AV Developers Strategy

[Rosina]

post the old video if you can. My thories had to do with the timing of the fighters weapon skills and what element they used at what time. Sorta like the Zelda ocarina of time twinrova fight. Pretty much it appeared that AV jumped element (to me anyway) and you had to deal a weapon skills that was stronger then that element. again this is based on only watching the video. and was my old theories.

I'm curious as well on the origins of AV and how they expected people to kill him.

[Alhanelem]

Lots of games have almost impossible bosses. Everquest even had a boss that was designed to be impossible to beat (it didn't even have drops), it was only there to rampage kill people) but then someone actually beat it.

Usually they DON'T expect people to kill them. In this case, PD itself may have even been added to lay the whole thing to rest, deciding that no one would ever find the right way.

[MarkovChain]

Except that SE said many time that AV was killable long before PD was introduced.

[uptempo]

Im another one who would love to here the "supposed correct" way to beat it.

[Runespider]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

[Tamoa]

I'd definitely like to know how SE originally intended us to beat AV.

[Darkren]

I don't think there was ever a proper way honestly, I think it was added just as something to keep the top tier playerbase thinking. PD was added to make it killable, although the level cap finally nailed it properly.

I think the whole thing was a huge trollfest, the unatainable ongoing puzzle with no real answer.

I doubt PD was added to make it killable because it was killable using souleater zerg until they nerfed that. If they did use PD to lay it to rest then its quite unfair on the drk strategy which was not really different. This being said. If they are accepting PD as a "correct strategy" then there is no point to keep what they did hidden, especially if we would be level 99 soon.

[Sparthos]

I doubt PD was added to make it killable because it was killable using souleater zerg until they nerfed that. If they did use PD to lay it to rest then its quite unfair on the drk strategy which was not really different. This being said. If they are accepting PD as a "correct strategy" then there is no point to keep what they did hidden, especially if we would be level 99 soon.

Pretty sure SE realized Perfect Defense would make AV killable as the ability does block all of AVs offensive output. The main issue was always the random Meteors which were an instant wipe regardless of curbing regen or your overall strategy.

They nerfed Souleater zerging because at that point in time, the devs still didn't want AV loot circulating like it is today. Someone made a call among the devs to finally quit stonewalling the players and today's AV was born.

Overall however, SE has been trying to scale back on Souleater due to multi-hit weapons being powerhouses.

For some contrast, the original Pandy Warden from the start was doable it's just that someone among the devs didn't realize that with all the forms he originally possessed (serpent generals, vampyr) human fatigue would start to set in and the phenomena known as the "puking pandy" would be born.

A terrible day in the PR department I can imagine.

Pandemonium Warden needed no hints from SE. It's a drawn out battle that was straightforward (adds pt kills lamps, main party handles warden, main and adds party alternate wiping on final form) once players figured out the battle and he was eventually worked him down at the 75 cap by a handful of linkshells.

Absolute Virtue however involved an extremely delicate strategy that to this day has never truly been understood. What was SEs intent? To frustrate or simply to create a challenge that players could aspire to defeat but never actually accomplish?

[SNK]

Lots of games have almost impossible bosses. Everquest even had a boss that was designed to be impossible to beat (it didn't even have drops), it was only there to rampage kill people) but then someone actually beat it.

Usually they DON'T expect people to kill them. In this case, PD itself may have even been added to lay the whole thing to rest, deciding that no one would ever find the right way.

SE stated it was killable with only 18 75s at the time. The video they posted was very vauge as hell and still left a lot of people confused as to what they were trying to show us.

[Shadotter]

I would like to know this too, while PD has made it doable, I highly doubt that was how we were supposed to deal with meteor, it would be nice to at least have a hint as to how we were to mitigate damage from that, on the same note, I don't think we're supposed to include dying as a strategy for PW and wonder if there's a way to mitigate the last form as well. Hell, while I'm at it, I wonder if other HNMs have hidden factors to their behavior that we just never figured out and just worked around.