Factions Complaint Department

[Seijin]

I can't say I found the monsters "too hard" really, I did have a few bad over-aggros but nothing special.

I do recall you were there when me and I think Xyn, or was it Wurm, Went to do Luxon Challenge and another quest in the general location and we couldn't finish one of them. The enemies aren't terribly difficult. Most regular groups of enemies aren't difficult at all, usually with one healer or spirit type in the group, a ranger, a warrior or assasin, and a couple of other types.

I don't think Wurm or I said anything was "too hard", we just said some things are a bit overpowered. Honestly, things don't have to be "too hard" anyways. If they don't seem hard enough you can always aggro more. I used to do that farming griffins...a couple groups were no problem, so I simply aggroed as many as the game would let me.

Fighting 6-7 Kappa is not fun especially if you're in the middle of them. First, it seems like you do no dmg unless you use skills or land a critical hit, and second, they bombard you with spells. A group of us did this when we had DP already, it didn't work out and we had to abandon the quest.

Oni for one do more dmg than maybe they should, especially since they can appear while you were trying to pull a group of enemies, thus making it a fight with not only the group of enemies, but the Oni as well. If you leave the Oni unchecked and fight the group, the Oni can tear through your party one by one. If you fight the Oni and not the group, the group will really annoy your party and probably kill 1-2 members. A pack of 3 Oni is not a problem. Focus fire, use defensive stances. A pack of 3 Oni and a group of Wardens proves to be a challenge, but doable...a pack of 3 Oni, a group of Wardens, and a group of dredge is most likely gonna lead to party wipe.

[Seijin]

Oh, and people keep talking about 20/20 wands, well I've been checking collectors and haven't seen it. I have seem flame artifacts which are rod-like and therefore might be mistaken as wands, but they have no damage, and give 12 energy if you meet the stat requirement, thus I believe they are focus items and therefore nothing special.

You must have been checking the wrong collectors..either that or they don't like you.

[WarBlade]

Oooh, if that water wand makes it into the game then Ice Blade's Flint's Wand goes bye bye. 8)

[Drasca]

I also don't think Oni are too strong. I used the guardian hench and a ritualist with the +125 health urn. Shields up +50 armor vs piercing (Oni daggers) really helped. Oni simply couldn't spike real tanks to death. They could hex / wire any cloth users that run away, but that's only for a totally unprepared group.

I'm fine with getting my butt kicked on first encounters.

I really wish I had more skillpoints for my PvE chars. I didn't get to really explore the new skills because I don't have any faction savd on my 2nd account to explore skills through PvP. However, I too was disappointed by what was shown to me (in PvE). A lot of skills were identical to Prophecies, but also some were very neat, and I hope they get more interesting.

Do knockdowns force urns to drop/crash? Is there anything that will? I'd like to see an ability to make enemies drop their items.

[Lurker Wyrm]

Earth didn't get much amazing revolutionary skills, but it did get something it sorely needed: more freakin damage. Now you have options besides flare spike and KD/AS.

Earth got something better. A ward that stops KD. Now, KD prevention isn't limited solely to the war.

Oni for one do more dmg than maybe they should, especially since they can appear while you were trying to pull a group of enemies, thus making it a fight with not only the group of enemies, but the Oni as well. If you leave the Oni unchecked and fight the group, the Oni can tear through your party one by one. If you fight the Oni and not the group, the group will really annoy your party and probably kill 1-2 members. A pack of 3 Oni is not a problem. Focus fire, use defensive stances. A pack of 3 Oni and a group of Wardens proves to be a challenge, but doable...a pack of 3 Oni, a group of Wardens, and a group of dredge is most likely gonna lead to party wipe.

What he said.

Also, the AI is still in desperate need of improvement. Poor skill selection on the part of the devs aside, there are still way too many things that need to be fixed. Vile henches are nice, but they tend to spam Putrid Explosion, even if there's no enemy near the area of the corpse, making life as a MM a complete pain. If you've got more than one character with a perm res, they're both going to activate the res at the same time and neither will cancel out (the spirit hench will start using Flesh, the healer will start Restoration Chant, spirit's will go off first, healer will keep casting RC - this happens every tiem something is being ressed). Priority for res sigs among AI is still to not bring back the healer, but rather the protection/spirit hench. The healer seems to have slowed down a bit on reaction times, I've noticed them watching and waiting for someone to be practically dead before using Orison/WoH. This might be in reaction to the henches overhealing before, but the way it is now is the other extreme. Last time I was taking a dirt nap, I watched the healer hench sit there and do nothing while the deadly one's life was completely drained away, only to start the res chant skill after it died. AI monks in general have become pretty useless. More and more often, I found myself ignoring the monk in favor of beating down the more damaging enemies, such as Dragon Moss', Kappas, Oni, etc., since the monks really weren't doing anything worth stopping.

Spirits need some improvement with their targetting AI as well. I've noticed more and more that they will ignore my target and go after whoever they deem to be the most threatening target, which is seriously annoying because I want my Shadowsong to target the assassin pounding on my teammates, not the monk that is pretty useless.

Most of the new monk skills are just plain pathetic. In fact, I didn't see a single healing spell worth putting on the skill bar. Almost all of them cast in 1 second, with the very rare exception of 1 that casts in 3/4, and they all have recharge times that are too long (4 seconds recharge on an elite that's little more than a weaker Heal Other that costs 5 energy? Give me a break...). The only semi-decent and almost-usable addition is the whisper healing spell that has half the normal range. I say almost usable because while the healing and recharge are decent, the range makes it a poor substitute for Orison. I'd rather wait the extra second before the spell was ready again rather than force myself to get closer to the enemies attacking the party. In the middle of combat it could have potential, but other than that, you're better off sticking with Orison. Honestly, I don't see Remy's skill bar changing much when Factions comes along. If it does, it'd only be to use them so I didn't feel like I wasted skill points.

I'd also like to know why it is that the Assassin has 4 pips of energy regen. They don't need it. Critical Strikes, Critical Eye, and a Zealous weapon gives them 4 energy per critical, which happens quite often. If the devs were so worried about their energy management, then they should have given them some adrenal based skills instead (since they can get the Furious prefix on their weapons, it would make sense).

Enough ranting for now.

[FoxBat]

Most of the new monk skills are just plain pathetic.

Boon Signet is a pretty nice alternative for the usual energy management elites on a divine boon build. Smiting might be more viable with some of the new skills (although still unlikely to be popular)

I'd also like to know why it is that the Assassin has 4 pips of energy regen. They don't need it.

Well, I found myself running out of mana often enough even with all of those.... wasn't drasca just whining about that as well?

About the wands.... egad. Well maybe this is some compensation for the dazes casters will have to face, but staves aren't looking as good when you can stack a 20/20 wand and focus together.

[Seijin]

Vile henches are nice, but they tend to spam Putrid Explosion, even if there's no enemy near the area of the corpse, making life as a MM a complete pain.

Thats good to note. I never took the vile hench with me. I've pretty much stopped being a MM though. I have more fun with A.Echo + SS.

If you've got more than one character with a perm res, they're both going to activate the res at the same time and neither will cancel out (the spirit hench will start using Flesh, the healer will start Restoration Chant, spirit's will go off first, healer will keep casting RC - this happens every tiem something is being ressed). Priority for res sigs among AI is still to not bring back the healer, but rather the protection/spirit hench. The healer seems to have slowed down a bit on reaction times, I've noticed them watching and waiting for someone to be practically dead before using Orison/WoH. This might be in reaction to the henches overhealing before, but the way it is now is the other extreme. Last time I was taking a dirt nap, I watched the healer hench sit there and do nothing while the deadly one's life was completely drained away, only to start the res chant skill after it died. AI monks in general have become pretty useless.

OK, is that why I feel like there's no healing going on from my healer hench and protection hench sometimes.

I'd also like to know why it is that the Assassin has 4 pips of energy regen. They don't need it. Critical Strikes, Critical Eye, and a Zealous weapon gives them 4 energy per critical, which happens quite often. If the devs were so worried about their energy management, then they should have given them some adrenal based skills instead (since they can get the Furious prefix on their weapons, it would make sense).

I think because they kind of count as spell caster since they have some hexes. I have no idea really, but early on, I found myself running out of energy a lot. I learned how to manage that a bit though.

[WarBlade]

I never had any problems with the AI healing. The henchies were useful and the Dredge Gardeners had to remain a high priority target. Some of the creatures weren't worth much in the monk department though. Something Menders were a minor annoyance and the Spring Wardens were to be ignored while everyone desperately tried to take out their Earth Warden cousins.

I have something else to complain about:

OMG THE PATHING IN THE KURZICK CAPITAL SUCKS!

I experimented on targeting the the armour crafter and hitting the space bar. a few steps later my character would invariably be doing a face plant into some pillar or get tangled up on the corner of a stairway. I practically couldn't mouse click my way through the area effectively enough to try clicking and even when steering with just keyboard control I found I had to 'drive carefully.' I watched an assassin having the same problem between the materials trader and the armour crafter too as he did a kind of vibrating grind on a tree stump or something.

That place is just one annoying hole to try and navigate in IMO.

[Zed-F]

Fighting 6-7 Kappa is not fun especially if you're in the middle of them. First, it seems like you do no dmg unless you use skills or land a critical hit, and second, they bombard you with spells. A group of us did this when we had DP already, it didn't work out and we had to abandon the quest.

On the other hand, it didn't help that at least a couple of us were messing around with sub-optimal builds. I had a spirit-based ritualist build going, but not very well optimized as I didn't have any extra skills unlocked. I think Hawk was not having much luck with her build either (again, probably due to lack of good skills unlocked.) I came back later with a party of henches and an unexceptional Broadhead/Poison ranger build and it made a huge difference. It was easily henchable.

Oni for one do more dmg than maybe they should, especially since they can appear while you were trying to pull a group of enemies, thus making it a fight with not only the group of enemies, but the Oni as well. If you leave the Oni unchecked and fight the group, the Oni can tear through your party one by one. If you fight the Oni and not the group, the group will really annoy your party and probably kill 1-2 members. A pack of 3 Oni is not a problem. Focus fire, use defensive stances. A pack of 3 Oni and a group of Wardens proves to be a challenge, but doable...a pack of 3 Oni, a group of Wardens, and a group of dredge is most likely gonna lead to party wipe.

I have to agree that the Oni are only dangerous if they come along when you are fighting another pack, and more to the point, when you've just started fighting another pack. Even if you manage to retain the upper hand, they will make the fight drag out to the point where another patrol may well cross your path. They are like popups that way but seem to be even more likely to show up when you would really rather not have to deal with them.

[Swiss Mercenary]

I think the problem you guys had with the healer henchmen, is that the Luxon one has Purge Signet, last I checked.