candida wrote:Should not a bigger monster cast stronger spells? And what about greater Earth elementals who NEVER cast mass distortion (which is also quite powerful)? In current status, it's easier to kill greater elementals than mid-level elementals.
Well, I wouldn't know about the greater earth elementals. The last time I played MM8 was quite a while ago. But even if they did cast mass distortion, the medium earth elementals could still be more dangerous until you become higher level.
But anyway, my point was that if anything, the medium earth elementals are the ones that are too strong comparatively. I'm just looking at the monster stats (which I got from some site years ago) and doing some math with them:
The average damage from Blades at M9 will be 45. Whereas the average damage of Rock Blast M5 will be 37.5.... to each character. So if you have 5 characters, that's 187.5! For comparison, the strongest dragons deal 72 average damage per attack (although I'm assuming they have a faster recovery time). Now, I don't remember the general level when I usually go to the plane of earth, but I think the greater earth elementals might deal similar damage with their mass distortion GM10 but probably only if they hit a troll or a knight at those levels.
But if we want to talk about bad balance, we should talk about the Fire Elementals. The lesser fire elementals cast fireball M9, which similarly to Rock Blast hits all five party members, for an average of 157.5 damage. Less than the rock blast, sure, but these are lesser elementals...! And the medium fire elementals cast.... haste.
Greater fire elementals cast incinerate at M10 but that only deals 95 damage on average.
So yeah, monsters casting aoe spells and always hitting all five characters with them is kind of overpowered. I think the devs realized that and made the rock blast less strong - I wouldn't be surprised if they tested it with them having Rock Blast M9 and were constantly dying on the plane of earth.
But I'm not complaining. I like a challenge.
The plane of earth is my favorite dungeon in Might and Magic 8 because it's only one that actually feels dangerous. I'm just saying, I suspect the devs made them cast it at a lower level for balancing reasons.
You'd think Darkmoor was a ghost town, but instead there's plenty of life among the dead.