Thread: Icy Crevasse: now more than ever...

Needs to be balanced with the rest of the skirmishes. T1, at least the bossfight, is completely haywire and only appropriate for a higher teir run.

Now yes, I know that so much of the game is "faceroll"able, that's why I'm talking about balance here. When randomly tossed into this skirmish by the Instance Finder, it's very depressing, because you know that even if you and your pug get through it there will be deaths.

Now the rewards do seem to be scaled up to match the difficulty. That's cool. Not wiping a couple times during a gonzo boss fight with AOE nerfs and nukes flying wild would be better.

I am doing this skirmish regularly and find it perfectly fine. One of my favorites in fact...

I agree with Moondog. Icy Crevasse is significantly more difficult than the other skirmishes.

With the random instance finder, all skirmishes on the same tier should have approximately the same difficulty. If you can do that instance, fine. But some groups will find that they are perfectly capable of finishing any skirmish on their preferred tier, except that one.

Originally Posted by Malachi108

I am doing this skirmish regularly and find it perfectly fine. One of my favorites in fact...

You do this with PuGs and never have a problem? If that's the case, then I'd say you are amazingly lucky at the groups you get. If you are referring to solo, then yes, most (but not all) classes can handle this solo, but that wasn't the point of the OP's comment. Using the Random Finder for a group skirmish is where this Skirmish can be a significant problem if you aren't with players/classes you normally group with.

Originally Posted by Malachi108

I am doing this skirmish regularly and find it perfectly fine. One of my favorites in fact...

Solo, it's not bad for certain classes.

In a group, it can go from decently easy to "I MUNNA EECHU!!!!!" difficulty.

Back when RoI launched this was really difficult as a raid on the last boss. Haven't tried it since then though with everyone geared... shouldn't be so bad now with good gear and stacked tact mit. But man that sorcerer at the end sure does love those huge AoE attacks.

It is a hard skirmish that I have no interest in bothering with, but you can't use instance finder for 12 man skirms, so your issue with randomness is a moot point (unless the U6 IF is a significantly more terrible event than we have been led to believe.)

Originally Posted by Iracham

It is a hard skirmish that I have no interest in bothering with, but you can't use instance finder for 12 man skirms, so your issue with randomness is a moot point (unless the U6 IF is a significantly more terrible event than we have been led to believe.)

3 and 6 man the boss fight is nuts. (granted, 6-man skirms tend to have nuts boss fights anyway, but it's just piling on in the case of IC.)

Solo the boss fight is easy, but some of the pulls (especially with ranged mobs) are wayyyy harder than you'll face in any other skirmish. EDIT: I actually appreciate a good challenge like IC offers, especially solo (Death from Below frex), but that's not what T1 skirms are for, and thrown into the IF lottery it's just a brick wall in the way of fun.

I agree with OP. It's a fun skirmish, but in terms of balanced towards the rest of the skirmishes... meh.

Originally Posted by Moondog548

Needs to be balanced with the rest of the skirmishes. T1, at least the bossfight, is completely haywire and only appropriate for a higher teir run.

Now yes, I know that so much of the game is "faceroll"able, that's why I'm talking about balance here. When randomly tossed into this skirmish by the Instance Finder, it's very depressing, because you know that even if you and your pug get through it there will be deaths.

Now the rewards do seem to be scaled up to match the difficulty. That's cool. Not wiping a couple times during a gonzo boss fight with AOE nerfs and nukes flying wild would be better.

Or maybe, all other skirms need to be balanced to be tougher to reflect the fact that they generally drop the best jewellry in game (bar a few pieces from ToO T2). Or maybe nerf Icy Crevasse on T1 and make teal jewellry exclusively a T2+ skirmish drop. Go ahead and make warden teal drops a T1 exclusive drop while your at it

Heh, we attempted this right after RoI with all fresh 75s. We gave up and never looked back when we determined that the boss's special mechanic was to AoE 1-shot the raid whenever he felt like it :P. Would be interesting to try it again with a geared group.

In update 6 we're doing a balance pass here.

We're altering the boss fight on tier 1 only for all group sizes.

The change is that the angmarim sorceror and the mammoth will no longer receive the Winds of Forochel buff.

There are no changes to any of the other monsters, mechanics, or tiers planned.

Originally Posted by jwbarry

In update 6 we're doing a balance pass here.

We're altering the boss fight on tier 1 only for all group sizes.

The change is that the angmarim sorceror and the mammoth will no longer receive the Winds of Forochel buff.

There are no changes to any of the other monsters, mechanics, or tiers planned.

Thanks for the update! Good news.

Now I'd mumble that I think some other tweaks to the mechanics (and how they interract with Lieutenant abilities while trapped in that cave) would be a lot better to address the problem, but that does sound like it will help.

Originally Posted by jwbarry

In update 6 we're doing a balance pass here.

We're altering the boss fight on tier 1 only for all group sizes.

The change is that the angmarim sorceror and the mammoth will no longer receive the Winds of Forochel buff.

There are no changes to any of the other monsters, mechanics, or tiers planned.

So, it will still be one of the hardest skirmishes? My main issue with it is that so many monsters will come during a wave, and archer monsters being particularly deadly. Just reducing them down a smidge on Tier 1 would make it much more enjoyable in my opinion.

Tier 1's should be a decent challenge for average geared chars, but the chars that are geared to the teeth should be able to roflstomp any tier 1 - because they should really be doing tier 2's and 3's.

All of the skirmish need to follow this basic formula without exception - and Icy Crevasse needs to be tweaked so that the final fight is significantly easier on T1 than it is now, while T2 is nerfed somewhat, and T3 is left as is. Perhaps there should be a really decent reward for completing T3 on Icy Crevasse, so there's at least some point to it's difficulty.

Originally Posted by Almagnus1

Perhaps there should be a really decent reward for completing T3 on Icy Crevasse, so there's at least some point to it's difficulty.

So much for the assertion the hardcore often come out with that it's the challenge they're after, not the phat lewt.

Originally Posted by Kerin_Eldar

So much for the assertion the hardcore often come out with that it's the challenge they're after, not the phat lewt.

I'm trying to be realistic. Sure, there's likely a group of friends (a kin) that want to take on IC T3, but if we want to get a PUG for it, there needs to be enough rewards to entice people to join, or it won't happen.

Look at DD before the Moria coin system, and after.

Originally Posted by jwbarry

In update 6 we're doing a balance pass here.

We're altering the boss fight on tier 1 only for all group sizes.

The change is that the angmarim sorceror and the mammoth will no longer receive the Winds of Forochel buff.

There are no changes to any of the other monsters, mechanics, or tiers planned.

I love it solo on my Captain, in fact pre instance-finder it was one of the ones I ran daily (also needed Forochel rep, which was a bonus). But the difficult is way too variable, which the above doesn't address. If you get a number of ranged mobs -- worse yet, with a ranged LT -- it is quite a bit harder to use the vents to your advantage. Yes, you can back up farther and try and get the archers to advance to the vent, but it is tricky. A team of archers with big winds of forochel bonuses are pretty brutal...

I do find it rather hard on my squishy RK though.

Originally Posted by DelgonTheWise

I love it solo on my Captain, in fact pre instance-finder it was one of the ones I ran daily (also needed Forochel rep, which was a bonus). But the difficult is way too variable, which the above doesn't address. If you get a number of ranged mobs -- worse yet, with a ranged LT -- it is quite a bit harder to use the vents to your advantage. Yes, you can back up farther and try and get the archers to advance to the vent, but it is tricky. A team of archers with big winds of forochel bonuses are pretty brutal...

I do find it rather hard on my squishy RK though.

Exactly. Last time I did this with my RK I got FOUR hale archers AND a Blood-Rook lieutenant where those buffs were already quite big (just before the cave). Solo T1 and I had to kill those archers one-by one and died about every time I got one of them down. Balance between other skirmishes is the key here, and when soloing this one, the last boss fight is the easiest part, it's the way there that is hardest, so I hope jwbarry reconsiders what he said about tweaking ONLY the last boss fight in group setting.

I like a challenge. I regularly 2 man T3 small fellowship skirmishes with a burg friend. Icy Crevasse though is in a class by itself as this one can easily get us killed just on T3 duo. It is not the boss fight that gets me so much as the ridiculous numbers of ranged mobs in the trash. It is just a killer and a pain.

It just is not challenging in a way that is fun. The boss is challenging and tough but doable. The trash is just annoying. This just my opinion on the matter as someone who runs skirmishes regularly and enjoys pretty much everyone but Icy Crevasse. Maybe turbine has numbers that show a different story though. /shrug

I LOVE this skirmish because of the difficulty! I run it at T3 and it's a very FUN challenge. Having these types of challenges, I always come out feeling like I understand my class a little better! I never enjoy anything that is easy and can be done on the first try. Please don't dumb it down any further. In fact if you add more like it that would be fantastic!

Originally Posted by Erethal

I LOVE this skirmish because of the difficulty! I run it at T3 and it's a very FUN challenge. Having these types of challenges, I always come out feeling like I understand my class a little better! I never enjoy anything that is easy and can be done on the first try. Please don't dumb it down any further. In fact if you add more like it that would be fantastic!

How hard T3 should be is one question. But particularly as of now, where many are picking their skirmishes "at random" with instance finder for extra skirmish marks, the difficulty level if T1 skirmishes really should be roughly consistent. That level should be pretty much doable by all classes, easy for experienced/well geared players, and maybe somewhat challenging for newer/less well geared players. There should be a rough notion of how hard a T1, a T2, and a T3 skirmish should be, and the skirmishes should adhere to those guidelines.

As I said above, I like Icy. I did it T3 at 65 (haven't tried it T3 in some time), it was hard but doable. But I can't say I like how variable the difficulty is based on which mobs you get...

I really despise so many things about that boss fight:

The random nature of what Lieutenants show up can make an add phase easy, super-hard, or next to impossible.

So many ranged mobs that show up and don't move onto the vent or out of the...

... gigantic anti-CC buff that obscures vision and shows up under every mob, including the boss,

not to mention the stupid healing reflect pools that appear under the players, the huge AoE the boss does, etc.

It seems like the intention of the fight should be to be moving from vent to vent, invoking CC where possible, and whittling down the adds while dealing with the boss and LTs, but it just all goes to hell so fast because a bunch of spear throwing wildmen kill your healer while the tank tries to round up the adds and the boss puts the eye on someone then there's dumb red shields everywhere so you can barely see and my herbalist is dead cripes I hates this why am I rooted now I'm dead grrrr...


I also despise the long run back to the cave since it seems like I have to do it a minimum of 3 times if I ever run this skirmish with a group. Fortunately I'm done with the encounter deed so I don't feel the need to ever go back in there, since it isn't anywhere on par with the challenge level of the other skirmishes, nor does it offer anything better in the way of rewards.

Originally Posted by DelgonTheWise

How hard T3 should be is one question. But particularly as of now, where many are picking their skirmishes "at random" with instance finder for extra skirmish marks, the difficulty level if T1 skirmishes really should be roughly consistent. That level should be pretty much doable by all classes, easy for experienced/well geared players, and maybe somewhat challenging for newer/less well geared players. There should be a rough notion of how hard a T1, a T2, and a T3 skirmish should be, and the skirmishes should adhere to those guidelines.

As I said above, I like Icy. I did it T3 at 65 (haven't tried it T3 in some time), it was hard but doable. But I can't say I like how variable the difficulty is based on which mobs you get...

As long as T3 stays the same I'm good to go! Also I think they stated Instance Finder will allow for people to select specific instances to queue for, so that they can exclude the ones they don't wish to join.

Originally Posted by MysterX

I really despise so many things about that boss fight:

The random nature of what Lieutenants show up can make an add phase easy, super-hard, or next to impossible.

So many ranged mobs that show up and don't move onto the vent or out of the...

... gigantic anti-CC buff that obscures vision and shows up under every mob, including the boss,

not to mention the stupid healing reflect pools that appear under the players, the huge AoE the boss does, etc.

It seems like the intention of the fight should be to be moving from vent to vent, invoking CC where possible, and whittling down the adds while dealing with the boss and LTs, but it just all goes to hell so fast because a bunch of spear throwing wildmen kill your healer while the tank tries to round up the adds and the boss puts the eye on someone then there's dumb red shields everywhere so you can barely see and my herbalist is dead cripes I hates this why am I rooted now I'm dead grrrr...


I also despise the long run back to the cave since it seems like I have to do it a minimum of 3 times if I ever run this skirmish with a group. Fortunately I'm done with the encounter deed so I don't feel the need to ever go back in there, since it isn't anywhere on par with the challenge level of the other skirmishes, nor does it offer anything better in the way of rewards.

Thank you for spelling it out so succinctly. It's haywire.

Originally Posted by MysterX

I really despise so many things about that boss fight:

The random nature of what Lieutenants show up can make an add phase easy, super-hard, or next to impossible.

So many ranged mobs that show up and don't move onto the vent or out of the...

... gigantic anti-CC buff that obscures vision and shows up under every mob, including the boss,

not to mention the stupid healing reflect pools that appear under the players, the huge AoE the boss does, etc.

It seems like the intention of the fight should be to be moving from vent to vent, invoking CC where possible, and whittling down the adds while dealing with the boss and LTs, but it just all goes to hell so fast because a bunch of spear throwing wildmen kill your healer while the tank tries to round up the adds and the boss puts the eye on someone then there's dumb red shields everywhere so you can barely see and my herbalist is dead cripes I hates this why am I rooted now I'm dead grrrr...


I also despise the long run back to the cave since it seems like I have to do it a minimum of 3 times if I ever run this skirmish with a group. Fortunately I'm done with the encounter deed so I don't feel the need to ever go back in there, since it isn't anywhere on par with the challenge level of the other skirmishes, nor does it offer anything better in the way of rewards.

So very much this, its why my friends and I won't even try it anymore, its just not worth the frustration.

Yeah, T3 Icy is a beast.

Tried it a few times duo with a Captain, but it's usually the adds on the boss or a crit/dev crit from the boss that do us in. Pulling a Zealot of Pain or other annoying LT can make things a little hairy. Still, from the CPs & encounters up until the boss it's roughly ~400? marks & 30 medallions with the IF, so not bad even if we fail at the boss.

Originally Posted by jwbarry

The change is that the angmarim sorceror and the mammoth will no longer receive the Winds of Forochel buff.

There are no changes to any of the other monsters, mechanics, or tiers planned.

Do you think the Winds of Forochel buff on the sorceror and mammoth is the reason why this is one of the least run 12-man raid skirmish?

Please read people's feedback.

I can't believe I'm just now noticing this thread, and therefore the change in Icy Crevasse! Now I may actually want to try running it again in a group.

My guardian--well, but not insanely well, geared-- used to run this skirmish solo with no problems (we won't talk about my poor hunter), and my LM could usually handle it solo. Honestly I haven't even tried it on my lower level characters, and it never seems to come up through the instance finder so it's been ages since I've run it at all. Grouping though... well that's another story. The only duo I was ever successful with (on tier one only) was my guard and a same level captain [this is the same combo with which I've duoed the t2 Isengard 3-man instances]. Every other group I tried, from duo to full fellow, wiped repeatedly at the end.

I'm glad to hear it's been tweaked some although I still am not sure about a group handling all those lieutenants at once. Still, I'll round up a kinnie (or 5) and give it a test run.

I hadn't noticed it either. I usually discourage necro threads but in this case it's welcome, so thanks