Gates of Discord AoC Testing Thread

Yeah you'd have to go back and readjust skill caps, remove focus effects on stuff from before luclin, redo combat tables and ac changes and readjust spells to what they used to be. Good luck getting them to do all of that.

It really isn't that bad, casters also have some AAs that need fixing. Particularly Destructive Fury which was I think either an OoW or DoN era addition? They threw that one into Luclin which isn't correct at all. DPS by all classes is ridiculously skewed at this point. Its basically double what it was back in the day and the HP values/mitigation values do not make up for this. That being said, since basically all of the GoD bugs have been worked out that have been discovered so far, I will tangent further on the merits of MOTM on raid creatures going forward.

Again I like the idea behind it I just wish they would separate the pet hate transfer and the immunity to certain Spell types that MOTM grants. Which is why I suggested the flagging of out of era AAs to disable them. It avoids them needing to do this and it makes the group game more challenging as well, whereas a MOTM change just makes the group game continue to be a joke.

Digging through some overnight parses performed on Al'Kabor (Mac server) years ago when it was still up, done by several level 65 Rangers, Monks and Warriors using 100% Haste (AFK Bard Bot rolling Warsong of Zek) and 250 ATK worn (cap) against a stationary target (generally Thelin pre-walk or Katta banker were used because they didn't fight back or move) you are looking at:

Ranger - Featherwood - 151 DPS
Ranger - Stonewood - 153 DPS
Ranger - Primordial - 157 DPS
Ranger - Obsidianwood - 166 DPS
Ranger - Time Bow - 176 DPS
Monk - Reparm 2hb - 195 DPS
Monk - Xegony h2h+Cursed h2h - 190 DPS
Warrior - Bloodfrenzy+Blasphemous - 164 DPS
Warrior - DBoW+EoE - 171 DPS
Warrior - Blade of War - 175 DPS

Those are all values without Rizlona/Muse Overhaste, Fero and FA of course. But even so, in the case of the ranger, an AFK parse by a level 65 Ranger with max ATK and 100% Haste done on Test does between 380-420 DPS. That's double the damage of what a ranger did back in this era. Mighty Buff doesn't come close to accounting for this difference. There is a reason guilds are easily splitting PoTime with 30-40 characters in each split. Yes EQ isn't hard but when DPS are pulling double the DPS the content was designed for, it's a joke when no other mechanics are in play.

Conversely with casters, most Luclin/PoP nuke values have stayed stagnant for 15 years. Some Rain Nukes were scaled up but most of the direct nuke lines are all the same value they were back in 2002. The DoT lines obviously have been scaled up hugely but the removal of stacking and the inflated mana cost sort of balance this out (in PoP... the classic Necro poison DoT right now is dumb on Agnarr though). Did they get gains, of course but I don't think they would be wrecking Melee like you say they would. Especially considering the rains that got the biggest boost don't focus, and if they were to remove DF3 simultaneously (if they did the former they should 100% do this as well) that's a big hit to Rains as well since they each get 3 critical rolls.

All MoTM does is kill pet classes. Everyone is wanting stuff to be harder but its never gonna happen. Everyone is over geared and over AAed. I remember when back in the day having 200 AA was insane. A lot of people now are maxed spent and banked AA.

Probable not the spot for this but what kind of gear and levels/aa's were you testing with?

like 30-40 characters in time gear with mostly a lot of AAs, just like everyone else? I mean I really doubt they'll add MotM since they were going to bundle the expansion with omens due to "difficulty" but as it is right now, it's not much challenge at all.

We are talking about GoD content on test right?

Yes

Our guild has the same stuff we currently have on Phinny. We don't do multiple splits and stuff like some of the guilds and it's pretty easy for us. I can't imagine what it's like for those that have BIS or near BIS everything. We don't auto grant AA's or anything just /testcopy our characters and try things out and it's pretty easy. It's really sad that an expansion like this is going to be beat so easily by so many guilds.

We're not going to go on a 4 day no sleep binge when Gates opens but even with our normal raid schedule this wont be hard to beat at all. I don't know how many guilds are testing Gates but it would be nice if DBG added some sort of MOTM at the last minute that way no one can test it and it adds somewhat of a surprise to us even if it's not much. Because the way it is, is pathetic.

This might actually be the worst idea i've ever heard. Making any change at the last minute so people don't have time to test it is a recipe for something to go unexpectedly wrong.

In a game where they patch once a month, having something go wrong in a 2 month expansion means half the expansion is ruined...

Not to mention, what are you asking for here, the 10% PoP MotM? Because that isn't going to make things materially harder. It will just continue to screw over pet classes. Heh.

Umm, they added it to Time at the last minute after the expansion was already released. It's not something they need to test it's really just a buff on the mobs, that's been tested for multiple expansions already. So NO, it's not he worse idea ever. Not that having MOTM in Time really did much, maybe making splitting a tad more difficult but right now the way Gates is, something needs to be done.

If this is true then we may need MOTM or a form of it.... What we really need to know is can we remove the pet aggro / pet debuffs (if any r left) from the buff.... (MOTM)

From what I have read it seems that GOD would be a face rolled which should not be the case... So if its possible to put MOTM with out pet aggro transfer..... What should the GOD MOTM be set at?

Classic / Kunark / Velious / Luclin ??? or ???? something else to make the mobs feel less face roll?

I still think you are barking up the wrong tree. This was hard in era on original release, but it was intentionally tuned down from that base line. At this point, we've caught up significantly on the power level solely due to the fact that we are now 7 expansions in.

Sure, there's still some remaining out of era power boosts, but the real "problem" is that everyone is really well geared. But as you note by my quotation marks, i'm not sure that counts as an actual problem. Furthermore, balancing everything assuming everyone is 100% previous expansion geared is madness because it just screws over anybody who tries to catch up later.

If you want to make the fights harder, do it with a smaller force. Just because you're capable of doing something as though it's trivial, doesn't mean everyone else is. And, from what I remember, GoD after it was tuned down WAS rather easy. I vaguely remember doing Ikkinz with 18~.

It was hard even after it was tuned down. Even when Omens and DoN came out well after they tuned it down it was plenty hard. Now it's pathetic, it's not because people are over geared although that may be a small part of it or even knowing the strats. It's because players have been made so powerful post TSS. There is no way to change the TSS changes so the only way without tearing up all the code would be MOTM. And I'm not even in what many would call a hardcore raiding guild so if we can do easily then I'm pretty sure everyone can.

What do you consider a hardcore raiding guild? what percentage of you are fully/mostly time and elemental geared? How many of your raids are full?

What I'm getting at, is you can't say that everyone can, because raiding guilds even on phinny vary wildly. as someone in a "Casual" guild, that is elemental flagged, but hasn't killed Rathe council yet. I'm going to say that we'd have no chance at GoD mobs if they had anything harsher than the PoP MoTM. Should guilds that didn't get into time early be locked out of GoD content, just so those who are "better" have a slightly tougher time in GoD?

This post makes no sense at all. You wouldn't be locked out of anything, not sure where you came up with that. Have you even tested GoD? If not then you really shouldn't even be commenting on it because you would have no idea how easy it is. As a causal guild you should have a hard time with any event, however we do not field a full raid. I think when we tested we had mid 30's in Txevu, we're not fully Time geared like some of these other guilds are. So a guild with 30ish people had a pretty easy time with some Txevu events that says something that is wrong with the difficulty of the expansion. They may as well just have loot chests as soon as you zone in. But let me ask you this again, what raids in Gates have you tested?

Bleh, I'm not nearly well enough spoken for this.

Can't say I tested GoD raids as a guild, I leveled a group up on the test server, and ran through the ikkinz raids last year, for fun.
I'll admit locked out was a bit of hyperbole, and I'm sorry if I wasn't as clear as I could have been.

I'm not debating it being too easy, I'll take your word for that until I can get another run through done. My issue is simply that sticking MoTM from even Luclin would make it far more difficult than it should be.

Appreciate you chiming in with your guys experience (also appreciate you guys helping to test it!).

I won't pretend though that our gear & likely our AA are the norm, but it was really disappointing that so far, our experience has mirrored yours. I'm genuinely curious if we could get into Txevu with 18ppl, because I sort of suspect we might be able to - guess it depends on some min #'s for cursecallers (we haven't made it to Inktuta yet).

I'm not sure I'm advocating really for Motm (not a fan of the pet agro part at this point for sure), and I really do want any competent raid guild (ie anyone in Time pretty much) to be able to progress through GoD (it IS one of the best expansions in the game!), but it's sorta disappointing so far. I do remember when we did GoD and OoW on Quarm with lvl 70's (albeit 50-100aa avg, velious-era melee weapons, and mid-Luclin gear on average), that GoD was harder than OoW, but not so hard we couldn't beat it pretty much on 1st or 2nd attempts for the most part. OoW was just comically easy outside of a couple of fights. Sorta concerning going forward, especially when we should hit some actual hard content & guilds won't be prepared.

No more MOTM. Never again.

No. He is right. The core difference is the gearing levels on Phinny.

GoD was never That Hard for Time-geared guilds. The only thing that stopped the march through Tacvi was that I believe it was South Side Goat(the one to the right from fork) was broken. Not hard to beat. Impossible.

Then you had the boss, for which the trigger was untuned, forcing guilds to attempt to deal with the AE rather than burning him down. As soon as Triton dropped it, they retuned it. The hijinks SoE pulled is exactly what caused the guild summit, and the exodus to WoW at the end of the year. Untested, broken content is fun for no one. Any gibroni of a developer can put that out. They were basically using high-end guilds as unpaid Beta Testers.

And if you weren't a Time-geared guild, or a casual guild.. you likely had a good majority of your people walking in bazaar gear or group gear from LDoN, maybe some Ornate, and MAYBE people had a raid piece or two if lucky. Why? Little access to the events. Time-geared guilds tended to protect territory, and part of that was both murdering VT when it was up, rolling anything in PoP when available, and blocking events like Coirnav if necessary.

It was simply a different PVP Raiding game then. So ya.. its nice that you have 20+ guilds on Phinny with the key core Time-geared... very few people back then were, and the servers had far more people on them.

Couple this with all strats known, all items known, properly tuned events, and GoD should go down fast and often. Its just the way these things tend to go.