Spirit Plane of Bhaal

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Dugmaren
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Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Dugmaren » Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:22 pm

Recently brought up as a candidate for modifications. Post your thoughts here, or email me (dugmaren.toril@gmail.com).

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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Disoputlip » Wed Oct 08, 2008 7:41 pm

I do think that you somehow should be able to keep the cracked, and mabye later turn them into seals, or something smart, when mud blows up. But fight wise I think it is balanced.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:05 pm

Its funny, but when SPoB came in, there was too much top tier gear, and now its really quite mediocre except for the heart items. The Risk vs Reward just isn't there anymore with the silver items being marginalized by a million other items out there. I'm not sure that there's really more than a couple best-in-slot items left in there, and you have to win a roll to win a chance at winning the item you want really.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Thilindel » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:35 pm

it's a horrifically long zone when things go wrong. I remember the yummy 13 hours it took before. The quickest time I remember was some 2 hour x min a LONG time ago. And it pretty much requires 15 ppl Other zones with nice eq do not have such requirements.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Adriorn Darkcloak » Thu Oct 09, 2008 2:20 am

I sent you my suggestions Dug.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Thu Oct 09, 2008 2:59 am

Juan's ideas are not up for discussion!
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Shaiith » Sat Oct 11, 2008 4:35 am

My memory of Spob is that the par time is around 3-4 hours for 15 people with the lower end being more typical when a competant group attempts it. As such, getting one guaranteed best or near in slot item with some interesting other items seems an acceptable risk/reward. The problem is the way the heart item is awarded.

The only heart item I ever received was when my yuan-ti cleric was given a pair of boots. Talk about useless. I swapped this for a morningstar that only really proved useful for teasing Larim.

SPOB would be greatly improved if there were quests added to Nern to cycle through the heart items until you ended up with the one that you wanted. Maybe require a cracked if needed for balance purposes. Since there are 5 total heart items per class, you'd be able to get whatever you wanted from SPOB in one run (initial chance + up to 4 swaps if they're linked in a circle would get you to any desired heart item, maybe there are some new drops that facilitate the swaps instead of using cracked as Nern might get confused seeing a cracked, etc, maybe they apply to lower tier rewards also)

PS I think I also picked up a pair of warrior plate for trade/warrior alt at one point. I know that Ibahalii has a pair of otherplanar platemail.

PPS I don't think it'd be game imbalancing to allow free swaps without a tokenized item to push it along.

PPPS Can we get yuan-ti tail items added to the loot table?
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Vaprak » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:18 am

My main issue with the zone is that even though you only end up with possibly 1 top tier item, and several good-ok items, there are a grand total of 5*4*3=60 total items in the zone approximately. I say the pool of 60 is too high. Not sure this is relevant anymore though since most of the gear with the exception of a few hitter items have been trumped.

Also the final fight is fairly silly. One spell-out runs is a silly tactic.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Sat Oct 11, 2008 5:24 pm

The sheer number of possible pieces you can score from SPoB really doesn't matter any more since most of it is junk. I don't know if letting people swap their rewards is the best solution. Tweak some of the terrible heart/large rewards and it should fix the problem nicely. As for the last fight, yes its just stupid.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Lilira » Sat Oct 11, 2008 7:02 pm

I want to add that twisted leather rogue stuff is dead sexy looking!
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Thilindel » Sun Oct 12, 2008 12:04 am

The final fight is completely and utterly stupid. Just as most the tactic for the mud, being that the 'rinse/repeat' method. No Loki, devourer, etc will just sit there while cowards run in with guerrilla warfare.
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Dugmaren
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Dugmaren » Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:37 am

Initial Proposal

1. make 6 tentacle fight easier (addresses 1 spell & out runs)
2. make the devourer fight easier (addresses 1 spell & out runs)
3. potentially allow cracked / large gem trade in's for gold seal
4. potential stat changing?

* Besides potential minor stat tweaks (feel free to suggest) I noticed that the "warrior" gear is predominantly +hit/dam, so considering changing it's intent to be more tank oriented. Would enjoy thoughts on this as it's more then a tweak.

> Yes there's too much potential equipment from 1 zone but it's already been in game for years so I'm not going to remove it now. Also somewhat mitigated by the fact that it's a serious pita to get the Nern you want to give you the item you want, assuming you have it mapped out.
> Not going to add a quest to turn in any item for any other item of the same tier.
> Not going to add yuanti or any other gear to this zone.
> Yes copper/silver rewards are not top tier (potentially addressed by the ability to trade lesser gems for a gold seal).

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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Ghimok » Tue Oct 14, 2008 3:58 pm

I'm against changing ALL the warrior gear in SPoB to be TANK gear. Not every warrior chooses to wear all mage gear all the time. On Dlur I generally run around with somewhere between 53 and 57 damroll with perm haste and only wear HP rings and I tank just fine (even when I'm burning on shield thanks very much). About the only time I wear mage junk is for tiamat. I've been looking forward to someday getting a set of SPoB heart warrior earrings and neckbands. In fact I'd like to see more warrior gear that is hit/dam orientated. I think it sucks that rogues are able to get a higher damroll than warriors, even when tia gear is factored in.

Also rangers are warriors as far as equipment restrictions go and need hit/dam gear selections.

All the other proposed ideas seem fine.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Adriorn Darkcloak » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:15 am

You could change the warrior heart weapon to be more tank friendly however.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:41 am

The warrior gear is also for rangers, so there should be a healthy amount of hit/dam stuff. Some of it is simply outclassed like the helm.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Elet » Wed Oct 15, 2008 9:19 am

in the mean time. please check again on cleric's shiled. minor globe is kinda useless imho.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Pril » Wed Oct 15, 2008 2:15 pm

Dug,

How do you see the potential trade in of large/cracked gems for gold seal working?

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Dugmaren
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Dugmaren » Wed Oct 15, 2008 4:46 pm

Okay, won't change the intent of the otherplanar sets, we'll leave them as is for damage dealing warriors and tanks well.. they can do other zones.

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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby flib » Tue Nov 04, 2008 5:14 am

I thought it was soul prison of bhaal.. but ya I dig the zone, it did suck though when we were on the last fight and the mud crashed and we lost all the gems.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Larem » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:35 am

hi, as a big spob supporter, since i have a char rp titled after spob, and i wear damn near all spob eq, i'd just like to point out where i see the worst statted spob eq. It's the cleric gauntlets, quested from the heart, which is the top item. AC 8 14hp 2hit.........vs. the mage gloves, from the lowest reward cracked gem: ac 10 15hp -4svbr..........

being that i'm very big on cleric eq from spob, i'm only missing 3 pieces from the full set, i can honestly say where clerics are lacking better than most. there is like only 1 -svbr eq. in mage class eqs there is several svbreath. I can't really comment on warrior and rogue sets, but in my opinion, the best fix for this poorly statted top end eq would be something more along the lines of: AC 8 14hp -4svbr pfc...........only 1 spob cleric eq has pfc, the morningstar, this would somewhat make it usable verses the other hand wear choices, and lets face it. A top end eq with really bad stats is just as useless as pril. And while i'm talking randomly, why not swap the mage gloves to ac 10 8 hp 3 hit..........more along the lines of a lowest tiered item.

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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Ardessa Moonblade » Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:01 pm

I won a heart item, quested it for my rogue, and it sucked. The cloak being +4 hit is very yawn-worthy. It's nice that it's dual prot (fire and cold) but most lvl 50's should have at least those two prots (and prot acid of course!) covered already. Other cloaks having 3 dam at that slot just makes 4 hit very pedestrian. I think more items having +max stats would be of benefit (since I was hoping for the max_agi gloves).
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:17 pm

On one hand I think that all the rewards should be decent, on the other I like that there's a chance to get a crappy item. Not sure which way I lean on that one really.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby loshaenar » Thu Feb 26, 2009 9:42 pm

it's funny...i thought dlur wore all that hit dam because he uses valhalla. If you're basing your decision to leave all the spob warrior items as ranger subs on the number of people using tia scepter... hmmm..

and yes..your thoughts about needing more than a slight tweak on the eq is valid, between SM, CpV and KV..there is little to no reason for doing spob unless you know the formula for the platemail / shroud / gloves. Unless of course the mud has been up for 100 hours again and the aforementioned 3 are done already.

What if... you could turn in every SPOB gem... and get 1 single sweet item?? Hang on..that's been done too.
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Re: Spirit Plane of Bhaal

Postby Gormal » Thu Feb 26, 2009 10:52 pm

That you can only name 3 good spob items shows you're not quite up to speed on the rewards.

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