Disappointed

*nod*

To retype my response! We are creating false challenge, Thwump. We're tanking zones with a beastlord.

Well if the beastlord is still not providing you a challenge might I suggest an Illusionist?

Nobody likes zone nerfs but they are a factor and they help people enjoy the content. Sure its not ideal for people that were enjoying the struggle that we once had it is what it is.

Personally I think the nerfs were a bit too much, but I can 100% understand why they were done.

However going from the 1st named in Highhold being a challenge to tank on a Mystical geared monk, to being an afk fest on an 0/3 potent geared Paladin (Didn't even need any saves), it seems a bit extreme.

Would liked to have seen the old zones stay as they were and be labelled as "Heroic (Difficult)" and new ones "Heroic (Normal)", and just give the difficult ones a 10% better chance at Fabled Loot or something.

I m amused : defiler + dirge + paladin ... .. my mystic is not as geared as the defiler there and already parse above 500K (with another healer, solo she would have been at 600-700) ...

Side note : healer has the stonekin charm (my friend told me that the stoneskin proc on group) ...

And wait, to be sure to have a "I win" button they included an Inquisitor.
I'm amused if you verdict bosses at 10-12% most of the difficulty is gone because of the dps check.

Take the guy that summon knifes, before nerf all the difficulty was at the end of the fight,
and indeed this is true for many named -- even the second in Caldera (super low dps check) is much easier if you kill it fast (less number on dot stack).

So we have a super optimal group setting, with people playing always together => it makes everything trivial.

I have way more fun in PUG with random group making, and people that may be neither well geared nor the best at doing damage ... It makes encounter spicy.

I would be bored to do what people in my raid team do : Run stuff in guild group => their healers probably fall asleep -- like in raid indeed --

If you're under the impression that inquisitor, defiler, dirge, and paladin is an optimal group, I'd hate to see how your raids are designed.

I'm equally amused by your concept of an "I win" button by using Verdict. To make things extra challenging on your warden to you ignore you HoTs? It would add that extra handicap to make the experience that much more enjoyable after all.

I don't log in to play with strangers. The average gamer is incompetent. I don't tolerate that, so I always play with the exact same top tier players.

If you think that the fights were boring previously because of healers falling asleep, then you're really going to think they're boring after the nerfs. I can focus primarily on DPS in every single zone other than Inner Sanctum.

Oh, and the hardest encounter in the heroic content rewards legs only unless you get a rare drop? You can get legs from a trivial fight in Resonance. Not particularly rewarding for doing the hardest content.

This probably has more to do with why the game has a seperate, bad section of the PUG community than anything.

We get that you're a big bad wolf and everyone else is inferior (except your buddies who play with you?).

We get that you're the master of this game and have the ultimate meta setups for your Heroic runs.

But no one cares and in fact, what the person described their group being is not uncommon in the PUG world, it's actually a better setup than you get 70% of the time in a PUG. But I guess we're all bad players because we can do the same content you do without uberl33t setups and players?

Also if you're so great at this game why do you fail at grouping with the general population? Shouldn't a really great player be able to adapt to even the shittiest group? I keep slouch groups going on my Inq or Paladin simply because, you know, I'm that uber l33t.

Actually no I keep groups going because I have the patience, the respect of my fellow PUG'er, and mutual admiration for the love of EQ2. This is a great game and has a great PUG community (on AB, if you're elsewhere all I can say is I'm sorry) hate to see it ruined by people who claim no one is worthy to group with them and the whole game is easy mode because of it.

To consider yourself a top tier player, by definition you need to have the top tier gear otherwise your not a top tier player.

These changes to heroic zones were a move in the right direction, we need to make these heroic zones more accessible to the general population. Leave the "top tier" gear/players in raiding where they belong.

I am one of those raidy-min-maxy-put way too much work into researching my class kind of players. I don't shy away from hard zones. I generally consider myself a better-than-average player.

I am glad for the change, and I'll tell you why. There is nothing more frustrating to get in a PUG (face it, if you want to group, you have to do a lot of PUGing), and to be working through a zone and BAM you hit a PUGblock that is not surmountable because of the aggregate "player level" of your group... in what should be a beginning or even intermediate level zone. The last guy in Castle Highhold was a PUGblock. Lady Bipsie (or whatever) was a PUGblock. The first named in Resonance (bone wall guy) was a PUGBlock.

I spent the first three weeks of this expansion rarely finishing a zone because of these PUGblocks. Some of the named were just too scripted for the average player to handle. There were just too many fail conditions. I very nearly quit altogether because if you can't finish a zone, you can't get your ferrin, you can't get your crate, you can't get geared up. And gearing up is what we're all here for. It was, and I am not exaggerating, frustrating as high holy hell.

Since the changes, I still encounter a few fail PUGs, but overall, PUGs are better able to finish these zones, resulting in much less frustration, much more fun, and finally... ferrin and crates to gear up.

I would have loved to see something like Errrorr suggested - regular and challenge heroics. That way I could go challenge when I'm with my guild/raid crew, and regular with PUGs... but I'm pretty sure there's not enough crew at SOE to make that happen any more. So I'd rather have the nerfs and be able to play with random people on my server.

This is a completely conflated argument which bears no resemblance to what I've said. Outperforming people in a PuG isn't going to carry a group in a difficult zone nor did I suggest any such thing. I don't know where you've come across this version of "logic" but I'd love to see you apply it in Sanguine Fountains even. I'll look forward to the video of you dragging a whole group on your coat tails. (You won't be.)

I did pickup groups for years. I'm well aware of the capabilities of the average players, which is a below average performance. This was prior to scripting as Feldon has pointed out. I can't imagine how the same level of player would perform when they're expected to know and execute their class WHILE performing the scripted maneuvers to finish a fight. Nowhere did I say that someone wasn't worthy to group with me. What I did say was that I won't tolerate grouping with incompetent players. The mental gymnastics on this site get tiring. Build a strawman elsewhere.

Sorry, no. I played top end for many years. I don't need to run my credentials by you for approval on what you'll agree to. If Daray stops raiding tomorrow he's still a better player than 99.9999% of people. Even if he retires to heroic content only. Same situation here.

While I understand what you're saying, I don't agree with it. Pickup groups are not entitled to clear a zone simply by virtue of A) PuGs existing and 2) owning the expansion. They've decided to cater to the lowest common denominator. There will be a point, which is likely soon, where players like me simply won't play the game anymore. Server populations have dwindled down such that we've had multiple server merges with another being necessary. High end guilds are going extinct. They can fully casualize the game like WoW (100% cleared content in the first two weeks) and then you'll be able to PuG all day in a mindless button masher that was once one of the best medium difficulty MMOs to exist.

During the "golden times" of higher population, the game looked much more like what the are changing AoM to than what they changed it from. How many zones were PuG-blockers in those earlier expacs, when PuGs were easy to form and fill? VD3 (maybe) and Erudin3 in SF? Unrest and (contested) Castle MM in EoF? Each with another half-dozen zones that were easier than everything in AoM (or ToV).

Over time, the raid strats and raid-like group builds have trickled down into six-man zones. Over time, the populations have died off. I enjoy the strategies more than the turn-and-burn myself, but linking server populations to the direction of the game is not a point in favor of your argument, it's a point in favor of the counterargument. (Or it's completely unlinked, and correlation isn't causation, here.)

Heroic content is quite different from raid one, verdict rules for heroic since it makes inquisitor dps very high, so basically you get an extra healer without any major dps loss.

Now shaman are optimal for the short encounters we find in heroic, ok mystic may be better with mana drain, but defiler can too throw 2 ancestral channeling + the new rune and transcendance that is super strong ...

Dirge is welcome in any group.

Now paladin is may be not the best to tank, since they are weak against very big hit, but probably any tank wolf fit there.

In any case to blow heroic the best is to have on inquisitor as back healer since it incur no major dps loss ;-)

Your friends may not be as " top tier players." as you think, they always play in a trivial environement, it would be interesting to see them in PUG in which you need to actually push your toon much further than in an organized group ;-)

Verdict doesn't make us DPS, unfortunately. If only that 12% heroic mob health went on my parse!

Verdict is pretty cool but hardly a game changer in most situations. It does help for those fights that ramp up in damage or have lame ~10% mechanics. Like the triplets in ssra temple heroic. Verdict means you can ignore Poxrata's heal at the end.

It's nice to have but not a good enough reason by itself to take an inq over anothe healer

None of the scripts have changed in those PUGblock zones..resists did is all...some one shot fails have been removed in others. I just did raid zone last night for first time and had to take one of my swashies that just came back to the game... I had a jeweler make her 6 normal mastercrafted items.. no rares.. and her resists were at 122kish. That was more than enough for the first "dino" zones for heroics now where it drops 19k and sometimes 21k resists items. This was jus to get her to minimums on first raid zone, and it already put her above the old resist for the first 2 zones. Imagine that. The problem is, some people.. ie these puggers worked hard to get their fabled jewelry in TOV and want to keep the procs on them instead of changing to the master-crafted jewelry. You say you have no problem blowing through the zones now.. ie your resists have been trivialized once again to a point where they mean nothing, which is the exact opposite of what SOE wanted with this expansion. People refused to comply and complained and they lowered resists. First guy in Castle High hold, last 10% Spirit tap negated it, divine waters negates, cyclone negates it.. and never really play with a fury, but I'm sure they have something to roll through it, lady pirate.. blockers negate moving.. if no blockers, then "gasp" you have to move to where she is...first named in ossuary.. again you may have to put a sprint button on your hot-bar and healers/tanks have to know how to use stoneskins and death-saves for a curse that you don't want to cure. Your resists had to be 130 initially for this and that wasn't hard to accomplish simply by running the first couple zones.

all 5 "T1 Zones" should be complete-able by a group with all Solo/Quested gear. the Handcrafted gear is an easy way to get Solo/quested equivalent gear. At launch this was not possible. People in just Handcrafted/Solo/Quested gear do so much less dps then they should, it made the T1 zones very hard.... the Zones are much better now.

Also MasterCrafted gear does require 5 Rares to craft.... just FYI

Yea, I meant handcrafted.. ones with 16k resists on them.