Something to Note about "Rebalancing Instances".

[Kunaak]

<p>while I firmly will agree - instances this expansion are FAR harder then you can do with most "PUGs", and really do require a set group of people that you know, and have helped gear up, and play together well with...</p><p>yes, instances currently are extremely "unwelcoming", for most players.</p><p>thats only half the issue.</p><p>the absolute top reason I myself will not do zones anymore - is cause of the simplest issue.</p><p>nothing has crit - or double attack on it.</p><p>the most active zone in the game right now, by far is Ascent. theres ranged weapons with tons of crit, and DA in there, and something for everyone, and its not incredibly frustrating to go in there, as you know, you can clear it, with a half decent group, and 1 healer.</p><p>but all the kael zones are a total "avoid at all costs".</p><p>cause, I've gone into these zones many times within my guild, cleared it, and yeah - I wouldnt dare go there without a very high geared group of experienced players, but most of all, I've see a great deal of the loot in there, and came out thinking.... wow..... really?</p><p>seeing gear with 5 crit bonus, 5 potency - and nothing else - and being labled as "fabled" - is the quickest way to insure, I wont go back, and pretty much tell anyone I know, dont bother, the zones a waste of time.</p><p>potency and crit bonus are so common, they really became worthless stats, cause you know your gonna see the exact same stats on 100 other items by the end of the expansion.</p><p>what we need the most on gear, is crit - what we all want the most is DA.</p><p>if a zone drops gear, that has neither of these stats - and is extremely hard, and time consuming - that zone is bound to be avoided at all costs, after a person does that zone 1-2 times.</p><p>oh yeah.... healers and mages need crit too - and cast speed, and reuse and such.</p><p>having a toon with 150 crit bonus and potency, and 80 crit - is not gonna do - you have to give people the stats they need to do this content.</p><p>otherwise - all we do, is hold onto old gear.</p><p>resists are not enough to convince some to drop gear, for 5 potency alone.</p>

[Lathain_Sarathai]

<p>Item are all cloned. Lot of item are totaly identical the only thing that change is the name. Select your gear fro coolest name item instead of stat, that's DoV <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Stat simplification... Each slot get specifical stats, and critical chance is not set for armor or jewel <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> You can find lot of Crit on belt, charm, weapon/range and adornment ^^</p><p>I also got the crit chance issue at start, until you get several item with 30+ on each...</p><p>DoV is all about Everything or Nothing.</p><p>You ll have people with nothing, and rest will have everything <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Zone are too easy (almost can be soloed) for people with the rigth gear, while those zone will be too hard (impossible) for people trying to gear up.</p><p>remove resist from armor, for see one single ring with +4000, +3000, +3000 is insane.</p><p>Primary, Secondary, Belt with +30 or +40 crit chance...</p><p>say thanks to stats simplification ^^</p><p>it was expected.</p>

[CoLD MeTaL]

<p><cite>Lathain_Sarathai wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>...DoV is all about Everything or Nothing.</p><p>You ll have people with nothing, and rest will have everything <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />...</p></blockquote><p>This is not a good recipe for healthy populations on a struggling game.</p>

[Odys]

<p>" what we need the most on gear, is crit - what we all want the most is DA."</p><p>As a scout you should feel lucky, you have at least usefull effects on some items (sword has DA, and others slot too). Priest simply get <strong>absolutely nothing</strong> beside potency and crit bonus.</p>

[Kunaak]

<p>so instead of upgrading gear today....</p><p>things get nerfed even farther?</p>

[Ironcleaver]

<p><cite>Kunaak wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>so instead of upgrading gear today....</p><p>things get nerfed even farther?</p></blockquote><p>more changes to come on thursday.</p>

[Artaxiel]

<p>Smokejumper promised no more nerfs, and another red name promised fixes, but the fixes so far spotted on test are things idiotic like +0.6 MA.</p>

[Yimway]

<p>The easy instances were pugable by players where soloquest content from the new expansion even prior to the nerfing.</p><p>It seems they felt compelled to make instances doable by those who haven't bothered with any other DoV progression as well.</p>

[Odys]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>The easy instances were pugable by players where soloquest content from the new expansion even prior to the nerfing.</p><p>It seems they felt compelled to make instances doable by those who haven't bothered with any other DoV progression as well.</p></blockquote><p>Not really true, the special named in TOFS where tough (before the nerf). Putting raid access encounter in the very first zone was a mistake.</p><p>Sadly it was not the only mistake.</p><p>For people in legendary with some EM raid gear (crit mit below 50-60%) TOFS2 was rather complicated. I remember outparsing my templar friend on the armor mob --  and we all know that if a druid outparse a templar on a single target it means that extreme healing was needed. Our tank kept oscillating from red to green. I got recently  a similar experience in The Ascent, with a well geared tank i probably parse around 2000-3000 hps on the last named, and the zone can probably be done with a duo in legendary gear. But that particular time i did 8000hps on last boss and tank kept being almost 1 shot <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />.</p><p>The quested chest piece offered more crit mitigation than icykeep raid one. Many groups with no raid gear probably bypassed solo quest lines and stupid PQ  in order to  directly explore  the easy dungeons. This usually meant hitting a brick wall or at least challenging encounters. </p><p><strong>Now it's clear that with a full set of quested gear those entry instances were fine, and with PQ  set they were easy. But it's a rather weird progression. It means that players first had to  do solo/trivial things and then run to the first dungeons, or happen to wear an almost full set of Easy mode SF raid gear. </strong></p><p>SF progression was totally different, i got my mythical conversion wearing TSO2 heroic set and 3 pieces of WOE set, with in my bag ton of level 90 amazing gear that i was not yet able to equip. In Sf you got equiped while doing the instances and  most people transmuted every piece of quested gear they got.</p><p><strong>In DOV you had to 1)either run the solo quest lines or 2)do the dumb PQ first  or 3) start DOV with raiding gear. Otherwise you would  face huge difficulties --.  This was big mistake one.  Enforcing participation to zerg raid with abyssal gameplay -- the x4 frontal was not even deadly enough to 1 shot squishies --  and extreme lag was feat <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></strong></p><p>The second big mistake was to create enormous gear gap, since 50% more crit mit or crit chance is maling  impossible things easy. Each extension the gear gap gets bigger, my priest may output more damage than some ungeared scouts and some scout does 4 time her damage.  Scout A (with no raid gear)  may does 6 times more damage than scout B, and it's not a matter of skill.</p><p>Potency and Crit bonus are non capped and have a linear impact on caracter power, their product have quadratic impact on character power. And i don't even include Mattack or other factors (like main caracteristic increasing dps) because they do not affect all the classes.</p><p>So we have  at least quadratic progression for priests, and cubic for scouts ...  This create enormous discrepancies, I have been in group in which 3 members were just non existant : i healed, the tank took the damage and one big damage dealer killed the bad guys, the 3 others could have been afk.</p><p>In previous extensions the ratio were much lower, in ROK days I remember  that raiders from hard core  guilds (doing vp) were probaly doing 2-3 times the damage of a casual player. In DOV i see larger gaps but between people with no raid gear.</p>

[Lathain_Sarathai]

First players dont like when everything change. Stats consolidation, and too many change, Crit mitigation, crit chance, multi attack, stats, resist, EVERYTHING have changed with dov (even our mount and the sky LOL). Was too much. Sad panda, since dov could have been great. But all bug, itemization and stats change ruined almost everything. Without say with all nerf so many player have burn so many adornment on item they will not use after one or other patch make player very happy. Ascent is a success zone Several player complain than most zone take too much time. Where are the one hour zone ? beside ascent... or pool, (HoS is not so bad too but lack of daily) ToFS:SC first floor why so many trash? in raid zone there is none ! Spectre and bat could easilly be removed for exemple. Fortress spire : same first room there is way too many trash, on dock a couple of trash could be removed too... Zone no need to be easier, they need to be quicker with less trash <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> too much, too far, too fast = fail <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

[Yimway]

<p><cite>Gorock@Storms wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For people in legendary with some EM raid gear (crit mit below 50-60%) TOFS2 was rather complicated.</p></blockquote><p>I'll stop you right there.</p><p>Your group didn't do the progressive content required to start doing DoV instances.  Just doing a few hours of solo quests before going into the first dungeon would net you well into 100 CM.</p><p>So, yes, you either had to have progressed sufficiently thru SF raid content, or you had to have done some DoV solo content to have a high degree of success in DoV dungeons.</p><p>In my opinion it is good for the content to be scaled to this point, otherwise in a matter of weeks it will be grossly trivialized as people have the new gear.</p>

[rattlebonz]

<p><cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Gorock@Storms wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>For people in legendary with some EM raid gear (crit mit below 50-60%) TOFS2 was rather complicated.</p></blockquote><p>I'll stop you right there.</p><p>Your group didn't do the progressive content required to start doing DoV instances.  Just doing a few hours of solo quests before going into the first dungeon would net you well into 100 CM.</p><p>So, yes, you either had to have progressed sufficiently thru SF raid content, or you had to have done some DoV solo content to have a high degree of success in DoV dungeons.</p><p>In my opinion it is good for the content to be scaled to this point, otherwise in a matter of weeks it will be grossly trivialized as people have the new gear.</p></blockquote><p>I don't know about well into the 100s for crit mit in a few hours. I have a full set of the PQ Woe gear, including BP and have 3 or 4 of the 2.5% crit mit adorns and I think I am at 109% maybe. Of course before the first set of changes and without the BP I was at 150%. But regardless, you are correct that with a little effort and some luck you can get over 100%. I haven't been in ToFS since before it was changed so I do not know what would be a benchmark now for crit mit. From what I've read Xalgoti is kinda just a tank and spank now as well.</p>

[daray]

<p>Since this seems to be a discussion about gear, I actually think the devs have largely done a good job this expansion with item balance.  There is a clear, linear growth to itemisation between the various "item tiers" that actually makes sense. Granted, everything is quite "cookie-cutter", and on the surface that may seem dull and unimaginative, but it does provide a sure way of achieving balance and therefore achieving sensible item progression.</p><p>The one decision that I disagree with though, was restricting certain attributes to certain slots only (e.g. crit and resists). Continuing to provide these stats on all items, but obviously far less per item slot, would have made the progression from pre-DoV itemisation into DoV far more smooth, and probably have removed most of the issues people had in gearing up for combat in the new expansion.</p> <p><cite>Kunaak wrote:</cite></p> <blockquote>seeing gear with 5 crit bonus, 5 potency - and nothing else - and being labled as "fabled" - is the quickest way to insure, I wont go back, and pretty much tell anyone I know, dont bother, the zones a waste of time.<p>potency and crit bonus are so common, they really became worthless stats</p></blockquote> <p>As for the OP, the ignorance in the above quote makes it hard to take anything you have said seriously. <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Offensive item growth</span> this expansion will primarily come from increases to crit bonus, potency, your primary stat (and for some classes MA too), as long as you continue to meet the crit chance requirements for the content you are fighting. While all those small potency/crit bonus numbers with those silly decimal things look unimpressive, their effect on character power is far larger than you appear to give credit for, and the opposite of "worthless".</p> <p><cite>Kunaak wrote:</cite></p> <blockquote>oh yeah.... healers and mages need crit too - and cast speed, and reuse and such.<p>having a toon with 150 crit bonus and potency, and 80 crit - is not gonna do - you have to give people the stats they need to do this content.</p><p>otherwise - all we do, is hold onto old gear.</p></blockquote> <p>It's funny you should say that, because all the legendary mage gear (quest / PQ rewarded and dropped) I have been seeing this expansion, has an abundance of spell haste on it - arguably far more than it needs. While spell haste / reuse / recovery are important, from my experience they seem to be available in sufficient quantities on non-raid items. However, to pick something out, it does seem as if spell haste has been restricted more on raid itemisation.</p> <p>Your issues there with crit chance is something that is addressed by upgrading those slots that have had crit chance restricted to them - primary/secondary/ranged/belt/charms/neck. Do that, and your crit chance issue will solve itself. As I said above though, SOE should not have restricted crit chance to specific slots (and in greater quantities) - for smoother transition into the expansion, crit chance (and resists) should have continued to be available on all items, but in lesser quantities.</p>

[Odys]

<p>I anyway disagree, group content should not require people to to the solo time lines or to repeat the zerg feasts that are called Public quests.</p>