UPDATE: Ancient Dragon Stats

[PJ]

With a wider area, less then half the delay, and a 33% chance (assuming you only have 1 Lasting Embers) chance to proc a nice dot.

[Fireclaw]

yes, we do get an armor increase. With the 133% base we can sill have a lvl 80 armor headscale + the 3 techs yo can put on it. So nya [img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-4.gif[/img]

Um no. We do not get an increase. Yes, we get a level 80 armor headscale, but look closer at the headscale of the ancients. In addition to its 133% armor bonus it also gives +75 armor... the exactly same armor bonus you get from a level 80 armor headscale.

The net effect of losing the headscale but gaining the 133% as an innate dragon bonus is no armor bonus at all assuming you use a T5 armor headscale to replace the ancient scale. If you use some other headscale such as a strength or power scale you'll actually lose armor.

[Fireclaw]

Breath of Flame Burst does not replace Breath of Fire.

Good to know. Breath of Flame Burst is pathetic and useless doing less damage than our AOE spells such as Blast V, but at least it doesn't get rid of our useable breath of fire attack.

Unless they increase the damage of Breath of Flame Burst by 10x or so I just don't see why anyone would want to ever hotkey it, much less use it. One Gold rage typically does a minimum of 1500 damage and can easily do upwards of 3000 damage with a lot of tooth and claw gear added. Its very dependable because of its fast recycle and triggers powerful debuffs (Gold rage's built in debuff, primal vengeance, Western Deadlands Crystals, Fangs of Fury debuff) Why would anyone want to spend nearly the same amount of hoard to do 1/20 the damage without the powerful debuffs is beyond me.

[Fireclaw]

Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Perhaps the devs chose the ancient rewards in a way to try to make the game more realistic. After all, an ancient dragon is ... well... ancient. Think if it like this.. a burly muscular 24-year-old adult man is going to swing his sword faster than a 96-year-old ancient man with bent back and arthritis. Put simply, in a straight up fight, the adult will be able to outfight the ancient.

This could explain why the developers have designed it so that an ancient dragon is less powerful in combat than a dragon who stops advancing before becoming ancient. No other explanation makes sense...[:^)]

[Guaran]

I suppose the headscale becoming passive seems nerfish at first, basically the +213 armor we get at the end of the first trial of ARoP, is all we will get from ARoP total.


A little more wouldnt hurt, and more hp. Seems they listened and added some hp.

I'm still hoping the alacrity from the scale becomes a passive bonus.

The word from Manga was that Breath of Flame Burst isn't quite finalized, and damage output from it is being increased. As it stands it is simply Breath of Fire III with area effect. ( Like breath of fire used to be basically). without a major increase in damage the hoard cost is a joke.

One other thing, I think the old AOE should come back to breath of fire III. This new attack with a hoardcost can be a higher damaging version of it.

Having to pay a hoardcost for Breath of Fire just seems wrong. Our innate weapon, we have to pay to use. Thats and the missing alacrity are my biggest concerns at the moment.

[Vlisson]

nice info thanks

i will get ancient regardless what bonuses come with (or flaws)

but the area flame burst with hoard cost is a bad joke :(

[oluviel]

[img]/Web/Themes/Generic/images/icon-quote.gif[/img]PJ wrote: Actually, is ~the damage of a Flame Damage IV teched Flame Bomb IV, which is 96-144, or a plain unteched Flame Bomb V, 98-136With a 500 hoard cost and 3 minute reset.

don't forget the horrible accuracy our bw has due to the fact that it is not impacted by any stats.

[oluviel]

Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Perhaps the devs chose the ancient rewards in a way to try to make the game more realistic. After all, an ancient dragon is ... well... ancient. Think if it like this.. a burly muscular 24-year-old adult man is going to swing his sword faster than a 96-year-old ancient man with bent back and arthritis. Put simply, in a straight up fight, the adult will be able to outfight the ancient.

This could explain why the developers have designed it so that an ancient dragon is less powerful in combat than a dragon who stops advancing before becoming ancient. No other explanation makes sense...[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-18.gif[/img]

older people usually have an uncanny ability to dispurse gas with a devastating result. Maybe our breath weapons should have their properties changed to gas attacks with their damage tripled. Also we would have a nice stench about ourselves(as we would be ancient after all) so we would be a walking dot to replace our diminishing claw and primal attacks.

[Valornyx]

With the HP addition - this is not as bad as it originally was .. If they would make the other headscale abilities innate as well then overall AROP advances dragon skills... obviously the sticking point is giving us abilities and then taking them away again.

One thing I am interested in is whether we are able to get both crystals - or just our faction one .. that might make it interesting for those that like to switch between TC and Casting depending on what they are fighting.

I think the breath attack needs to be seriously upgraded if it is going to warrant 500 HV to use it.

Giving up the headscaleis not such a bad thing as long as we keep the same abilities - it allows us to use a new headscale in its place - some of those cool blighted ones that we have completely ignored until now might actually make us stronger overall.

1.Make ALL the headscale abilities innate (or attached to the crystal)
2.Make sure thecrystals are released at the same time as you are asking us to giveup our scales.
3.rethink the damage on the breath attack (or at the very least decrease its hoard cost)
4.I'd like to be able to use both crystals to switch between casting and TC
5.Another option would be to give us something else special to ancients - like the ability to fly with our cargo disks like the exploit of old - with lairs in the offing - this would makedragons want to become ancient.

[Dragoniade]

Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Perhaps the devs chose the ancient rewards in a way to try to make the game more realistic. After all, an ancient dragon is ... well... ancient. Think if it like this.. a burly muscular 24-year-old adult man is going to swing his sword faster than a 96-year-old ancient man with bent back and arthritis. Put simply, in a straight up fight, the adult will be able to outfight the ancient.

This could explain why the developers have designed it so that an ancient dragon is less powerful in combat than a dragon who stops advancing before becoming ancient. No other explanation makes sense...[img]/Web//emoticons/emotion-18.gif[/img]

Because Human don't age the same way as dragon ages d'oh
Ancient doesn't only mean "old age". It also mean
"Having the qualities associated with age, wisdom, or long use; venerable."
Some species with better regeneration get better as they keep aging, not crappier.

And remember, dragons in Istaria do not Age. We 'poof' to addult hood and ancient hood.

[Kaze]

On the note of new flame breath with hoard cost and other ablities with hoard costs. As it stands it is a pain that we have to pay for them, simply solution wouldn't itbe easier to have the hoard values of all items ingame doubled, that way less of drain on newer players trying to raise hoard, on side note RoP hoard value should be then doubled to 500k from 250k.

On another issue, shouldn't the new flame attack be primal not flame skill?

Will the dev's be making new quests just like with RoP to increase ones previous flame attacks ie BoF III to IV and BoL or BoI from I to II and if we lucky a version II of new attack.

Next about stat increases shouldn't they be based on your racial path ie more str/dex and little power for lunus and more power/focus and little strfor helian?

[Deth]

I can understand the +Power. It really helps Lunus more then Helians. Helians already have a high power, Lunus who normally have a lower power will really notice a greater out put from their Spiked Scales from the increase then Helians. Also I think, I could and probably am wrong, But is not the breath weapon damage effected by Power? Also Lunus will see more return on their spells then a Helians will. So no it may not increase your Melee damage but over all I think Lunus will see more DPS then the average caster Helians will. But thats just my thoughts on it.

[dorrin]

why are there not separate "ancient path of the helian" and "ancient path of the lunus" innate abilities? or am i missing something? couldn't these be used to make sure the helian gets its +75 armor +50 primal, 133 % base armor and 5% spell haste while lunus get their 50 T&C 5% claw haste?
using both crystals seems to be a stretch, honestly...
+250 health .. +10 base fly speed.. +500 capacity ... thank you

my complaints...
the size issue... (whoever said reduce the size of adults a bit too so ancients will once again look comparitively larger... QUIET! don't give them ideas! >< ) ...
losing the haste (yeah... i know.. 5 % isn't much, but why take something away we're given earlier in the quest?)...
and hoard cost for flame burst... i looked at the damage on breath III and it's 60-100.. this damage for flame burst .. i can handle. ... but taking away something we had upon adulthood before... then bringing it back requiring ancient rite completion with hoard cost... i don't mind the 3-minute timer.. heck, even the 5-minute timer we had with the old breath of fire III i wouldn't mind so much but as any dragon will tell you.. don't take away my hoard .... hoard leak was left behind for a reason... i worked hard for at least 2 months in wolf's paw (after they first made dwarven anvils work as scaleforges) to get my hoard to where it is today.. i'd rather not lose it...


aside from all that, though... honestly.. a heartfelt thank you for the quest itself. that has been the reward as much as anything else... but... eh.... a good reward at the end of a good quest is generally expected.... and losing part of what the head scale gave us months ago is just not acceptable...
and yes... please get that crystal out asap...and as someone else said, it had better stack with all other crystals, deadlands or otherwise.

[Theolaerynn]

With a wider area, less then half the delay, and a 33% chance (assuming you only have 1 Lasting Embers) chance to proc a nice dot.

At point blank (no kiting), and again, 3 minute recycle.

The crystal is a consideration, but at the same time that is something we recieved in the RoP. But it does affect this breath weapon so bears consideration.

[Devast]

Like many I am disappointed with much of the reward for completing ARoP.

Here are some ideas for what it would take to make me happy. The flight speed, capacity boost, and passive abilities are good.

Make the haste a passive ability, allow everyone access to BOTH crystals, increase health boost slightly, all other stats boosted (+75 - +100), additional armor in addition to and before the 133%, boost to dragon breath skill, decrease or eliminate hoard costs for new abilities, add area to our existing breath weapon,and major rework of Breath of Flame Burst. I could give more numbers but want to be flexible.

Submitted for your consideration,

Devast

[Goriax]

They also really need to do something about the size. Or lack thereof.

In my mind size and the crystals are the remaining problems. Crystals in that they need to show up soon. Not next year. Not 6 months from now. Soon.

The other issue is size. People wanted to be BIG. People were expecting it. Heh, NPC ancients have been in since before the ROP went live (not AROP, ROP). It's not like TG didn't have plenty of time to think this through which they obviously didn't. One gets the impression that people at TG try to put dragons out of their minds as much as possible. Everyone was seeing the NPC ancients and assuming they'd be similar.

Except TG did a bait and switch.



I could probably be mollified if they just upped the size a little, but to have an ancient almost the same size as an adult is pretty hard to take.

[Khoal]

It won't replace the existing BoF attack, so that is good. This means I can still keep BoF as a hotkey, whilerelegating this little puffball on my abilities window.

This isa start, devs, but it needs work. It sounds okay for an adult, but not for an Ancient.

As an Ancient, I had originally expected to be given some abilities that cause severe damage to an opponent, but also have long timers....

I'd planned on saying more, but there's no point. Just have to wait for this new design preview, where (hopefully) we see where the Devs plan on taking Ancients, post-ARoP. All of these Roman numerals obviously mean something, and to me I think there are more powerful variants of these floor-level Ancient abilities that are unlocked during the post-ARoP progression.

After jumping through so many hoops, there better be more of a payoff.

[Fireclaw]

To get happy ancient dragons all the devs need to do is add to the existing ARoP rewards:

(1) increase the damage from Breath of Flame Burst by 10x so the new damage is 1000-1400. If its going to cost hoard like Gold Rage, let it do comparable damage. Not that even at 1000-1400 damage its still doing a lot less damage than gold rage (which does up to 3k damage per use while triggering powerful procs). However, if you hit 3 target with this its doing equivalent to gold rage. If you really want to make dragonbreath a dragon's signature weapon as it should be up the damage some more to maybe 2,000-2,500 damage with a 3 minute timer at 500 or even 1000 hoard cost.

(2) increase the size of the ancient dragon model back up to what people expect. Players have been looking at those big ancient dragon models for over a year and thats what they expect. Now that the moment of truth arrives and you take it away. Give the players what they expected.

(3) put the 5% haste bonus from the headscale as an innate bonus or on the new ancient crystal. Players don't want to be nerfed upon becoming ancient. Don't make them have to decide to give up a combat advantage you've already given them.

[Varangaard]

Oops, I forgot about the 133% on the ancient scale. Been a long long time since I last looked at it. [:S]

Anyway, losing the haste bonus of 5% does nto translate to 5% loss of damage or more. On the contrary. Let's remember that damage works in a funny way in Horizons. The full formula is: weapon base damage + (stat/X*delay) + (skill/Y*delay) - (armor/Z*delay) - resist.

If we look at the (stat/X*delay) + (skill/Y*delay) - (armor/Z*delay) part and fudge up some numbers, deciding stat/X, skill/Y and armor/Z all give 200, and run with delay 20 and 10, we get:

200*20+200*20-200*20 = 4000 over 20 ticks,
200*10+200*10-200*10 = 2000 over 10 ticks = 4000 over 20 ticks = constant DPS regardless of actual delay.

This means delay does not affect stat and skill-based damage DPS, effectively increasing only your base damage because it is not delay adjusted. This means dragons lose 5% of base claw damage when they lose the haste.

Not relevant to discussion, but this does not yet take resists into account. As resists are not delay adjusted, it means hasting yourself against mobs with strong resist actually decreases your damage.

[Kitimandiri]

To get happy ancient dragons all the devs need to do is add to the existing ARoP rewards:

(1) increase the damage from Breath of Flame Burst by 10x so the new damage is 1000-1400. If its going to cost hoard like Gold Rage, let it do comparable damage. Not that even at 1000-1400 damage its still doing a lot less damage than gold rage (which does up to 3k damage per use while triggering powerful procs). However, if you hit 3 target with this its doing equivalent to gold rage. If you really want to make dragonbreath a dragon's signature weapon as it should be up the damage some more to maybe 2,000-2,500 damage with a 3 minute timer at 500 or even 1000 hoard cost.

(2) increase the size of the ancient dragon model back up to what people expect. Players have been looking at those big ancient dragon models for over a year and thats what they expect. Now that the moment of truth arrives and you take it away. Give the players what they expected.

(3) put the 5% haste bonus from the headscale as an innate bonus or on the new ancient crystal. Players don't want to be nerfed upon becoming ancient. Don't make them have to decide to give up a combat advantage you've already given them.

I agree with Fire, adding the 5% haste would cancel out most of peoples concerns.

Guaran kindly posted the old ancient models, so if the devs don't give us the old size back, I'll just use that. I don't usually hunt with bipeds mostly because I'm solitary, so I've never had the size problem with targeting, and I also use auto-target, or assist. To me these are just basic gaming skills and I've rarely had a problem with targeting. Is there some other factor that prevents these being useful to bipeds?

My only regret is that hatchies most likely won't have the ancient models (unless of course the devs reset the size). I remember being in awe of the first adult I stumbled across, and for weeks after RoP came out I always stopped and stared at adults. I was really looking forward to being this huge dragon coming to a hatchling's rescue. We are still big, but not even as big as the NPCs now, and thats what I really was hoping for :'(