Yeah, because one report of it automatically makes all the other points invalid. With that thinking, they have to go back and undo all the raid nerfs.
To be fair even though we beat it the missions do need some retunes, and honestly missions like evantil 2 are 100 percent stupid. Evantil 2 without necromancers takes a really long time and is a huge hassle. I did notice in evantil 2 during phase 1 that exactly 15 trash mobs slowly spawn over the course of that phase, it seems that 15 is the limit on mobs being up and once all 15 are up you can just have one person hold agro on them and kite them all while other toons chip away at the 2 molars. I do not consider grelleth difficult at all due to the fact that you can zerg it, if they ever change it so that grelleth 2 resets then they will need to *drastically* retune that so i hope they never nerf it. In its current form is is "easy" just "long" My friend and I were able to beat it and complete all 3 conquests in it the first time we grabbed the instance. We died several times of course but persistence wins the day on that particular mission. Chapterhouse 2 was easier than i was told it would be but it was still an unpleastant mission, Realistically though even though my friend and I beat it I don't think the following missions are tuned properly: chapterhouse 2, Evantil 2, xorbb 2. Also as far as the non raid missions go, chapterhouse 1 was a very unpleasant experience overall.
I box anywhere from 3 to 5 toons (the 5th toon never gets used for missions though), my friend only plays 1 account so our setup for most missions was: mage/mage/bard/ranger (me boxing), + chanter (non boxed) + 1 cleric merc. Sometimes I would drop the ranger for a 2nd cleric merc and for the first chapterhouse mission i only played mage + bard for the chase part (having to constantly run toons for the first part of chapterhouse 1 was a pain so i dropped most of my boxes and later re-added 2nd mage for boss fight at end)
I still agree with you that several missions need retunes btw, my post was just to show that it is possible for groupers to beat these, just because a couple groupers can beat these missions though does not make them properly tuned (or enjoyable) because honestly evantil 2 was about as much fun as an E. Honda headbutt to my crotch. Some changes i personally would make to the missions for groupers: Chapterhouse 1: Slow lord taros movement rate by 25 percent (not everyone is gonna be a DPS group), Reduce the frequency at which the final boss of the mission spawns skeleton adds and reduce the frequency of her emote EW2 : remove 1 add from both dwarf and giants factions each wave of adds that spawn, reduce final bosses dps by 10 percent Chapterhouse 2: Do not make an add spawn every 5 percent of the bosses health, make it so an add spawns every 20 percent, Decrease the range of the auras on the mobs that can only be damaged by shroud toons (to make the conquest more achieveable and to make the penalty on groups lower for a shrouded player not getting agro instantly Grelleth 2: I said before this mission is easy but it is too long, Cut the HP of every mini boss / trash mob in half Xorbb 2: reduce t he trash mob dps by half (especially the minotaur add that spawns), add an additional 60 seconds to each phase before the king goes inactive and retreats to a random portal (more time to dps without having to deal with adds), and lastly remove the mini trash mobs that spawn every few percent of his health near the end of the fight Evantil 2: Reduce molar health by 25 percent, change it so that only 5 adds can be up at a time instead of the 15 adds that can be up currently. Make it so the adds spawn every 2 minutes instead of every like 30-45 seconds as they do now.
As soon as the queen emotes you i had mage fade and 2nd mage take over tank duties. Mage fade is pretty much one of the worst class fades in the game, not the worst but pretty close especially since it fades our pet as well and requires our pet to be alive and in casting range. Basically had to burn her down though, If she emoted the same mage a 2nd time i'd pop a mem blur pet and blur her before emote went off killing the mage. However there was at least one occasion where there was some chaos and a mage got obliterated by her emote.
I did other night and only had one spawn ever 10% it was at like some random thing think it was 94-84-74-ect but only got one each 10% Wasnt bad at all. maybe they already changed that one a little bit?
More likely i just was remembering incorrectly, when i was writing the post off the top of my head I couldnt remember if it was 10 percent or 5, but i remember adds came fairly frequently considering that you also get an add on top of those that spawns just by a person entering shroud. Still though i think maybe 1 every 20 percent would be a step in the right direction, This is probably one of the least completed missions in the expansion atm.
Best way to guarantee group missions are a lot easier if the devs agree not to make any missions go live until they have done the missions themselves
The devs ask random people across the beta server to join up via announcement to test the group content and often require that you use a beta buff toon. The idea that the devs aren't doing the missions is kinda funny.
The problem, Shiftie, is that beta testers generally know their class. The people in this thread are used to spoon fed guaranteed mission completions while they 3 box their toons, badly. These people probably never actually learned the limits of their class, so naturally the effort required to beat these impossible missions is wasted effort. And for a casual gamer, OMG, failure is never acceptable. Only those pesky raiders enjoy beating their head against a wall for 3 weeks dying 10x a day and enjoy it. Here is a mission statement of challenge you casuals should always strive for in a game: 1. Easy entry level content to get you to learn the game. We'll call this the "tutorial," or in EQ terms, "Calling Phantasm." You learn how emotes work. You learn when the screen turns red, moving may help you not explode and die. Actually turning on Auto attack makes HP go down. 2. Enjoyable, but not overly difficult mid tier content. This is the meat of the game. Any reasonably intelligent person will win this mission. Most RoF missions qualify under this heading. Most people hone their skills in this content. 3. Challenging, non required, content. This is content that isn't technically required to complete to experience everything else, but if you're into that sort of thing it's there for you. NOW BACK IN 1999, we called this "Raiding." But now there are group missions that actually make you think too! The main idea, obviously, is that none of these missions are required to experience everything else. The fact you can't complete them to get XYZ aug, title, etc is irrelevant. Get better. Adapt. Turn off your TV. Do less drugs. If the EW2 mission was required to zone into a T2 zone, the whiners on this board may have had a reasonable argument. But EQ devs, thinking intelligently, opened the expansion and allowed you to choose the level of difficulty you wanted to experience. The fact that you can't do it only speaks to how poorly you are as a player, or how poorly you choose your playmates. Additionally, despite the fact that many people box, EQ is not a game that caters to the boxers when designing missions. If you can't get your 3 toons to look away when King Xorbb does his emote, then too bad. I 4 box and agree that I cannot do a lot of missions, and thats new to me. Grelleth 2 I have boxed (paladin, wizard, chanter, bard) and I have to say it was crazy, but it was only crazy because i had to do everything myself. Had those 4 people been 4 real people, the mission is trivial. Anyway, I digress. The missions I would say qualify under this category are Grelleth 2, Xorbb 2, and maybe BG2 (for requiring ranged dps and the glflux prison thing). Grelleth 2 requires 2 tanks and good planning on how you use your defensives, etc. But unless you didnt get your discs, shouldn't be rocket science. People usually make this harder by doing too much DPS and spawning too many adds. Your fault, not the mission's. The mission is a tad long, though, but that doesn't mean it's hard, just long. Oh, by the way, you can buy/make FD potions for the Tank switch mechanic. Buy a stopwatch or learn to count to 5 and it's trivial. Xorbb 2 is not hard, but again without a 2nd tank people in group gear could really have to plan things out. Also can get unlucky if the cleric gets pushed on the 2nd mini boss and the tank is tanking Xorbb (although people who think ahead can get the mini spawned just before Xorbb despawns). Again, buy a stopwatch. A lot of people mention Evantil2. Here's a strat for you if you're lacking "fire" power. Position your team at the campfires, leaving 1 person to "pew pew" the trees. Pull the add over the campfire, and dps the add to 65% or whatever and the add runs to the tree and does your DPS on Molar/Impacted Molar FOR YOU. The fact that this strategy isn't on Eqresource.com doesn't mean you're not allowed to think out of the box. Reading the conquest achievements actually does help you figure out alternative strategies. Chapterhouse 2 mission is only hard if you use discs and try to burn down the mobs. Much like Grelleth 2, think of the mission as an endurance fight, not a race. Don't use discs. Be ready for the wraiths and the mission is omg trivial. In short, please don't water the missions down. I won't call them perfect, but it's nice to see a little challenge so long as it's not required to unlock part of the expansion. The complainers will always complain. Devs, you did a good job.
Out of touch with the game, can't tune content for a few good players. I would never want EQ tuned around my abilities (or the abilities of other players that know their class + EQ mechanics inside and out), there are a handful of top tier players on each server both in the raid game and in the group game. Those players are the minority of EQ and honestly even though my friend and I were able to beat the missions and i know there are a fair amount of people that have beaten all the missions (primarily raiders) I don't really think the missions are tuned correctly. The devs did a VERY good job on several aspects of RoF but to give them universal acclaim on doing a good job on all the missions is blind praise. even the "good" players that beat the missions are not going back and farming those missions the majority of people that beat those missions beat them one time, maybe two times and then pretended they did not exist. The some of those missions are too unforgiving (starting from the beginning if you wipe near the end of evantil 2 for instance) If the missions are not fun and not bringing people back for return visits then no, the missions were either not well done, or were not well tuned and they very much are worthy of the retunes people are requesting. I'm sure you are a good player and like a good challenge, and heck even casual players will enjoy certain kinds of challenges but there are just too many different factors in what leads to one giant problem with a few of these missions. They need to give groupers more room for error.
not really. tahts why tehre are pages of threads for each pointing out bugs and tuning needs..they do this with raids yes but not gorup content theres too much to test there probably with 12-15 quests per zone rather htan 1-3 raids. takingdevs in to do the missions that are mentioned HERE (not every mission just the ones people are bringing issue with) will probably show them better waht exactly is the problem as it may be a variety of thigns, hitting too hard, ae too big, mechanics requiring too specific of classes, or a combination thereof. asking lpayers is going to have far more suggestions than necessary and no other way to find which ones are based on skewed perception. only way to guarantee there is no skewing is to do it yoruself instead of asking others to do it for you
Do we even want to go there? Let's agree not to call any content properly tuned based solely on the fact that a group that contains 2 mages was able to beat it?
That's not true at all. For the last two pages people have been saying the mission is too hard for people that can't/won't take the time to understand how best to play their class and follow game mechanics. That has absolutely NOTHING to do with group gear. I have said before and will say again, one of these two missions is easier in group gear than in raid gear.
EW2: the named does hit hard, l'll give you that. Tankable by my neglected SK with no debuffs other than willsapper slow, but hard none the less. No, mobs don't summon from 100%, try again. Zekish will summon you if you have Agro on something and are too far away from it for too long (protip: sit at the north side of the bubble near the tree, have your tank pull while in melee range for parts of it, ???, profit) Queen's decree: you >don't< need specific classes other than the typical group makeup for EQ (tank, one of six semi specific dps classes, three others, either dps, cc or utility, healer). You need to understand how the mission works. You're frustrated and need to step away from the keyboard, take a deep breath and consider the possibility that you might not be one hundred percent correct in the things you're saying. If you'd like, I would be happy to walk you through how to beat these missions with whatever group you'd like in full group gear.
Pretty sure there were multiple other threads with details of why these missions are overtuned. But here's why for the 2 worst offenders: 1. East Wastes #2: Mobs in phase 1 have line-of-sight aggro and summon at 100%. This mechanic may be broken because they give emotes claiming that you are trying to run from them, while you are not trying to run at all - you are tanking their friends and new mobs simply see you from across the room and decide that if you are too far away then you must be trying to kite them. This mechanic and the sheer number of spawns make this mission too hard with 1 tank (even raid geared). Then in phase 2 you get a dragon that hits like a truck and crystallizes (mez/rune) random people. All this is happening in a T1 mission. Doing it in VoA T4 group gear looks like way too much to ask. 2. Grelleth #2: The boss has a mechanic that requires a tank switch (failure = DT). There are 15 waves of different adds, 2 of which require mobs tanked in separate locations (failure = likely wipe). This mission is currently zergable because it does not properly reset on wipe. But doing it without wiping requires 2 tanks.
I can't speak for any of the other missions, but I managed to tank EW2 as group geared paladin wearing primarily RoF T1. 8kish AAs helps, but it was super touch and go there toward the end. Certainly seemed a bit over-tuned to me.
