So... ...the Cobalt Scar tradeskill questline just magically appeared there one day with no work on the part of any dev? Interesting.
From the update notes... Tradeskill Apprentice components from Siren's Grotto bosses now drop 100% of the time, up from 25%. Does that mean the raid or heroic crafting ones?
By the time this stuff is common enough to be available to more than 5% of the population, it will be two GU/Expacs old and probably quite irrelevant :/ Sad really.
The Mysterious Blue Coins are not components, they are currency. What I took this to mean is bosses in SG now drop at least one rare component. There was not enough information provided to know if it was raid or heroic.
I'm sure it's for the azure crafting mats. I'd bet the insignia mats drop from the HM SG raid mobs that haven't been killed yet.
as much as i love searching for these mats i wish soe would give us a new hint or clue to thier location. its been two months now and it would be nice to hear from the devs.
There are mobs in GU66 which haven't died yet. I doubt there will be any revelations until that's no longer the case.
I'm actually questioning if the Insignia recipes are worth anything. If the components are from content that hardly anyone is going to do (ever), and once we level past this nobody will go back to do that content then why is it taking up space? Lets look back at Drunder crafting. What you could make from Drunder crafting was decent at the time. Nothing spectacular but a definite upgrade from Kael armor. However crafting materials could only be made by breaking down drops from the drunder zones which were considerably more difficult than Kael. As soon as Skyshrine came out...drunder was abandoned because Skyshrine was a better reward for less effort. The insignias have good stats but considering that none of them have dropped from content easier than HM raiding... the people capable of farming this content will move on to the new content and the supply of components will dry up because anyone capable of farming the components will be going after newer content with better rewards instead. It would of been better to sprinkle these components amongst solo and group content instead of making them raid drops. Replacing ethereal drops with the components would of still excited solo and group players and generated a small demand for the recipes. Unless these components start dropping like candy from raids...there won't be enough supply to even generate a real price to match demand.
Any objection to allowing them to drop from the CM Heroic zone? It wouldn't be an out of line reward for the difficulty of the zone. And it would give an incentive to get a band of geared up folks together and run it. I don't expect it will happen, certainly not until folks have gotten them from the CM Raid mobs, but I like the idea much better than putting them in the Solo zones....
That ring is currently probably the best in game. Precedence and history of the game dictates that means it should only drop in Raid Zones, Challenge Ones at that. So that is my vote, keep them in raid zones (where they most likely are). As with most "end-game" material eventually the content will be easy enough for non-HM Raiders to do, usually 1 expansion or GU after it came out. Some groups to this day can't clear Underfoot Depths and that was SF-Content, though that is script-blocking not gear-blocking. Without something to chase after you will find many players will tire of doing Group/Raid content, after all when you could get within 1-2% of Heroic Quality Gear from Solo Zones, we saw how fast Heroic Content dried up, save for mounts and the really easy zones. So yes, Ynnek, I do have an objection to putting HM-Raid Quality materials in non-raid zones.
I agree with Estred. They should never drop in non-raid zones, and are definitely not in-line with the rest of the CM SG heroic zone, they're better than avatar drops, there's no way that they should be easily obtainable. I wish SOE had not put that recipe on the regular research assistant because now so many people seem to feel entitled to easily make them just because they can research it. Next time I hope they at least put a disclaimer on the recipe telling people the materials required are extremely rare so don't expect to see them outside of a challenge mode raid environment.
Fair enough. The idea was that direct dropped HM Raid gear would be the carrot for HM Raid zones. And the ingredients for the ring could be the carrot for the end of the new CM Heroic, which is seriously lacking in the carrot department. I guess I don't see the harm in *one*, exceptionally good item for one slot coming from the CM Heroic that is on a par with its difficulty, and requiring repeated runs just to get one. Just as we have *one* nice item out of the x2 (Upgraded Rancor), and *one* nice item from completing the shiny collections. Nothing disruptive as the Advanced Solo gear that decimated grouping. Unless you're saying the HM gear from the HM zones isn't a good enough carrot, and the ring ingredients absolutely need to stay there to be that carrot that keeps people trying. You yourself indicated you couldn't clear the CM Heroic unless you brought 6 of your best HM raid geared characters (unless I'm misremembering), putting it in approximately (if not exactly) in the right difficulty category. But with the timer at only 1:30, I suppose you guys could farm and sell them, which would trivialize obtaining the ring for anyone with sufficient plat, and that's not what I'm intending.... And I do agree with Zahk's point, that the recipes should never have been just thrown on the regular researcher, raid researcher would have been more appropriate. But, it was just an idea up the flagpole, not one likely to be implemented, even if anyone agreed with it. Kander wants these items to be near impossible for non hm raiders to get, so they're going to stay that way.
Your kinda arguing with yourself here. First you say it will be easy enough one expansion later, then you go on to say "some" groups still can't do content that is an expansion ago. And why would anyone want to do UD anyways, when your better off doing the much easier CoE zones for better rewards? This really reinforces the idea that challenging content doesn't get done after it stops being current. We're about five months away from a new expansion. More than likely that expansion will come with content as well as features and there will be a new teir of raid zones. Want to bet nobody does the Siren's Grotto challenge zones where these materials might drop after new raid zones appear? And as a crafter one thing that I despise is getting a really nice recipe that even after the content is no longer relevant I can't get the materials to make it. As things stand now...its possible that these items may NEVER be discovered even though we'll all have the recipes to make them.
I haven't done HM-SG, nor even EM as the guild I transferred to is going to enter that content soon, we farmed Drinal and Amalgamon a bit more before starting as many new members had to gear up a bit. So I cannot speak of how the gear compares, that would be more a question to be answered by one of Equillibrium, Fatality or another top-10 that is doing the content right now. I agree with Zahk too, they should have been a raid-researcher item. More incentive to run Skyshrine again. I have yet to actually clear CM-Heroic just because we haven't had that "perfect" group log on at least when I am on. However that doesn't mean CM-Heroic is off. It should be extremely hard since it is an X2 Zone with 1 Group, so it takes HM-Raiders to clear it. You hit exactly on the problem of putting Insignia ingredients anywhere but HM-SG-Raid, farming to sell. To address Merril who posted just as I was writing this, historically starting with Zraxth's Unseen Arcanum at least in my experience as a raider. During DoV a group of EM-Raiders could clear the HM-Heroic while only HM-Raiders could clear the HM during Sentinels Fate. Talavan Abyss HM is no different. Except that zone is for the Hydra Scale Brace, not the Insignia of the Deep. So at least for me I must rely on my guild to have the right members on and the right time, or make plans. The Insignia of the Deep is to Raiders, what the Hydra Scale Bracer is to Heroic Players. It is an extra carrot for us to chase as we push to kill the HM-Encounters. This is also the first time that standard crafters have had the chance to view a HM-Raidcraft item. Previously they had been Raid-Researcher only which meant to see/use them either you had to raid or pay the raiders to get mats and make it for you. So perhaps the flaw is that you; and by you I mean "Standard Crafters" implying you do not raid, was that you had access to this "shiny" recipe with no way to do it. Would you have been satisfied not knowing where the item came from if you just happened to see it on another player? Had the precedent not been set of acquiring the recipe would you feel this way?
Quite frankly they screwed the pooch by putting what is at first glance a HM raid crafted item (I say at first glance due to the fact no one has discoed where the components come from yet) on a general researcher instead of the raid researcher from Skyshrine. My fear is that no matter how well intentioned if the components only drop off of say HM raid names in the new SG raid zone than a number of issues will creep up with regards to them. 1) The number of players who will get enough components to make even 1 ring will be so tiny as to be a joke (that is if the components drop with the well known and hated RNG). 2) By the time any guild can clear the HM raid names enough times as to try and forge a number of rings for their raiders the new xpac will just be about to come out and the likelihood of them going back into old content is slim at best. 3) The likelihood of medium content raid guilds able to kill the HM SG encounters even with the next xpac again is iffy. All in all I think I'm seeing a repeat of the Skyshrine crafted raid components disaster (pre sleepers tomb of course) with extremely poor drop ratio's. As the devs are all over the place regarding tradeskills last few years I'm in the camp that precedent has been set with Sleepers Tomb with both versions of crafting components being able to be looted via the phylactery as such the HM SG group zone's difficulty more than warrants the components for the insignia's of the deep to drop within and not just off the final named. After all Ethereal drops can come off of advanced solo zones and tbh why not these components.
I'm actually going to say that it would of been better if the current ethereals that drop in solo/heroic content and the insignia recipes would of switched places it would of been better for everybody involved. I'm going to assume that the insignia components only drop in HM SG and only drop from the end boss. At a 100% drop rate you can make 1 every 6 clearings of the zone...and only if the 6 right components drop. If for some reason all 3 components drop once every run that still means you need 3 runs to make 1 item, or a better way to put it is every 4 runs you can make 2 items if everything drops (3a+2b+1c for item A, 3c+2b+1a for item B = 4a, 4b and 4c consumed). Instead the ethereal could of been a rare drop that is a 25% chance of dropping which fits better with raiding than a crafted reward. And instead of an absurdly small chance of getting a HM equivalent reward from solo/heroic content you could get a rare chance at getting 1/6th of a HM equivalent item instead. This would serve the crafting community much better because the components would naturally find their way to the broker and people would be looking for someone with the recipe. Most of us would never make one, but we'd at least know someone that has.
So you weren't playing in the "good old days" eh? There have been raid crafted items in the game since day one, but the developers have been very inconsistent about using "raid crafted". From the very beginning there was Wyurmsteel which was needed to defeat Darathar before DoF was introduced, and was not only a raid recipe but also...you needed to craft them in a raid zone while the raid is being attacked. Fun. Skip to Echoes of Fadewyr and you have the Tenders Secrets line of crafted items. All the recipes drop in Emerald Halls and so do the ingredients. The recipes were fully tradeable and actually not that difficult to obtain for non-raiders...but components were almost always used by the raids that farmed EH. And I've got a raid apprentice, which I was on the raid that cleared UD and I won the loot. I'm not in a HM raid guild but UD wasn't all that tough either. After CoE came out we stopped doing UD because it was a waste of the raid's time. And I'm fairly certain that whatever drops the components for these recipes is going to be the same. And it isn't the availability of the recipes that bothers me, it is that if the components are so extremely rare that ethereal look like they have a decent drop rate in comparison, then it would of served the community (both raiders and crafters) better to switch them.
Meirril if in deed that is the way things were before my time then yes. The only thing I can think of Is Kingdom of Sky stuff. So, I can't comment. Just for clairifcation we are suggesting asking them to be put in HM-Talavan Abyss (Heroic) correct? I suppose ultimately it's Kander and his teams decision. Unless smokejumper decides to stick his hands in it, though I hear he doesn't Group or Raid which may explain why CoE was so Solo-centric.
Regardless...there has been little from the devs on this except a few cryptic lines sprinkled about....I think we'd all like to have a better answer than the "the components will SURFACE" line if for nothing else than to let us know before the content becomes totally irrelevant. If they intend to cater only to the high end guilds fine (think there's been bit too much of that lately as I know just about every raid guild was looking for content we all can do not just another bump for the high enders again)...if its their intention to cater to everyone with regards to where the components drop fine let us know but its high time the cryptic messages get tossed in the waste basket.
