Raid fights in early expansions need to be more difficult

Raid fights in early expansions are too easy. There is no longer a sense of accomplishment for beating these raids, and raid loot has become a participation trophy.

Exhibit A: A twinked level 2 paladin tanking Kunark dragons on Mischief server


While this is impressive in its own right, the fact that this is even possible detracts from the overall raiding experience on these servers. These raids need to be updated to be more challenging to make the raid game more engaging. This paladin is able to tank these dragons because the character doesn't matter, it's simply a gear/HP threshold check.

Allow for multiple tiers of guilds in retuning this content, similar to how WoW supports more hardcore "mythic guilds," less hardcore "heroic guilds," and much more casual guilds that may not even raid as a group and experience raids through the raid finder tool. It should not be expected that every guild can waltz through every encounter. Raid encounters should be some of the most challenging content in the game and should no longer award participation trophies simply for showing up.

You could just play wow if you want EQ to be wow.

You are upset that a level 2 character can tank something using gear that isn't even close to being in era on a server that makes it easier to twink them?

I wouldn't say I'm upset, but I don't think it should be possible for a level 2 to tank these encounters regardless of gear level. It's incongruent with a challenging raid experience for this to be possible.

I think you're intentionally missing the point, but if this is an acceptable standard then you're probably right, it's probably time for me to stop going through the motions.

The fight is just a tank and spank, if you get enough AC/HP and have the healing to keep someone alive it isn't exactly a challenging fight. Put a level one in enough twink gear and they can do a lot as long as the healing can keep up.

That's exactly my point. That's the raiding experience until probably gates of discord at the very earliest.

Yeah, any argument you had was lost by including the free trade server twinking a player well out of era to tank a raid mob as your main evidence.

I still don't understand your point, you are complaining that content that designed to be a simple tank and spank turns out to be just a matter of having enough HP/AC and healing to tank it.

The way I'm interpreting this, it seems like what you're saying is that because this level 2 paladin meets some arbitrary HP threshold, it should be able to tank a dragon 70 levels higher than it? While it's still learning how to hold its sword, and doesn't even know how to dodge an attack yet? To me this demonstrates that the only thing that matters here is that HP threshold. Maybe I have the wrong take for the expected raid experience on these servers, but my gut reaction to seeing that was "that shouldn't be possible." My mistake.

What you're asking for isn't a simple adjustment of some formulas to make it more difficult. It will require coding not only to alter the encounter to withstand gear far outside of era, but also to be easy enough to be defeated with gear in era.

This takes development time, and given such a large investment of development time it would require, and the minimal benefit, I don't foresee this occurring.

70 levels higher? Those mobs are only level 60 which makes it a lower level differnce then you are trying to claim. When you are dealing with a fight that revolves around having enough AC/HP/Resists so that your healers can keep up there is nothing wrong with a super twink with out of era gear meeting those requirements.

Essentially yes. Other raids (even in classic) have other mechanics but 1 character can tank the dragon the entire fight as long as he mitigates the damage, either from having so much hp he doesn't die or having so much ac/avoidance he doesn't get hit so hard.

In era, and for a time afterwards, these bosses would still have motm on them.

Even then, basing your gripe on a server is at least 8 expansions past Kunark is silly. And you should feel silly.

A lvl 52 monk soloed Naggy like 15 years ago and there has been only more twink gear to arrive. What did you expect?

On live you can get a level 1 close to 10k hp. That's over double the achievable hp in classic. Of course they'll be able to tank it because tanking is simply if you have enough hp/ac to survive long enough for heals to arrive.

It's amazing what rerollers request. Maybe just admit the content is garbage and move on from it. Best solution

Gotcha. For me that's ridiculous and an indicator of severely flawed raid design.

My fault, I forgot what level the dragons are and figured they were red cons. I feel the same way about a 60 level gap vs a 70 level gap. Sorry, 58 to be precise.

I should feel silly because people disagree with me about something? Motm doesn't make a difference. Raiding with or without motm on these servers is such a hamster wheel of mediocrity, and to me continuing to do it year after year without asking for a better experience is silly.

Thanks for the help all, I think I'm realizing concretely today that I want to like raiding in this game more than I actually like raiding in this game anymore. It's just a boring race to the middle.

Harder bosses would favor more serious players, but I honestly think that harder bosses from Classic to Luclin would hurt the casual fanbase too much to be worth the change.

I've been in enough raids to say that so many players don't understand basic raid mechanics. They're having fun, enjoying discord conversations, and just clicking their spells. If you make the game a lot harder, then their guild leaders will start signalling them out. Casual players don't want to be at the center of negative attention.

If you want harder mechanics, stay with the server past Pop. I'll be following my own advice this time as well.

Classic - Velious is all the same cookie cutter tank and spank fights. You want something fundamentally different? Play longer when devs got better at designing raids. Asking to change classic on a TLP isn't going to happen because the annual rerollers will have a fit that their braindead encounters became challenging.

And PS motm would make a huge difference for that level 2 pally. The mobs would go from hitting for 250ish up to near 1k.

How would you make these old fights harder? Increase the boss damage? That'd just increase the probability of losing a tank to an unlucky round and force you to cycle through tanks faster, not really any harder assuming you have enough tanks. More hp? Drawing the fight out longer doesn't really make it harder, and since the early game has very few options for things like increasing mana efficiency or regenerating mana you'd just be forcing players into using borderline exploit strategies if they start hitting mana limits. Completely change the fights to use modern era style scripted mechanics? I doubt they have the manpower and that's not what most people want from a TLP anyways.

Old EQ just wasn't a very difficult game. Most of the challenge was just getting a competent raid of the appropriate level with the right mix of classes together at the right time, something which is way easier on TLPs with enhanced exp rates and instanced raids.

Lol at this thread

Level 60 & 50 DROPPABLE RAID GEAR going on characters lower than 60/50 making them overpowered is the absolute worst possible rationale for making any content harder.

You need to think about what you are asking for a little deeper and see just how bad it is before you post it.

The only reasonable way you make this not happen is to make tradeable raid gear from early expansions no longer tradeable - and that fundamentally changes the TLP experience & potentially pisses off any Live players who enjoy rerolling lowbies & twinking them for a laugh.

I concur.