I don't think anyone is arguing against that. One claim here is that some group missions require the same level of focus that some raids do. The other claim is that group gear is not adequate for allowing tanks to tank the mobs and/nor DPS to kill them. I just added up all the numbers from T2 group armor and T1 raid armor (visible) for paladins. Group total AC: 1507 Raid total AC: 1903 I'll round it to +400. All of my nonvisible is VoA T3 (minus my neck, which is last year's anniversary). I'll estimate that as about +300 to current T2 group gear, though I think I'm being generous there. So call my AC +700. I tanked Grelleth2, EW2, and Xorbb3 (or 2, whatever. Return of King Xorbb) with a merc healer. Chapterhouse I've only done once, and I had a real cleric for it. But for the others - I'm guessing a real healer would weigh out the 700 AC difference. I do not think these missions are impossible for group geared players. I do think they are very challenging, and should not be attempted without a full group of non-bots and non-mercs until you get the strategy down. Now, all of that said - the EW2 dragon might hit a bit too hard for a group geared tank (especially for a T1 mission). The Chapterhouse2 DoT might be a bit strong. However, other than that, these missions are not impossible for groupers. No casual raider reasonably expects to finish all raids in an expansion until the next one is just about to come out (or after it comes out). I'm not sure why that expectation should be more reasonable to a casual grouper, unless it's for a pragmatic "I don't want these people to quit paying/playing" reason. The missions seem mostly fine. If you get tired of banging your head against a wall with them, stop and do something else for a while. The aug will still be there when you're ready to try again.
How about the difference in hp ? In DPS ? in Heroic stats ? You don't think having 20k+ more hp helps ? You know all raid weapons are 25% higher then the group ones ? and that group weapons are still behind HOT Raid weapons ? You don't think having that extra dps helps ? Group content should be tuned to GROUPERS by nature groupers are casual players. I find it incredibly arrogant for you to say the missions are not impossible for groupers when you yourself have not done them in the gear that was intended.
The hitpoints won't make a huge difference for a tank - in fact I know quite a few groupers with MORE hitpoints than me, because of my steadfast refusal to trade out old raid gear for higher HP group gear (because of the AC). And more DPS, in most cases, only makes it less likely that a mistake will be made (because you're not fighting as long). Having more DPS doesn't make EW2's dragon any easier whatsoever unless your healer is running out of mana. Having more DPS actually makes Grelleth2 MORE difficult because you get double spawns of adds. Having more DPS does little to make Chapterhouse easier due to the shade mechanic. Groupers are NOT by nature more casual. I know many groupers who would be offended you would say that. Groupers are people that want to play with 6 or fewer. Raiders are fine with playing with more than that. There are a lot of groupers that want challenging scripts and events that they will have to strategize and learn in order to win. The only relevant difference between groupers and raiders is the amount of people they play with at a time. There are casual and hardcore breeds of both.
I am only group geared. Never raid anymore, but maybe an open raid here or there. But no end game stuff. I am fully t2 group geared with augs and almost max aa and all my chars and I beat all these group missions but xorbb, only cause I can't request it yet so I never even attempted it yet. Yeah, some where a bit harder then others but it is doable, I still think it should be tuned down slightly
and you think the tuning is right if it requires all players in a group to be absolute max greoup gear available and max aa? hardly. thats kinda the point to saying its a bit overtuned, not a lot as far as hits go though in some instances maybe, but mechanics in addition to make it overtuned for some of these (not all) t o the guy talking about raid gear vs group gear: there are many factors beyond ac to consider as mentioned. hp, focii, heroics, mod2s. the cumulative difference is quite large. Groupers have an average detriment to key heroics of about 100 each stat, their cleave/fero quite behind, mod2s like strikethrough sp dmg heal amount etc etc, behind, hps 20k avg behind, and for those of us with spells in addition to melee, there are many other factors from focus differences. and to the people arguing about how casual or not groupers are vs raiders: it can easily be argued that on average a grouper is much mroecasual and that their casual approach is one of the reasons they dont raid: dont want to invest taht much time into game, or cant invest that much time on top of their other game pursuits, also looking at aa counts and min/maxing...the average aa count on raiders is much higher than groups as is the rate of havign done all those little things to max out like ldons for dodge aug, the tear in VoA, even mpg trials and DoN progression for stat and wahtnot boosts. Seriously though how many groupers before RoF, did you know that maxed out their Alaran? or even cared about getting more than 71? Thats not to say that all raiders are max everything and work harder or play more hours or wahtever or that all groups do nearly nothing, jsut that on average the difference is pretty big.
The only downside to this is the 2nd chapterhouse mission is kind of an anti pet mission.. we won despite that handicap... other than that, missions like EW2 are a lot easier with pets yeah.
i call BS whats your hp at unbuffed. You're one of those ill have 400 ac over 20k hp dudes aren't you ? Wonder if you have done the parses to get the effective cap on AC for your class and the effect of the AC post cap to actually show the ac is worth it. Also all of you saying oh i did this with my max AAed group geared tank lol the avg grouper DOES NOT HAVE max AAs he doesn't even have half of that.
Unbuffed HP is 88770. No, I haven't run the parses - that's a different subject though. EDIT: At this point, I don't know if groupers will have more hitpoints than this or not. I do know that mixed raid/group gear bards have more hitpoints than me by a considerable amount, and I know that in VoA group tanks would sometimes have more hitpoints than me. However, with the influx of raid gear from NToV, I may have enough current-ish raid armor that my hitpoints are greater than someone using group gear. And no one is saying that the average grouper should be able to do these missions. That is precisely the opposite of what we are saying. Groupers should be able to do all of the missions - but not ALL groupers should be able to do ALL missions.
The avg grouper should be able to do all the missions. You don't tailor group content to a minority of the players its the same reason you don't make end game group zones tuned for raid players.
Chapterhouse 2 should have the Scorching Bones dot toned down, it hurts a lot even in raid gear, and makes the conquest for never curing it in the water kinda rough
NOT EVERYTHING IN THIS GAME IS FOR AVERAGE JOE BLOW. The aug from completing all the missions is worth the hassle. Omg if a raider can do it a little easier, or it takes a more focused group of "groupers" to do the tasks. Life isnt equal and neither is EQ. there are alot of people who play 3 -4 hours a night group or raid it doesnt matter. Groupers who do that will be able to have t2 group gear/high aa count so dont give me your average person doesnt have XYZ blah blah blah, if your average grouper cant play 2-4 hour at a time then they cant do grellath2 anyways. I wish EQ would bug out and be old grind for aa, and you would be lucky to get 1.5-2aa in a night if you were in a GOOD group.
Correct. You tailor a minority of group content for a minority of group players. Like, say, 3 or so missions...
This I can agree with - and tuning down the melee output of the EW2 dragon. I think I said that earlier.
This point was brought up to Dzarn, the dev asking questions in beta. He didnt care. The people running this game get stubborn because they are developers and sometimes there is no telling them anything. They'll then make sweeping changes, add things that are OP(spells, AA, missions, rewards, 2x 3x SC weekends)and then start nerfing. Nobody is perfect. But the refusal to acknowledge mistakes or even just concerns of the player base has been something EQ has been dealing with for years. Im not a rookie, ive played here for over a decade. The amount of disassociation they have with the player base is mind boggling. I may be over critical. But that is the perception. And I am making a sweeping statement not associated with the topic I started. I don't expect it to ever get better. Especially since now it seems micro transactions are making them money. Get ready for everything to go that way. Heh, SC sale going now for the next 2 hours.......properly tuned EW2 mission, only 5000 SC per toon! Hurry, offer ends soon! Its a vicious cycle in EQ.
but dont lock them out of paragon. You tough guys and gals wanna flaunt your conquests in general..fine. Dont block out the rest of us out of our achievements. Because it just plain sucks to do all the work and be held back at the very end. Go raid, go box raids...dont muddy our waters with your need to epeen.
What are you being held back from? An achievement? That sounds more like a need to epeen than anything else. So the aug? Now it sounds like not having the best possible gear is the concern. If that's the case, why aren't you in a top tier raiding guild? I accepted a long time ago that I'm not going to have the very best gear, probably ever. I don't want to play at that level. If you don't want to either, that's fine. No reasonable person would hold that against you - but that doesn't mean you're entitled to every item in the game, not even if it's obtained through grouping rather than raiding.
A fellowship of six regular players in group gear should be able to accomplish every mercenary, partisan, mission, named, achievement in group gear. This fellowship may sometimes have to swap to alts here and there to cover a few bases that might be missed by their mains, but it should be tuned towards group geared players. That said, I've been advocating for a nose-bleed tough zone or two to challenge the best of the best. I'd like to see it tuned so named will challenge a group of the previous expansion's top raid players. Trash will challenge a group of top end group geared players. Trash should have a chance of dropping things like 30 purity augs or Xorbb powersources, so it wouldn't just waste time. (Like I've been trying to get my fellowship to group trash in ToV for the hell of it - not a chance, as there's chance of anything). Named should challenge two or three groups of group geared players and drop chase items, clicks, etc., but in no way be required for group players. I think UF and VoA were tuned very well (maybe postnerf CC undead). SoD and HoT were snoozefest expansions for most players and playing alts became the norm. RoF seems easy so far, aside of a couple missions and a couple named, if unprepared. I'm hoping SoF will provide a challenging game that is mostly lacking in the first two tiers.
This type of problem with these missions and many others like it in Voa and RoF are exactly why i will not be buying the expansion. I pay just as well as any others do , raiders or groupers alike, and with that i expect to have fun, not WORK at failing repeatedly on over tuned content. In my opinion after reading all this thread and comments and thoughts it looks to me like this type of tuned group content is a very big problem. Those of you that wanted the hardcore content, is that not what raiding is for. That would mean group content is for grouping(or casual) players right? I chose to quit posting about it and use my wallet to speak for me. And like someone posted earlier that will only last so long before i stop logging in because if the next tier release is the same there is still no reason for me to get it then either. A lot of people over the years have complained about the hard stuff that has been talked about here and are gone because of it yet they continue. The last straw for me was directly making missions non boxer friendly. The fact of the matter is there is a lot of revenue from boxers and by making these missions the way they are makes people not want to repeat them which in fact is actually causing or part of the current grouping problems. Not many people i can imagine want to do those things over and over again and again to help others because of the fact that they are so highly tuned with so much time for little reward. I believe it was suggested before that they should offer a hard mode for these missions( selecting group mission is regular and selecting hard would be like an extreme mode or 12man). Looks like a better idea now then ever. Scale loot as such. I very much understand those that want the challenges and harder stuff, that still does not give you guys the right to say we should just deal with it and not expect to be able to do everything. If that were so then you guys should just deal with the tuned down content and stick to your raiding for the challenges. And i for one would not expect you to, i would think that you want just as much for the money you pay for the game as i do , or any others do. I have seen a few good idea's posted but like the Dev's have said many times, without details of the possible fixes or tuning nothing will ever be done other then people continuing to troll each other which will just lead them to lock the thread.
I like what you said, Beinshady. Give these people 2 group missions not tied to anything. Give em 100 more HME, some AC and heroics above whats top group gear. But stop messing with those of us that want some progression (and it is progression, look at the achievements) and an end thats feasible. But, Im tired. I've come to the conclusion that nothing will be done. They are making money or otherwise they wouldnt have opened free to play even further. Everything else will take a backseat to this new model of making money. This game will become Free Realms soon enough. Then everyone here arguing against me will have a different take.
I don't know why people are forgetting the reason we have copies of the raids in the group game. It was simply to open the story to everyone that wanted to see it, not lock it behind raids so you have to get spoon fed the lore and text from a raider. They should be doable by groupers. My suggestion would simply be to open up the raid versions of the missions to 12 people. Even as a raider when I did a few, or tried them rather, they felt like they were meant to be 12 man missions not 6 group encounters. Too much going on, too many adds, too much hp, too hard to tank with only 1 or 2 tanks, etc. Don't worry about it being 'easy', like I said these things exist supposedly to show groupers the lore of this game and making them too hard for the target audience is foolish and unnecessary.
