Ward of Elements needs to be toned WAY DOWN!

As a point of reference, we hit 55k dps on the first named last night. It was our second time as a guild in there, though many of our players are well experienced in WoE. Most of the players were decently equipped, usually t2 and fabled or t2/t3 and mythical.

There's a new Digg strat I've seen on Crushbone in the last few weeks and it's genius. It makes the hardest part of the fight the pull. Have one player (we've had our tank do it, but anyone can) run up to Digg's island and activate the snake bridge. This takes some careful manuevering but he has less of an aggro range than you think. Then the whole raid stands on the last island by the snake spawner. Digg is tanked on the far part of that island, tank stands on the second one, the raid at the back of the island. The tank pulls dig standing with the rest of the raid, and spins him into the spot described hopefully before the frontal lands. The only cause of wipe we've had doing this was the thank falling off =p This way you don't have to have anyone run to get the snake, just someone moving it when it spawns. The stun phase is easy enough to wait out, and three good healers will get you through the DoT phase. I hadn't hear of using the relic/signet of stability and I'll suggest it next time, that first 20-30% of the fight takes more than half the time.

Dayakara we beat our second night through. We couldn't beat it the first time, our predators were absent and we took some underequipped dps. To compare, we did 28k on the first named that night. We got Dayakara down to 25% that first night doing an all out burn and our amazing, truly talented healers allowed us to get that far. The second night, even with the much improved dps we couldn't get her past 15% before being overwhelmed. We tried offtanking the adds with every combo but it didn't work. So we had our two enchanters mez the adds that fight and she went down with only minor hiccups. That dot is pretty nasty, but I'll look into reading the buff on her and seeing if we can mitigate it better.

To our surprise we killed Grush after 3 tries. We just did a straight burn not messing with any idols or anything. We had melee joust the aoe (when he flails his arms) and everyone else stand on the lip around the room and tanked him and the adds where he stands. After the first add went down it was trivial to heal and it was just waiting him out like the first part of Digg.
We're going to attempt Aiden next time. We only passed because no one on the raid had ever been a rock grabber before and because we were gonna lose a few people to time constraints.

The Signet/Relic just works wonders First thing I tell my guildies before we go is hit up the Relic merchant in the guildhall.

Huntress Jellica wrote:

We've probably got the positioning sorted enough now that this is possible. When we first started trying, we didn't have sufficient curing and the positioning was not right so I would get one-shotted. This was in a previous guild by the way.

I'm not really interested in reading 40 pages of gum flapping but I would like to say this: The zone is more or less fine but I would like to see Aiden not port (or port no more than one) healers to get boulders. My guild generally blows up the zone with 3 healers (which is plenty) but getting randomly shafted with a wipe because 2 of the 3 get ported is absolutely stupid.
That is all.

I've done this zone before, as my defiler, with only 2 other healers. In fact the first time I was in a raid that beat it we had a Templar, Defiler(me), and an alt Druid. We even did the book room with the 3 healers. The best thing to do is have people running for bolders so you don't have to worry about your healers taking time to pick bolders up.

Always run it with a Defiler, Templar in the MT group and then a Warden in then second group (DPS). The whole zone is extremly easy these days.
Hell, the only thing to die on in there is the stupid AoE, DoT or whatever it is and even that can be ranged easily.
EDIT: I will actually take back what I said. Only because it all depends on the people running it and their equipment and skills. I suppose the zone could be hard.

Noaani wrote:

I've cleared WoE with temp + warden for mt heals and no shaman in raid just fine

woe is not hard and doesnt require any special setup as lon as ppl in raid know what they r doing - right now zone is ok compare to loot it drops. Just would like to see 2 x shoulder patterns drop from last named

Laylle wrote:

Do that with a tank geared up to the point of the raid in question, then come back and say so.
Gear can compensate for a whole lot of things.

Noaani wrote:

Point. Though, I've also gone about half way through WoW with a T2 tank guard using mystic + warden. (that one only stopped because of drama)

Laylle wrote:

Do me a quick favour...
Next time this tank logs on, target him. Then...
/point
/laugh
/t %t Noaani from the official forms told me to point and laugh at you, because you are wearing shard jewelery.
Thanks!

Noaani wrote:

A person has to start somewhere. My original point being however, the answer isn't always ditching the druid...

Somewhere, yes. But starting off the broker is considerably better than starting off the shard merchant for tanking jewelery.

Noaani wrote:

Who said the person was in T2 jewelry? Having said that, some of the Infused jewelry is quite a bit better then the RoK crap on the broker... and a lot of the no-drop jewelry from various instances can be pretty nice. (See the fabled drops off the final encounter in Emperor's Athenaeum, for example: http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Mhere%27s...onary_of_Combat ).

You said the tank was geared similar to the tank in the OP. The tank in the OP was averagly geared, but had crap jewelery. There is far better stuff you can buy on the broker and get from easy RoK solo quests. Its defensive stuff, which is exactly what you need when you have no shaman on a raid.

Noaani wrote:

Actually I was replying to your previous remark, "Do that with a tank geared up to the point of the raid in question, then come back and say so." I've done it with a tank 'geared up to that point of the raid in question'... and yes, it went fine.
Having SEEN all of the RoK quest gear, some of the infused jewelry IS better. For example, the Stone Tower set is rather decent for defensive gear. http://eq2.zam.com/search.html?q=Stone Tower . It has a big chunk of HP, a bunch of +parry/+defence, rather nice set bonuses, and a good spread of resists.
Speaking of quest gear, the moors quests have quite a few decent items as well.
Edit: Mind you... I misunderstood your remark thinking you meant someone, 'geared up from content up to but excluding WoE'. I am not entirely sure what my tank had for jewelry... but his armor was all T2. I was however trying to make the point that buying from the broker doesn't always mean 'better then T2 jewelry'.

Further Noaani, belittling the OP tank does very little to get your point accross outside of making you look like a jerk. (Unless... of course, that is your point. In which case, good job!).

Laylle wrote:

So you have no idea what is and is not good tanking gear.
Gotcha.
Obviously if you buy caster jewelery from the broker, it won't be as good for a guardian as T2 tanking jewelery. if your smart about it though, you can get better.

Noaani wrote:

Enlighten me. List all this better jewelry one can find on the broker. Don't forget the PRICES of said items, as the few items that one can find on the broker that actually ARE better tend to cost a fortune. (To someone who obviously isn't in raiding gear, YES price is an issue.)
Here, I'll help.
Cloaks: http://eq2.zam.com/db/broker.html?s...0&statval1=
Ears: http://eq2.zam.com/db/broker.html?s...&statval1=0
(Sarnak Earring of Station is 'ok')
Ring: http://eq2.zam.com/db/broker.html?s...2=80&page=1
(Malevor Ring of Gnashing is decent, 30p however. OP tank would be better served buying a Master.)

You get the idea. Yes resist gear can be found on the broker. No, I do not think loading up in all resist gear makes for a good tank.

Allurana wrote:

Is what your post should've said.
You basically have no raid experience (It's hard to count old content like that as raid experience when it's barely a glorified Heroic zone with a bunch of 80s in shard gear doing zones like Labs or Godking, and both of those are 1-2 grouped now) but you are complaining about not being able to clear current tier content. x2/x4 doesn't really matter. A raid zone is still a raid zone and it should be approached by a raid force and not 2 instance groups slapped together. If anything, the potential for failure in x2 is higher because it's easier for a raid of 24 to carry 1 weak player than 12.
That's to be expected. If you're getting mauled on trash mobs in WoE, good luck beating Pawbuster, which is last expansion's content. Next time, try asking what was wrong with your raid - because there's quite a few - instead of whining because you want excuses for your own shortcomings or you're just plain ignorant of your own failings.