Yes. The phrase is "fake difficulty." It's what happens in a MMO when originality is replaced by something less desirable.
Several problems with this thread... First, there are players who (less than a month into this new expansion) already have their core AA upgrades and could be max AA by February (or the only AA they have left is irrelevant for their class and/or playstyle). So that defeats the "lack of gain" concern. Second, the expansion should last the entire year. For all intensive purposes, it should last for two years if you believe that the next expansion is Luclin 2.0 Part 2 with no level increase. The game is not forcing anyone to be 120 right now, only raid guilds and/or players. Which is not a game/dev problem. Third, the inflated HP is probably (along with reduced respawn timers) an attempt to not have one group monopolize an area (such as controlling half of the GD dwarf caves). If you remember the GD dwarf cave, one strong group could control that final room where the named spawn, the next oval room up the tunnel before that final room, and (if really good) the next room as well. Inflating HP and lowering respawn might keep that group in that last room only, instead of monopolizing 2-3 rooms. Finally, it might be taking longer for some players because they don't have their new weapons, spells, heroics, AA, etc. Once players start to get them, then the inflated mob HP may not look so daunting as it does now. So maybe there is a reason why TOL is different in some regards than COV/TOV. And while it might be a bummer right now, it may not be in Spring or Summer...
Can someone explain the recent changes to riposte? My level 119 pally has been dying more frequently lately and I am wondering if those changes are part of the reason. Before the latest expansion I could grind AA points in GD with little trouble, but now, every once in a while a baddie will just eat me up quick. Note: I am using the same mercs. and fighting the same things as before. And yes, it is possible that I do just suck at times.
The phrase you are looking for is "for all intents and purposes." for all intensive purposes | Common Errors in English Usage and More | Washington State University (wsu.edu)
I think named rate could be better but the big issue I have is the named rate combined with the drop rate of rare items like augs. Though I think the solution is to have those highly desired augs drop every time the named spawns, or to have it drop off multiple different named, or etc. It's one thing to spend a hour camping a named to get hunter, but camping and killing the same named over and over for hours not getting the item you are looking for is a double shot of bad luck with the RNG. While there's not necessarily a great solution to this topic as a whole, I think identifying and improving the situation for a few specific item(s) (types) would be easy to correct.
Trying to balance based on the most extreme players is not a good thing. AA inflation is the least of my concerns in this thread, but the extreme players were maxing AA in short order in prior expansions. As for an expansion lasting a year, that should only happen if there is enough content for a year. Producing limited content and then extending the treadmill to slow things down is not a great way to keep players happy. As for the inflated hp, I suspect it was mainly done due to dot classes, but who knows. The biggest issue is slowing down AA gain, reg exp gain, and collection drops.
The collection drops... some actual data for you. Umbral shades. 236 mobs killed, 35 collects dropped. Maidens vamps. 227 mobs killed, 30 collects dropped. That's really not any different than previous expansions. 13-14% drop rate is about all there has ever been. Some expansions have been far worse for certain sets - TBM's An Ounce of Fetid Flesh anyone? The regular xp gain is very fast unless you're EXTREMELY stubborn and refuse to do some simple quests and want to run into a wall... back up and run even faster into the same wall over and over again. Your choice there I suppose. AA's? I have no idea how many AA's are in ToL vs. CoV vs ToV. But it doesn't really seem like many more. AA's fall from the sky once you start doing them though.
Raid guild did a hunter raid after the bonus was over. They went to bloodfalls, were in 2 instances of the zone, mass pulling all the ph they could, and after 2.5 hours, had only 3 name to show for it. Hunter spawn rate is a lot worse than once every 72 min. As for the above post of about one drop per 10 killed, that is quite low. ROS was the other extreme, where you probably had 1 drop for each mob, but one per 10 is very low, especially since mob kill rate is lower.
Its not just you, there is a thread in the Tank forums about it. If I remember correctly mobs seem to be getting to strikethrough a riposte almost 100% of the time now? DBL check the tank forums for better explanation.
Bloodfalls is probably the worst zone you can use for an example. The PH's are spread all over the zone for every named.
Yeah... it does. The 72 minutes part means killing EVERY PH at the same time. For example, there are 5-6 vicious blood bags in the zone, but they're spread out all over the zone. It's the zone that took me by far the longest to finish even with the increased spawn rate. A dev would have to confirm, but I really don't think the rate has been slowed.
There are 4, and my suspicion is that only one is the actual ph. But yes, you are correct - the 72 min timer is for killing allph, however real experience is that even killing all ph, it is a lot longer than 72 min to spawn. The fact that a raid got so few kills is evidence of such a fact.
They're all the PH LOL. I've seen the named at multiple locations. Your "evidence" is not evidence at all. I've gotten back to back named on one of them in Bloodfalls. Is the spawn rate therefore 9 minutes? No. It's still random, it's not exactly 72 minutes.
I thought the same thing when I started exping/progression in ToL...that the hps and mitigation were off. Common sense tells me that the new expansion should be harder. The mobs have more hps and mitigate better. PC's do the same thing when going back into older content. However in ME there are light blue (to a lvl 120) mobs that mitigate quite a bit better than previous expansion (CoV). I review each fight on a monitor live as do many I'm sure. What I observed was that I was doing quite a bit less DPS than I was in CoV to the average mob in ME. The same applied to all of the other zones unless you found the mobs that had 158M hps but there aren't that many. Yes I run a box group but I am not using software to make my life easier so it's me just moving from one to another and back. In CoV I was hitting 1.7M dps with my crew (war, zerk, zerk, bard, shm, merc healer). No discs just normal mas keys grinding out mobs without blowing them up. No need to tell how bad that dps because I know I can average much higher if I felt like it. In ToL it dropped to 1.1M dps. Mobs were both blue to a lvl 116 toon All toons had the new discs for that lvl I know that different models make a difference but I'm taking an average based on time spent doing progression. Now that I'm lvl 120 back in ME my dps is back up to 1.6M dps doing the same method of not using discs just mash keys. I'm still using CoV gear on all toons. CoV TS Group gear on 3 and 2 in CoV T1 raid gear (bard and 1 zerker) so you have an idea of where I'm coming from in terms of gear. Only have some of the new aa's, not max by any stretch.
Shocked and grateful to hear you speaking up for average players. My experiences in beta were with ROI members saying, "Bigger, harder, more HP!" You need to get the "tune to the median" message to the next devs you interact with. Very warmly, Lee of Povar (Below average player.)
