CoE loot comparison - solo vs heroic

I was shocked to get raid stat gear out of solo missions. Its rare, but we've seen several high stat items (179) out of solo instances.

Thank you for trying to tell me why I should play...

But since you are, how about you name some of these single player games that have close to the amount of content that EQ2 has with all it's expansions (or WoW or well, pretty much any other MMO TBH). How often do single player games get updated with new content (Live Updates, etc...)? How long do single player games get support before they're ditched by their parent company as the team moves on to new titles (Blizzard being a notable exception)?

I play MMO's because ultimately, it's cheaper than going out and buying a new game every month because I've beaten the last one six ways from Sunday (if there even is a decent new PC game out - another serious problem in the RPG genre), and I get a better, more complete world (Bethesda comes close sometimes with their sandbox system).

I also don't have to deal with all the DRM crap they want to put on single player titles (Ubisoft and EA, I'm looking at you): Thank you CDProjektRed for showing it doesn't have to be that way.

There are also the mastercrafted - "refined" gear can run up to the 170's. Sadly, the names for refined are the same, so most people don't seem to know about them.

A solution would be to allow groups to do solo zones, and let groups breeze through it. That's one of the bennies of grouping. While it's good for MMOs to support soloing, it should never be required. That was one of my biggest gripes with The Secret World. I was playing it with two other people, both of whom had group support builds that they'd have to change just to get through all the solo instances, while the rest of us were standing around bored.

If the re-use time limit is too long to make that worthwhile (I dunno, I've just got back from TSW), then what are people complaining about?

What I'm complaining about is gear progression.

My little brain has been trained over the years of playing eq2 that the more people I require to kill a bad guy, the better the loot is.

In CoE, this is not the case in terms of heroic zone drops vs solo zone drops.

I personally feel the heroic drop level is about right. Minutely better than the best heroic gear from skyshrine. Then after lots of farming, you get your obol gear.

But, the fact that anyone can run a CoE solo zone and get better gear than anything from heroic skyshrine zones, just makes the past xpac obsolete... AGAIN! I hate obsolete things. Solo progression should be within range of the past xpacs solo progression. And it is for the sig line! It's only the solo instances that are out of wack. Everything else scales appropriately.

I don't get how this differs from mark or shard gear, and now you even got crafted gear that's pretty good, which wasn't the case in TSO or SF. Guess I'll have to see for myself how it compares with my homemade armor, many pieces of which have 174 stats on it.

When mark and shard gear were the top heroic loot there were no solo instances that gave gear. So for soloers who refuse to group, the top stuff they could get was the solo timelines.

I'm not too familiar with the TS stuff, but generally from what I've seen is they are up to par or maybe even better in some stats, but missing a really important one (like high crit chance and base stats but no multiattack).

Fixed it for you, and thats all this comes down to in the end. Every single expansion a handful of envious whiners poke the dim-witted giant that is SOE so often that it starts swinging the nerf-bat. EVERY. SINGLE. EXPANSION.

Seriously go do whatever you want in the game and stop worrying about what others are wearing. Oh and another thing, every single expac since this game came out has made the gear from the expac before worthless.

Look at those rare 170 stat items in the solo zones as the carrot on the stick SOE adds at the beginning of every expac to get people playing.

And to answer your question; yes with the new research and experiment stuff that trade-skillers have, they are making MC Armor and Weapons with god-mode stats, I guess you should start whining about that next...

Solo shard / mark daily quests....

As long as people get good enough items to do the things they like to do in a game, i really dont understand why they cry about what everyone else is getting, too much focus on dumb items thise days and not enough on fun. Must get 5 sta 1 CB more then the other guy...will trample on everyone and everything in my way.....sigh

Yeah, it is sad isn't it. Over the years more and more people forget that it should be about have fun and not overcompensating for inadequacies irl.

I agree with Vrisslar & Wurm completely.

Yes, with every form of currency for gear there has been a solo way to attain the currency. It may have been a wee bit slower than grouping but it has always been an option.

We've run the solo and heroic version of these instances many times.

Solo - run the zone and get a mystery crate at the end with a random reward, not always an item that can be equipped and when it is an equippable item it is not something that can be traded with anyone but your own account.

Heroic - run the zone and have many chances for many chests to drop throughout the run, even from the trash mobs. We had 7 chests drop in Dreadcutter alone last night. All items can be traded with those present at the time of looting and you get the added bonus of getting the second item needed along with the obol to buy item from the gear merchant as well. Something you do not get in the solo instances. So let's see.. more loot, more tokens (obol plus second token) = more reward.

Seems fair to me.

But really does it matter that much to someone what somebody else is getting or doing in a video game?

Who cares? Who cares what somebody else loots? Who cares where somebody else looted something? Who cares where the said loot comes from? I certainly do not. Let the folks that can get the loot get it and have fun and move on. Some of you act like this is affecting you when it is not in any way (unless you SLR, then it might).

It's not an issue of envy as so many of you are putting it. You seem to have the relationship working improperly. People envy our gear. The issue we're discussing is when the top gear in the game isn't dropping from top tier content. My issue is when the hierarchy of gear has been moved. It's always been solo->heroic->raid. Right now it's heroic->solo->raid with some variability where you'll get raid equivalent slots from solo and best-in-slot items from solo.

That's a problem. It has nothing to do with if Tom Wagglegobbler is the guy with the loot. The issue is that Tom killed 2 mobs with 10 hp upon first walking into this expansion and now has an item that raiders CANNOT obtain short of rolling a 100 a thousand times in a row. That's unacceptable.

Only argument about the loot is that I believe players were a bit rocked by how the gear was lining up as "solo" gear was overworld quests and about the quality of Treasured Gear whereas Group instances dropped Legendary then from there it was Faction/Token gear and from there you had EM Raiding then HM Raiding then Avatar Raiding.
Note: Numbers are based on the STR/INT/WIS/AGI stat on gear not STA which is always higher.

CoE doesn't follow that normal progression with the line between EM and HM raiding drops being somewhat small granted its more in line with old style progression not DoV stat jumping. in SF T1 raid gear had 55-62 for stats and T4 had 74-82ish meaning four gear tiers in 50-80 range (only 30 points).

Then came DoV where EM was 120's and HM was 150's with no tiers between the two (30 points only over 1 tier instead of 4). Drunder EM was 160's and Drunder HM was 170's before they redid it.

When Skyshrine went live we got EM Skyshrine at 150-160 range making EM Drunder oboslete. and HM Drunder revamped had 184 on it while Skyshrine HM had 188 l placing them on an interchangable tier list with SSHM slightly higher.

From there you had Plane of War now 1 GU old at 196 marking it as the final Tier of gear for SS-DoV oh and the Mythical cloak from General Teku that had 201 STR on it and an awesome proc.

Now with Chains of Eternity. I have seen Fabled Gauntlets from a solo zone with 190 STR on them (just 6 points under top tier raid gear) And normal EM loot at 187 still at the level of HM Drunder but considerably easier making Drunder obsolete unless you want to farm the 212 Mythical weapons.

Avatars were added to the game late SS and now CoE these drops have 216 points for the primary stat marking them as being a Tier above Plane of War though they are contested meaning only 1 or 2 guilds per server will have this gear in most cases. For guilds that cannot contest Avatars, Plane of War is the best you get at 196 but wait Chains of Eternity solo zones have a rare chance to drop a Fabled with 190's and even Ethereals with 200+ meaning you don't have to raid for raid quality gear anymore.

The last paragraph is what has raiders complaining on the forums since Heroic level players got new gear that previously was only attainable in Hard Mode raid content. While raiders themselves were given no new gear to progress into outside of Contested bosses making Instance only raiding less rewarding unless you purely enjoy EM Raid scripts for your 187 point items. I know I have listed alot of math but I think I have divided it well enough to show the gear progression from lvl 90 DoV to lvl 95 CoE.

Estred, you mind linking those solo zone 190 STR gauntlets? Because until I see them, I don't believe it.

Every single solo zone fabled I've seen hovers around 179 for the main stat, meaning its a little bit better than EM skyshrine raid gear that is at around 172. Some have better and some have worse blue stats but for all purposes they are the equal of EM skyshrine.

And I was discussing this with our raid leader and he likes the new gear progression, and I quote "I'm so glad that recruits will be coming to us with decent gear, means we won't have to go run the skyshrine zones we are all sick of to gear them up."

I agree.

*edit* And regarding the drop once in a blue moon ethereals, I don't even think they should count in this discussion.

Sure you can, go run the same zones... maybe you might get EXTREMELY LUCKY too.

Wurm,

If all you can get from my posts is I'm complaining that people are getting better loot than me then there's no point even debating with you, as you clearly can't read correctly.

I give up. Lets watch as skyshrine is no longer used as part of the game except an hour or so to get from 90-95, because every single piece of loot is bettered by farming dreadcutter solo at 5 minutes every 90 instead.

It'll be like Sundered Frontier all over again.

I hate skyshrine with a passion, so that doesn't bother me a bit. I just wish more people would like to go play around in DoV / Drunder zones, I had a lot more fun in there then I ever did in skyshrine.

And you are acting like people are going to get AAAAAAAAWWWWESOME gear for every slot by running the solo zones. No. They. Are. Not.

And my reading comprehension is just fine, you seem to be the person with comprehension problems.

Fact: Every expansion's gear has made the last expansion's gear look weak. It's the nature of the beast.

It's only the past few xpacs that have had such massive gear inflation that solo gear blew away the past xpacs fabled heroic gear. And I think it's wrong.

It's the same reason why it's very rare for people to run Drunder zones. The risk vs reward.

Why SOE can't see for the long term health of the game that they are funneling their playerbase to purposefully miss massive amounts of content I do not know.

You attacked me by saying I'm complaining about others getting gear I can't. That's total BS. I can and do get this gear, I just don't agree with making the past xpacs content obsolete when everything is still yellow or orange in con at max level.

I can understand what you're saying fine, you're just defending it without having any argument other than "that's the way it is", "it's always been this way", and "you're whining because others are getting good loot".

No, I'm looking at the bigger picture. Not what keeps me busy now, I've got plenty to do with all these timesinks on multiple characters.

Solo missions should have an ok chance of an Obol (like 1 in 4 or so) in the end chest and an extremely rare chance of a spirit from the end chest. The raid quality fabled gear that drops from solo missions should also be rare drops from heroic nameds.

I've cleared ~30 heroics so far this expansion, got 20 Obols and 0 spirits. I've seen 2 spirits drop but lost both rolls.

I spent 1.5 hours last night clearing 15 solo zones and got 2 fabled drops.

The fact that the risk/reward of solo/heroic zones in this expansion actively DISCOURAGES me from grouping with other players is INSANE.

Sahimian Fear Touched Gauntlets are their name let me see if i can dredge up a link from my guild events. I may be wrong there has been a bug where it won't show you looted something till much later through guild-events. Ah yes I found them and Wurm you are correct I miss-cited myself I have an examine window up right now and for the sake of arguement next to them are PoW gloves.

Samhain Fear-Touched Gauntlets--------------------- Dominent Sentinel's Brutal Gauntlets
Attuneable Heirloom---------------------------------------- Attuned Heirloom Reforged (I wear these)
179 STR 183 STA -------------------------------------------196 STR 201 STA
24 Parry ---------------------------------------------------------26 Parry
37.5% MA -----------------------------------------------------15.4% Attack Speed
5.6% Block ----------------------------------------------------8.2% MA
10.4% CB/Potency -----------------------------------------5.6% block Chance
4.8% Mitigation ----------------------------------------------11.4% CB/Potency
Haste : 35 Attack Speed---------------------------------- 4.8% Mitigation
----------------------------------------------------------------------Lucid Haste: 50 Attack Speed

Edit: had to add dashes to keep it separate and I forgot the protection ratings they are 1,158 for the PoW and for some reason I can't re-examine the Solo ones.

So for points of comparison that people have complained/griped about PoW is still better by roughly 10% in some areas and exactly equal in others such as Block and Mitigation stats. I guess people are arguing over the gap being too small because Solo zones except Ethereals do not threaten Raid gear especially since Avatar gear has 210+ and is better than PoW by 10% at least.

I can agree with Phia there is too much focus on these new solo zones that it actually discourages people from grouping in many scenarios. I as an end-game raider who can kill Avatars see no reason to group unless I am bored and want to talk to people as the zone itself holds no reward for me except the off-hand chance that I win a 1/6 roll to win an Obol or Spirit for my alts.