Specific 3 Sages Feedback

[LardLord]

<p>From test update notes:</p><p><em>Sage Encounter – The AOE spells for the sages have had their radius reduced.  You now have 10 seconds rather than 5 to complete the HO to remove their prismatic spheres.  <strong>Sages will now wait 80 secs from the time their prismatic spheres are removed before recasting the next one.</strong>  In challenge-mode the 3 sages now have lower maximum health.</em></p><p>First off, I understand that nerfs happen to raid mobs all the time.  I expect it, and I know this isn't a very popular fight, so I'm not trying to say that it should stay exactly as it is on live forever.</p><p>However, I think the bolded part of the nerf goes too far since it makes the mob way less fun, not just way easier.  On live, the part of the fight that people seem to enjoy (I know I do, at least) is getting the heroic opportunity in ASAP.  The faster we get it in, the more time we have to DPS.  That's what creates the "urgency" in this fight and keeps it from being a total snoozefest (for some of us, at least).  With the change, the fight is left without an urgency and there already isn't much danger.  If this nerf goes live, I fail to see any reason to get excited about the fight...we just jump through a few hoops at our leisure and collect the loot.  It's not even a good fight to parse on or anything.</p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The use of HOs on this fight is cool and unique, and I hate to see it ruined.</span>  I don't like the change from 5 seconds to 10 either (the other two changes don't bother me), but I'm really trying to focus on the biggest issue and hope it gets changed so that I don't have to be bored out of my mind each time we do this encounter.</p><p>I hope I was able to articulate the issue at least to some degree.  Thanks for considering this feedback.</p>

[SacDaddy420]

<p>I completely agree with him.</p>

[Notsovilepriest]

<p>Boot Miss!</p>

[Korrupt]

<p>Lowering the hp or increasing burn time is fine, but not both. Both is a typical SOE overkill that will trivialize this encounter.</p>

[LardLord]

<p>Well, the encounter is already really easy.  There's a better chance of actually wiping now that they added the bolt fail condition, but you can still have 23 people dead at once and recover if you want. </p><p>In the current form on live, I like how you have to get the HO in quickly or you end up without much/any burn time.  I know it doesn't really qualify as "challenging," but at least it adds some urgency to the encounter so you can't just do the encounter "at your own pace." </p><p>With the change on test (as I understand it), you'll be able to just sit there as long as you want without completing an HO and then still have the same amount of time to burn as a raid that got the HO in ASAP.  Not sure I'm doing a great job of explaining it, but doesn't that seem especially lame to people? I mean it's one thing to make an encounter easier, but to remove the only element that even makes it feel like a fight (as opposed to feeling like a dance or something) is just going to make the fight even more tedius for me.</p>

[Sydares]

<p><3 Quabi. Personally though, I'm alright with it, mostly because the heroic opportunity element was a very polarizing mechanic to begin with - I think the bolded part always felt to me to be a brutal punishment for the times when your raid setup was wrong and you had the people that couldn't complete HOs. Nothing quite so demoralizing as getting the spheres down and then have them pop right back up.</p><p>I loathe this encounter - it's everything I hate about EQ2 rolled up into one. Curing, fail conditions, heroic opportunities, and not one but <strong>two</strong> elevator rides if you fully wipe. Blugh. Anything that makes it more palatable is fine by me. <em></em></p><p><em>Edit: (Then again, I'd be perfectly happy if HOs - which have been largely irrelevant for how many expansions now - were removed altogether.)</em></p>

[Tehom]

<p>Frankly, I despise this encounter and just want it over with as quickly as possible. I don't see why I would want a fight I simply don't enjoy to take longer than necessary, and any fight in which we cycle in the fighter alts for the HO pretty much automatically qualifies as lame for me. It's the only challenge mode in the expansion that I strongly dislike - I know some hate the twins, but they don't bother me at all, and Maalus is great.</p><p>In my opinion, I think the fight should have been designed so that the HO differed based on the archetype of the player that started it, and required 3 out of the 4 archetypes to allow more flexibility in group construction. The class requirement constraint is a heck of a lot more hard-coded than on something like Zarrakon, where you could easily have scouts tank, and we haven't had a requirement for all 3 fighter class-types in a raid ever. That's really why I hate it. People who have the right classes are just cheery about this encounter, but what if we take this sort of nonsense to its logical extreme? Have fights where only druids or shamans can heal, or only a cleric can cure an effect, or where only summoners can damage a mob? Yeah, raids with the right class composition would have a ball, but everyone else thinks it's contrived and silly.</p>

[Corydonn]

<p><cite>Sydares wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><3 Quabi. Personally though, I'm alright with it, mostly because the heroic opportunity element was a very polarizing mechanic to begin with - I think the bolded part always felt to me to be a brutal punishment for the times when your raid setup was wrong and you had the people that couldn't complete HOs. Nothing quite so demoralizing as getting the spheres down and then have them pop right back up.</p></blockquote><p>All 3 tank groups can easily complete the HO's and there isn't a need to bring in alts except maybe for tanks which doesn't make the encounter anymore painful. We've done it with an undergeared crusader alt and it just took a little bit of extra work from the support classes in his group to fix aggro issues before the HO completes.</p>

[Sydares]

<p>While I do agree that having hard-coded class requirements is a cheesy and annoying effort to shoe-horn certain classes into spots in raid guilds, It's really not the problem I had with this fight. The problem was largely the HOs, and since they've opted to make that aspect less irritating, I'm all for it.</p>

[Eldrie]

<p><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>any fight in which we cycle in the fighter alts for the HO pretty much automatically qualifies as lame for me</p></blockquote><p>This.</p><p>While I can understand fighting to maintain whatever sense of accomplishment we all can eke out of HM 3 Sages, I don't think that encouraging tedious raid mechanics is the way to do it. Easier to just accept that this fight will never be truly challenging without fundamental changes.</p>

[ATTHWSM]

<p>Ok lets just get it out there right now.</p><p>90% of the weak raid guilds, either struggle with this fight, or cannot do it at all.  The 2 sticking points for easy mode clearing are Sages,and Celis.  NOTHING else in easy mode is a remotely hard challenge, for any guild, not just the best. </p><p>With that said, why change it?  Why change one of two harder easy mode modes just to appeal to raiders that arent at that level of teamwork yet?  I agree with ONE thing, and ONE thing only about this supposed nerf, and that is lowering the hps of the mob, both one asy and on hard.  HGL doesnt put out a stupid amout of dps like defiance does, but it still takes us 10-12 minutes to kill this mob, assuming there are no screw ups eary on.  That is ridiculous for an easy mode mob tbh, its likr MPS all over again. </p><p>I completely disagree with the Sphere nerf, and the HO nerf.  The sphere/HO is what makes this fight remotely hard because otherwise you would just burn Brawler/Crusader mob down in 2 minutes  and have the entire raid smoke the warrior mob.  Whats hard with that?  Nothing is more funny than watching boot fail, or have a healer not dps at the last second to get the HO in, with 10 seconds you can basically cast it, miss, wait for recast, cast again and still make the HO in time.  That is weak.</p><p>Im not trying to block guilds that are struggling with this, AT ALL, but the fight is the 2nd to last fight in the xpac for easy mode, its not spozed to be a turn and burn OMG collect loots.</p><p>So Again, I say:</p><p>1. DO NOT extend the Sphere recast time, cuz it keeps the fight from being tank and spank.</p><p>2. DO NOT give us 10 seconds to complete the HO, this again turns the fight into a lazy tank and spank.</p><p>3. DO lower the mob hps, because its MPS all over again.  IF you have a fight figured out, and are not wiping for 10 minutes, theres no reason to have to fight for another 10 minutes. </p><p>Hope this was broke down decently, in a way that really supports the NON nerf.</p><p>ALSO - DONT nerf Mystic/Fury mythical, no one is complaining that its op, broken, or unfair.  Fix things that people agree on that are broken.</p><p>-Garaktun 90 Mystic of HGL on NEK</p>

[ATTHWSM]

<p>Holy crap nobody else is upset with this?  I never post here and Im posting over how BS of a dumbdown this is.  This would be like if you had nerfed NExona in RoK 3 months into it, your hardcore players that pay for multiple accounts, play the most, and let you know about all the bugs and fixes that need to happen, would have been very upset.</p>

[Splice]

<p>I can fully agree with you, i have found that most of the fights in Roehn Theer are really fun in my opinion and the sages took some work to learn but that what makes them a raid tough raid mob. Hell Roehn theer in my opinion is a reward mob from killing the sages. But thats just cause we got the strat down alot faster than making sure that the sages lost theirs stone skin quick enough. Not to mention it only reall took us two nights of 1-2 hours of pulls to learn that mob and it was even fun learning it, and most of the people in my guild would agree. Im not saying that everymob they have shouldnt be nerfed cause believe me Perah'Celsis is one tough dude we havent been able to kill him yet. But the sages were not that hard in my opinion and raid mobs are raid mobs becuase of the strat intensive ideas behind them and i dont think this is a good idea.<a href="http://lootdb.com/eq2/mob/Perah%27Celsis"></a></p>

[Rigid]

<p><span style="font-family: ">I really enjoyed learning this mob as it is. I never once thought the strat sucked. It did take a few pulls to for everyone to figure out their role in the fight but the reward in killing it was worth it. Of all the raid mobs SOE has made for this expansion I really do not see the issue with this one. The random charm from Para I can see needing nerfed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: ">I'm sorry I just haven't seen anything really in this expansion that I would actually consider "difficult" and you are already nerfing it? I'm all about a few easy loots out there but if you take away the challenge of the content then you're going to lose more top end raiders than gain from making the content easy to please a few people who can't work together to kill something as is. I mean it's not like people are not killing the mob.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: ">I am pretty sure with this change many of the raid guilds out there will be able to kill the brawler and crusader names before the first stone skin or with only one. Hell some of them are doing it now. </span></p>

[EasternKing]

<p>I just want to say,</p><p>I almost 100% sure it is the HC guilds that complained about this mob, and that is the only reason they are getting changed.</p><p>Lots and lots of posts here and on flames by the HC raiders expressing their displeasure with this encounter.</p><p>And just LOL at difficult, its not difficult or hard, it is sheer mind numbing boredom, hence the changes being made.</p>