Do u have to raid for raid gear?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by jmurked, Jul 11, 2014.

  1. Nolrog Augur

    Rank 3 are raid level spells that you can only get (for the most part) by raiding it is completely fair to soloers and groupers who do not raid that they cannot obtain raid rewards. They can get the rank 2 spells which are intended for soloers and groupers.
    Nissko likes this.
  2. ~Mills~ Augur

    Especially since rk 2 spells are so powerful to begin with compared to group weapons. I don't see group weapons that are almost as powerful as raid weapons which rk 2 spells are.
  3. Nylrem Augur

    Most melee dps comes from properly using discs/aa etc and proper coordination of others' abilities. The ratio of the weapon does not play near as much of a role as most melee think.

    Raid weapons vs group weapons on a poorly played melee toon are extremely minor dps increase.

    Raid weapons vs group weapons on an extremely well played melee toon are higher, but still fairly low dps increase.

    Exactly the same as rank 2 and rank 3 dps spells on a caster...
    Zentara likes this.
  4. Ruven_BB Augur

    Might want to parse your numbers for melee. I have seen raid weapons exceed 33 percent more damage over group in a 5 minute burn. That doesn't even take in account for sustained dps.

    Not going to get involved in the spells versus gear debate, but weapons ratios are extremely important to melee dps.

    Ruven
    Leerah likes this.
  5. onyuyan Augur

    Quite frankly in the case of either Melee or Caster DPS, skill and correct ability usage are what matters, not gear.

    As a mage, RK 3 spells and Raid Foci (Pet Focus, Fire Focus, Spell Haste, Mana Pres, etc) do have a significant impact on your DPS. The flat numbers are not particularly big, but because there are many multiplicative effects it ends up being much, much more significant than you'd think just looking at the spell.

    However, as a group geared mage I can smoke most raid geared mages I play with DPS wise because at least 85%, possibly a much higher percentage, of the player base never reads their class's forums or parses enough to know the best DPS in certain scenarios (and they don't listen to my advice). When you have a mage with max raid gear, spell damage augs, and AAs weaving fickle and bolt, it's not hard to beat them. For the vast majority of players who don't use their class to its potential, they'll suck with raid weapons/spells/foci too.

    On the subject of the thread, being a (mostly) grouping mage, it's completely fair raiders get better gear/spells. Even with more relaxed rules nowadays, you still have to get 54 people together, fight for hours, and maybe get 1 or 2 pieces of gear. And spells are not that common now that everyone has moved on to CotF.
  6. savrin Augur

    Skill has always been the most important factor. But most raids are anti-burn so weapons do make a big difference. If they do not, compared to group gear, they should have ratio increased. Because otherwise why even bid on better gear?

    I would maybe agree if only burn situations exists with raids, but for the most part they don't. Most scripts now are anti-burn and more of a sustained fight and in those kinds of fights weapons mean everything. Any raids(which are most of them) that last longer than simple burns do will make it not matter too much how good people are at burning but more about how good people are at doing sustained damage.

    To get back on topic raid gear is called "raid gear" for a reason. You gotta raid for it. There is some very rare and expensive chase item you can get but nowhere near a full set of it.
  7. Ravengloome Augur


    Even in a sustained fight a melee is stacking discs as convenient/they are up if they want to make the combined summary...

    So Nyl's point about the raw difference not factoring ADPS/Discs is pretty spot on and is how it should be.
  8. Brohg Augur

    Spot on and how it should be if it were true, I guess? Between ranking up each spell and putting on better foci, necros for instance get between +25% & +30% damage per spell cast. Group necro Pyre of Marnek = 230k(ish) damage, raid necro Pyre of Marnek > 300k. "Player skill" and trying hard and paying attention makes some difference, but you have to be pretty darned incompetent to fall behind that kind of handicap.
    Leerah likes this.
  9. Harabakc Augur


    Going from 70k bests to 120k+ bests is fairly substantial.
  10. Axxius Augur

    If you raid, the raid gear and rk3 spells come to you naturally.
    If you don't raid, you don't need raid gear or rk3 spells.
    Yinla and Genoane like this.
  11. Qelil Augur

    I'll toss in my own thoughts for whatever they are worth after reading through this thread.

    I see people debating skill vs gear as if one beats the other in tackling content. I would say for any given level of content, ideally you want and even need both, particularly raid content. Just as a case in point to evaluate the situation in raiding. Let's say we hypothetically get a guild of skilled raiders all outfitted in current expansion group gear to take on next expansion's raid content. How far do you think their high degree of skill is going to take them in that content without raid gear and spells? The gear and spells are in fact highly valuable aren't they? That content cannot be beaten by anyone in group gear.

    I bring this up because debating the relative value of skill versus gear is kind of pointless overall when you consider that a mix of both for any given level of content is necessary. You need both to win all but trivial content.

    People who do not raid but want raid gear either want to play EverQuest in "God mode" or they have some silly idea that having the highest stat gear in the game makes them cool somehow, the envy of their friends. I can only say I find that kind of thinking a wee bit less than adult in terms of maturity level. In EverQuest nowadays you can very easily get content appropriate gear for however you personally like to play. There is no problem but no, the game does not really support God mode outright anywhere you want to go. It is by design that you cannot just go around soloing everything. If you want to take on harder stuff, make some friends and experience the fun of playing with other people to do it. This game was made for this first and foremost.

    I notice also the usual stuff about entitlement. I raid, therefore only I deserve raid gear. I earned it. One could even say, I play the group game, only I deserve the nicer gear from that. Everyone who raids or groups could say these things to people who solo for example. I say, entitlement is not the issue. It's all about the content and being able to reasonably acquire the gear and spells needed to play in certain content that you enjoy. That's all. I'll come right out and say it. You are not entitled to feel that you are special because your gear in a computer game has higher stats then the lesser class of players that surround you. Think about it. That is pretty silly isn't it? And the game is not work. You do not work for gear. Well, at least I hope not. It is a game. It is supposed to fun, not work. You have fun and get the stuff you need to keep having more fun playing the kind of game you enjoy whether it be raiding, grouping, soloing or some mix of these. For anyone that considers EverQuest work I can only suggest you consider finding something else to do with your entertainment time that isn't work for you.

    These conversations having been going on for years and years and it's always the same stuff being said over and over again. For once, I felt like saying my own peace about it. Hopefully I don't offend anyone too much. By the way, in case anyone thinks I am coming from any particular perspective, I have raided in top guilds as a cleric, I have played the group game again mostly as a cleric, some as a monk and lately I enjoy just tooling around with lowbie alts for fun and consider defiant gear amazing because it is compared to the old days. Leveling is God-mod now in that stuff and it is kinda fun where you level more quickly because in a game this old and top-heavy level-wise you spend a lot of time alone bringing up a new toon. I've really had fun playing this game in a number of ways that it can be played.
    Elricvonclief likes this.
  12. savrin Augur

    Except there is a large loss of dps if you refuse to upgrade weapons in the case of melees. Skill and adps will not negate having a bad weapon or something like that. You don't need cotf t2 weapons to do current content but all the skill in the world won't make up for crappy ratio weapons. Current raids have very high gear requirements to do them. They are made for the best dps possible which trivializes them. Which means having good gear is key and discing is less important. Most classes cannot adps and disc all the time. Weapon ratios many times could be the difference between wins and losses for some guilds. Honestly most people are not idiots and have reasonable skill for raiding. So the only real difference is gear for most in my guild.
    Elricvonclief likes this.
  13. Ravengloome Augur


    Yes they do, they are also designed for 54 players... But then tell me how do some guilds split raid them with much less then 54?
  14. Dibab Augur

    combination of gear, ability, and the raid not having mechanics that actually require 54 people. Naggy HH raid and House Upper both come to mine. If its 54 badly geared people who arent familiar with a raid setting and or just aren't capable.
  15. Langya Augur

    Qelil, you probably already get this but there are plenty of people in the EQ community who feel it is their entitlement to dictate terms on how everyone else should be playing the game. There are plenty who would say if you don't raid in EQ than you really are not playing the game and thus are not worthy of their respect as a fellow player of the same game. These people tend to recognize the group aspect as paying service to raiding if not some separate entity in to itself where all the lesser skilled players call home. Truth is raiding is not always an option for everyone and everyone has their own goals in mind that should be respected.

    That is seldom the case though as the narrow construct of the "Us and Them" has fired some lengthy debates and vitriol. Particularly when ultra rare "raid quality" items were rolled out as random zone drops in CotF. The intent was a bit of carrot to get people into CotF but it ended up being all stick. The roll out was botched in that it could be exploited. The exploit was then used as leverage in the debate to crush the whole concept of these items even dropping at all by those who wanted to maintain that clear divide. The items dropping had no impact upon their play since the majority of the static was from raid players who already had easier access to much better gear, but they felt it was their "civic duty" or whatever to make sure everyone remains with access to gear that is only worthy of their caste in the game. The end result was they got their way, but the devs ended up looking stupid and the community left further divided.

    As you said, its behavior that is lacking in a certain level of adult maturity.
    Elricvonclief and Qelil like this.
  16. Sancho Elder

    Just go to FV for rkIII spells & raid gear. It's awesome.
  17. savrin Augur

    Because many of them are very easy for bleeding edge guilds. And these guilds that split raid them are very overgeared. More causal guilds with less RA requirements than others cannot split raid them. I don't agree they are designed for 54 raiders either. 54 is simply the maximum allowed in the dz. I do not think you need full raids at all for many of them. Remember raiding is now designed for everyone and not just the top 5 guilds according to the devs. So some guilds will be able to split raid them because they are being developed for the lowest common guilds to be able to beat them.

    Gear is a huge factor in whethere you can do cotf raids or not. Lots of guilds had full t4 rof gear when the expansion orignally came out and blew through all the raids easily. And you surely don't need 54 people if you are overgeared.

    A lot of these raids though are much easier with high dps and good weapons make a big difference between being able skip mechanics and make phases much shorter. Burns and AAs have cooldowns so you cannot rely on them all the time in most of these raids for max dps.
  18. Langya Augur

    Of all the years raiding that I did, I don't think I ever had a full kit of the expansion's end game tier gear. It was always a hodgepodge of multiple expacs of stuff. That is probably fairly typical for many guilds until raid currency came around. The gear was a tool to be able to do my part better at the time and not so much the end goal so I didn't really care too much. When I rolled a rogue, weapons were the big thing but beyond that it was not as important as being in a good group, staying alive and hitting the right buttons.

    What bearing does this have on this thread? Well, if the loot pursuit is all you care about than you might be missing the point of the game.
    Qelil likes this.
  19. Porterz73 Augur

    Bottom line people want the best available equipment in a game like EQ. The argument that group people, "Don't Need" certain gear is old and weak. If characters who don't raid should not have the raid gear then why does most raid guilds have multi multi Alts and Bots who never raid with this unneeded equipment. (I'm sure many of the people who have made this silly argument have non-raiding alts and bots with a considerable amount of raid gear)

    People on FV have access to this stuff and those who have access to platinum can buy the droppable chase items that are basically raid gear. Still the easiest way to get the stuff is to raid and it isn't too hard to get into a decent raid guild these days so if you have the time, raiding is the way to go.
  20. Axxius Augur

    Go ahead and make your argument why they do need it?
    Because they can.

    Next argument?