opinions of Ward of Elements Difficulty.

Xalmat wrote:

QFE

This is the Aidan fight in a nutshell....
2 people get ported (2 random people that are not the MT) and go to harvest boulders. They must mine the boulder then hop back to the center tower and 1) unpack the boulder then 2) place the boulder so that it cons green successfully blocking the portal.
The problem with this is that the dev who developed this fight is dumb. Those 2 people that manage to come back with a boulder and (while dealing with the knockarounds from the fans in the center of the room manage to luckily place the boulders) plant it successfully....3 waves of adds (instead of 10) in 3 seperate encounters of 3 heroic ^^^ mobs each will aggro the raid and attack it. You have about 1 minute to kill all the adds before the dragon comes back down and starts attacking the raid again. The adds also have a power tap on the player they are attacking...so you run out of power very quickly (basically instantly for the OT that trys to grab them).
Alternative strategy...you have 5 people (that happen to have feather falling cloaks) go get boulders and come back to place them. You have just enough time that (if everything goes perfect) you can block all the portals and get no adds. The problem with this strat is he has a curse that randomly goes on people that stuns you and makes it impossible to move/cast....This means if you are running to collect boulders you JUST DIED. This also means you have 5 less people killing the named so it becomes a fun 30 minute fight to kill this named...assuming everyone harvests the boulders everytime and noone dies.
NOTES TO DEVS:
1) MOST CASUAL PLAYERS IN A X2 RAID WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KILL 9 ^^^ HEROIC MOBS in 1 MINUTE on the final mob!
2) This should be designed and targeted in difficulty towards Tier 2 shard gear players with maybe their fabled epics. The zone is targeted somewhat for this except for the last 2 bosses now...but do you need to have THAT MUCH TRASH in the zone? I have seen less trash in instances. You should target this zone timewise to be a 1.5 to 2 hour zone instead of 3+ hours to get to the 3rd name in a pug. This has several effects....Effect one...people are unwilling to do this in a pickup manner (basically the same issue you had with most of the TSO instances when they came out.....again another what were you thinking moment). Effect two....you are not getting any feedback from your intended audiance because they never have enough time to kill past the 3rd named (if they have that much time). All of the people who posted here that cleared to Aiden were in X2 groups that were fully mythicaled and very well geared.
3) While scripted events are fun, donkey kong style events like the last named are frustrating and stupid. There is nothing fun or exciting about fighting the last named in that zone...its just a stupid encounter. Fix it so that you only need to place 1 boulder to block the beams because you would be lucky if most PUGS could even place one of those boulders in the time required...let alone 4 others. Hardcore guilds which are clearing this fight do it once then will not come back because they are flagged for the X4...which means noone will come to the zone rarely.
PLEASE CHANGE THIS FIGHT SO ITS MORE FUN...thanks in advance....

Fatuus wrote:

The first few mobs in the zone are designed with players wearing T2 shard armour, TSO instance dropped jewelery, fabled epics and 140+ achievements. Any less than this and you should not be able to kill the first named.
It stands to reason then, that since every other TSO raid zone has been a measuer of progression in itself, that this should be no different. As such, the end mob should be targetted at players in 4 - 5 pieces of T3 set gear and some of the jewelery from this zone.
That is what Aiden is aimed at, and it hit its mark (though he does need a minor tweak to give the people getting boulders a few more seconds, and remove the possibility for players to jump over the side of the tower to get their own boulders without being ported).

Noaani wrote:

the problem with this.. is that no drop in this zone will increase your dps by any real amount... And thus.. there IS NO PROGRESSION... The drops in the zone might give you more hp/power, and very slight dps increase.. but nothing to the level that is required. I dont care if you run this zone every 5 days for a year, without HUGE dps increases from mythicals/x4 raid gear, it wont be done.

Victer@Oasis wrote:

The 'totem procs' may only proc off melee. Meaning your caster heavy group must be autoattackign to get the effects of the snake, etc. We had similar issues with a caster heavy makeup until we got everyone in there swinging.

vinere wrote:

I have some sympathy for this comment. Gearing up inside WoE isn't going to significantly impact your chances with Aiden. Yes, your tank will get some survivability, but that generally isn't the issue.
You simply must block AT LEAST 3 portals to be able to handle the adds. If your dps is lower, you need to send more people over to get rocks to block 4 portals.
I find that 2 people will get the natural port in time to bring up bolders, then its just a decision of sending 1 or 2 more over the edge to block more doors. If you can handle 2 portals open, send one extra person down, if not send 2 down.
Providing everyone is on their mario a game, and your 2 MT healers don't get ported back to back (happened 3 times now), you should be able to win this fight.

Noaani wrote:

This sort of slow gearing up progression is fine for raid guilds which have consistent rosters and make loot decisions to maximize raid effectiveness, but it simply doesn't work for non-raid guilds and pick-up raids. A big problem I see is that WoE was designed for players with the raider mentality, not players with a more casual mentality, and so it failed. The non-raiders are non-raiders primarily because they do not want to raid, so expecting them to suddenly act like raiders for this zone isn't going to be successful.

Dasein wrote:

How can you call that a "fail"? WOE hit its intended target perfectly IMO.
Besides, what exactly does "raid mentality" mean? If you mean requireing people that know their class and know how to pull/position mobs, how to use cure potions, how to form groups...having worked thru most of the TSO instances.....then yeah WOE requires that but that has nothing to do with casual -vs- hardcare or even raider -vs- non-raider.
Because while my guild is casual in nature...we have several people that are very good at raiding....we just cant do it all the time and when we do we are limited in the number of people. A x2 like WoE is perfect for us.
WOE it its mark perfectly in IMO.

Dasein wrote:

Make no mistake - this is a RAID zone. It's a x2 raid zone, but a raid zone nonetheless.
For those folks that don't want to raid, why are they trying this zone?

Dasein wrote:

1) WoE is a RAID ZONE. Its simply a raid zone that requires half as many people but it is a RAID zone. So I see no reason why non-raid guilds have interest in WoE at all. PURs have always been a lot less successful at current content than an organized raid. That doesn't magically change because something is a x2 instead of a x4.
2) A raid zone was designed with a raiding mentality? GASP. I can't believe it. Raid zones aren't casual. The raiding playstyle isn't casual. They rarely overlap. This is a raid zone that rewards raid level gear. It just requires 12 people instead of 24 which enables more guilds to use the content, guilds that wouldn't be able to use the x4s as well because of roster size.
3) If non-raiders are non-raiders because they do not want to raid why are they worried about the content inside of a x2 raid zone? I don't expect them to act like raiders but I also don't expect them to utilize much less comment on or try to get a raid zone changed.

Gage wrote:

Well said.
Not sure where people got the idea that WOE was going to be a Deep Forge or Scion for 12.

Dasein wrote:

So you're saying non-raid guilds have less consistent rosters than raid guilds do? I'm a member of a very casual guild and while we formed an alliance with another small guild for grouping and raiding, we are still very casual. We do not see much turnover at all in our guild roster. I've seen the constant recruitment that many of the high end raid guilds have to go through. I'd bet that my guild roster has a lot less turnover.
Pick-up raids will always run into problems with a consistent raidforce but that's the nature of pick-up raids.
Non-raiders are non-raiders for many reasons. If the reason is that the person doesn't like to raid then what is he or she doing in a raid zone in the first place?

Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:

I kinda got the fealing it was PoF for 12.
And thats about where it landed to me except for the lockout timer.
It would be nice to be able to run 2x/wk, so like a 2d 20h lockout would be nicer. But I can deal, I got the alts.

Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:

In my own experiance, the more casual the guild, the more stable its roster.
Casual guilds don't suffer from burnout that raid guilds do, they don't boot people for not showing up for a week, they usually don't have anywhere near the amount of drama that cause people to leave (and the drama they do have is usually confined to a smaller group of people, because no one cares).
This is from being in guilds ranging from total casual - anyone can join and do whatever they want type guilds to family - only invite people we know, do what content we can, but absolutly no pressure type guilds, and up to we-have-the-server-on-lockdown type guilds, where not logging on for one day without notifying an officer would result in a phone call.

I'll agree with Aiden being out of whack after what we encountered with him lastnight. Note, this is 12 people that have done in 4 times successfully, and our timers just rereshed on our raid geared mains.
We had issues with smoldering updraft not working on the tornadoes.
We had issues with curse firing on people being ported. Nothing like getting ported into a lava pool and immediately cursed with a root.
With all that, we'd still get 3 portals blocked, but due to the above bugs, we'd be short 3-4 people when the adds spawned. Being short that many, getting the adds down in the short window before aiden returns was problematic. Add to that atleast one of our healers was out due to the above issues on 4:5 tries, when aiden returned with a few adds still up, the results were predicatable.
Hopefully todays patch will solve some of these problems.

all this talk about the zone being meant for casual or hardcore or w/e doesnt matter. They already stated what the zone was meant for... Its meant for people that are with their fabled epics and heroic gear.
Sure it may still be difficult for this type of setup but it should still be possible for people without mythicals and TSO raid gear but it simply is not. If the last encounter it giving a mythical/TSO raid geared raid alot of problems then there is no way that the intented audiance is going to do it.
And that is the problem... i dont see anyone without the better gear clearing anything past the book room. I dont care how many times you run the start of this zone and get your raid full of t3 shard armor.
Suggestions for the last fight.

• Change the con of the adds from ^^^ to ^^.
  • or make the adds despawn as soon as the name gets back into the fight.
• Make it so that healers do not get ported as well as the person tanking the name.
• Make it so that you only need 1 gust of wind to make it to the other side. (no need to use 2 of them)
• Make the rocks be placed automaticly if the person uses it in the general area of the portal.

Victer@Oasis wrote:

They can be palced in the general area and you still get the text that it is blocked.
Todays patch also lowered the con of the adds as well as provides a speed increase on smoldering updraft. it might be possible to get up top with only hitting one tornado now.
I hope to test it again more tonight and see what the impact is.
I do agree, as he was yesterday vs how he was last week, your not doing this without raidgear + myth. The primary issue being the updraft and curse bugs causing less than a full raid party up top when adds spawn.

Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:

Bugs me also. They want X2 content balanced for people cranking out 60K DPS. Wonderful.
I would like to add this. I'm proud that my team of 11 was able to kill the 2nd named parsing under 15K DPS. We even had a 78 Monk.

Thunndar316 wrote:

We beat dig on alts with less than 12 players doing 17k dps.
While cranking 70k makes things easier, honestly the fire elemental is the only true dps check in the zone.

Thunndar316 wrote:

Congratulations, & I mean that sincerely.
Of course, your being able to do so also kinda tells me that the zone is probably closer to being "right" for its chosen audience than otherwise, all of which makes me happy.