CoE heroics are very incomplete and need work

I usually keep entertained for months and months running my way through all of the heroics in an expansion. In CoE that is not the case. I'm finished already because of how incredibly half arsed they are.

There are heaps of heroics and some are much harder than others, but they all drop the same quality gear? Where is the gear progression of DoV where there were 4 tiers of heroic zones? In CoE they're all the same tier.

Where are the rare nameds with out of tier drops?
Where are the rare drops from nameds? (obol/spirits are, they're too rare to be much of an incentive).
Where are the higher tiers of heroic zones

The CoE heroics NEED:

• Rare drops. Nameds should rarely drop fableds, like the fableds you can get from solo zone end chests.
• Rare nameds. Nameds that spawn around 1/3 or 1/4 zones, that drop out of tier items.. Common drop legendaries that are on par with the rare drop fableds from the normal nameds, and rare drop fableds that are on par with easy mode raid trash drops. SF And DoV did this and it was great, so why is it gone in CoE?
• Spirits when they drop should drop for everyone in the group. Same with Obols. Make Obols drop less often but drop for everyone when they do. And add daily heroic missions that give you an Obol, and weekly heroic missions that give you a spirit.
• Sleepers Contested should drop better gear, like Skyshrine contested did compared to its heroics.
• Harder heroic instances should have higher tiers of gear. Why would I run Wurmbone Crag/End etc for the same quality gear that I can get from facerolling Dreadcutter?

I'm finished with this expansion already unless I want to SOLO for fabled drops which is crazy. I don't play an mmo to solo, I'll play skyrim or new vegas if I want to do that.

Agree 1,000,000%

Edit

And it's really what I've been saying in the thread I started about heroic loot vs solo loot. Although you're concentrating on the heroic aspect in more detail whereas I thought solo loot needed nerfing to bring it in line with heroics (or rather, below heroic quality)

LMFAO, +1 to the first bullet for sure.

After raid ran two quick zones last night and got two exquisites from the last named (cool, right).

From Dreadcutter the only "good" item was the merc that is just bad and no one wanted. Just one zone, so we did a quick Harrow's run.

Drinal gave us a crappy healer bp that got muted and his head statue. Are you kidding me....the head is what caused us to get a master chest drop. That was it, two things, muted bp and a head that everyone had and no one wants. Great re-playability there, I know I want to spend another 30 min tonight in harrows after raid for a chance at a terribad lego healer bp....

I mean he's an x2. Granted not a hard x2, but dropping just a head statue and a legendary bp that is equivalent to a doz head bp is very poor for morale.


The only thing I can really see doing at this point for CoE is raiding, because everything else does not seem worth the time (I know the 2nd time through the sig quest was my last). You (SoE) are a business. Customers or shareholders are always looking for ROI....what do you intend the return to be on our time invested at this point. I do not see it as being worthwhile, as raiding and logging like most everyone else in my guild seems to do nets about the same result at this point.

Players need something interesting to chase towards that is a payoff for their time, and I do not see that currently in CoE aside from some of the raid content...

I don't want them to nerf solo loot. I don't care what comes from solo zones. The solo zones seem good to me, they're very easy and you can get really great gear from them and there is incentive to keep running them because they drop fableds so frequently that you'll want to keep going back for more in the hopes of getting ones that you can equip (or farming stuff for alts). But that only works for people who like soloing in an mmo and I'm not one of those people.

I've done about 30 solo zones. Not much of a time commitment for me as a bruiser since I just train from named to named and AE everything to death in seconds without any danger so it takes me less than 5 minutes to clear a zone.. But it's hella boring and I've had enough of it..

I want a reason to run heroics. From clearing dreadcutter, throne, and temple a few times each I'm fully geared in 160 quality legendaries (apart from forearm/helm which dont drop in those zones)... so now what? There's nothing left for me to do really except try to farm the obol gear except due to drop rates on obols and spirits I'd have to run on average like 60 heroics per item.. Which is just ridiculous.

And lol as for exquisite chests, I've seen maybe 10 of them drop in heroic zones. what did they contain? 2 of them were masters, the other 8 were fabled decorations.. What an insult.

The core of the issue is no heroic progression in DoV it was clear; ToFS -> Velektors -> Kael. That doesn't exist here because CoE gear = Skyshrine gear there has been little to no progress with this expansion. I suspect it's because they mechanics system is breaking down and stats are getting too high and the math side of game design is getting absurd.

great post to op,
and agreed

Oh Oh Oh look, an Exquisite Chest... We have a ranger in the guild, so even a ranger master wouldn't go to waste.

... Legendary Trash ...
... Fabled Item: Major Essence of Ice ...

Are you kidding me??? At the very least stop toying with us and take the Fabled tag off the decoration essences...

It's absolutelty ridiculous when a fabled drop from a solo instance is better than a fabled drop from a group instance.

So, spirits are pretty rare and take lots of runs to get and yet you're already finished with the instances. If they had increased the drop rate, wouldn't you have been finished even earlier? As it is, the spirits are a good reason to run those instances, although the best reason is the adornments as the best-in-slot yellow adornments for all players drop in these instances and take a good while to get (unless you got really lucky, i've run like 100 instances and am still missing 3 adorns for my main).

Also, there IS rare fabled in the instances. Including best in slot Ethereal items (ultra-rare), Higher stat armor than the solo fabled versions (rare), mercs (rare) and two very good mounts (uncommon).

So i completely disagree with the majority of your points. I actually think the new zones are great.

I do agree that getting a rare named or two would be cool. I also think that loot should improve based on difficulty. Currently there is no point in spending the time or effort to run (the much harder) wurmbone instances when you can get all the same loot in 15 minutes by running (the very easy) Dreadcutter (heroic).


I also agree with the point about the Contested ST. What the heck is the point of this zone? There are no heroic quests, there is no good (or even different) loot and frankly, i'm not going to get a group just to farm shineys.

Are you talking about some future patch that hasn't been announced yet, or only harrows end? I've run dozens and dozens of heroics (but not Harrows) and have seen zero fabled drops other than decorations and a few masters.

Either this is a very recent addition, or all of this stuff you're talking about (other than the mercs) only drop in Harrow's End like the mounts do.

Ethereals (items and mercs) drop in all CoE instances. The items are ultra rare, Mercs more common. Both mounts are in HE afaik. I don't know what's in Cheslith because it's been bugged since launch and I've only done it the couple of times back then. The higher tier fabled for sure drops off the HM bosses, but i believe there is a chance off regular as well.

All these have been in since launch. The only major recent change was the much increased frequency of Essence tokens for the Obol merchant. Get one in virtually every instance now or at least 1 in 2 instances (as opposed to like 1 in 30 before)

You think they would have learned from the DoV fiasco...what a terrible expansion.

Haha...silly us for thinking they would learn from their past mistakes.

The DoV progression through Heroic was started in SF. Just like Raid Zones, Heroic content needs progression because for us Raiders we have Progression but for the Heroic group... Heroic Progression SHOULD exist even if its only a 1-2% upgrade between the zones like it was in SF. This means Edilon Zones drop the entry gear along with Dreadcutter. Wurmbones and Ancient Vault drop the intermediate gear with Wurmbones End dropping the best and is almost on par with Harrow's End gear which that zone has the rare-drops i.e. Merc/Mount/Ethereals.

Erudin zones dropped gear that was interchangable with Vastly Deep zones but better than The Hole instances. All of them were less than Vigilant zones.
Tower of Frozen Shadows was worse than Velektor's Labyrinth gear which was worse than Kael gear and all were worse than Drunder. The DoV debacle was that the gear was TOO far different so much that once everyone had Velektors they never ran ToFS again.
Um... CoE... I can solo and get the "best in slot" items rarely and I don't even have to fight others for them on the RNG rolls... I guess I will solo till I get mine .

Ok my point is Ethereals should never drop from solo instances and neither should standard fabled. The Rare-Fabled in Solo instances sholuld be equivalent to the last boss standard drop from Heroic zones.

yeah... that.

I would LOVE it if the heroics in CoE were on the same kind of quality level as in DoV. DoV had real reason to run heroics over and over and work towards the next tier of zones, it had random rare things that would pop up like fabled drops/rare nameds to make heroics exciting and interesting.

The DoV heroics definitely had their issues but they were still far better than the very empty shell that is CoE.

Yes they do. This IS a clear line of progression, because after you clear the easy heroics, you then do the harder heroics, which then give you a chance at better loot. You yourself were asking for "multiple tiers" of heroic content. Well, they exist. Plus, the drop of an essence token in any instance is pretty much the equivalent of getting a good fabled drop, except you can actually go choose the correct peice for your class instead of being stuck with 200 pieces of leather tank armor.

The fact that your brain can't process a different mechanic other than a new instance name or can't put togher that "essence drop = fabled robe", is your own problem.

As far as me smashing too many instances - you were the one that said that you were already done with the instances, not I. I may have some raid gear, but there are still plenty of upgrades for me in the heroic instances. Not to mention that I have 3 other characters that will be looking to get gear upgrades for almost every slot in these instances.

Perhaps if you had actually bothered to look and understand how the new expac works, you wouldn't be so unhappy.

I absolutely agree with the OP on every point.

I'd like to add my view on how the gear should be and some mistakes of past systems...

DoV1 system:
7 tiers of heroic loot prior to drunder
1) low end pq gear
2) high end pq gear
3) tofs gear (iirc worst than pq gear)
4) velk's gear (iirc worst than pq gear)
5) thurgadin armor
6) kael gear
7) rygorr armor

This was wayyyy overkill and most was made obsolete by PQ even before setting foot in the easiest zone, merchant loot was initially way overpriced shard wise.

Skyshrine:
4 tiers of armor
1) easy mode instances
2) contested
3) hardmode instances
4) merchant gear

This was not a bad system but the hardmode gear was not done correctly and merchant gear was too good. They had the right idea as far as difficulty to obtain merchant gear, but it made only 1 zone worth farming unless you wanted to play the lotto for mythicals and the gear was better than the hardmode stuff.

What CoE should look like:
- SOE had the right idea with the essence jewelry, it is not super common, it is best in slot, and forces you to run all the instances. The essences need to have their drop rate bumped just a bit or be 1 per member of the group and rarity stay the same.
- Merchant gear should not be the be all end all, it should be common... Every endboss should drop at least 1 spirit and obols should be off every named or end boss and 1 per group member.
- makes initial gear up tolerable and gearing up alts feasible
- the current fabled drops from solos need to be moved to heroic instances as rare drops off end bosses and distributed evenly across bosses to encourage running all zones
- the 3 hardmode encounters need to have better loot in general and have a higher drop rate of this fabled armor mentioned above
- the contested zone should drop the current 163 statted armor and jewelry (it might already cannot recall) and should be made easier so it does not become kael 2.0
- solo zones should continue to drop extremely rare ethereals as a further incentive than adornments and jewelry
- heroic zones need ethereal drops that are best in slot (better than essence jewelry) and be about as rare as SS mythicals but have some way to purchase them with a combo of essences and obols in large quantity in case the RNG gods are not in your favor

Also see my post about hotzones and missions, coupled with my suggestions and the suggestions of others in this thread will make the expansion a good one

Heroic instances never should have been put on 30 minute timers.

Fabled for everyone!

Posts like these give me mixed feelings. On the one hand I really miss playing EQ2 and miss the friends and my guild and all my geared, played toons. On the other hand I feel quite vindicated that I finally said enough after doing beta and seeing what they were planning to fob off us me as content.

Gear itemization has been borked for quite some time....dont think they will ever get it right regardless of our feedback.