Re-tuned HAs

I farm CotF HAs (mostly Gribbles) for essences. I need them for a number of tradeskill things, mostly pet armor and non-visibles. Maybe when RoS drops get more common, I'll look at upgrading petwear.

I quit raiding in UF, mostly from burnout, with a touch of "how much time have I taken from my kids?" I quit playing for a time in VoA, when the devs tried to enforce ply the way we tell you to. After UF crippled my solo/duo play, I told myself I wasn't buying another expansion I couldn't play in. I came back on invitation from an old guildy during CotF (or RoF, whichever is newer).

I'm way out of date with so many achievements because the gear from these expansions was always making the old ones obsolete. So I've been chasing the power curve to finish gearing and AAing, always planning to go back and pick up what I've missed for the rewards. Now most of all that is current (and hardcore RoS is still a bit out of my reach). All my toons are still in EoK T1 gear - the continuous spin stuns keep me out of Droga, and I haven't tried fighting my way into Kor-Sha or Chardok yet.

I've been playing long enough to know how the treadmill works. I don't mind being behind, as long as DB doesn't decide to block the advancements I need to go back to.

Frogmancer...stop the falsehoods.

All CotF HAs and TBM HAs are part of progression (actually TDS too) for all toons. Want all those neat Hero Vitality/Fortitude/Resolution aas? You better have beaten every HA as well as the other quests. TBM is especially bad since even the missions are HAs. So stop saying HAs aren't progression...they most certainly are.

You sound like another person who wants to meddle in something you have no concept of. Groupers don't go into raiding threads and try to push agendas...why do raiders do the same in grouper threads? You don't do them? Great. You don't understand why others do? Who cares...others do understand. You want harder content? Ask the devs for more raids. Heck, they even built an entire zone for you...and oh yeah, TONED IT DOWN and gave you more loot. I don't see many threads on how easy VP is...

Do you want to know why 90 percent of my guild folks do Gribbles? Because...they are relatively (...at least in the old days) quick, can have a wide range of levels/classes and still be able to do the content (well, below 106), and get a decent shot of xp every 3 hours. I know there are also folks who have disabilities playing the game and Gribbles have really been nice because they can be part of a group doing something, but not grind the group to a halt if they have to stop playing for a bit to rest/etc. Groups are a real pain to find for non-raiding guild folks (or those with strong ties to that group). You, others, and especially the Devs need to understand this and stop messing with groupers.

The issue his here isn’t really HAs - it’s molo friendly content. Anyone arguing that Gribbles wasn’t too easy isn’t telling the truth. My group geared SK can tank a dozen + provided my some DPS. The main issue here is time - people want something they can complete in a manageable time.

Removed my reply but not the replies of people replying to my reply. Sooo..... I kinda feel like I just won something. /victory dance

Increases in level, i.e. power, are supposed to make older content weaker. You gain power, you are stronger. The scaling system is faulty, here. Hopefully their internal discussion reverts these unncessary changes.

We aren't asking to do WoW-esque damage, hitting old raids for millions of damage. Just tune them back to them pre-patch. At 110, max aa, and in good gear, they SHOULD be easy. The CoTF era missions are from level 100 for christ's sake!

I would not hold your breath about the changes going back to pre-patch. If, and it is a BIG IF, the Devs decide that they are hemorrhaging subs left and right, they will try to fix it.I bet that the content from past expansions only scale to 109 now instead of 110.

Look at what a wonderful job they did "fixing" the patch to the cactus mission. Still need people in RoS RAID gear to beat the "easiest" T1 RoS group mission in the starting zone of the expansion.

Generally, 9 times out of 10, a patch is never reversed to pre-patch.

Gribbles should be easy. It's like 5 years old. Perhaps the reward was not properly scaled. But there's no reason it shouldn't be easy.

Realistically, if you were eok group geared at 105, gear runs ~4000hp a slot. If you're group geared now in RoS, gear runs closer to 4800hp a slot. So 20% upgrade in hp. Please explain the 300% increase in mob hp in TBM HAs. I'm ~70% EoK raid geared, 30% RoS T2 and the change still makes the HAs not worth doing. Forcing RoS level mobs on anyone and everyone that would rather work past progression/hunter/collection was a great way to force me to unsubscribe my accts. Two accounts of 4 are already silver. 16 years of gameplay and now I have 2 posts on this forum, both on the same topic.

Why not focus efforts on making the game better rather than erasing past content for casuals?

Shouldn't take 5 days to get a "hey we actually read this thread, but no promises" response. Should be able to handle that one on a day off next time.

It's almost like the devs are trying to get people to quit. I can't understand why they would make this change. Gribbles exp is way less than EOK or ROS, with zero loot reward ( besides some rare augs ).
I came back after 5 years off half way through EoK, I planned to go back & do all the HA heroic AA's I missed, now they made that nearly impossible, why??
RoS is a steaming pile is excrement, there are no HA's that are good to earn currency in like EoK. The tier 1 zones are full of mobs with super annoying mechanics and there are no good camp spots. Tier 1 should be for the average group geared player, why is everything tuned around raid geared people. The difference between a fully raid geared toon & a group geared player is insane, missions that are difficult for raid players is going to be near impossible for group players.

Yep, we all can relate to that - there's many HAs that "hide" some hunter mob.

Respectfully, i'd submit that CotF and Cooper's #3 hardly qualify for "current content", nor should it ever.

It's cool that you found a HA - one of MANY in that expansion - that works for you.
I find it shameful - for the Devs, mind you - that a live GROUP of top-geared and capable raiders cannot do or are hard-pressed to do (possibly others than what you post about) CotF-HAs.

I stayed at level 105 because I just started TBM and wanted to avoid the scaling 106-110 even before the patch. I planned on doing TBM and getting remnants for a long time. I found TBM content at lvl 105 with low aa's to be plenty challenging.

Now I am hearing that if I go into TBM with a level appropriate group of 105's the yellow and red cons will have RoS abilities, spells and HP because those mobs are lvl 106 plus. That along with the alts issue is what has me the most upset. Gotcha if you stayed at lvl 105 and gotcha if you went to lvl 110. Someone correct me if I am wrong on this. I havn't been able to play recently.

Overall, players will move into EoK and RoS when they think they are ready. If Gribbs gets them ready then who cares?

QFT

Glad you and the guy befor eyou quoted that post - i couldn't agree more.
Sad that i cannot seem to directly like it, as it seems to have been removed :/

I don't, but when i did the reasons were:
*fast XP, especially AAXP, to help me catch up around 10k AAs after autogrant to become raid-viable
Yes, there only was this one reason to, despite my use of plural above.

When i have done any since, it was for
*past expansion's Hero-AAs
*collectibles
*hunters
*help guildies with any of the above
*(one time only) evaluate the XP over time compared to other static zones, since i saw many guildies hiding in gribbles again after RoS release
in that order and yes, that is an exhaustive list.

I feel like if anything the exp should just be nerfed post 105. There's no reason to make old progression (and all the progression AAs that go with it) harder to achieve than they were at launch.

That is no Dev

The powers that be, found that post to that which I quoted to be a violation of the boards. But I can tell you this, it was spot on how most of us feel.

Meh.
I think i can agree with the general gist of your post, but this part... is far too imprecise.
"too easy" for what?
5year old content? no, certainly not too easy. if it were, it would've been from the very beginning.
The 16AAs it gave? well, perhaps, considering the time a MAX LEVEL, MAX GEARED group or box crew needs.

Yet, there were also not one but TWO relativizing things to it:
*boredom, first and foremost.
*tasktimer

Ok, so during double-XP weekends and with lessons/potions one could get 150 to 200AAs relatively easy every - what was it? 3hrs? - if you had the DPS (e.g. friends, or boxes with a working combination for mass-pulling and AE'ing) to chain 4HAs in one go.
And yes, some (perhaps ab)used it to get through levels 106 to 110 in general and level 109 specifically ( design, hell levels!).

But how was or is that a bad thing?
I know that if i hadn't been dragged through Gribbles so often during my trial, that trial would've had to be extended or failed simply because i wouldn't have been in any tanking shape, returning after 8years and not only low-level and undergeared but most of all also under-AA'd.
Boring or not, "too easy" or not: i "owe" Gribbles a lot of thanks for getting me back into the game FASTER.
With that speedbump and regular groups afterwards, i caught up from basically level 83 and autogrant to level 105 and max AA - within one YEAR.
That's still a lot of time, and my guild had to bear with me not being able to tank a whole lot without more-than-usual healer attention even after my trial for a while.
But the AAs i got from Gribbles at least allowed me to get my most urgent AAs covered during my trial and helped or even let me pass it.

It was also a nice place, as was said above, to group up with a level 75 and also get SOMETHING from PLing him...
It was an easy, rather quick groupage opportunity where the level 75 still knew he was being PL'd but didn't "have to" have qualms about "wasting" the powerleveling player's time completely, since that one got at least a small reward for taking him in (not many 150-200AAXP groups in that scenario, but more the basic 16AAs per HA!).
And it was a place (although too dull for MY taste) for people to bring their ALTs up relatively quickly (e.g. after-raids) to a point where they are "useable" too.


I actually think that it is a good thing - for players and the game as a whole alike - to have "easy" stuff like that.
Even if we see a certain crowd "abusing" it.
But you know... back in 2013 i've been told about much a similar task in Underfoot.
(i haven't tried that then nor since because i was either not anywhere near the level to even attempt it, or had already out-leveled that expansion and it's gear)
Plus, the reward was/is fixed per mission completion, the mutiplying from lesson/bonus XP that actually makes these worthwhile was possible and done from day1.
And i expect from a Designer to take such things into consideration when well.. designing stuff.

Now yes, over time the content became easier - as is to be expected with better gear and more AAs from 5expansions since.
And why not? i certainly would not expect a D'Vinn or Emp Crush and his cronies to do me in at level 110 as they did at level 15 or so.

There is no "too easy" for old content.
There is - at MOST! - "too good reward".
But that is a design flaw with the feature itself, if it were a flaw - i prefer to see it as an intended opportunity or even "path" to catch up for "behind" characters.

It’s not about being easy - it’s about molo friendly content that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. Even raiders use Gribbles to get a bit of exp after raids. But now that it takes 45+ for crap exp...

I'm not gonna quite the rest of your post.
Gribbles provides a total of 3 ha's
This change has impacted all HA's
COTFS are level 100 content that scaled to 105.
The Darkened Sea was released in 2014 with a max level 105
I will absolutely insist that no adjustment was warranted. TBM was already made harder with the release of ROS and the Mobs being upgraded to ROS spells
level 50 initial
Level 60 3 expansions
Level 65 4 expansions
Level 70 4 expansions
Level 75 2 expansions
Level 80 1 expansion
Level 85 2 expansions
Level 90 1 expansion- 4 tiers of gear.
Level 95 1 expansion- 4 tiers of gear
level 100 was two expansions
level 105 was three expansions.

TBM and EOK is 105 max static content. TBM's HA content allows lower levels additional content and things to do while they level to 105.

Both COTF and TBM went out of their way to provide a new gear path for those level 75- 100

to push those levels out of COTF and TBM and make them level through 8 tiers of gear over 10 level range is certainly nto the direction to go.

especially not to accommodate levels 106 to 110.


Did we see the masses shoot to level 110 in ha's? no they went to EOK which is now easily farmable at good xp rate and a phenomenal AAXP rate

Yes there is people who want to "experience the old content as new again" but they shouldn't have the other option taken away from them.


These Ha's are very challenging diverse content. you can do the missions three times in a row and get different mission. Mobs need dispelled. Encounter with mini raid mechanics, ETC.

These ha's are some sf the best content SOE has put out in a long time.

Autogrant aa's essentially stop at level 100. It is important for these players to have a place to log in and get some aa. because with aa inflation they will need about 500-1000's aa's a level to stay viable(Especially the tank classes)
the content was tuned to 2-3 players groups for a reason aas HA' have become the only place they need to group and cant just outlevel the content as they do with static zones.

They need to be tuned back to where they were. the content wasn't broken and did not need to be overtuned.

I meanthe devs come out and basically say ROS is hard and you have to be well geared and aa's to do this content. If someone levels too fast then they are stuck grinding their aa's in EOK when they should have the option of getting their heroic aa's and working on Achievements and such in the 3 105 expansion available to them while they get themselves in shape to take on ROS as opposed to waiting for the next expansion which will either give them a level increase or easier content to do.