 Bastion Stair is my favorite PvE instance in the game. That being said...Take any Instance boss in the game and figure the odds of you getting a useable drop. Unless you're running Hunters Vale or ToVL, chances are pretty f'king slim right? Something like 1 out of 12 pieces might be for your class? This wouldn't be so bad if you could bring all 12 classes into an instance, at least SOMEONE would get the damn drop. Unfortunately, it's all too common for that phantom player to collect all the drops from a single run.Sunday night, we had one of those runs. When I get a couple of the old school guys online, we tend to run through everything like crazy. These are the same guys that had Bastion Stair down to a 90m run at sub R40 levels. I only take credit for tanking it. However, this also means that we run Bastion Stair A LOT. Like, every night that 3+ of us are on at a time. Of course you're probably wondering, why the hell would you guys run BS so much? Well, half of them are hopeless altoholics that seriously need 10 R40's on a server before looking at Sentinel runs. My personal reason is that for the majority of the dungeon, the shit just makes sense. Bastion Stair is an instance CHOCK FULL of PQ's. Literally, every mob you fight is tied to a PQ somehow. This means lots and lots of bag drops and Master Looting going on. When you get good enough that purple bags drop from the middle wing PQs, you can actually end up with some very decent gear. The problem is always the bosses however, and this is where the phantom player comes in. Any boss in the game drops career specific set pieces, which unfortunately means that you have a 2 out of 12 chance (most of the time) to get what you need. Multiply this by the standard 5-6-7 piece set and you're looking at a statistical mountain of runs before you're guaranteed a full set of anything.
Then you have phantom players. I shit you not, on Sunday we ran Bastion Stair, Bloodwrought Enclave, and Bilerot Burrows, EVERY SINGLE DROP was for a Marauder that wasn't even there. Literally every boss dropped a piece of Mara gear. That means if we had our Marauder online he would have gotten his full Bloodlord and Sentinel sets in one run. Oh, but they're not called phantom players for nothing. The more and more I hear about players running dungeons and repeatedly getting gear for the same class that isn't present, it just makes me more and more paranoid. Is there code in the game that creates these phantom player drops? What's our real chance of getting something useable? 2 out of 15? 2 out of 30? Is this kind of loot distribution really what the game needs to thrive?To all of this I say hell no. Perhaps initially a low drop chance was needed for the ward granting sets to slow down the rate of players attaining gear, but these days the significant playerbase is running multiple pieces of Invader, Tyrant, Warlord, and very soon Sovereign gear. Is anyone going to really give a crap if I snag my Sentinel pieces sooner? Does anyone even WEAR Bloodlord gear? I'd even go so far as throwing some PQ's into Lost Vale since ToVL really stole it's thunder (ToVL really should have required Superior instead of Greater wards imo). I really have no problem with gated content, it makes sense and pushes people to play the game in a designed path. When the path ends at a dead end 10 out of 12 times however, you start smacking your face against the wall in an attempt to mine it for your precious loot.USE THE PQ SYSTEM. IT WORKS GREAT. It worked great for Gunbad Mountain in T3, and it worked great for Bastion Stair in T4. All that needs to be done is to convert the instanced boss fights into staged PQ's, and let 1 of each color bag to drop for beating him. Now you can go multiple directions with loot distribution. The most obvious, but probably a bit too drastic would to simply put an armor piece in one gold bag and call it a day. However I've heard of another way to do it, which would be a fragment type system. Each bag has a number of fragments that can be used to repair into the appropriate armor piece when enough are collected. Add in a single dropped piece at random from each boss, and you'll have the normal cross-your-fingers-and-pray drop system along with a rinse-and-repeat fragment system.The goal here isn't to give away gear willy-nilly, but to give players a sense of progression instead of having to rely on blind luck. Not that luck is bad by any means, but it shouldn't be the sole source of gear necessary to move into the next tier of content. It's already being done for RvR gear via Medallions and Insignias so you guys know that the system works just fine. It wouldn't really be a new currency, as each set of fragments would be unique to the armor piece. Ideally this change would have come over a year ago when the FIRST medallion system was put into place, but then again people seem to like doing these dungeons anyway.We're never going to escape the fact that players are going to collect every piece of gear in the game. Even if you make it ass-fuckingly ridiculous to attain, players are still going to get their hands on it. In fact, one would imagine those players that would dedicate themselves so hard are already some of the most elite players anyway, and will pass that ass-fucking along in PvP. No lube. All I'm asking for is a little lube to make the experience slightly more enjoyable. Is that so wrong?
 Ah Good ol' Bastion Stair, how well I remember you. This warband enabled instance was great fun to run around in wiping everything in our path. At least until we got to the instance bosses anyway. I've returned a few times since R40, be it on my Engi, Slayer, or Archmage, and in a smaller group setting, it can be a frustrating wipe-fest. Instances in WAR always disturbed me by how incredibly powerful the random trash mobs were. What appears to be a R35 Champion (soloable by both my Slayer and AM in the wild), actually has the power level of a R45 Champion and the ability to reduce you to ribbons in a few swipes. I run small groups through BS irregularly, if only to take down Slaurith at least once, and achieved this on my Slayer. It felt... well... a little cheated. It shouldn't have been that difficult where it comes down to 15 attempts, an assload of luck, and perhaps one of his abilities bugging out to get him down. We're all very skilled RvR players, we do Crypts/Tunnels regularly, and a few in my guild are up for Lost Vale already. Come to think of it, all the instance Champion mobs are ridiculously OP compared to their "in the wild" counterparts.They DID fix Gunbad with the last patch cycle, so perhaps the rest will slowly make their way into circulation. Regardless, this excites me a little bit, since I always did want to get my hands on that Bloodlord set. Perhaps, if they toned it down to the level Gunbad is at now, it will become more attainable. Next thing they need to do, is repairable set item drops so we don't get into the Crypt/Tunnel cycle of getting drops for ANY CLASS THAT ISN'T THERE.PvE is so stupid. Hot Fixes - 7/31/2009General Changes & Bug Fixes - Resolved an issue that was causing characters to drop out of combat animation when they moved.
Land of the Dead General - Groups will now be properly rewarded for successfully defending more than one instance invasion.
Tomb of the Vulture Lord - The Fire Traps will now be more forgiving.
- Chamber of the Vulture Lord: King Amenemhetum will no longer reset in phase III.
- Hall of Awakening: High Priest Herakh will no longer enrage at the incorrect time.
- Sepulcher of Swords Public Quest: High Priest Herakh will now correctly reset after a party wipes regardless of whether players are using self-resurrection abilities.
Combat and Careers General Tank Archetype Morale Abilities - Distracting Bellow: The damage reduction debuff from this Morale Ability will no longer reduce outgoing damage against targets that are being guarded.
- Immaculate Defense: The incoming damage reduction self-buff from this Morale Ability will no longer stack with the damage reduction from Guard
Bright Wizard - Burn Through: This tactic will no longer cause the damage from the Lingering Fires tactic to trigger on Pyroclastic Surge.
Choppa - Wild Choppin’: Fixed a bug that prevented this ability from doing damage to some of the targets.
Disciple of Khaine - Khaine’s Blessing: The auto-attack speed increase will no longer stack with other auto-attack speed increases.
Engineer - Hand Crafted Scope: The auto-attack speed increase will no longer stack with other auto-attack speed increases.
Marauder - Terrible Embrace: This ability will now only check your target’s defense once and no longer checks the caster for defense chance.
Shaman - I’ll Take That: This ability will now properly heal the defensive target for 150% of the damage done.
Slayer - Push for More: The auto-attack speed increase will no longer stack with other auto-attack speed increases.
Sorcerer - Wind-Woven Shell: The damage reduction from this Morale Ability will no longer stack with “Guard”.
Warrior Priest - Hastened Divinity: The auto-attack speed increase will no longer stack with other auto-attack speed increases.
White Lion - Fetch: This ability will now only check your target’s defense once and no longer check the caster for defense chance.
Witch Hunter - Inquisitor’s Fury: The auto-attack speed buff will no longer stack with other auto-attack speed buffs.
Content Quests - Faith is Madness: Knight Reinhard will no longer leave when players complete this quest, and he will now allow other players to speak with him.
Public Quests - Pure Power: This Public Quest will no longer complete itself if left unattended.
Dungeons Bastion Stair - Many monsters throughout the Bastion Stair had higher-than-intended health and auto-attack damage values. These monsters have been adjusted to present a more appropriate level of challenge.• Azuk’Thul (Left wing, third PQ boss): This monster’s overall damage output has been reduced.
- Lord Slaurith (Right wing, instance boss): The cooldown and duration of Slaurith’s Bloodpulse ability have been increased, and the ability’s damage has been reduced. Also, the radius of the effect has been reduced to more closely match that of the power’s visual effect.
- Lord Slaurith (Right wing, instance boss): Removed Silence ability.
- Brass Skullhowler (Middle wing, third PQ, stage 5): Removed the Obliterate ability from this monster. Also, the Brass Skullhowler will no longer deal damage over time when carrying a skull.
- Kaarn the Vanquisher (Middle wing, instance boss): Kaarn’s enrage timer has been extended, his dual-wield auto-attack damage has been reduced, and his abilities and icons will now rotate through the fight as intended.
- Skull Lord Var’ithrok (Dungeon Boss): The damage-over-time of the Volatile Injection ability and the damage ticks from Bloodwrath have both been reduced.
Items - Renown merchant armor and weapons now have talisman slots. Please note: if you have purchased an item that did not have a talisman slot, you may need to zone or relog in order for the change to take effect.
- Potion of Tahoth: An issue was fixed that caused the free AP charge to last longer than intended.
Realm vs. Realm Scenarios - Flag Carrier’s Exhaustion will now be properly stripped once the flag carrier captures the flag.
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