TSO Instances: not casual?

Caverns of the Afflicted is easy. A 30 minute or 45 min tops zone.
If you can take mezzer and a warlock, it makes the zone significantly easier. If you don't have access to these then you have to adjust your strategy. For example:
If you don't have a mezzer, or strong AoE capabilities, simply body pull the groups to your party. Everyone needs to wait until the mobs are in your camp. Then simply kill one by one, but leave ONE of them alive. Pull the next group to your pull spot, repeat. Pull third group to your spot, repeat. You should have 3 half-dead mobs in-camp by this point that are solo mobs. Move ahead to the next group, repeat. Work your way to the named. When you are ready for the named, kill all of the remaining half-dead mobs, then kill named. This will keep mobs from respawning as you move, and once the specific named mobs are killed, the mobs will stop respawning.
Kill named. They are all cake, other than perhaps the Joker, whose adds can be a bit of a pain if you aren't a high DPS group. But even so, just focus on him and burn him down, or adjust your tactics accordingly.

When you get downstairs to the ramp, same thing. Kill all but 1 of the group, pull the corner up to top of ramp, do the same, move to corner, pull the second wave of ramp mobs, but always leave 1 alive so the groups do not respawn on top of you. Best choice is to wait for the pather group at the T intersection and pull one or two of the large groups back up to your corner at the midway ramp point, then kill ALL but 2 mobs from the T intersection groups. Then move into T intersection, repeat the process, and move to entrance of the named room. Slaughter your mobs, move in, kill named.
Of course this requires HEAVY concentration. You have to keep track of which mobs are killable and which ones you need to keep alive. Having a mezzer makes this task easier, but it's extremely doable without (I've ran this zone with about 5 different group setups and just have to adjust accordingly).
The worm queen mob can be a pain...be sure to either have someone who can cure noxious or bring plenty of pots. As I recall this poison DoT does 1-2k power drain per SECOND if it's left up. That's the hardest part about this mob. Other than that you can jump over her when she's in zerk mode and avoid getting hit.
Regardless, CoA is a 30-45 min zone, max. We are not mythical. We are fabled epics, and I've done this zone with MC and legendary gear on alts. (entire group was MC and legendary weapons).
It isn't snide. It's truth. If you can't handle adjusting strategies dependant upon your group setup it has nothing to do with the diffculty of the zone, it has to do with you as a player being unable to play smart and adjust.
You can easily run Scion of Ice, Deep Forge, CoA, Anathema, Crucible, Abbey, and Hollow Tower with MC and legendary (although a couple of the named are a **** with low DPS, like the coffin-Vampire in Abbey), and none of these zones should take you longer than an hour, hour and half at most. If you can't handle it...it's not the fault of the game. It's the fault of the players.

Pedorro@Butcherblock wrote:

There is a way to move through this part of the zone without having more than 2 groups on you at any point in time. Doing so means you will be in constant combat, so you need either massive AE DPS or power regen (a bard or chanter are enough regen to do this). Since the mobs do not hit hard, a single healer is enough.
While some may look at that and think it is a fairly specific group requirement for an easy zone, remember that the only reason it is an easy zone is because with a group setup like this (which involves having any 2 of about half of the classes in the game) it is a pushover.
Not sure which thread I posted it in, but the difficulty levels posted for TSO instances are a guide, they are not absolutes. A group that has trouble in Caverns of the Afflicted due to not enough AE DPS may well be able to plow through Necrotic Asylum. Very few of the zones have an actual difficulty rating based on how hard mobs hit.

bks6721 wrote:

All this says to me is that you are not even trying.
There is a shard quest for Scion of Ice that has you killing the first 12 trash mobs in the zone. Once you have killed them, you are done. Same can be said for Caverns, there is a shard quest that requires you to kill the trash mobs in the group at the start. Deep Forge has one where you can get a shard from killing a single mob and harvesting 12 books.
If you only have 7 shards, the only thing that sayd to me is that you are not trying to get them. In all three of the above examples (that come up every 2 - 3 days it seems) you do not even need to kill a named mob in the zone. You can get a group, get the quests and run them, get the shards, and then attempt to make progress in the rest of the zone, assuming your having issues with it.
Its less a matter of perspective as it is a matter of just going out and playing the game.

With CoA and VOES you can go through them and get by fairly easily with about any group make up. This makes pickup and go a lot easier. What frustrates me is this "you need this setup" to beat it type stuff. It's either mezzer or DPS. I used to do instances a heck of a lot, heck even raids. It would be nice if one or two of the TSO zones were on par with COA and VOES. I've never fully completed maidens, usually issues at sandstorm and my necro had to drop for a "DPS" class so they could beat the zone. wth this stuff is frustrating. (we had a mezzer).

There was how many instances? Why does it bother you if a couple are toned down.

Nuhus wrote:

Of The easiest 12 instances, you have 1 that has AE DPS is a major benifit (Najena's Hollow Tower, its not needed, but it really does help), and thats honestly about it. Single target DPS helps to kill stuff faster, but that is true with anything.
Obviously you can't just randomly invite any player of any class to your group, but Scion of Ice and Oblisk of Akhzul are as forgiving on group makup and gear quality as CoA is. The only thing that mkes them harder right now is the fact that the encounters are not as well understood as the CoA encounters are.
As for a mezzer, they are not required until you hit the very top of the instances in TSO, and by the time the majority of players get there, I would say there would be enough readily avalible information about the encounters to not specifically need one anyway.

Nuhus wrote:

Offhand, I know of three TSO instances that would qualify.....Scion and Abbey and Forge. Done them all with several mixes of group members. The only "requirement" was we needed a 2nd healer for Abbey. Other than that, the rest of the group ranged from mix of scouts, mix of mages, mix of both, even a 73 Guardian tagged along once for Scion and Forge. Sure some group makeups went smoother...but all were doable.

Thanon@Runnyeye wrote:

I wouldn't put the Crucible on that list, the normal guild group I'm in can do Necrotic Asylum which arguably has harder hitting mobs (melee crits for almost up to 10k dmg autoattack from named) with higher HP (not even the boss named yet CoFE can have up to 1.3 million HP), heck, even the normal/trash mobs actually have a shot at killing you here with a CURSE debuff that makes your crushing mitigation 0% and then it only takes 1 hit from them - yet can't do The Crucible. The Master in the Crucible reflects just about everything a spell caster can throw at him - you can avoid debuffs, AOEs, etc all you want but in the end if you didn't take scouts instead of mages this fight will be harder than the Moderate to Hard zones.
The rest sure, I can agree with, but The Crucible you really need to have a specific group makeup, much more specific than even the Moderate to Hard zones.

My Illusionist doesn't seem to have any problems dishing out his normal DPS versus the Master in Crucible. In fact, he actually parses pretty well in that fight because his AE's land on all the adds the Master summons.
I see the occasional reflect, but it's not a big deal.

Detor wrote:

I've done him with a group that was filled with Guardian, Templar, Troubadour, Necromancer, Illusionist, and a Brigand. The casters never had a problem. When you use your debuffs, he's cake. Just wade through the doggy adds and he's a cinch. It doesn't require scouts.

Banditman wrote:

Well, I don't know what he was doing differently because when I look back at logs (try to avoid that particular zone now) it was more akin to reflect, reflect reflect, spell gets through, reflect reflect reflect. He was way more difficult than many named in the Moderate to Hard zones - at least from a perspective of try try try try....in his case, try try try try try try try giveup whereas named in some Moderate to Hard zones where it's been try try win.
After a few minutes he'd been whittled down to about 80-90% health by melee hits mostly, and finally an AoE, "Elemental Strike" according to log - heat damage, killed us. We were already pretty weakened by the massive amount of reflected damage though when the AOE hit.
Loot tends to be better in the end with the Moderate to Hard zones than in The Crucible as well - so really I'm just missing out on the experience of being able to do the crucible moreso than any item. I'd definately consider The Crucible more difficult than Necrotic Asylum or Anchor of Bazzul just from personal experience.

Thanon@Runnyeye wrote:

Debuffs were a terrible idea - we learned that fast when a debuff got reflected back then somebody AoE'd and it did massive dmg back to group. (learned no AoEs fast too) It's funny you say no scouts needed then say you managed to do it with a group that was 33% scouts.

If it was me, I'd tell all these casters to chill on the AE damage until they were sure their spells were landing. An "all caster" group is probably a bad idea. Our group was pretty mixed with Scouts and Mages in DPS positions.
Nevertheless, this is a 30 minute zone. Codexicon is by far the hardest encounter in there, and once understood, it's not all that bad . . . unless it bugs.

Banditman wrote:

I said we learned fast not to use AoEs or debuffs on him. Bottom line though the Crucible if you don't have the exact setup required is FAR less flexible than almost all the other zones. You can say on your list of zones that "if somebody can't handle it then it's the player not the zone" but in the case of the Crucible you can have good players, in good gear (not raid, but good group gear), that can't do the zone BECAUSE of the design of the zone. Unless you boot somebody, and find the exact group setup the designer wanted for it (which is not required for other zones to near the same degree) the mob will just be impossible for you. No matter how "good" a player you are.
The Master isn't about teamwork where nobody can make a mistake such as Dread Exarch Mordek, it isn't about learning a strategy that allows you to overcome it by doing the right thing such as Marcus in Evernight with the sun, it isn't about having the dps to kill the mob before adds overrun you like Coagulation of Flesh and Evil. The Master is about the people you normally group with having picked the right class back whenever they made their character that would be needed a few expansions later for this specific mob.
I'm no longer saying change it, because there are plenty of other zones with better loot that are perfectly doable, even far easier in fact, but I don't think The Crucible should be listed on any list where you say the equivalent of "do these zones or you suck".

Gaylon@Mistmoore wrote:

About three years ago.
Anything requiring that degree of organisation qualifies as "hardcore" nowadays.
I play MMOs pretty much every day of the week, after I get in from work and at weekends. I mainly duo with my girlfriend or solo if she's not around. My hours played are hardcore, but my playstyle is casual. I describe my playstyle as "pottering".
I haven't done the organised grouping thing since about 6 months after EQ2 launched, although I did plenty of it in various MMOs in the 5 years before that. I really can't imagine ever going back to it - it does seem "hardcore" to me now, although back when I actually was doing it, it was considered "casual" becasue it wasn't raiding.
It's the degree of organisation that I find off-putting. Other players, be they friends or not, have their own agendas. They don't necessarily want to do what I want to do , or when I want to do it, or how i want to do it, or for as long as I want to do it. Three or four years ago, I had to put up with that because MMOs pretty much insisted on it, and there weren;t that many MMOs.
Nowadays, most MMOs provide enough "casual" content to keep me occupied for a good long while, and when I run out in a any given MMO I can just move to another, since nowadays there are dozens of them.
Last year, my girlfriend and I spent a total of 10 weeks playing EQ2 - we completed all the RoK content we could duo, made 80th as adventurers and crafters and did the Frostfell content. After Christmas we left and didn't come back until TSO. We are currently doing the Moors of Ykesha content and Frostfell. When that's done it will goodbye to EQ2 until the next expansion.
Since we both have Station Access accounts, SoE get the same money whether we play or not. But next year, for the first time since we got EQ in 1999, we are considering closing our SoE accounts while we play non-SoE MMOs until the next EQ/EQ2 expansions.
If all the content in the EQ2 expansions scaled to the size of the group doing it, as well as to the level, we'd be locked in for several months longer.

Before this expansion there were very few fights that required any "Organization". They were mainly Tank hold agro, Healer heal, Dps kill it dead rinse and repeat, I fail to see how an MMO of all things should cater so much to solo/duo instances, Its just doesn't make any sense to me. MMO= Massive MULTIPLAYER Online, Its not multiplayer to watch people walk by too, they could script NPC's to do that.

Natthan@Venekor wrote:

Basically MMO doesn't infer that you have to group, it isn't in the acronym MMO. SO there are many different playstyles while you might not like them they do exist, and should have some content for them. TSO IMO had very little solo content, this I believe is more the balance to what rok was. When the next expansion comes out and we are at <insert next level cap> the two expansions will make alot of sense.

Detor wrote:

Against The Master, all a caster needs to remember is to not debuff and to not cast green AEs if at all possibble. Casters are better off casting nothing than a green AE if the adds are not up, and hold all green AEs until you have used all blue (these do not get reflected, as the target is 'self' not the mob).
So, basically, if adds are up cast blue AEs, if they are not, cast single target spells. It is not a bad idea to increase the resist type of the damage you deal as well.
Since the listed damage amount on a spell is the damage range it does before resists are factored in, if you can get your resists up to 75% or higher with the damage types you do, the damage from single target resists will be minimal.
Oh, and no AE control effects.

TBH I was never even aware that the Master had a reflect spell. I've ran Crucible well over a dozen times with multiple group scenarios and the entire zone has never taken us more than 45 minutes. So either the casters in my group know what they are doing or something else is in our favor. I'm just a clueless tank, after all =P Me smash, me bash!

Danean@Guk wrote:

If you play casually, you won't have that team. You might be in a small guild with other casual players but that doesnt make a team. Chances are that regularly those folk won't have a full group, and chances are when they on occasion do, they will have low levels of experience in a scripted encounter, which typically ends in defeat no matter how skilled they might be individually.
Also, you are confusing a lack of a team with soloing, which is not in any shape or form the same thing. There is some solo content in TSO, there is a ton of content for organized full groups, there is nothing inbetween, and that is what the root problem is.
You did not give any compelling reason why content suited for those people shouldnt have been included. Not including it was simply a dumb move, since it excluded a chunk of the playerbase. And it is a move that the game is going to pay with by bleeding subscriptions.

Martn@Kithicor wrote:

Hardcore isn't necesarily how many hours you put in (allthough hardcore players generally do play a lot), it is more a frame of mind, the willingness to butt heads with an encounter 20 times to figure out a way of beating it for example. Someone who plays relatively low hours could fall into that group, but usually anyone who does pretty much allways has a semipermanent group organized with very close friends. If you don't need to look for group members, deal with people bailing, have a constant group setup and play with people who are on the same page as you (ie play as a team), you can get a lot done with relatively low play times, whereas people who dont have those things going for them will likely take a lot longer to achieve the same goal.