Raidgear does trivialize Groupcontent to the point of monopolizing large aerea

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Beco, Dec 19, 2020.

  1. Beco Lorekeeper

    During beta there have been some Raides, complaining about the groupcontent beeing too easy. There some tried to argue, that its more the superior playstyle than the gear, which makes the content trivial.

    Actually on my server you can withness this superior playstyle.
    A probably boxed team of one of the biggest raidguilds shows the difference in gear/playstyle:
    He pulls 10+ mezzimune trashmobs in new Western Wastes to his team and tanks them to death within less than 30 seconds, without ever going below 90% hp. Than goes grabbing the next swarm.

    If a team of grouper pulls 3 unmezzable mobs in new Western Waste, they are in big trouble to keep the tank alive and have a good chance to wipe, that is a tank in full CoV T3 gear.

    A whole area can easily be monopolized by a group of raider, where maybe upto 6-10 casual groups could find enought to do to have fun.

    Probably it's time to address the gap in gear between raidgear and groupgear.
    Leerah likes this.
  2. Nolrog Augur

    /popcorn

    OK, I am ready.

    Go.
    Fenthen, Mikana and Dibab like this.
  3. Warpeace Augur

    I agree Raid gear helps, but there is so much more to it than just that that gets ignored in complaints like this.
  4. Cadman Elder

    While I agree that raid gear does help, a lot... If you're struggling with 3 Tier 1 mobs on a T3 Geared group geared tank, the problem isn't group gear. Your tank and healer isn't using everything that's available to them in the correct manner.

    My group of non-raiders take 5 or 6 in WW regularly without any issues.
  5. Dibab Augur

    The gap between CoV Ts gear and ToV TS raid isnt that great. The gap is fine where it's at. The people who have said skill > gear are absolutely correct. I have raided with tanks in equal gear to one another but 1 has skill whereas the other doesnt. The one without skills gets smoked.
  6. Beco Lorekeeper

    Your signature shows over 27k AC on your groupgeared Tank, able to take 5 to 6 mobs.
    Are you shure, you got this with sole group-gear?
  7. Jokskilove Palzerker


    If you clicked the signature, you'd be able to confirm this is indeed the case. Full TBL chase loot, Rallos ear, full velium threaded and maxed augs. It's rare to see group players this well equipped, but kudos to those that go all in on the group game :)
    Ironkeg, Dibab and Cadman like this.
  8. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    It is my impression that groupgear has been "catching up" to raidgear lately. CoV-group-tier3 has almost the same raw HME as ToV-raid-tier1. There is still a noticeable difference in focus-effects and AC/heroics though.

    A hardcore grouper is not far behind a slack raider(gearwise), nowadays.
    Skuz likes this.
  9. Cadman Elder

    As Jokskilove pointed out, I only have group gear (with the exception of the latest Type 5 augs, everything is up to date) maybe at a stretch you could consider my shield as a raid item, but tbh that's just Magelo padding and is rarely used.
    Ironkeg and Yinla like this.
  10. Slasher Augur

    1 group even a raid group killing 10 mobs in WW in 30 seconds over and over without waiting for burns to be back up ? I call bs on that. Once MAYBE twice with secondary burns but after that you're waiting for disc to refresh.
    Velisaris_MS likes this.
  11. Beco Lorekeeper

    /bow at Cadman ... my guess that's by far different from any casual group tank.
    Kase likes this.
  12. Dibab Augur

    then thats on the player not the game. Cadman is a perfect example of what any group gear player CAN attain. If anything as EQ goes on the gap has lessened not grown further apart.
    dreadlord, Skuz and Cadman like this.
  13. KrakenReality Augur

    I’d encourage anyone out there that’s casual to join a raid guild. Guilds are down to 1-2 nights a week for a few hours each night. You’ll get better return on your time investment and be in a more cooperative community. Plus, the added content is so thin that you need only need to keep up a few AA lines each expansion.
    Skuz and Ironkeg like this.
  14. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    You correctly identify an issue, but frankly are way off on the solution.

    Let all zones support pick zones, and let the criteria for another pick be, not how many players are in the zone, but what percentage of mobs are down. If the current pop is dominating a zone, let another zone spawn.

    Solves not just this issue, but also the farming bot issue.
  15. Tucoh Augur

    Raid vs group gear doesn't matter all that much. It helps tanks the most but in 2020 the abilities the tank use overshadow the impact of gear. For DPS that gear does very little. I say this as someone without raid gear.

    This fact isn't that obvious because most organized groups with highly informed players happen to be raiders.
  16. Windance Augur

    Gear makes a pretty big difference. Knowing how to use a classes ability makes a big difference. Having a perfectly min/maxed group makes a big difference.

    A perfectly min/max group of people in raid gear who know their characters is a HUGE difference.


    This weekend I helping out a guild members by playing his monk instead of mine. Both characters are max going into CoV, both have ToV Raid 2HB, but guild member doesn't play much outside of raids, so no TBL chase loots for18/19 augs, and he's missing a lot of hDex type 15 augs.

    The sustained and burst DPS was noticeable lower, by about 20-25%.

    If he were running a group gear weapon it would be even worse.


    So I can totally see someone who's spent a lot of time to min/max their toons coming into a zone like WW and totally owning it. I find the claim of chain pulling 10 mobs and killing them all in 30s to be difficult to believe. Once while blowing discs, yes. Sustained unlikely.
    Tegila likes this.
  17. Cicelee Augur

    Most important thing about your character is your Magelo profile and ranking.

    It has nothing to do with skills, talent, ability, knowledge, experience, situational awareness, cooperation with group mates, focus, desire.

    Only Magelo rankings.
    code-zero and Metanis like this.
  18. Beco Lorekeeper

    How many skill it takes for a tank, if the tanks hp-bar barely moves when 10 mobs are hitting him. The situal awareness is, that, if hes on oger illu, he will scratch his backside while tanking, if not he won't.
    Any semi-afk tank can tank, if the mobs don't scrach him.

    This agrument about talent, skills, experience is always pulled, when there are theorizations about the differences. If in the fields, you see, that a tank almost take no damage, non of this is necessary.

    I am fine, if raidegear eases the progress for the raiders, so they get their needed flags for the raids.
    But as I now could see how far more ppl can do whith this gear, I understand, while every once a while some raider are complaining.

    For me everything would still be fine, if I wouldn't find the threads, where raiders post groupcontent should be made harder to offer them a challenge.

    My feelings are, if the gap wouldn't be as it is now, those could be fine with the level of difficulty of the group-content.
    UncleUms likes this.
  19. Tegila Augur

    Um how do you think the tank is tanking without getting hit? Tools. Discs. Aas. Clicks. Spells for knights. Etc. It's not just oh gimme raid gear and I'll afk while y'all DPS the mobs. Doesn't work that way. They also have to hold aggor and autoattack doesn't do that, especially against burning dps
    Yendar, Cadman, Sancus and 1 other person like this.
  20. Sancus Augur

    I suspect this is an extreme exaggeration, but if not it is mathematically impossible to explain this difference via gear.

    To use the Warrior BP as a proxy for gear differences, here are the stats of the ToV Raid TS and CoV Group TS versions, with and without augments:

    [IMG]

    The gap in heroics between group and raid gear is larger than in other stats, but when including Type 5 augs, which account for the majority of heroic stats on an item, the gap is in line (~90%). For reference, I chose Wrapped Entropy Stone and Seaglass Curio as the Type 7 and Type 5 augs; a better Type 7 aug would reduce the gap slightly.

    There are other fixed benefits that both group and raid geared players receive the benefit of that would further close the gap. Most buffs are now de-ranked, any survivability AAs are equal across them (e.g. Armor of Wisdom provides both group and raid Warriors 3630 raw AC), they have the same softcap limit, etc. There is a slight difference in stats derived from Power Sources due to purity and between Rank 2 to Rank 3 disciplines (the latter is generally 5%), but neither are going to cause a notable difference in performance.

    The idea that an 18.0% increase in armor class and an 8.9% increase in HP could enable a tank to tank three times as many mobs and never drop below 90% HP is ridiculous. Presumably if the group tank "has a good chance to wipe," his HP is at risk at dropping to zero percent with three mobs. To only drop to 90% HP with 8.9% more total HP and ten mobs would require that each individual mob do 3.27% of the damage output they would be doing on the group tank. In other words, that marginal difference in heroics and 18% armor class would have had to somehow mitigate 96.73% of the incoming damage each mob was doing.

    That's the problem with arguments about raid gear. It does make a difference, and tanking is by far the most gear dependent function of EverQuest. However, people are quick to attribute massive gaps in ability to the gap in group vs raid gear, without understanding all of the other different variables that are in some cases much more important in terms of performance. They also tend to significantly exaggerate what they observe.

    In RoI, most of our applicants come from top 10 guilds and have full raid gear, chase loot, and whatever else you could imagine a character having. We have DPS applicants that come in and do two-thirds or half of the damage of our top players who have identical or worse characters. These are people who are generally considered reasonably good in the guilds they play in, and likely have above average skill when comparing them to the playerbase as a whole. That's the difference that skill makes (or knowledge, or not having a life, or whatever you want to call it), and if we actually took the median player in EQ, gave them a fully decked out character, and gave them time to learn the events, their performance would be even lower relative to RoI's best players than the apps I described.

    To be clear, there are plenty of very talented group players and talented raiders dispersed across EQ's guilds. To the extent others do underperform, it's largely a function of how unnecessarily complicated EQ is, and I totally understand that many people don't want to devote tons of their play time to figuring out how to play it optimally. I wish more development time was spent closing that gap. That said, the returns on playing optimally are massive, and that's what creates experiences like those described in the OP, along with differences in gear, augs, AA, group makeup, and a whole host of other variables. Were any gear related variables completely neutralized the difference between an average and top percentile player might be smaller, but it would exist nonetheless.

    As an aside, if you performed the above analysis on the output of, for example, a DPS caster, the gap in output would be minuscule.
    ArtremasEQ, Skuz, Wulfhere and 12 others like this.