New guild raids

[shiznitz]

I don't know if anyone cares but if you have been paying attention, EQ2 implemented new guild raid content to help smaller guild practice and gear up. My guild tried two of them last night and they were short, fun, educational and rewarding.

Each raid is limited to 12 people fighting EpicX2 mobs that scale to average raid level. Like the Splitpaw Saga instances, the rad can mentor down to manage the encounter level and then unmentor a few key people to make it easier. The raid force gets teleported from Qeynos/Freeport directly into the instance. We actually have Freeport-based characters in our Qeynos-based guild and the Freeport players could 'port into the same raid instance from Freeport. SOE really nailed the mechanics here.

Each raid introduces a different encounter concept to the newbie raider.

The first one we did involved adds. After clearing some wanderers, we engaged the boss mob who proceeded to summon reinforcements at a fixed interval. It felt like one minute intervals, but I expect my sense of time was warped by the ensuing chaos so it could be shorter. Each group of reinforcements was four heroics. We had one group mentored to 52 and the other to 53.  All the wanderers and reinforcements were 53. The boss was a 55x2.

Our first attempt failed predictably as we had too much DPS focusing on the adds when we should have been trying to take down the boss so the reinforcements would stop. We ended up with 12 heroics mowing through the healers, bards and one wizard.

We revived in the zone and tried again with some mentoring adjustments adding about 3 levels to our strength. We had one person pull the reinforcements away as much as possible and everyone else focused on taking down the boss. Boss dropped fast so we only had 9 heroics to clean up. Loot was a No Drop/No Trade item that when turned in to the proper NPC became a Legendary level 50 armor piece. Unfortunately, it was cloth so our lone caster got it even though he is level 70. It would have been a nice upgrade for anyone under 60 who didn't have Fabled in that slot already.

The second raid involved hate list resetting. There were three lieutenant mobs to kill (after clearing the trash, of course) before the boss became targetable. There would be an onscreen (not chat box) announcement like "Sister Methia searches for a new target!" and the next person to do anything aggro-inducing would get aggro. This was much easier to adapt too (everyone but the MT stop what you are doing) and we didn't have any trouble until the boss, by which time we had lost 3 people to the lateness of the hour (lots of family folk so midnight is pushing it for the East Coast players).

All in all these were a lot of fun and did not involve large amounts of downtime to do (2 hours of play.) Timer is 4 days, but as I wrote above, you get to stay in the instance until you win.

[jpark]

Very interesting - thanks.

[shiznitz]

My guild is now 4-1 on raid1 and 1-2 on raid2.  LU27 changed them again so that they are an actual progression so we did 1 and 2 last night.  The raids themselvs are exactly the same as they were prior to LU27 other than the names.

We had a higher level raid group last night. Both bosses were level 60x2. The first dropped a single piece of level 60 Legendary gear (better than the best player-made stuff) and the second raid boss dropped two pieces.

Our raid was:

54 sk
55 troub
57 templar
57 zerk (me)
59 zerk
60 pally
61 templar
64 monk
64 guard
64(70) wiz
64(70) brigand
64(70) dirge

Other than the 70s, most of us are at best 50% equipped with adept 3s and all wearing/wielding Mastercrafted gear of the appropriate tier. The wizard and dirge have some fabled stuff.

We entered the raid zones all mentored to 57 (other than the 54 and 55 of course.) We could not have won if we entered at the levels listed. Most of us are lacking the adept3/master spells necessary, I imagine. For raid 2, the 59 zerk tanked everything but the boss just fine. The guard had to tank the boss after we failed the first try. The dirge's battle rezzing was critical.

Since the raid series is a true progression now, you cannot back farm raids unless you have 2 guild members (1 for each raid group) that haven't done the earlier raids. Twelve is pretty much all we can field so I will report next week on raid 3 which we should fail a few times at least.

[UD_Delt]

Can you still mentor and then unmentor once in the zone? Used to work for when we do an occasional T5 (Level 50) raid. Everyone mentors down to be allowed into the zone and then people start unmentoring until the zone greys out, one person then would rementor to set it back to green.

With a Level 70 tank and a bunch of 70 DPS we'd roll through them like nothing. Loot at that point is pretty much useless but we did that at the release of the AA skills to farm all those zones for AA exp and guild status.

[shiznitz]

Can you still mentor and then unmentor once in the zone? Used to work for when we do an occasional T5 (Level 50) raid. Everyone mentors down to be allowed into the zone and then people start unmentoring until the zone greys out, one person then would rementor to set it back to green.

Yes. For our raid, the level disparity would not let the 70s be 70s, though. The 54 and 55 got the "you will get no exp/loot/quest credit" message.

[shiznitz]

I also wanted to mention that the 70s in my guild insist that PC-NPC level disparity works differently on epic vs heroic mobs.

Bottom line, for epics the tier of your gear is all that matters other than resists. Supposedly, identically equipped level 60 or 65 tank won't matter versus a 65 epic mob. For raids, having your spells/CAs at adept3 or better is the most important factor because that determines the epic mob's ability to resist/mitigate damage. The PC's level does not come into play as long as the PC is in the correct 0-9 level bracket. 

For heroics, we all know that level is king. A tank that is +2 versus a ^^^ will do a much better job than a -2 tank.

Apparently, this is how it has been since the combat update in LU13, but I have never raided until now so I didn't know. I was skeptical at first but discussions outside my guild have only confirmed it.

[UD_Delt]

I'm not sure on how it works for tanks but for melee dps every level matters. Or I should say weapon skill level matters. Adjusted skill level/5 will basically tell you what level mob you will be effective against.

I noticed a HUGE difference in damage output with my Swashbuckler while raiding T7 as I moved from 68 (our cutoff) to 69, and finally 70. Then another boost as I upgraded my weapons/gear for more + piercing items. My base piercing is at 350 but with gear and buffs it's around 450ish. I very rarely miss against most epics that dont have special skills (ie... boss of the Lyceum).