In Discussion Balrog Boss thread

So hype seeing new content in Royals, Big appreciation for the staffs, less goooo

 

As of ST 05:33:41 Apr. 12, 2025

Note on an attemp at Balrog PQ:

Do not sign with Mu Young if your party is not ready!
There is no sign-up, and your party will be teleported to the map immediately and kill your unready party members!

Boss time limit: 25 min.
Right hand and left hand HP are 25% ea.
How fast can we kill:
We are a 5-man party. One died early for low HP; the second one died for DP before 4:30.
Most of the damage was dealt by 8* dk, 8* bandit, and 99 priest.
It took 19 min and 38 sec for us to kill the hands (50% of total HP).
For a 6-man expedition, killing balrog in 25 min should be easy.

Spoiler

Right hand can dispel (DP).
DP intervals could vary.
I took notes on DP time (not exact):
4:30
5:50
6:23
7:52
It seems like DP every 80 sec or so.

Left hand won't DP. (We observed DP when attacking left hand.)

Head will DP.
(If it works properly will damage reflect, but we haven't observe it yet.)

Balrog is bugged currently (ST 05:33:41 Apr. 12, 2025). In some cases, you can't kill the head. (Hopefully will be solved in the SC.)
How much damage does balrog do:

Spoiler

DR up to 3~4k, and can do damage thru magic guard (unwashed mage wont survive).
Rocks can 1/1 you. (Don't know why but it can instant kill my mage making it 0/1.)
Other damage is pretty low:

中文版：

Spoiler: 中文

现阶段Balrog有bug，手可以杀，有些情况下头杀不了。
这个boss目前没有sign-up，点npc的选项会直接将你们传送到boss地图，如果你们还没准备好，就不要点npc，不然容易导致队友死。
左右手各25% HP，头50%。
右手会DP（消除buff），间隔约80秒。
左手不会DP。
头会DP。
因为还有bug，我们并不能对头造成伤害。
在约20分钟的时间内，我们打了50%的boss HP，伤害主要来自8* dk, 8* bandit 和 99 priest，另外有两名队员很早就死了。
6人团应该能比较轻松地在25分钟内解决balrog。
感谢各位参加本次测试。

Thank you all for testing with us.

 

Just a thought/feedback, if the idea is to make a lvl 75-99 char for the bossing content, shouldn't the shoulder pad not have godroll stats?

At this point, we're making a character in that acc to park at balrog pq as a mule to farm the shoulder equip.

If the idea is to get the equip once and then be happy with that shoulder, I would agree with the level cap but if there's a godroll element to the shoulder, it's basically forcing new players to stunt their character there till they get a shoulder of decent stats or veterans to make a balrog pq mule specifically to get a godroll stat they pref. Just a thought.

 

Yup I can affirm that the boss is bugged at 50%. The boss stay purple even after the alter was hit.

 

I like how this is aimed at mid level accounts, new content is always appreciated. It does feel like it's forcing players to make a Balrog PQ mule, as mentioned above

Maybe post level 99, the boss could be solo'd with beefed up stats and a lower godly item drop rate? That way, you won't miss anything if you have already leveled past 99.

 

I have not seen this implementation in a game before where the game masters felt the need to create a low-level accessible quest only to obtain an item. Whose/What was the thought process in making this a low level PQ whereby a potential godroll item can only be obtained?
If this is a way to introduce additional item slots for future high level PQs such as PB or future planned content, could you advise the community that this is the intent. Otherwise, srsly, why?

 

Just to keep in mind that this shoulder is current BIS.

While the level cap may be a nuinsance, many of us will be ok to make a character to get that 2 all stat.

The fact that most players don't make their attackers on the same account and instead, separate accounts, means if everyone wants a shoulder, they have to make respective amount of characters for their respective amount attackers. Coupled by the fact that now the shoulder is godroll, isn't this just promoting lvl 75-99 mules and to speed runs even faster, GEARED lvl 75-99 mules

 

Balrog shoulder pad average stat 2 (1 to 3), godly 8
To get a main stat = 8 shoulder, on average one needs to get 20 x 3 x 6 = 360 shoulders

There is no god-roll on Balrog should pads. So stats are 1 ~ 3.

We don't know how many shoulders ea run gives (or how to get it).

3 shoulder pads ea run

Spoiler: shoulders drop

We cleared 2 runs, with 3 shoulders and 3x 1k NX ea run.

But it seems that one needs to run balrog for months to get an 8 stat shoulder..
Either you stay lvl 99 for months, or you make a mule (or be super lucky)...

Spoiler: split shoulders?

I can imagine drama on the shoulders if they are drops.
People would be doing balrog on their mules.
If someone loots everything, community blacklist won't work as they are mules..

 

Veterans could fight this boss by having their skills and damage nerfed too, just like the original where you get a purple seal debuff that does that.

The game already has this mechanism in PQs where higher levelled characters have their skills locked to the PQ's level range. Separately, it would be more helpful for a veteran to help out a new player if they can do more damage to the boss.

 

Can't say I'm super excited to make a Balrog Boss mule for every single character that I've leveled past level 100(considering they're on different accounts).
There's probably also some newer players that have just hit level 100 for the first time and thereby barely missed out on this content.
The influx of new characters might mean some more action in the lower-level PQs but I could also see people just buy leech until 75 to be able to run the boss.

 

normally you would expect new contents to be progressive for existing players (and newer ones) but this one is just straight up backwards especially when a good portion of the population already have each and every class maxed out in level albeit leeching through the entirety of 3rd job, which i assume is the targeted part of gameplay to improve here so i would like to acknowledge that the intention is good.

however, what you are doing here is directly forcing your older players to play a new 3rd job character, for each existing attacker class across separate accounts because apparently being a multiclient-enabled server promotes this, which would then be trashed aside once they have acquired this currently only-in-slot gear because there will be no good reason to do it anymore (tbd because it is still day 1 and i heard it drops some dank auf for legs stuff, maybe there are more lucrative rewards in it?).

i would like to propose that the shoulder pads be made tradeable, perhaps once-only or untradeable upon equipping so that people can re-use this one 3rd job character to gear all their end-game characters and also providing incentive to potentially make meso while re-playing a low-level content with newer players. this will also cushion the psychological damage dealt when a better shoulder pad comes along eventually (cuz you simply have to release one) then players cry again because their 12 level 99 mules now have no use.

Spoiler: level-restriction

 

Update:
We have successfully cleared 2 runs (and all mages ripped in both runs)
Shoulders are direct drops. (1st run 3 shoulders, 2nd run also 3 shoulders.)

Mage attackers won't make it thru the run because DR kills you before you notice it.
When DR happens: (see the little blue/purple symbol?)


(when u see the horns go red ur already dead)


Thank you all for testing with us.


Seems like duo with 3 DK's is the best choice:
1. high HP unwashed (to survive DR)
2. HB
3. end game weapon sky ski lvl req. 85, or pyrope spear lvl 77, or fishing pole lvl 45 (cheap, great without SI)
4. great damage
5. gizer run with 6 dk's ez
6. duo good for drops split

New players may do balrog runs for a couple of days. Soon they will face the situation to choose between leveling up or grinding for a good shoulder..
I believe most people would just settle with whatever they get, and make a shoulder mule in the future (prob. DK).

According to the current drop quantity (3 shoulders per run), if one does not duo, one may get 1 shoulder each day.
If duo, 3 shoulders.

On average, one needs to get 120 shoulders for a 7 or 8 stat shoulder (or 360 shoulders for an 8 stat).
Non-duo players on average need to grind for 4 months.
Duo players on average need to grind for 1.3 months.

 

1. New 3rd job bossing content is nice, that seems very fun
2. Making it drop a best in slot item when it's limited to level 75-99 only is terrible
3. Making shoulders roll godly stats is diabolical (I hope it's not the case) because it means secondary stats are just going to be less of an issue and the effects on the market will be devastating, surely you didn't make this mistake right...?

It's better fixing this now before it's another auf helm situation where you can't erase/change the item when many people already grinded it.

 

I don't think it's fair that mages have so many ways to die here (damage reflect, dispel). From what it looks like the dr can hit over the max hp of lower hp characters (think I saw a 3.9k dr hit? my lv 95 thief is 3470 hp with 360hp from medal+eq), though they will probably live with hyper body (if we ignore that it dispels very often). Mages just die I guess, since no one loves them until 4th job. Dk is just easy mode here so time to have everyone make a dk mule for bpq.

 

Ways mages could die:
1. got dp and didn't recast mg
2. got hit by rock

Spoiler: rock

Hit by rock. HP = 0, MP = 1. Buffs (mg) still up.

Spoiler: weird

Just watched the recording again.
A warrior/crusader (3rd job hero) got hit by rock and survived.
Still don't know why my mage got 0/1 by rock.

3. DR

Spoiler

 

Wanna provide some important animation gifs.
Let me know if the info is incorrect or if there are other important things to add.

Dispel:
You will see Balrog's chest glow purple, followed by a purple bite animation on your characters. (dispel applies when the bite hits)
Note: Sometimes dp doesn't apply (my guess is other attacks/touch give you iframe to avoid the DP attack), but it's good to know when it's coming.


Damage Reflect:
You will see an orange circle rune in front of Balrog's mouth appearing, then its horn glows up slowly. (DR starts instantly when the circle rune appears)
Note: DR hits up to around 4k and it goes through magic guard; each DR lasts for roughly 10 sec; DR cd is about 60~70s, so if your hp is low, consider stop attacking 55s after you see the last DR cast.

Spoiler: dr cast history

 

Was lucky to have a drk on my main's account near the level range for this. Got a little bit of leech and was ready to try it out.
First run failed with 4 people after a we lost one to DR and we didn't have enough damage to clear.
Smega'd for a few backups, put on more serious gear, and an echo later cleared our 2nd run (s/o @Jozeph @MengQian)

I think there's valid points above but just wanted to say it was a lot of fun (even though only 3 shoulderpads dropped and I missed out #nexttime)

 

I dont know how possible it is to implement but I think that requireing every existing account to create a mule char in order to be able to get the sholder just doesn't make sense.
If it could be changed so the sholder is transferable between accounts logged in to the same computer it would be much more resonable, since it would only require each person to make 1 mule to get the sholder on all of their chars. I'm not sure how implementable it is but I just think the current situation doesn't make sense.