The War of Zek - General Feedback Thread

[SOE-MOD-02]

Please keep the posts on topic and without insults.  Thank you!

[Talathion]

SOE Also forgot to fix Templar / Inquisitor EoW Items, I'm glad they can nerf things, but don't fix items.

[Neskonlith]

Talathion@Antonia Bayle wrote:

SOE Also forgot to fix Templar / Inquisitor EoW Items, I'm glad they can nerf things, but don't fix items.

When all you carry is a Nerf-hammer, everything starts to look like an OP nail.

[Kruschev2086]

So having seen the new raid dropped wand from Foundation of Stone (Challenge mode), and figured I should contribute a nice screenshot for it.

I leave it to others to decide the fairness/balance of that.  Both items drop from the same mob.

[Talathion]

it lacks a red slot

[CoLD MeTaL]

Thanks for taking all of our crit chance away.  Nerf missile payload was massive.

[Urfang]

EOW (and rare named) items aren't worth a copper more than transmuting materials now. When crit chance is too low, other stats are absolutely meaningless.

PS. In the raid loot picture above, the Symbol is clearly much better. Majorly more crit chance, much higher potency and actually has reuse and the red slot.

[Yimway]

Urfang wrote:

EOW (and rare named) items aren't worth a copper more than transmuting materials now. When crit chance is too low, other stats are absolutely meaningless.

Kander already stated in items thread the crit nerf was a bug and would be restored.

[DuneWarrior]

Atan@Unrest wrote:

Urfang wrote:

EOW (and rare named) items aren't worth a copper more than transmuting materials now. When crit chance is too low, other stats are absolutely meaningless.

Kander already stated in items thread the crit nerf was a bug and would be restored.

And dont we all love the part of Kanders message that said "Next Week" so for now ... dont play?

[Novusod]

It has been a few weeks since GU61 went live and I have had some time to think about it and there is just been so much about this update that does not sit well with me.

Free AA respecs:

This should have been optional as some did not want to respec their characters. Two or Three times. I spent hours putting all my alts back together. Also enountered bugs with mirrors sometimes causing the AA to reset again on zoning. Very anoying buggy process that wasn't needed.

Class AA Tree webbing removing:

Seems unnecessary as there really wan't a way to waste AA when being forced to spend 70AA to get the Real endlines.

Shadows level 50 lockout:

Another unneeded change that only served to anger the level locking community

Old gear Re itemization:

Crit was added and then removed in some cases leaving the gear worse than it was before. The SF raid gear crit mit boost was good though. It makes SF raids somewhat viable again as a starting point to get ready for DoV raids. It should have been done this way at launch so raid gear we had spent a year farming didn't end up getting replaced with PQ gear in the first days of the expansion.

Bassackwards Progression in Raids to Heroics:

In GU61 it feels like the progression of DoV is you raid first to get EM gear so you can then have the priviledge of going into the instances. This is so wrong I can't even begin to tell you. It should be players run heroics to be able to do raids. Not run raids to can gear up for heroics. Just horrible honestly.

War runes going away:

War runes were the ONE thing that DoV actually got right and you now you are taking it away. It is changes like this that really make me think why should I keep playing.

If people start leaving in droves one would only need take to look at GU61 and how it jerked people arround.

[SisterTheresa]

Novusod wrote:

It has been a few weeks since GU61 went live and I have had some time to think about it and there is just been so much about this update that does not sit well with me.

Free AA respecs:

This should have been optional as some did not want to respec their characters. Two or Three times. I spent hours putting all my alts back together. Also enountered bugs with mirrors sometimes causing the AA to reset again on zoning. Very anoying buggy process that wasn't needed.

Class AA Tree webbing removing:

Seems unnecessary as there really wan't a way to waste AA when being forced to spend 70AA to get the Real endlines. - Actually there was a good amount of stuff I didn't want but HAD to take, so I like the removed webbing

Shadows level 50 lockout:

Another unneeded change that only served to anger the level locking community - Agreed on this

Old gear Re itemization:

Crit was added and then removed in some cases leaving the gear worse than it was before. The SF raid gear crit mit boost was good though. It makes SF raids somewhat viable again as a starting point to get ready for DoV raids. It should have been done this way at launch so raid gear we had spent a year farming didn't end up getting replaced with PQ gear in the first days of the expansion.

 If people start leaving in droves one would only need take to look at GU61 and how it jerked people arround.

I'm still making due with it so far, though some items I'm finding from old zones are bugged out or just make me scratch my head.  Heck my 81 INQ ... who had troubles fighting greens because of his all healing spec ... picked up some items revamped and can kill greens in 2 shots.  Yeaaaah ....

[Rick777]

Novusod wrote:

Bassackwards Progression in Raids to Heroics:

In GU61 it feels like the progression of DoV is you raid first to get EM gear so you can then have the priviledge of going into the instances. This is so wrong I can't even begin to tell you. It should be players run heroics to be able to do raids. Not run raids to can gear up for heroics. Just horrible honestly.

Well just to play devils advocate, I think their goal here was to make "6 man raid zones".  Having a 6 man raid zone is actually very appealing to me for those nights either my guild has a lockout for the regular raid zones, or if we just have a group of 6 peeps who are hardcore enough to handle the zone.  The only thing that SOE screwed up on is the lockout timers, what ends up happening is those 6 players can farm the gear in the zones every night as opposed to every 3 nights on a regular raid zone.  But besides that I don't see the issue, and actually really like the idea of 6 man raid zones.

From what I'm seeing the game is dying, but it's far from dead.  Getting 24 people together who are properly geared and motivated is getting tougher and tougher.  Possibly 6 man raiding is the future of this game, or not I can't predict the future.  Maybe it's just a nice bridge between DOV EM and HM, an easier (too easy IMO atm) way to gear up for HM raiding.  Sure it breaks with tradition, but I welcome something to do the nights my guild is not raiding and I have absolutely no need to run regular shard zones.

[Raviel]

no one complained about gear from hardmode TORZ. imo, we need more hardmode heroic zones so raiders have more meaningful nonraid content

[Novusod]

Raviel wrote:

no one complained about gear from hardmode TORZ. imo, we need more hardmode heroic zones so raiders have more meaningful nonraid content

Actually there was a 7 page complaint thread on it. Seen here:

I still hate Hardmode TORZ with a passion.

[Ragnaphore]

Novusod wrote:

Raviel wrote:

no one complained about gear from hardmode TORZ. imo, we need more hardmode heroic zones so raiders have more meaningful nonraid content

Actually there was a 7 page complaint thread on it. Seen here:

I still hate Hardmode TORZ with a passion.

TBF, you were - almost - the only one complaining about loot from Hard TORZ in this thread and even only for the BP (which should have been a non-issue if HMx4 Statue wasn't... well, you know...)

OTOH EoW had/has some OP loots even on "normal" mode and can be cleared a lot faster than Hard TORZ (Heck if you can clear it, it's probably the shortest DoV instance)

[Golbezz]

Rick777 wrote:

Well just to play devils advocate, I think their goal here was to make "6 man raid zones".  Having a 6 man raid zone is actually very appealing to me for those nights either my guild has a lockout for the regular raid zones, or if we just have a group of 6 peeps who are hardcore enough to handle the zone.  The only thing that SOE screwed up on is the lockout timers, what ends up happening is those 6 players can farm the gear in the zones every night as opposed to every 3 nights on a regular raid zone.  But besides that I don't see the issue, and actually really like the idea of 6 man raid zones.

From what I'm seeing the game is dying, but it's far from dead.  Getting 24 people together who are properly geared and motivated is getting tougher and tougher.  Possibly 6 man raiding is the future of this game, or not I can't predict the future.  Maybe it's just a nice bridge between DOV EM and HM, an easier (too easy IMO atm) way to gear up for HM raiding.  Sure it breaks with tradition, but I welcome something to do the nights my guild is not raiding and I have absolutely no need to run regular shard zones.

If 6 man raids are the future of this game I think many raiding guilds will choose to move on. I know if progression continues down the mistake of a path that EoW is taking I won't be renewing my sub and many of my guildmates won't either. We are here to raid x4, not run group instances. We do instances and x2 with a mix of mains and alts during off time.

Most raid guilds don't have the proper number of mains to divide x4 raid force into 4 perfect instance groups so I think the move to 6 man raids will just speed the death of this game along, especially since any casual player group thrown together still will not be able to clear these zones even with all their purchased loot rights gear.

If x4 raiders leave due to the move from x4 to 6 man raiding progression who will sell all the loot rights to these casual players? When these casual players are no longer able to farm plat to buy loot to be OP for ascent and other instances what is going to keep them playing when the content becomes too hard for them without the loot right gear being sold by the raiders?

[Rick777]

Golbezz wrote:

Rick777 wrote:

Well just to play devils advocate, I think their goal here was to make "6 man raid zones".  Having a 6 man raid zone is actually very appealing to me for those nights either my guild has a lockout for the regular raid zones, or if we just have a group of 6 peeps who are hardcore enough to handle the zone.  The only thing that SOE screwed up on is the lockout timers, what ends up happening is those 6 players can farm the gear in the zones every night as opposed to every 3 nights on a regular raid zone.  But besides that I don't see the issue, and actually really like the idea of 6 man raid zones.

From what I'm seeing the game is dying, but it's far from dead.  Getting 24 people together who are properly geared and motivated is getting tougher and tougher.  Possibly 6 man raiding is the future of this game, or not I can't predict the future.  Maybe it's just a nice bridge between DOV EM and HM, an easier (too easy IMO atm) way to gear up for HM raiding.  Sure it breaks with tradition, but I welcome something to do the nights my guild is not raiding and I have absolutely no need to run regular shard zones.

If 6 man raids are the future of this game I think many raiding guilds will choose to move on. I know if progression continues down the mistake of a path that EoW is taking I won't be renewing my sub and many of my guildmates won't either. We are here to raid x4, not run group instances. We do instances and x2 with a mix of mains and alts during off time.

Most raid guilds don't have the proper number of mains to divide x4 raid force into 4 perfect instance groups so I think the move to 6 man raids will just speed the death of this game along, especially since any casual player group thrown together still will not be able to clear these zones even with all their purchased loot rights gear.

If x4 raiders leave due to the move from x4 to 6 man raiding progression who will sell all the loot rights to these casual players? When these casual players are no longer able to farm plat to buy loot to be OP for ascent and other instances what is going to keep them playing when the content becomes too hard for them without the loot right gear being sold by the raiders?

Oh I don't disagree with you at all.  While I like 6 man raids for that 1-2x/week that my guild is locked or we don't have 24 main toons to play with, my desire to play would be nil if we didn't have 24 man raids.  But the unsavory truth is a declining population, the easy mode complete catering to the casual player, the intentional bleeding to the EQ2x servers, henchmen, extremely misbalanced itemization and progression, etc etc.  You see high end raiding guilds who would not have given anyone else the time of day now openly spamming level chat looking for new members.  Plus we have the inherent inbalance of how often you can run the 6 man raids and how quickly you can get geared.  If the gear from there is better than x24 content then just the frequency you can run them will make raids put them on their schedule.

I don't think 6 man raids are the future though, I was exaggerating to make my point but I can't see the game dying so much that there won't be any 24 man raids, at least in the next 2-3 years, although if SOE continues to screw things up as bad as they have been I won't be surprised at anything.

[str8gone]

Rick777 wrote:

Golbezz wrote:

Rick777 wrote:

Well just to play devils advocate, I think their goal here was to make "6 man raid zones".  Having a 6 man raid zone is actually very appealing to me for those nights either my guild has a lockout for the regular raid zones, or if we just have a group of 6 peeps who are hardcore enough to handle the zone.  The only thing that SOE screwed up on is the lockout timers, what ends up happening is those 6 players can farm the gear in the zones every night as opposed to every 3 nights on a regular raid zone.  But besides that I don't see the issue, and actually really like the idea of 6 man raid zones.

From what I'm seeing the game is dying, but it's far from dead.  Getting 24 people together who are properly geared and motivated is getting tougher and tougher.  Possibly 6 man raiding is the future of this game, or not I can't predict the future.  Maybe it's just a nice bridge between DOV EM and HM, an easier (too easy IMO atm) way to gear up for HM raiding.  Sure it breaks with tradition, but I welcome something to do the nights my guild is not raiding and I have absolutely no need to run regular shard zones.

If 6 man raids are the future of this game I think many raiding guilds will choose to move on. I know if progression continues down the mistake of a path that EoW is taking I won't be renewing my sub and many of my guildmates won't either. We are here to raid x4, not run group instances. We do instances and x2 with a mix of mains and alts during off time.

Most raid guilds don't have the proper number of mains to divide x4 raid force into 4 perfect instance groups so I think the move to 6 man raids will just speed the death of this game along, especially since any casual player group thrown together still will not be able to clear these zones even with all their purchased loot rights gear.

If x4 raiders leave due to the move from x4 to 6 man raiding progression who will sell all the loot rights to these casual players? When these casual players are no longer able to farm plat to buy loot to be OP for ascent and other instances what is going to keep them playing when the content becomes too hard for them without the loot right gear being sold by the raiders?

Oh I don't disagree with you at all.  While I like 6 man raids for that 1-2x/week that my guild is locked or we don't have 24 main toons to play with, my desire to play would be nil if we didn't have 24 man raids.  But the unsavory truth is a declining population, the easy mode complete catering to the casual player, the intentional bleeding to the EQ2x servers, henchmen, extremely misbalanced itemization and progression, etc etc.  You see high end raiding guilds who would not have given anyone else the time of day now openly spamming level chat looking for new members.  Plus we have the inherent inbalance of how often you can run the 6 man raids and how quickly you can get geared.  If the gear from there is better than x24 content then just the frequency you can run them will make raids put them on their schedule.

I don't think 6 man raids are the future though, I was exaggerating to make my point but I can't see the game dying so much that there won't be any 24 man raids, at least in the next 2-3 years, although if SOE continues to screw things up as bad as they have been I won't be surprised at anything.

Reason why guilds are having a tough time finding people to raid is that raiding requires allot of work. You can no longer raid in this game just by using the tools provided by Sony. You actually must use external tools like ACT and Guild Connect just to have a chance at killing the mobs and even then unless you are an expert at using the tool it requires allot of patience and learning time to learn how to use them properly. On top of that the old days of only one or two people in the raid needing these tools has changed to now everyone in the raid needs to have them. Which you then run into the problem of people who want to raid (and can raid) but are not IT profficient and when you ask them to setup these tools and learn how to use them they look at you like a brain dead zombie.

Me personaly, as a guild leader, I have spent sometimes hours with just individual recruits to teach them how to use the tools just so you can raid and there has been several occasions they simply walk away cause it is overwhelming to people who are not IT profficient.

That is the reason why raid guilds have vanished! DoV has destroyed casual raid guilds. You are either hard core or on the border of hard core (meaning you use the tools that Sony is forcing you to use) or you do not raid at all in this expansion.

I think their is even a rumor that the devs use ACT to make new raid content. Basically my point on this is if you DO NOT provide the tools in game to kill the mob then you should not make a mob be killable only by people using external tools such as ACT and Guild Connect.

[Undorett]

I know a lot of people have given up, bu there is a lot of loot from the "rare"'(read not at all rare) monsters that is considerably better than raid loot. These "rare monsters" are not hard, and the loot off of them is not rare enough to warrant the quality of said loot.

[Yimway]

Undorett wrote:

I know a lot of people have given up, bu there is a lot of loot from the "rare"'(read not at all rare) monsters that is considerably better than raid loot. These "rare monsters" are not hard, and the loot off of them is not rare enough to warrant the quality of said loot.

SJ said the gear is balanced, so therefor it is.

*edit* - To be clear here, these items probably are 'balanced' based upon the new loot model for DoV.  They properly are between EM and HM raid gear under the new itemization rules.

The issue is, they've not made it a priority to re-itemize HM raid drops to this new itemization scheeme, so everything is grossly out of whack.

If they'd just bite the bullet on that one, things would be much better in the long run.

[Undorett]

I was under the impression that the gear from EM EoW was to be balanced this way, but not the "rare monster" loot, as these "rare monsters" are 10-15 second burn fights and have no actual challenge to them. As of now, half of them do not even have a crit MIT check.

[Yimway]

Undorett wrote:

I was under the impression that the gear from EM EoW was to be balanced this way, but not the "rare monster" loot, as these "rare monsters" are 10-15 second burn fights and have no actual challenge to them. As of now, half of them do not even have a crit MIT check.

I was under the impression they were all in the same tier.  Go do some 6 man raids for guaranteed good loot, or go run easy instances 20 times for one chance.

I'm one of the folks that advocated rare monsters added with a fabled loot table, cause there is just so little interest in the content, but I never imagined that loot being better than HM drops.

[Undorett]

For this loot you would think a 1/20 drop rate would be closer to acceptable but it appears to be much higher. I don't mind the item or two from rare mobs, but it seems like you are better off getting almost all of the jewelry from heroic content. More health, higher base stat, more of just about everything. When we can alter loot in the next expansion, it will have more points to move around. I would really like to see the raid loot touched on sooner rather than when no one cares.

[Urfang]

It seems to me that the chances have already been dropped in last patches a lot. But lets calculate with the original 25%, what would be your actual chances to get one for yourself. 1/4*1/4= 1/16 for the item to be of your class. 50% or less chance for the chest to be exquisite -> 1/32. Average of two people of your class in group (unless you are a fighter) -> 1/64. If the 25% chance have been dropped even a little as it seems -> 1/100. So, you would have to run the instance average of 100 times to get one item. It is much too low to even bother to run an otherwise useless instance.

Furthermore, only Drunder rare loot is better than HM. All the weapons have so little CC that they are absolutely worthless and all the rare loot have been nerfed 14% or more in stats. Also, large base stats dont mean anything, if the item is crap otherwise, dont have red slot and so on.

[dotdotdot]

Urfang wrote:

It seems to me that the chances have already been dropped in last patches a lot. But lets calculate with the original 25%, what would be your actual chances to get one for yourself. 1/4*1/4= 1/16 for the item to be of your class. 50% or less chance for the chest to be exquisite -> 1/32. Average of two people of your class in group (unless you are a fighter) -> 1/64. If the 25% chance have been dropped even a little as it seems -> 1/100. So, you would have to run the instance average of 100 times to get one item. It is much too low to even bother to run an otherwise useless instance.

Furthermore, only Drunder rare loot is better than HM. All the weapons have so little CC that they are absolutely worthless and all the rare loot have been nerfed 14% or more in stats. Also, large base stats dont mean anything, if the item is crap otherwise, dont have red slot and so on.

The scout belt that drops off the rare named in Ascent I seriously considered wearing vs my HM belt. The only reason I declined is because I knew that what I had was much better than what the other scouts in the group were wearing.

[Yimway]

dotdotdot wrote:

The scout belt that drops off the rare named in Ascent I seriously considered wearing vs my HM belt. The only reason I declined is because I knew that what I had was much better than what the other scouts in the group were wearing.

Right, so you ask yourself, what is better, getting 24 people together to raid HM Kraytoc or having 24 people run ascent 3 times each (rotating alts).  Any face-roller can do the ascent multiple times a night and get the rare named.  It takes 24 people with considerable time spent building their character and raiding discipline to win in HM Kraytoc.

The problem, and I'm getting tired of repeating it, is the HM loot isn't scaled high enough compaired to what was added.

If this isn't fixed, I expect my rate of attrition on raiders burning out and leaving the game to rise exponentially.

[Kruschev2086]

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't many old EQ1 players look at our x4s and sigh when eq2 came out? How many groups were eq1 raids? Friend of mine told me it was 70odd people to a raid, correct? Now, soe has kept to the x4 in eq2 all this time thus far. I do not think they will have the gall to force a change in that. They might...but I don't think they will. Look at raid setups now. How often do you have people sitting that are t1 dps because the mechanics demand more utility types? Now they want to add another class? If anything, I can see x5s maybe x6s being possible.

[Yimway]

Kruschev2086 wrote:

 How often do you have people sitting that are t1 dps because the mechanics demand more utility types?

Yes, this is extremely common, however considering the amount of efort to enable a x5 or x6, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

I also wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get a 25th class.

[Trensharo]

Kruschev2086 wrote:

Correct me if I am wrong, but don't many old EQ1 players look at our x4s and sigh when eq2 came out? How many groups were eq1 raids? Friend of mine told me it was 70odd people to a raid, correct? Now, soe has kept to the x4 in eq2 all this time thus far. I do not think they will have the gall to force a change in that. They might...but I don't think they will. Look at raid setups now. How often do you have people sitting that are t1 dps because the mechanics demand more utility types? Now they want to add another class? If anything, I can see x5s maybe x6s being possible.

When I quit EQ1 it was down to 32 or so per raid.  It was only 70+ becuase back before GoD every raid was contested.  Once we got to GoD and they started instancing everything, the zones would only let like 40 or so people in.  At around DoDH or so the raid limit was lowered to around 32 or 36.  This is all fuzzy.  But there haven't been 70+ person non-contested raids in EQ1 since like 2003 or so.

24 is a bit too few slots, IMO.  Should make it 30.  That would make it less annoying.

Just finding a guild is hard because of the limited slots.  In EQ1 it was easier casue of more slots, but I remember we still have over a group full of people sitting and we'd rotate people out as we cleared through a zone so they could raid.

[Trensharo]

Urfang wrote:

It seems to me that the chances have already been dropped in last patches a lot. But lets calculate with the original 25%, what would be your actual chances to get one for yourself. 1/4*1/4= 1/16 for the item to be of your class. 50% or less chance for the chest to be exquisite -> 1/32. Average of two people of your class in group (unless you are a fighter) -> 1/64. If the 25% chance have been dropped even a little as it seems -> 1/100. So, you would have to run the instance average of 100 times to get one item. It is much too low to even bother to run an otherwise useless instance.

Furthermore, only Drunder rare loot is better than HM. All the weapons have so little CC that they are absolutely worthless and all the rare loot have been nerfed 14% or more in stats. Also, large base stats dont mean anything, if the item is crap otherwise, dont have red slot and so on.

The drunder necks have 45 CC which makes wearing the other rare loot with hither blue stats (not including crit) totally viable.