My group and I spent a couple of hours in this zone under the impression that it was intended to be an easy contested designed for leveling to 100. Unfortunately in its current state it's far from hitting that mark. Some specific feedback and suggestions: - If nothing else, experience gain needs to be drastically increased as currently it's far faster just doing solo quests. Even a 5x boost in experience wouldn't be out of line when you look at the experience rate attainable in dungeon maker. - While the first few nameds were fairly manageable in terms of difficulty, starting with Forgemaster Belun the damage output (autoattack and ability) spiked drastically and just got continually higher on subsequent nameds. Even for the earlier nameds the loot (armor and weapons which are identical to solo quested) didn't even come close to matching the difficulty. To put it in perspective, these mobs are dropping loot that statwise is worse than Fabled Sanctum of the Scaleborn while the later nameds hit harder than mobs in Vulak's Dominion. If it is intended that this zone be something easy that people in ToV solo quested gear can jump in to (and the loot quality certainly indicates as much) the named damage output needs to be reduced by 50-75%. I'd also consider removing the pulsing AE damage entirely from this zone. You'd be hard pressed to make these nameds too easy. The trash at least seemed fine in terms of difficulty. - I'd also consider a slight hp reduction across the board. This zone serves an important role in progression, especially if the intent is for people to level in new content, so hopefully some of these issues can be addressed.
This zone has plenty of issues, namely what Nindakin pointed out, but I'll iterate my own findings. Firstly, if the zone was intended as a place for players to level to 100, the experience is approximately half what you gained in Kael Drakkel at level per kill. Not sure why that would be, but if it's intended so be. Otherwise the experience is fairly low. (We were in there for 3 hours last night and I only gained about 80% of a level.) Second point: The loot is atrocious. I don't know what was behind the thought process here, but the loot is often identical to solo-quested gear. The pieces that don't fall under that criteria are the jewelry pieces. These items have decent effects, but several of them are completely broken and don't function at all. Here is a great example. \aITEM 1665603333 297543031auntless Ring of Soul Grasping\/a This item doesn't even proc. To make matters worse on this issue all of the gear is level 95 and everything but jewelry appears to share a loot pool. For instance we killed multiple heroic named in the zone and eventually came across Brawlin Bones (a x2 epic). After a long, drawn out fight we finally kill him and he drops a legendary thrown weapon that COMES OFF ANY OF THE OTHER HEROIC NAMED. That's plain ridiculous. This fight in particular seems to have a very high HPS demand that the leveling group isn't going to meet. If the zone is intended for non-leveling players (level 100 players) then why is all of the loot level 95? I simply don't understand the loot design in this zone. Third point: Mob difficulty versus reward. Many of the named in this zone are requiring 400k+ heals per second plus have tons of hp. The average group simply isn't going to be able to handle this when the zone is entirely designed around the idea of you not being level 100 and decked out. Some of the fights were dealing millions of damage a second with one, Poochy, flatout killing us on pull continually. Poochy was dealing 600k damage AE after wards. The leveling group going through that zone is never going to be able to handle that. Hell, we couldn't handle that (it was 1-shotting me!) Poochy and a few other mobs appear to gain buffs that read something along the lines of "If they eat they will become more fierce!" From what we saw nothing really triggers that incremental buff other than time. The buff isn't dispellable and after gaining one stack of it the named in the zone gain substantial damage increases often in the hundreds of percent range. (The x2 spider really goes nuts when he gets a single increment, hitting for over 1.8 million a swing fully defiler debuffed.) Final point: Why are there no quests IN this zone or FOR this zone? Guys, this zone is absolutely beautiful. It's one of the best looking contested zones I've seen in years. Completely unique and actually made me feel like I was doing a real dungeon crawl again. Why not put some quests in here? PLEASE put some quests in here. Perhaps a questline similar to the previous contested zones. (You do X quantity of environment and drop quests and then find a hidden NPC to gain titles!) My whole group loves this zone's design, but please give us some incentive to return. My overall view is that the zone looks stunning, the loot is horrendous (I imagine there are design reasons for this, but read what I said above), the effort is way higher than solo questing which gives equal rewards (other than jewelry), and there aren't any quests that reward a player for putting in the effort to explore this beautiful zone you made. If you guys want this to be one of the premier locations for leveling up, you're going to have to put in a bit more incentive for players to do so. Otherwise this thing is going to be as empty as New Tunaria.
I completely agree with all of the above. Ran this zone with a group on the Nagafen server expecting good rewards, experience and the anticipation of some truly contested pvp. Drops from the named were transmute items and the experience was rather bad for the difficulty. Really disappointing, was hoping this would be a hot zone for pvp. I see no reason to run it as the reward for running the zone is not there. We got better exp in DM. Please add some pvp drops to some of the named in the zone also.
Greetings everyone, The update tomorrow will include these changes for Brokenskull Bay: Spoils of Maraud [Contested]: the difficulty has been reduced slightly the experience has been increased
That dog is a monster. Was thinking something similar when this zone was supposed to be a 95-100 leveling/gating zone. I havent seen the other x2 mob yet however but the spider one is mean too. Hopefully the update going in today rectifies risk vs reward.
Hi, any chances the Loot gets fixed? We went in there yesterday and yes, the Loot was worthless, even more so that it was lvl 95 and everything we could do (We were a Party of 6, clothed in Yellow/Blue Malice Shard Gear and Last Xpacs Green/Red) was Vendor Trash it, cause: Transmuting ? What ? To get another now worthless old-xpacs Adornment Components? Refining them for Rares (or whatever it is called) gets also the old xpac rares. So, even if you do not change the Items itself, update their level to at least 96, so they can be of other use besides Vendor Trash. Regards, theriatis.
Lvl 95 items are kinda worthless. Please fix itemization in AoM. Its been a big mess and wasn't finished properly at release and still isn't fixed yet.
All of the named were toned down a bit. Experience was raised. The loot remains the same as it is supposed to be a leveling zone so we want those leveling in it to be able to use the gear right away. Currently the quality should sit between quest and normal heroic gear in terms of quality.
If its a leveling zone then the gear should be 96+ so people opening a chest have a reason to say... "look what I'm equiping in a bit!" Heck you get to 96 almost 97 on the first two islands just doing the sig quest if you are coming from ToV.
Ah, but one of the major complaints about AoM was that you are forced to do the Signature quests if you want to get XP and gear at lvl95. Having Brokenskull Bay Contested available at 95 and dropping loot equippable at 95 [which is actually better than the quest gear] gives a "non-Signature" way to gear up.
Thats only an issue since they decided to nerf the heck out of the entire game's old content past level 96, HOWEVER you can still go anywhere else until level 96 and get good XP. Which means I'm willing to bet that most of the people going into the BSBC instance are 96 when they get there or shortly there after. Also they toned it down to make it a place where ToV geared people could go correct? So waiting one level (the devs did say that they made the XP in there really good right?) to equip a level 96 item that can use the new adorns would be a lot better than being able to instant equip an level 95 item that may be only slightly better than what you already have on.
Hi Gninja, thanks for the response. Just one more question: Aren't there enough ways to level at least to 96? I mean if this zone is intended for leveling and only has equipment that is worthless for characters 96+, which makes no sense to transmute or dissolve (?) it, then nobody will go into that zone the moment they ding 96, because its better anywhere else. Making the Loot just only 96 instead of 95 would bring a little more longevity to that zone and even people which are higher could use that zone. Regards, theriatis.
Bad loot aside, the items in this zone aren't even eligible for crafted AoM adornments which require an item to be level 96+. I guess it's good that the sig line rewards you with 95 adorns that DO work but seems strange nonetheless.
