So, is the 2nd tower of rot mission going to be fine tuned at all? Its way too hard in its current form....
Its tuned fairly well for people in full CotF T1 raid gear. Really wondering why group geared players havent raising hell about this for over a month now.
Ok the raiders had a huge thread about the mission and how hard it was while groupers just went out and did it? Go groupers!
mission is overtuned for group geared people and is significantly harder than any other group mission in COTF. Just because the mission isn't impossible doesn't mean that the difficulty is fine the way it is. This is not PoWar so the difficulty relative to other group missions should not be so much higher
This mission is a challenge with a slightly unorthodox 6 person raid group. It's definitely doable, but you'd need a near perfect (6 real, skilled people, most likely 2 healers, 2 DPS, 2 tanks) group to do it in group gear. If you can't muster that perfect group then you're out of luck in group gear. Personally I think this mission is overtuned considering almost no one has access to such a group (yes, they do exist, but the vast majority of groups don't have 6 players, let alone the correct lineup). I feel like this mission was a response to the complaints about the group game being too easy and raiders steamrolling through group content. Unfortunately it excludes most group players from completion. Before anyone says "but I beat it in group gear so you're wrong," I'm not saying you can't do it. It just requires more resources (players) than most people have access to. Hard content isn't a bad thing, but at the time of release this was one of two new missions, the only ones in T2 (there are now 4 with Argin-Hiz). Difficulty seems to have been used to substitute lack of content in this case. A compromise would be slightly reducing the number/frequency/abilities of adds during the mini phase, which is really the difficult part.
I've beat it a number times, and done it multiple ways. I single tanked it one time, used 1 healer another, brought in 2 tanks, 2 priests, etc. It's a pain, it really is, but it's one of the missions when you win you actually feel like that took some skill. Not run in let mercs do all the work like HA and even most of the other missions. I think it's winnable by group geared players if they didn't tank it. 2 pets(mage/bst/nec) I think could make it winnable if it was ranged. Maybe hard and unorthodox, but IMO only way to do it. Those mobs hit hard, and my war is 125k hp/10.6k ac unbuffed and gets smacked around, so I seriously doubt a group geared tank in full t2 cotf could manage to last long without taking a lot of rezs.
I think you'd run into a lot of issues with a group-geared group... Most group casters would be tight on mana, which really matters during the mini phase because of timed adds (you need to maintain mana while killing adds fast enough). I think group tanks would have trouble, plus they can be mezzed (why on earth does SoE need to introduce a mechanic that makes pets look even better? Like they didn't already want to nerf them). You could probably get away with group healers if your DPS was good enough to get through it quickly.
i'd say, your average grouper probably dosen't even know what ToR is ... they probably don't know what CoTF have to offer, other than gribble heroics. Raiders can't complain about a group mission. wich mean, there's only a very very small percentage of grouper ( likely the elite groupers) who try and care about ToR mission...
Unfortunately this mission really benefits greatly certain classes. Almost everyone has problems with the beguiler's targeted AE mez. Pets of course cannot be mezzed. So immediately having a pet class as one of the tanks is vital. The other problem is the 50 curse counters on the mez. Paladins can quickly cure this amount of counters, without the need for target switching, but other classes cannot. imo - they should reduce the counters to 25 , so 1 word of reformation will cure it. They should also either ensure that no more than 1 beguiler can be up a time (which people could probably take advantage a little) or allow the beguilers to be mezzable. Having 2 beguilers up at a time with both AE mezzing normally results in wipe every time and it's just luck. These are my tips. I use a mage pet on Arch magus. And tank the beguilers normally. I save burns for the beguilers. Use silent casting on the beguiler phase. I tank the beguilers next to the pet and also send in pet onto the beguilers. This way when my tank does get mezzed, then the pet has aggro (and casters are using silent casting) and just tank both Arch magus + beguilers, until tank is unmezzed. Range DPS the beguilers, so the chance of the tank being mezzed is lessened.
Have done it with warrior and SK as tanks. Did not need to use pets. Had 1 cleric (who burned beguilers) and 1 Shaman for healing. then 2 solid DPS. Nobody died. Some mixes of classes make it easier. Going for battle royal makes it much harder. But can mix it up and win. Just need people that are good at playing their class and know when to use all their abilities.
I've really enjoyed this mission. The risk-vs-reward seems in line (yes, it's hard, but also the trophy is amazing). CotF T2 is a definite step up from T1 all around, both missions and static zones. This mission is a good continuation of this trend. I'm a fan.
Paladins have ways to negate the mez, if add tank and group is positioned properly, the AE mez will only hit the add tank. Knowing these 2 things, you can formulate a strategy. Also if your cleric is smart 1 word of reformation does cure it... Its faster to cast Glorious + 1 group heal (and far more mana cost effective) then it is to cast 2 group heals. However if your add tank and group are spaced correctly, you don't even need to use Word of Ref, you can just pure blood the add tank. Or if its a paladin they can use their 2 ways to negate the mez and by then your probably done with this wave, after that its basically LOL difficulty In Comparison to dealing with the mez wave. Boom theres how some people in group gear did the mission, Because after the arch magus its basically a yawnfest.
As I've said, Mages and Paladins make this event much easier. They can fulfill a variety of the important roles on this event. Without a paladin, you need to bring in an additional healer/curer at a cost of DPS. I'm not sure how you can use Pure Blood as that is disease/poison cure and the Slumber is curse counters. Glorious requires target switching, not to mention knowing when to cure. Sure a good curer can set up an AT for "{s} stares idly at the wall". You're a paladin. Your glorious+splash is over twice as fast casting combination as the cleric. A cleric using glorious+word basically means that the caster/other tank has to be able to survive for around 6secs without a heal. When you factor in the timing of realising they are mezzed, switching targets for a glorious, then in reality it's 10secs and you can begin to see why people have problems with it.
Cleansed blood, but it requires a double cast. < So I was wrong on the name my earlier post was made from my phone sorry. I made an audio trigger for it after the first time we wiped trying to do the mission. If other people couldn't figure that out *shrug*. But yeh Its pretty much a walk in the park with 2 paladins or paladin+mage pet, but thats the case with every hard group mission. There is always 1 obvious way you can get past xyz mechanic, thats called tactics. Its up to the player to decide if they are going to bring along classes to make it easier on themselves or not.
To be fair it's not always a decision... Most people don't have a member of each class to pick and choose from based on the mission. I'm lucky in that I have access to a lot more classes than most people, but paladins are one class that seems scarce at least in my guild. The closest I've gotten (wiped during last mini due to lack of mana) was with 4 mages and 2 shaman, with varying levels of raid gear.
Missions like this one are what group players will commit their entire EQ session to any given night. Raiders will fit this sort of thing in during the 45 minutes they have before or after raids and expect it just to fall over dead in that allotment with time to spare. When it doesn't, than its "too hard". Can't blame them. Most group missions DO fall over dead in 30-45 minutes for a good group of fully kitted out raid players.
This mission really does need to be tuned down some for group geared players.Most of the people posting in this thread are raid geared players.Most of the people i have seen in Cotf T2 zones are in the top raid guilds on my server.
