Change the pace of oozes

[DollarPhil]

I did this recently after not having been on the quest for a while, and  it seems to have been beefed up quite a lot, especially the Zombies. Also, it does and always has scaled rather poorly to larger groups. There's also a very noticeable difference in spawns between 2 and 3 man runs even. Now, my favourite quest this last week was a run of Hive I did in an 8-PC team. It went well, only one PC dying and that due to poor luck. Hive scales well, it was challenging but not impossible. On the other hand, Oozes with 8 PCs would seem like suicide.

The thing about this quest is that the right team, especially with Acid Dr/DI gear can chew it up and spit it out in record time, but larger, non-optimal groups turn it into a meat grinder. This is mainly because the spawns have every possible way to take advantage of their numbers and abilities. They have powerful, accurate  acid dmg ranged attacks with stuns, and half the time you can't close into melee, or stand a chance of shooting back against so much massed fire.  In most areas, every foe in range can see you and shoot you at once. The zombies *require* flame weapon or a Rogue's Mace or something, or you'll never beat the DR, and you can't even KD them while you whittle them down.

What this means is that you have to OOCly rig everything up for this quest or you end up turning back or getting wiped. I think that it would be a lot better with things tweaked to favour groups that don't happen to be led by a melee wizard in Acid Resist robes.

So, my suggestions:

• Reduce the duration of the onhit stun to one round, or replace it with Blindness. There's no way to protect from it and although rare, the sheer amount of attacks meant someone tends to get hit. Then since you can't invis them to protect them, you have to hope you can healspam them until it wears off. If they're trapped where you can't have the others rush in and kill the spitters, they're often screwed. Blindness would disrupt a group but not annihilate them.
• Instead of 10/- DR or whatever the Ooze Revenants have, give them maybe 5/- DR and 50% DI to all physical damage, and lower their HP. Unless you're using a greatweapon it is all but impossible to wear them down.  Swapping in some DI and lowering HP would let finessers stand a chance with stuff like +1 ele dmg weapons while still making them nasty tanks you have to cooperate to bring down.
• Space things out more, add more cover. The quest is either tiny hallways where only a couple of people can reach the front, or massive shooting galleries.
• Reduce the acid damage on everything. It's cool that it's there, but it's either a joke if you have a 5/- DR item or a gigantic consumable drain if you don't.
• Change the spawn pattern so instead of creating a larger horde for more than 2 people, it adds in "Ooze Mummies", Gelatinous Cubes or some other tough mobs that fall best to gang-up attacks, rather than more Spitters that can hit everyone.
• Add for example a  knife with -1 dmg, +2 Acid dmg versus Undead, rather than stuff vs Ooze to the drops. The Oozes aren't hard to kill, so nobody bothers using the weapons off it.

I tried to think of stuff that wouldn't make it easier to smashbot but would make it doable for non-optimal teams.

[TheImpossibleDream]

The zombies have a little over 40 or 50 hp at most. I do agree though that the qeusts scaling is poor and Iprefer to do it as a duo. Sometimes a trio. Any more is as you say suicide. There is actually plenty of cover except for afewpoints which seem intended to force you to move fast.

It is however worth noting that the combination of blur and insulation makes you immune to the on hit effect. As with all on hit effects cannot proc when 0 damage is dealt.

[TeaTimer]

Some sort of different and bigger spawn that rolls out with big groups would be nice. It's balanced well for two people, three people, but after that it is very hard. The corridors mean that really only one or two people are fighting stuff at any time and taking hits. It is very rewarding though...

[Relinquish]

Nothing on that quest has any amount of AC. Take advantage of healing wands/totems on the undead, find some of that oh so precious acid resist gear. Most of all don't be stupid, I've tried less planning for this quest and it goes badly, use strategies. Yes, I've died on this quest before.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

Hard to plan when Some 20 ooze spitters are gunning for you.

[DollarPhil]

There's no need to point out how to do the quest perfectly. Right there in the OP I pointed out both the obvious counters and the problems with them because I don't want this to turn into a discussion on how to do the quest. That would mire down in one-upmanship and spoilers. The difficulty of it on the average 2 man team isn't the issue. That's OK. Challenging but rewarding. The issue is how unfairly it scales up, both from a threat point of view and the fact that only the Zombies drop loot, so the extra spawns don't in any way up the reward.
 
The funky acid resist gear is mostly from drops on that quest in the first place. Healing will cut into the zombies yes, but one, you're down to one attack per round that way, and two, it's costly in healing devices. The bigger and less organised a team, the more likely something is to go wrong, and Oozes is one of the most unforgiving quests on the server simply because everything has True Seeing. You can't invis or stealth to regroup or recover bodies.

You say "plan ahead" Rel, but the only way to really "plan" is the rather metagamey "we need a caster spamming extended flame weapons for the surprising zombies, and he must use blur not invis"

@Naga. I realise there's cover. It's sufficient for a 2 or 3 man team, but more than that and most of the spaces become extremely awkward to take advantage of. Also, quite true on the "no dmg=no onhit effect" but with so much flying at you, it's incredibly hard to keep track of how much more damage your insulation will take. Doable on smaller teams with lower spawns, much less so with a load more spitters.

[TheImpossibleDream]

The main issue is that with 2~3 you are never forced to fight more than five spitters at one time(if done correctly) however with more people you are forced to fight so many and that paralysis can last a LONG time. You could argue that more can kill the spitters faster. When in fact once one person succumbs to 4 rounds of paralysis more folk need to heal him due to other enemies of lower priorty due to sloth and DR.
edit: Damn dollarphi chimed in just before me ps3 typing takes so long . I only really disagree on weakening the zombies and changing paralyze to blind . The ooze paralyze could use a duration decrease too for reasons I mentioned above.

[DollarPhil]

I don't think the zombies need to be weakened generally so much as shifted in how their toughness works. Lower DR but more DI, since DI makes every attack generally weaker whereas DR will simply block anything below a certain threshold. DI instead would mean you'd not need high STR and a 2 hander to just dent them for a couple of points at a time without flamewep, but could feasibly chip away at them. It would take time, but it would be an option.