Wow... What in the hell did you guys do to Antharas? Alright, I read in the patch notes on Thursday "Antharas and Valakas' HP Regeneration has been adjusted". Don't you think you went a LITTLE overboard?
We had 120 people (60 of which were nukers, of 70+), and once we got his HP to the 1/4 where he starts doing the Lava Breath, he went nuts. He regened it faster than we could imaginitevly thought to take it down. I mean, honestly... The **** thing regened faster than anything.
In the 5 minutes where we re-grouped to gather mana, buffs and give him a last push to try and take him down, he regened nearly an eighth of his HP.
You need to take a look at what you did, honestly.
did it today... had ~100 people probably half were nukers.
got its hp to 1/10, and started destroying everything in sight.
got the heavy hitting nuker groups rebuffed and regened for the last push, and its hp almost doubled from 10%. thats just ******ed.
and the really bad thing is, there is no tactic that would work against that, except for more people specifically more nukers/rechargers.
Exactly... We probably could have killed him if we stuck around another 30 minutes and kept at it...
But as most of us there were 75+ (had I think 7 Hero's as well), the exp we were losing was just too much... (I went through 15 brezzes and still lost over 40% ><; )
Just curious but at what point does he start regenning massively? Is it all the time or only at 20%? If it's at 20% then the strategy might be to die then regroup before the 20% mark. If the massive regen is all the time then you need more firepower.
we had stuck around for a good 30 minutes already.
the point was its hp not only didn't go down but actually went UP after an hour or so at the 10-15% mark. and that was after a good re-rallying of the sh groups.
staying longer woudln't have made the difference. the mp regen for the nukers just coudln't keep up with new and improved hp regen.
the only solution really, is more nukers and more rechargers.
and the really bad thing is, there is no tactic that would work against that, except for more people specifically more nukers/rechargers.
And THAT is the thing that is galling me. Killing down a big boss like Antharas should not be an excersize in bringing more and more nukers.
You used to need archers and debuffers as well. Even some melees managed to debuff him occasionally. It was mostly bring more spellhowlers that was the winning factor but still.
Once more they made a change that tells us: Play a nuker, all other classes are not worth doing and that is a very big problem. :(
Exactly... We probably could have killed him if we stuck around another 30 minutes and kept at it...
But as most of us there were 75+ (had I think 7 Hero's as well), the exp we were losing was just too much... (I went through 15 brezzes and still lost over 40% ><; )
Yes - that is something the devs really have to think about. If you are a halfway normal player, you get maybe 3-4% a day at 76 (and even less at 77 or 78). So losing even 1% really hurts. Losing 10% is like losing 3 days worth of playing. Losing 30-40% at a raid of new&improved&insane Antharas, plus dying a few times at sieges, means that you lose about TWO WEEKS of grinding exp. That really sets you back a lot - so much, that people start thinking about if it is really worth it to go there. And if you have to go there with several hundred players, the chances of getting something aren't much better than doing normal ally raids on the standard raid bosses - and you usually do not die there except if things go seriously wrong. Raiding the epic bosses should be fun, not frustrating.
It's not the problem that antharas is difficult... heck it's the very endboss of L2 and you can bring unlimited numbers.
but this change was very unbalanced, as it only increses the need for more and more nukers before anything else. *sigh* and I hoped they finlly noticed something is going wrong.
I agree raiding the big bosses should be fun and entertaining, but that doesn't mean they have to be easy and on farm status to anyone who wants to.
Back in C3 some clans were killing Antharas with 20 people, sure it took a while but they did it. That kind of thing is stupid.
Antharas should be **** hard, he gives amazing loot every time and is a dragon, not some silly raid boss.
The difficulty is increased to match our new skills and our new gear, as well as prevent him from being farmed so easily.
If it stayed as it was the raidboss farmers would even have a go and what fun that would be with those guys farming it. The raid farmers on my server have already attempted Antharas at least once.
If you dont have 480 at anthars dont complain you cant take him down. If he cant be taken down with 480 people then whine to your heart's content. Problem with NA is people not willing to work together and form bigger alliances.
Too many chiefs not enough indians.
I just dont like that fact as an archer im doing 50 damage on a hit and 200 on a crit when a nuker is doing 800 damage on a hit and 2000 on a crit.
Can we make so people besides nukers mean something besides cannon fodder on these big bosses?
My suggestion drop his pdef and up his mdef so high level dds can do the same damage as high level nukers.
If you dont have 480 at anthars dont complain you cant take him down. If he cant be taken down with 480 people then whine to your heart's content. Problem with NA is people not willing to work together and form bigger alliances.
Too many chiefs not enough indians.
I just dont like that fact as an archer im doing 50 damage on a hit and 200 on a crit when a nuker is doing 800 damage on a hit and 2000 on a crit.
Can we make so people besides nukers mean something besides cannon fodder on these big bosses?
My suggestion drop his pdef and up his mdef so high level dds can do the same damage as high level nukers.
Let's see you pull 480 active people together all at once and raid him. Last time I looked, Devianne wasn't incredibly populated like that either. Then again, you are a bunch of carebears and just hold hands with everyone.
Oh, and btw.. What's with Antharas ONLY attacking the melee's? After awhile, the archer party I was in and the nuker party next to us, went at Antharas and started attacking him. He went after ONLY the people in my Archer party, once we all died, he just walked around attacking random melee's/buffers while the nukers just went to work on him.
Are you guys trying to FORCE melee's out of this game? (I say melee as an archer in this also, becuase it didn't matter if we were ranged, he'd come after you).
Please take a look at this patch, it's ridiculous.
Exile on Teon is aroud 450 members. Has around 300+ online in Sieges, helds Aden(lost Innadril today, took Gludio at the same time) and farmed Antharas from C3 to this day. Exile is also in war with 3 other alliances(Twilight, Immortal Alliance, Syndicate, all heroes involved in war are in Immortal Alliance or Syndicate, 1 neutral hero) that have together slightly more numbers, and can do Antharas just fine too.
They actually fought a mass pvp over Antharas just recently, fraps on Blah. Battle was about 200+ vs 200+ or so.
We dropped him on Lionna today with 150 people, not sure teh exact tiem but it was under 2 hours. The extra HP isn't noticable, the extra regen is lame but easily managable.
Yeah it's all about how many **** nukers you have. Our alliance isn't what you would call small - its 6 clans and around 200 people. But I don't think we could do Antharas ourselves since we are lacking nukers. Some smaller allies out there are like 50%+ nukers so they can do it easier with less numbers.
They need to rethink Antharas and raid bosses in general and make melee DDs more useful against them. And this is coming from me, a SH.
We had around 3 1/2 to 4 nuker parties max. The rest where archers/melee and rechargers. In those nuker parties we had bd/sws and es. So we really didn't have that many nukers an alliance with 200 people should be able to throw that together.
Psst, 4 nuker parties is alot related to most aliances, LianLi. ;)
Think about it Glav, there is not 9 NUKERS per party it's more like 5 to 6. So maybe 24 actual nukers in 1 alliance is not bad. It's all about stragety with Antharas. It always has been, most people think zerg is the only solution.
Psst, 4 nuker parties is alot related to most aliances, LianLi. ;)
Think about it Glav, there is not 9 NUKERS per party it's more like 5 to 6. So maybe 24 actual nukers in 1 alliance is not bad. It's all about stragety with Antharas. It always has been, most people think zerg is the only solution.
Sadly coming from the losing side in this, I agree. We had nowhere near 70 nukers as the OP said. I'd say we had 25-30 nukers.
I do think that Antharas is a bit exclusionary towards the L2 public because melee's are nothing but a hinderance.
My strategy from the last raid was flawed and I was unable to comeup with a strategy on the fly to allow us to win. I'll take the blame for people losing, but Catalyst did it with less people than we did, moreso than anything it was a strategy error, which I will correct for next time ;)
Psst, 4 nuker parties is alot related to most aliances, LianLi. ;)
Think about it Glav, there is not 9 NUKERS per party it's more like 5 to 6. So maybe 24 actual nukers in 1 alliance is not bad. It's all about stragety with Antharas. It always has been, most people think zerg is the only solution.
Where'd I say that you needed 9 nukers in these parties? 4 parties of nukers, and by parties (as I had said) I mean parties, is still a lot of nukers.
and as i stated u have no problem killing antharas with a full alliance
Ok before the people who say its no porblem with a full allaince how about we find someone that has killed him and find out what it took before we talk about any full alliances I haven't heard anyone successfully killing him yet.
100 - 150 does not make a full alliance and shouldnt be able to kill the top boss in the game with that many period.
Well he's not as easy now so guess what, your strategy has to change. I have tested 2 on Hindemith while in a small party. Things seemed pretty simple to me. It will require people to listen and be more inventive than...chase boss around spamming hurricane. I like that idea personally.
I have led two successful (out of 4) Anthras raids on Hindemith. The first raid went flawless and we brought him down at our server's record time. The second time we brought more people, but two clan leaders would not listen to my commands during the raid. My orders were questioned and the raid took longer when it should've taken half the time.
The new Anthras, in my experience, requires more and more listening. AFK on attack will not handle the boss, and that is a very good thing. There are still ways to handle him like that, but I don't think you are quite inventive enough to find them yet eh? Anthras is and should be tough. He's exactly as strong as he ought to be.
Personally I recommend organizing your nukers in a formation which shows them exactly who to seed (pyramid) when the boss is down to 10%. Then chain super nuke the boss to give you a good head start into his hp as he hits 10%. But that won't handle it alone, again, you're going to have to be more inventive.
And yes, this thread is correct. Raid boss PDEF needs to be decreased across the board. All raids are nuker dependent atm. It's really boring like this.
What about making Antharas a little smarter?
If i were Antharas, and all those nukers are hitting me so hard, I would stop aggroing the kiter, and target the nukers more often ^^ .
You mean the "Tell melee DDs to stay at home, call all nukers" -strategy?
NCSoft, how about you make a few bosses that are _melee_ weak? As it is now, you need _1_ melee for normal RBs, and thats a tank. Make some RBs that require melees and that mages cant really drop without melee support.
Antharas is the end game goal of many people, but for many of the melees, it's also something where they will feel utterly useless.
"You hit for 15dmg"
"Antharas hit you for 8765dmg"
*wait for rez and watch how the nukers blast ol' Anthy away*