LDoN Raid Difficulty

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Bewts, Sep 12, 2017.

  1. Bewts Augur

    Admittedly I spent zero time in prior lives doing LDoN raids, so I have nothing but expectations from hersay to base difficulty off of...

    But the first run through the LDoN raids out of CL left me wondering.... How hard were these intended to be? Even with the raid restrictions down to 55 players, I found my cleric rarely doing much outside of popping DA if I healed a tank when we trained ourselves on purpose to clear mobs. 8 - 10 mobs at once at least kept us clerics busy tanking / popping DA through the night.

    Have other time geared guilds observed similar mileage on the challenge chart? We've only done two raids so far; so maybe other shorter tasks amp up the difficulty. The CL tasks surely did not push that envelope.

    Not calling for nerfs here, outside of augments LDoN drops are pretty MEH so perhaps the difficulty is matching the reward of incremental character improvement at a few heroic stats at a time.
  2. Machentoo Augur

    They were mostly designed for 36 players, in an era where players had 1/3 the dps that they have now. So yeah, they are going to be pretty easy now with 54 players.
  3. McJumps TLP QoL Activist

    We found the LDoN raids to be almost trivial after all the PoTime clears.

    As far as risk vs reward, there are only 7 LDoN raids we focused on, because the best augs came from there (didnt really focus on the LDoN gear, mostly augs)

    The best augs come from the following raids:

    Deepest Guk - Ritualist of Hate and The Curse Reborn

    Miragul's Menagerie - Folly of Miragul's Ambition

    Mistmoore Catacombs - Struggles within the Progeny

    Rujarkian Hills - Prison Break and The Hidden Vale

    Takish-Hiz - Within the Compact

    Guk raids are the only ones that are even slightly difficult, and thats only because of the maps being annoying

    Also there is an AC aug out of one of the other Miragul Raids that we did occasionally. Most of the other LDoN raids are useless as far as gear for a Time geared Guild.
  4. Bewts Augur

    So... Yaulping and Auto-attacking with my group heal hammer it is. Battle Cleric engaged. RIP tanks using AE taunt.
  5. McJumps TLP QoL Activist

    On a side note, the Takish-Hiz raid Within the Compact can be finished in about 10-15 minutes with a full raid. We usually did that one as a quick time filler at the end of a raid. Its fast and there are really good augs from that one, including a 1hb Aug for a certain Battle Cleric :p
  6. Machentoo Augur


    Plus it drops the spec: evocation aug, which is tied with the spec: alteration aug for the two most valuable and long lasting things in the entire expansion.
  7. McJumps TLP QoL Activist



    Yup, and the Alteration aug is from one of the other raids I listed (just cannot remember which one)

    LDoN raids were kinda fun I guess. They had some more mechanics than PoP raids at least. I only wish they were on a different map than the group version of the zone. Except Guk. A pox on whoever came up with those maps, lol
  8. Machentoo Augur


    A lot of them have way too much trash. There is really no challenge or difficulty in slaying a thousand orcs to get to the final orc bosses. It is just tedious. At least it goes faster now with higher dps.
  9. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    LDoN raids could do with 10% of the trash Clear. Just time consuming not hard. Our guild also farmed those 7 every week in one night. Most of the rest of the raids had junk loot like tons of Type 7/3 Augs and less than Elemental Planes quality gear.

    I do not envy Agnarr with LDoN being the end point on the server. It really should've cut before than to save people the time sink of having to grind those raids til the end of time.

    The Alteration aug is from Hidden Vale.
  10. McJumps TLP QoL Activist

    I agree. Agnarr is gonna have a hell of a time keeping population with LDoN being the end-point. The raids are just not that fun and even after doing PoTime for 3 months, they were not enough to satiate most raiders. I suspect the group game to be going strong, and hopefully that will be enough to keep Agnarr afloat after the lock, but only time will tell.
    .
  11. Machentoo Augur


    The type 3 augs with heroics are actually great to bank until you get to SoD. Type 3 slots start appearing on all the gear again, and there aren't a lot of augs that go in that slot.
  12. Renshu Augur

    Have you even seen that scene in Scanners where dude's head explodes?

    Thats going to be you, player X on Agnarr, after you go through a couple of LDoN raids and realize that it's the last expansion you will see, ever.
    jeskola likes this.
  13. Bewts Augur


    I browsed the Type 3 Augs and from a cleric perspective I didn't see any that really had a lasting effect. Maybe the purchased dodge mod would be useful; but don't most of those focuses get outdated?

    My list really comes down to:
    Spec Alt
    Spec Evo
    1hb Mod

    Any hStat that improves hp/mana/resist mit (I believe that's basically sta and wis?)

    I'd take flyers on mana or HP augs, but generally see them as MEH and wouldn't really look to take them unless they're rotting.
  14. malaki Augur

    LDoNs were 36 capped originally and character power is much, much higher individually since back then, so yes these are going to feel rather easy. While some of the individual events have some fun mechanical things in them most of the raids just feel like huge trash clears.
  15. Gremin Augur

    Imo, LDON should be released when Pop is to make the gear and some of the items viable.
  16. AgentofChange Augur

    Ya LDoN was tuned for 36 so they will never be challenging. The only real challenge I suppose is finding people who want to continue to log in to do them.
  17. Bewts Augur

    What Gremin said. There's plenty of items from LDoN that could bridge gear gaps until accessing EP/Time.

    It also adds a bit more variety and would spread the raiding concentration out. Of course as everything will probably be instanced going forward that may be a moot point.

    I don't mind LDoN itself, the hStat augs and focus augs are nice things to pursue. I mean I now have an earring with 7 hSTA on it that's worth like 290 HP and I'm looking forward to adding more spell mitigation.
  18. snailish Augur

    So I will ask:

    What if the LDoN raids were restored to 36 as the raiding cap? Would that make any difference?


    What if it was dropped to 24 with the statement: "We have retuned LDoN raids to be difficult in era to match the original intent. Is your force skilled enough to face the challenge?"

    [assuming 24 is the magic # for making it "as originally intended" rather than trying to reduce player power]


    Rationale being, why not have LDoN raids be hard to do in LDoN? Some of the loot does hold value up the expacs, so people will go back and do it when it is easy if they couldn't handle it in era. So this could make sense for future progression, does nothing to live servers and makes Agnarr's lock have "difficult" content... maybe?
  19. Machentoo Augur


    It would make a pretty big difference, on the survival of guilds that don't want to or can't split. A guild that does time each week with ~45 is going to be screwed with a 36 man cap on just a portion of their content. There's a good reason they got rid of the 36 cap in the first place.
    snailish likes this.
  20. jeskola pheerie

    There is a reason they advertised it as a "POP-Locked" server. They threw LDON in as a bone to extend the life a little bit.
    Mukkul likes this.