Does anyone think LS is hard?

I thought this was going to be the case. But I found a nice little spot when I pulled I got Dok and only 2 adds. My Enchanter certainly helps with the calm line of spells here.

This mission seemed real easy for me since the first time I tried it. The only time I use my burns now is on the 3rd wave of the mini bosses right before the big guy. I box 4 mages and an Enchanter. Mostly raid gear on all of them.

I think the game has got to a point where there is too much spread in player power. Heroic AAs, for example, make long term characters much more powerful than less established ones. Evolving items that take lots of XP keep players on these older and more powerful characters. To make the game challenging for these players would make it very difficult for less established players.

Leveling expansions in particular shouldn't be overly difficult. Quests should be enjoyable not just the first time but when repeating to help other players. Missions shouldn't be overly challenging, that's what challenger is for. I think that if evolving items were server bound, and I could play any alt I wanted and progress the XP on that item, I would play more alts, struggle more on my terms, and spread out my play time with different people.

It's going to be hard to find a balance of difficulty in gameplay while having player power behind huge time sinks that create a significant range of player powers while at the same time keeping those players on the same characters.

-----------

I 4-box with a T2R geared ENC main, a T1Rish geared SHD main box and a T1Rish geared MAG and DRU. I did T1 quests and final fugue without much trouble. I can agree the expansion is pretty easy, however, I agree with what someone said that the question should not be is the expansion too easy but rather is it fun.

I have enjoyed this expansion. I like that there is Hereos are Forged and I need a real group to get through that. I like that I can do Final Fugue twice a day to farm with my box group and keep everyone moving. The game is grindy enough, always repeating the same things. I box my group progress because of my available play times and being able to progress my group without being miserable is very valuable to me. My social time comes from scheduled raid times, and I guess we'll see the difficulty on that when raids launch.

Thank you very much for the insight there, I really appreciate it! You're describing my problem perfectly, I'm not getting through the first 4 mobs fast enough, then I get ported to boars, then the handler runs in, and on last night's attempt the wraith even showed up before the first soldiers were dead haha. Thanks to your help I think the next attempt is gonna go better, can't wait to try it, thank you again.

What a difference a little burn makes hey... I went in for another attempt. Phasers set to kill. Beat the first 4 much faster, boars and handler went fine, wraith went fine, lost a toon and a merc to the goblin attack but found out there's no more timer, you can rez, rebuff, med to full, and then take out the goblins. The 4 minis were fine although mana was getting really low.. and the big guy went fine too, had just enough fuel in the tank to finish.

Thank you again for the advice, it made all the difference and what a rush to finally win and get to give out 3 TAs too, awesome.

Good to know. While it is technically interesting that you don't need to tank, with a melee heavy group (merc or PC), you will for practical reasons want to tank. NPCs will attack any merc/PC in melee range.

Sounds exactly like my first win. Mercs down at boars (tank positioning is important to preserve melee mercs esp. with 3+ NPC up). Goblin ambush from behind, wipe (Goblins auto-split into 2+1 or 1+2 if you hold back a bit from NPCs and wait for the ambushers to come to you). Recovery, time froze, thought it was a bug, apparently it's intended. Didn't want to risk waiting around and a potential reset so continued before FM, nearly OOM at final boss death. That first win really is a great feeling after failing at it a few times, I feel you.

I am pretty casual on live the last 4 years or so (mostly play on TLPs) but I come back for expansions, with a small group of friends. I find this expansion to be significantly easier than the last few. It didn't take long to level up doing tasks/missions. Final Fugue I was watching a movie when I did it an completed it the first time. Heroes are forged, was pretty easy as well, I failed it 2 times on the very last guy trying to figure out the notes. but wont the 3rd and have been farming both missions. Beat both of them in t1 group gear with everyone being 122-124. Now in my small group (4 people with 2-4 characters each) almost all of them are 125, half have the neck, and 5-6 of the characters are in full t2 TS gear.

Other than the ease of the expansion (most likely due to the major power creep with gear) the expansion seems to be a lot emptier as well when it comes to things to do. I would have liked to have seen more missions and tasks. It seems like you get done with them rather quickly and then just repeat the kill ones in Laurion's inn for AA and missions when the timer is up.

Been playing off and on since '99, this is the easiest expansion I remember, it's also pretty fun, but that could be because I hate NoS.

It's not really that hard. It's not even really time consuming, except for one quest in Pal'Lomen (which can use a greater spawn rate for the conquerors/lieutenants)

The expansion was pretty much cobbled together by a skeleton crew that had to cut a bunch of stuff to get it to release on time.

What really bothers me is that they still used the same BS item system from last expansion. With the introduction personas (which should have been worked on for another year before release), it would have been better to go with something like TBMs itemization for visible pieces. Non-vis are probably fine, but if I were in charge I'd remove pet ears and roll the raid EM into the base pet stats

Why is that a problem?
This is a game.
People play games to have fun.
If people can log in, play for 30 minutes, not have to worry about finding the perfect group, and actually feel like they have had fun, that is a good thing!

Why do some people seem to think that EQ should feel like a job? Gotta "work for it", gotta have the perfect gear, gotta have the best augs, gotta have all maxed spells, etc, etc...

Personally I like this expansion!

Yeah its hard.

That person aint no casual jo schmo though.

Casuals have like 275k buffed HME.

Also, good indicator of difficulty is,
J5 Tank J5 healer

In tier 1, J5 healer struggles very hard to keep the J5 tank up in a T1 named fight.
Mob slowed and everything.

It's around 20 minutes to kill a T1 named casual duo.
J5 tank struggles to survive, bound to get unlucky sometime within the 20 min fight.
T1 named

LS is no GoD expansion where the Tank merc can solo a named by itself, dps and tank with a healer merc.

Don't even need to assist, thats easy, thats GoD with duo mercs.

LS with duo mercs, tank merc is struggling.
Difficult, T1.

I can understand struggling T2, and undoable in T3. But T1. Mercs can't hold up in duo?

I like the expansion, though i do think it is super easy as a raider.
What I dislike is the named mobs are vanilla zone trash with more stats. Not a single one (outside the missions) has a defining ability or spell or tactic to use on them other than tank and spank.....Is this the first ever EQ expac like this? I can't recall another.

The judges all agree...

This statement is FALSE.

How is it false when thats what happens?
I like how you took out the J5 tank merc getting whooped on T1 too. Everyone can agree because J5 tank is J5 regardless if your a raider.

However 20 mins to kill a T1 named, its true its dang true. Firsthand, I ain't saying others, average. It happened.

Your average is way off when 60% is raiders and 30% good, up to date boxers, even molo'ers.

That necro that molo that person is no joke, hes no casual. Hes the whats possible if you get really far in game, which is a lot of time.

0 merc armor, 0 heroic AAs, 0 0 0 0. I actually have like 6 of 90 whatever.
Outrageous!

Thats the state of casuals.

I didn't buy LS to go back to RoS EoK and act like the game is cool and I have to put in my years of backlog catchup. Aint no upgrades in those zones, worthless except massive timesinks.

Hence, AP retaining all those timesinks. Y'all complaining about doing it again, well casuals gotta do it. Ugh.

So yes, this expansion is difficult can kill trash T1, but T1 nameds, take 20 minutes. Which is longer if you wipe all over again.
J5 tank merc duo can't handle the heat when unlucky round strikes.

They make missions kill a named, can't do a mission can't do squat.

Worst part is when a named is up, always some person come to watch. Go away. If you not gonna help go away. I don't want you to watch a 20 min struggle hi intensity fight thats T1 named.

Gear gap is huge.
275k HME to 600k HME huge.
Thing is 275k HME means less AC,
so eating higher damage and you have less hp
vs
600k HME, getting tickled and tons of hp (also they deal a lot more damage 20m fight turned into 5 min or less fight for them)

On the bright side, cleric mercs their mana never seems to drain. Doesn't matter if J5 tank can get deleted in 2 rounds.

I don't mind 20 min fight, but thats if your lucky, if your not lucky thats a wipe.
I don't like wiping.
T1 named spawn I got them to spawn, its T1 gimme a break. Should be able to kill it, could be 40 minute thats fine, as long it dies.
Need a serious buff the heck outta J5 tank mercs.
Should be situational, T1 should be able to survive easy.
T2 they take a 50% debuff
T3 100% debuff, thats fine.

As soon as I get some stun weps for my group geared SK, I will be duoing Final Fugue mission with SK and Rogue. Two healer mercs.

Lianeb is right about named. They are pretty vanilla and easy to kill.

This expansion is pretty easy for good players, whether they are raid geared or not.

Neither mission is difficult with a full group. If you understand the mechanics and have good players, they are a breeze.

This forum has some seriously warped views on this game.

Many think that good players are not casual.

Does "casual" mean players who don't play their toons well?

Players who raid do not equate to being good players.

Uberkingkong is not "many". It is just a single broken chat bot.

It's been that way for named since pretty much ToV. Other than Restless Ice and the occasional DoT that needed a cure here and there, I can't really think of one that was more than simple tank and spank...certainly not any that required an actual sort of strategy. They're all just straight fights...the tank grabs agro, everyone else burn it down, loot.

The hardest part of named mobs these days is just getting them to spawn.

Oh ok I didn't say that.

Good players aint casual.

he aint no casual, look at his UI, casual don't have access to dps parser.
I'd love a dps parser.
It should be in the new ui.

btw the only way to save the J5 tank merc from unlucky rounds is via stuns, and keeping the stun rotation going, is how they don't take many unlucky to begin with.

But dps wise, and the named hp pool.
20 mins long, keeping the stun rotation 20 mins, is pretty grueling.
why do I need the stun rotation because I aint the dps, and HME isn't 600k., 450k hme is good. I aint got that.

Augs, AA, this and this that, years years years.
I aint got that.
Bazaar gear easy, got that.

Haven't got gear naturally since 110. 110 to current is very nasty.

I didn't buy LS to go play EoK/etc etc etc. to prepare for 120 going into 125.
Nobody got time for those tedious tasks, no gear upgrades, just tedious stuff.
Alone. /LFG hasn't been working on Live for very very long time.

LS I didn't even see anyone go LFG on day expansion opened. (not because easy, because everyone boxes, don't play with others period)
So do catchup, Alone?

You all saw the video,

Zolgrimm in ToFS used to summon surrounding ghosts. A shrouded bat named turned into the vampyre named upon death. A tentacle horror in the maze sits surrounded by 4 see-through-inviso adds.
Kael named wolves are actually following their giant masters. And nameds in Tier 2 ToV zones have much higher dps and almost a double of HP comparing to Tier 1 nameds.
CoV nameds are insane comparing to ToV nameds. Massively higher dps and more HP.
Named skeleton in Umbral Planes summons adds at %. Named golem is surrounded by un-CC-able golem adds. Named gargoyle in Basilica periodically goes inactive and clears aggro. Vex Thal names follow mission aggro rules.
Not all nameds were actually "single pull -tank - spank" fight. Unless your tank is OP.

also, if any "casual" player ever wants a dps overlay, start here:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/gamparse-2-0-0-x-beta.253869/