Cultural Nerfage? (unsubstantiated rumour)

[Zarcal]

I really don't want to get into this fight and i am not going to reply past this post, but since i know ngreth reads here and this forum is far more friendly then the SOE forum this is where it is.

I am an officer in a guild that once had 100+ people online over the course of a week and alway 40+ daily that has stagnated to the 5-10 people that are on now. We enjoy each others company and play because we have fun. Since TSS we have had trouble advancing our little group into further content becuase the upgrades just weren't readily available and the unreliablity of who will be on makes it equally difficult. At least 2 of us have tried to level up a tank alt to fill in and faced with 1 of 23 defensive aa's and only a small amount of afforadable gear available in the bazaar leaves us frustrated.

The new TS armor offers HOPE. Since the expansion there has been renewed interest in out group and the mains can experince some of the new content AND collect supplies for armor to have enough 'level approprite' toons to field a force regardless of who is on.

Its not going to happen fast, None of us has millions of plat in the bank to buy a set. Odds are we arent even going to be able to pass by the exalted stage for a long long time. (no pieces have been made yet)

There exsists in EQ a flawed mechanic where at some point you must leave your friends if you want to experience more content and that is not healthy as alot of people choose to quit rather then abandon those they play with.
There needs to be HOPE of gear increases for EVERY type of player. My level 67 7000hp tank alt is not going to be effective at any level higher than maybe DoN, and have you seen how many people are doing content there.

Anyhow, please remember the those people in the middle and don't neft it too hard.

Rolane, 78 shaman

[KyrosKrane]

In my experience, people tend to assume that others will think like them, and therefore agree with them, like what they like, and hate what they hate. Sadly, however, this is rarely the case.

One of the unspoke assumptions about the raid game has been that the only real way to progress in raiding has been to gear up by raiding. Obviously, this is a circular argument. At some point, you have to start raiding, and you will be in non-raid gear then. Whether that point is Anguish, Tacvi, Solteris, or Vox and Naggy is irrelevant. Your first raids will, by definition, be in non-raid gear.

Another unspoke assumption is that the objective to raiding is the ability to raid more stuff, the next tier, the next big, bad boss. Again, this is not always the case. Some people raid because they enjoy seeing new content. Others raid just for gear, and don't care whether their upgrade comes from Tacvi or Solteris. Others raid to play with friends, and yet others raid despite hating it and complaining about it. No two people's motivations are the same for raiding. One cannot assume that just because you like raiding for reason X, that everyone else also likes it for that same reason.

A third unspoken assumption is that those not at the top tier of raiding should be content doing raids at their level of progression. This one is an outright fallacy that, sadly, is often perpetuated by the developers themselves. This leads to the delusion that players will voluntarily stop leveling at 65 to raid PoP, then at 70 for Tacvi and Anguish, then at 75 for TSS. This is balderdash on so many levels, it's not even funny. EQ is structured in a such way that levels have a huge impact on player power, far beyond the boost any single statistic or item could provide. As a consequence, players are given incentive to level directly to max first, then later worry about the niceties of progression like high-end gear, AA, or even skill at playing the class. (An argument could be made here that the game should be restructured to provide more incentive for experiencing content at the intended level, but it is irrelevant to this debate.)

Yet another unspoken assumption is that current gear should be balanced against old content. This one drives me nuts. People will say, "Well, Tunat is so simple with full Anguish gear. I don't see why people say he's hard." Or, "We downed OMM after three months of Demi farming. He's easy!" They don't see the irony of heading to past content using later gear and upgrades, and yet implicitly judging current standards of gear and power against that same content. You have to use the same benchmark. If you are judging Anguish-level content like OMM, you should judge the difficulty in Anguish-level gear. If you evaluate SoF items like Elegant armors, you should judge their power relevant to SoF content, not Demi or TSS.

If you want to judge the impact of new armors on past content, you CANNOT use Elegant and Sublime as your baseline. This is NEW gear that is intended to balance NEW content. Instead, focus on the impact Elaborate armors and Eminent augs would have when combined with Last Bloods, Serpents seals, and Sunshard seals. That is the level of gear designed for and balanced against existing gear, from Demi, TSS, and TBS content, respectively. If you use Elegant/Sublime as your baseline, that's like saying Anguish armors makes PoTime trivial. Well, duh! That's an intended effect.

The new gear allows players of all stripes, whether raider or non-raider, to get a boost. (Notice I didn't say tradeskill gear, just "new gear.") The stated intent was to allow groupers to catch up with non-endgame raiders, thus broadening the pool of potential raiders (not to mention allowing raiders and non-raiders to group without the former having to carry the latter), and to allow raiders an alternative option to acquiring raid-level gear. I would argue that both those goals are necessary for the health of the game, and both have been met. Any argument that suggests the new gear is overpowered first has to take those goals into account. Failure to do so invalidates the argument.

This is not your father's Everquest. This is the new EQ. As with all change, you must adapt or leave. Demanding that the game must stand still is demanding that EQ die.

[Bedavir]

Ngreth said 80+80+TBS > Solteris is reasonable to expect.

I agree that 80 + 80 + TBS > Solteris is reasonable to expect.

-I do not think that elegant + sublime + last blood > Solteris is reasonable
-I do not think that elegant + exalted + last blood = Solteris is reasonable
-I do not think that eminent+ exalted + last blood > TSS is reasonable

Any combination above eminent/exalted + blood destroys TSS gear.

The things which do not add up are the inconsitencies that revolve around the presence of Last bloods. The problem is in finding some balance where the people at the last blood stage can get a moderate boost without messing up the system completely. This is where the ball was dropped.

Aaneras I genuinely feel sorry for your guild's position. I predict the new found power from last bloods will only hurt your attendance problems in the future. When your people stack up on bloods and realise they will not upgrade those slots with your guild for a long time to come, you'll have a lot more attendance problems than you do now. The plight of the mid-tier raiding guild is that there's a high turnover rate with spotty attendance. New people incomming must match people exiting (either by quitting or guild hopping up the ladder). When more people realise that your guild cannot effectively deliver upgrades from raiding, you'll see those who are less loyal and more self-absorbed quickly move on to content/guilds they consider 'their tier'. As for finishin Demiplane fast and moving out of it ... do you think people will want to work on DK or the difficult TSS flagging raids when 400-500hp loot can be gotten without raiding? Do think thing they'll choose to do content that drops 350-400hp loot that's new/hard when they can do old/easy content that builds 600+ hp loot? The only easy answer for the mid-tier guild is to use the powerboost to get beyond the level of attainable group gear. Tier4 group content is difficult ... so is tier3 but tier3 is going to at least be managable. Your best bet was and is to use this new powerboost to punch quickly into TSS content. The TSS raiding expansion is a breath of fresh air for raiders after DPoB/DK. It's honestly your best bet. Unless you use the momentum of the new expansion to carry yourselves forward and re-vitalize your raid force, you'll quickly find yourself farming DPoB for overpowered bloods till kingdom come.

I hope I explained it more clearly that time.

Maximizing Potential would me that every single tank would have a set of Fallen Saints for certain effects, until they can down Snowtail/Ghost to get rid of the Fallen Saints in favor of Elaborate/Eminent/Last Blood. Regardless of assertations repeatedly by people that this "funnels" people into one gear choice... it doesn't.

Then you apparently do not understand tanking whatsoever. Considering the old blood armor, the only fallen saint piece worth wearing was the BP for the stats/effects/haste. Any tank using fallen saint over bloods in the other slots was either too lazy/unmotivated to complete the armor or had a shoddy understanding of relative armor values. All bloods sported insanely higher ac per piece. Most of the bloods had the exact same or superior hp. Any motivated tank could find the appropriate focus and mod2s elsewhere. Being unmotivated to go through the hassle is fine. Trying to assert that Fallen saint in all but bp was in any way a better route than last bloods (comparing gear to gear) is inaccurate. In several slots, Last blood was better than TSS raid gear for tanks.

[Woland]

Zarcal,

There are 2 things happening for a casual player. Tiered armor and drops and Cultural armor.

Tiered drops will be very hard to get past tier 3, even that will be very hard. Cultural armor will be bazaar bought but you will have an opportunity to get a seal to fit in Type 12 aug.

If that seal is better than LB aug as it should be, than it is pointless to invest time in Tiered armor. What I have seen of Cultural armor with LB, groupers will surpass anyone but raiders in Tier 3 SoF gear, at least at the 8 visible slots. With Tier 2 and 3 groupable non-visible drops we should be better than any raider doing outdated content. This however means that all guilds who are raiding pre-SoF content will have even bigger issue with numbers. This in turn will probably be good for grouping population.

[filobeto]

Well put stuff

I agree with you.

[Wyvernwill]

Then you apparently do not understand tanking whatsoever. Considering the old blood armor, the only fallen saint piece worth wearing was the BP for the stats/effects/haste. Any tank using fallen saint over bloods in the other slots was either too lazy/unmotivated to complete the armor or had a shoddy understanding of relative armor values. All bloods sported insanely higher ac per piece. Most of the bloods had the exact same or superior hp. Any motivated tank could find the appropriate focus and mod2s elsewhere. Being unmotivated to go through the hassle is fine. Trying to assert that Fallen saint in all but bp was in any way a better route than last bloods (comparing gear to gear) is inaccurate. In several slots, Last blood was better than TSS raid gear for tanks.

While I should resort to petty statements regarding your blind statements, I should let your dig on "my" understanding of tanking slide. I guess that 6 slots of Elaborate/Eminent wasn't last blood, nor that short of 2 aug slots, I wear nothing but AC or AC/Hp augs. Yep, I have no clue how to tank.

You and I will agree that those whom didn't go Elaborate/Eminent/Last Blood is lazy at the Demi level. Unfortunately, since you don't hear my lectures to the tanks in channels regarding Fallen Saints... you really have no clue on my knowledge regarding tanking.

The simple fact is that not everyone wants to bother with getting the cultural armor, wether Elaborate or Elegant, nor do they want to bother with the AAAA and the costs involved with that. You may consider it lazy, I may consider it lazy, but the fact remains that dropped visible armors are less work and far easier to obtain than cultural, the skill to make the cultural, the drops to get someone to combine the cultural, or the cash to buy it.

The fact also remains that content is balanced around the visible armors. A tank in full TSS raid gear is going to tank quite well for the content (as well as they did previous to the new gear), because the content was not adjusted to be harder due to the new culturals. They could tank better with using the Elegant/Sublime/Last Blood, but it's not mandatory to do your job at that level of raiding.

[Ratblaster]

I agree that 80 + 80 + TBS > Solteris is reasonable to expect.

-I do not think that elegant + sublime + last blood > Solteris is reasonable
-I do not think that elegant + exalted + last blood = Solteris is reasonable
-I do not think that eminent+ exalted + last blood > TSS is reasonable

Any combination above eminent/exalted + blood destroys TSS gear.

Don't overlook the fact that not everyone will be able to gear up in all last bloods. Our guild has 80+ raiders x 8 slots = 640 last bloods. Even if we continue to raid demi weekly and get 3 last bloods a week, so 6 months from now we may have an extra 3 x 6 x 4 = 72 last bloods in guild...or an avg increase of 1 per person. There are other LBs available in Rage and ToB, but those are open zones being farmed by many guilds so not somethign that can be reliably farmed.

Yes our TSS-raiding guild does have several people who have a full set of cultural, but those were people who were already using last bloods prior to SoF release due to the AC gain (i.e. mostly warriors/knights). Those who were not already on the LB bandwagon pre-SoF are not sing a fast cultural gearup due to the bottleneck for obtaining new last bloods, so we have many raiders bidding on TSS molds as they drop in AG. TSS molds have not rotted nor do I expect them to for a long time.

The value of TSS molds in DKP terms has dropped a bit due to increase interest in last bloods since our raiders now have multiple options available for gearing armor slots. The DKP cost of last bloods has gone up significantly meaning it will be difficult for any one player to obtain a new full set in a short period of time.

So with respect to Last Bloods destroying TSS gear, I cant agree. Casters needing lvl 75 focus need TSS gear, not LBs, plus the general demand for TSS armor will continue since it's just not feasible for everyone in guild to get a significant number of LBs (except perhaps for a few guilds that have been known to exploit a flaw in expedition lockout timers...something that we dont do).

[Twistagain]

Don't overlook the fact that not everyone will be able to gear up in all last bloods.

Or the fact that MOST people will never see a SINGLE Last Blood... If you are getting Last Bloods, then you are a raider to begin with. Leave the groupers out of the arguement.

[Woland]

Twistagain,

Groupers are getting seal for type 12 slot. Group armor in SoF is better than raid armor in DPoB, I would expect groupers to get seal that is better than LB.

[Bedavir]

Groupers are getting seal for type 12 slot. Group armor in SoF is better than raid armor in DPoB, I would expect groupers to get seal that is better than LB.

Considering the TSS/TBS type 12's are just barely (and i mean that literally) better than Last bloods, I'd give it a snowball's chance in heck.

[Ratblaster]

Twistagain,

Groupers are getting seal for type 12 slot. Group armor in SoF is better than raid armor in DPoB, I would expect groupers to get seal that is better than LB.

What type-12 seal do groupers have access to?

Last blood augs require raids to access. Serpent/Sunshard seal ausg require raids + TSS/TBS access, and i had assumed the unseen faycite seal augs would be from Tier3/4 raid mobs.

Bazu stones likely still need raids also , though it may be possible to do Shyrra now with 2 raid-geared groups.

Discordant/Chronal stones have never seemed very common, though I think Zomm in Arcstone drops a Discordant (dont think he can be one-grouped though)

[Woland]

Why should groupers get worse than LB aug, that would make no sense. If backward guilds can get LB aug why should best most commited groupers not get better?

[Woland]

What type-12 seal do groupers have access to?

Last blood augs require raids to access. Serpent/Sunshard seal ausg require raids + TSS/TBS access, and i had assumed the unseen faycite seal augs would be from Tier3/4.

Bazu stones likely still need raids also , though it may be possible to do Shyrra now with 2 raid-geared groups.

Discordant/Chronal stones have never seemed very common, though I think Zomm in Arcstone drops a Discordant (dont think he can be one-grouped though)

There is a Type 12 aug in SoF targeted for group players. It has not been discovered yet but that is the word from Devs.

[Ratblaster]

There is a Type 12 aug in SoF targeted for group players. It has not been discovered yet but that is the word from Devs.

Well, I guess we'll have something new to debate once someone discovers it. We have hit named mobs in tiers 1-3 and not seen any seal yet....and I would not consider tier3/4 named to be groupable by non-raiders.

If there are truly planned "group" level type-12 augs planned, my expectation would be for them to have lower stats than raid level type-12 augs (LB/Serpent/Sunshard). If these new groupable type-12's do have LB-like stats, my expectation woudl be that they only drop on tier3/4 "groupable" mobs.

From a caster point of view though, even new type-12's with less hp/ac than LBs woudl still be very appealing if they had lvl 80 focus effects. I'd happily give up 100 hp in slot 12 to gain lvl 80 20% mana pres or other significant lvl 80 focus.

[Woland]

Ratblaster, I added a link to Ngreth post on these boards regarding group seals.

When you compare foci you have to be careful exactly how much value you attach to each. You also need to know what foci typically goes where.

Mana pres has not been on visible piece of armor since DPoB/DK. It is always on a non-visible armor. You also need to realize that difference in detrimental mana pres. between one you can get on LB and one you get from TSS is 5%. That is really only 2.5% due to RNG nature of most foci. 2.5% is not a small number but it is not earth shattering. If you have all AAs needed and you are casting spell from your specialization you have 23.5% mana pres. If you have LB foci you add between 5% and 7.5% depending on the level of spell you cast. If you go and do PU Anguish or Demi raid you may be able to pick up armor piece that adds Specialization mod +12%, that in turn is another 1.5%. So 2.5% you would gain from TSS type of foci is not that huge of a difference.

My point here is that though foci are important they have a certain value that may not be as large as you are trying to make it out to be.

I would never give 800 Mana/HP on seals for a marginal foci improvement. Given the nature of group game top level foci add little advantage compared to Mana/HP.