Upcoming Vex Thal: Beyond the Veil [Raid] changes/fixes

Discussion in 'Zones and Populations' started by Gninja, May 18, 2021.

  1. Obano Well-Known Member

    No, my concern is Vex 3 and stuff that isn't even out yet because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I am just using those mobs as comparative examples of why Vex 2 is already at the limits. We can do these mobs, it just that it is hard and comparatively much harder than Ssraeshza's Hallowed Halls from BoL. I don't remember a single DPS check in that entire zone and not much in the way of damage output either except for that incurable nox effect. Since you didn't answer me before about "Halls" I assume you concede the point. Now you are just derailing the subject.
  2. Clintsat Well-Known Member


    There is no fight in vex 2 that is close to as hard to solo heal as the mobs in Halls Challenge. The two zones aren't even close to comparable in that regard.There are no mobs in vex 2 that require the same script knowledge to flawless as flawlessing the final mob in Halls.

    Flip to monk and tell me that it's hard to tank in Vex 2? Monks aren't even the meta tank right now.... Your viewpoint is clouded because you play with a sub-optimal class.
  3. Obano Well-Known Member

    Solo healing, well there is your problem. The zone probably wasn't created with solo healing in mind. You basically created your own hard mode. Though it is not too dissimilar than what I do making it harder than it needs to be by playing a Bruiser. Monks are the meta because they trivialize auto-attacks and Vex 2 has nothing but auto-attacks. Throw in a bunch of death touches and maybe Monks won't have it so easy and other tanks will become more viable. I shouldn't have to betray my class to be viable raider. The raid content plays into the strengths of a Monk. In this case it is more of content issue than a class balance issue.

    I looked up my logs from Vzyh'dra the Undying the last mob in Halls and it doesn't seem anything out of the ordinary. I just remember this fight being really long and boring. A total snoozefest after we got the script down. I mean it had like three steps. Make a triangle with some clickies, assign groups to a section and kill adds, burn named in between. Rinse / repeat until named dead. Emperor by comparison has three times as many steps.
  4. Mezaka Active Member

    I think herein lies some of the problem.

    I seem to remember it wasn't that long ago, that raids were balanced around having at least expert level spells, and knowing how to play your class in order to be successful. If raids are now being designed to only be doable by having people being willing to spend money on their toon to get above a certain threshold, then that really is an issue. No longer does skill or knowledge count, it is how big is your wallet, and how many people are willing to pay for the extra advantages to be the 'first' to win and brag about imaginary pieces of data.

    Are the fights challenging? Yes. Once you get the script down, some are even a little fun. But when I look at the larger picture, what I also see overall, is that many people are getting frustrated with the current state of affairs - trash with loads of extra HP, some scripts that are a little too tight and unforgiving if a mistake is made, and 'meh' loot that is at the mercy of the RNG gods.

    Summer is upon us, and I do worry about the state of the game, because as more and more places open up, less and less likely people are to log in. Your casual to mid-range guilds are going to get frustrated at some of these scripts and issues, which causes more people to leave, and it just sets up a vicious cycle.
    Priority likes this.
  5. Twisty Well-Known Member

    I think now we've come to the forks in the road where communicating is no longer productive. Your memory is too poor or you're too far down the rabbit-hole to turn back to land of sense or there is something so unique about your raidforce that none of us can relate. From my perspective now you're spouting nonsense in defense of your position, whatever the underlying reason, and that's after me trying to do mind-flips to try to picture it from a perch other than my own. While SsraHalls wasn't some pinnacle of raiding to put on a pedestal, by comparison to Vex2 it was pretty well positioned in challenge department.

    Both Blood and Vyzdra were fights u went into with a heavy heart, worried about crying babies, slow reactions and keyboard cats wiping your pulls. Sure Thall Xanax hits uncomfortably hard for your tanking crew of Bruiser(s) and Crusader(s), but you should to be self-aware enough to realize that problem is not a problem to an average raid force but rather just looming large in your local minimum bubble. Also tank deaths are recoverable-from on this fight in most cases. Like i said, i feel your pain, and our rather-skilled SK also looks rather unstable on Thall Xanax, but by same token you need to realize your pain isn't the average scenario you're trying to sell and content shouldn't be nerfed down to match this minority experience. It's way more sensible for minority crews to plug holes with alt zerkers or 3rd tank-group-healers than trivialize content for majority of crews playing with meta tanks.

    Vyzdra wasn't some stratagem, but at least there was clearly a visible attempt to make it layered and thought-engaging. It didn't turn out that way, but points have to be awarded for trying - not every egg omelet can turn out a masterpiece. I don't think it's possible to give even that sort of leeway to Emperor.
    Clintsat likes this.
  6. Priority Well-Known Member

    I agree with everything but plugging holes with alt zerkers. Fix the other tanks so they're equal to zerks. That said, nothing in VT2 hits too hard for tanks to survive. If I can live on the trio in Ostance and an extra 30% bleedthrough, I'd argue it's already trivial for zerks.
  7. Beee Well-Known Member

    We are trying to kill Emperor for some raidevenings, but having recovery times of up to 2 seconds is a little bit anoying.

    It's like a fighting against the server than against the mob. Sadly the zone resets much too early for testing
  8. Obano Well-Known Member

    You definitely missed the point about what I was saying. All one has to do is compare this year's progression with last years to understand my point is valid. Read back to my previous post which you didn't address at all. I am not saying trivialize things for the meta. I am saying balance the content because this is a content issue, not a class balance issue.

    [IMG]

    You obviously won't touch this comment with a ten foot pole. But I am not here to convince you. I am here to convince the devs or at least shed some light on what is going on. Mix up the damage types: less auto-attacks, more death touches and such. If this happened it would actually give you what you want... a challenge.
  9. Arclite Well-Known Member


    The class balance is so out of whack at the moment that its beyond comical. The "new AA revamp" was just a tagline and nothing more. The whole auto attack mechanics got disabled because devs could not work out how to curb pet damage from beastlords at the beginning of the expansion and since some tank classes specifically rely heavily on auto attack mechanic, they got shoved aside. If you think that having bloated stats (either p2win RNG lucky or generally good RNG) equates to class balance then im not sure what to tell you.

    I would feel super sorry for a tank who has either returned after a long time and/or is starting out in the game now with 260k potency and 200 fervor and would feel significantly more worse for one if they ended having those stats on a tank class that inherently parse low due to garbage combat art damage (e.g. Guardian). No amount of player skill is going to help them pure and simple and you ain't going to hold aggro against a well geared/stat dps in a raid.

    We have two glaring issues with tanking at the moment.

    1. Threat generation tied to DPS coming from bloated stats
    2. Defensive stats completely broken/disabled or so far beyond repair that Devs wouldn't know where to begin.

    We have lost the semblance of what the traditional tanking role has been in the game. Devs have turned every class into a blackhole of dps where there is only one way in and no way out.

    I have tanked everything this expansion (including the emperor) on my guard whilst dual wielding with little to no mit/block gear with focus purely on inflating those dps stats as much as possible with little to no issues whatsoever and that is by no means for me to say that its my skill, you have your "class balance" to thank for. Put a poorly crusader in that position without giving them a stacked group of defensive buffs and you will still get a rude awakening how biased and unfair this really is.

    The sudden flurry auto attack from a named that more often then not exceeds your billions of hp is just designed to kill you regardless of you wearing mit/block gear or a shield. You would be lucky to survive if you happen to time your 100% avoidance skills or have stuff up because there is no casting bar, there is no emote, there is no hp to yellow then orange and then red. It is straight splat. This is not by creative design, this is by adding layers upon layers of nonsense to cover up the mess that lies beneath.

    Now combine this with the threat generation being tied to tank dps and you get another problem.

    To say the content needs to be tweaked in order to make some classes better is as useful as having a window on a submarine. It is not going to fix the wound festering under the covers. You first balance the classes as to their intended function, i.e. tanks are not meant to do high dps, we only do it now because we have to as you cannot compete with dps classes with just using your taunts and threat generation. Then you have the issue with the defensive stats working properly so as a tank you feel stronger as you slap on defensive gear if the need arises and feel equally feeble when you opt to put on more dps stuff. All tank classes are going for the same stat increases. We all are going high on potency/cb/fervor/overcaps/ability doublecast. Where exactly is the balance here since we all essentially are dps classes at this stage.

    One way to start the repair process is to literally take a sledgehammer and stomp all stats back to where they were when the first AAs were added and then build the classes up from that. Once you have some balance, then fine tune the content where each tank class brings something useful to the table. That said, this will never happen as without a shadow of doubt, the game's main income is from crate sales and to go against that would make no business sense.
    Priority likes this.
  10. Clintsat Well-Known Member


    I think more guilds have flawlessed Vex 2 than Challenge halls and emperor has only been killable for a couple weeks.
    Priority likes this.
  11. Beee Well-Known Member

    cool thx!

    EverQuest II Patch Notes [06/10/21]
    Vex Thal: Beyond the Veil [Raid]

    The maximum duration you can save a newly created instance of the zone has been increased to 14 days.
    Mounts can now be summoned within newly created instances of the zone.
    Obano likes this.
  12. Obano Well-Known Member

    There was literally zero motivation get flawless in Halls. No extra loot, no buff, no fancy title. Just a green check mark on a 3rd party website. The only thing that mattered in Halls was killing the boss and getting the chest to drop. If we had a few deaths along the way it didn't matter. Vex 2 is another story, they have graciously provided some chase loot for getting the Vex 2 flawless achievement.
  13. Obano Well-Known Member

    Look Arclite, you are preaching to the choir here when it comes to class balance and stat inflation. After spending a month grinding in Vex 2 my guild went to raid some of the earlier RoS zones: Vex 1, Spirit Harvest, and Savage Weald. It didn't even feel like it was the same expansion anymore. Bosses died in 30seconds and even my Bruiser was parsing 800Billion. All this because of crazy stat inflation. People complain about Vex 2 loot being "Bad" without understanding that the damage calculation formula is logarithmic. After you cross a certain inflection point in stats the DPS graph turns into a hockey stick and dps goes to the moon.

    The issue is content also ties into the stat inflation problem. Vex 2 was so over-tuned it took a tremendous amount of stats to overcome those dps checks and to be able to heal through the incoming damage. Then after completing Vex 2 every other boss in RoS looks like a wet noodle in comparison. It really does feel like Vex 2 is not part of the same expansion because it was so over-turned that everything else seems like a joke. The thing is if they didn't overpower Vex 2 we would NOT need all that stat inflation. These two problems are joined at the hip. You can't look at one without also examining the other. If you want to get stat inflation under control they need to stop over-turning the raid zones. If Vex 3 ends up being harder than Vex 2 the stat inflation will only get worse.
  14. Arclite Well-Known Member


    You said in your previous post that class balance is not an issue but the content is so we are now in agreement that classes are not balanced?

    With respect to going back to old expansions with your current stats and blowing away BoL content then that has been the case for a fairly long time with every expansion. The old content just simply do not hold up once you outgrow the stat checks for the zones and i would doubt if devs ever wanted the old content to be challenging anyway.

    About Vex loot being bad and the point about dps stats being on a log scale has nothing to do with the fact that loot is still very very bad and lacklustre. We get repeated 255 items and other rubbish that no one wants. What really has happened is that did not add another resolve check in the zone and kept the loot at tier 13 and this is what is coming back to haunt them now. Majority of the people going into Vex 2 already had the resolve required so logic would dictate that the next incentive would be better loot with the new zone - that has not happened. I have seen some really nice celestial items which are on the other end of RNG. The 260 items are also on that RNG ladder and what you are left with are the base 255 items that no one has any use for.

    It is baffling that cabal coins reward items that are vastly superior and you don't have to step into Vex 2 to get them.

    If they had any sense on the loot then they should've have just kept with that flat +5 resolve increase per tier of zone or named within a zone so Vex 2 should have had base item drop of 260 and the better items dropping further in the zone along with the 260 armor upgrades.

    It would now be interesting to see how they go about with this. A simple simple simple step and completely missed again by whoever is in charge of loot.
  15. Obano Well-Known Member

    You took that line out of context. I am not saying class balance is good but that Vex 2 content was playing into the strengths of Monks with their ability to trivialize auto-attacks. Along with Zerkers they are basically the meta tanks right now. This is profoundly unfair especially with some of the Vex 2 content which should be adjusted.

    For example look at Thall Xundraux Diabo. It takes three meta tanks to deal with, which is ridiculous because the named and the two adds all have insane auto attacks. It is like the Devs only want us to play Zerkers and Monks. If one of the adds did a different type of damage (death touches or something) then it would useful to bring other tanks. Taken in that narrow view it is content issue not a class balance issue.

    Not every tank should be exactly the same. Tanks should have their strengths and weaknesses. I am a Bruiser, I don't want to be Monk. But it is becoming increasing difficult to justify my class choice. Guardians have their issues too which you nicely explained before. I raid with a guardian and I can see the points you made are valid. I don't disagree, and that is why I said "you are preaching to the choir." It is hard to get people who play meta classes to understand that many things need to change.

    In the eyes of the scissors the rock is over powered and the paper is fine.

    I think you misunderstood what I wrote. We didn't go back to old BoL content. We were doing RoS content but it was so easy compared to Vex 2 that it felt like it was from an old expansion. This is because of the crazy stat inflation. It felt like we were killing gray mobs or something it was dying so fast.

    What is really coming back to haunt them is the logarithmic scaling because it is unintuitive to the player how much better the mythical 260 gear is over the 255. This is an over simplification BUT consider these number to be cubic in the way they scale. How much bigger is 260 cubed (260^3) over 255 cubed (255^3). That is 17.5 million vs 16.5 million. It is not a 5r stat increase but an effective 1,000,000 point increase. People don't understand math or at least every few do. I feel like the devs should just put fake stats on the gear so players can't see the sausages being made. Then people will go max DKP bid when those million point stat items drop.
  16. Obano Well-Known Member

    Just confirming here that the Celestial Earring can drop again as non-artifact versions. We just discovered it today. The chase loot is real.

    [IMG]
    Scrappyz likes this.
  17. Bentenn Well-Known Member

    I find it cool when tanks miss Bulwark and it stuns us for 10 secs.... :)
  18. Bentenn Well-Known Member

    We haven't had a monk in months.. mostly 1 zerker and 2 SKs lol.. sometimes its 2 zerkers and 1 sk.. sometimes its 2 zerkers and 2 SK's. (short on people nights)... but no monk.... and well I will admit that bruisers have been lacking for years.. not just one expac.. for years......
  19. Priority Well-Known Member


    i find it cool when dps cant kill adds or healers cant cure or utility cant spec properly to do their job. ya know, the simple things that dont bug out and just refuse to work....
  20. Beee Well-Known Member

    The zone has really nice scripted nameds. Some of them get really hard against the actual 3 sec server spell recovery lag :confused:

    Conjurer porting does sadly not work in this zone (only COH works)
    We miss an Item from emporer for killing the trash next run like in PoW