State of raiding in 2023

Just to be clear on a few points, there have been just as many fights the top raid forces beat when they were undertuned/broken as when they were too difficult. Convorteum comes to mind as a big example of that.

As for Mearatas, the top guild was begging for it to be nerfed up to the day they beat it to the point an actual hotfix was planned and ready to go the next Monday, and the day before it went in (Sunday) they finally beat it and backpedaled and got the hotfix pulled.

Plane of War was also nerfed from the original Beta version, which I know because my guild at the time (MS) tested it on beta. It was unbeatable in that form and we were told specifically that it would not be changed/nerfed before it went live, and we let the rest of the community know that not to waste time on it...and then it was nerfed before it went live and RoI was one of the few guilds who actually attempted it and then beat it. No one beat the unnerfed version.

For someone who claims to not have a horse in this race, you seem to be quite opinionated about it.

I responded to a post suggesting that there should be a raid that only a few guilds can beat and that is what I am saying is wrong. There are only 9 raids each expansion and there is no need to make one so that only a few will be able to beat it. With a small population that only appears to to be shrinking they should not be developing limited use content.

If we were to truly apply your logic, then we would have to eliminate raids entirely since it alienates the people that only form groups. Raids are "limited use" content to those people...

I assume this discussion even came about because this years raids are pretty easy/lack luster. I would like to see a hard raid that has an awesome achievement item with high stats that you can earn later if you cannot clear it in current content. Last expansions raids were harder especially the bloodfalls raids.

There are still a decent amount of raiders playing and I am just objecting to making any of the limited amount of raids only beatable by a couple of guilds.

Thanks for the details. Just to help correct the record: were both Mearatas and Plane of War nerfed after they were beaten?

Mearatas was beaten by RoI and over a month later, MS won and then a week later, Valhalla did it. Two weeks later, there was the first "nerf" patch.

My memory is fuzzy about when folks knew that the first patch was coming, but I'm pretty sure that it was known that it was incoming when MS beat the event. Because I was part of MS at the time and we were really pushing hard to get the win before the nerf (#122 for the charm ... that did include every let's just run this to see if this happens try). If it wasn't known then, it was known pretty soon after since we never attempted again in the original state after our first win because we knew the patch was coming (and we were just a little burnt out on the event).

The interesting thing (well, at least to me) about Mearatas is that we never saw the event on Beta except for the 100 to 85 percent part (the super boring part). We attempted it once on Beta, got the chest when UEE got to 85 percent, and never tried it again in Beta. I heard that more of the event was in Beta by the end (but I cannot confirm) but I am pretty sure no one knew how difficult the event would be on Live until folks started to attempt it.

Maybe a handful of people thought it should be nerfed, but begging? Seems a tad over exaggerated considering it was a week into the event being unlocked. Not to mention there were numerous posts on these forums stating it should be unchanged to allow other guilds to attempt it before nerfs (by the top guild).

As for hard content, there should be 1 incredibly hard raid per expansion. Then as it gets beaten and or can not be beaten it gets tuned downwards. Make it so the final raid does not have any hidden flags for gear (so it can all be purchased beating 1-8), and then allow guilds to try and beat it or just skip it outright if they must. Every month or 2 months they can do a blanket 5-10% nerf on DMG or whatever until its in an ideal state for the majority of the guilds.

Having it so every year the hardest part is zoning into the raids is incredibly bad design. It will eventually lead to the top guilds just being done with the game and then the majority of players who test the game and get things adjusted or fixed will be gone.

As a raid cleric there are a lot of things I could dislike. Stun effects or rapid movement requirements come to mind. As a realistic human being however, I have to be amazed that after 25 years the Devs can still come up with new ideas and designs that remain challenging.

On any given night it's still possible to fail a current event quite spectacularly. That means the design of the event has to be both winnable at release while remaining at least moderately challenging even after we've geared up and learned most of the vagaries of the event.

Ultimately, I don't want raiding to feel like a job. I like mechanics whereby you can skip a lot of tedium once you learn the "secret". I can't think of a single example right now but there have been some in previous expansions.

The secret is to pay attention, not get distracted, turn off netflix, organize your UI so it's not a giant cluster-eff and generally be aware of what's happening around you.

The point is you can raid older raids when a new expansion comes out. Most guilds still do achievements for 1-2 expansion behind the current one. A really hard bonus special raid every expansion to give best raiders something to work on will also give a raid that lower guilds couldn't do during expansion but when it is 1-2 expansions old if the gear it drops is set to be really powerful they can go back and do it when they are able to. So it isn't like a raid only 1-2 guilds will ever beat.

Yes, you can raid them but when the drops you get from the older expansions are worse then the drops from the newer one it becomes harder to get people to go back and do them.

Considering a non-insignificant number of those "top guilds" would be fine if raids were only beatable by guilds like them, and from what I understand have members who actively lobby for loot changes to the point that we got the absolute dogwater loot system we have this xpac, I'm fine with them leaving. Don't let the door hit ya on the way out if it applies to you.


I enjoy raids where the primary difficult is mechanics execution. My ideal raid has a fair number of moving pieces that require the entire raid force to pay attention. This xpac has multiple events where I am struggling to say awake because they're just boring slogs of beating on HP sponges.

The problems are exaggerated by the fact that there's zero excitement at all when loot drops. At *best* you aren't upset because your guild got 1+ ores. But the ore-per-slot + 0-2 ores per win thing somehow manages to make loot now less exciting than it was killing griklor and seeing 37 froo froos chopping board drop.

Raids should never be tuned around "dragon glyphs" those are added help factors and not guaranteed to be there. Raids are on the easy side yes and mobs should prob hit 5-15% harder. but TBL only like 8 guilds beat full expansion now you have 30+ guilds beating expansions. That is healthy for the game due to a 50/50 split of raiders vs groupers. if can get more "casual" guilds to raid and do things than the groupers will sub more for better gear etc.

Would love to reduce lag. but the idiots cant seem to "figure" it out or they just dont care.

I disagree.

Once a new expansion comes out the focus is nearly 100% on new content.

The difference in power between expansions are fairly minimal. The last few expansions you get about 5% HME and small bumps in DPS.

If you can't get the last expansion down, that extra 5% isn't going to be enough to make the difference.

It is incredibly hard to get people to go back to older expansions. We recently had a conversation about going back to get some first time wins on TBL, CoV and ToL and the consensus was it wasn't worth the loss of current gear, even if the T1 gear is going to alts.

This is why raids should be changed and given older raids a rare chance to drop chase loot that is as good or better than current expansion gear. This would help encourage those who have all the achievements for all the old raids to go back and do them. Even if it is just 1-2 super rare really powerful augs that will last for years it would encourage raiders to go back and do older stuff for these items.

It is kind of sad that expansion content is only good for 1 expansion and noone wants to go back and do it again. I love to go back and do older content for fun until it becomes so trivial that you one round all the mobs and it bugs the instance so it becomes more work to finish than just running through it for old times (thinking of raids where you can 1 hit for 5-10% and you have to get 4-6 mobs at 5% or less hp before you can kill them, stupid raid).

why not having the last raid in an expansion to be very hard to the elite guilds to competitions each others , then after 3 months lower the difficulty of that raid . so the lower end guilds could catch up.

This is what we ask for pretty regularly.

I promise you the top guilds have absolutely nothing to do with the current loot system. We think it’s pointless because pretty much everyone (in our guild) ignores the first tier of loot because gear doesn’t matter outside of a couple focus slots for casters and weapons for melee. As long as you have enough hps to survive the aes you’re good. For example my alt berserker is wearing t1 ToV raid gear mostly (3 expansion old gear) and still survives raid aes no problem on open raids. All in all itemization has been boring and mostly underwhelming for a pretty long time outside of evolving items.

To the comment about don’t let the door kick you on the way out. That’s strange logic, as we lose people we recruit from the lower tier guilds. Once we take enough of the higher quality players those lower tier guilds struggle until they fold. The objective is to make as many people as happy as possible to prevent/prolong those things from happening. The top tier guilds do not want every raid to be hard, we want the final event to be hard, it does not need to stay that way either, just long enough for us to have our fun (a couple months tops). Now with all that said there is more than just raid issues causing people from top guilds to retire, class development (or lack there of) plays a large role in that also.

People are always leaving guilds. Your statement shows that it's better to make the raids easier and more accessible, as it maintains the viability and promotes growth of lower end guilds. As they can accomplish content recruit a wider, variety of players and classes.

I think they should just offer an NPC to debuff the raid, then decrease it until a guild beats it. The guild that wins gets some bragging rights, more loot drops. Also, establish a wall of fame in-game and get some sweet looking pixels. Let's say 25% decreased melee and spell casting speed, then decrease that % each month until it's beat and lock it in.

D4 is doing this cool thing, where the first 1000 people get their name added to real life statue. It would be cool, if EQ could do something like that too.