Nerf Mearates (Now)

Those of you defending the raid in its current form really don't seem to understand the health of this game. Raiding guilds have become fewer and fewer. In order to be competitive and attract the best players, completion of an expansion is the standard by which guilds are judged.

When fewer guilds are able to complete an expansion, burnout sets in, people quit or go elsewhere in frustration, and the raiding game becomes even smaller. If you like to raid and want to see the game continue (hell, if you don't raid and want to see the game continue), you'd be smart to realize that this raid is hurting guilds at the moment. Period.

This probably should be nerfed, but I really don't know how they do it without making it trivial beyond learning the mechanics through the training wheels phases. If you remove the run into the halls or delay the mephits during that window or this or that or whatever else, it's going to make the remainder of the fight a continuation of the first 15 minutes. An extra mephit and some rocks aren't going to be an issue if you're already getting that far.

To those saying it's entirely skill-based and that gear won't help, I believe that's false. The enrage timer definitely matters more than it's given credit for, both in the hard time limit (you can't hit enrage and throw a few tanks into the bone saw while you finish up like other events) and in its impacts on staffing and banes. When you hit 25% and you know you're going to have 4-5 minutes max after the lock to get mephitis under control and take the boss the rest of the way down, it's going to strain your resource allocation significantly more than if your fully geared force hit that point with 7-8 minutes left. The nerfed regeneration helped with this, but gear does, too.

I hope they find a way to make this more accessible without taking away from the event too significantly.

Everyone says this game is dying for just about every reason under the sun. How easy were the rest of the raids in this expansion? Don't you think they're too easy for raid content? Everquest is absurdly easy nowadays, but it's unforgivable if you screw up. As a paladin, if I cure at the wrong time it's a wipe 99% of the time.

It doesn't matter if it's a gatekeeping raid. Perhaps you forget how guilds work and players think?

I'm curious about this, because I really don't know. Can you enlighten me?

Today I got even more discouraged when I realized that if the next nerf comes during the June patch, I'll be overseas and unable to participate.

I'm having way too many feelings about this raid.

The only change I think this raid merits is get rid of the enrage timer, or at least change it a bit. Regenning 4% a tick is dumb, might as well just DT the raid and it would be less annoying. I am not a fan of enrage timers in general. If you can survive it, more power to you. Guilds are already punished enough for low dps, now reason to kick them when you're down.

But really, with all the nerfs, the challenge is chewing bubble gum while jogging.

I agree with your first point, and said as much earlier.

As for your second point, and to whatever extent you're responding to my comments, I specifically said that gear was a non-issue aside from the enrage timer. And while I'm not discounting the enrage timer, the reality is I would be surprised if any of the guilds currently stuck on UEE are losing due to enrage. Instead, I suspect that as with RoV, it's the transition at 25% that is the problem. There are simply too many things that can go wrong, and too little opportunity for the raid as a whole to recover from the mistakes of a few individuals. Most guilds simply can't field 54 people of the caliber necessary to beat this event.

It ticks me off to no end that the more I think about this, the more I think it is time for a nerf.

The enrage timer is fairly irrelevant.
If you can get passed the 25% transition and then hit the enrage timer, try again and do better dps.
Yea I'd be ticked if it hit enrage timer at 1%, but at least that would be different than getting 100 F-ing mephits storming the castle at 25%.

5 guilds have beaten this.
Its 2 days until June.
This needs nerfed.
Its just a matter of what aspect to nerf.

I believe the death mephits are by far the biggest road block.
That a single player failing emotes or event mechanics can lead to wipes for the entire raid has always been the worst aspect of any event in Everquest's history.
In this case there are too many things happening at 25% for anyone who isn't totally dialed in full time to handle.
I hate that 53 people can jump through all the hoops just perfectly, but if one person messes up and dies, the entire house of cards comes crashing down under an avalanche of mephits.

That there are still a handful of people calling this event fine as is boggles my mind. I assure you you would be singing a different tune if you were not sitting at the top of the mountain looking down.

I was one of the voices asking to hold off the nerf. It was held off. Then we got a tiny nerf, and then another month of nothing. Its time for another round.

The real question here is.. Can it be nerfed now .. with out gutting it to absurd levels ?

I just gotta say - with bards topping the parse there is either something really messed up or something really right about this raid.

I wholeheartedly agree that the raid being this difficult is not healthy for the game.

The population of the game is older nowadays, have real life requirements, and not as much patience for 'trivial' things, which, in most older people's opinion, includes all video games.

The majority of people that are still playing EQ are doing so because they enjoy the time away from real life, relaxing, chatting with long time friends, and making new friends. They enjoy the social aspect, and most enjoy socializing even during raid events.

They do not play EQ to be stressed out, frustrated, and feeling overwhelmed attempting to beat the last raid hundreds of times, wiping continuously over and over.

EQ competes with many things in real life. Raiding for extended periods of time, where total focus is required, severely competes with many things. From taking (or watching) kids play sports, making dinner, meaningful conversations with family, household chores, and especially in summer months, outside activities and chores.

Making any event, mission, raid, etc overly difficult is NOT helpful to the game, and the overall longevity of the game. People will/have become bored with the difficulty level, and will find 'better' things to do with their time.

The developers always have a challenge, to keep all things non-trivial, and seeming worthwhile to do, while not making them too difficult that it will drive people away...

It is time to reduce the difficulty of this raid. It wouldn't be terrible to just make the last 25% the same as 50 to 25%, honestly.

I have heard that ROI doesn't even do this raid on a weekly basis. If the top guild in the game isn't doing it regularly, then obviously, the reward isn't worth the effort... The effort needs to be reduced.

It is the last target we hit in a cycle, with 7 other muhbis sources, 3 GMM raids and going back to re-obtain achievements for those who missed them, we just don’t put it at the start of a cycle.

Reason 1: Wiping is demoralizing.
Reason 2: Literally the only benefit to continue raiding it in its current form over another target is practice and achievements.

Something I see with those beautiful twitches people have posted is that once you are rezzed you have the rock form that needs a cure. This mechanic could be removed and not neuter the event. But generally I see a death...followed by a cure fail death.

Our guild has had to stop recruitment because of the influx of players from guilds who are struggling week after week on this single raid.

Bring back individual punishments, not group ones. Fail an emote, DT. I enjoyed the individual achievements from RoS.

Those were great.

Also, the flags that stopped coming once flagged in TBM

Or the Arx ones that click converted to AA.

I agree with this. Need Cicelee approval before devs will take action though.

removal of death mephitis would destroy my stream watching pleasure and make the event way to easy

I don't want to remove the death mephits, just reduce their damage output so its not a cascade of death after 1 single person dies at the wrong time or place.

I see a recurring theme amongst certain people/guilds in this thread. My deduction is maybe you're just not good enough.

So you've been hand-fed the past few years with easy content via a loot conveyor belt requiring people with a pulse. The moment a mechanic is put in that requires more than that, and most of you throw your hands up, "time for a nerf!" My guild has more than 3/4 of the raid that doesn't even log in other than for raid nights. We all have jobs, children, chores, etc.

If you really care about making the boards that much, maybe bench those garbage-tier recruits and members on this fight. I'd much rather have one group benched that constantly ignore emotes and mechanics, than wiping at interval.

I think lowering dmg output of mephits, adding a tick to the hallways for the 25% phase, and lengthen the spreading stone debuff giving people more time to cure would put this in the realm of doable for most guilds without completely gutting the raid. And yes get rid of the enrage timer, enrage timers do not need to be in game for any damn event. It would be one thing if the boss just starts hitting a little harder as time goes on once you hit enrage like some events but a hard timer is not necessary at all.