Raid content for the non 1%

I've been thinking about this and I think the best compromise for accessibility and dev time is simply an aura that decreases incoming damage by a certain amount and increases damage by a certain amount.

So like in the buff window in the easy mode raid you'd see...
Protection of Stratos - Decreases incoming spell damage by XX% and incoming melee damage by XX%%
Strength of Stratos - Increases the affects of detrimental spells by XX% and melee damage by XX%

With a structure like that, the devs could tune the easy mode just by simply adjusting those values. No changes to the actual event would be necessary.

For loot, T1 events could use RoS T2 loot tables (or just currency higher than 10 to offset no loot), and T2 events use TBL T1 loot tables or strictly TBL: currency with no loot.

I think the ideal tune for TBL T1 easy mode would be the equivalent difficulty to T2 ROS.

Since no flags would be awarded in easy mode, players wouldn't have a shortcut to TBL currency by doing T2 events because they would have to win T1 on normal mode before they could do T2 easy mode.

I keep saying ROS and TBL but it could be applied to any past or future expansion.

And if the Dev's Super duper love the idea and decide to implement it, please feel free to name them "Protection fo Vumad and Strength of Vumad". $$$ <3

Changes like that would make events either super trivial or have no real effect.

Just like levels and gear make some events that were at one time challenging now trivial. Other events are not affected as much because the mechanics continue to be challenging even after powering up.

Example:
CoTF T2 (in era) difficulty:
Burnout
Journey Home
Lord Bayle

CoTF T2 (modern inflated levels/gear) difficulty:
Journey Home
Lord Bayle
Burnout

Guilds that can only still raid last expansion, likely only raid 3-4 of those at the most. Still get gear at an increasingly slower rate than when top guilds ran through when it was current.

Might be a good idea for the devs to increase the gear/spell drops in older expansion raids once newer expansions come out, like they did with the flags to give struggling guilds a bump to help them catch up?

Where as I completely agree with you, it'd be a little more fair if you compared the best group item and not that Battleworn Trash.

6396hp on your Adamant chest.

Ohh.. I like that. Once a new expansion hits.. add like +2 loots to previous expansion raid loot.

That's some thing I never thought about honestly. That's good thinking.

And/or Bump old raid currency given.

This would be interesting if they could implement it.

CoTF wasn't tuned nearly as harshly as TBL/Underfoot/GoD/a couple RoS events though. I suppose that wasn't the point you were making either though.

Journey Home is probably one of the single best examples of an event that doesn't have "one size fits all" design. If it had the tuning of the train wreck that is TBL tuning, you'd have to engage all the islands at once. It doesn't force you to do that.

I also liked how they had NPC helpers in some raids, thankfully NOT nerfing them into uselessness. Perhaps there aren't that many examples, but Firiona can tank the last part of the Nomia raid in Arx Mentis, and Lendiniara can help tank the final boss of the second Ethernere raid. They've done that recently too in EoK and RoS of course.

One size fits all design just plain isn't a good thing for the game, unless it is somewhat forgiving, which will always be trivial for the strongest.