I play on Test. I'm a multi-boxer. There is no raiding on Test these days, and the only groups I've run since CoE are with my partner and mercs. I've been following most of the discussions on gear - I'm in the 'I believe there should be better drops in the solo instances' camps. When the xpac first launched I refused to get my alts all keyed so I was a couple weeks behind probably most players. I did catch the solos before they nerfed the gear drops. I did there what I always do to gear up - I focused on one toon - Micki, the guardian to start with. I ran the challenge WE twice every 90 minutes (alt on the same account so I could pass any decent gear) for days and days. I'm not sure how many I did but it was tons. When they nerfed the drops I had pretty much run the loot table and I moved onto filling slots in the Steward gear. I'm now farming adornments while I'm gearing up other toons. I just went to EQU and searched for Atan (sorry Atan - through these forums yours is the only raiding guardian name I know on a live server) and did a comparison to Micki. While I like to think Micki is geared decently one look at the comparison shows she's not. So, while I did get some decent drops - there is no way she's geared better than a raider (though I can dream!). Links to both: Micki Atan
You honestly believe your solo geared toon should be better geared than a raidgeared toon? And that while you didn't even bother adorning most of your gear and many of the adorns you do have are terrible choices? Solo gear is already quite close in quality to raidgear this expansion. The smaller you make the gap between solo, heroic and raid gear, the less incentive people have to form groups to take on vastly more challenging encounters. Solo gear is already too powerful in my opinion and should most definately not be buffed even further.
No, I don't think solo gear should be better than raid gear. I was trying to show it wasn't better, not argue for higher gear. My 'dreaming' is that raiding will return to Test and I'll have an opportunity to get the better gear. Regardless - I also believe no amount of gear is going to change a person's play style. Those who like solo play aren't going to raid, even if they have some decent gear.
Oh also the only reason I feel the Solo to Raid gap is too small is because it is crowding out Heroic gear. That is why, to me, the gap between Solo and Raid needs to be made larger. There is also a very very sore lack of drops period. Dreadcutter: A commonly farmed zone, from my running of it, has 10 drops total. Two per named. There really aught to be a full set of gear from these zones and imo these pairing. Throne of Fear + Temple of the Faceless + Dreadcutter = one full set of lower end Heroic Gear as these are the "easy" zones. Chelsith + Wurmbones End + Wurmbones Crag = one full set of higher end Heroic Gear as these are the "hard" zones. Harrows End should imo be an X2 Raid zone given it's length/Difficulty and as such would have it's own set of gear above Jarsath gear. Solo gear should be on par with Fearcreap Gear and the "rare" drops from them should be right up near Harrows Gear. Ethereals should remain as they are for Solo players for Waist and Ear slots BUT there should be say a Wrist and a Ring from the Heroic Zones that are also of Ethereal quality. 4 Ethereals + Harrows Gear will easily get you into Chelsith for X2 gear which puts you right up there with EM Raiders. Only the HM Raiders really need that defining gap given what they do. SF was good because while you could gear up all your Jewelry from Heroic/X2's you HAD to Raid to get your Armor... that is a good thing imo people ran PuR's all the time in SF. Heck to make it more defined since DoV did this and it worked well, make Chelsith mark you with a special buff letting you attack Raid Mobs in Ethernere this would eliminate people PuGing Raid Trash for drops.
It has 4 drops per named which is standard for most of the heroic bosses. Mugulg has 4 charms (one per archtype), Chef has 4 earrings, Tempest has at least 4 weapon types, maybe more. Trash has 4 belts and 4 rings. Bosses that drop armour pieces have more than 4 drops as they have one for every class type. But generally yeah I agree with you, there should be a lot more to the heroics in this expansion. Dreadcutter and Chelsith which drop the slightly higher tier gear than throne/temple are actually the 2 easiest heroics in my experience (since they fixed the 2nd boss in Chelsith).
Up the drops for heroics and make them more common. Yes, that means that heroic and low raid will be about the same, but people will still raid - they may be casual guilds who raid at that level, or they are players learning how to raid so they can take on the hard mode content later. That's the simplest (and hence most likely to be implemented) "fix" to itemization.
Thanks. I did end game raiding in EQ1 so I knew there would be a difference but yours shows how much there is. Yea, no way solo gear should equal that - I know the effort that needs to go into getting that gear. I'm just learning the heroics - plenty as a multi-boxer I won't ever be able to do (I can walk and chew gum but some of the encounters are just too frustrating for me) but I am going to go try the 2nd named in Chelsith again if you say it's fixed. Thanks again - gave me fond memories of my raiding days. There are many many days I really do miss them.
That is how SF and DoV were. High-end Heroic and Low-End Raid were very similar because High-Heroic had to be able to get into raiding the only way to make that gap larger is to add an X2 Raid Zone between Heroic and EM X4. HM Raid is 200+ the issue for most high-enders is that PoW is still the only place to have near end-game AND a full set. CoE is an incomplete set and imo that is the source of a lot of malcontent. In SF and even DoV (and TSO mind you) there were Heroic Sets. Erudin had across all zones 1 full armor set but was mostly for farming Weapons and Jewelry. Vastly Deep had better armor and Charms with 1 or 2 weapons farmed by healers. The Hole had a few good armor AND good jewelry pieces. Vigilant went a step above all 3 and was harder for it but dropped the best non-raid Jewelry before the Rare Named came out. Guk, Befallen, Miraguls, Najeena's they all had the same thing going for them, diverse item sets that went beyond the "one of each item for each class" type of loot SOE has settled into which imo is a very bland pattern. They also are trivializing old content too fast see Feldon's article on EQ2Wire about Skyshrine for a good food for thought on that subject.
Umm, for a start you're missing the primal bp and gehein shoulders. As others have pointed out you haven't adorned everything. Your jewellery is mediocre at best. There's collections that will give + 170 stat items and you still have a couple of skyshrine pieces. Then there's the steward stuff. COE solo stuff can get you almost as well equipped as EM raid gear from skyshrine. Some slots are slightly better, others slightly worse. With heroic grouping as well, all your gear can be better than EM skyshrine stuff.
That was nice of you to point that out Regolas, but as you can clearly tell from the OP there is an entitlement mentality here. It would be no different if this person were on live, they would just be saying that they don't want to deal with raid leaders stealing loot, DKP etc. Solo zones are already dropping raid quality gear yet it isn't enough That is more commonly referred to as the entitlement camp. The gear that drops from Solo is too good, it is far too good and it is a reason that many can not find groups for heroic content, and is impacting raiding as well.
You may call it the entitlement camp. I call it the "solo finally got some love" camp. I was thinking about this - somewhere someone was bragging he was in one of the only five or so guilds on his server to have cleared all the PoW content. Think about that for a moment. Say there are fifty unique accounts in each guild, that would make 250 accounts. Now double that because there are other guilds almost there, then double it again just to make sure we're not underestimating things. That puts the number of 'hardcore' or 'HM' raiders at about one thousand per server. Now, you're SOE. You're coming up with a new scheme of items to reward players. Does it really make sense to have the itemization set up to only reward a small percent of your player base? Or do you change the way things are (which obviously aren't working looking at past server merges and current populations, and make the itemization reward the bulk of your customers? Could they have swung the pendulum a bit too far the other way? Maybe, but it will take a few months to really sort it out. Then they can have a better plan for the next Game Update and eventually the next expansion. It isn't about "Who deserves the best gear because raids are harder than groups and solo". It's about "We need something that will motivate our players into staying, and having all the cool stuff in content that most players have no interest in doing isn't working for us." Btw, this also helps casual raiding guilds a ton, because now their members have a chance to actually get geared up so they can take on tougher content (even if they only do it once a week or so). And unless I'm misunderstanding what others have posted, the very best stuff in the game still comes from Plane of War, which you have to raid to get. So the solo gear isn't really replacing that, though it may help people have a chance to complete that content.
I'm curious how many people you think still play this game if a thousand per server are hardcore raiders and that represents a small part of the adventuring population. Feldon posted stats a couple weeks ago and I think the easiest heroic only had 5000ish people that had completed it world-wide. Regardless, there is a large portion of the population that needs the top content out there as something to shoot for. If all there is is really easy content and you can get geared for it in solo zones a majority will get bored an move on to another game if they don't feel there is something out there to work towards whether or not they are likely to reach it anytime soon. And this whole expansion was just released only with content for the casual player. Dov wasn't cleared until a year and a half in. Coe only took as long as a month to clear cause Drinal was broken. It's time to put out some legitimate challenge mode content in the next update. If not, all you're gonna have left in this mmo is solo players.
You clearly didn't understand OP post at all. All he/she was saying that on test server there is no raiding so they have to compair gear they got by soloing and grouping with raid gear of a known raider Atan. Not their own raid gear they didn't have an oportunity to obtain. And OP stated that raid gear is still better than solo or/ and heroic. Nobody is talking about entitlement (i hate when peeps use this term to belittle others!). The thread 's name said illustration. The purpose is to compare and get you hardcore raiders to finally relax. Nobody wants to get you from pedestal you put yourselves on.
Since you decided to not read the OP and just launch into some incoherent rant let me quote his first paragraph AGAIN for you. Solo instances already drop Fabled EM gear, the OP is saying he wants EVEN BETTER DROPS in the solo zone. Raid gear should drop from nowhere other than raid zones, I just don't understand what is so hard to comprehend RAID GEAR -> RAID ZONE. Why should solo zones drop raid gear? There is no reason and it is an entitlement mentality and it was started because it was an entitlement mentality, players howling and screaming that they pay a sub too and they WANT ACCESS to the gear others have. They have had access all along, just for whatever reason they chose not to follow a path to get it. And the tired old line of not enough time to raid just doesn't cut it, there are plenty of PUR's on weekends and raid forces that raid at all hours of the day on Everfrost as well as other servers.
Her. I'm a her. I don't think better drops should be had in solo zones. I was generalizing my outlook on the solo/heroic/raid drop discussions. There seem to be two that people are polarized about - solo gear and raid gear. What I was attempting to show is that someone who busts their pixels farming the solo zones, supplementing with some of the easier heroic zones and then filling the remaining slots with Steward gear does not come close to raid standards (despite good/bad adornment choices). The only way someone could have done more challenge WE zones that me is if they had 3 (or more) toons on each of 2 accounts so they could run them 3 (or more) times every 90 minutes over my twice. I ran the loot table (and yes, I do have the BP and shoulders but they are on the wrong account) before SOE nerfed the drop rate. I made the comparison to show there is no way anyone could come close to raid standards with the available drops. What I wouldn't mind seeing, is that drop rate un-nerfed. I fail to see how decent drops hurt anyone. To non-raiders the gear we saw in solo zones was the best of the best. To raiders it's low end.
I can't believe this is even an argument for some people. Do you not know what will happen when your gear is better then heroic gear? You have NO incentive to group.? If you stop grouping, you stop caring about what your gear is, and then you quit playing. That's pretty much the bottom line, there is no debate about it. There needs to be a progression and the solo zones have stepped way to far in that line. Every time I see a solo instance drop an Ethereal item I want to quit the game.
The issue I see (and as has been pointed out I fall into the HC-Raider group of players) Is that Solo Zones (a sort of new thing) are finally rewarding solo players... the issue is the rewards are too high and it is discouraging grouping. Weather or not EM-Raid or HM-Raid is better than Solo is a (hate this word) "non-issue". The real problem is Heroic Players are the ones really being hurt here, those who like to group for social interactions and enjoy possibly getting upgrades are being shafted because Solo zones at least appear to drop the same if not better gear. Honestly I am fine seeing new content for the Solo crowds but not at the expense of the Groupers or the Raiders. There are defined types of playstyles and you must build for them all in an MMO to have maximum retention. Soloers get to aim for Heroic Gear one day, its a carrot they can strive for. Groupers can shoot for EM Raid gear and finally get that big edge over group-content, but they still have those Rare Fabled pieces in Heroic that are better than EM-Raid to shoot for. Raiders can of course shoot for HM-Raid gear or mind their time farming... see Raiders are the hardest players to keep as they usually have gotten their carrots . I guess my point is that all types of players need content and what I hear in these threads is very polarized - Solo is fine you Raiders need to stop whining - Solo is not fine it's darn near raid gear, you entitled whining @*#&$^%^'s (insert whatever curse you want there) I see it as an issue that there is no middle ground (Group Content) that is defined enough above Solo and below Raid to be worth running for most players.
