Questions about QuarmFollow

3.7k max, I believe (could be wrong: all of our tanks have shielding), average high HP, and his DPS doesn't dimish as his heads pop; it technically grows slightly, depending on tactics.

Yeah what Outcast and Merri said. He has a damage base of 1k and a damage intervel of like 140 or so. Right now, I think the only killable boss type mob that hits harder is Quintessence of Sand.

What changes each time he loses a head is his AE's, as he basically loads a new set as he resets himself:

Starts with-
Fire AE 3k
Disease 500/tick dot
Poison 500/tick ot
Cold snare thingy
mr mana drain, atk debuff

74%-50%
Cold AE 3k
DR DoT
PR DoT
Mr mana drain

49-25%
PR AE 3k
DR DoT
Mr mana drain

24-dead
MR 3k AE
MR mana drain

I consider the 500/tick dots as his most damaging AEs myself, so yeah I do think of his DPS as going down, but some people like to joust more than I do so take less damage from that. As Merri said, depends how you fight him.

per hit heh

It can get downright painful.

Per hit?

Sheesh, I wonder what your Cheal line looks like. 0,5 second interval with 15 priests on patch?

Oh, Aadynn, I plan to steal the Shards guildbank, run off and apply with the d00ds from FaF of course!

To be honest, Quarm is probably one of the -least- damaging Time gods in actually melee- because he's slowable, and has a slow base attack speed. Unslowed his delay is like 30 or something, slowed it's closer to 70 (7 seconds). So I tend to only use 4 clerics going at about 6 seconds normally, with them going to 3 seconds when he goes unslowable.

Quarm just has the really amusing tendency to kill your tank in one set of attacks from full, once in a while. Rallos in phase 5 on the other hand, below half, has some really, really impressive DPS. And then there's the Quintessence of Sand in the takish LDON time raid, which can hit for 4500 per hit, and is magic immune, so not gonna stick 75% slow on him.

Yes and no. A lot of mob difficulty is basically built around rate of attrition.

Quarm is an extremely well designed mob, at least in intent, that doesn't necessarily pull it off. In theory, you have a mob that needs defensive to effectively be tanked, since it can one round kill anyone tanking it, while having relatively controlled dps and such destructive AE's that ress-rushing or bind-rushing is impractical or ineffective.

In practice, a mob that swings like that every 7-8 seconds isn't very threatening melee wise, because say he one round kills a moderately equipped knight one time in 4. 8 seconds is more than enough time for people to frantically dump assist heals and keep him up. So you'll be losing guys that really -can't- take quarm still once every 30+ seconds, which isn't a terrible rate of attrition. You can't ress in, but you are still losing relatively little people to his dps.

Now, where people lose Quarm is mostly him going unslowed (so he's swinging every 3 seconds, which often is too fast for people to pick up assist heals, getting double rounds on guys, and killing someone every 3-6 seconds or so) and just being beaten down by his AE's. Obviously, if the tank dies, half the melee start playing it VERY safe on his aggro. Which is the right call, except that his AE's are so damaging that if your dps is halved by everyone playing it safe, you are pretty much doomed by a 20 minute fight. And running people back naked into 3k AE's and 500/tick dots isn't exactly productive to repairing your dps when you take losses from attrition.

The other place people lose is just keeping up with AE's. In order to deal with 3k ae's and 500/tick dots, in a fairly low fight, you need a pretty substantial healing force. Frankly, if people wanted to make an argument for paladins being overpowered, -tanking- quarm isn't nearly as big a deal as having paladins in melee groups on him. Group heals just are absolutely crucial, since even mass heals at 300/tick won't keep up with that without dedicated group healers backing it up, and Quarm has enough health were trying to go a super dps heavy composition without healer backing will just get slaughtered each time. I've taken quarm with 40ish, but that force was extremely dps light. It was however super heavy on clerics, bards, paladins, shamans, etc... just a force capable of going on him nearly indefinitely, compared to one that spikes high early on dps then just bleeds dps through the whole fight.

Quarm is, by far, the best designed mob in the game, no question. He is just right in every single aspect except one: his AE's have a range of 500, and they should have a range of 800. This change would force guilds to deal with the attrition rather than being creative about positioning, so the AE's don't hit the zone-in.

I really don't like when people cycle in or "run back." We don't do it, as a general rule, but we certainly have in the not-too-distant past, and it's very possible on Quarm, the one thing I don't like about the fight.

He's still not my favorite fight in the Plane of Time, though... that honor goes to Bertox, because I love seeing new invites (a nomiker which encompassed me not so long ago), saying things like, "What the **** is that AE ****?"

I would trade my soul for a Jagged Timeforged Blade.

Oh yes.