ToV ToFS Raids

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Ashian, Feb 5, 2020.

  1. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

  2. Axxius Augur

    Basing any assumptions on Beta videos would not be wise. Events 2 and 3 were changed multiple times during Beta, both mechanically and numerically. And nobody knows the final tuning that's going to be live.
    Sancus likes this.
  3. Cloud the Third Augur

    Don't say anything about raids being to hard until you try them. I did all of the T1 raids in beta and the live versions were really a joke compared to the ones we did in beta, much easier. Try them in live and then you can afterwards.
  4. Whulfgar Augur

    Thats how it should be. If raid 2 or raid 3 is easier then raid 1, then just beat raid 1, an get to the easier raids.
  5. Bigstomp Augur

    No point at all. Hang out in T1. Have fun.
    Jennre, Celephane and feeltheburn like this.
  6. feeltheburn Augur


    [IMG]
    Celephane likes this.
  7. Hellowhatsyourname Augur

    I'm excited for ToFS raids.... the first one was annoying, but at least you had to pay attention. The T1 raids are show up, kill stuff, loot the chest, and move on.
  8. Ashian Augur

    That makes no sense.

    First, raids have unique mechanics, and what may be difficult for one raid force may be easy for another. A raid force with killer tanks and healers would do great at drawn out balance fights but terribly at DPS checks. Linear progression makes all the sense in the world if every fight is a straightforward tank+spank and the boss just had its health/DPS upped each time, but that’s not even close to the way EQ raiding works.

    Second, you’re saying that to get access to the easy content, you should have to beat the hard content. Put differently and exaggerated to make the point: If Mearatas were the first raid in TBL and all the other raids were locked behind it, your advice would be the equivalent of: “Beat Mearatas so that you can access the easier raids.” Alternatively, an example for the groupers: “Go beat Plane of Smoke trials if you want access to the T1 zone, Esianti.” We all know how well that was received by the community.
  9. Whulfgar Augur

    Easiest raid in RoS - Last raid of the entire expansion.

    Which proves my point. Beat the other stuff ..

    We can go on an on like this all day . I'm here for ya.
  10. Ashian Augur

    I’m confused over precisely what your point is. Is your point that there are some prior expansions where easy raids are locked behind hard raids and therefore your recommended advice is for people to beat the hard ones so they can have access to the easy ones as well? The discussion isn’t whether easy raids are blocked behind hard raids in prior expansions. Everyone already knows that to be true. The discussion is whether that should be how ToFS raids are structured.

    I was under the impression that ToV was going to be structured to eliminate flagging/progression, essentially allowing guilds to attempt/complete raids in any order (once they are released). However, the linear structure of ToFS is such that event #2 is locked behind event #1 and after that, event #3 is locked behind events #1 and #2. While many guilds won’t be impacted as they can go ahead and beat all three events, some of us definitely will be impacted.

    To give some examples of where this has been important in the past:

    1) We were able to clear all three Veeshan’s Peak raids despite being unable to beat Sathir’s Tomb #2 (Drusella’s Vault).
    2) We were able to beat Prince Ralaifin raid (T2) despite being unable to beat Plane of Smoke (T1).

    I don’t want any of the raids nerfed. I’m not advocating for that. I just want to be able to attempt (and hopefully farm) the Tserrina raid without first playing slip & slide or wedding crashers.
  11. Tucoh Augur

    I'm still hoping they follow the ideas posted in beta forums of doubling the output damage at release for T3 (and even T2) raids and reducing it by 5% every week and then locking it when the first guild beats it, then start reducing it again a month or two later or something.
    Axxius likes this.
  12. Whulfgar Augur

    Ok i see what your saying. And i for one 100% dosagree with what your opinion is of no progression for raids is.

    There is zero progression for raids. You no longer have to farm raids in tier one for keys to get tier 2 raids.

    Having to complete tier 1 raids in order to get tier two raids are gone as well..

    The issue you seem to not understand is all the raids are in 1 instance. And as such they have to be completed o.k n a certainorder in order to activate the next raid.

    And zero progression is required for that. You just can not skip an instances 1st raid or 2nd raid to get that last raid.

    Which i fully 100% agree with.
  13. Cragzop Cranky Wizard


    You and only you are the one who posted that idea in Beta. And as far as I know you don't even raid.

    Not saying that T2.2 and 2.3 could not use some beefing up (T2.2 is especially silly IMO). But I'm just hoping for raids that aren't broken on Feb 16th. Difficult is fine, broken is stupid … especially after all the guilds that gave data (or could be asked for data) in Beta.

    And the only thing the devs ever said about ToV raids was that group progression would not be required. Nothing was said or implied that the same mechanism for multiple raids in an instance would be changed (ie needing to do the first raid to get to the second, etc.). I think a lot of players took the concept of no progression needed and just assumed that each individual raid could be accessed in any order (once in game). Maybe it needs to be looked at … but that's another discussion entirely.
    Yinla and Tucoh like this.
  14. Sancus Augur

    In before Tserrina is completely different from beta and actually the hardest raid in the expansion.
    Axxius, Sokki and Ashian like this.
  15. Ashian Augur

    I completely understand how it currently works and that the request would require “recoding.” That is precisely what I am requesting.

    If you step back and evaluate each of the raids independently, there really is no reason whatsoever that any of the raids are linked together other than the fact that they occur in the same zone. In the past, there used to be multiple tiers of gear (House of Thule, for example). The raids were very easy to “tier” based on the quality of the gear that dropped. However, now every raid drops the same quality gear, so distinguishing between raids based on gear quality is no longer a thing.

    The other element is difficulty. As you’ve pointed out above, there is no clear pattern in raid difficulty. One of the easiest RoS raids was the last one in the progression. The opposite was true in TBL. Clearly difficulty does not scale with tier.

    Finally there is the flagging. “Tiers” were used to create artificial progression hurdles via flags to prevent guilds from rampaging through all of the raid content at launch. That system has since been replaced by staggering the release date of raids.

    As I now evaluate the EQ raiding scene as it stands in ToV, the concept of requiring beating raid A to attempt raid B no longer makes sense. Here is what it looks like:

    1) Restless Assault (None)
    2) Griklor (None)
    3) Sleeper (Pre Requisite = Griklor)
    4) Heart of Frozen Shadow (None)
    5) Till Death do us Part (Pre Requisite = Heart of Frozen Shadow)
    6) Tserrina Syl’Tor (Pre Requisite = Heart of Frozen Shadow & Till Death do us Part)
    7) Velks (None)
    8) Derakor (None)
    9) AoW (Pre Requisite = Derakor)

    There really isn’t a logical reason that raids #3, #5, #6, and #9 have pre requisites and the others do not.
  16. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    If you only want to spend an hour or two doing T1 every week, https://pinballmap.com for the rest of the week!
  17. Laronk Augur

    I think its a terrible idea because it would still be beat by ROI and MS the first week at stupid unbalanced levels and then the content would get locked at that super hard level.

    Also unlike the group game, I don't think you could double the dps of raid mobs and have people actually live. Sure in the group game you can just blow something up but take a hard hitting TBL raid mob like Sheen and double its dps and I don't think it would be reasonably tankable even at 115.

    In the group game even when the nameds sometimes spawned with essentially 0 delay they were still killable if you had the dps but just because some groups can kill a named within the time of one deflection doesn't mean it would be good game design to have mobs randomly be like that.
  18. Sancus Augur

    At the risk of piling on, I also don't love this idea. I do think the damage output of the mobs in the T3 raids could be increased some, but making numbers bigger in and of itself isn't a great way to make difficult raids. If mobs hit so hard they can't be tanked, you encourage... imaginative strats to beat the content earlier that wouldn't be fun for anyone involved or help the integrity of the raid game. If the mobs are just difficult to tank, it's really not going to challenge top guilds that much. Some skill gap exists even in those guilds, but realistically "play your class really well for X duration and have a certain raid makeup" is an insufficient challenge and creates somewhat of a binary check (i.e., you have to be this tall to ride).

    I'm not necessarily saying you couldn't make something hard, or even impossible, that way, but I don't think that would live up to the standards set by Mearatas or Drusella's Vault. Interesting mechanics that force every member of the raid to pay attention and play well are IMO a prerequisite for a truly well made and challenging raid. None of the ToV events exhibit that; their emotes generally require a small portion of the raid to react, and the vast majority of the time I stand in one spot and DPS (or run to mobs and DPS). Mechanics that force movement aren't the only way to make raids challenging (AoW's weapon swap emote is a good example, but that only applies to a few people).

    It's probably too late, but I'd love to see AoW's mechanics tweaked a bit to encourage personal responsibility. I'd also like to see the T3 raids have fewer HP % based mechanics, because as an end game DPS player, I loved how Mearatas required me to keep sustaining DPS at every point in it. It's a huge contrast to AoW where you often have too much boss DPS and need to slow down or wipe.
  19. Whulfgar Augur

    The logical reason is because thats what the dev's wanted or were told to do.

    /shrug. I get it your guild is a bit weaker in some aspect, an will simply have to recruit better players to help defeat some of the harder raids.

    But as some one who raided this stuff in beta.. its ALL not as hard as you think it really is..
  20. Ashian Augur

    On this basis, no one should ever request changes to the game because every single element of the game (outside of bugs) is what the devs wanted or were told to do. We should all just accept any nerfs/buffs, class imbalance, xp rates, or any or element of the game without discussion.

    I don't think you get it though. Imagine this when you next go to raid:


    1) All but 1 of your healers logs off. Your healing force consists entirely of clerics and shaman boxed by the tanks. There are almost no healer mains on your server because everyone is able to pop a cleric merc or boxes one. You can't recruit more healers because there is a perpetual demand for healers at the top raiding guilds which are just a character transfer token away. Don't believe me? See the post on this very thread from RoI looking to recruit our shamans a clerics! I know it was said jokingly, but I'm willing to bet it was a legitimate offer.
    2) You have no paladins. Sorry, the paladins that are qualified to raid with you are located in Africa and China and can't make your raid times. Your only tanks are warriors and shadowknights (and they are boxing your healers).
    3) Only your tanks are geared well. TBL raids were too difficult so the little loot you got last expansion was funneled to the tanks to enable you to attempt more raids. The rest of your raid force is in group gear except for key focus items for casters and weapons for melee.
    4) A third of your raid force is over the age of 50. While they've been playing EQ for 10-20 years, some of them take a little longer to react to things.

    I know you think it is "not as hard as you think it really is" and I agree. If we had the ability to recruit priests. If our raid force entered the expansion with full TBL T2 gear. If we weren't forced to box a portion of the raid just to get 54 characters and survive. IF these were true, then the raids would indeed be easy, but they are not. These are the realities of raiding in the mid-tier or up-and-coming raid forces.

    If we only end up able to beat T1, so be it. That will be a major improvement over TBL and I'll remain quite happy. Again though, I'm not asking for them to be nerfed. I'm not saying "woe is us, our raid force is limited so remove the mechanics or make the raid easier." If we encounter a raid we just can't do, we skip it and move on as we've done in prior expansions. That said, I don't think it is unreasonable to ask for the ability to attempt each raid rather than do them in sequence. If the devs post here and say "NO!" fine, I won't ask again. But to have you show up and just say "It really isn't hard at all! or Recruit more!" To me, that is not a satisfactory response and demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the relative struggles other folks are facing this expansion.
    Windance and Sancus like this.