Raid content for the non 1%

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Windance, Sep 11, 2019.

  1. Lianeb Augur

    13 is the number of guilds that beat TBL tier 1 (all 3) raids in the first week of launch. Wearing essentially the equivalent of TBL group gear.
    Whulfgar likes this.
  2. bigpapa Augur

    with our * joint * raid we can fill a 54 palyers raid easy , can choose from about 12 + warriors , same for clerics and 4 or so shm , 7 or so druids, and a 12 + rangers , ect, we lack on zerker tho, with 1 in raid ( rarely 2 ) .
    anyway , with all the possibilities we have to choose the ** right ** class , ect , we still didn't kill sathir 2 and 3 , same for VP 2 and 3 in ROS ...

    into TBL : , i was able to buy my second freebie armors from the npc with raid currencies lately ( yep took us that long to be able to get 2 armors from the npc and i am at about 90 % raid attendance in these raids as well } , we can do doomfire ( reparm ) , fight fire pretty easy now . we are still struggling with smoke trial ( one win ) no win in tier 2 yet , we trying very hard .

    gmm 1 is easy now , but took us a long time before being able to kill the 1st one, ( we didn't beat 2 and 3 tho ),

    just to say there is a lot of diff with * elite guilds * and some other's , we have some very good players , but some who are ...... ok i guess .

    many of our members don't have many ach's from past group tasks, for the heroic boost, ect, some just don't have time for that , with RL issues ,

    btw ,tier one raids should be aimed for * weaker / casual * guild
    tier 2 zone to be harder and tier 3 raids to be the hardest

    maeratas is the hardest raid ( finally like it should be ), the final raid in TBL .

    *** btw we are raiding 4 days a week
    Zunnoab likes this.
  3. Natal Augur



    And raid foci, full spell/weapon sets, and full balanced raid rosters. Beating tier 1 with full balanced raids is not difficult at all. But, doing that with fewer numbers, class balance as whoever shows up, not everyone having full gear/spells (the new recruits that constantly cycle through mid-tier guilds for example) and then it is a different story.

    And don't forget that most of that beating TBL in the first week of launch was powered by liberal use of glyphs. The raids are more challenging if they are not used.

    TBL group gear is similar to RoS raid TS stuff, not full RoS raid gear btw.
  4. Lianeb Augur

    So we said the same thing?

    Really not sure why you are clinging to this and thinking it is why people win the T1 events
  5. Whulfgar Augur

    We downed ALL of TBL T1 with right round 45-50 per raid.

    Whats the next excuse?
  6. Whulfgar Augur

    Glyphs are an AA ability, with a reuse timer.

    Are you excluded on the game side of things (or your raid force) from using said AA's ?

    Is that a dev's issue or a personal issue?
  7. Rowanoak Elder

    To all the guilds raiding 4 days a week with members who don't have old achievements or EoK progression or group gear in TBL, why not just use one of your raidnights to work on those things.
    If your members just don't have time for that, seems like a way to get it done. I wouldn't raid for that many nights not beating content, when theres content to make you stronger so you can. In all actuality though, it has little to do with gear.
    eqgamer likes this.
  8. Tanols Augur

    Developer's would have to chime in on how much time and resources it takes to implement multiple tiers of gear versus multiple tiers of raid difficulty.
    Given a choice I would prefer the latter. The only possible issue/complaint would be for the top 10 guilds and the "race". I can just see the battles over who did progression in easy mode and who did it in hard mode.
    I can see however where it would be in the best interest of DBG and would make the majority of the masses pleased as punch if it was possible to release raids that were 3/4 or 2/3 difficulty for a comparable number of loot items in chest. Or better yet if time/resources allow have difficulty of raid determine loot tier(s).
    I can also see the sense in having raids get harder the further along in progression you get. However having spent a decade in a mid/low tier guild that almost never completed an expansion before the next was released. Every year we came up against an issue of people not interested in raiding previous expansion content and it caused major problems. Such guilds as that would still be in same boat with progressive difficulty. Unable to complete expansion before next release, sick of doing the same raids over and over again, and beating heads against wall of un won raids
  9. Zunnoab Augur

    The last few posts people are vastly overestimating this being a gear issue, in my opinion. The average performance needed from a raid member has spiked, some in EoK then dramatically in parts of RoS and pretty much most of TBL. Raid-ending situations are far more easily a risk now than in any time since Underfoot.

    Taking raid days to allow group progression is something that would do little to offset that.
  10. Windance Augur

    We actually did exactly that. We took 2-3 months off raiding RoS/TBL this summer to go do TBM achievements for the damage/heal augs. Progress! ... then find out about a month later that that the next expansion was going to make them worthless.
  11. Zunnoab Augur

    I forgot to mention on the gearing up front too:
    The developers made the awful decision to require EoK raid visibles to get RoS raid visibles. With EoK gear now worse than TBL group gear, that just plain doesn't work, even beyond it being a bad idea to begin with. I stress I do not think this is a gearing issue alone, but that certainly doesn't help things in the least.

    I put too little emphasis on the RoS problems, in hindsight (I won't retread the timer shenanigans):
    1.) Visible gear requiring prior expansion raid gear, which is a minor inconvenience to stronger guilds but likely devastating for weaker ones, or ones rebuilding.
    2.) End of Empire requiring almost all main progression in the prior expansion, with penalties worse than those in the end zone of the prior expansion for not doing so. I'm surprised it didn't require EotD2, as well.
    3.) They were originally going to require the drops from T3 raids in EoK to do anything at all in RoS. Thankfully I heard people on beta talked them out of that catastrophe. The T3 flags in TBL worry me they are going to make that mistake going forward. It's a design philosophy that failed horrendously with Underfoot (even the first tier of Underfoot wasn't gated with SoD keying), so I really hope they don't do it again. I hope those flagging drops in TBL are just a nice infusion of bonus raid currency as a reward for making it that far.

    It's interesting, now that I think about it, that Underfoot is sandwiched between two of my favorite expansions, SoD and HoT. To be fair, I like Underfoot in its design (especially how it interconnects in a non-linear fashion with the rest of Norrath), even if its tuning was an unmitigated disaster at launch and a long time after.
    Yinla likes this.
  12. CrazyLarth Augur

    I keep hearing that but its a stupid bet peeps are making.
    I don't want to increase a X number of raiding peeps in my raid guild now I hear it i will be gimmy in the next expanation . So what these peeps are saying that next year at this time after they have done all the new raid ach they might have the same 10% DPS/healing AUG that raiders need now- lol that is so funny.
  13. Zunnoab Augur

    It doesn't actually do 10% to the final numbers. Either way, you have to keep in mind the effort it takes to keep a mid/low tier guild/raid force so much as functioning. Any advantage at all is something to claw for to do so. Even if it's not 10% it is a help. It was unknown if they were going to raise the level cap until fairly recently, so if a guild is unable to progress but has people to field on old content to work on something that might help them claw their way forward a bit, that's not dumb.

    Whether the aug should do anything at 115 is something that risks derailing the topic though. I have a neutral stance on it honestly.

    Edit:
    In my earlier posts listing events that I liked that have interesting things going on, I neglected to mention the final event in EoK. It's a classic example of an event that with increased complexity has individual parts be more forgiving. It's not nearly among the most complex events in the game, but it is an example of that. I suppose it may have been boring to the strongest raid forces (this was way before merging into IL), but I liked it.
  14. Vumad Cape Wearer

    I stand by the problem of balance being Devs painting themselves into a corner. If the DPS/heal aug is 10% or 2%, it's still a factor in tuning.

    I believe that no expansion should introduce rewards that are *necessary* for the next expansion. EotD in RoS and the way visable gear works is an example. EoK to RoS gear makes since until TBL came out. Now the "raids for the non-1% is the previous expansion" doesn't work because they have to go back 2 expansions to actually make the armor, and go back 2 expansions to obtain the passive AA to survive.

    Raid progression needs to work like charms. The 10% aug from TBM should instead be a passive AA that gives bane / healing damage in TBM zones. Each expansion should have the same outcome of the progression, but it's not forward transferable to the next expansion. The same should be true of collectable, hunter or any other ACH benefits from a given expansion (I am not arguing against the TBl evolvers however, since the events shouldn't be tuned for that gear anyway).

    I understand the counter point of wanting to keep that advantage, but it's adding huge tuning conflicts. It's adding a barrier to new or returning players to have to go back several expansions worth of content to be properly useful in the current one.

    You'd still go into the current expansion with your raid gear and augs, you just wouldn't move into the next expansion with bane damage from the previous one.

    Totally get the desire to become a badass and stay a badass but the truth is that what I am suggesting would be of a more long term advantage anyway. Returning players wouldn't get bypasses for older content because it wouldn't be needed anymore. That means that even though the content becomes trivial, the legacy of the content remains. I'd even go as far to argue that these benefits could be heirloom, tied to the account, so if you reroll an go back through an expansion like TBl you can play again with the advantages you earned, while the new player plays through without disadvantages.
  15. AcemoneyFV Augur

    Raid content for the weak ones = older raids. Enjoy. :D
  16. kizant Augur

    1. TBM has the best raids. If you want to have fun in EQ then you're going to want to do them. While you're at it, you may as well get the aug.

    2. There's no way they're going to upgrade the aug but that doesn't make it useless. It'll still benefit a few of my spells next expansion so I'm going to keep using it no matter what.

    3. It should be easy for devs to keep it in mind as far as a balance goes. If they're already worried about improving class X and class X benefits more than others from the aug then obviously they should factor that in. In most other cases they can ignore it. The increase it gives isn't that big.
    Sancus likes this.
  17. Bigstomp Augur

    There is probably a fairly significant upgrade though in doing all the things that give those heroic AA's.
  18. Icaen Elder

    I propose they make a LFR version of these raids ! It was a huge success in another MMO. Why? Because all the players that subscribe are able to see the beautifully crafted, wonderfully designed content that the devs made!
  19. Zunnoab Augur

    They would have to implement cross-server invites for the population to remotely support this I suspect, and the UI changes they would have to introduce are something I'd imagine would be prohibitively complicated for their staff.

    Difficulty levels are probably more realistic, and even that is difficult to balance since what they clearly think is harder at times is in reality the easier way of doing things. Reducing the number of players doesn't count, in my opinion. All that meant for SoD was benching DPS/support with just as much tanking/healing required. I think what the devs intend when designing an event and how harsh the individual mechanics are meant to be probably rarely lines up exactly with the reality of the situation. I find it hard to believe they intended the snails to be pretty much THE event for General Reparm for example, to the point that they are significantly more difficult than anything else in the entire instance/script to the point all other aspects are trivial if a force can deal with them. There are many more examples than that, often regarding add power.

    LFR version does mean easier difficulty doesn't it? I love the idea, but I don't see how they could do it with the game's population and their budget/staff.
  20. Endaar Augur

    Well you proved your point as far as I'm concerned. Despite doing Stratos dozens of times, I didn't even realize there was any sort of an AE that could pose a problem, and I was extremely squishy when I joined RoV early this year. I honestly didn't realize there was that dramatic of a difference in capabilities between upper-tier and mid-tier guilds, particularly in an event that isn't mechanically difficult.