aye, it is very class dependent.. in fact only thing that significantly benefits from raid gear is a tank.. Though in raid gear many classes can be subed for a good tank in the group game. casters sort of benefit as it opens them up to just go all out with no risk of running out of Mana. If your a none stop type group this is a much bigger advantage. DPS wise again if you have a raid geared tank you can get away with one healer merc and 2 DPS mercs if your going the 3player 3 merc route. I dont really want to hear about the speed at which raiders get there gear. lol.. considering as a tank CoTF T1 raid gear is better than group gear today, i think group gear is still trying to catch up.. But that will be the argument until this game is shut down. Reality is all someone has to do is join a raid guild at the end of an expansion and get all the rots and have better gear then the group game will have for the next 2-3 years.. not sure if people that do gribbles are trying to catch up.. i think they do gribbles to do... more gribbles... point is i think people are happy to pay to sit in there and do that crap over and over again. so when they change it they come here voicing there displeasure. Then i /scratch my head and wonder why the staff takes the time to change old stuff when they should be working on new stuff.
Curiosity is a good thing And I'm hopeful that Coopers scaled less, or not at all, compared to Gribbles, so people are encouraged to spread their wings a bit. Disagree mate. I think scaling content is a good thing for EQ, it keeps content current. Non-scaling content has just created large swaths of empty content in this game. I mean, this game is huge, but only a tiny portion of it is ever used Ideally, there is a carrot in each HA (or set of HAs) across expansions so that there is always a reason for people to want to do them .... like the Blooddrinker's Coating that only drops in DH HAs for example.
I understand. Though they are perhaps paying customers.. and really i think the community now has a better chance of making this game continue than the staff it self. as it would seem the staff is now doing things to actually kill the game rather than protects its longevity.. Im to the point were i could care less if gribbles is easy button. So long as people enjoy it and are paying something i dont care.. Hell if it makes more people play and pay make more easy button stuff here and there. I man at the end of the day money is the only thing that matters. A pleasant community and stuff to do in game that keeps people going is about all that we can hope for. I think the time passed long ago where we could still sit here and be "snooty" to lesser players. Yea they might not be that good but it dont matter. If they are happy and paying it creates opportunity for more resources for everyone. Which is why im so baffled at why they used resources to potentially have less resources..
I understand where you're coming from, but I think the game would be healthier if people developed their EQ skills and confidence a bit too. The disparity between a Gribble and the rest of EQ really was huge, and if that sucks in enough players then raiding guilds start to suffer because there is nothing to draw from, pick-up groups become the pits because your necros can't get higher than a 1 on their agro meter, or the Gribblers reach max level and AA in no time and have no need to really do anything else in the game (unless they desperately want the best BP for the current expac for whatever reason). I think it's healthy for a game to encourage players to push themselves a bit, and always make sure they've got something else to go on to and can do that in small steps. The players don't ever have to reach the top of the game if new content is coming out, it's just moving from one challenge to the next. Winning, getting good at it, moving on.
I agree about skill of players.. thing is the floors and ceilings are much different. Raid gear mask talent very much so.. Raiding also really does not mean your a better group content player. I think that people exclusively in group gear are more than likely better players in the group game than raiders. Not saying that negatively but thats just the world in which they live. People who raid and dawn that raid gear exclusively loose touch to the skills needed. The gear takes the need for those skills away. Group geared players also like raiders should strive to get the very most out of there chars. In the group game wearing group gear you have to do this. Not so much if you are in raid gear.
This comment right here just shows how very ignorant you are on discussing raid gear vs goup gear, skill vs unskilled, raider vs casual playing. Stop trying to make a wedge between all of those. The thing that makes or breaks ya in this game is that SKILLED PLAYERS will PLAY WELL. That's it.
Takes me a hour plus to do gribbles, and I am 105 4 box with max AA's on 3 of the 4 toons. Why? not because I'm poorly equipped, or lack knowledge of how to play EQ, its because I have 2 small children and a husband, and have to AFK often for extended periods of time. HA's let me still play the game I love in chunk's and spurts and make me feel like I have accomplished something in a day. I don't raid and have no intention of ever joining a raid guild again. mainly because of my spotty play times my attendance would be near the bottom. So the assumption that HA's are drawing off potential raiders is not always true, a lot of people just have no interest in raiding you know. As for the changes, yes I noticed the HP increase at 105 but really because of the pace I play it made very little difference for me, the only change of note was when Soulsucker actually killed my EM 16 air pet...but the other pets were able to tank him to the end fine. and I can make adjustments to make sure it does not happen again.
I'm not sure why we are all fighting over this, quit attacking each other over casual vs hardcore, it's useless posturing. I'm starting to think they did this to annoy everone on live servers enough to make them go play on the new TLP....where all the krono action will be. I'm stuck between casual and hardcore, I'm in a family guild, but I'm raid geared. I play very casual half the week, and raid my off the other half. Gear does make some difference,but in reality, it just let's me survive 2-3 extra hits, or about 5 seconds. In my opinion, the major difference is attitude.i don't like people telling me what I can and can't do, so I make things happen. As for doing Gribbles, I still can quite easily, and will continue, I'm a raid geared cleric, but my box team of wizzys are group geared.....poorly at that, I really have to know what I'm doing to keep 5 burning wizards alive. Sometimes I blow through them in 15 mins, sometimes I die a lot, but I pick myself up and keep hurling myself at it till it's done. This is my casual time, and I'll do Gribbles if I choose. If your having a hard time with Gribbles, find a way, make new friends, adjust your play style, research your class to see what more you can be doing. If someone invites you to a Gribble group, do your absolute best, ask what more you can do, annoy the heck out of the SKs.............I'm serious, if your a dps, try it, at least your trying to do max dps.above all else, ask for help with your class.
Yeah the biggest difference I saw was that the nameds in the Gribbles were a bit too difficult for a merc tank and merc cleric to lock down and the group had to be able to provide a little healing support. Given the rewards for the named haven't scaled up I think the risk is a little out of proportion. Honestly the Gribbles are great for the super casual, they were being "abused" by others. Either the scaling needed to take into account AA counts (as a rough estimate) or the reward for gribbles only should have been adjusted downward (especially if you had a lot of AA). Or maybe the lockout on them increased, if you are super casual then once a day should be sufficient. They are still a stupid easy way to max out TBM granted AA when you can't get a 'real' group and that won't change unless the reward is adjusted, adjusting just the difficulty won't work and they should have realized that.
sorry i did not mean to sound ignorant. I have a hard time making a point. i was just trying to say that due to the nature of wearing group gear only a person has more need/opportunity to be better. I did not mean it to sound like they will be or that raid gear players are inherently worse players. That is not true for sure, as most raid players do have the potential of being very good players in all parts of the game. I will go one step further and say that most raiders are better than most groupers not even considering gear.. Simply saying they do not have to always dig down in deep thought on how to do things in most situations in the group game. you are very correct, skilled players will play well. Though you have to admit raid gear does indeed cover up a lot of skill issues. you know kinda like pro sports. Raw Talent and physical ability covers up a lot. Though lesser talent and ability players often require more in between the ears to accomplish the same goal.
Just wondering here.. ok so CoTF was meant to be level 100 max at the time. so if someone is happing to go back for say hunter, and other achievements. should they not be able to choose the max level 100 option to play in? Normally going back to do old content is easier due to player power but with this sort of model player power is not making it any easier but the rewards and goals are still the same? Only difference is now you get more exp for the given level?
this is kinda the point i was making. Its more difficult be the reward is still the same? Named drop same loot. Missions give same points for the old gear. Collects are the same reward. Achievements are the same and so on. Its just harder to complete them now that you are level 105.
Raiding gear doesn't cover up these "issues" you keep mentioning. Most raiders can not even listen and react to their own damn audio triggers lol. Those people still struggle heavily in the group content because they just suck at EQ.
ahh Simon says BS of raiding.. right that issue gear does not cover up.. at least in the group game you can ignore it for the most part and suffer nothing. though most people avoid any complex group content all together.
You bring up a great point. The AA reward already scales down as you gain more AA ( not just for HAs mind you). I see no reason for this nerf other than it falls conveniently on TBM release day and they want to force us into the least but latest content.
CotF is 2 expansions ago, to be upset that old content isn't as good as it used to be seems, odd. The missions should have never scaled past 100 level, its going to continue to be a fiasco to tune while introducing new content down the road. That said, there needs to be compelling alternatives in new material. I'm not awestruck by the latest offerings, be it quality, content, or both. More annoying is they took the time to tune CotF HAs when they could have been finishing TBM. Ruven
Interesting how this thread has devolved into the classic "those guys are bad EQ players and I know how to play because . . .." That really was never the point. Reading such ego strutting and self-importance over a game is somewhat disconcerting, albeit revealing. In my opinion DH HAs are not obsolete, even with the "scaling." I'm not quite certain how they are scaled as my experience so far has been to see no difficulty changes using heroic characters in the 87-89 range. I can log on for an hour, complete a 2-box HA and go do other things if I want, including real life. More importantly, I can use that experience to catch up a little. Granted, even buying Lucid armor with Marks of Valor (on my 94.75 Paladin who played a lot of DH HAs and EWTK HAs) will only put me into Tier 4 group HoT gear, but that's a substantial improvement over current rustic gear, even though it would pale in comparison to Tier 1 Raid HoT items. I wonder though if the "scaling" is level based or gear based. Might test that by putting on some better items. In any event, I enjoy the DH HAs on my two all-access accounts and hope they retain it the way it is. I have run across excellent, good, fair and bad players the past 15 years. I have also run across a mere handful of simply outstanding players who are a complete joy to watch (Yeah, I'm talking about you SA 105 Bard on Rathe/Prexus). It's always fun to have a group, even if we don't seem to mesh very well. It has been truly rare that someone has been so bad or so self-centered that the enjoyment factor was nullified. YMMV.
LOL ... what a completely idiotic statement. People who struggle with group content suck at EQ? Then by your rationale guilds and the members who cant react to their own damn audio triggers suck at EQ as well. There isn't one raider who wants to be doing gribble missions, period. We do them for the same reason the "casuals" go do them. Its the easiest way for EVERYONE in the game to get back our lost experience and new AA's. If you're a casual player and struggling, it isn't your gear. It's your attitude. You accept struggling, and in fact may embrace it. A raider would never accept struggle, and would find away to get past it, and win the event anyway. For the record there isn't ANY group content that is a challenge to a raider, none, nada, zip. We aren't abusing Gribble any more than anyone else in the game. We aren't getting the "raid gear" to make the group game easier for us. But people who make these posts seem to assume we raid to make killing gribble level mobs easy. If there was no raiding in EQ, a raiders mentality would not be get better gear and make this easy, it would in fact be the opposite, and most of us would see how little we could get by with to beat it.
