Questions Regarding Future Content

Well you need to increase your lurking skills. No top raid guild uses last year's eth armor, and the meta collection reward has long been replaced by better loot. This year's eth items are really only good for their potency increase which will likely only slightly assist in the next xpac's release. The red rune is a bit better than the red rune it replaces, but not OP. That said, you could probably log on in an upcoming triple coin weekend and get enough for the red rune if you wanted to.

Gearing aside, Redlight's original post had a valid point where regular spells and ascensions are concerned. It is extremely difficult for a player who's been gone over two or more years to play catch up on spellls/CAs, etc. without dropping a lot of real world cash is a valid complaint. Getting spells up to expert is a no-brainer. Past that, let's get serious. Masters are rare drops and if you even see one on the MP, they sell for millions of plat. Past that, stand by to open up your pocketbook. If you've been playing for years, plat accumulation is possible, but more often than not, it's buying kronos to get plat to pay the millions they're being sold for. Or paying DPG regular money to buy DBC so you can rush the research process. This makes getting back in the game and being viable a real hurdle for any player. Sure you can research those spells, but let's face it, you're looking at years to research spells past expert to GM. Same is true for ascensions. They may be losing their luster due to resistance factors, but they're still viable.
Returning to this game after an absence is possible, but the roadblocks to getting there quickly without opening up your wallet to bypass current loot mechanics isn't going to happen. You can defend it all you want, but that's the reality of the current situation. Players are leaving and throwing up their hands in frustration, not just because of the PTW mechanic, but also because of the RNG factor. It used to be you could work hard and stuff would drop...if even eventually. Not any more. RNG has done more to kill this game than anything else, in my opinion. I've got 3 toons I play with frequency and others I log in and do stuff on occasion just to keep them mildly viable, for a total of 19 toons. And yet, despite all the heroics, the OSer quests, the PQs I used to run until they became pointless, here it is, almost a year into the xpac and only one toon has the infuser recipe. One. That's absolutely ludicrous.
I digress, haha. The point Redlight was originally making is still quite valid. Many got caught up with the whole gearing conversation, while ignoring the other side of the coin, which is building the CAs, Spells, and to a lesser degree, the Ascensions to catch up. The drop rate for Masters and above is laughable. I periodically (3-4 times a week) check the broker for masters, etc. and good luck even finding one. Even if you can, they're often multi-millions of plat and for a returning player, that's already a problem, because you've already fainted dead away at the plat shock, haha.

I don't know what you speak of. Most games die after 2 to 4 years... EQ2 is doing quite well based on it's age, while you on the other hand age like milk it seems lol. Don't play if you don't like it I don't care. Your attitude and constant trolling and downing of players who don't see it your way is terrible, have a snickers Betty.

What a person puts in the game now means it's worth it to them now. If in a few years it's not, they will stop. Move on man, and stop berating other players.

Please Lock this thread, talk about devolving lol...

I think he lost me at the personal attacks on guilds and other players who don't see it all his way.

I hear the game is balanced around Expert spells/CA's. Not sure if that is 100% true, but you can compete decently with those level of items and despite there being a book shortage at the beginning of the xpac, should be easily acquired.

This game is centered around progressing your toon. If people are not progressing, then they don't log in. You cannot have it to where anyone can easily catch up without putting in the effort. That said, I do think the P2W is a bit much and could be balanced. Expecting to walk back into the game and be more competitive than someone who put in the time just because you have "superior skills" is all but demanding to take any type of progression out of the game.

ABMod caps out at half your biggest hit. Everything has ABMod on it these days, and you can't reforge out of all of it by any means. And you think we need more ABMod?

DPS mod tacks onto the end of the damage equation in the same way ABMod does, I seem to recall. That's why most people are reforging ABMod to DPS. You aren't disputing that most people are reforging ABMod to DPS, are you?

I'd love to see actual ACT parses showing the supposed difference, along with side-by-side examine windows of fully imbued CD Ethereals vs. high end challenge raid armor in the same slots. I have the pink armor pieces. I'm just not wearing them.

Also, while I may not myself BE a high end raider, I have friends in game who ARE and to whom I speak regularly. We also have some high end raider alts in our raidforce, and they tell us stuff. We are not turnips sitting in darkened holes.

We were discussing people starting the expansion. We all started with Expert to avoid the resists, then upgraded to Grandmaster as soon as we reasonably could do so. Ancient and Celestial spells don't drop anywhere with any decent frequency, so all of us pretty much have to either use research over time or cash to upgrade to Ancient.There's no disparity, there's not really any other way to do it.

I go and hunt old shinies in heroic instances that I can solo and sell those to make money. That funds me purchasing masters on the broker. I also "flip" krono... I buy them when desperate people price them ridiculously low, then put them back on the broker at the median price and wait patiently, rinse and repeat.

Also, our raid force routinely holds any masters we get doing Heroics and passes them to someone else in the raid who needs that master. We only sell them ourselves if no one needs them.

Thanks for the weak praise. This is why people are still running the CD Celestial quest and upgrading their Ascension spells. When you get right down to it, most people only ever use ONE Ascension, and usually only some of the spells in that Ascension, so it's not that hard to get them caught up. By next expansion, raid-geared folk may be able to just solo those quests, if not you can get a couple of guildies and one-group even the PQs.

I did pay 5mp for Destruction, because it isn't craftable. Because my raid force worked cooperatively to get everyone runes, we didn't have to buy most of the others. At the very start of the expansion, if no one in the group could make a particular rune, we asked in Auction to trade someone who could make it with whatever red adorn recipe charges we personally had available.

As far as I can see, all those procs just cause lag. And since a clicky item won't queue like a spell, you get to sit there and wait when your casting order requires the clickie item, which I find annoying.

I will agree that the stat packages on the current expansion raid gear are too cookie cutter. That's unlikely to change anytime soon, as they have limited manpower and it's easier for them to do cookie cutter, so I don't see anything to do about it besides make the best of it I can.

When EQ2 was in its prime, we didn't have all these secondary stats, so I don't know what good old days you refer to. I think what you were saying is that you wanted some reasonably uncommon piece of gear that would make you shine on the parse, because if everybody had it, more rich itemization would be worthless.

I miss the days when raid-dropped gear had super spiffy appearances (KoS had some very nice ones, I still like that sword from Vilucidae) and you couldn't get anything similar elsewhere. While I do want my raid weapons to do sick damage, I'd be pleased if they also were visually appealing. I remember the days when people stood in Qeynos Harbor in their spiffy gear, weapons drawn, then went AFK all day, just to show off that Qeynos Claymore or whatever it was.

As I keep saying, I'd like someone who understands this to show side-by-side examine windows of fully imbued CD Ethereals vs. high end challenge raid armor in the same slots and explain to my why the stats are so much better. I don't see it, but I am willing to be taught, oh mighty ones.

I'm even worse than a casual pleb, I'm a casual F2P pleb that spends more time in Eorzea than I do in Norrath, so pardon my confusion.

But what the heck does the Ability Doublecast Redlight mentioned have to do with ABMod? And here I thought I was doing pretty good as a F2P toon that can't equip Prestige schtuff, in getting my ADC up to 27%.

Ah, I misread that part. Self-buffed I have 95% Ability Doublecast (that's why I want the saddle from the Achievement for killing all the Diaku Corral Heroic names, it has +5.5% Ability Doublecast). In raid it's well over 100%. You don't need more than that, do you? 100% plus however much the mob is debuffing Ability Doublecast.

The red adornments weren’t that bad this expansion. Part of it is guilds working together too.

Sigrdrifa - The reason the ethereal gear from last expac was/is so good is that it has ADC and CB buffs on it if you cleared last expac's Kael raids. If you didn't, it was replaced early...if you did, you are just now changing it out...

Astral Gloom-Hardened (CD Ethereal)
4,012 Primary Attributes
605,328 Health
14,322 STA
90,690 Power
10,290 POT
555 Resolve
+0.3% Ability Doublecast

Middling BoL Raid Armor
4,362 Primary Attributes
918,696 Health
20,257 STA
178,483 Power
13,841 POT
590 Resolve

Self-buffed, I'm at 95.1% Ability Doublecast from Items, Adorns, and Mount Tack. Raid buffs take it well over 100%.

I just don't see how 0.3% Ability Doublecast makes the old ethereal armor worthwhile. There is no triple-cast, the most you can get is doublecast.

See below post

The level 12 Ethereal Reinforcement gives you 8.8 ADC, 90CB and 453.7 potency PER PIECE. That's almost 30 ADC for the set.

Oh, and unless you are just doing solo content, you will need upwards of 139 ADC to doublecast 100% of the time vs. heroic and raid names due to their debuffs. So...That 100 ADC you have isn't near enough to maximize dps. Not trying to bash but it's not good when folks spread misinformation.

Are you saying your still wearing Pink armor? Can you post pics of the pink fully leveled out Clint?

I tried to post a pic last night but the forums can't handle a straight snip it copy/paste due to size limitations. Happy to share one via discord when I get home from work.

I replaced my last year ethereal armor when I finished leveling this year's items. The leveled ethereal armor from last year's expac (with all the associated kill unlocks) was just plain superior to all similar slot armor in this expac with the exception of maybe the 50 pearl BP. That said, the relic tags force changes (which isn't necessarily bad). Folks can carry on with their arguments on if it was necessary to be competitive and all...I just wanted to make sure everyone was clear on the stats of the armor.

Finally, someone who doesnt live under a rock ;P

I understand why a bunch of you are completely missing the point of the criticism I have about itemization, you arent fully aware of this matter. As Clintsat stated, the fully kael upgraded eth armor is insanely good.

Reason I asked is some of my guildies who had the armor have moved on from it, and did so a while back. I was on hiatus last xpack and missed the ethereal and just had not seen the full effects in a pic. I did know that the double cast was superior to anything available over current items. But the CB and Potency I thought were a huge loss along with the way things could be reforged.

Once again the end of an xpack is upon us and I am looking at this years ethereal, I'm not sure the same could be said. In my opinion that's a good thing. I don't think Items should linger into the next cycle longer than the week or two it takes to get through the first part of the new content raid zones. I also don't think casual/heroic content gear should be anywhere near what raid gear is. However, I do think it should be competitive enough that you can break into raid content rather than last xpacks raid gear being the only gear that allows you to enter, right. So, don't spoon feed everyone, but still offer the ladder to climb so to speak. Last time I took a break raiders were dying off hard and it was really difficult to replace them due to itemization. I think we can agree that is def not the case now. While we lost a bunch of good raiders during those times, I still feel like there are plenty of players out there worth raiding and hanging out with. A few I have come across lately possibly even better.

Next xpack will tell a good story.

Everyone in our guild and alliance has been helping new players with red adorns as well. Given how hard it is (for a working person) just to keep a single main raid ready (infusing & whatnot)...a lot of us just end up stacking extra red runes in our bags..

Why not share them?

Stop pretending like having a job excludes you from having a well geared character.

I've worked 40+ hour weeks for the last 14 years and been in a top 10 ranked guild for 12 of them.

It's not time that stops people, it's inefficiency and lack of ability or knowledge.

40-hour work weeks are not the only thing people do outside of EQ2. Your efficiency may only entail looking out for yourself instead of an entire guild.