I am not sure whether this is specifically directed at me or not but will respond as such. I did use two separate sources: alla and eq resource. I like the named area location of eq resource and the comments from alla. I do not always research their agililties but in this case after a few wipes, I felt a need to review to see if there was something that I was missing. The mobs, Pollutor Slaunk, abilities listed add every few minutes ish, 21k DD, and a 5 k dot seemed very reasonable to me. Had fought in T3 VOA with mobs listed with higher damages for both dots and DDs. Some things I learned in the fight, the DD seemed to have a root, knock back, and small stun effect which if lined up at the wrong time led to one rounds which I experienced about half of the attempts. Additionally, the add hit somewhat hard maybe even alittle more than a trash mob but less than the named. This was not listed but am not using as an excuse as you need to overcome obstacles in game. I do this reasonably well. I am not elite by any means but, I am also not below average. The thing is should the level of difficulty be this hard with so many adverse effects in the group game at a tier 2 level where T1 gear should allow you to progress or gear up reasonably well. Did I enter the nastier of the T2 zones? This maybe the case which I will learn and move to an area which I can gear up. I do not, however, feel the repeated failure was due to my ability to adapt to the situation through skill use or research. Thanks for your input, Rykear
Its entirely different when certain geared folks cant do the named/missions and whatnot because the difficulty is ramped up too high. Group content is suppose to be doable by everyone. Not just raid geared folks.
Especially when you have group geared players that have literally completed every hunter achievement dating back to SoD saying a few of these named mobs in chelsith are overtuned and that the 2 group named mob approach is failing (the mobs are staying left up until raiders kill them) they need a retune and the new test patch notes make no mention of a retune.. that's so fail
I have been playing EQ for 14 years. Loved the group game and never really got interested in the raid game with all the Simon Says stuff required. Now the raid game is being pushed into the group game. I just want to go do stand up group fights.... worked well and enjoyed it for the first 13 years of Everquest. Now this change of adding raid mechanics is sucking the fun out of the game for me. Yes it may be just what others want but for me its a bummer. I just don't think SOE realizes that it MAY slowly alienate the group players. The reason they aren't raiders is because they don't want to play a raid style game so the logic of pusing raid style tactics on them escapes me. *shrugs*
It's amazing to me that people still think that tuning group content is a zero sum game where having complex mechanics = casual groupers fail. I'm sorry but raiders in this game aren't pro gamers with 300 APM and the ability to control 3-4 different characters at the same time without losing a single bit of effectiveness. The difference in skill between groupers/raiders is rather small when it comes to Simon says mechanics, adds, etc. What is big is the difference in commitment. Raiders log on each day to a raid of 40-50+ people ready to go. Groupers log on each day to... Well, their mercs and their boxes. The grouping game is casual because it is not designed for the same level of commitment that raids are designed for. It is not casual because groupers are incapable of handling raid mechanics. Rather, it is casual because groupers don't have a lot to work with. The bulk of groupers in the game go around with a 1 friend + box + merc team of 3-5 members. When that isn't enough to do a mission because the mission was tuned for 5-6 human players, then yeah, it's not casual. Besides which, you guys are talking about mechanics that are EASILY reduced to trivial by a few tweaks in the spreadsheet. Simon says triggers too fast? Have them be 30 second long triggers and nobody's ever going to miss them. Adds too tough? Have them hit for 500 and nobody's even going to be scratched. Mobs healing faster than players are able to damage them? Tune down the HPS. There are very few triggers in the game where the only variables you get to tweak are binary. The state of these missions is a product of devs overtuning them. It's not because groupers fail / raid mechanics are too complicated.
I for one appreciate the change . I like challenging 6 man content, and I absolutly love having to group again for the harder missions. tri-quad boxing stuff get awfully boring...It's hard to get group together cause way too many people box their own group. And as some people said, stuff do get easier with 1 or 2 real DPS classes in. As a wizard I can pop 130-150kdps over 120 second in full burn, effectivly killing T3 name in ~ 70-100 seconds.. I can't imagine how you'd kill anything with a cleric-bard-tank merc + dps merc ( who are, btw, complete crap compared to real DPS'ers)
The last group mission i did was about 4 months ago, Grelleth 2. Got the win but it was ugly and involved zerging adds dying rinse repeat. I really wish they would bring back flagging for zones as at least then they would have to give more consideration to the difficulty of the events.
You should look into PoS mission 1, and even CR mission 1. They are very 'casual friendly'. CR would take a lowish dps group a fair amount of time to finish, but is not overly difficult, just many mobs to kill. I personally enjoy the current level of difficulty of RoF missions. The fact is, mercs are terrible compared to good players. Many people that are complaining are ones that are attempting to accomplish these missions with 2-3 mercs, not 6 real, live, geared players. If you tune these missions to 1 individual 3 boxing with 3 mercs, then a full group of real players will of course steamroll the event.
Sounds like tuning for mercs would give a reward for bringing a full group. Hour with mercs or 15 min with a full group.
All, Got the Sk to 99. Tried Evantil and Breeding Ground named and found them a bit harder. I, however, did go to Chapterhouse and found these named doable. On another note, I really did like the zones that I have visited in this expansion. Good job to the design and artists group here! Rykear
