Nightmare Mode

[schild]

So.

Yea.

Aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesome.

Drops are better. Monsters are much, much harder. You learn real fast whether your build sucks or not. I think I'm going to have to write up an article or something about the awesomeness of mind control in an MMOG though. My 2nd and third weapon slots are all mind control weapons. Second slot is a field mind control which is amazing for escaping bad shit. Unique item, 4 meter field. My 3rd slot is 2 Puppet Masters, to control 2 baddies at once. You can talk to Furiously about how game-breakingly fucking awesome mind control can be (can we say Five Lies fighting eachother - feature? bug? you decide).

Anyway. Yea. Nightmare mode is where it's at. I'm going to rush all my elite characters through the game to get access to elite nightmare mode. ^_^ Strider is heading straight for Sydonai.

[schild]

Seriously, I'm replacing oranges with whites here. And the yellows.

Oh. My. God. The yellows. It's the look, the look of love.

Also, it's all new variety of stuff with all new looks. It is hot_as_shit. Normal mode is just bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeech compared to nightmare. It's merely preparation.

PS, shard skimmers. Mind control ftw.

[Wolf]

It's like Diablo, right? Same game, same items (different names) but better? Is it the final difficulty or is there hell?

[schild]

Technically speaking, there's 4 difficulties.

Regular: Normal
Nightmare Regular: Unlocked after you beat regular, more like Hell than Nightmare in Diablo 2.
Elite: Unlocked after you beat regular, only new characters can start on Elite. You cannot migrate. Seems more like Nightmare without the extra item fluff. Though that's said to be added later.
Nightmare Elite: You know, the ultimate goal. Endgame. Probably twice as hard as Hell difficulty in Diablo 2.

[Trippy]

I don't understand the difference between Elite and Nightmare other than having to start a new character.

[schild]

Elite mode is sort of like picking Hard mode right when you start a game. It's simply more difficult and doles out a bit more experience. Items don't get upgrades until Nightmare mode. As such, due to the extra rare mobs and experience from elite stacking onto nightmare mode, it's basically the ultimate experience. Seriously, it's so much fun, I'm going to lose more goddamn sleep than I already have.

The memory leak has become nothing more than a notifier that I need to take a break. Feature!

[Hoax]

So when do we start making hardcore characters or does that feature not exist yet?  I haven't played much because.


a)  no chat = lame; not being able to join a guild = really lame.  Also nobody comes on TS.
b)  I missed the first 3 days after launch, I'm hopelessly behind everyone, I hate when that happens.
c)  I need to suck less at TF2 I didn't manage to grasp the goddamn rocket launcher prior to yesterday.  At which point I promptly stopped being able to use pyro for shit which sucks because pyros are just so damn fun.
d)  Seriously, this no chat shit?  It sucks.  I have never played this game w/ another human yet.  I don't do single player games...
e)  I'm sort of waiting to see how the metagame shakes out, I guess I'll power a character through normal so I can make Nightmare mode guys while not worrying about metashit but I really am not a big fan of alts or the time wasted leveling them so I like to get it right The First Time whenever possible.

[schild]

There are 3 people talking on Teamspeak, RIGHT NOW.

Stop saying people aren't on teamspeak.

Also, this is a pretty awkward hour as most of us play pretty late. >_>

[Hoax]

Its 4:30pm this is not late, this is "wtf are you doing at home" hours...

Watch at 7:00pm PST nobody will be online, the people who are on TS will be Furiously and possibly you on your fucking trick daddy chars 1 mode and 20 levels ahead of me and I still wont be able to get a fucking guild invite so I can putz around with other slow leveling noobs.  Getting lewtz is awesome, if you have someone to take it out from under and gloat about said lewtz to..  Otherwise its only mildly gratifying.

[schild]

Getting lewtz is awesome, if you have someone to take it out from under and gloat about said lewtz to..

 ^
 
Poor guy doesn't know people in groups get separate loot. That you can't see what other people get.

[Hoax]

Oh wow, that is failure.  Makes grouping with people you can't call/ts/pm and gloat to not even worth doing...

[Trippy]

You need to be a subscriber to get access to hardcore mode.

[squirrel]

So once you complete normal why play Nightmare? If you're planning on playing Elite mostly wouldn't it make sense to skip Nightmare and start over as an Elite character and then progress to Nightmare? Although I hear Elite is significantly harder than Normal.

[Threash]

The only reason i could see to continue to normal nightmare mode is if you dont want to give up your character.

[Falwell]

My engineer is taking a seat on the bench as soon as I finish off act 5. Elite nightmare here also sir, either Guardian or Summoner. Not sure which yet.

[schild]

I think I'm going to try elite nightmare by going through with an elite blademaster. Yea, I'm crazy.

[Nonentity]

I'm doing Elite with a Blademaster.

Holy fuck, it's HARD.

I grouped with an Engineer, it was rough as hell.

[Phunked]

I tried it with an evoker: GOT MY FACE BEAT IN.

Tried it with a marksman: took forever to kill anything, but was pretty safe about it.

Tried it with a guardian: lol ez.

Guardians have to be the best damn solo class in the game.

[Falwell]

We were talking about this a couple of nights ago. Schild, Rattran and I have been grouping up frequently and needless to say, the difficulty ramps up dramatically. Too much so infact. As in zoning into one instance and having 3 Tormentors waiting for us, except these were the size of Stay-Puft, had an aura that ticked for roughly 3 trillion and nothing short of a nuclear field howitzer could even dent em. Multiple, loud, painful rapes for all.

What I'm trying to say is that the difficulty scaling for grouping needs a slight adjustment.

I wouldn't even wanna guess what kinda reamings grouped, elite, nightmare would hold.

[squirrel]

I tried it with an evoker: GOT MY FACE BEAT IN.

Tried it with a marksman: took forever to kill anything, but was pretty safe about it.

Tried it with a guardian: lol ez.

Guardians have to be the best damn solo class in the game.

Yeah Guardian is pretty crazy. Just started one to see what the non-ranged game feels like. Um, godly? I assume BM's aren't this easy, but holy shit do Guardians lay waste to stuff without taking a scratch. (Mind you this was on Normal).

[rattran]

I started an elite guardian last night. Felt exactly the same as starting a normal blademaster. So I tried a marksman. Holy fuck is that hard!
So, yeah, Guardian seems easy mode. Dunno if it'll last. My Blademaster took out 4 of the 5 lies and Sydonai handily (should have brought a cricket bat), I can't imagine how easy a Guard would be.

And like Diablo2, having an awesome weapon is the shit. Changing from some meh to a great orange and the bestest orange I've ever seen makes nightmare trivial, except for the 'instadeth' phase/ignite combo. Stupid Pain Leeches.

Teamspeak is nice, chat is annoying but works. And a note to people: Templar Base quests should be done as soon as you get sent there, they overlap zones with Monument. Otherwise you'll be visiting the same zones with the aforementioned Sta-Puft Tormentors repeatedly.

[EvilJohn]

I take it the tormentors are the giant jackasses you start seeing with the Millenium battle and more in monument... I hate those mass fireball/stun shots.

[Morfiend]

From what I hear Blademasters get completely raped in Elite and Hardcore modes. Their defense is to low, and many of their abilities depend on ether getting a lot of kill shots quickly, or being surrounded by mobs. Both which dont happen in Elite.

[Phunked]

I think some classes might need to ******GASP****** group in elite.

That's right. Grouping. Like in real MMOs. Blademasters are physical DPS with low survivability.

In the normal game, this means nothing because you can catass2victory without spending any points on anything.

In elite, you might need to 1. spend points and 2. Have tanks tank for your DPS classes.

Soon you might need healers to heal your tanks! Wait. This game has the tanking and healing role given to one class. Woops!

[Murgos]

Several classes have healing abilities.

[Threash]

I think some classes might need to ******GASP****** group in elite.

That's right. Grouping. Like in real MMOs. Blademasters are physical DPS with low survivability.

In the normal game, this means nothing because you can catass2victory without spending any points on anything.

In elite, you might need to 1. spend points and 2. Have tanks tank for your DPS classes.

Soon you might need healers to heal your tanks! Wait. This game has the tanking and healing role given to one class. Woops!

The problem with that is that the blademaster dps isnt really any better than the guardian dps.

[Morfiend]

I think some classes might need to ******GASP****** group in elite.

That's right. Grouping. Like in real MMOs. Blademasters are physical DPS with low survivability.

In the normal game, this means nothing because you can catass2victory without spending any points on anything.

In elite, you might need to 1. spend points and 2. Have tanks tank for your DPS classes.

Soon you might need healers to heal your tanks! Wait. This game has the tanking and healing role given to one class. Woops!

Yeah, because making the monsters hit harder with more life and having to compete even more for killing blows will make a Blademaster work better. The Surge system is flawed, and even more so when it comes to grouping. What would you tell some one playing Singleplayer, "your class was designed to only work in a group, sorry nothing to see here"?

[Murgos]

From the beta experience (no idea where Blademasters are at now) getting to 15 was trivial.  Pretty much as fast as you could run you could finish a level.  And then, around 15ish you came to an utter screeching halt.  Deaths started to just be every few seconds regardless of health potions.  Eventually I kitted out my BM like a Guardian, with shield and all but didn't get enough play time in to see if that helped enough while still keeping BM unique enough from Guard to be worth it.

The teleport to mob skill was golden though.

[Phunked]

I think some classes might need to ******GASP****** group in elite.

That's right. Grouping. Like in real MMOs. Blademasters are physical DPS with low survivability.

In the normal game, this means nothing because you can catass2victory without spending any points on anything.

In elite, you might need to 1. spend points and 2. Have tanks tank for your DPS classes.

Soon you might need healers to heal your tanks! Wait. This game has the tanking and healing role given to one class. Woops!

Yeah, because making the monsters hit harder with more life and having to compete even more for killing blows will make a Blademaster work better. The Surge system is flawed, and even more so when it comes to grouping. What would you tell some one playing Singleplayer, "your class was designed to only work in a group, sorry nothing to see here"?

I never mentioned that it was ideal. It's just how it is. I totally agree that it *needs* to be fixed, probably by changing the entire surge system.

It just seems that they don't really expect elite to be solod though, and especially not nightmare elite. The bosses are 8+ levels higher, which is... harder, to say the least. Is this a design flaw? Yes, because marksmen and guardians can solo elite pretty easily, and are merely restricted by how much they want to grind to solo nightmare elite. I don't think that blademasters have the option to do so, even at the level cap.

And as for the healing capacity, the Summoner and Engineer pets that heal are bloody terrible. The guardian heal is on demand and doesn't rely on a pet not being dead.

[Aez]

It's not that they expect you to group for nightmare, they expect you to lvl up without quest.  Farm the mobs for a couple of lvl before you take the boss.

[Trouble]

I completed normal mode at level 27. I went to Nightmare. Holborn station was crazy easy as usual and I was like "oh this isn't going to be as bad as everyone is making it out to be!". I get to Covent Garden Station then go to Covent Garden Market and get two shot by an Ancient something or other. I did beacon and rapid fire on it from point blank and only took 15% of its hp away. Rape. What level did anyone else start at and how hard was it?