Raidgear does trivialize Groupcontent to the point of monopolizing large aerea

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Beco, Dec 19, 2020.

  1. Mazame Augur

    I would like to share my exp. I been camping out side the Temple in WW and the first day I started I was able to keep about 5 mobs down. The next day I was about to keep 8 down. Now my gear didn't change and there was no patch to change the mobs. The only change was the effort I was putting in to it. When I was first camping I took it a bit slower to see what I could handle. The next day I was pushing my self to find the max I was able to clear. My point is that it not about the gear but about how your playing.

    Yes gear add a bit but so does a number of other factors.

    AA are you max or not ? A avg group can all be gear the same but based on the AA count and if they are well spent can have an impact on the groups speed.

    Heroic AA.. These are gained by doing different requirements Starting with CoTF. It might not seam like a lot but having these help a lot for my group gear toons it is even more so needed if you want to preform better then the Avg Joe.

    Aug slots: Are you augment slots filled? I started playing my cleric that I had ignored for 2 years. When I looked at his gear it was bad. I Log him in because we were going to do a set of CoV missions but the healer we had was not comfortable solo healing. We completed all 4 mission but it was Very ruff I got one rounded a few time by the AE that were going off. I the next day I upgrade 10 slots with the gear i got out of doing the missions and on the magelo ranks I moved from #249 to #197. I saw that with changing the gear out I was missing many augs. So I went to old exp and got my type 5's and put them in. I moved up in Rank to #173. I then joined a pick up group as the only healer and was able to do the set with them. My cleric is 240k HP / Mana. My point being you don't NEED raid gear and you can use other ways to lift your toon up. Making sure you have all your augs is can make a big difference.

    Group make up. Many of the groups you see out there that are able to do the mass killing are doing it by the group make up they put together. Many of the class in EQ are designed to group with other classes. A shammy for example will improve a melee group more then a caster group. Finding synergy in you group play a bigger role then gear. It also not about just having the right classes but working together to time your abilities so that you max the DPS. When you see an SK swarming 20+ mobs it often not the gear that letting them pull it off but rather there group. having a Chanter AE stunning and a Necro sphere and dotting multi mobs. Yes the SK is AE aggro to hold them all and with using disc and life taps. It is a group working to gear to pull off what you happen to run past. Also it not easy and most that do it have died countless time working on perfecting it that when it going right it more because of the skill and effort they put into it that your see the result of.


    DO NOT think that just because you have raid gear that the game is going to become easy. The reason people have play EQ for 20+ year is because they like the challenge. learning to play a class and then learning to master it takes time. Their are people that make some stuff look easy they didn't get there over night it took time.

    Have you spent Day or Week parsing out what order to use your burn and cast your spells? have you set up auto trigger to help improve your game play. Have you looked are people that play your class better then you and asked them for help or advise? No it not required to play the game. Yes it is work. that is why many people have gotten burn out over the year because it a lot of work to "Get Good". When some one comes a long and post that "raid" gear is a game changer it a slap in the face to all those that have put in the effort to master there class. Yes most of these people have raid gear but it because they earned it by pushing them self to be better. Most people that Raid do so because they master the group game and are looking for something more to push them to be better. In turn the new trick they learn raiding then make them even better at the group game.

    I would also like to point out I know a few people that play ONLY group game and never raid. They have maxed every /achievement that doesn't require a raid and are some very Skilled players that have made the choice to not raid. These people that have master their toons can do everything a Raid gear toon can do. If anything they are even more skilled because they had to learn how to get their goals with out raid gear.

    So rather then just posing to say give me better gear. how about put some effort into it and become better with out asking for the hand out. If you want raid gear that bad then join a raid guild. Their is plenty of them out there to meet all kinds of play time and schedules.
    Duder likes this.
  2. Endorek Lorekeeper

    I know it's slightly off topic or at least a tangent, but how does the AC softcap play into the effectiveness of AC discussed and diagrammed earlier? Does increasing it via 18/19 augs just get you to the point of diminishing returns faster?
  3. Cadman Elder

    Can a Tank, any healer, and 4 dps classes manage 850k between them without going balls to the wall? Yes, easily.


    No, and those effects stack also, despite being a percentage mod ;)
  4. Endorek Lorekeeper

    Ok, if it isn't just putting you further along the curve, then what does the increasing the softcap do?
  5. Khur Sed New Member

    It's funny all the stories of people telling me they do insane amount of dmg and make insane amount of AAs, then I ask them their spent total, and they tell me they're not maxed yet. While I'm a warrior with 162k aa spent. I'm raid geared with a raid geared cleric, and I don't do 10 WW mobs while never going bellow 90% health. I do 4-6 of them with no problem however and never go bellow 40% health. I did a 7 pull one time and lived to tell about it, but it was close and the bard and shammy died.
  6. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer


    Fixed that for you.
    Belexes likes this.
  7. zoycite Journeyman

    two areas where a lot of people struggle especially that typically claim this type of argument:
    1) heroic aa
    2) tribute and trophies

    These two areas can increase your effectiveness by quite a bit as any class. The unfortunate truth is you have to go back and do heroic AA starting in TDS. Should be a cakewalk to get these early ones considering the Current tier group gear is at least double TDS raid gear; not to mention the level increases.

    Trophies require going back to Rain of Fear to obtain and finishing things like progression, collection, hunters, and so on.
    Mazame and Duder like this.
  8. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    Heroics actually start in CotF. But yes, after you get a fair amount of them, they do help.

    As to trophies, I wish there was a good page for comparing them, or pointing to where the good ones are without doing a whole mess of digging. I've gotten one trophy worth actually keeping active. Granted, I'm always behind the curve, but many of them look rather anemic even for the era they dropped in.

    Is there a good reference page for trophies somewhere?
  9. Tryal Anderror Journeyman

    I'm coming back after several years off, and may have a different perspective on it.

    My main take is that wow, Group gear and Raid gear is a lot closer together than it used to be.
    If you rewind back to like, Omens of War or something your best raid gear had like 330hp, and your best group gear had 160hp.

    House of Thule, best group stuff might be 1000ish, best Raid stuff 2000ish.

    But now, ToV level, Raid level gear like 10,000-11,000hp ands the best group stuff is like 9000-9800
    It feels like the gap between the two is really closing in a lot, not the other way around.

    I'd say though the part that has drastically changed is the game's hostility to solo play, sub-optimal groups and overall assumption that most people play at least 3 accounts.

    The thing I noticed changed most when I came back was the increase in difficulty of trash common mobs.
    It seems now you've got almost all random trash either immune to snares and roots, summoning, random un-named things are casting huge DDs or DoTs, there even seems to be a mechanic where some things only summon in their last 10%.

    They've also past level 110 nerfed normal xp from mobs to almost nothing.

    It also sort of seems that some of the class synergies which used to be things like 'A Bard with a Necro adds 20% to DPS' is now more like specific combinations causing triple DPS.
    Also the way AAs and items have evolved, blowing 'burn' AAs and items used to like, maybe double your DPs...now it's an explosion of multiple times your damage. It's kind of a natural evolution of things, but since everything is multiplicative it can scale in a crazy way.

    The result seems to be that some people running boxes of maxxed out characters with good compositions doing things individual players struggle with.

    We've also got an issue where it's not just like the good group does the mission in 30 minutes and the worse group does it in 2 hours, but where the worse group just can't do it.

    Also even for things like Mercenary tasks, meant to be solo missions, you start throwing in summoning everything and all kinds of stuff and it really becomes the case that these tasks were balanced for boxed mercenary squads, not actual solo players.

    It seems the actual standard has become that most people aren't actually expected to do the group missions, but just get Taskadds from people who 6 box them.

    Someone above mentioned how gear doesn't compensate for skill, but I think the mechanics can over power that.
    When you add all these mechanics like summoning and like 4 minute long Dots and 150khp DDs to trash mobs, you create a situation where you can't 'out-skill' it.

    I think too we're in this weird spot where mercenaries are simultaneously too weak but also too essential.

    It can't really fill in as a healer or tank as the main role, but again in a boxed group it can be plenty. Also again for some solo players...an SK with a Cleric Merc can do some stuff, but what's a Wizard going to do with them? They either have a tank and no healer or healer with no tank.

    Also I'm finding that at this point you need to go back 10+ expansions to make sure you've done all progression, for all these extra heroic AAs and trophies and things.
    I'm a Necromancer, so luckily I can do that stuff myself. But I'd imagine for most classes, they can't or it'd take an obscene amount of time.
    I always think like, how does a Chanter or a Warrior do basically anything alone, even this years old content, some would be very hard to do.

    Even in chats and what people say, everyone seems to just assume the multi-box.
    When someone asked for how to do something, you just get a lot of 'Just box a Shaman for that part....Just box a Chanter, those are mezzable..'

    I think the real solution they need at this point, is they need an alternative way for people to 'catch up' on these crazy old achievements, and they need to stop going out of their way to punish and solo and pick up group play.
    I don't think its actually a gear problem though, if anything like I said the gear gap is actually closer than its ever been.
    Sancus likes this.
  10. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    The AC softcap is the point at which the value of AC on items/spells/AAs is actually less then the value they say they are.

    As an example, let's say you have 10 items with 100 AC on them. Simple math means you should have 1,000 AC. Easy.

    Now let's say you have a softcap of 500. This means that after you get 500 AC, any other AC you get is less than face value. 1000 ac on your items no longer results in you having 1000 ac.

    How much "overcap" ac is worth is determined by a multiplier which we will say for this example is .5.

    So this means that any AC over the cap is worth 50% of it's face value. So, using the example above with 1000 AC on your armor, you will get 500 AC, then the second 500 AC is worth 50% or 250, so you will end up with 750 AC total, not 1000.


    So, now you get an AA that says it increases your softcap by 10%. Your softcap originally was 500, so 10% of that is 50, so your new softcap is 550. Then the remaining 450 has 50% effectiveness so 225 for a total of 775 AC instead of the 750 you had before.
    Cadman, Duder and Bigstomp like this.
  11. Bigstomp Augur

    Nice simple explanation.
  12. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    Thanks, though I simplified it even more, I think.
  13. Bigstomp Augur

    You explained it better. My ... snipped ... was just to avoid quoting your whole post.
    I wanted to say more than just click like. (although you could add shield ac ignoring the cap in there)
  14. Beimeith Lord of the Game


    There's a lot more I didn't add. For that you can read Dzarn's post. I was just trying to explain it simply.