So let me make sure I got this all straight

GMM was ruined for many casual players with the infamous summer patch. Are you saying it is worse now?

What the halfling bleep is the magician doing with a fire pet??????????

His name is kindling and he keeps everyone warm!

If only mercs tanked as good as pets...

They should have just made the tank merc a mage pet...

it's a bug with gamparse picking up the correct pet...was the 111 air pet iirc.

I think that Darkness Howls is significantly harder now than it was before Wednesday. I parsed the one I did last night vs. one from about 2 weeks ago. I'm not sure how to determine the strikethrough rate using GamParse, but my warrior took about +60% damage for the whole run with the average hit up by around 25%. He also died several times (wiz evac saved himself and the ranger all but one of those times), when I generally only lost him to my own mistakes after they upped the mob levels this summer. The damage from the orcs in the first 3 parts that can be over 110 seemed considerably more spiky. The orcs outside the gate were all blue to the 111 WAR, and were noticeably easier than the others. The many deaths made it take 2 1/2 hours to complete vs. the less than 1 hour for the original and less than 1 1/2 hours for the "2.0" version prior to this week.

Just from my limited experience I would describe the 'new' GMM - Darkness Howls as going from 6 difficulty to 8 difficulty for a pre-TBL box group. Other group configurations may vary.

GMM ... they moved the headstones, but they didn't move the bodies!

Well, if heroic adventures do in fact scale, then that is not an issue with ToV or making previous content trivial. The content would still be relevant at 110. However leveling to 111 in a HA w/o changing anything but your level is like moving from Sathir's Tomb to Aalashi and expecting to not struggle in the beginning. HAs scale to remain relevant longer under the assumption that you are going out to get the level appropriate gear. Maybe the event needs some 111+ tuning, but, no offense, your warrior is soft for 111.

Tanks have life harder than any other class. As an ENC boxing my cleric, I have spent my entire EQ life standing behind good tanks. At 240k buffed HP, you have less HP than I do, on a class that should have vastly more.

I think that you should take your 111 level and disc and use it to farm some armor from TBL. Even T1 rots from hunters should be enough to bump you up 60 AC and 700 HP per visible slot, plus the heroic AGI and STA. And what is the situation with your augs?

And really, with ToV T1 armor being tradable, the devs should be receiving praise, not scorn, because you can skip TBL completely. You can immediately replace your vastly outdated conflagrant armor with ToV T1 armor. That's 242 AC and 2,015HP on just your BP.

Leveling beyond 110 but not having a desire to get level appropriate gear was not a choice made by the developers. The only way I can agree with you is if you were arguing for a difficulty setting for HAs, or for them to not scale, and I think just as many people support them scaling as those who don't. Probably more want them to stay relevant for XP than don't.

GMM is significantly harder.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the HA scaling changes are, by far, the WORST change to ever happen in EQ. Ever.

Putting EXP on on anything besides mob kills, is by far the worse change to Everquest. Putting EXP on completition of tasks or achievements is what is destroying this game - it's bad game design.

The current changes are not what makes the GMM HAs harder, it is the previous level change from this past summer.

Far worse is making a progression task more difficult for the same reward.

In the middle of RoS progression?

Sooooo sorry. We just released an expansion. You now must complete TBL-difficulty tasks in EoK armor. Have a great day! #harderisfunner

Where did I say "current changes"? I said HA scaling changes.

These changes happened two years ago, right around the time RoS dropped. They sucked then. They suck now. They will always suck. It favors anyone that finishes progression while it's current. Anyone behind the curve gets punished simply because a level increase took place.

The ToV tier 1 attuneable is level 115 reccomended so the person starts with downgraded armor and if they don't have a tov charm they lose a bunch of charm stats So not the ideal solution.

GMM shouldn't have been retuned so heavily with the expansion. I have no problem defending DBG when I think they are right but in this case no. Just makes things harder for those returning and trying to gear up for the new expansion. Especially if they want to GET THEIR OWN gear and not buy stuff in the baz which they may not be able to afford in the first place.

So attuneable geat great. Retune of GMM not great.

Despite my position above, I'm willing to admit when I am wrong, or at least not right, and I think you have made very valid points, especially on my over site on ToV T1 armor / charm.

Although I'm not sure I agree there wouldn't be a net gain over conflagrant, TBL maybe but not conflagrant.

Also it think if getting gear mattered rather than buying it I don't think he'd be wearing the tradable conflagrant gear.

The last time HA scaling changes happened before this past summer was back when they specifically went in and made it such that HAs did not scale to higher levels than the expansion in which the HA in question originally appeared. There weren't HA scaling changes again until this summer which targeted the scaling of GMM HAs. The HAs scaled the same after the patch you are referring to as they did before, the only difference was that the NPCs were made to balance around the most current expansion for a level range. So TDS HAs still only scale to 105 max, but they use EoK mobs as the baseline for the 101-105+ mobs. This really didn't cause any increase in challenge to the content in question. Similarly, the recent change from using EoK to RoS for the 106-110 mobs has not actually increased the difficulty of the HAs.

What did increase the difficulty of the HAs however was the actual changing in scaling of the GMM HAs this past summer, where they went from being mobs which ranged from 105-110 to being mobs which ranged from 110-115 (mostly 110-113). This pushes them firmly into the RoS range and even into the ToV range. That is where the issues people are having with the mobs is coming from, not any recent change or any 2 year old change, but the one that occurred this summer. It is the one when the devs flipflopped on the intended level range of GMM.

no change in difficulty for the more experienced yes probably but still a jump in difficulty non the less, but for people not so experienced, this is big bump in difficulty, also I believe even in static EoK zones are using RoS scaled mobs, making it even more difficult for players in the 101-109 range trying to catch up. worst part of it all, is the reward vs the higher risk now is not worth it and will surely put off some people

1. If the just returning player finds GMM.. just too hard to pull and beat. They should go back to ROS.. expansion farm more gear and more aa.. before returning to GMM.

2. Thank you for the compliment. I do try to be as understanding as i can be.

For instance..

I understand.. just because some 1 returns and cant beat grp mission .. perhapz they ought to go back to safer zones for them and gear up more there and AA up nore there..

Then.. go back to gmm.

I umderstand .. people want to rush stuff.. in an attempt to get with their friends and or buddies or what have ya..

But as i stated if they having issues with content.. go back and farm more gear.. and aa... then come back.

Whats so difficult about that concept ?

Is it rude to say go back farm more aa an gear to help yourself ?

They are not, the only thing changed were HAs. Nothing else was changed, and even then it was only the 106-110 level range which was changed.

Also, the amount of experience someone has isn't going to have any bearing on how difficult this was before or after the patch. The minor increase that came from them increasing from EoK T1 to RoS T1 baseline was more than countered by the drastic game wide decrease in NPC strikethrough that happened at the same time.

The changes to the risk vs reward happened back this summer, not now. People simply did not notice or care about the change this summer because they were not doing that content to grind, but now they are. This in turn has lead to those same people incorrectly attributing the increased difficulty they are facing to it being due to some change from ToV's release when it is anything but that.

If people cannot do GMM, then they definitely cannot do RoS. They will need to go back to EoK or TBM.

For better or worse, GMM is a ghost town.