More Shadowguard Changes??

Belfry - Last week it used to be such that when you're being pushed off, you could run towards the dragon to counteract it. Now it appears to have been changed so that the dragon paralyzes you. Is this change intended?

Anon now seems to treat direct damage (like armor ignore and word of death) like physical damage, switch to earth elemental form, and heal from it. So tamers are f***ed once again, as everyone needs to pull their pets off regardless of damage type. The encounter becomes even more of a snorefest.

It seems that now that everyone and their mother have farmed shadowguard to death, and are equipped with ridiculous overpowered legendary artifacts and roof drops, broadsword would like to change the encounters to be ridiculously annoying in order to remove any chance a new player has of obtaining this loot.

As someone who has just returned a month ago, and was just getting started with shadowguard, these changes are basically going to be a final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to farm f***ing wings from vile drakes, then jump on a platform, and IMMEDIATELY get pushed off with NO WAY TO COUNTER the mechanic. (Heck we even tried wall of stone. You just get pushed right through it).

Not to mention all these f***ing drakes, bosses, etc have 120-130+ wrestling, and thus take freaking ages for a 100 wrestling pet to kill. Not everyone has billions of gold to spend on their pets getting all their skills up to 120.

I'm just sick and tired of all the bs to be honest. I'm trying very hard to have some fun, but it seems broadsword has other plans. I think you just lost 5 subscribers (me and my friend group) tonight, who are tired of fighting a neverending uphill battle where new obstacles are added constantly, while the majority of the existing playerbase are already chilling at the top.

/rant off

A lot of players are with you. I didn't even know about the Anon Changes.

The Belfry they should of only fixed the ability for pets to FLY up without the wings. 

Fountain, they just needed to fix the stacking of the Canals. 

Havent had a chance to try it out yet with the new changes.  But Im in the same boat as I just returned to the game last year and only just last month got my accounts ready and learned to do the roof.  So bittersweet that finally got to do it regularly and now its gone.  I am going to give some other combinations a try at least.

Not sure I understand the mindset of making old content less accessible.  Usually companies do the opposite once the higher tier people have farmed something long enough, so that the more casual subscribers get to experience it as well.

Theres already a very big lack of end game content in this game that has rewards worth the grinds they involve.  I get theres a small team for this games small budget, but upsetting a portion of subscribers to appease complaints from people that probably have farmed this content for 2 years straight doesn't make business sense.

Word of death is not direct damage, it is chaos damage.

armor ignore should still deal the type of damage that the pet deals. Although interestingly, the official uo wiki reads that ai deals physical damage. And I was arguing with the editor to remove the “physical damage” sentence as you don’t always deal physical damage...
i hope they haven’t changed that in game after I drew attention to it...


Also, how did you get to fight anon if you couldn’t complete the Belfry?

Obuw said:

Belfry - Last week it used to be such that when you're being pushed off, you could run towards the dragon to counteract it. Now it appears to have been changed so that the dragon paralyzes you. Is this change intended?

Anon now seems to treat direct damage (like armor ignore and word of death) like physical damage, switch to earth elemental form, and heal from it. So tamers are f***ed once again, as everyone needs to pull their pets off regardless of damage type. The encounter becomes even more of a snorefest.

It seems that now that everyone and their mother have farmed shadowguard to death, and are equipped with ridiculous overpowered legendary artifacts and roof drops, broadsword would like to change the encounters to be ridiculously annoying in order to remove any chance a new player has of obtaining this loot.

As someone who has just returned a month ago, and was just getting started with shadowguard, these changes are basically going to be a final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to farm f***ing wings from vile drakes, then jump on a platform, and IMMEDIATELY get pushed off with NO WAY TO COUNTER the mechanic. (Heck we even tried wall of stone. You just get pushed right through it).

Not to mention all these f***ing drakes, bosses, etc have 120-130+ wrestling, and thus take freaking ages for a 100 wrestling pet to kill. Not everyone has billions of gold to spend on their pets getting all their skills up to 120.

I'm just sick and tired of all the bs to be honest. I'm trying very hard to have some fun, but it seems broadsword has other plans. I think you just lost 5 subscribers (me and my friend group) tonight, who are tired of fighting a neverending uphill battle where new obstacles are added constantly, while the majority of the existing playerbase are already chilling at the top.

/rant off

Welcome to Sampires Online

Word of Death is not chaos damage. Afaik chaos damage = random damage type. Word of Death does direct damage, aka damage that ignores resistances.

We completed the belfry allright. It just took us 2 tries, and 55 minutes (basically had to get lucky, so the dragon didn't instantly start pushing us down as soon as we got up).

Drakes are obviously not a problem, but it can get extremely annoying when your pets miss them 20 times in a row. Just like most of the other encounters in shadowguard they are tailored for a sampire with 120 skill + 45 HCI.

I'm sick of being REQUIRED to use a sampire for everything. Not all of us have the ridiculous gear required to make a functioning sampire. We play tamers now because they seemed to be the only class that can actually complete content without ridiculous gear requirements, but broadsword is doing everything in their power to change that.

All the documentation reads that word of death deals chaos damage. 


Are are we all just skipping over the fact that the OP has found some way of getting to the roof without completing the Belfry?

You know what would balance out Sampires. Sampires get a 30% damage reduction from armoured swamp dragons. If Sampire’s Swamp dragons died when the sampires died, they would be begging for a veterinarian to come along with them. Instead they just log out to prevent it dying.

Mervyn said:

All the documentation reads that word of death deals chaos damage.

I was always under the impression it did physical damage because Anon turned to earth elemental the second he is hit with WoD. I've never seen him turn into anything else when hit with WoD...

just looked it up on uo.com: "This spell can possibly slay any one creature (not players) that is under 5-30% of its maximum health. Creatures that are not slain outright take chaos damage instead. Creatures that are under 5-30% of their health take direct damage."

Mervyn said:

You know what would balance out Sampires. Sampires get a 30% damage reduction from armoured swamp dragons. If Sampire’s Swamp dragons died when the sampires died, they would be begging for a veterinarian to come along with them. Instead they just log out to prevent it dying.

There is a breath-taking amount of misinformation in this thread.. 

Parnoc said:

Mervyn said:

You know what would balance out Sampires. Sampires get a 30% damage reduction from armoured swamp dragons. If Sampire’s Swamp dragons died when the sampires died, they would be begging for a veterinarian to come along with them. Instead they just log out to prevent it dying.

Wow, armored swampies get 30% damage reduction?  I sure didn't know that.  When did that change?  You hiding something and have info no one else has?

Yeah exceptional armoured swamp dragon absorbs 20% sorry.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that turning anon into earth ele by dealing direct damage or anon healing as earth ele from receiving direct damage is a bug. 

Could just as easily argue that it’s a feature. The rule could simply be that anon heals direct and physical damage in earth ele form...

but either way, I’m pretty sure nothing has changed. 

Being a new or returning player is hard enough because you're so incredibly far behind gear wise due to how OP good legendary pieces are. Are we seriously making it harder for new/returning players?

As someone who has come back recently and now will have a tougher time doing roof as I have no gold and crap gear I may just quit. There's no reason to change something like this after years, especially if the main people it's hurting are those very people you're trying so hard to attract. 

Mervyn said:

Are are we all just skipping over the fact that the OP has found some way of getting to the roof without completing the Belfry?

Obuw said:

We completed the belfry allright. It just took us 2 tries, and 55 minutes (basically had to get lucky, so the dragon didn't instantly start pushing us down as soon as we got up).

Some reading comprehension can often help in cases like this.

Obuw said:

I'm sick of being REQUIRED to use a sampire for everything. Not all of us have the ridiculous gear required to make a functioning sampire. We play tamers now because they seemed to be the only class that can actually complete content without ridiculous gear requirements, but broadsword is doing everything in their power to change that.

I ran Shadowguard last night with a friend, he was on Tamer and I was on Samp.  I can tell you that the Sampire is useless in the belfry.  I was being frozen after 1-2 Hits.  No chance to break the freeze or getting pushed off.  I understand the game mechanics, pets have always been pushed off, now the tamers can't use the log out trick.  But pets at least have the chance to hit a few times and I have seen the pets before being able to break the push when you have multiple pets involved.  I went up 3 times with my Samp and all 3 times I was immediately pushed off.  This cannot be by design unless the design is to only use pets.  The second run we had a third player join with an Archer.  After every hit the archer was frozen for a few seconds and had to retarget to continue attacking.  Again, this does not seem to be workable game mechanics.

Max_Blackoak said:

Mervyn said:

All the documentation reads that word of death deals chaos damage.

I was always under the impression it did physical damage because Anon turned to earth elemental the second he is hit with WoD. I've never seen him turn into anything else when hit with WoD...

If you hold a 100% poison weapon while casting WoD he turns poison.  Takes a few WoDs.  But maybe that has changed.  

drcossack said:

I use a barebones imbued/reforged suit on my sampire, with the Luck Jewelry set.  You do NOT need an uber high-end suit for pvm content.  Max resists, max HCI, and elemental damage slayer weaps is all you need on a sampire.  But do go on about how you don't have the ridiculous gear required to make a sampire.

All you need is max resists, max DCI, HCI, DI, 190+ stam, 45%+ SSI, 40% LMC, M&S for HLD, a whole set of elemental damage slayer weapons with HLA / HML / HSL, and a bunch of 120 power scrolls. And preferably a whole set of cameos to go with that. Yeah, that's not a lot at all. (Unless you're just using your sampire to farm miasma.)

Centu said:

I ran Shadowguard last night with a friend, he was on Tamer and I was on Samp.  I can tell you that the Sampire is useless in the belfry.  I was being frozen after 1-2 Hits.  No chance to break the freeze or getting pushed off.  I understand the game mechanics, pets have always been pushed off, now the tamers can't use the log out trick.  But pets at least have the chance to hit a few times and I have seen the pets before being able to break the push when you have multiple pets involved.  I went up 3 times with my Samp and all 3 times I was immediately pushed off.  This cannot be by design unless the design is to only use pets.  The second run we had a third player join with an Archer.  After every hit the archer was frozen for a few seconds and had to retarget to continue attacking.  Again, this does not seem to be workable game mechanics.

So I was under the impression that up until last week you could run towards the dragon to counteract the push (or you could "all follow me" your pet to make him run towards you and not fall off") but now they have added this retarded paralyze effect. Is this not the case? Was the paralyze always there, and have we just never experienced it due to a bug or something?

Pawain said:

Max_Blackoak said:

Mervyn said:

All the documentation reads that word of death deals chaos damage.

I was always under the impression it did physical damage because Anon turned to earth elemental the second he is hit with WoD. I've never seen him turn into anything else when hit with WoD...

If you hold a 100% poison weapon while casting WoD he turns poison.  Takes a few WoDs.  But maybe that has changed.  

Obuw said:

drcossack said:

I use a barebones imbued/reforged suit on my sampire, with the Luck Jewelry set.  You do NOT need an uber high-end suit for pvm content.  Max resists, max HCI, and elemental damage slayer weaps is all you need on a sampire.  But do go on about how you don't have the ridiculous gear required to make a sampire.

All you need is max resists, max DCI, HCI, DI, 190+ stam, 45%+ SSI, 40% LMC, M&S for HLD, a whole set of elemental damage slayer weapons with HLA / HML / HSL, and a bunch of 120 power scrolls. And preferably a whole set of cameos to go with that. Yeah, that's not a lot at all. (Unless you're just using your sampire to farm miasma.)

Shadowguard already took too long for the lack of reward you get from it.  Changing it to make it take much longer is just gonna turn it into dead content.  It shouldn't take longer to do the rooms then it does to kill the boss/es.   I understand things weren't working as intended but with those things being broken its made it worth the amount of time to complete it.  Taking more then an hour just to clear the rooms is a complete waste of time, especially when you can kill the bosses in ten-fifteen minutes.   Maybe they should look at a 24-hour room completion setup, basically saying once you complete the rooms you can do the roof as many times as you want in a 24-hour period before they reset.  Then it might be worth the time again.

> Mace & Shield clone from Blackthorn's (however, as far am I'm aware, it does absolutely nothing in pvm.)

Wait, what? Really? Do you mean the clone does nothing? Or HLD does nothing?

What is this red luck jewelry?

Even something as basic as Tangle is ridiculously difficult to get, since the droprate is 1% or less, and noone even sells it (or anything really) on europa anymore. And if they did sell it, it would probably go for around 100m, since people seem to even wipe their arses with 10m checks nowadays.

Conjurer stuff are also flat out impossible to get, since they were only handed out during that one halloween event 10 years ago afaik. (Amazing design choices there too, handing out best in slot items during a one-time event).

You should try actually making a barebones 45% hci, all 70 set with no artifacts, and see how difficult it is to even solo a GD with it.

Lune rouge and soleil rouge from clean up.

Our guild quite likes doing shadowguard when there’s no action in fel. 

Obuw said:

> Mace & Shield clone from Blackthorn's (however, as far am I'm aware, it does absolutely nothing in pvm.)

Wait, what? Really? Do you mean the clone does nothing? Or HLD does nothing?

What is this red luck jewelry?

Even something as basic as Tangle is ridiculously difficult to get, since the droprate is 1% or less, and noone even sells it (or anything really) on europa anymore. And if they did sell it, it would probably go for around 100m, since people seem to even wipe their arses with 10m checks nowadays.

Conjurer stuff are also flat out impossible to get, since they were only handed out during that one halloween event 10 years ago afaik. (Amazing design choices there too, handing out best in slot items during a one-time event).

You should try actually making a barebones 45% hci, all 70 set with no artifacts, and see how difficult it is to even solo a GD with it.

I believe M&S is 100, as we farmed one for a friend and it took us about 2 weeks of mindless grinding.

Where would be your suggested farming spots? Captains? Balrons? Rats?

So you're saying HLD doesn't work in PVM? That would be a huge issue. Are you sure?

He did not say that.  They work great in PvM and combine with HLD on weapons.  That and 50 on a bow make ~60% chance.

How much are they from Library?

Obuw said:

I believe M&S is 100, as we farmed one for a friend and it took us about 2 weeks of mindless grinding.

Where would be your suggested farming spots? Captains? Balrons? Rats?

So you're saying HLD doesn't work in PVM? That would be a huge issue. Are you sure?

Pawain said:

He did not say that.

drcossack said:

I don't use HLA, but I do have HLD in the form of one of the Mace & Shield clone from Blackthorn's (however, as far am I'm aware, it does absolutely nothing in pvm.)

Maybe I misunderstood what he's saying, but it seemed like he was saying that. Or was he talking about HLA?

Pawain said:

They work great in PvM and combine with HLD on weapons.  That and 50 on a bow make ~60% chance.

I believe the chance stacks, but the debuff doesn't. So it's kind of a waste to put HLD on your bow if you already have M&S. In most situations you'd be better off picking something else, like velocity. Might make sense to put HLD on your bow as well on those 160 wrestling(or whatever) bosses though.

Someone tell me how to make velocity worthwhile.  In PvM I notice, on the bows I have it on, that when it goes off, all it does is lower the normal damage numbers...I'm actually not coming out any better *shrugs*   What am I doing wrong here? 

I think there may be a bug where velocity negates slayer bonus, sure someone posted about it before 

Obuw said:

I believe the chance stacks, but the debuff doesn't. So it's kind of a waste to put HLD on your bow if you already have M&S. In most situations you'd be better off picking something else, like velocity. Might make sense to put HLD on your bow as well on those 160 wrestling(or whatever) bosses though.

The chance is all I am after.  Archers have horrible % hits without it.

Agree with the statement above.  Velocity hits lower damage than normal hits with a slayer.

Holy moly... I'm glad I learned about that before I wasted so many imbuing resources crafting a whole new set of slayer bows with velocity... Okay, HLD it is then!

(In which case, M&S is looking less and less attractive, since you're already getting HLD on your bow).

Pawain said:

The chance is all I am after.  Archers have horrible % hits without it.

Agree with the statement above.  Velocity hits lower damage than normal hits with a slayer.

You can test it with the ironwood bow.  I would be fine with balance if it had mana leech.  @Kyronix does not know how to make an arti bow better than an imbued one. Put mana leech on it please. Replace the + 5 dex. with mana leech.  We already have 150 dex.

Sure they "fix" bugs in Shadowguard but don't fix the Eodon Slayer Bow that drops from the boss that has 60% Velocity which procs way to often get any benefit from the Slayer.  

And it is a Yumi so you need 50 Bush or Ninja to use the specials.  Change that one to a Bow or composite and lower the DI and replace with any Hit spell or area.  

I have tried it with the Aloron suit at the turtle spawn.  I end up changing to an imbued gen purpose composite.

I think they built the Aloron suit well.  And my turtle protection earrings have saved me.

drcossack said:

Obuw said:

Belfry - Last week it used to be such that when you're being pushed off, you could run towards the dragon to counteract it. Now it appears to have been changed so that the dragon paralyzes you. Is this change intended?

Anon now seems to treat direct damage (like armor ignore and word of death) like physical damage, switch to earth elemental form, and heal from it. So tamers are f***ed once again, as everyone needs to pull their pets off regardless of damage type. The encounter becomes even more of a snorefest.

It seems that now that everyone and their mother have farmed shadowguard to death, and are equipped with ridiculous overpowered legendary artifacts and roof drops, broadsword would like to change the encounters to be ridiculously annoying in order to remove any chance a new player has of obtaining this loot.

As someone who has just returned a month ago, and was just getting started with shadowguard, these changes are basically going to be a final nail in the coffin for me. I don't want to farm f***ing wings from vile drakes, then jump on a platform, and IMMEDIATELY get pushed off with NO WAY TO COUNTER the mechanic. (Heck we even tried wall of stone. You just get pushed right through it).

Not to mention all these f***ing drakes, bosses, etc have 120-130+ wrestling, and thus take freaking ages for a 100 wrestling pet to kill. Not everyone has billions of gold to spend on their pets getting all their skills up to 120.

I'm just sick and tired of all the bs to be honest. I'm trying very hard to have some fun, but it seems broadsword has other plans. I think you just lost 5 subscribers (me and my friend group) tonight, who are tired of fighting a neverending uphill battle where new obstacles are added constantly, while the majority of the existing playerbase are already chilling at the top.

/rant off

Except that's how Anon's worked for the past few years?  I can't speak to Armor Ignore changes, because I always did it with guildmates that used it, while my pets didn't.  But he's ALWAYS healed the damage type his transformation corresponds to:

Physical: Earth Elemental (also applies if you're a mage holding a Slayer spellbook.)

Cold: Snow Elemental

Energy: Llama-shaped Energy Vortex

Poison: Acid Elemental

Fire: Fire Elemental

When I was doing it solo in the past (last time I did it by myself, I used 2 clients.  I tried 3 on TC1 but couldn't manage Virtuebane/Juo'nar - there was too much to juggle with my 3 client setup), I'd "All stop/All stay" my pets until Anon went back into his normal form.  On TC, his mechanics hadn't changed all that much - I was using various damage types and only had to pull one of my pets off.

Belfry sucks, and shouldn't have been changed to completely stop pets or players from attacking the dragon.  It doesn't affect me since I don't use a sampire in the Belfry, but if I weren't multi-clienting it I'd never kill the Greater Dragon (I use flying pets there for a reason.)

The Drakes in the belfry are a problem?  Really?  Try Rune Corruption or Armor Ignore, if you feel the need to fight them.  Pets with either one will tear through them.

Shadowguard is still just as accessible as it was previously, although it's a bit harder.  The only difference now is that you can't easy mode it with tamers due to a bugged mechanic, and have to bring different templates, like a Sampire...but is that, for endgame content, such a bad thing?  Some people might say it's not fun...but it wasn't fun BEFORE (granted, I had farmed it extensively some time back, and had it down to a science.)

It was about an hour long before the publish, and it's still about the same length of time now.

I just did the roof last night bringing the same pets I always brought on my own, Anon is indeed changed, as we didn't even have a pet with any Physical on him and he still went to Earth form.  I can guarantee you this was never the way he reacted prior.  Either that or they changed armor ignore itself on pets, might have to test that.

Teapot said:

I just did the roof last night bringing the same pets I always brought on my own, Anon is indeed changed, as we didn't even have a pet with any Physical on him and he still went to Earth form.  I can guarantee you this was never the way he reacted prior.  Either that or they changed armor ignore itself on pets, might have to test that.

drcossack said:

Hmm, now that you mention it, I noticed the same thing on TC.  I was using a cold damage pet (although it too had Armor Ignore/Chiv) and he was going into Earth Elemental form.  I didn't test damage without either, but I'm not interested in bonding/training/leveling up another non-Physical Platinum/Crimson Drake to test things out.

We spent a lot of time on TC testing anon when we initially were testing the roof changes, one of the reasons we posted no videos of the encounter.  We were noticing a lot of things triggering physical and a lot more healing than normal.  When they had the Chesapeake meet and greet on in May (there appears to be no log of this event unfortunately), I asked about some pet ability damage types because I had noticed anon healing alot more than on Prodo.  Bleak mentioned that he was aware of an issue with Anon but it had not been addressed yet on tc.  He did not elaborate on that (perhaps the poison damage?)

Violet said:

drcossack said:

Hmm, now that you mention it, I noticed the same thing on TC.  I was using a cold damage pet (although it too had Armor Ignore/Chiv) and he was going into Earth Elemental form.  I didn't test damage without either, but I'm not interested in bonding/training/leveling up another non-Physical Platinum/Crimson Drake to test things out.

We spent a lot of time on TC testing anon when we initially were testing the roof changes, one of the reasons we posted no videos of the encounter.  We were noticing a lot of things triggering physical and a lot more healing than normal.  When they had the Chesapeake meet and greet on in May (there appears to be no log of this event unfortunately), I asked about some pet ability damage types because I had noticed anon healing alot more than on Prodo.  Bleak mentioned that he was aware of an issue with Anon but it had not been addressed yet on tc.  He did not elaborate on that (perhaps the poison damage?)

Yeah Im going to try to take a new elemental pet I just built in with no armor ignore and see if it still triggers earth form. 

Teapot said:

Yeah Im going to try to take a new elemental pet I just built in with no armor ignore and see if it still triggers earth form. 

If it has something like Frenzied Whirlwind, that too will trigger Anon.

Violet said:

Teapot said:

Yeah Im going to try to take a new elemental pet I just built in with no armor ignore and see if it still triggers earth form. 

If it has something like Frenzied Whirlwind, that too will trigger Anon.

Did it tonight and had no physical attacks yet he still went to physical.

Pet1. Fire Beetle with RC + wrestling mastery
Pet2.  Reptalon with aura of nausea / chivalry
Third pet was just a snake to deal with spawn and he had AI still but I did not use him on anon.

The only time he ever was anything but a earth ele was at the end when I WOD'd him with a fire dmg sword equipped.  He was the easiest just took almost as long as the rest of the bosses combined only attacking him in human form.

@Kyronix @Bleak @Misk1

Is this a intended change or a bug??  I just built these pets specifically to deal with him and now I see they are just the same thing too.  

Juo is annoying enough now not to mention Ive already had bugged belfry pets like everyone else.

I've rarely seen Anon as anything but an earth ellie, once or twice he has gone to a fire ellie but only for a few seconds. Never seen anything else in all the time since Shadowguard was launched.
I didn't even know for the first year or so he could change into anything else! 

They have definitely changed Anon on publish 100. We had 2 x cu sidhes and a frost mite on it and not one time did it turn into snow ele, it turned into earth ele, and when the pets (who don't deal physical damage) attacked it in earth ele form, it was gaining health???

The pets were dealing armour ignore.