Discussion: Improve or remove The Wretched Falconer

The wretched falconer is truly wretched; he's neither fun nor challenging. Please remove or redesign it!

Group skirmishes grind to a crawl when one of these lieutenants show up. They don't hit hard enough to require active containment while invulnerable, and mostly we end up standing around the falconer waiting and waiting and waiting. It kills the otherwise good pace of skirmishes.

How about he's only invulnerable while there are crebain, and maybe let him summon several at a time so there's some challenge in killing the crebain fast enough, before he can summon more, to actually damage him.

Please, please bring this lieutenant up to par with the others or remove him entirely.

The original Falconer summoned birds fast and furious. Often players got over whelmed by the massive number of birds. Turbine slowed down the summon to deal with complaints. You asking Turbine to undo the changes Turbine made at customer request.

Envoyé par banhorn

The wretched falconer is truly wretched; he's neither fun nor challenging. Please remove or redesign it!

Group skirmishes grind to a crawl when one of these lieutenants show up. They don't hit hard enough to require active containment while invulnerable, and mostly we end up standing around the falconer waiting and waiting and waiting. It kills the otherwise good pace of skirmishes.

How about he's only invulnerable while there are crebain, and maybe let him summon several at a time so there's some challenge in killing the crebain fast enough, before he can summon more, to actually damage him.

Please, please bring this lieutenant up to par with the others or remove him entirely.

Agreed, it is no coincidence that these are the last mobs left standing after a wave. Large group spawns should be much higher.

Envoyé par Yula_the_Mighty

The original Falconer summoned birds fast and furious. Often players got over whelmed by the massive number of birds. Turbine slowed down the summon to deal with complaints. You asking Turbine to undo the changes Turbine made at customer request.

The change created new problems and new complaints. So yes, either change it again or remove it.

Envoyé par banhorn

The change created new problems and new complaints. So yes, either change it again or remove it.

Remove the Lieutenant is not the solution. If enough people complain another adjustment somewhere between the original implementation and the current implementation would be appropriate. One thing to remember there is no universally liked anything in a product like Lotro.

Myself, I was happy with the original implementation. I was annoyed that Turbine wasted valuable resources to change the Falconer to another acceptable implementation. I was will be even more annoyed if Turbine changes the Falconer again to a third implementation that I am comfortable with.

A lot of the changes Turbine does annoy me. Whether it be icons for skills. Running animations. Smoke animations. Generally to me it is no improvement. It is different.

Envoyé par Yula_the_Mighty

One thing to remember there is no universally liked anything in a product like Lotro.

This isn't just about likes and dislikes. Right now, game play comes to a halt while waiting for the falconer to spawn his birds before dying. There's at least a good, long minute with the fellowship huddled around the falconer, waiting. That's how the encounter's ended every time I've seen one.

It sounds like too many people were being defeated by the previous implementation; although I don't recall having problems personally, I'm guessing LOTRO's back-end statistics were consulted. Perhaps only some classes had problems with it. And perhaps the mechanics just aren't workable with small changes in pacing and morale.

What might be more interesting is to have a beefier creban that makes the falconer invulnerable until killed--no more summoning. The falconer can heal the creban, so there's a mixed dynamic of killing the beefier creban while interrupting or stunning the falconer to prevent heals. Since they only spawn in group fellowships, something that requires teamwork to defeat would be interesting.

Heard on Vent:

"Oh no, it's a Wretched Falconer -- he's going to bore us to death."

Make it like the elites in the black dog cave. Every extra person means an extra crebain.

I'd fully agree to any changes, because atm, it is the worst lieutenant, and not because it is challenging, but because it is a broken NPC.

Almost every Leutenant has something that makes raid-folk angry. And there are worse than the Falconer.

The worst is the Blue Grim doing wipes (cant remember its exact name); the worst option is 2 Grims at a time

Other lieutennents are hard to deal with and can wipe your fellowship/raid, however, this one is just boring!
There is no danger whatsoever!

And this is not only boring in raids, even in 2 men skirmishes these are the most boring ever.
Most of the time, we don't even get to see the crebain it summons because the companions kill it right away, so we just stand there hitting the falconer and getting hit by him eventualy healing someone if need be.
There is no need to run from him because he hits hard, no need to kill the crebain fast because it just dies anyway and doesn't deal any additional amout of damage that can even be acounted for.

However, the main problem is really the time it takes to kill him.

Maybe he should summon 2 crebains as soon as one is killed until he dies (Hydra like effect - you kill one "head" 2 more spawn).

That way, all we had to do was kill crebains as soon as possible while watching for not being overwhelmed (because each one killed spawns 2 more). So the fight gets harder and harder untill he finaly dies (after you kill the Xth crebain - by then you would be fighting the X-1 remaining crebains)

That would make the fight fast (all you need to do is kill X crebains for him to die) and more challenging (you would have to deal with X crebains + falconer at its most dangerous time - right before you kill him, and the remaining X-1 crebains would have to be dealt with before/during the next wave if it's a defensive skirmish).

Envoyé par Yula_the_Mighty

The original Falconer summoned birds fast and furious. Often players got over whelmed by the massive number of birds. Turbine slowed down the summon to deal with complaints. You asking Turbine to undo the changes Turbine made at customer request.

Slower spawns on 3 mans, gradually increasing with 6 and 12 mans. I highly doubt a 12man raid would have a problem with too many crebain.

Envoyé par deeman25845601

Slower spawns on 3 mans, gradually increasing with 6 and 12 mans. I highly doubt a 12man raid would have a problem with too many crebain.

I've encountered it skirmishing with a friend, and it's far too slow at duo level. The cooldown for him to spawn a new creban is far shorter than the time it takes to kill it, and he doesn't do enough damage to be a real threat, so it's a rather boring encounter.

I've been running Instance Finder regularly and have had plenty of skirmish duos and occasional trios. One thing has been constant across all of those runs: The moment a Wretched Falconer appears, it's a race to see who will sigh, groan, or otherwise comment on the obviously-universal hatred of this Lieutenant.

Turbine, please do something! At least add some really insulting Wretched-Falconer-specific emotes.

Envoyé par banhorn

I've been running Instance Finder regularly and have had plenty of skirmish duos and occasional trios. One thing has been constant across all of those runs: The moment a Wretched Falconer appears, it's a race to see who will sigh, groan, or otherwise comment on the obviously-universal hatred of this Lieutenant.

Turbine, please do something! At least add some really insulting Wretched-Falconer-specific emotes.

I check my bags to see if I have the store item on me to remove the defeat penalty and then sigh. The mob is Turbine's "I WIN" button if you ask me!

Envoyé par Zarador

I check my bags to see if I have the store item on me to remove the defeat penalty and then sigh. The mob is Turbine's "I WIN" button if you ask me!

That's odd; most find it to be the least challenging lieutenant. Are you killing the birds as they appear? You can't harm the falconer as long as he has the shields spinning around him. As you kill the birds, his health decreases until, just before he dies, the shield drops and you can kill him.

I just read this thread while afk-ing from the game waiting for Wretched Falconer's shields to drop. Just ran Trouble in Tuckborough with my husband. I think we ended up getting 4 WF's. Longest TiT ever . Every time one appeared, I just tabbed out and read a few posts.

Please use one of the suggestions posted on the first page of this thread and CHANGE THE WRETCHED FALCONER!!!

Envoyé par JoeSO

Almost every Leutenant has something that makes raid-folk angry. And there are worse than the Falconer.

The worst is the Blue Grim doing wipes (cant remember its exact name); the worst option is 2 Grims at a time

Primordial Wrath.

*shudders*

I think there's one very simple way to fix this. Let's see.

I can't really remember it, but you said that players got overwhelmed by the amount of birds? Too many up at the same time? Well, that's an understandable reason to change it; birds have obviously been spawning too fast. Now, everyone ends up waiting, waiting and waiting for the birds to spawn. You kill the one that's up and wait a good 10 seconds for the next one. This is indeed annoying... and I've seen it happening many times.

The easiest imaginable fix would be to change the bird spawn. Two rules for it;

1. Spawn a bird every X seconds, regardless of how many of them are already up.
2. When the last bird is down, spawn a replacement instantly.

I don't think anyone would be overwhelmed by having one bird up all the time as long as the Falconer lives. It's not like you need to take a break after each kill. Spawning them regularly, even up to having all his birds up simultaneously, shouldn't be a problem; that's up to the player to handle.

Keeping the amount of birds "low enough to survive" is not hard with such mechanic. Keep one bird up all the time, kill the second one whenever it appears. Sort of "crowd control" there. Kill the last bird either 1) when the Falconer is out of birds, or 2) when you are done with the other mobs and want to get rid of the still standing falconer. Having the second rule applied would make the killing of this lieutenant much more convenient.

Easy enough and in my opinion, it would be much better than all the waiting.

This goes back to Yula's statement about everyone not liking the same thing. I personally like the Falconer, I thought it was a different idea and would much rather see him pop up than some of the others that lead to a wipe when unexpected.

Envoyé par JoeSO

Almost every Leutenant has something that makes raid-folk angry. And there are worse than the Falconer.

The worst is the Blue Grim doing wipes (cant remember its exact name); the worst option is 2 Grims at a time

The thing is, there are enough ways to deal with any other LT, even the hard ones. The problem with the falconer is its total and unbreakable invulnerability until he has spawned every single of his Crebain. Which, at the speed current summoning speed, is at some time tomorrow.

Several possibilities:
- have him summon 2 crebain in SFS size, 3 in FFS and 4 crebain in raid size, just like you get 1-4 brothers of destruction depending on group size. Morale drain value remains unchanged.
- increase type of crebain from swarm to normal or signature level, while having them take away more of the Falconers´ health.
- reinstate continuous craban summoning for raid and fellowship size. Right now, there is a "theat list" of LTs and the wretched falconer probably has the very last place. Right now, it has ZERO potential to kill or wipe a group. Could be interesting to have him become an actual problem if the birds are not dealt with in time.

More than 6 months later, and the Wretched Falconer is still a massive pain in the neck. When my group sees one on the horizon, everybody in Vent groans and starts swearing. They absolutely WRECK group momentum, take forever to kill, and are just plain unfun.

My firstborn to Turbine if they fix this &&&&.

Envoyé par Yula_the_Mighty

A lot of the changes Turbine does annoy me. Whether it be icons for skills. Running animations. Smoke animations. Generally to me it is no improvement. It is different.

For me it was the random change of the dismount!? They made the mount kneel down and grunt. It appears as if it's dying and the grunt sounds like a death moan. LOL