Icy Keep: Retribution (Raid) Feedback

[Gninja]

<p><cite>getta wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Did they improve the drops in zone or at least the amount of drops, to make it worth while to even do the zone?</p></blockquote><p>We are currently reviewing that. Unsure when changes will make it to live but it is definately being looked at.</p>

[Pervis]

<p><cite>Gninja wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>getta wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Did they improve the drops in zone or at least the amount of drops, to make it worth while to even do the zone?</p></blockquote><p>We are currently reviewing that. Unsure when changes will make it to live but it is definately being looked at.</p></blockquote><p>I hear itemization is a group effort now.</p><p>If thats the case, I am not surprised its not been done yet. I mean, with people working on important things like experience calculations, EQ2fwe, marketplace items, changes to betrayal, and my favourite... making sure everyone has their Fan Faire cloak, its no wonder unimportant things like itemization get left at the bottom of the pile.</p>

[Odys]

<p>I just started to raid a bit, we do Tox (fast and nice entry raid), Labo and Palace (issues with crab and barrier). </p><p>I wonder what is that BP quest, does it mean that we will all get a reasonnable BP is we follow the quest line?</p><p>Considering that in the best case a raid need 24 weeks to get a chest for everyone it is interesting (may be 12 if 2 mobs drop a chest piece).</p><p>If a quest line actually provides 24 Bps in a shot it should be flagged, none of the one i have mention a reward like that.</p>

[Odys]

<p><cite>Starseeker@Crushbone wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite></cite></p><p>Took us 2 1/2 minutes at 180 dps, but I believe that was a different mob due to the damage difference, but seriously a trash mob with 27 -37.5 mil hps? thats a tad much.</p><p>Comparatively all of the named range from 16mil to 30 mil.</p><p>Example: Tamer Nicoli: (03:23) 34229403 total damage | 168617.80 dps</p><p><span><p><span><p><span><p><span><span style="color: #999999;"><span><span><span style="font-size: 85%; line-height: normal;"></span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: #888888;"></span></p></span></p></span></p></span></p></blockquote><p>Our raid was not full, but a powerfull snowbeast had 37 millions of hps, raid has 165dps. Some ice maiden have like 5 million.</p><p>I got a look at the gobelin that sells stuff, it's not really better than vigi or vd3 gear.</p><p>An idea would be to remove molts and to ask only for signet to get armor and items.</p>

[Brantkl]

<p>So from the looks of it, this will remain a ONE and DONE raid zone. Guilds will clear it for progression and then never visit again.</p>

[Jrel]

<p>Please put Haste on the tank gloves (Gauntlets of Solid Ice and Iced Guantlets of Bashing) from the Glacial Champion Gloves Pattern. Currently they are Fabled with no Attack Speed so the Sage-Guardian Guantlets for 25 Seals are still a better option.</p>

[Odys]

<p>We went again to equip alt with the chest piece.</p><p>The Giant that split was the one i feared the most but we did on first try, quite some death during the figth.</p><p>Odus & cie was long with quite some death, i was spam assist healing on the combined mob .. big mess.</p><p>Both figth are more technical than most of labo & palace EM.</p><p>Then came the mainden, it's long too long but easy.</p><p>Then   Mr Wreexxmmmmm got bugged, he froze rigth at the emote time (that almost nobody sees) and he started to KB the MT in the air (it never happened before).</p><p>We managed to survive 3-4 ports but we wiped when the tank started to be thrown in the air. Last time he did bug we reseted the instance and after we were able to intereput most of the freezing.</p><p>What we do is to have people on one platerform, the OT is ready to taunt if wrmmmxxx attention fluctuates, we are instructed not to move (???) and we try to interupt the freezing spell. When Wrexxm is not bugged it works smoothly, as sson as he bugs frezzing come with absolutely no warning.</p><p>Last time we reseted  the encounter fully by leaving the zone, after that we killed  Wrmmxxx him with zero issue (boring and long fight). Today we could not reset because we had an AFK to validate. The problem may be related to us spanning first the hard mob monster (due to crazy dialogs that are supremly unclear).</p><p>I will probably never run the zone again, you can to Tox in 1/10 of the time and the encounters are much simpler. I think we spend less time explaining Perah to new people that we did explaining Odus & cie. So IK is harder/longer  than most T1 emode but the loot is much worst.</p><p>We will complete our second round of tunic and never return.</p><p>Comparing with WOE is interesting, WOE encounters are much simpler, for sure you needed some minimal resist/dps/hps but otherwise it was close to tank/spank/interupt with variations in which on persson had to click/run somewhere.</p>

[Gninja]

<p>Trying to interupt the freezing is not going to save you from being frozen. It was never meant to be able to be interupted so if you can't anymore then that is intended. One question I have is when your tank was being knocked up in the air was he the Dragon's target and was he on the floor where the dragon spawns?</p>

[Morghus]

<p>Could the Ice Maiden fight before Vrewwx get changed a bit? Her invulnerability at set percentages is incredibly irritating. It essentially says that your dps doesn't matter aside from the dps needed to kill the four forming golems.</p><p>For a high dps raid it boils down to dps named for 5 - 10 seconds, kill adds, wait 10 seconds for her to be vulnerable, and repeat...that combined with her unskippable speech at the beginning makes the fight much longer than it should be.</p>

[Gninja]

<p>As soon as I get some time I am going to change it where if you kill all 4 golems before her speech ends she will drop the invuln. Right now I am a bit swamped so its on my list.</p>

[Odys]

<p>Just some addition, my warden totally exploded the zone wide parse (on the 3 last nameds) solo healing a paladin against one golem. Note that on the icy maiden my parser does not record other healers.</p><p>My HPS on the repeated golem was ~2700, but if i look at the active period of the golem i see that its dps was constantly above 5000K (for 120sec) with spikes around 7500 for 30 seconds.</p><p>The Paladin who tanked him was probably the intended audience.</p><p>Note that the mob was not debuffed (i have no debuf), but sandstorm, turtle shell, anti death were on as much as i could.</p><p>This little annoying add did only 4 million of damage. I don't have the parse of the other little add i was too far from the other tank.</p>

[Odys]

<p>Hoping that gninja is still reading this thread. Today we got mr V. down with almost no issue, he ported the raid only once and we had much time to interupt him.</p><p>Something is clearly bugged somewhere.</p><p>We also got a server disco (http://everquest2.com/Item/449706) , this clearly means that the zone is unused (like scaled down TSO zones). We started to raid in mid summer, monthes after true raiding guilds. It's probably why we did icy keep. Most raiders were already wearing full t1 when icy came out, they rushed it and never came back. The target audience never came in.</p>

[Gninja]

<p>Honeslty if you are able to interupt him thats a bug :p</p>

[Trifixion]

<p><cite>Odys@Storms wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hoping that gninja is still reading this thread. Today we got mr V. down with almost no issue, he ported the raid only once and we had much time to interupt him.</p><p>Something is clearly bugged somewhere.</p><p><strong>We also got a server disco (http://everquest2.com/Item/449706) , this clearly means that the zone is unused (like scaled down TSO zones). We started to raid in mid summer, monthes after true raiding guilds. It's probably why we did icy keep. Most raiders were already wearing full t1 when icy came out, they rushed it and never came back. The target audience never came in.</strong></p></blockquote><p>My Raids never go into this raid zone because of the loot tables and the stupid quests that makes you return mulit times for some crappy loot. Other than the loot I do like the zone and the fights are fun but tring to get my raid force in there is like pulling teeth.</p>

[Kenban]

<p><cite>famorf wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Odys@Storms wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Hoping that gninja is still reading this thread. Today we got mr V. down with almost no issue, he ported the raid only once and we had much time to interupt him.</p><p>Something is clearly bugged somewhere.</p><p><strong>We also got a server disco (http://everquest2.com/Item/449706) , this clearly means that the zone is unused (like scaled down TSO zones). We started to raid in mid summer, monthes after true raiding guilds. It's probably why we did icy keep. Most raiders were already wearing full t1 when icy came out, they rushed it and never came back. The target audience never came in.</strong></p></blockquote><p>My Raids never go into this raid zone because of the loot tables and the stupid quests that makes you return mulit times for some crappy loot. Other than the loot I do like the zone and the fights are fun but tring to get my raid force in there is like pulling teeth.</p></blockquote><p>My guild has done the whole zone maybe 3 or 4 times.  I enjoy some of the fights and it seems others do as well but the loot is just bad.  Its a complete waste of your time.  By the time you can do this zone you can just go and do lair of the dragon queen.  I keep reading and hearing that the loot will be increased.  I even talked to a dev at fan faire about it.  But until the loot is worth using your not going to see many people using the zone.</p><p>About the quests maybe I missed something but the only quests that I know of which you have to go back more then once for now are the dropped quest starters.  But some of those are nuts and require several runs to complete.</p>

[Odys]

<p>Well i have no interupt and i m far from the dragon, so may be he was not interupted but taunting came in time. I believe that when someone on the platform attract the dude attention a tank on the floor has a few seconds to distract & taunt Mr. W. Anyway we killed on first try after the reset.</p><p>The dragon lair has also some perfomance issues, often people dissapear and i just see hit point bars, lot of people go LD.</p><p>Note that Cornival, the 3 golem add + main golem, Odus & Brother are fun with not much randomness, i like them.</p><p>The Ice Maiden is nice too but a bit too long and golems hit like trucks on moderatly geared tanks.</p><p>Mr W. is "yawn" between potential ports, i think we tried with scout on the floor but they got destroyed by the aoe ... (high resist elemetnal wards, aoe may be a solution).</p><p>The first drake and the statue are fine too.</p><p>For me Tox is ton simpler, we can probably do it in 15-30mn; Labo is also faster and encounters are of similar difficulty (scriptwise) with no trash.</p><p>May be this raid would be more popular if the chest reward was advertised better.</p>

[Bratface]

<p>Gninja if you do look at this zone could you PLEASE reduce the number of items needed for the "smelly bag" type quests, having to get 20 drops is just insane and requires multiple trips to the zone JUST for those drops... I'd much rather have a lower number needed so I could at least bring more than one toon through the zone, as it is now I will wait to get my last four drake talons and NEVER do that zone again.</p><p>On every trip I have been through lately no one takes those quests because you just KNOW you wont finish it because no one wants to come back 4 times just for trash drops.</p>

[Morghus]

<p><cite>Gninja wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>As soon as I get some time I am going to change it where if you kill all 4 golems before her speech ends she will drop the invuln. Right now I am a bit swamped so its on my list.</p></blockquote><p>That is a great change, will we be seeing it soon I hope? Also along with that change, is there any chance you would consider spreading out the invulnerability/dd spawning intervals to every 20% instead of 10?</p>

[Ulrichvon]

<p>Please remove the need to click all 6 handles to advance the quest.  Perhaps just the one in the 2nd to last named's room should be enough?</p><p>We nearly had another coup Friday night while 20 people waited 15+ minutes for 4 people to get updates by getting all the handles clicked at the same time.</p><p>Raid zones with quests that require 80%+ of the raid sitting on thumbs for significant time while a minority group gets quest updates is complete failsauce.</p>

[getta]

<p>Yet still with the minor changes being made to mechanics this zone will remain unused until the loot is worth the time and risk. Guilds can just get more done running Toxx, Labs and Palace on easy mode rather than sitting in this zone for the same period of time. Unless this zones loot table is changed to match that of the raid zones in the same tier it will just sit there and never make a guilds raid rotation.</p>

[Silzin]

My guild just Perah'Celsis and he is a much easier fight then the when Vrewwx. i would even say that Ice Maiden D'lna is every bit as hard to get down as Haraakat the Seer.... the point is that as it has bin said before these mobs dont drop loot near equal to that of other mobs of equal difficulty. the only thing that is near worth the loot it the BP from the quest, since it is as good or better then the T1 BP and a raid can get a lot of them at 1 time.

[Ulrichvon]

<p><cite>Silzin wrote:</cite></p><blockquote>My guild just Perah'Celsis and he is a much easier fight then the when Vrewwx. i would even say that Ice Maiden D'lna is every bit as hard to get down as Haraakat the Seer.... the point is that as it has bin said before these mobs dont drop loot near equal to that of other mobs of equal difficulty. the only thing that is near worth the loot it the BP from the quest, since it is as good or better then the T1 BP and a raid can get a lot of them at 1 time.</blockquote><p>Wouldn't you say IK rewards and quests would be better suited if the zone was a x2 and the encounters tuned as such but retained the current loot tables?</p><p>In that it would be like WoE in bridging heroic and epic content more effectively?</p><p>I think if as a x2 it could be cleared and quests completed in ~90-120mins, it would be a far better zone and players would enjoy it more.</p>

[Silzin]

<p><cite>Ulrichvon wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Wouldn't you say IK rewards and quests would be better suited if the zone was a x2 and the encounters tuned as such but retained the current loot tables?</p><p>In that it would be like WoE in bridging heroic and epic content more effectively?</p><p>I think if as a x2 it could be cleared and quests completed in ~90-120mins, it would be a far better zone and players would enjoy it more.</p></blockquote><p>I dont think that changing it to a X2 would fix the problems with the zone.  I went into IK this weekend with a raid pushing around 200k dps and it took us about 4 hours to get to the queen and get here doen.  we know all of the fights, there is just so much stuff in the zone to work throw it takes for ever. </p><p>I think if ALL of the quests could be done in 1 run throw the zone, with some repeatables it would help.  also all of the need to repetedly go back to the zone in to get the next quest was removed it would help also. </p><p>Since the zone was released there have bin steps made to make the zone more usable but i done thing they are enuff.</p>

[Odys]

<p>Indeed i killex  vrmeeexx 3 times and I still need to finish the smelly bag quest. I got the quest  during our first clearing. Token shoudl be usable to buy armor as soo as you killed the mob that droo the mold.</p><p>If the chest quest was not existing nobody would run icy.</p>

[Megavolt]

<p>Honestly since the gear itself reflects what I would think level 87 fabled stats should be, retooling the zone down to 87 and making the gear wearable by 87's would probably balance it out. I really feel this coulda been this expansion's protector's realm, alllowing players who aren't maxxed level and aa's to join those who were to help out the lower and get the occassional master for themselves. Cutting the amount of trash by 1/3rd would probably help if the quest drops were alllowed to be a couple off of each kill.</p>

[Ulrichvon]

<p><cite>Megavolt@Everfrost wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Honestly since the gear itself reflects what I would think level 87 fabled stats should be, retooling the zone down to 87 and making the gear wearable by 87's would probably balance it out. I really feel this coulda been this expansion's protector's realm, alllowing players who aren't maxxed level and aa's to join those who were to help out the lower and get the occassional master for themselves.</p></blockquote><p>I'm not sure that concept is terribly relevant in todays game given leveling speed.</p><p>Wasn't there supposed to be a general expansion-wide revamp of raid loot in the last GU?  Did that just not happen?</p>

[Titigabe]

<p>Isn't it a perfect zone to be tuned down to a X2, in order to give Casual Players a nice way to get introduced in T9 raiding, remembering the fun memories we had in WoE with a smooth progressive instance?</p><p>The equipment would help everybody to get ready for SF X4 raids, and even to get ready for Velious!</p>

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Titigabe wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Isn't it a perfect zone to be tuned down to a X2, in order to give Casual Players a nice way to get introduced in T9 raiding, remembering the fun memories we had in WoE with a smooth progressive instance?</p><p>The equipment would help everybody to get ready for SF X4 raids, and even to get ready for Velious!</p></blockquote><p>Yes, this zone with the same loot with the mobs and trash tuned down to a x2 to complete in ~2-3 hours would be a far more successful effort.</p>

[Horgana]

<p><cite>Titigabe wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Isn't it a perfect zone to be tuned down to a X2, in order to give Casual Players a nice way to get introduced in T9 raiding, remembering the fun memories we had in WoE with a smooth progressive instance?</p><p>The equipment would help everybody to get ready for SF X4 raids, and even to get ready for Velious!</p></blockquote><p>That's actually quite a good idea.</p>