Ward of Elements needs to be toned WAY DOWN!

Allurana wrote:

I think the WOE is set up pretty well. Our guild, which is NOT a raid guild by a very long shot and hasn't even done weekly raids as a guild since KOS I believe. Some folks occassionally raid with other guilds and with the server alliance but we are far from skilled regular raiders as a guild. There are some of us who don't even have t2 shard armor yet (me and my husband, who is the offtank usually btw and I am usually the offtank healer in this particular raid).
Now our MT is fantastically equipped but he has worked very hard to do so and made friends with other guilds to get his mythical since it was something we just could not do. We do have a warden who is also well equipped from attending the raid alliance (but he can't always attend) and a well equipped templar who also can't always attend. And even so we still do well enough to have put in a very good effort into killing Digg and squashing the previous 3 named. It's taken us a few tries to get that far but we get better everytime we go. The first time we wiped on the first few pulls. After a few pulls we started to get the hang of what needed to happen. I still think I ended up dying 19 times, and that's even with a few deaths saved by FD. That stupid roamer, he can surprise any raid force, he's hard to see sometimes.
It's not a super easy zone to waltz into and scoop up the loots. There is a progression inside the zone and from what I understand it's a fairly big zone so lots of room for a mini raid to learn.

Beghauns wrote:

I think your issues are that you went in with the wrong idea for the mobs. You were over estimating what is needed to kill some, under estimating other. On the fire name, for an example, you just ignore the adds until after the main is dead, whereas the books need masses of AE hate and DPS.
On Aiden, with the gear I would expect you to have, you can totally ignore the portals if you have someone that can hold AE aggro.
Probably the biggest thing with this zone is the fact that some fights need decient single target aggro, while others need overly high AE aggro.

Jokael@Oasis wrote:

I said... There is no reason to bring a guard and an SK to the zone. In a raid make-up you proposed, I said lose the guard and bring another t1 dps class. I didn't say the guard sucks, I said they lack the sustained aoe aggro to be effective on all encounters in WoE. You took my 'drop the guard and just bring the SK' to mean guards suck.
I said the SK is better equiped to single tank the zone. I didn't say a guard could not do it, but for a guard to be able to do every encounter in WoE is going to require not only a very well played and geared guard, but a rock solid raid force behind him pumping out enough dps that said raid would never be posting in threads regarding WoE being difficult. By example, I doubt you could single tank it with no coercer or swash in mt group with an AoE stacked caster dps group. If you don't build that x2 to the guards strengths it has little chance at completing the zone. However the SK could single tank for any raid makup with no hate transfer or hate buff, with a raid force doing 30k parses and still win the zone. Again, I'm not saying guards suck, I'm just saying the difficulty bar is set *much* lower for AoE tanks in WoE.
I'm fairly sure I could single tank WoE on my guard as well if I brought fully stacked 2 groups. I know the only encounter that concerns me is the fire elemental, all others I'm sure I could handle trivially. However, I don't even want to post that knowing that others will think thats a good idea to try, cause honestly 90% or more of the guards reading these forums will either lack the gear, skill, or sufficient raid build to accomplish it.
Our pissing contest on the matter though, isn't really contributing to the OP, or any of the many other players finding challenge in WoE.

Atan@Unrest wrote:

I think what alot of people don't realize is the guilds that WoE is intended for do not always have the luxury of always having 'needed' classes.
Which is why for us......using an SK is optimal....we can afford to build less optimized groups using the people that we have available. For me as Guard to tank WoE would require certain classes that frankly we do not have. There is alot more wiggle room when you have an SK because the SK requires alot less of other classes to be able to do his job. We dont have a Swashy, we don't have Defiler, Brigand? whats that?, etc.......I know there are guilds out there that do not raid without those classes. But we have to make due with what we have...SK as MT allows that.

Finora@Everfrost wrote:

That's the right spirit, I salute you, good lady!

Thunndar316 wrote:

If you're this frustrated by WoE, then to be honest I suspect I don't want your stuff.
Anyway, many others have said my thoughts on this zone. Like any raid zone, it has progression. Yes, the WALK IN requirments are T2 shard armor or equivelent level of gear, plus all adept III's. But the assumption is that people will clear the first nameds, get some loot, come back if their gear is at T2 shard gear + adept III's. One is to slowly gear up, maybe just from here, maybe from both here and doing the first couple nameds in x4 raid zones also until one has a bit better gear. Also, for those that don't raid it does teach proper coordination within a raid, for lack of a better term. How to work as a raid force basically. Maybe think of WoE as a test to see if you'd like endgame raiding. If you do dislike it then you do know that there's other aspects of the endgame (such as grouping, I wonder if the guy I quoted knows that the endgame quest for TSO is ALL group zones...oh well, he already decided to /quit...) to investigate instead. If not, then it gives one some sliver of raid experience without having to join a raid guild or alliance, and lets one decide if they wish to join a raid guild, do they wish to see if they can get their guild into a raid alliance, or something else dealing with raiding.

Okay, done rambling for now. Oh, back to the guy I quoted..someone did suggest "Free Realms". I think Hello Kitty Online might be out of beta test too.

Did the zone for the fisrt time last night, not a bad zone. (got two pieces bp and pants woot) I wouldn't ask for anything to be toned down. You have to relize this is a raid zone and not a heroic instance and with raid zones comes death after death, if the first time you go in there you can only kill one name and one person gets some loot than its a win. You come back in kill the one name u can, get the loot and rinse and repeat untill everyone has the gear needed to PROGRESS in the zone. I didn't have any issue with the trash I did how ever have an SK and Zerk backing me up with the ae agro. Make sure your groups are giving you room to pull the mobs and make sure you don't waist your AE till all the mobs are in range maybe try waiting for the few romers to pass, learn the pathing and timing of the romers. Make sure your templar is using sanc on as many pulls as posible, also if you find your healers getting agro on pull and dieng use sentry and maybe sentinal just have ToS ready incase you take to much damage. Make sure you have a cleric/shammy prefurable a defiler templar in the MT group. I saw some talk about having to use potions and what not, for most of the raid mobs in TsO its very very important to use cure pots to cure yourself so why would a x2 be any different? The tools are there for a reason use tham.

Beghauns wrote:

With that kind of gear (and the assumed knowledge and experience that comes with it) once you get the strats and group make ups down for the mobs it should be pretty easy. If its not I can only assume that perhaps, just perhaps, you guys over estimated yourselves based on your gear and took things for granted. Trust me we did that ourselves for a little bit on Digg. Went in and figured "look at us, what we killed, we can bum rush dig forget about the script." NOT. It took a couple of tries to get the turns down right on him but once we did getting to Aiden is not that difficult at all. The scripts in this zone are definitely designed to make them hard to bumm rush. What this does though is make it so its skill and discipline, more than gear that makes the difference and I like that myself.

Thunndar316 wrote:

Are you basing your opinion of endgame on your trip into VP to buy your mythical? If you think WoE is too hard I find it tough to believe that you didn't buy your mythical.

SpineDoc wrote:

Well, I'm on Guk, which has a pretty decent population, and we have a couple folks on our server who are known for putting together PUG raids. Granted, they're not clearing VP or the very top-end raid content, but they're handling various Kunark stuff, getting people mythicals, etc. Raids are a two-part relationship: you need people who listen, pay attention, and who know how to play their classes; but you also need leadership.
If you're a player who frequently ends up leading (and by leading I mean 'takes charge', isn't just wearing the leader tag) groups, then why not try putting together a raid night where more casual players can attend? Advertise it on your server boards, or in chats, and start with content you know. (There's a surprising number of players out there still willing to hit high 70s content, if for nothing else than the chance at free masters).
The ideal place to be for a PUG raid on WoE is to have a set of regulars of course, but baring that, if you can at least find people who know how to play their class, it's doable. I do WoE runs with a bunch of folks who are half regulars, half PUG, and we are now having almost no problems with the first three named in WoE. (We're learning Digg now.)
Raid guilds don't have to take focus off their regular raids, unless they're raiding 7x/week, and there's probably very few guilds in game who do that - most tend towards 3-5x/wk, I'd think. I know in my guild, we have our 3 regular raid nights a week, and the WoE raid is optional. (It's actually helpful to players, as some folks who might not get on the regular nightly raids are able to get in on WoE nights.)
I'd be willing to bet with a little advertising/word of mouth, you could designate a night and pull together a force to give WoE a go.

The difficulty is right for the loot it drops don't let the x2 label fool ya. Its still a cakewalk compared to x4 zones and scripts even the ones from some of the 1 group zones have a learning curve. Trust me on this you can search the leaderboards for most deaths for your server and they'll likely all gonna be long time raiders. I can agree its prolly not the best zone for an indroduction to raiding out there (perhaps indroduction to TSO raiding). Still there are some aspects of the zone that bother me (like needing a slowfall ability/item to gather boulders effectively against Aiden)
It's meant to be a challenge just like nearly every x4 raid zone. I would prolly recommend as well since t2 armors lack forearms is to work the first x4 named in Tomb of the Mad Crusader. Just gotta warn ya about the sparkly line(may need to turn the graphics up can turn it back down once ya know where it is). You gotta kill the entry guy to disable it and you'll need to pull it and position yourself so you don't get knockedback across it. Dog or hammer pull all the trash ya can and pull the first named. He isn't all that much different from the trash (you can use the same tank spot the whole time). He's a really easy x4 it'll be easier than the x2 zone I can assure you and you'll get some really nice upgrades in the process. That's pretty much the standard raid progression starter for TSO. The 2nd named in tombs starts throwing in some crazy memwipes (which is an indroduction to how trash in inner stronghold behave. Pretty much anything else in TSO x4 has ever more complex scripts and tasks. Combining into ever more complicated patterns of cure this, click that, move here, kill this now.
But in all seriousness if you want to run WoE which is an introduction to the raiding world don't be afraid to roll the some of the true x4s as well. Even the trash in TSO x4s can drop stuff that would be nice to have. A t2 equipped raid should have little trouble with Tomb of the Mad crusader up to the first named and the trash in Palace of the ancients then work up to Tomb's 2nd name and Inner Stronghold trash (beware the stalker though). Any further than that though then I'm gonna have to call ya a raider.

Xendo wrote:

Players that get ported get a slowfall buff on them automatically.

This is not a overly hard zone it seems my only HUGE problem with this zone is the very long lockout timer. Most raid zones the lockout is only 3 days to be able to reset it this one is what 7 days? Considering you have to clear this zone for access to the raid zone makes this task a lil frustrating.

After dealing with recruits / spouses in there in 2 runs again last night, increase the model size of the tornado's x4. Then the zone is where it should be.

Haven't done this zone in quite a while as it's rare to find a group looking for more for WOE on my server. But before our VP raid a couple of groups from my guild went in there and we blew through it pretty quickly. These are groups that are used to raiding and are pretty cohesive with scripts.
Interestingly enough right after WOE we did our regularly scheduled VP run, we were on the last 3 or 4 named. We blew thru them so fast that we had an extra hour left to kill the first 2 named in the Palace raid zone. I only bring that up because it seems clearing VP was a bit easier than clearing WOE, but maybe we are just used to VP by now and don't do WOE that often.
What kills me though is after playing all day like that I actually got zero drops, one Templar item dropped in WOE which I lost the roll on (I just don't understand shared patterns), and the stuff that drops in VP IMO kind of sucks for plate healers. So I walked away with .000014 of AA xp maybe, and nothing else, sigh.

SpineDoc wrote:

You got a couple shards and some plat!

Well this weekend we did WOE again. Went in planning to just do the first 3 that we are able to do.
But this time we decided to take a stab at the one in the library with all the books. Wiped once but we finally were able to take down that named. The fight was surprisingly easier than we had thought or been warned about. Then we took a few stabs at the fire elemental. We definately have the strat down but we just do not have the DPS or the extra healing required.
So for us thats now 4 WOE named we can farm
I am more convinced now than ever that WOE is perfect for a guild like ours.

Xalmat wrote:

Well, the healers' gear matters too. I solo healed a guardian in t2 shard armor for the zone (before aiden was toned down) with a shaman in the other group. Wasn't that bad, but I'm pretty well set and so was the other shaman. I am pretty sure I could have solo healed the zone entirely with no healer in second group but kinda dangerous with Aiden's curse and likelihood of me getting banished so no reason to risk it outside of bragging rights (which admittedly I'll probably try to do for fun).

My personal perception of WoE is that it was originally cast as an upcoming x2 raid zone for the casual raider.
This is not the case at all. With the new upcoming zone from Kander now being pitched as a x2 that is more challenging than WoE, I think you will see even fewer people playing that zone.
I saw a posting about the devs watching the success and failure of people through this zone but the question is - are you also watching the number of people not playing the zone at all that are of appropriate level?
There is nothing wrong with new raid zones but it seems they are being tuned to a point of creating nothing more than a timesink for high end raiders so they can sell loot rights and waste time until another expansion arrives. Having it marketed as a casual raiding zone I think gave many guilds a wrong impression of the content. Much like TSO being marketed as a 50-80 content expansion when it was really 75-80 for 99% of the content.
Just a thought.

Artemiz@The Bazaar wrote:

To be fair they never used the term "Casual" when describing WOE.........what they did say was......."This zone is balanced for players without a proliferation of raid gear".
Which is exactly what was delivered.
It was the players that created false expectations and somehow expected a Deep Forge for 12 instead of a actual raid zone.