The boss casts "Volcanic Eruption" every so often. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=45558#NPCs_with_Ability When that happens the same time as fireball aoe, my poorly geared characters die (obviously when I'm choosing to eat fireball aoe). Problem is with my group makeup, when I move too much my dps is not even close to okay, and I've tried with an enchanter spamming rune AND 2 healers but my dps is not good enough there either obviously. I think it's just not happening with my paladin tank and conflag geared alts. Was really wanting to box this but I think I'll just try to progress on paladin first and go from there.
Merc healers? They just aren't equipped to deal with it. Modern healers have lots of AA tools and clickies to assist them with groupwide damage. Mercs use one group heal every 9.6 seconds. They simply cannot do it. They cannot even coordinate between themselves. If you take a group AE, both mercs spam their group heals, often wasting them.
IMHO the biggest issue with this trial isn't how difficult it is, but how far it lies within progression. If this was a mid-to-late progression task, the difficulty would be fine. People have had time to gear up to T1, if not T2 gear. They have RK2 spells. New augs, new weapons, etc. Instead this is thrown into the mix at the very start of the expansion. It's part of a series of missions in which it is vastly more difficult than the rest of the series. It locks you out of an entire TIER 1 static zone. It gives me End of Empire vibes, but that one came at the end of an expansion and gives you access to the end game for that expansion. The difficulty just needs to be brought in line with the other 4 trials. That's not too much to ask.
It is difficult for boxers, but this one trial is only needed for full Plane of Smoke access. It is not needed to continue your progression. With just a Plane of Smoke trial instance, if you have any of the other trials done you can move on to Ash and keep progressing into Tier 2. You don't need Plane of Smoke for anything but achievement completionest things and at that point yes, it is recommended to throw in some more folks other than a full box group with one pilot. But you can absolutely move on and do the Ash progression and beyond with a box group.
It was mentioned but will restate it. Bring along an enchanter. If they are casting all their group runes it massively improves the survivability of this event cutting down on the AE damage where even poorly group geared players can survive it. Two healers reduces the chance of both being stunned at the same time. With two clerics and a chanter did this mission with very low overall DPS and nobody died.
It seems the main reasons for doing any modern quest in EQ are to get the /achs (check off the boxes) and get the rewards. In this expansion, the rewards for doing quests seem to be: stat mount, stat illusion, lamp upgrade, and the ability to access other zones and request raids. The term "progression" is watered down and overloaded, and I think the best definition would be the /ach window itself. The Quests and Missions categories are similar to previous expansions, but the category specifically called "Progression" is a convoluted mishmash of missions in different zones, with seemingly arbitrary cross-connections between tasks in other categories. It was a frustrating and near-useless roadmap for the expansion. But, in the "Progression" category, all 5 trials of smoke are required and are even the very first item listed. So to me, there is no denying that all 5 trials ARE required for "progression". It also seems to me that the real issue isn't so much what is required, but when it is required. I agree that blocking access to the base tier 1 Smoke zone, which only has very trivial "Mercenary" tasks and named mobs for the Hunter /ach, is an arbitrary and frustrating design decision.
sheer pedantry. incomplete trials isn't a barrier to anything other than Plane of Smoke itself. Further, the progression tasks aren't "random" or disjointed at all - they very clearly follow the expansion's story. That you didn't pay attention to the Role your character was Playing is on you, not a fault of the /ach window
Opinion noted Objectively not true. Incomplete trials are also a barrier to: completing the Progression category of the /ach list, obtaining the expansion's rewards such as stat illusion and stat mount, and upgrades to the new dicho spell. And while everybody must complete all the trials to get those rewards, if you have yet to beat all 5 of the trials, then it is even more of a blocker: Being locked out of the next zone unless you have done a trial in the last few days is a harsh punishment that only affects the lesser-geared and/or lesser-skilled players. I.e., the people that are already having trouble. To me, that is backwards design. What part of the story is being followed by locking the base zone of Smoke behind the trials? Or locking the next zone behind completing all trials or one trial every few days? This is a bit of a tangent, but I know I've missed a lot of the NPC text that flies by in the spam and I would like to go back and read it. Do you know if there's a place to read the text from all the tasks we've done, without trying to review logs? There is a Storyline Window that hasn't been updated in 8 years and there is an NPC Journal that nobody can turn on because of lag. Is there a repository of all the quest NPC text that we can all read? Ever since I had to turn off my NPC Journal because of lag, I've considered most of the NPC text to be just wasted words (and dev effort) that most players can't reasonably read without dissecting their logs. Especially if you are grouping with other players and don't want to hold up the group. I enjoy the tidbits I am able to read. Back to the /ach list and "progression", I thought the /ach lists have been used to guide players through the quests they are supposed to follow since the /ach window (or Hero's Journey) was introduced. This time around, not only do the quest givers and quests for Progression jump around without any indication of which zone they are in (compared to previous expansions, where you did the tasks in one zone to unlock or move on to the tasks in the next zone), but the quest givers sometimes give you quests that you can't possibly finish at the time (hello, Political Awareness). While I'm sure the devs had a great laugh watching players getting killed and wasting time on tasks they couldn't possibly finish when the tasks were given out, it most certainly wasn't fun as a player.
I listed 4 different things: I'm looking at the Progression category of the /ach list and I see that all 5 trials are required to complete the very first achievement in that category. The first /ach is called, "Trials of Smoke (Group)". The stat illusion reward comes from Paragon of the The Burning Lands, which requires all of the Hero missions. You are correct: this one does not REQUIRE all 5 of the Smoke trials, it only requires one. The stat mount, however, comes from the Burninator achievement, which requires the "Champion of The Burning Lands" achievement, which requires the "Mercenary of The Plane of Smoke" achievement, which requires access to the static Plane of Smoke zone, which requires the "Trials of Smoke (Group)" achievement, which requires all 5 trials to be completed. That may not seem convoluted to you, but I think it may have tripped you up...or else it is still tripping me up and I would appreciate your help in clarifying You are also correct that the dicho spell upgrades do not require all 5 of the Smoke trials, only 1 trial. So 2 out of 4 of the items I listed do seem to require all 5 trials, and the other two are just more work to get without all 5 trials. But all 5 trials are still required for some of the rewards and for access to a T1 zone. Even though the dicho upgrades and the illusion reward do not technically require all 5 Smoke trials, the need to redo a trial every few days is still a punishment for not being able to beat all 5 trials. A design decision that only punishes players for being weak.
Other people getting nice things as a reward for their efforts does not punish you. That's not what the word means. That's not how the world works.
The Fireball emote/AE happens every 30seconds (actual AE occurs 15 seconds after the emote, by the way). The boss casts Eruption every 30seconds. You can pull the boss shortly after the Fireball emote goes off and it should stagger the 2 AEs so you're not eating them at the same time.
For anybody who was curious... A couple of guildmates and I tried this the other night, but ended up wiping. One guy (2 toons) had to log, so those of use left just sat in the instance after we rezzed and AFK'd/shot the breeze for a little while...maybe half an hour tops. In that time, 34 elementals spawned, in case anyone was wondering if there was a spawn limit. It appears there isn't. The only way to get it to reset is to drop the task and get it again. Seems more like a bug than a feature.
Just wanted to say I finally beat this thing last night. Group was a PUG with no raid geared characters except a raid geared shaman. I tanked on my paladin which has a mixture of T1/T2/TS group TBL. To offset the raid geared shaman, we had a fresh level 110 cleric with fewer than 18k AA and using Conflag and worse gear. I would say the single biggest thing for us which I am not sure if I’ve seen talked about on here yet but between each boss wave we cleared the yellow cons out completely. This was the first time I’ve done this and I had the idea because on the previous attempt we had the red con and 3 yellows on us which wiped us. The issue is that the green con you have to kill is right where we set the group up, so traditionally we’d just kill the green thing and spawn the boss back ASAP. In doing this, there were always 2 or 3 yellow cons up on the other side of the area that didn’t agro but do wander and will eventually agro on the group, usually when another 1-2 yellow have already spawned. In doing this clearing of all yellows before spawning the red con back again, we never once had to fight more than 1 yellow at a time while killing the boss, which made this mission seemingly significantly easier.
Nice work. Those yellow con mobs are no joke. I usually use my shaman/cleric together and the shaman's alliance spell turns the clerics direct heals into group heals, which is enough to heal the group after the fire AEs too. I'm sure the shaman was also keeping his synergy stacked on the group and then hitting the group with spiritual squall after each AE. I'm going to be doing this fight this week without my cleric (just the shaman healing), going to be tough!
Good luck! Does sound tough indeed, am curious to hear if you are successful. We tried it once with just the shaman and wiped pretty early on. Luckily our mage had to log and a cleric alt was suddenly available. And yes, we had 2 Necros and my paladin throwing out group heals which meant the sham and cler could solely focus on single target healing me. Combine their alliances with my harmonious and the group was completely healed within seconds after the AEs were hitting.
Got it done last night with a nec, sk, 2 rogues and two healer mercs. Was pretty basic and not that hard really with the strategy we used. It just took some time. One of the rogues was me. Burn on each phase of the Boss. After despawning his first appearance, just kill yellows until burns are back up. Clear out yellows, kill the green swirly dude, burn second spawn of boss until despawns, then go back to yellows again until burns are ready then clear any remaining yellows, kill the greenie...burn boss for the win. On yellows we avoided fireball. On the boss we did not. Each boss spawn was dead before my rogue clicked on Twisted Chance. Good DPS with good tank and puller should work. Nec was puller in our group. The person playing SK was boxing the other rogue. Toons should have good AA counts and decent group gear. Mercs were high AA count. Need decent HP counts.
