[TLE] Problems w/ T5 Raiding

This is meant to start a positive conversation to improve T5 game play and to avoid similar problems as expansions role out.

1. Items -- most fabled drops (non-raid and raid) are not better than treasured and legendary gear
2. Masters -- most masters are only 1% better than expert level skills
3. Difficulty -- raid mobs are too easy (exception: revamped Vox)
4. Timers and Drop Rates -- too slow, too low

Upshot: we are spending a lot of time farming masters, raiding instances, and battling over contested raid mobs for VERY LITTLE potential upside. in truth basically for cool pvp procs, often at a cost to other core stats. People will get bored if they don't have more to do and look forward to. And it's a shame b/c classic content is actually great.

Allow me to briefly expound:

1. Items -- most lvl 40-50 items suck, including raid gear
Nearly all of the best items for a level 50 can be found from treasured / legendary gear in lavastorm and a handful of quests, with the exception of maybe 5% of the items on the loot table for all T5 epics. The treasured Waistband of Haste in LS is the best belt, the legendary bow drops from LS heroics are the best bows (nothing on T5 loot table can do better) andfor most raid gear: weapon damage ratings are too low, stats are too low (eg +10 not +30) or don't make sense (eg STR + AGI), and most fabled gear doesn't have the blue stats (DPS mod, % attack speed, etc.) as strong as the quested + LS treasured and legendary gear.

I'm in Darkhand and when we raid, more than 50% of the gear we find isn't even worth equipping. Nearly all the fabled gear I find solo isn't. This severely undercuts a dedicated player's motivation to play.

2. Masters -- drop rates are low, this is good. It's a throwback to the classic hardcore style of the game. However, the % increase of a master skill over an expert for nearly 95% of all masters i've compared is literally about a 1% increase. Masters used to actually mean something. They used to be about 20% better so it was actually a big deal to be mastered out. Right now, you could skip masters all together and it wouldn't make a difference. You could probably complete all the raids without a single master (though it's unclear if Vox is currently possible in its revamped form) and be just as good at PvP.

3. Difficulty -- raid mobs are too easy. There's practically no strategy. x4 contesteds will die to a geared raid of 50s in 3-7 minutes. All of the instances seem to be a breeze. Where's the challenge? Vox did get revamped (lvl 55 -> lvl 58; possibly other changes too) and that helps, but apart from Vox, nothing seems to be hard. There should be challenging content. If items, masters, and gameplay mechanics were truly left classic as the raid mobs have been, it WOULD be challenging, and that would be really fun. Since clearly we can't / won't roll back to true classic, at least revamp some of the epics please.

4. Timers and Drop Rates -- instance lockouts are ~3-5 days. x2 respawn timers seem to be 12-36 hours. x4 3-7 days. In Darkhand, we have a lot of downtime where we are just sitting around. It's boring. The loot tables for drop rates on ZAM are also at classic levels, which was fine for hardcore original gameplay where it took guilds 1-2 years to twink out at T5. But we are looking at 1 or 2 months max before a progression vote succeeds. That means we need to consolidate 1-2 years of original game play raiding and loot drops into 1-2 months.

How is it fun or worthwhile to play classic content, see 3% of the items that matter, and then level past it???

MY FINAL SUGGESTION:

-Make master skills matter for lvl 35-50 (+10-20% increase, not 1%).

-Revamp more items to make dmg rating, mitigation, stats, and blue abilities good (just spend a few hours on the loot tables for all raid drop monsters, followed by those from the named in the high end zones.

-Make all contested raid mobs harder, and make the epics in the raid progression harder too

-Reduce raid lockout times and epic respawn timers, and increase drop rates (x2?). Too much treasured and crap fabled for the effort we put in, given this tier won't last long on TLE anyways.

For TLE to have a thriving, rich population and active community, there has to be continuous and compelling reasons bringing players to log in every day. People are just starting to hit 50, and get some PvP in, but MANY are rumbling about how bored they are. They want the next expansion. But things would be fine if there were simply challenging and numerous goals for people to achieve right now.

If some of these major issues aren't addressed, or are also present in the next expansion, TLE could easily die. Because why are we investing so much time when there is basically nothing to get out of it.

-Youresodead
50 SK on Deathtoll

-PS I'm a huge eq2 fan and love that Day Break decided to do TLE. I just want to help improve the experience.

You guys are crazy!
If you really are playing the TLE servers to raid you're nuts!

Think about this for a second.

How long did it take for devs to get the live servers raid mobs and loot to where they needed to be on live??
Right, so what in the world make any of the raid leaders on this server think it will be any better on a server that progresses 10x faster than the live servers ever did. The devs could hardly keep up with live, they dam sure cant on these servers not to mention what a waste.
Yea lets spends months of dev time working on old mobs and loot that will be voted irrelevant before it can even be pushed to test.....

Crazy.

Enjoy what you can while you can because the spiral is already in a downward cycle folks.

PvP focus should not be raiding. Should be PvP. Raid as a means to an end..better gear or whatever. But Raiding shouldn't drive server decisions. If you want to raid seriously, go to the PvE TLE.

As soon as you start going to the next expansions, you will start diluting the number of players into even larger maps.....won't take long for everything to seem emptier and emptier.

IMO, we should stay locked at 50 forever.

I was afraid the raid gear drops were gonna be with 2004 stats. This gear should be better than any none raid acquired gear. Contested Raid bosses should drop even better gear.

Id like to see more difficult raids. The gear dropped from raids should be worth it.

Drop rates and lock out timers though, I disagree. Keep them as they are.

The devs do need to spend some time on T5 raid content.
Keeping players satisfied will keep Deathtoll from progressing to fast. KEeping the servers progressing slowly (in a natural way) will generate revenue for DBG; unless to many people are leaving.

-PS
im also a huge EQ2 fan. I would do anything to keep deathtoll alive and vibrant. But lets not turn the end game players off because there is no reward for beating end game content.

Keep Deathtoll locked to KoS 4 LYF!

We can raid here on PvP server. Who cares if people want to raid? Raiding is a big part of EQ and EQ2. No one plays EQ2 and doesn't go after gear. It should be considered when server improvements are being contemplated.

You raid to get gear to PvP.
There are no tokens for PvP gear (this was before BGs)
Everyone should run around in Master crafted gear?
And like you skip over named mobs. People kill named mobs for loot drops. Not the the thrill or fun of it. Kill names for gear and masters. Period.

#1 raiding is an important aspect of TLE PvP for many players. It's also relevant to TLE PvE so either way, it should matter to Day Break

#2 the idea of getting the raid gear and its cool procs is a huge draw for doing a PvP progression server in the first place. everyone wants to be a god

#3 the server population will be hard to keep healthy and engaged, and an important factor of that equation is raiding, hence my post. We have x6 vs x6 fighting over contested raid mobs, so I think it's clear that raiding is an important part of the TLE server.

The point of progression Raff, is not to stay at 50 forever; it's to let everyone experience the game how they want. It likely won't stay at 50, so I wouldn't get your hopes up.

Deathtoll is not a progression server. Its a Time Locked Server. Unlocking to be determined by 2 (or was it 3) subsequent server votes. Most of us have played and raided 1-100 over numerous alts and years. Do it again? Why? We are here for the PvP only.

My entire guild will likely leave if the server votes to unlock past 50.

with itemization and stat caps being what they are, would them being better matter right now? int/wis casters are capping the only source of damage increase on their spells before 50, meaning everyone is just stacking auto attack dps mod and attack speed.

it's a bit more than 1%, and what level 50 experts are you comparing them to?

they were faceroll at launch too. real raiding comes later

uh...that's raiding? not meant to be farmed multiple times a day.

I sincerely hope this is the case.

Well if I'm good enough to raid and smoke people in PvP why shouldn't I? I mean I pay a sub to do everything the game will allow me. Plus I can continue to block Darkhand from killing anything worthwhile.

The only logical solution seams to be more cow bell. No but seriously, nurf gear inc! Of course you want it to be kind of easy though because not everyone (especially a yr from now) can field a full group. I say nurf all gear _%. Or shot, it's working so far maybe leave it alone. People threatening to quit over vitality pots or raids are just trying to make a point. If raid is so easy split into 2 X2 forces and get twice the gear duh.

If you don't want to level and play the new content, you don't have too. There are plenty more people that will be quitting if it stays at 50 with no challenge to the game.

The best PvP in this game has always been driven by PvE. When the PvE content got seperated from the PvP, thats when Nagafen started dying. If the content does become more challenging, people will get bored and the server will die just the same.

my guildie gave me my illy master that increases power regen in combat. the expert did 30. the master did 31.2
so you are right, a bit more than 1%, since 1% of 30 would make it 30.3.

he said level 50. what level 50 experts does anyone have? isn't your last level of that power in the low 40's?

i would imagine level FIFTY masters would be a huge jump, since the best anyone can get right now in game is adept.

Great thread and suggestions. If these things are not rectified, I can tell you neither me nor my guild will last very long here. Only other real potential problem that you didn't mention and is already costing us guild members is the major class imbalances. No surprise, OP is playing an SK. SK for instance can heal themselves for over 200% of their health every minute, do more dps than a ranger, while pets do about twice the dps of other dps classes. If we can get stuff like this rectified, I could see Deathtoll being very successful.

this needs a parse as evidence - single target.

For so many years I sent in many detailed reports on old fabled items missed when they did the re-itemizing the entire game. The exact items you are talking about now. Which is a huge, huge portion of loot off of T5, and T6 raid bosses.

Maybe they will get around to finally updating them. Sad when treasured gear beats a higher leveled fabled piece by a lot.

Damage is damage, why would that matter? A 49 sk in our guild that's been raiding for the last few days with us has consistently topped the charts @ over 1k dps, including in single mob encounters.

so the server can die in two months? Great idea

The Game has always been about gearing up. At the moment the Endgame is just a huge disappointment. Treasured Gear is mostly better then the Legendary or Fabled Drops in the Highlevel Zones. Sure it will be a lot of work to rework als the Items, but this should have been clear when the Idea of the TLE Server came up.If you want to let these Server last longer then a few Months this work must be done.
I really hope that Stormhold votes to stay at Lvl 50 for a few Months, so the Devs have enough Time to adress this Issue.