Reviewing Torment of Velious expansion

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Fian, May 19, 2020.

  1. Metanis Bad Company

    On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give ToV a solid 5. It's not bad at all, it's just nothing special either. I blame the level increase for consuming waaaaaaay too much Dev time that could have been put to better use.

    As a cleric it's nice having nearly every mob being undead. It's not nice they relented so early and cancelled all the see-invis mobs. If you know how to double invis there's no sense of danger anywhere.

    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.
    I am getting tired of all the washed out graphics from snow and ice.

    Overseer was a waste of time and effort. All that Dev time could have finally fixed Autofollow maybe? (Or maybe 400,000 other Quality of Life enhancements!) And maybe you wouldn't have ruined my income from collectibles!!! GRRRRRRR!

    I sound more negative than I actually am. I've been playing in ToV every day with my 6-box team. I did the ear on all 6 even though only my wife and I were able to actually get the raid drop.

    I do the missions every day. EW is fun to try and beat on his first drop. AoW is still very challenging for a boxed group. GD is mostly boring now that I figured out Narandi. And Velks is just another Griklor burn-fest. I have to do them though because Glowing Spells are still rare as hell for me. I still have 2 characters not done with Glowings. And wouldn't it be nice if they actually sold something worthwhile that you could purchase with the Group Mission currency!!! GRRRRRR!

    On Luclin I do my part to keep the Rank 1 gear drops cheap by doing bazaar on them!

    Please Darkpaw for the love of Money give me a switch to make the intensity of the ice and snow go away!!!
    Nadisia and Yendar like this.
  2. Whulfgar Augur


    Several things.
    1. Do you box ? Is this what you mean when you say you can not beat TBL ?
    2. Do people hate you so much that you do not get into actual player character grps ?
    3. Do you REALLY REALLY REALLY not know a single raider on your server that can not help you ?
    4. Are you not in a guild that help's out its population?

    Im sorry.. But unfortunately just because you say so I do not believe you. I refuse to believe that you (A)do not know a single person that (B) is raid
    geared or geared well enough that they can help you or (C) you are hated to the point nobody will help you or (D) your not in a guild that refuses to
    help you for any reason what so ever.

    You sir are stretching the credibility by every metric there is when it comes to EQ and its overall gaming population.


    Then you have a crappy tank .. Tanking that mob. Thee only mob in maeratas at that camp that does anything of the sort is the mob that mezzes the highest on agro target. And any tank worth their salt knows exactly how to self break a mez .. Thats one of the corner stone player skills that separates the good from the bad ..


    Nobody said it made them trivial. So stop tryna act ignorant like that. What I said was with ToV T3 grp gear new spells new melee tomes TBL is easier ..

    And yes, thats a fact with the new levels , melee tomes, spells, gear, AA.. If you are still having issues with TBL content its now less an issue of crappy this or that .. but a 100% completely skill based issue .. Like it or not .. sorry not sorry ..





    Already stretched the credability of not knowing a single raider on your server that will help you .. your guild refuses to help you.. and on top of that
    you lack the friends with capability enough to help you threw that expansion..

    But you want us to just believe ya .. cause "reasons" .. right ?

    Get real ..
    Yendar likes this.
  3. Zulan Lorekeeper

    Comparing expansions:
    TBL:
    Pros:
    -Loved the Jann Illusion
    -More than 4 group missions.
    -Meartas, you could farm gear there all day long if you wanted too, was an interesting concept for the Named to spawn in the middle like an area challenging players.
    -Chase loot evolving gear.

    Cons:
    -One of the worst expansion releases for tuning i can remember, almost on par with GoD. It was so bad there was almost a new post on the forums weekly about how people were quitting because of how non enjoyable the new expansion was.
    -Progression that didn't make sense at all, you started on a island with knockback causing trains on overtuned mobs for T1 so regular group geared from the previous expansion was having issues staying alive with no other zone to start off on.
    -Smoke trials were fun when you had the gear, but staying in stratos for a long time to get gear, wasn't all that fun.
    -Nobody wanted to do the Ash Trial, the aoe ate group players for breakfast.

    After multiple tuning efforts to the expansion, it was fun to play in.

    ToV pros:
    -T1 Gear is really easy to get and helped a lot of toons catch up real quick, lots of alts or new people enjoyed catching up during this corona virus lock down.
    -Missions gave exp! you could actually progress in this expansion viably, by doing quests.
    -Group content scaled really well for group geared players. You can tank a few mobs in T3 ToV gear, maxed aa as a warrior in T2 zones, but without cc you risk dying consistently (velks, upper floors tofs).
    -T1 Raids are actually on a T1 level difficulty, you can level up your toons and gear them in T3 ToV and be viable on T1 raids for the current expansion.
    -Personal opinion but a pro to me, stagger release of the raids. Execution of it was off, definitely should of been on a Sunday at noon or something a long those lines, but a pro non the less.
    -Good raid events! Over tuned or under, the events themselves are pretty cool Esp the bride/groom.
    -New earring quest.

    Cons:
    -Grinding mobs exp even with lessons on is kin to level 55 back in ToV days farming in the real velks.
    -T3 raids are not as hard as the T2 ToFS ones.
    -Making progression exp the only viable exp to level at a decent pace.
    -Challenger achievements could be accomplished in each mission by only doing that mission once (this was extended by making people do the opposite in TBL like "Avoid the fire" then another Ach "allow the fire to spread")



    ToV has been a great expansion. If you gear yourself in T3 gear for ToV, you can easily do T1 stuff without issues. T2 still gives you some trouble if you pull too many mobs. If you're raid geared, T2 is trivial (as it should be when you're finally raid geared). That scaling is spot on, maybe not enough content overall but that's simply where EQ is in 2020, not a lot of support due to the playerbase it supports.

    It wasn't completely over tuned like TBL. TBL was a cluster that went through nerfs to allow group characters to even enjoy grouping. Oh you got three adds? here's 3x 120k dd's while pulling...might of been a different story if the mobs didn't cast until 98% or something but even in ToV T1 Gear, that would of been an issue even today.

    In comparison, TBL was not a good returning player expansion what so ever, and actually encouraged people not to buy the expansion for quite some time. There were lots of posts of "i'm not buying this expansion until the devs figure out how to tune it" when it was released. I don't see that with ToV, i see people enjoying it, making alts to try out or leveling up current ones. On Bristlebane you have more alts raiding in open raiding nights than i can remember in previous expansions, to the point there is benching happening on open raids.

    I've seen more pick up groups in for ToV missions than any expansion that I can remember in the past few years. You can box the missions sure, but people who don't, are actually able to find people who want to do it.

    TBL needed a LOT more tuning than ToV did, call it a "catch up" expansion if you want, but this was tuned great for group geared casual players. Sorry if the raids weren't hard enough to make more players quit (GoD), or the quests didn't take the entire year of the expansion to complete, but overall it's been fun.

    Yes it's too bright.
  4. Yendar Augur

    There are a lot of so called “bad players” then in your book.. and those are the people that don’t finish the expansions generally.

    I have friends that are raiders, I can group with them whenever I want.. I don’t ask them to go back and do old challenger missions for me for all my toons generally they don’t need. People don’t want to log on and do old content for no benefit. I wouldn’t want to ask people to do that. I wouldn’t want to do it if I was them. I have guildies that I can group with.. why are you making these dumb assertions? I never said any of these things. I do group with them and do the achievements we are capable of. I do group with raiders and do the achievements we are capable of. How do you think I finished ToV challenger? I didn’t say I did it on my own.. I grouped with the same guildies and same raider friends during TBL and we couldn’t complete it.

    Once you get ToV t3 group gear, melee tomes, spells, & AA’s ToV is easier too. Kizant has a comment on the easiest class to play thread. He says his lower level necro can chain cast 110 (TBL) level swarm pets and kill mobs in EW without casting anything else. These are the SAME mobs people are getting 115, max AA, tradeskill gear, and new melee tomes/spells for.. oh and they’re grouping up with SIX of them like this.

    Let’s see you go to TBL and cast your level 105 swarm pet on TBL mobs.. the TBL stuff is still basically just as hard as ToV.. and ToV didn’t require all those things for me to complete.. in fact I completed it without a lot of my spells, AAs, levels, and still using TBL TS group gear.

    Im actually pretty shocked that you think most group geared players finish challenger achievements every year.. I’d guess that most don’t.. and aren’t able to find groups during the next expansion to get them done often either. I’d also guess that ToV will have more players finish challenger achievements than CoTF, TDS, TBM, EoK, RoS And TBL. I’ve been able to complete most of these and my four toons have almost all their heroic AA’s, all their 5 evolving items, most of the proper augs although I could still swap a few type 18/19’s on a couple. I was able to do all these things while the expansion was live though.

    If it’s skill based, and I’m not a good player... that’s fine.. but my lack of skill has rather easily/rapidly finished ToV.. so again ToV must be WAY too easy & that’s what I’ve been getting at. I’m not going to get any better or improve my lack of skill in ToV because I’m not challenged too.
  5. Fredescu Augur

    The visual monotony is the biggest downside. I only started again recently, so I'm going back and doing TBL progression now and it's so beautiful. Going back to ToV again is like watching something in black and white, which is fine once in a while, but not every zone and every encounter. Even Avatar of War, the iconic huge bright orange mob that everyone knows, is relegated to the same grey blandness.

    There really needs to be a Wakening Lands style zone in ToV. If the lore says you can't do that, change the lore. The visual interest of new zones trumps everything else. Plenty of people ignore the lore in the text, but visual design is impossible to ignore. 100% of players experience that. It has to come first.

    It's a funny thing to say about an expansion where the lore is based around a new visual element though. That part is really cool. It just needs a splash of colour or two. Something to break up the monotony.
  6. Whulfgar Augur

    You said that .. not me..

    But it is a 100% factual thing to admit, there are varying levels of talent in players across BOTH the raid population as well as the Grp only players population.

    To say other wise is being 100% disingenuous ..

    Then you are literally limiting your OWN self .. an projecting that very limitation upon other's because you REFUSE to ask for help ..

    Thats stupid..

    Its not "hard content" its .. YOU'RE refusal to ask for help thats holding you back from finishing expanions (in era .. ) Stop trying to say anything other then what it is ..



    TBL is geared twords level 110 characters .. Its no wonder you have still having troubles with TBL content ..

    A- You refuse to ask for help ..
    B- You refuse to level to the correct level for the corrasponding expansions..

    You are literally your own worst enemy ..

    Just like you said there are some bad players .. there are some good. Even in the grp content only player pool this is a factual point.

    Good players never limit themselves 5 lvls lower then the content is ment to be played at .. and also do not limit themselves by not asking for help if and when its required they do so.

    Bingo.
    Gillthanas likes this.
  7. AZerker New Member

    I liked TOV a lot. I liked the story, I like how it rolled out the raids and even the slight delay in the ear didn't bother me. I like the Ear (BIS). I like not having to progress to do raids (also no keying!) or group events. I would of preferred locked zones, makes it a little tougher/longer to get where you want/need to go.

    My group did ALL of TOV progression without any new gear or spells, levels came as they did. 2 of the 6 were raid geared. That was our challenge. Totally possible, we did everything but hunters and collections. But my group of merry man/women are very good at what they do.

    When we got done we went our separate ways and did our alt accounts, I thought the replay was fun with my alts also (hunter and collection time!), my third time though at this point, still not bad. Crystal Cavern's............. damn you Ngreth!!, was a PITA. But when you think about that, it was more in depth and difficult due to the steps you had to complete. One quest to rule them all!! Imagine if all the zones had quests like that.... be like EOK but worse/better depending on your viewpoint?

    Was it easy, depends? What and who is doing it. I think it was a great expansion to get people up to snuff and to get some other stuff done they been meaning to do. You can even farm TOV raids for luck and ores, that is awesome and slightly difficult and no flagging needed!

    I am not saying this was the biggest or most difficult or more has the most new zones/mobs or the most quests. I am saying I enjoyed it and I am still enjoying it. I think a majority of under powered/manned/skilled (whatever you think) group players and raiding guilds are finally able to catch up and not be so frustrated. This goes a long way for a healthier population (Just my Opinion, yours may vary).

    I give it a solid 8 - 8.5. There is always room for improvement. Will the next expansion be like this /shrug. I am hoping now that we had a nice walk in the park, we can get a little more difficult for the next expansion at least. Then take it as it goes from there.
  8. enclee Augur

    I didn’t like the last season of Game of Thrones. So, I give ToV a 1/10.
    Whulfgar likes this.
  9. Caisy Master

    Have you turned off pixel shader 2.0? No more vertigo ice glows.
    Whulfgar likes this.
  10. Dracolindus Journeyman

    I'm a Paladin. I love ToV, but TBL is my 2nd favorite expansion, behind Planes of Power. I retired during HoT, and came back around halfway through RoS. The difficulty in RoS and TBL is probably the prevailing factor that sucked me back in to this game like original EQ and Kunark did.
  11. Sexy Troll New Member

    This expansion boring as hell. Excluding the earring, it was WAYYYYY to easy. I'm maxed aa, max XP 3 days after launch, max earing. Literally nothing to do for 7 months.

    Its not a terrible expansion content wise, but if we are traveling back to velious, bring us the highlights! POG, a giant ringwar 2.0, dain, yelinak, 3 different factions that your guild could explore.

    Everything that made velious awesome is non-existant.

    I'm completly Meh about this expansion, its almost as bad at TBM IMO
  12. Gillthanas New Member



    I'm a newb, how do I self break mez?
  13. Odiiusx Elder

  14. Vumad Cape Wearer


    I think that the expansion was pretty great overall. I was among the first in my server to access smoke so I myself was not held back.

    I agree with this and just want to clarify that I take a strong stance on supporting returning players and my "worst expansion" statement was based solely on how harsh TBL was on anyone returning or playing casually. My biggest issues with TBL were the AE death touches (for returning players) in the very first zone, all the locked zones, how access to smoke worked and Access to wind (T1) being after access to allasha (T2)

    At least in Lceanium players could avoid the giants. TBL had no place for returning players to safely catch up.

    So TBL was definitely not the worst expansion in EQ, but it was the least accessible and brought the least value to a large number of players. That very bad for a MMO that does need the casual player base.
  15. Fian Augur

    I am also skeptical about a mage pet tanking missions in TBL or TOV. From my experience with my bst, there is anti-pet tanking code in missions that prevents your pet from keeping aggro if there are multiple other players on the aggro list. So if you could solo a mission, your pet could probably tank, but if you have a 6 man group, no way.
  16. Yendar Augur

    What are you talking about? All my toons are 115 max exp and have most everything done. I have zero trouble completing ToV content. Never have.. even prior to 115. Or having my AA’s its an EASY expansion.

    In ToV the prior level swarm pets can kill trash mobs.. that was the point.. Kizant has a lower level necro and send 110 swarm pets at ToV EW trash and kills them fine (easiest class to play thread) so I asked you if you can use a 105 swarm pet in TBL to kill trash.. That doesn’t mean I’m 105 and don’t have the AA’s or spells.

    If I get 5 people to help me do old challengers, sure I could do them.. but there aren’t 5 people on that actually want to do them.. and I honestly don’t care all that much.. if it wasn’t for C19 I wouldn’t be playing EQ.. since I’m home... I bought the xpac. In era.. I have no problem finding groups.. or asking for help.. TBL challengers weren’t easy “in era” the time trial for prince ralafin is HARD. Killing the boss after all the adds are dead on ashes is hard when people need a basic win and are worried about wiping. Firelings I did on my chanter with mage and cleric.. but was never able to get done on my monk because I needed someone else to play enchanter. I’m able to do these things.. I’m not always able to get the right group to help me of capable players.


    I don’t know how “skilled” I am.. I know that I’m usually the first one I’m my guild to finish off things.. and have to explain most of the mechanics etc to them. There are a lot of people more “skilled” than me I’m sure but I’m way above average in EQ. ToV is easy.. TBL is pretty easy too.. but there are some challenges there... where you actually need other good players. In ToV you can get the same content done even grouping with the “bad players.” You called the tank a “bad player” in mearatas for losing aggro and not breaking the mez.. which is fine.. but the point is that SAME “bad player” has completed ToV and that’s why he’s going back to TBL to get some old augs. So bad players can complete ToV.. meaning they arent becoming challenged to get better.
  17. Wiff Elder

    My friend and I are playing an SK and ENC with a CLR box, with 3 dps mercs. We have group/bazaar gear (6800ish hp). Should we do TBL or ToV? I'm not real fond of zone keys/flags, so I was planning on skipping TBL, but am worried that ToV will be too tough for us.
  18. Fian Augur

    TOV is easier than TBL even with higher level mobs. This assumes you are 110. If not, level to 110 in RoS zones.
  19. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    ToV is easier than TBL, but I'd go do Gnome Mountain and get some more HP, 6800 is very low.
  20. Schadenfreude Augur

    For bazaar gear? Not really.