I cant believe all this crying and whining about Vitio raid "Being too hard", its the least difficult raid, besides Arx1. It is also the easiest to dissect. For parsing, its perfect, for the most part everyone is in close proximity, so getting an accurate parse is possible. If your having a tough time on this one, go over your parsing and see where the mistakes are being made. I personally love Vitio. Its quick and you get Arx5 drops to boot. So its possible to get Darkwater Tunic. I got a my hastaduria on a vitio drop. I may be wrong, but i believe its 2 arx5 drops per chest from arx5. So yeah..Once a week, no more.
I'm a bit late to the party but had a few thoughts to add anyway. In my experience, this is the number one factor behind mid-tier guilds' inability to progress in a more timely fashion. Not everyone wants to be hardcore, I get that, but because of friendships/relationships/old timers/whathaveyou being involved without exception in mid-tier guilds' raid makeup, this will never change. The good players who are carrying the mediocre ones can either be satisfied to stay in the mid tier range or seek out greener pastures. This is disingenuous and histrionic. Top tier guilds don't "skim." They don't have to. The better players go to them because they grow weary of dragging along the mediocre players. If you don't want to lose your players, then, yeah, you do have to be better at raiding. This ain't rocket science. People need to learn to objectively assess A) their abilities, B) any given raiding guild's actual abilities, C) their drive to improve, and then decide what's the best fit. This business of mid tier guilds getting all butt hurt when their better players leave for greener pastures are never going to improve the bottom line. Either clean house of the mediocre players or be happy with being mid tier. There's just really no other way around it. Moreover, be happy when you do have an exceptional player amongst your ranks and use the opportunity to improve the guild as a whole... but this is predicated on people wanting to improve themselves and, in my experience, most people in mid tier guilds are content with their characters' abilities, content to be mid tier, and therefore must accept when higher skilled players don't share that same contentment and go elsewhere. Objectively speaking, 8 months have passed since the release. If you haven't managed to beat the 7 raids in that time frame, you are mid tier. Just totally false. In short, no. The evidence shows that the top tier guilds remain that way because of the demanding requirements of the guild. And with the high retention rate that most of these guilds enjoy--save for the usual retirements that all guilds experience--you can expect to see them remain among the best. I don't have any empirical data to whip out, but I sense that the high end guilds retain more members consistently than anyone else. And, lastly, to the OP--no, the raids are not too hard.
Hey Mint My post wasn't directed at top guilds, but rather more to guilds who lean more toward being casual/family. If a guild is more casual/family but they have expectations of clearing TDS raids while TDS is current, their expectations may be too high IMO. In my previous guild, we knew we were not able to tackle the most current of raids, we mostly raided a tier behind and had (mostly) success doing it.
That's an interesting spin, and you're totally correct--their expectations are likely too high. I may or may not have read your entire post so took it out of context. Okay, I totally didn't read your entire post; this thread is tl;dr enough as it is. Valid point, and I think the mid tier guilds re-reading this (in its entirety, heh) would be greatly beneficial. It's okay to not be RoI. Find where you fit and be happy.
In mid-tier guild, there appear to be an unveiled hostility against those who desire to improve their character... as odd as it sounds, someone who actually go over his log, looking at DPS / spellcast , someone who try to coordinate with support classes on how to use cooldown or even worse, someone who suggest that cleric have better healing spells than the light-line of heal... is considered an elitist/drama queen ( those term are the same thing for some persons...). Quite frankly, if you don't mind see'ing enchanter outdps rogues, clerics using nothing but light, and support classes who pop wathever they want whenever they want cause it's too complicated to coordinate... you shouldn't expect to drop the end boss of the current expansion.
When I referred to skim, I was neither of what you say. I was just stating a fact of what happens. The top tier guilds have no room to actually recruit at most times and only take a few new app's each and every year. They look for and contact players and yes sometimes our players seek them out, but its hardly a wholesale recruiting phase each expansion. Of the top two guilds on our server one of them now has 3 of our ex members as recruits. And the other has three or four ex members since cotf launch and another 3 or 4 since Tds launched. None of them left on bad terms they just left to join guilds that are more raid oriented. I won't rehash my opinion in detail but... quiet down quit clapping!! More raids will never be a bad thing for Eq. Having some raids that do not require min maxing class stacking and all the other stuff some of you enjoy, would not be a bad thing. Having raids guilds like ours will possibly never beat is not a bad thing either.
Sorry for going off-topic, but sadly this can even happen to skilled rogues with good support on some events. Chanters are above average dps currently, and there are anti-melee mechanics in certain events so it's not really a shocker when it happens. Imo.
Unless Inverse Logic and Crimson Tempest don't qualify as top-tier guilds...it's not that hard at all to get in assuming you got the talent to back it up ( unless you are a necro.). Actually, they are always looking for skilled player, particulary during the farming season where people get bored and stop logging on.
I don't know how it is on other servers, but depending on your class, it could be very difficult to get in. I know we have waiting lists for some classes.
Needed classes vary by guild though. If you have your heart set on a particular guild you may be out of luck (or you may get lucky, or you may be able to app under an exceptional players clause). Some classes (*cough* Bards, Clerics, Enchanters *cough*) seem to be more widely needed than others, but between the top guilds I'm sure nearly every class (if not every class) has a guild looking for them, or at the very least willing to take them. Most of the raids in Arx are new to me, but I'm sure people who have been farming them for the last 6+ months are getting burned out, which leaves a good number of guilds looking for players in various roles.
I'm from what could definitely be called a mid tier guild (Ancient Dominion, feel free to look up our progression - fair and square middling). The raids are definitely NOT too hard. I like them hard as it makes the win more rewarding. However our most difficult task, and one we face every year, is player retention in the summer, especially clerics. We beat Arx1 a few nights back with 41 players in zone (some boxed). Pretty sad turnout since RF and LJ started. This isn't a whine or a plea to make things easier - as I say we're still beating some (the first 3 plus 1 maybe 2 one-offs). Infact I'd say having a weak member turnout and still beating *some* Arx but not all, not even one we'd previously beaten, shows that it is pitched about right for us. Is it too easy for the ubers? Probably yes. Should the ubers be dictating the whole game? Definitely no. Should there be one hard-as-hell raid out there to really tax the ubers too? Sure. I have no issue with not being able to complete an expansion before the next launches. Indeed it's only been a recent thing that this has been possible, probably due to gradual simplification of the end-of-expansion encounters. However to lock away the one-offs behind the end would be punishing the majority of your customers to satisfy the few.
Since we are so short on raid content and its 3 years old now how about leaving Naggy raid up permanently?
I disagree with this idea. It's a limited time event (which will be back next year) with not game changing but sorta cool loot. Nobody would even really experience it except now and then (plane of shadow for aug pieces) if it was up all the time.
THIS. Something is seriously remiss if a chanter is out parsing a rogue and therein lies a problem in itself . People leave mid tier guilds because of alot of people not carrying their weight and the minority of people who are busting their butts and are get tired of carrying them, or tired of how things are organized to maximize the output of the raid as a whole, and their pleas falling on deaf ears to those that can correct those problems. Constantly missed emotes, lack of healing and sub par dps from the same people over and over again will wear down some of the best raiders in those mid tier guilds and THAT is what causes them to leave, not head hunting skimming or whatever you choose to use. People who play hard in those mid tier guilds are no different then any in hard core guilds imo, they wanna win just the same as the rest of us, that is what causese dissention in the ranks and people to move on.
