=( Returning Player, New Xpak...pain and suffering.

So my friends and I (SK, Necro, Templar) decided we all wanted to return to EQ2 (hooray!) and all of us immediately purchased the pre-Order so that we could explore the Expansion (ToT) that we missed so that we could 1) get back into game and 2) prepare for the new content! Super excited!

....Today, excitement turned quite swiftly to misery.
All three of us were raiders before ToT -- we are not newbs (and we've been here since BETA). We may have needed a small refresher 3 weeks ago, but we are not incapable or poor at our classes. That being said, it took us no time at all to find our niche again and get right back into the swing of things.
So on launch, we expect the usual: all of the gear we managed to get before the launch (which wasn't much, we finished the ToT sig line but did not manage to get into the heroics) would quickly become out-dated and paltry compared to the new stuff -- yeah, we get that. New launch always "Evens the playing field" so to speak. Understandable.

There is no even-ground for a returning player who did not previously do heroics in ToT. None.
Heroic^^ mob takes us 20 minutes to kill because our resolve is around 60. This is pure misery. If I didn't have a fabled merc, these wouldn't even be dead.

If this Xpak was meant to bring people back to EQ2, this is certainly going to kill their drive because it certainly has made trudging through the quest line pure and utter misery for us as a TRIO. If I had to do this solo, I have NO idea (much less any HOPE) of completing it.

Please consider lowering the resolve requirements of the starting quest mobs.
I cannot imagine anyone coming back to EQ2 from having missed ToT being able to play AT ALL.

Totally agree, right now my Berserker which done very well in ToT now can not kill a single yard trash in under 20 minutes. Currently I feel I wasted cash (Thankfully only bought the basic Xpack, nearly got the collectors which I am now glad I didnt). About to log, DB wife and I have been back 3 months, and we are currently considering whether to re-sub our 3mth sub rotation cause of the game being painful and non enjoyable from the get go with the new xpac, it's a joke in its current form.

You need players DB, forcing them away is not good business when your struggling to keep the game making money!!

They jacked the bajebbus out of mob mitigation.. They did this for a few days on Beta but I never though it would be on Live. I returned to the game a month or more ago and got my two tanks up (pally and zerker) and geared up with ToT Solo gear and the new Zek gear. The Pally I copied over to Beta and the solo zones were not bad at all. Now with the super-mitigation on mobs, it takes forever to kill even trash. Not everyone is running around with three 20 million procing items...

Do I want easy, no.. but I don't want 25 minute fights against a single up con named.

Anyway, my two cents.

(edit note: I do not use mercenaries, I personally feel content shouldn't be balanced around using them.)

I definitely don't want "easy" either! I LOVE a great challenge (puzzles, difficult fights, hard pulls, debuffs -- bring it on!), but I'm watching people who are decked out in ToT raid gear that can kill these mobs in 2 seconds. =( I don't expect to one-shot mobs in crap gear but I'd at least like to be able to kill 3 trash mobs in under an hour.

Glad we aren't the only ones struggling.

Ohhh I thought it was just me due to being a healer. It was taking me a while to kill things with a merc, but I figured it was just normal because of not being a DPS class, but then the merc died once at the beginning of a fight because I was paying too much attention to homeshow chat and didn't keep my eye on merc, and then killing the three downarrow mobs took about 15 to 20 minutes! Definitely going to make sure the merc stays *alive* to I'm not spending 20 minutes per encounter.

There seems to be a bug...

I swapped out armor for player crafted - not a big upgrade at all, actually it was almost the same as I had on but for a total of 150 more potency and some crit bonus. (not huge numbers difference). Zoned a few times. Logged out for Dinner.

Came back online and things were normal; meaning things died in a reasonable time. The Smithy which killed me three times (over three 15 minute fights) now went down without an issue in a minute or two. Auto attack went from 50k~150k back up to 300k~700k+.

Got to be a bug for some people.

From what I am hearing in GC I would say this expansion is probably more geared toward the raiders from ToT. Probably be the last expansion I buy since I'm mostly a lazy player. Don't do sig quest lines or raids anymore so casual play is about as far as I go. I haven't ever done epic weapon or finished any sig quest line since AoM and don't plan on it.

Holy crap guys, what were you thinking tuning the defensive values of these trash mobs so high?

Considering the post above yours, this looks to be a bug and not intended.

I was wondering if there was something wrong with me.
I spent nearly ten minutes killing two sel'nok infiltrators then logged out because that is not what I consider fun.

check out the time locked expansion server

I hope this is a bug.
Spending ten minutes per trash mob in a "go kill ten of this trash mob" sorta quests is not fun at all.
I was looking forward to my return to Norrath. Hoping this gets a quick fix. :\

If you are having difficulty with overland or normal solo dungeons, I recommend you upgrade your gear with new handcrafted items. I've fought through every solo dungeon, and defeated almost all of the overland names on both a dirge and an illusionist, with no merc all apprentice spells, and no casting order with nothing but handcrafted on and no fight lasted more then 30 seconds unless it was a named, and no fight with a named lasted more then two minutes.

Yesterday in nizara adv solo, I was doing 15 mil dps on names(higher until adds were dead from AE)

today I added a leach, and can barely break 1 mil on the very first solo mobs of expansion. something is seriously wrong there, I know my weapons are only proccing for half what they did before, but that's not enough to account for doing 1/15th the damage.

and there just flat isn't any new handcrafted of any kind on halls of fate broker, looking at the stats of the few MC pieces, the handcrafted isn't likely to be an upgrade for more than a couple of my slots

They weren't that high on the last day of Beta...

I watched a monk in so-so gear fight a infiltrator (you know first quest mob you need) for over 10 mins.

Yeah it's got to be a bug or a rare bug. Happened once in Beta but happened the same time mitigation was being tinkered with. Not sure what it was but it cleared up after changing armor (though it could just be the act of equip/unequping it), zoning and reclogging. Now fights are just as you described; fairly quick and feels right.

When the bug is happening it takes five minutes or more just for a trash mob. Feels like (and flying combat numbers) are 90% lower then it should be. Combat arts don't even hit for their printed value (not even crit and crit bonuses added in).

[Note: Crits are calculated in with the bug.. But a Mythical Crit for 75k damage is being highly mitigated. heh]

The problem is at least for that first fight people are likely to be in gear, even pretty good gear, from the last xpac and won't even consider looking at hand crafted (which won't be available in quantity until the crafters get done anyway). In older gear that first fight in particular is a major slog fest and quite a surprise to players who thought they were decently geared.

Check the other thread going "Pain and suffering..." I think its a bug that's going on.

that's totally overtuned. I'm taking fully heroic fab/leg geared guys and their dps drops to 5-10% of what it was?

yes when you go into a new expansion things are slower til you get the new gear, but never anything like this

rezoning, reequipped, retrying on another char, nothing making a difference

A good place to see this in action is right at the start of the expansion where you have to kill the 8 up cons after being chained up. Some people blast thru the mobs normally... others like myself can be seen fighting them for 5+ minutes each..