signet recharges, and have a fair bit of death penalty, meaning that they'll die again very easily. Maybe you make it to the second big battle area before the henchmen party is gone, but again, you're toast.

As for Arborstone, the battle at the end is pretty random. There's a big group of mobs with healers that can't be pulled. When you approach, some additional stone mobs activate and join in. There's also a boss that deals considerable damage. Killing all of those mobs is quite a daunting task in hard mode.

But you don't have to do it. Get close to the door, survive for 10 seconds (which isn't hard to do), and Danika opens the door, ending the mission. Well, usually she does. Sometimes she just stands there. I've timed it at holding out for about 45 seconds before a wipe, and Danika wouldn't open the door. It's not due to knockdowns, either, as ward of stability doesn't prevent it. And if you go in assuming that Danika is going to open the door, and she doesn't open it, well, that makes the mission awfully hard. If you only beat the mission once, it's likely that you'll never see Danika go AFK, and think it wasn't that hard. But it's one of the randomly hard missions, not a consistently hard one, and randomly hard means I can't reliably beat it, so it goes high on the list. I had 10 failures total in getting ten characters through in hard mode, but five of those came on my last two characters, after I had figured out about as much strategy as I was going to.

I think that the difficulty of Gate of Madness is vastly overrated. I put it as high as #21 largely on reputation, and could have justified putting it much lower if going strictly by results. I never wiped on that mission, ever. I got all ten characters through in easy mode, and all ten in hard mode, and never wiped once. I did reset very early once or twice very early when I figured out that I had the wrong builds, but other than that, every single time I started the mission, I finished it with master's reward.

I only had two close calls, even. One of those was when I nearly wiped at the gate by the Shiro'ken, as I didn't know to move forward to avoid getting hit from behind. The other was because one of the other players in my group was an idiot. Once he finally disconnected, so that I could flag his heroes, the rest of the mission went smoothly.

I think it's largely that Gate of Madness fits how I play the game very well, while not being amenable to blitzing through it with Sabway or Discordway. Battles with Titans take a long time, and the mission effect decreases your healing. Bring lots of healers and defensive skills and you can survive long enough and you're fine. The portals can be a bit tricky to pull, but at worst, you have to take on a pair of torment creatures and three portal wraiths at once. With plenty of healing and other defensive skills, that's quite manageable.

Some players get stuck there because they just don't get the idea of changing their builds to fit the mission, and want to keep their preferred high damage builds and hope to kill mobs really fast. That doesn't work against Titans. And then they get a run through Gate of Madness and get stuck on Abaddon's Gate for the same reason, even though that's a cupcake mission. Quizzical 23:09, February 19, 2010 (UTC)

Holy... mother of Pyre... Can you summarize that? tl'dr sry RoseOfKali 00:39, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

You know what's funny about Gate of Madness? Discord cannot make it through. Shiro shrugs of Conditions too fast for Discord to land.

I don't really get why you can't run Discord nor Sabway; do you mean heroes also "only use their primary profession" (bla, attributes)? If yes: That's just dumb if you ask me. Intentionally gimping yourself gives a pretty skewed result. Yes, they're both comparable... But not to what I'd do, for example. If no: You can still run Discord and Sabway. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 11:16, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with "gimping" yourself to primary-only, as it costs time and money to get secondary skills. For heroes, however, that's a non-issue, and shouldn't be considered at all here. RoseOfKali 12:09, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

/agree with Viper and Rose. The assumptions you used do allow you to make more objective comparisons, true, but they are not very applicable to the way that most people play the game. I, for one, have no qualms about running 3 PvE skills on my bar all the time. —Dr Ishmael 13:53, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

If you invariably form a group that loads up on PVE-only cheats, then everything is trivial, and there isn't much of a meaningful notion of difficulty. Also, I didn't say I wouldn't use secondary profession skills, but only that I wouldn't put attribute points into them. I really hate the game's secondary profession system. Quizzical 15:41, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

I will give you an ecto if you give me a "trivial" H/H group build (using any skills/attributes, but no cons besides honeycombs) that can "trivially" beat Dzagonur, Eternal Grove, and Gate of Madness HM with Masters. It must work for at least 8/10 primary player professions. Also, what's the point of using secondary skills and not spreading attributes to them? That is an un-reasonable handicap. RoseOfKali 21:42, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

No-attribute skills. Wild blow is staple on my derv. But you're quite right about some other things. Dzagnur HM is an enormous pain, and Eternal Grove even more. Gate of Madness wasn't too bad, but that was mainly because we chain-ressurected with UA when switching shrines (bloody Lich).--El_Nazgir 22:38, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

There's an absolutely massive difference between a group loaded with PvE skills (besides, 8*3=24 max) and a H/H group with max PvE skills (uhh.. 1*3). Also, Sneak Attack, albeit useful, is far from some uber overpowered steamroll cheat of deathbringing ala Ursan Blessing (which I once used in Dzagonur HM because Ele spells suck in HM and I was sick of playing (Melee) support). --- -- (contribs) (talk) 22:45, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

By a "group that loads up on PVE-only cheats", I meant, a group of mostly or entirely players, all of which bring some heavily overpowered PVE-only skills, and the group uses consumables. And you've seen such a group that steamrolls through nearly everything: Ursanway.

Also, there are a few skills that are linked to an attribute that are useful without any points in it. I've used heart of holy flame and disrupting dagger as secondary skills at times. Quizzical 03:21, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

There's one thing that bothers be though: Why is The Wilds so high? I H/h'd it without any PvE skills, and iirc it was a relatively normal hero setup (Ele nuker, healer and MM I think). The only actual trouble I had was that I forgot to take seeds with me and then had to go all the way back, left my heroes behind and then triggered 4 scarabs :s --El_Nazgir 08:33, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I said in my second post; 8*3 vs. 1*3 PvE skills. However, that's not what I, Rose and Ish implied when talking about gimping oneself; those were comments about one or two player groups. You seem to only take the "extremes"; None, or a team full of PvE skills. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 11:42, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

We're talking H/H, aren't we? Meaning 1 player, 3 PvE skills total. There's no point in making a list of difficulty for a way nobody plays. Sure it might be accurate within its own set of constraints, but just not very widely applicable. I don't mean to sound like I'm hating your idea of making the list by posting some of these "disagreements," I like it, and I would like to see it become useful for a wider range of players, with easier strategies. We could even link guides to completing these with H/H, as more and more often it's becoming difficult to find anyone to play with in some of the "remote" missions. People who go for HM missions, especially H/H, are usually reasonably-developed characters who will already have many PvE skills, or have access to the quests to obtain them. Skills to avoid relying on might be ones like the Asura summons, the Glacial Griffon rewards, Bear Club for (Wo)Men rewards, as they are something many people skip due to the annoyance/difficulty of the quests themselves. For the player, secondary professions skills and attributes should be ok, but not relying on a secondary Elite (e.g. Assassin's Promise nuker). Heroes should be allowed any primary/secondary skill builds, as a level 2 character can equip their Koss with Signet of Spirits if they want (not that it makes much sense, but they can). RoseOfKali 12:43, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

"a way nobody plays" Are you calling me "nobody"? :p The set of restrictions is tuned to the way that I play. I don't have data on anything else.

At #20, The Wilds isn't that high. It's in the range of, you have to pay attention to what you're doing, but if you do and you know what you're doing, you should be able to reliably beat it. I only failed it once in hard mode, but had some other close calls. If you're not careful about pulling, it's easy to get hit by three groups at once and then wipe. Quizzical 14:00, February 21, 2010 (UTC)

I was hoping to get it generalized for a wider playerbase with helpful strategies attached, but if you want to keep it tailored to the way you like to play, that's fine too. RoseOfKali 08:19, February 22, 2010 (UTC)