Basically yes, with one or two exceptions. Not to mention a couple decent enough items from fabled Labs, which I believe can be reset a couple times a week. There are so many options for raid guilds right now. There are 5 zones out there that offer upgrades before you even touch ToV (SG, DMP, AS, Labs, PK), some of which have practically no better option until you're killing Zlandicar with regularity. And then like you say, some of the biggest upgrades come from the first few mobs in ToV, and practically every guild at this point can kill those. Like Daray says, the raw power gap between the low end and the high end is pretty close now. My troub, with mostly potent gear and heroic jewelry can parse comparably with the best geared bards in the game. If guilds are struggling now, even after getting upgrades from said zones, their problems are human resource related. That is, they're either setting up their raids poorly, their members are specced/reforged badly and possibly not even trying, or they're not working together as a team and just wildly bashing buttons.
Quoted for emphasis. Wonder how many guilds are losing out because people refuse to wear Gen'ra Ears, Anguish proc ears, or Eye of Sontelak because it doesn't look great on a personal parse.
Interesting. I'm actually trying to convince my guild leaders to focus on going after SG Challenge names. They decline saying it's out of the way, no longer part of the main progression, and how one of the top guilds didn't even go there. Any suggestions to convince them?
Using the fact that top guilds don't go there is a silly line of reasoning, because top guilds would have already had most of that stuff before ToV launched, and so could just exchange them for the upgraded items. And to be perfectly honest, SG and PK aren't that difficult anymore, and in the case of PK weapons are for the most part best in slot until you can clear ToV.
SG is a requirement in order to craft the green adorns which are needed for the new temple raid wing being released soon. If their intention is to progress then I would suggest that as reason enough.
Ha, well I can say from being in one of those top guilds that we do in fact go to SG and PK still. We also do Fabled Labs and Princes/Mutagenic because ya know what? They are all upgrades. Even though they aren't "new" to us anymore we still do them. Besides, SG is "current". You need Shattered Rubies to make the adorns for the new zone. Also the Mythical Helmet is still BiS for many classes some tanks or healers may take Klandicar's for the HP though.
Also, (because you might not know this about SG if you haven't cleared it), after killing Gen'Ra HM you will no longer have to clear the EM names in the beginning of the zone up to him. Maybe pass that info to your raid leaders in case they don't know. Some of our top end guilds have had this easy way to clear the zone for some time, so we forget that raids who haven't cleared Gen'Ra HM still have to clear those first (3?) names and for many raids it feels like a complete waste of time revisiting those old scripts with ~8 hours raid time all week. The problem is SG HM drops a whole host of raid jewelry that is actually useful without risk like lots of Temple procs are, and in fact come in handy for raidwide health and debuffs \ buffs for Wing 2 (it's gonna hurt). That's the reason why it's worth the time in the end - a concerted effort on learning the Gen'Ra HM script ensures the rest of your time in that zone is straight to Gen'Ra every time! Edit: you get a clicky from HM Gen'Ra, much like POW toward the end of CoE after killing boar. Didn't mean to imply it would be automatic from there on out (but it should be if you learn the Gen'Ra script, you'll keep getting a new clicky each clear for next).
We clear both Fabled Labs and AS each week. Most of it is alt stuff by now outside of the red gems and the legionnaire trio. Yeah I'll definitely get them to take notice to it.
When you do get your guild to do SG and kill HM Gen'ra don't let the short sited people blow off the debuff ears he can drop. Some people will see the 1.25% damage and think 'oh that's terrible and doesn't do damage'. Smack those people upside the head for being fools and then point out the effect stats. So the more people in raid using them the more damage mobs are taking from the raid.
To elaborate on Crychtonn's point. 1.25% Physical Damage increase worn on 4 scouts (let's assume only the Bards are wearing it and you have 4) = 9% more Physical Damage for your: Bards Rouges Predators Fighters Same as that 1.25% Magical Damage worn by just your Enchanters is 9% more damage from your: Enchanters Sorcerers Summoners Healers The classes that do both like Bards/Crusaders get benefit of both. This is just with your Utility wearing it.
Convince them, by telling them they're wrong.. Every "Top" guild still goes to SG, you have to in order to make the Green adorns... Also SG drops the best Earrings in game (minus Drazaaks), pretty sure every "Top" guild farms SG still to this day, even if they cleared it pre-expac. Also SG helms are still pretty much best in slot for "some" classes still Every "Top" guild also still does PK when needed.
Basically it comes back to the itemization magna carta that raid items should be considered in a raid context. On paper, as an individual, some of these items look terrible, but multiplied across 24 people, they begin to make sense.
Yeah, I was a bit preoccupied when I was writing that and wasn't really paying attention You of course are correct. Still a 5% damage increase is a 5% damage increase, just for an ear.
So good news! We finally cleared 5th name in ToV and got up to Cinderaxe 2 weeks ago. I got my guild to check out DMP and have killed him three times since last week. All quite impressed with the drops (wrists) so now that's on farm status and hopefully going to be hitting SG soon to try out the HM's!
I did the math with our raids, but it basically came down to unless you have an earring that is doing about 200k DPS single target, the debuff earring yields more DPS raid wide. And 200k DPS was a number I came up with WELL before we cleared ToV. Since its percentage based its probably yields much more raid wide DPS now. Good luck in SG!
devs isn't aware of those loot problems, those items that producing bad side effects or types of AoE is unwanted by specific guilds, they place those items on Not to Wear those "Banned List" in guild raids or otherwise some members get sideline from raids. it seem look good for solo, but unfit for groups and raids.
