Watching the Tweets go by...

From Twitter: @Manb0t - Increased radius of Death Meld from 1 to 3.
WTF?!? With a range of 1 it was already the most powerful heal card in the game. How about putting it on an elf skill with Loner to make squishiness more helpful?

 

That will be painful if it goes live - as you say, it's already very powerful. Those slimes can be hard to finish off sometimes even with a range of 1.

Perhaps it's an attempt to make Purging Strike and the magic purge cards a bigger part of the game - can't say I use them much at the moment.

 

That reminds me that I haven't had any luck to get my hands on any Spellstripper Relics?!? (No shops or drops during my 2 months daily play) At least I have Purging Charms, but still would also love to get Spellstripper Relics.

 

I don´t replay any slime adventures anymore since the rebalance and for the rare occasion that looty is there i will manage.
But since new player don´t have the damage output to deal with the massive healing that will happen, they will surely rage a lot.

 

Ok. So this was as bad as I thought it was when I posted it in the change thread. I hadn't done Dungeon of the Swamp King for a long time as was a source of bad memories. In spite of my collection growing over the last few months the last map in that adventure is still difficult. The only reason I even beat it both times I did it was due to my Dwarven Vampire Priest.

 

Swamp King is not a main problem. Of course it gets insanely hard but it is a Treasure Hunt and they are harder than normal adventures.
The real tough spot is the final part of Vicious Tombs. Your team is in a corner and you have to face two different kind of immunities. And if one Slime dies he will quite surely heal all the remaining mobs.

At least there will be a world chat room now, so people can complain to us grinders and get useful advise and not get trolled in the MP chat.

P.S.: I hope for some fancy colors for the roaches and not a boring grey to complement the current brown.

 

I still usually run 2 wiz/priest, and use lots of Flash Flood on the last map.
It's often impossible to kill those without Death Meld first. It's sometimes possible to separate the monsters by a square if one uses good positioning, but rarely by 3. Maybe they're trying to force the use of purging. If so, I think it's a bad idea. I'm self-editing my remarks heavily at this point.

 

All these changes will be on the test server for some time before going live, so if there're any huge issues you should be able to identify them.

(As for Death Meld, it's never been a problem for me: if you focus fire one monster at a time, with or without Death Meld, without damaging other monsters, Death Meld does nothing. The range increase won't affect how I play against slimes.)

 

That can work if you don't use chops or area effect spells, and don't get caught between the Only Bones and Amorphous Body immunities. It is a possible solution. I hope CH isn't heading down the path of further limiting the possible solutions to adventures. It's a very boring path.

 

That is also the tactic I use Flax, but depending on the team that can backfire. If a Death Meld gets attached to a slime that is about to burn to death. Or say when it attacks your warrior with Barbed Platemail and it dies activating Death Meld.

Not that I think these things are a common occurrences. Just examples.

Edit: Perhaps if the healing was reduced to 4 it would mitigate the range increase.

 

this is just to nerf firestorm some more

 

heh. Good point. I've not used my FS team on slime levels since I've avoided DotSK like the plague and my mid level farming team is not a FS team.

I forgot it was a Treasure Hunt. The difficulty makes sense now. Just to be clear, I'm not against difficult adventures. I'm just surprised my improved collection didn't seem to make it easier for the party type I took. I'll try my Savage Curse/Fire team and see how it's different.

 

I have nothing against more challenge as long as it comes in the form of improving the AI:

- Stop enemies wasting their attacks against characters that have visible immunities. (e.g. Impenetrable Nimbus)
- Stop enemies wasting their move cards just because they have them. (many times I've been just hitting the pass button and watched as the enemies circle around me like hyenas)
- Give melee opponents at least some self-preservation. (to me it seems that they are way too easily just running at you without the care in the world)
- Make the enemies use their attack cards if the last one worked and the opponent is still up. (it's weird that they'd be willing to just pass the turn if their target is still alive and they have unused attack cards in their hands)

 

Slimes are no problem for triple dwarf mages maxed out on damage. I whip out Heartripper, Mordecai's Staff Of Magma, and Deadly, Deadly Staff (of course, these are all legendary). With everyone wearing Robe Of Lightness and 4x Runestone, you can easily herd / push the slimes around and isolate / kill without triggering the meld. Usually I have most of the map covered in lava tiles.

 

That is not the point. No adventure is a real problem if you have the experience and the items. So epeening with a legendary builds is nice but it won´t help the new player facing another unusually cruel opponent with the sad collection he got from the last ~20 adventures.

But maybe all adventures get adjusted to the difficulty of the level 18 ones, at least then it is equally challenging on all levels.

 

I see what you're saying now. Apologies for being a bit slow.

My point is that even with a veteran collection I find slimes hard on certain levels.

 

Except that WoW is not good enough to seperate two slimes in adjacent squares to get around a radius of 3.

 

If that's the real goal, they better give us more save slots so we can have a specific build for each module.

And I hope players who have already finished Jewel of Alet Zhav are automatically given the Jewel when it goes live. (And I'm still waiting for my Compass.)

 

I have no problems with this particular change. One of the draws of single-player is the requirement that you shift your strategy for different campaigns. Not just a suggestion, but a requirement. Why would any player ever use Chops in this sort of campaign? It's counter to the better available strategies, so there should be almost no players affected by the change. If I'm wrong, though, and increasing the range affects a number of players, then it means only that those players will figure out a more relevant strategy.

And this sort of post reminds me that "focus fire" isn't the only solution. I understand your point about the possible solutions becoming too limited, Sir Veza; the "draw" I discussed above isn't a perfect end-all state. I think that alternatives like this help lessen the risk of going too far.

 

Because you're facing a bunch of enemies that stick together in a clump? My first time through the campaign I relied almost exclusively on Chops and armor destruction for the middle third of the campaign.