With most people long past this stage, anybody still in need will be hard pressed to get them done. They still need a full group, and really, they're just plain annoying so there are not a lot of helpers. Is there a DPS penalty in there ? My parses are way off regular numbers. Maybe its just me, but I hate them. Can they be tuned down, have the chests removed, something. Its so annoying to have to lock out another trial just to go to the next zone. Its killing me. Alts are SOL.
all of the trial do not require a full group. I have done all of them with 4-5. a few of them I have done with only 2 people. so getting a trail done is not hard. once you have a toon with the trial done you can request it and everyone in the group can then get past. so alts are not SOL .
I'd suspect depending on skill, gear and classes, 2 + 2 mercs can probably do Cyclone, Trial of Three and Wending Ways without too much issue. Not pleasantly, I'd say, but doable. Other two maybe also, but getting more restrictive on the parameters. That's a pretty decent balance sweet spot to hit for "1-3 good players can probably carry 2-4 people that are basically participating". I have some issue with the fact that these things lock out access to most of the gear that would actually help getting past some of the stat checking, and keep you in 1 zone, but overall I like the trials pretty well now, with a few balance passes being done and more information fleshed out. At this stage it also helps some that the majority of group missions don't require access past Smoke to join in to farm gear from T2 chests. You can tag along with people who are past, or just scoot by long enough to unlock your own ability to get one of those missions to get some HP/AC padding for a tank. Downside being that Palace of Embers can be a rough task to "scoot" through, and buggy besides, but if you can manage that you've got a decent shot at opening up Tyrant of Fire and Contract of War for two nice T2 group loot sources, even without 5 trials done. Tyrant of Fire relying on one extra path through to Aalishai, of course, for the Royal Visits task.
It is a game and a game should be a pleasure. Trials and most Missions are a plain annoyance. I have done them all now except one or two. Insane time sinks, stupid kicks after a wipe (run to GH instead a nice fun dungeon crawl) and completely out of mind time and dps checks instead of exploring the area one fight after the other. It seems DGB has no ideas anymore and they copy from the usual "Counter Strike" genre instead of having some nice design ideas which are playable by everybody with fun. Who the hell does the end missions in TBM anymore? Who has even the joy to make some RoS missions anymore. There are even people in TBL not having some of the easier missions from RoS. They are simply an annoyance and TBL missions and trials are in the same row. But TBL is still at raid level dps - enjoyment is something different. But the annoying thing is not the difficulty. It is the fact that once you make a small fault, you can restart the whole crap instead of simply rezzing and trying that part without penalties again. That sucks since it has been invented into EQ. I can only remember one single mission which was outstanding and different:Tyrant of Fire. Good ideas, much humor, a bit crazy but possible to do even after a wipe. Hey, why not doing that instead of pure numb dps checks with corpse runs into the GH because the stupid mission locks out after a wipe?
Pretty sure I am never getting them done. The design and placement in the expansion has me scratching my head. Luckily I have lots of old content to catch up on.
I was talking about alts. My main isn't behind on anything except the new content. Whether you enjoy content like this or not is all dependent on the access you have to other players.
1. Unlock all the zones except mearatas. 2. Increase mob hp in mearatas by 50% and mob dmg by 20%, and make all the mobs kos. Expansion is now balanced.
