There can be both easy 30 minute ones and harder ones, but the harder ones should have something special, as it is your best bet is to do the 2 easy ones and ignore the rest if all you want is the player gear or merc gear. You do have to do all of them at least once if you want the Special AA though. The easy ones are good because they are only 30 minute instances, you can get a group get in and get out and be done relatively fast, they aren't as interesting though. The longer ones are probably more fun overall, but there's no point repeating them. They are basically one and done's like most missions. You don't even really get more currency from them either for your time/effort. At least with Dzarn's HA's you can get up to all 3 named popping at once, plus there's the A5 side stuff that can be neat in other parts of the game.
I'm not sure about the other zones, but in Dead Hills - you can bypass doing the 4 named -- or captains -- by re-requesting the mission until you get a collect mission. There are 2 versions of of those missions. It's hard to kill those 4 mobs while boxing, so i opt for the collect ones. Merc Tanks You people that make fun of merc tanks seriously need quit being so simple minded. I run a monk and there is no way in hell most could box 2 melee toons with all the options, button pushing and placement at each mob -- unless your advocating using "special software"? If you do have some neat secret to box 2 melee toons, by all means, let us in on your method because my monk has to run behind each mob, then requires constant button pushing to max out his dps. Named in Heroic missions The named in those missions are impossible to do with a merc tank and boxing 3 toons / 3 mercs. I've had 2 named -- the mosquito that dots for 60k/tick(thanks for that Sony) --- and the other named casted fear which is a death sentence to anyone running mercs. The named mobs drop gear that no raider would even consider, but that no grouper running 3/3 with mercs(including merc tank) could possibly acquire. Named Mobs that Fear Anyone that has group gear and boxes 2/2 or 3/3 can tell you that all these named in CoTF that fear are never getting killed by us. What is with all the named that fear in this expansion? its a fear-fest i swear. I guess we just have to find the ones we can actually handle and keep jabbing away at those mobs for the new gear. ... and do you know how frustrating it is to camp a mob for over 3 hours, to have it finally spawn, then a group of raiders roll up and kill it while i was medding -- "because it was on track". I'll let those types of people get bored of CotF and i'll enjoy it without their company. I'm seriously heading back to RoF and finish gearing up there. Its too frustrating in CotF atm.
Ok so I want to find a HA that I can do lesson burns in. I only get about an hour and a half to play per night, and I want to find an HA that I can farm/lesson burn on both of my 4 box crews in about 30-40 min for the lesson burn. My two crews are right now: Bard (100), Monk (97), Wiz (100), Shaman (100), Tank merc, Healer merc Mage (100), BST (97), Druid (100), SK (97), Tank merc, Healer merc Would the Into the Hills HA best suit my needs? I want fast pulling and not too much moving the whole crew around if possible. p.s. I am using the tank merc instead of the SK until the SK hits 100 and I will switch out the Tank merc for a DPS merc. Thanks for the suggestions!
I main an sk and box a rogue, it's really not that bad. Am I less effective than doing only 1? Sure. Do I miss a few backstabs doing sk stuff? Sure. It's still a plenty effective dps bot, though. Monk has about the same number of mashes and their dps isn't anywhere near as restrictive or reliant on positioning. Agree with you on a few of the names in DH though. The squire we killed twice with fear wasn't cake in raid gear.
Merc tank is utterly useless on nameds inside the heroics. It's so frustrating. Even with 2 merc healers he still dies to most nameds within seconds. So much for "balanced around 3 players and 3 mercs". Maybe more like 3 dps caster mercs. lol
Although there is no way in hell that you can manage it, that doesn't mean everyone else is as inept as you are. I have been boxing warrior+beastlord+druid for years and have zero problems doing so on a highly effective basis. That's two melee, plus a pet, plus two spellcasters, plus a healer, all wrapped up in three characters. Effortless.
I've been unsociable in CotF so far, I've been boxing a mage (group geared) and wizzy (raid geared) and 2 healer mercs. I've managed to do the 1st HA in Bixieland and all the HA's in Dead HIlls, enough to get Partisan in both zones. They have been a challenge, which is what I needed and have taken anything upto 3 and half hours. I've had a few named the only one who caused me any issues was Marcelyn Sjobern in Excavating an Anser in Dead Hills, she wiped me once or twice but I did get her dead. Enranged Bixie caught me out in the first Bixie mission as I just didn't see it until after it attacked and killed the mage. Its been fun and challenging. My current plan is to do the partisan in Neriak and then go back and do the HAs in Bixieland. Once I'm done I'll be grouping anything anyone else wants to do and boxing only when I feel I need a challenge.
Let me be clear. I don't think the Heroic Missions are "bad" I think they are overtuned to what they were said to be in Beta. I just did Heroic Adventure in Dead Hills Heroic Adventure Chain: Clearing a Path There is Zero Chance IMO that a Group of 3 Mercs 3 Players are finishing this in 1 Hour without Raid Gear. The mobs do too much damage for a Tank Merc, or Group Geared Tank to survive with one Merc Healer. There are too many wandering mobs, mixed undead/normal, and even see invis normal, to make it where you can move up and around camp spots. Meaning you almost have to clear everything in path resulting in such a large kill count that I don't believe this is doable in 1 hour
Thanks for the feedback so far. I'm bumping this thread to request more feedback on the current Heroic Adventures in Bixie Warfront and Dead Hills. Let us know what you like and dislike about them, and what you'd change or add to future iterations of the concept. All perspectives and playstyle concerns are welcome, but please keep it friendly and cordial.
After going through pretty much all of these, multiple times, seeing various named etc... with groups comprised of fully raid geared guildmates... I can see where the group geared players would have a LOT of headaches trying to get through some of these. The current difficulty level is fine for raid geared peeps... but in the interest of those players who don't have the skills/stats of most raiders, the adventures may be a tad overtuned... especially the later Dead Hills HA's.
DH HA's are *way* harder than BW ones. Dunno if that was really intended or not, but the tuning in DH compared to BW is like RoF T3 compared to RoF T1. Those zones don't belong in the same tier.
Many take way too long. Thank goodness I roll with a chanter or they would take so much longer. The named are too rare. I feel like these are too much work for too little reward. After finishing a chain of quest, I've had zero feeling of satisfaction, just relief I'm done with it. I don't know if everyone gets what I'm saying, but, that's just not how a game we play for fun should have us feeling.
Oh yeah, and the named in BW are way too rare. Guess that matches the difficulty gap between BW in DH. But I'd rather see BW tuned harder with more chance of a named.
I have to disagree with this assessment. I complete HAs regularly with a group geared bard, a wiz with outdated raid gear (2 expacs old), a tank merc and a cleric merc. I suppose an argument might be that the bard is able to split and bring in one mob at a time, but there are some steps that make that nearly impossible (Lippy and Slicky in Jacyll's Jailbreak is one example). That said, they are much easier with even a group geared tank than with a merc tank. Seems either merc tanks have lost their aggro abilities or my wizard has gained some.
Due to changes (read: buffs) to all 3 tank classes over the past few expansions, the gap between having and hot having a real PC tank is larger now than it has been in a couple years. Get an actual tank if you're having trouble.
The good: I enjoyed these as opposed to normal mercenary tasks. I have always liked zones that have no repops as it is just more satisfying to clear them. I wish at times they were more dungeon like, as these zones are pretty easy to navigate and pull, although making them entirely this way would not be good either. My complaints: 1- Inconsistent difficulty. One mission goes quick and easy and the next is a nightmare even though it seems to be just as simple. Creatures within the missions do not appear to be tuned the same either. Certain task steps can make or break a mission. I flew through the first 7 DH missions (45-60 minutes each on average) with a few little bumps here and there but nothing I couldn't overcome. DH 8/9 took 2-3 hours and had many obstacles that were very frustrating. 2- Dead ends. At the end of the 9th DH mission I had to open a locked chest. I had no means to open it myself and did not have the A5 yet. My options were brute force or quit. I cast once on the chest and spawned 6 adds. Two hours into the mission and my only option was to quit now. Punishing for mistakes is fine, but having things that can not be recovered from at all is not good design in my opinion. Tuning: As far as tuning goes I basically did all of the missions solo w/cleric merc. My general opinion on tuning is that if I can't solo something (unless it is the result of needing major crowd control or some specific coordinated effort that requires more people) there are going to be major complaints about the difficulty by the community at large. Missions with a lot of back-to-back named/boss kills are going to slow average groups down a lot. I don't think they are over tuned individually, but they do likely require waiting for discs and abilities to refresh for most and that can add some serious length to a mission.
Would it be possible to have the warrior/monk mobs in the clearing a path/excavating an answer series looked at? I had an easier time tanking most named in WK then I had against these, just ridiculous spike potential on these. Also, would you like collection bugs in this area too? Most collections are good, save for the ones occuring Skulk Madaxe's task arc. Some of those are literally ungettable, I've stood inside one and not been able to get it.
Some trash mob in saving jacyll have up to 12 million hitpoint... that's more than RoF names. granted they don't hit much harder than the regular trash mob but.... wtf? 12 million hp when the regular trash mob have 2 M or less?
