The problem with Resolve restricted zones and summer raiding.

I had concerns about the resolve mechanic before it went live and I voiced them. Now that the content is live I'd like to share an experience with the devs for consideration as they choose whether or not to go forward with the resolve mechanic.

Summer raiding in eq2 means open spots for a guild like mine. We do NOT allow bots in our raid force and as a result our weekend (saturday and sunday) raids tend to be a little light, especially Saturday and especially during the summer. Since 2008 when I guilded and began raiding with this guild that's the way it's been. It won't change, no matter how populated the game is. Folks that aren't a hardcore player with absolutely nothing better to do than play this game, go out and enjoy the weekends during warm weather.

Its never stopped us in the past. Now here comes resolve. Saturday about a week ago our raid force looks typical for a saturday, about 3 groups. We clear through all of Maldura forge of ashes, minus the captains. Had I had an extra tank on for the encounter I think we could have easily cleared the zone entirely, Captain included. May have been close to the time check on it, but 3 groups and the upgrades to potency I believe it would have been doable.

At this point in the night we have nothing else to really hit besides the first named in the new zek raid zone, due to lockouts. We figure ok, if we can clear through nearly all of maldura, that first named in zek should be doable right? The raid setup at this point is 19 folks. We mosey in there and begin pulls and can't seem to get it down. The tank keeps dying to regular damage. Double check our resolve and with 19 folks in the raid it does turn out we're 40-50 under the resolve check. Our raid setup that particular night contained several duplicates: 2 conji's, 2 Illy's, 2 coercers, 2 troubs. 2 mystics, 2 templars. This is typical for most raid nights but it just so happened that thanks to the fact that resolve doesn't stack from the same classes, 19 folks and the above duplicates put us so far under the mark that the encounter wasn't happening for us.

Following day, Sunday raid time rolls around and 20 folks are online at start. We pop back over to zek and low and behold we are at or in some cases above the resolve check. Only one more raider actually present but because several of the classes that just weren't present the night before were there, we had enough resolve. At that point the mob dies in one pull. We easily wasted 10+ pulls the night before, at which point we gave up.

The number of raiders did not cause the fail on the encounter, the lack of diversity of classes did. This is a horrible mechanic. I should not have to keep on my raid rosters "extras" of each and every class just in case on a particular shorthanded night I don't have the diversity to meet resolve checks. Had resolve mechanic been implemented on all raid zones, I probably would have had to cancel my Saturday raid. Even though I had the dps and heals to fill out 3 groups and clear zones, the diversity of classes lacked.

I see an easy solution to this if the devs of eq2 insist on continuing with resolve as a combat mechanic. Make all resolve buffs stack and make each persons contribution equal. Like others in separate threads have pointed out, there is no rhyme or reason why class x gives 15 resolve to a raid and class y only gives 5.

the ryhme and reason was simple, though. it was to encourage a raidforce to bring in some of the usually 'neglected' classes. riads not bringing in swashys? lets tgive them 15 resolve buff. tanks mostly all warriors and monks? lets give the crusaders 15 resolve, ect.

Resolve is Crit Mit 3.0 (or 4?) with the added bonus of penalizing guilds/raids with less than optimal setups.

Terrible design philosophy and implementation.

If you want to make less utilized classes more desirable, try making them more desirable rather than adding a gimmick that screws over way too many people.

I Agree make the less played classes more desirable!

I'd be fine with a diminishing return for duplicate classes.

For example, if you had 3 people playing the same class:
(Class X gives 15)
Member 1 gives 15
Member 2 gives 7
Member 3 gives 1

(Class Y gives 10)
Member 1 gives 10
Member 2 gives 5
Member 3 gives 1

(Class Z gives 5)
Member 1 gives 5
Member 2 gives 3
Member 3 gives 1


I actually really like Resolve, and I like that classes have varying amounts... I just feel that the gap between the 3 amounts is too harsh. I would prefer 2 / 4 / 6 or 3 / 6 / 9 .... because as it is now, many common raid situations can instantly make "easy" content completely impossible to even attempt, as the OP has stated.

I can see attendance not being "perfect" and that causing you to be unable to handle doing T3 content, but when it makes you unable to attempt T1... then I think the system needs to be tweaked a little bit.

Why not make them stackable? If you have 2 mage groups.. an OT grp, and MT grp, you've already got 2 troubs for mage, 2 dirge for scouts in the ot/mt grps, 2 illys for you mages and 2 coes for your tanks... that''s 4 people with resolve buffs that aren't going to be counted that could really help the rest of the raid.. not to mention the hypothetical duplicate dps classes one might have in a raid

very poor mechanic that pretty much stalls smaller guilds that are have numbers to get through the ToT content, but not enough to do Zek because of resolve..

One big issue I see going forward with the different (and non-stacking) resolve for different classes.. which classes are weak/undesirable/etc CHANGES nearly every expac as mechanics, hitpoint pools, incoming damage, etc changes... so unless they redo how much resolve each class gets every expac, we're eventually going to have 'weak' classes with LESS resolve the 'strong' classes...

The problem with resolve, is resolve...

The time to implement this mechanic was 2009. Not 2016.

Agreed, 3/6/9 and allow 2 of the same class to stack. This mechanic needs to be a little more flexible, you can still accomplish your goals without making it so frustratingly restrictive.

It's been a lot more forgiving since they lowered the resolve on the raid mobs.

However, it is still a very strange and arbitrary method to encourage class variation.

I also really am not seeing how it is like "crit mit," It's only a little bit like crit mit.

What makes resolve inherently a poor concept is the class variation concept.

If we are really trying to get diff classes in the raid... then they classes themselves need to be tweaked and or have raid scripts that require certain classes.

Allowing 2 buffs to stack but not 3 might be tricky to code.
Allowing all buffs to stack means mob resolve checks would need to be increased/ re-balanced.
Either one will require some maths, but I think that's why Developers get paid to do what they do!

So hopefully they are listening, because the OP has a great example of a 19 player raid having 40-50 less resolve than a 20 person raid. That's a huge gap when Resolve checks are all between 80 points of each other!

Thanks for considering my feedback, appreciate knowing it was read and considered by the devs.

When we were missing 4 people one time (due to being late or something) and attempted a name, that ~20%+ less raidwide resolve was pretty brutal and we wiped easily in a few seconds. I don't see how 1% extra damage per resolve from raid mobs, that do large amounts of damage, is fair anyway.