Best Expansion in YEARS

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Zekzerk, Dec 22, 2019.

  1. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Thank you for the advice. Right now, it is usually just my soon to be level 112 paladin and my equally soon to be level 110 rogue. I can sometimes get in real groups, but my play time is easily interrupted as late and I hate having to AFK pause a group. I will try Gorowyn and when finances allow, get the latest expansion for the rogue.

    As a followup question: Is a level 112 paladin with a merc. likely to be able to kill singles in ToV EW?
  2. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    I was so excited for ToV. It literally brought me back into the game. I had quit early in TBL, and all it took was hearing sometime in late summer or early fall that the next expansion was going to be velious based to get me to resume playing.

    Remaxed my aa's, resumed raiding on a new server with a new guild with some new friends and a couple old ones. After doing all of the raids for weeks on beta, and blazing through the group content once the expansion finally released, I feel like ToV will cause many people to quit the game for good.

    Most of the zones are undesirable for people, (not to mention absolutely blinding making people constantly alter their display settings) the content is too easy, and it's not even been a month but a large number of people are already done with the expansion sans the raids. Which we are seriously hoping they will be tuned to be much harder than they were on beta. Even if they raise the difficulty, most of the raids themselves are the least inspiring that I've seen in several expansions.
    Sancus likes this.
  3. Ashian Augur

    I very much agree with your position on the brightness issue. I disagree on the difficulty position. It took me one day to do Master of TBL. It also took me one day to do Master of ToV (except the bugged EW quests). TBL was considered a very challenging expansion and ToV is the opposite. Unless the content is so challenging that it obliterates the vast majority of the playerbase, it isn’t going to slow the top players down. My point: It isn’t a matter of “difficulty” but more a matter of quantity of content.

    What you’re really asking for is more content to keep you engaged. Unfortunately the TS/evolving chase earring was not completed by launch, so the one thing that was likely to consume your time isn’t available yet.

    As for more difficult raids: it is a balance. Make them too difficult and guilds such as mine won’t be able to beat any of them. This has been discussed at great lengths during the beta process.
  4. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    At least tbl had more than 4 missions to do. The velks mission can be done in less than a minute of engaged time, the kael mission is an exercise in dps classes NOT dpsing for half of the encounter, the ew mission is insultingly easy not to mention boring, and the gd mission is nothing more than paying attention for 10 seconds to find out who is the real slim shady.
    Sancus likes this.
  5. Sancus Augur

    I have to agree with this. I wrote like seven paragraphs about the raid design in this expansion, but I think my basic point is, regardless of difficulty/tuning/whatever, I'm not going to enjoy farming these raids.

    What it comes down to, for me, are mechanics. I like those that encourage personal responsibility and that create the risk of failure. I absolutely despise mechanics that the correct response to is "stop DPS" or "sit and twiddle your thumbs." I do not consider not playing my class a challenge, and I would consider balance mechanics, HP % based adds, bosses constantly going inactive, etc. to all fall into that category.

    If I'm not going to get to do something fun like Mearatas/Drusella's Vault, I would at least like to be able to DPS without feeling like the event doesn't want me to perform my role.
    Duder, Ssdar and Ravanta Suffer like this.
  6. bigpapa Augur

    well there are some players who don't like to do tasks ( who required full groups for the most ) and prefer grinding killing mobs , i know we can still do that , but the xp is so low , it might get them out of this expansion .

    i guess TBL was the same for them , but GMM was a nice grinding spot for them , with nice rewards.

    ps : i like tov so far, i did all progression with my main toon ,, for my alts , since i can't beat the hero tasks it is slow grinding , killing mobs, until i see an opening for them for a task add or something.

    so no more alts for me ( i am ok with what i have atm anyway ) and i don't use is_boxer .

    ***so i was not able to do any ROS hero tasks .

    *** i did all TBL tasks ( except smoke trial of ashes )

    *** so far hero tasks in tov didn't went well { i only tried 2 } , i will see once i got level 115 and better gears / aa's to see if i can box them.
  7. Hitty Augur

    for ubah raiders with ubah gear...obviously...
    for groupers who get dragged and protected by ubah tanks... obviously...

    Like always some forget there are other players too...
    I would be interested how you do that in group gear...(and I don't say it is not possible, I only say that many are talking but only a very small amount of real info).

    Obviously there is a trick in that which is neither on Zam nor in this form or on Eqresource but at moment it all looks more than a raiders plow through due to gear and 30% focus bonus compared to group gear...
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  8. Flatchy Court Jester

    Sometimes I wish EQ would go the Diablo route and give the player the chance to ramp up the difficulty. That might save us groupers from the "OMG ITS TOO SIMPLE IN MY UBAH GEAR" make it harder nerf that will probably be on its way.

    Last expansion there were screams of too tough and some things were ramped down. This time around it will probably be the opposite. So everyone who didnt rush to beat the expansion over your Christmas break from work will get a nice treat.
  9. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    You're right. I've forgotten all about the fact that there are other players in the game.

    You're absolutely right. Oh wait...I've done the missions with pets tanking them, when we didn't have a tank class.
  10. Hitty Augur

    sounds easy in raid gear and max-botted AA and xp to the earlobe...
    Xianzu_Monk_Tunare likes this.
  11. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    Too funny. Max botted? What does that even mean? I'm not an autobot, that's a hasbro property not affiliated with everquest in any way.

    The equipment that is worn on a person only impacts the pet in one area, and that's the pet focus. I've run these missions with characters who have never joined a raid tank the missions with their pets

    You won't get anywhere posting things like this, because all that you're doing is making baseless assumptions about other people.
  12. Hitty Augur

    Then step down from your high horse. Read your posts, they are a slap into the face for people struggling for getting these missions done while everybody tells how easy it is without any real hints how this should work.

    I am friendly as long as people are to me.

    I have done it now and it is far from being easy. Raidfocii are about 30% better then the usual group focii. As a raider you have the advantage to be able to do all special achievements which gives additional boni every expansion. This is something I rarely have seen mentioned here. I always wondered why this is such a big difference. These missions are a hell easier with the right amount of DPS. Normal groupers get the partisan, mercenary (and mostly not important Hunter/Collection) achievements - if they are lucky then perhaps the Paragon Achievement adds ot it but lack on Challenger or the combination of them and therefore miss nice items like the healing augments or the usual special AAs.

    More exact information instead of showing off would really help and I would really appreciate that. And these missions information are - to say at least - crude, because the raid-to-groupers-gap is so big that most only plow through the content or getting dragged through. So all who are not top-end can perhaps wait that DGB makes the missions harder because of all "to easy posts" (AGAIN... they did it before in EoK, in RoS) while guys like me are more then struggling to get it done - to NOT WAIT AGAIN ONE YEAR TO HAVE THE GEAR FOR IT!

    This can be sometimes highly demotivating here in this forum. I am happy that a part of people here really have a notion about how much only small things help in getting these missions done. My fun is not grinding to get killed over and over again while grinding is ultraslow and every wipe is again grind... this is not Everquest for me - this was the stupid game 20 years ago which I would have left for good a looong time ago if it would not have changed. And if people dare to compensate the experience loss with botting crews (some posts here are shouting so much into that direction) then it gets highly annoying if people only say how easy this all is...

    So sorry for that, but I am only after some bits to get over these missions which are - like the last expansions not any fun at all... for me... once done - then I can proceed with the real funny things...
    Flatchy likes this.
  13. Natal Augur



    For Kael, only if you are trying to get the achievement, if you already have it you might as well burn the trash down.

    The ToV missions are only super easy if you have good dps. Like doing the Velk's mission in less than a minute for example. If you dps is less good then it gets considerably harder. The problem with your argument is that you are destroying content with dps that most players will come nowhere near to achieving, and content can't be gated on that.

    Most of the TBL missions were super easy as well. The only ones that presented a real challenge ironically were those right at the start of progression, namely the smoke trials. Which was assbackwards, but I think the lesson learned was not to repeat the same mistake in ToV.
  14. Ravanta Suffer Augur

    The problem I have with opinions about the missions not being easy is that it's always about the complaint of the uberness of the character's gear. Yet I've done the missions with people who have never joined a raid in that character's life and they did just fine.

    People just never want to admit that they just don't know what buttons to push.
    menown and Sancus like this.
  15. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer


    Gotta disagree with you. I think the missions are fun and they're accessible to PUGs.
    Szilent and Elyssanda like this.
  16. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Red herring fallacy. You presume that all raiders are highly skilled players and know their classes forward and backward. Sorry - this is simply not true. While a fair portion of raiders are, indeed, highly skilled players. I would wager most fall under the bell curve and are average to above-average players. There is NOTHING wrong with this, by the way.

    I am not defending Hitty, but rather pointing out that not all raiders are of equal skill or equal knowledge. What I think separates raiders from groupers is the persistence - most raiders are not deterred by failure and redouble their efforts to overcome the obstacle. Raiders fail and fall just like everyone else. The difference is that they get right back up and get after it straight away.
  17. Hitty Augur

    Says somebody in raid gear who drags exactly these people through the difficulties? In Cacticii I had only one friend in raid gear who was enough to make this mission flow. Replacing this guy with a grouper - and nothing worked.

    Say like you always want, but I simply tested that now often enough - in beta with raid gear and now I see that again. The same gear, only a bit higher in level and ToV T1 weapons and TBL Ashes Trial is smooth like butter. And you only need 1-2 raiders in the group for that tad of edge.

    It is always easy to talk down from a high horse....

    Do it without your achievments, your 30% focus bonus, all your items-AAs from raid items, all your item boosts from achievement boni you got from raid and then strip down to group gear. If somebody claims he does then it was always the same - they had all their little boni still and only changed the clothes. It is a very fine line. Before that 10x failure with not even being close to withstand the beating, after that I even stand in the damage rain and can now simply heal through it and I am not even maxed with Rk. II spells.

    So tell me that is only ability... ridiculous excuse, like always in the last years in this forum. Only a small amount of people really try that in real group gear but even they are a tad over this slight edge and have their achievements from TBL (TBL mask, TBL mount) - and simple raid weapons are sometimes enough to reach this tipping point.

    I tested that regularly since TBM.
  18. Ravanta Suffer Augur

  19. Hitty Augur

    And btw: I see it since TBM. EoK was the only expansion which was possible to do completely until DGB nerfed the last mission and then I could only do it with gear one expansion later again. RoS Talendor is still open but this is a 12 peep mini raid - so what - but the progression is still not done because it is a part of it (Merc-Partisan-Hero). TBL Ashes was open and is now finished this week. TBM is still not done, but honestly I didn't had any urge to try that mess again - I am always talking about the last missions. I can let me shove through with a raid tank but then I could also buy TAs or somebody who plays my toons - I think about the use of a game where you need to buy success, not my style.... :confused:
  20. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    Tucoh does it boxing six characters. Zero raid gear. /shrug