I guess my feeling is raiding is more about the skill of a few people with many other players just following what those handful of players do Thats def true in wow, not so true in eq2, If one healer is slacking, it can hurt the entire raid, if your dps isn't putting out enough to kill xxx before yytime your going to loose. Eq2 98% of the people in a raid to be aware. Let me also add, There is not a single 1 group instance, that is a challenge at all. HOF was at the very beginning, now it's pathetically easy like the rest. And you are all missing the big picture, the SHOULDERS were not a final quest reward for a long quest, they were one of many powerful, and good quest rewards in a quest line, that ENDS in a weapon worth the effort for the entire line. As a part of the line, the shoulders should not have equaled a fabled reward. When you take all the rewards together, bracelet, chestpiece, legs, boots, earring, belt, katar, shoulders, ranged weapon, It's still a MORE then generous quest line, with very very good items. All the change did was bring the shoulders more in line with the massive amount of equipment gained in the quest line, and make fabled shoulders more worth having.
As we have been discussing, everything is a trade-off. I would say that Gnorbl's would be the best overall physical damage tank shoulders, the extra 67 physical mitigation being a trade-off for the extra hp and avoidance. Mitigation is king of the tanking scene in t7, and with brawler mits reaching 4k+ish and hp reaching 10k+ish, the tradeoff seems decent. Add in extra resists from wis, and some straight power increase since str is capped so easily and really doesnt supply power. Add in +crush for hitting higher levels and keeping agro. A better physically defensive item that still has some decent general useage. The Crescent Moon would be better general shoulders, especially effective against slashing damage enemies, still allowing you to balance other pieces with +vs crush and +vs pierce to give an overall mit advantage. Add to the fact that all of these items would be highly useful in non-tanking situations, and their overall value increases. I was not pro-nerf on this item. I realize that it isnt the final quest in the series, but by the time you reach this point in the series, each quest can be as long as the HQs, and the rewards are designed to reflect the length of progression and effort to reach that stage. My biggest issue actually isnt that the shoulders were "adjusted". I have an issue with the fact that they were decreased in "value" compared to other lvl 68 legendary items, and that the change was unfairly targetted at one quest reward when every quest reward was balanced almost identically. I could give an example of a good "adjustment" if you wish. Adjusted Dragonscale Shoulders (example and fictional) 30str 30sta 55hlth 55 pow 600 vs ht 500 vs cold +7 def 324 mit effect Str of Dragon As you can see, the overall value was maintained. The mit decrease was balanced by a resist increase of an appropriate percentage. The hlth and pow was maintained overall. This item now would be considered good, but its mit is now on level with similar pieces and inferior to many that include additional resist. Another issue I have in this debate is that people are spending time complaining about designers actually THINKING about the target group and creating an item specifically for them. It is something brawlers have wanted for ages, always in the past there have been complaints about the actual stats and balancing of our items, now they seem to be making an effort to answer those concerns and the brawler community still isnt happy. I really wonder how the mixed signals are affecting our future in-development items. Az Message Edited by Azazel-Defiant on 05-19-2006 03:56 PM Message Edited by Azazel-Defiant on 05-20-2006 01:21 AM Message Edited by Azazel-Defiant on 05-20-2006 01:23 AM
Sorry about the changing fonts. I have been having some strange issues with the posts where I am warned that I have included Urls that are unsupported. I dont know why this happens since I dont use anything other than the chat board commands. I usually have to save my posts into notepad and then repaste them so it will accept them. It sometimes effects the fonts. Message Edited by Azazel-Defiant on 05-19-2006 03:59 PM
Sorry, HOF was surely made easier with fabled, but it was perfectly doable before. With just Sanctum legendary. As far as this quest series, and steps taking forever to do, I can't aggree with that especially not with fellow brawlers. My main group did all the sanctum stuff in one night, and the palace stuff in the next. The longest stuff was just getting mobs to spawn. Its not hard as much as it is a pain. Heck most of it is seasier to solo, or duo with a healer, training through everywhere. Quest rewards that require raids should be equal to raid drop fabled. The loot reflects the accomplishment of 24 people working together to beat a mob. Saying xxx loot drops from labs isn't really accurate. Some of the stuff in there rots, it's complete junk. Quest rewards are garunteed drops for everyone accomplishing, for their class. Raid drops are no where near that. You could see the same paladin loot drop 5 raids in a row. Rarely will one in 24 people get multiple pieces of quality fabled in a raid. So they may go back once a week for 5 weeks, and still not see something drop they can use. Brawlers seem to be even more affected by this. Message Edited by Ashengur on 05-20-2006 11:25 PM
How come your main group can do all quests in one night in Sanctum? Just curious... One step took my group 4 hours to spawn the named to be able to get "next step" of the quest. This is not "take all quests" do all at same time... Otherwise, I just think your group did one quest but it came like all quests to you, since once people get in, they stay till they level. Message Edited by selch on 05-21-2006 04:12 PM
He is over-exhaggerating. I was very lucky on my spawns for the claymore series taking only at most 3 respawns on most named. I trained EVERYWHERE for the claymore updates. And starting in the morning on most days it took me at least 3 sollid days in sanctum. Which is completely resonable since most of the named are on ~30min respawn timers. The ghosts in the top of sanctum in the little book nooks was my biggest pain it litterly took 6 hours camping to get all 4? of them to pop. The snake dude in the 3rd floor took about 6 respawns. PoA could of been done in 2-3 sollid days depending on how screwed u get w spawns. It is not unreasonabel to hear people in guild camping a named for the second day straight. now mind you when i say sollid days i mean 8-12 hours playing. People seem to forget to even get the SoS final reward (chest peice) you need the dragon language which in and of itself is a long quest series starting from a T5 epic x2. which a few people in my guild had to do. Ok so now after 24+ quests you get these game breaking super shoulders. It takes a hard core player from 4-6 striaght days to get. This is as a brawler mind you who is prolly the only class who can do this quest so quickly. Fake death FTW. So now you move on to the next step which requires difficult to harvest spawns in an epic x2 zoen w 1 bajillion hp's. So if yorur lucky enough to have 11 friends to help or jump with your guild clearing you get thes done. OR you cna do what i did and do the nakid fake death dance in there. Then you get to bonemire kill a bunch of easy to pop named i 2 boxed most of them. And sit on harragars (another 2x epic) camp eveyr 3-5 days in the hopes you catch him when he pops. Being he is probabably the most contested mob in game (not counting the monoliths which die in 2 min of spawning). Being that this is a long quest series that require killing epic x2 along the way AND even an epic contested. there is no reason why these rewards should nto be better then raid loot.
