I'm gonna go ahead and say that It is my personal opinion that the majority of you are wrong and go on to explain why. First, very little in this expansion is a challenge besides these two missions. A handful of named and one or two of the merc/partisan quests were tough, but otherwise it was fairly easy. I had more trouble finishing my collections than i did finishing all the quests in RoF. This is not "progression" content in the sense that you need to complete it in order to reach further zones or unlock aa's/spells. The only rewards are the trophies and the aug that comes from beating all of the group missions. Meaning it's not "required" content to progress and is more or less one long aug camp. I've posted about both of these missions multiple times before both here and on other forums. I'm not a huge fan of EW #2 more because it's tedious than difficult, but Grelleth #2 is probably my favorite event this expansion. And I'm of the opinion that Grelleth #2 is HARDER with raid geared DPS. The entire mission is about control. You need to be able to control when adds/children pop. You need to control who has how much agro on Grelleth. You need to control the NPC helpers. If you can do those three things, the mission is not hard at all. Adds are percentage based, weather it be from the children or Grelleth herself. More DPS = faster adds = more DPS needed or a CC class. Agro generation needs to be controlled for like the first time ever. Unless you bring two tanks to taunt off her, your tank needs to be able to understand that over 9000 hate is a bad thing here. This is perfectly doable with one tank and one melee capable of off-tanking her for short periods of time. If your tank is capable of watching his agro meter and paying attention rather than just mindlessly spamming his agro abilities, he can keep that melee DPS within tanking range without too much difficulty. Groups do not need to be stacked to do these events if the players in them are capable of thinking for themselves and don't sit in the corner, face the wall and spam greater healing for two and a half hours. For those that do... sorry. You're SOL. For those that understand the mechanics of their classes, use them, don't give it a try from head on and then immediately play the over-tuned card.
Everquest has already gone to easy mode. We dont need two more missions on easy mode. Keep them as they are, and have keep on trying. MPG trials were way harder and have a much better reward. Learn to build your groups for the encounter and watch the mechanics. That's what EQ is all about. Stop whining.
Please stay on topic. I would really like to do these. And now with new content coming out these will be forgotten about and people, will move on making it all the harder for me and other like myself to get these done. I believe I've done everything that can be reasonably expected. Wasted people's time by drag them there just to give it a shot. Put together the right classes and have the gear check completely wipe us. I firmly believe that if I don't get these done before Aprils new content I can kiss them goodbye. Summer comes makes things slower, heck even fall with school starting i see a dip in players, then the annual loss of people towards the end of an expansion. Sure, when I'm 105 it will be doable.
Thus why these missions are so difficult to get past, we regularly had carry to 1-3 people that didn't really know what they were doing in order to progress here. If I had 5 guys who paid attention like I did, I would have fully agreed and went on further about what a joke these missions were. Nowadays you gotta schedule people in, hope their kid isn't screaming, hope your kid isn't screaming, etceteras. The merc/partisan tasks can be tricky sometimes, but I have yet to find one that isn't boxable, with the majority being soloable once you learn the trick behind it. Funny how you talk about an agro level over 9000 being a bad thing. Vegeta thoroughly disagrees!
CaptAmazing, what server are you on? Regardless, if you need firsthand info on any of these, please just ask, be happy to share what I know.
Thank you. I think I've got the what's its just the who. The plan I have kind of sucks for the people ill have to leave behind so I can get this done. Feel like a heel telling someone that's been with us through everything else, sorry we can't take you cause we need a better or different X. Best case scenario would be to have at least a TA from a merc spot. But, that's doubtful.
What class would you recommend tank her when the emote goes off thats not a tank class. Keep in mind, this in group gear and also the mana pools on the healers aren't as big so even with control if the DPS isn't there you still fail. You made a nice long post, but it lacks objectivity.
I feel like you literally just said: These missions need to be easier because people don't pay attention or understand or bother to learn how to play the game/their class. If that is the case... That has nothing to do with the missions, but... I don't actually have a reply. Great, great sadness, but no reply.
Has no one seriously mentioned pet tanking yet? People complain about how overpowered pet tanks are in *raid* situations - surely someone might consider using one in a group mission? A mage or necro with a pet gives you an extra DPS, tank, AND healer. Pets are probably being nerfed in the raid game - but not in the group game. I would strongly encourage utilizing them to beat this more challenging missions. This also makes Grelleth 2's emote particularly easy to avoid. Either have two casters match each other, or just have the mage CoH the person that gets called out. These missions are difficult, but I'm fairly certain that they're beatable by groupers with a little strategy. PS - whoever said Avatar of War wasn't tankable by a T1 tank is... wrong. I handled him fine just last night. Though I can imagine him being tough for groupers, if for no other reason than the auto-agro. Not having time to set up sucks, and is the major difference between AoWar and the group missions.
Enchanter. My 100% group geared enchanter is a better tank than me (raid geared wizard) and has no problem tanking T2 named. In RoF group content enchanter is the 4th tank class. But that's still a specific case, and let's not go into the nerf direction here. Grelleth2 requires 2 separate tanks, which is unreasonable IMO.
Every melee class has some sort of weaponshield/furious disc, so I won't list those Monk: Impenetrable discipline Ranger: weaponshield proc buff (yes, it's random, but they can take a hit or two without it) Necromancer: I don't know what the AA is called, but it's like 'click me to win at tanking for 45 seconds' Beastlord, mage: pets The NPCs will also take agro if allowed. There's an objective reply on classes that can do this job. Those five, plus the three tank classes makes eight classes that can take her attention away. The emote is also avoidable by tanks if they, again, know what their doing and the mechanics of their class. Not every single one can be avoided, but two or three is possible. ALSO, if you again pay attention and learn mechanics, the emote is time based. You have 10-12 seconds from when she does the emote till when she hits the tank. Meaning your tank only has to be off agro for ~3-5 seconds. I'd wagger a wizard could kite her for 3-5 seconds with only a heal or two. Also, just fyi, she's permarooted until 50% and spawns children adds at set percentages of her health. She also doesn't regen if one person keeps her in combat and will only nuke/AE those on her combat list. Every class in the game has a fade ability now, and there's a zoneout door like eight seconds away. Healers can break in between children and then again after kotul before you engage her for the last portion of the event.
Well yea, pretty much Maereax. Not sure what kind of fantasy land EQ Triality has going on over on their end, but over half the people I was able to round up in order to knock these out either can't or won't pay attention playing, or did not know how to best utilize their class in all situations. Finding people with a certain skill level/attention level was a very difficult process indeed. I half the time knocked these out with the General pickup group special of the day, never know what you are going to get!
I could not have said it any better. Most of this expansion is extremely easy. I do not see any issues with having a couple non-progression missions that require high-end groups to complete. The arguement that someone paid for the RoF expansion entitles him/her to be able to do all the group content within is obsurd. This is like saying all raids should be made easily doable by your average raider as they paid for the expansion as well. There is a huge variation of skill/gear/AAs amongst the people that play this game, and not everyone is going to be able to beat everything in an expansion. It is my belief that these harder missions CAN be beaten with an optimal group that knows what they are doing and plays their class to their fullest potential.
And I'm sure that's frustrating. My point is that... none of those reasons are problems with these two missions. That's an issue with the players and the game itself, and honestly, for those people, the aug is not a requirement. I've done this two or three times with pickup players and didn't run into any problems because of it. My only suggestions would be to make friends with better players, offer free 14 day trials of WoW to your general chat, or inform people that you're doing a difficult mission and /afk /autofire players need not apply.
I completely agree with your whole post. I'm going to cherry pick one line to cut down on the length of my reply, but I would go so far as to say that they can be beaten with a non-optimal group makeup as long as said players have the ability to pay attention and understand their classes/game mechanics.
I think these missions are slightly overtuned for the group players. Are they totally unbeatable? No, not at all. Are they enjoyable and fun to do for groupers? I doubt it. While I don't mind certain zones or mobs being hard, I think the missions should be doable by groupers in sufficient group gear with sufficient skill without having to die 20 times.
I think you're overly exaggerating here, just so you know. The aug that's rewarded from these missions is quite nice, people aren't going to just stop running them. The rest of the missions are cake for the most part and new gear/aa/spells will only make the hard ones easier.
Much easier said than done Maereax. Have to keep in mind that players who know every in and out of their class, pay attention, and have excellent response time to any situation are very much the exception in this game, not the rule. I regularly die a little more inside when talking to the newer generation of SKs, the swarm generation... Imagine rangers do the same talking to the headshot generation of Rangers. My point is that your view might be more than a little biased being in one of the top 10 towards thinking that all players can play at a certain level. It just isn't true. It shouldn't be a problem with these missions, I agree. But we are in the minority here, not the majority. Thus why mudflation and many other easy modes are rampant. It won't shock me if they soon announce autosummon/ress buttons for everyone, every death when you respawn in the GL or whatever, you will be asked if you'd like to be ressed and returned to where you died.
Tuning includes the assumed skill level, not just gear level. Requiring very high skill to beat the mission is not very different from requiring raid gear. You can play better or you can make the mission easier with raid gear. The problem is that a typical pick up group doesn't have neither 6 highly-skilled players nor raid gear. The original question ("Who is this tuned for?") still applies. Not to mention that most of the highly-skilled players happen to own raid gear anyway.
