I'll start with my question. I'm curious how many mobs in phase 2 guilds who are successful at this raid are killing before the squads break at the 6 minute mark? Our guild is what I assume is typical mid tier these days. We don't field a full raid force. Most raid nights we're around 40 and the CoTF raids top guilds obliterate with 54 good raiders we have to grind through. For Arx 1, we've yet to get a clean break at the 6 minute mark where all the remaining soldiers are locked down, which is obviously a problem in and of itself, but what I think is more important is that we're usually only making it through 7 mobs (5 soldiers + magio/vitali ) during the 6 minutes before Tita and the other squads go active. So the question again, how bad is that compared to guilds who are successfully doing this raid?
That must make it difficult We make it through the first set of mobs all dead in about 1m30s. Then we clear through the others and have killed the numbers that force Tita active by around 6-7 minutes in. I worry these TDS raids we have seen so far are very much pure dps raids, I had hoped we were moving away from them but it seems not.
They are designed for raids of 54 people in a minimum of CotF T1 gear, so you lack of success on this raid is expected. I do sympathize with you, but I think the title of the thread is misleading a bit. Your problem is not dps, it's fielding a full raid, which you obviously know. Given your details, you are doing 1/3 or less of the dps of guilds who are beating this event regularly, and even 1/3 is a touch on the generous side. Keep farming CotF, and hopefully you can draw some more players in. I hope it works out for you!
Recruitment, guesting, joint raids, merging, boxing and primarily raiding CotF and poking at Arx1 when you have a high turnout are pretty much your options. At your described DPS rate I don't think you would beat the event before it reset (30min) even if you managed to control and survive all the mobs. Not only do you have to beat Arx1 once like it was Ritual of Terror or Pillars of Alra that were really difficult to beat with 40 but you have to beat Arx1 every week to access any other raid in Arx so an occasional win from high turnout/luck/skill/grit wouldn't let you spend much time on any other Arx raids. There are definitely guilds than can beat Arx1 with 40 but none of those guild typically field 40.
on a good night, we clear all but 1 august on the first pack, and get the magio-vitali down on the 2nd pack ( 5 august + magio + vitali). on a bad night... tita become active before we touch the 2nd magio. i'd assume we're below-average on dps amongst the top 20 guild.
If this is the case and with EQs shrinking player base maybe this raid should be toned down some. Maybe increasing 6 minute timer and 30 minute timer and removing restriction on being belly casters when rooted? Just some thoughts.
They never stated they havnt farmed CotF, they only stated they still grind through it. Could mean they are well geared in it, could mean they arnt. The problem they are stating is they cant field full raids. And that is a growing problem among all of EQ not just their stated guild. And the higher end guilds are already beating this, so why not hook the struggling guilds up? Let them play some catchup, they are still going to be behind the higher end guilds.
I can appreciate the woes of a mid tier guild. I am in a unique situation where I can raid with both a top 10 and a top 50 guild. The differences between the guilds are many, but the difference in mentality between dps classes is one of the largest. Without checking logs, I would say your guild DPS is a bit on the low side per capita even for mid tier. So even with a full raid your DPS need to pick up some slack. My top 10 guild can clear half of the Augusts and the Vitali/Magio in about 5 minutes, with probably 5-7 DPS saving their burns for the boss on a good stride night. Otherwise we'll be pushing the 6 minute mark with the same people reserving their burn for the boss. They only mezz 10 (5 each from N and E) and clean up the rest of the south before starting Tita. One enchanter and 3-4 bards. The other guild will get through half of the N, E and the first couple on the south side before the timer is up with what I assume is their burning dps but have not won the event yet. That said, the cause of wipes has always been issues with uncontrolled adds summoning healers and tanks and causing issues (5 chanters and a bard /grrr, it shouldn't be that hard). Here's the thing. You can mezz everything once the event timer starts unless I am mistaken. In theory, a low DPS guild with competent enchanters can get away without killing anything before Tita goes active (I would recommend killing the magio/vitali anyway though due to the ae's and as many Augusts as you can so you can start on the magio/vitali earlier). I am perhaps a bit overly judgmental, but sticking an enchanter at the base of each stair case to mezz 10-12 mobs should not be "hard." I would probably do single target mezzes and just cycle them to make sure none resist and I don't lose track of them with mem blurs etc or use the ETW to assign each mob. I don't main an enchanter but I have an alt that I play so I am not totally clueless. Bards can clump them and AE/single mezz too. In theory as long as the chanter isn't the target of all the AE's they shouldn't really need many heals either with their spell and regular runes. Point being, though DPS definitely makes it easier, good CC will work too.
We are not a top DPS guild but do a solid job. Looking at the 3 groups on the timed part we just did this with 48 and still killed 7 out of the first 2 groups and 5 out of the third group before the 6 mins was up. The DPS requirement is not that high. If your having issues look at your range DPS and make sure they are all actually close enough to do damage. A good CC plan is more important than DPS.
Why not hook them up? You cannot be serious, that is the worst reaction possible. There are many alliances out there, some of which beat difficult raids. They have clearly not farmed it enough, because the raids are designed for 54 people, all in CotF gear, so they currently need to farm it for another 14 people. They also could do the previous, and form an alliance with another guild, and then attempt this raid again, and see if they are successful. I would think, that with 40 ppl, and doing 1/3 or less of the dps of guilds beating this, that it would be obvious they need to farm more, or otherwise do not have the proper raid makeup to overcome the raids design, which could be done with many different configurations before you say it has to be a certain one. It does not need to be made easier, and "hooking them up" is a beyond poor solution.
The reason why is to retain customers. Without mentioning anything in Sense Heading, at SOE Live or by whatever other method they drastically increased the difficulty of raids. A guild typically fielding 40 most likely could have beaten every raid in the last two expansions while it was current, possibly only beating a few of the raids (Xorbb1, Heart2, ToRot) with higher than average turnout/luck/etc. Then you release a new expansion with effectively no raids for a couple of dozen guilds that had a high level of success on CotF raids and you're going to wreck guilds and in the reshuffling going to lose customers. Make Arx1 farming even more trivial which will also eventually give guilds access to Vitio and you have a couple of Arx raids for those lower couple of dozen guilds to work on while they try to build up their force to the point they can beat the other 5 TDS raids.
That customer retention thing always seems to rear it's head. They have not quit, nor have they threatened to, and simply asked where they fit as far as dps on the event compared to other guilds. Customer retention never had anything to do with it, number fielded and dps did. They have many options to be successful, yet the only one anyone is screaming (and curiously not themselves /boggle @ these responses) is nerf the content. They (I assume) are trying to find out where they fit dps wise, and are attempting to figure out their needs to win, which is commendable, instead of saying "make the content something which it was not designed for", or "it's too hard", which it isn't. Someone has given them all they need to win, or at least do better, already in this thread.
The fact is that not everyone can be above average players, obviously. Indeed half your players are going to be distinctly below average . Now in the top couple uber guilds they'd be punted out and replaced with better players, but the average mid to low level raiding guild doesn't have this luxury. I'm not saying everyone in a mid tier guild is bad, FAR from it and IMO the top players will rival the top players elsewhere, but the *average* player just isn't the same dps as the *average* top tier guild is due to selection pressures. This is why raids need to be tuned around the average guild, and not the min/max top few guilds. In an ideal world SOE would try a bit of both - starting raids hard and tuning down a little bit to give some meaning to the race - but if push comes to shove and the money doesn't go around then I'm sorry but perfectly optimised raid forces will just have to suffer with the game seeming easy. As for how far do we get? It varies. We've now beaten this event twice (Ancient Dominion) and are the 26th guild to get a new kill on it so we're far far from high end. We kill just enough soldiers to take out the magio & healer mob and then move on to the next. We typically have to keep killing after Tita pops so we can take out the last magio, but we usually have the previous one downed by then.
What feels more problematic to me in this situation is the massive hp pool you'll witness with Aragus - at the pace you describe, you're looking at a good 15 minute fight (I'm estimating wildly here, but the number feels right.) Even if you manage to lock all the mobs down and kill Captain, you still have to kill all the adds off to finish the event. In the end, you're probably going to time out regardless. If I had any advice, it would be focus on perfecting the first mass of mobs, and ensure that there are no avoidable deaths (claw-bombing the raid.) The smaller the raid force, the more perfect the play has be. I'd make the entire guild read and understand the Freelance (or your own) write-up to get more comfortable and understand. For any progress in this expansion, guilds really need to be fielding a full raid force. I wish there was an easier way to put it, but unfortunately that is the case. This event is a tiny bit of foreplay compared to 2, 3, or 4. The difficulty pendulum swung fairly hard in the opposite direction after we all complained about how easy CoTF was, with each one getting progressively more difficult. Events are built for full raids, and I'm afraid we're going to see quite a few guilds forced to collapse, or take a merge alternative with a similarly struggling guild before this is all over with.
I think that adequately represents how far Freelance gets as well. We have to kill the last priest/magio after boss spawns, but the other two are usually down.
I've never liked events with a hard time limit to complete. As long as they keep creating them I'll never be able to raid with my ideal raid force of 53 healers and me.
If it wasn't for needing pesky mezzers and charmers, you'd have a good shot at the first one-off that way
This is why having only 1 raid tier is flawed. Either it's too challenging for the masses and only satisfies a few hardcore, and they lose players, or it's too easy and there's little reason to hardcore raid, since everyone and their mom steamrolls everything anyway, and they lose players. 2 tiers should be the minimum for a level cap expansion.
You must be in my guild Do you parse? The Augusts have about 6million HP's. So doing 7 in 6mins is around 116k DPS sustained. Even with our 40ish raiders, we should be doing A LOT more than that. What did you sustain over this period? The reason? 1. People are a bit cautious, we previously didn't have AE aggro on the mobs, so mobs turned and killed some DPS. 2. Lack of control on the rest of the formation when it breaks. We have never had the other 5 premezzed properly. We have killed 5 Augusts in 2.5min previously and then spent the other 3.5 mins trying to kill the Vitali and Maggio and getting the formation locked down. This wastes time. We also have tanks not being kept up on formation breaks.. Again this wastes time. Mostly it's practise to get everyone on the same page. And then I think the DPS will come. We have chanters locking down 20 mobs which they are able to do. That would leave us with 2x Maggio, 2x Vitali and Tita when the 6mins is up. 40 people should be doing more than 116k DPS sustained. However I would like them to review the 30mins overall time, as it really does unfairly impact guilds that cannot field a full roster.
