Tiers 9 through 11 balancing (See post #4 for current status)

Anvyl, from Companions.

Cambrai, we've killed Storm Giant in EJ and never did it again deeming it a waste of time for rot loot about 9 months ago.
 
Tao edit: Fuwok of <Fair Weather Friends>
This is kind of an aside but I've always heard that Storm Tyrant is way hard for the quality of loot that he drops.

Tao edit: I'd like to hear more about this. Maybe his loot is not good enough. Maybe he's too hard to kill. Maybe both or neither. I'd like to hear more.
 
(1) Who are you? What guild are you in?
Cryas the Enlightened Fool <Companions>

(2) What tier would you consider your guild to be?
T10

(4) Have you killed some/many/most/all of the encounters that the wiki lists as being that tier you consider your guild to be?
We've only successfully managed five of the listed t10 targets. There are a few that we are painfully close on.

(5) Have you killed any of the encounters in the next higher tier, according to the wiki's current listings?
No.

(6) Do you think your guild is ready to try some new encounters that are more challenging?
I believe we have enough on our plate as it is (especially once Thaz returns.) Sadly, it doesn't always feel this way because a lot of the encounters require a raid force (read: non-boxed) that we simply can't always muster when the opportunity is there.

(7) Do you think your guild spends enough time raiding to attempt new challenging encounters and still get some upgrades from encounters you've killed a few times before in a given 2 week period?
I feel that our leaders strike a good balance. I will say that our forays into new encounters are not as often as I'd like, but I recognize this is largely due to my response to (6) as well as a notable lack of initiative to try new things when other goals are closer to fruition.

(8) What encounters have you done recently that you really struggled with and had the loot rot?
We're pretty good about covering potential loot tables to prevent rot, but there's always the possibility with class specific items.

(9) What encounters are you looking forward to trying?
Outer Sanctum and Cauldron Event.

(10) What encounters are you thinking "I don't even want to try that", and why do you feel that way about them?
None. I will reinforce my guildmate's comments regarding Thaz timers though. The concept is great, but last time we were there.. it wasn't even close. Yes, we wiped to trash. We can probably tighten up the flow of pulls to save some time now that we're more familiar with them. But in the end, I doubt we'll have more than two attempts before the timer is up. Because of this mechanic, it changes sentiment regarding the investment of time in learning the new content. I will also note that I do not believe the script was working properly last time we attempted Thaz, as we were not gaining time for removing trash.

(11) Are there any encounters where you think some part of the encounter is unfair?
The only encounter that comes to mind is Ferd'in and it's not necessarily unfair... it's more of a problem with collision with the ceiling. I've been pushed through the ceiling by a grav flux on more than one occasion, which renders me useless for quite some time.

(12) Are there any encounters that you enjoy doing even if they don't provide any loot that you could personally use?
I enjoy the majority of raid encounters, even if there isn't the potential for personal gain.

Any other point that I would like to discuss is either tied into the proper implementation of Thaz (to relieve the lack of early t10 targets). Otherwise, from what I have experienced, I see no real issues with the flow of progression.

Tao edit: more streamlining to keep the thread moving
 
(1) Who are you? What guild are you in? (remember all of your posts in this thread must include this information)

Oehl, Prophecy

(2) What tier would you consider your guild to be?

9

(3) Do you think that most of your guild's regular raid force has gear that is pretty much from that tier you listed or the tier before, or do you think there are a lot of members with numerous pieces from 3-4 tiers back?

I'd say we're 75% geared with T8-9 loot, with the rest filled from T7 minimum. With Abyss activity this is rapidly increasing to 80% or greater.

(4) Have you killed some/many/most/all of the encounters that the wiki lists as being that tier you consider your guild to be?

I think we have killed every Tier 9 target now not including Thaz.

(5) Have you killed any of the encounters in the next higher tier, according to the wiki's current listings?

We have killed Serizus in Undercity who is currently classed as T10. Though, personally, I would say he's just a very challenging T9.

(6) Do you think your guild is ready to try some new encounters that are more challenging?

Yes. Our success of Abyss is indicative that when we are at strength we have the opportunity to do great things!

(7) Do you think your guild spends enough time raiding to attempt new challenging encounters and still get some upgrades from encounters you've killed a few times before in a given 2 week period?

No, it would be ideal to probably raid 3 nights a week on 18 man content versus 2, and for greater than 4 hours, but because we each of us have personal lives outside of the game what would be "ideal" isn't practical.

(8) What encounters have you done recently that you really struggled with and had the loot rot?

Corefire comes to mind, I think that Folerit Redsun has some loots which are very close to being rot. We don't much bother doing encounters that lack in loot and exceed in difficulty.

(9) What encounters are you looking forward to trying?

Upper end Yclist (T10 encounters), Cauldron of Dawn, The Generals

(10) What encounters are you thinking "I don't even want to try that", and why do you feel that way about them?

Most-anything in Thaz. I don't like being on a time constraint in EverQuest where buffs are involved. We currently only get 3 to 4 solid attempts in earth wing which is rumored to be the easiest. Buffing just isn't fun, especially when you're in a winged instance that locks you out and punishes you for taking it slow and steady. I think it's poor game design.

(11) Are there any encounters where you think some part of the encounter is unfair?

I truly do not understand why raid encounters (trash or named) mesmerize players in Shards of Dalaya. The efficient (path of least resistance) is to use a group bard dispell song which eats through buffs. If buffs didn't exist in SoD this would be an entirely different story.

(12) Are there any encounters that you enjoy doing even if they don't provide any loot that you could personally use?

Enthann in ValorB, Eternal Well, Orator of Frost, Clockwork, Versikul the Chained. Most elaborately scripted events which provide flavor but don't have a gimmick that straight-up kills the raid instantaneously when a person makes a mistake.
 
It looks to me like tier 9 isn't the issue that needs to be addressed, and it would seem from this thread that most other players feel the same. Progression from tier 1-9 has been a pretty smooth curve (I've been here for all of it).

Hearing that upper tier 10 and most of tier 11-12 has been buffed is what is depressing. I understand why I think, the Bane problem, overpowered items (most have since been fixed) and high end guild back gearing / trivializing the content I think were all factors. I think that nobody doing Thaz could also be a factor, but maybe not.

The thing is: Bane was fixed, items were fixed *and* content was buffed. Sure the problem of trivial content for the top guilds was fixed, but at the same time a wall was really put up for guilds like FA and Prophecy who are rapidly approaching those tiers. I think fixing Bane and / or fixing the items would have been enough of a fix had the staff waited and given it a chance to work.

Voidworm - one of the previously easiest mobs in Spires and probably an important one to start progressing in the zone is now unkillable by Chaotic Winds. I remember one of the CW members saying Voidworms AE or some other attribute (it was a while ago) 1 shotted him. That's kind of crazy if it's true.

Ancient Guardians - T12 guilds don't even bother anymore, and its not for a lack of use for his loot. Apparently this encounter pushes higher end guilds who have been farming turruj for quite some time right to their limits and they finish the fight on fumes if they even make it.

Overgrown Sthizri (Spelled wrong Im sure) - His HP was doubled, and with a raid of FA and CW members we got him to 8% on our second / last attempt. If he's intended to be tier 11ish, that's about right I guess. Prophecy says they've done him on tier, if its true then good for them and it's just us needing to be better.


Also -

I would like to suggest that Archaic Frags drop more frequently after tier 7-8. Players begin to want these spells around tier 7-8 and by the time tier 9-10 comes around some unlucky ones are forced to constantly PuG / ask their guild to raid for trash content to hope their piece will drop.

If the frags continued to drop through tier 10-11, this would likely not be an issue, and in my opinion, every zone should have a chance to drop any frag. We rot 3-4 wis caster frags every time we do UC, yet we have two wizards who can't finish their spell and people are tired of going to Prison to farm for pieces that don't drop ever.


tl;dr - The tier 10-11 jump is going to be near impossible with the new buffed mobs, archaic frags should drop past IP for int casters so there is no need to raid trash / trivial content.
 
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Frags do continue to drop past there, once you get into IS they drop. It is just a random part if the game and is fine, some people are just unlucky.
 
Frags do continue to drop past there, once you get into IS they drop. It is just a random part if the game and is fine, some people are just unlucky.

Ah, disregard that part then. It's frustrating at our point because our Wizards need the spell and we keep having to go to IP / OP to farm them in what usually ends up being a waste of a couple of hours.
 
try rust! Even if the loot in general isn't an upgrade there are some cool sidegrades or niche pieces in there and it will just spice it up in general if you're only doing prison.
 
The tripping point on that is with limited play time (generally only evenings / nights for a few hours) I don't want to spend it raiding content that's old, that I've done a long time ago and for a chance of getting absolutely nothing out of it if a frag doesn't drop.

I'd rather XP or do some 6 / 12 / 18 man progression.

This is drifting off topic though, it was just a thought that since we were discussing tiers where this is an issue that it might be an OK time to bring it up - those frags are something you have to keep going backwards for, and it's more of a chore than a fun game at that point.
 
Krentil
Sacred Band
about T11

I agree with most of what was said here. Up to and including Yclist and ToT Gens seem fine the way it is.

Spires seemed good the way it was. As Sacred Band broke in on Tier i don't remember any of the fights being all that easy. Voidworm became a little easy once we got gear and went back to kill it for a specific drop. We hardly ever did Conglo before the nerf since it was a tough fight then, can't imagine why it was made harder. We haven't tried the new ancient guardians but i thought that fight was fine the way it was. When it goes perfect and smooth it could seem easy but on the other hand 1 slip up and it's over. Don't think i did Akarn enough to judge it. The first night we tried it we killed it on the third attempt but we had an ideal raid setup and a little luck on our side. As Shimone said already Duo pushed us to our limits before the nerf.

Would love to see the Temple entry lowered or changed and a third encounter put in. I think we currently need 180 turn ins to get back in. That's a lot of farming for a chance at 2 mobs. Last time we used our turn ins we spent 2 hours trying to figure out the 3rd mob that we later found out was not in yet. This use to be a good option when Yclist/Spires were taken or nothing we needed was up.

Thaz: Haven't heard a peep from anyone in SB about wanting to go back there. The earth mini was fun but clearing with those traps is a nightmare.
 
I've updated second placeholder post (post #4 in this thread) to include a list of more specific topics that need to be addressed and where my priorities are with them. Please continue to say things not on that list, but please keep an eye on that list so you know if I'm not responding much to your specific posts that I might be aware of the issue and discussing some other things first. It's a lot to cover.

That all said, let's discuss the "spires buffs" briefly. A few fights in Spires were changed. Some of them were too easy. Some of them were fairly low on mechanics. Some were both. It's desired that the fights have some amount of mechanics and are also not something a Tier 7 raid could do. Further discussion of that is probably best left to a case-by-case basis. After all, Researcher Thek`rak didn't get changed (unless I'm mistaken) as it was tier-appropriate and had a reasonable level of mechanics involved. The other fights should follow this trend.

The Void Worm, in particular, was probably as easy as early Yclist if you had a casters that could sneaky cast underwater and a bard for dispells. The debuff that affected AE damage was made to be more of a pressing concern during the encounter and the damage was increased a bit to make it a fight that is around Tier 10-11 in difficulty. I believe these changes are good changes in intent and on paper.

I do hear the comments of "this fight is too hard", but I'm having difficulty interpreting those comments. Do you mean that there's just too much damage going out for a late Tier 10 or early Tier 11 fight? Do you mean that the tank is taking too much damage? Do you mean that the debuff should necessarily be removable from everyone by a bard or two without further effort or else the encounter just sucks? Do you mean that removing the debuff requires too much time of the healers that should otherwise be spent healing? Do you mean that you can't remove the debuff, and so the fight is effectively impossible with the large AE damage increase the debuff causes?

Answer "yes" to any of those "Do you mean...?" questions is a valid response, and I believe that we can handle the problems that a "yes" answer to any of those questions would indicate. I haven't watched the fight be attempted since it was changed, so I actually don't know the problem. It looks fine on paper, so I could use some input. That's what this thread is for (your input). Please provide this input nicely and with the mindset that I'm actually listening and very interested in this phase of balance.
 
(11) Are there any encounters where you think some part of the encounter is unfair?
The only encounter that comes to mind is Ferd'in and it's not necessarily unfair... it's more of a problem with collision with the ceiling. I've been pushed through the ceiling by a grav flux on more than one occasion, which renders me useless for quite some time.

I'd really like to hear some details on this. This just doesn't sound right to me.
 
I've been on vacation and only reading the end of this, but with voidworm in particular from Tao's post.

Voidworm: hit our raid for 8-12k lifetap per person. That is unbalanced and we reported it when we did it in detail with one of the GMs. The damage output of Voidworm is ridiciulously high, I believe Raxton has parses of this.

Trio : now has all three of them hitting like a truck instead of the small being smaller damage, medium being decent damage, and large being the most damage. It was already a well balanced fight and now with the change it is almost impossible being over tiered to bring a balanced raid to kill it (by balanced raid I mean not taking 6 healers, 3 tanks, and a shm to heal it). It seems to be balanced now toward people having T12 gear and it's ridiculously hard for T12 raid to kill it with all their damage outputs being higher.

Twins: fight, the invuln part is buggy or we just cant find a pattern with it. The non-robe one (cant remember the name) goes invuln and makes the fight if the raid is on tier extremely more difficult and I dont see how T11 healers unless fully farmed out would ever have the mana to do it anymore.

These are the 3 fights that I feel are unbalanced because T12-13 people said they were easy. But they should be easy for them since they farmed them already so everyone knows their role and have better gear than when they first tried the fight.

When CW broke into Spires all the fights were difficult until we spent 8 months farming it all. Zaela did a good job on the zone and I am confused on why it was changed at all.

Experiment: is only slightly unbalanced. It was a joke before after you had the strat but that was the point to it, figuring out the unique strat. Maybe the hp buff was a little excessive.

Akarn: is not broken, he just went invuln at the end once and Slaar said he fixed it.

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Ok'tar : if you fail it shouldn't depop. It should fully repop so you can redo it.
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Fer'din : I havent done this in awhile so not sure if it was changed or people just complaining. The rumble effect is not hard if you understand where to stand and what to do during that part. I do not think that it needs to be changed at all.
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Old Overgrowth : I thought was excessively hard for the tier. CW was T11 when we did it and it smoked us, we did end up winning but the ramp tank takes SO much damage on top of the tank getting spanked.
 
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Shimone / Moraelin

For more detauled information regarding spires please reread my second post. But in summary here is the problems:

Akarn: way too much ae Dmg. Too much damage on tank. Too many hps
Duo: dread captain hits way too hard. Dc has 2-3x too many hps healers run oom before he is close to dead
Trio: should never had been changed

In all honesty 100% of spires should be reverted to original form. It was appropriate difficulty and increased as you went deeper. No t8/9/10 guild could kill anything in there even knowing all mechanics. Goonsquad was able to do some but they used to get tanks which helps a lot. Even after it had been farmed for 6+ months SB would still wipe to voidwurm on occasion. It hit the tanks hard enough and fast enough that had to have a good enough tank/healers to win.

I know you don't want to hear that xxx zone should be reverted, but in all honesty it is probably the best choice. Revamping zones bc a T13 guild things its easy would be like revamping tot bc a T11 guild thinks it too easy. We can 1 group the first farhag does that mean it should be buffed?

At least 4 guild struggled to learn and get through the encounters and now 2 of them after successfully killing the entire zone struggle with a majority of them. That is wrong.
 
Also ok tar timer needs 3-5x as much time cannot be comeyed even close with in tier dps.

Ok'tar is tribe 2 and is not timed. So if you mean tribe 1 needs time increase I completely disagree. CW doesn't have ringers and broke into the content themselves and never had an issue with the timer unless people decide to not listen. If you have trouble with time i suggest changing your strategy.

Shimone / Moraelin

For more detauled information regarding spires please reread my second post. But in summary here is the problems:

Akarn: way too much ae Dmg. Too much damage on tank. Too many hps
Duo: dread captain hits way too hard. Dc has 2-3x too many hps healers run oom before he is close to dead
Trio: should never had been changed
Akarn damage to tank is greatly reduced when the ghost is out. However I did think that the AOE is increased when we did it last but to avoid the issue we found out a new strat for it and had no problems, cake walk again. I don't think it needs to be changed, it was really easy before when we first did it a year ago.

Dread Capt I think hits the same as he always did, and we did it on tier. But now the issue is that he is invuln until the other one is dead usually. So there is no way on tier healers can heal through that the whole time of the caster guy then continue healing through Dread Captain. When he wasn't invuln the melees could burn him down freeing up those healers. However if you failed you had to petition to get it repop'd because Dread Captain wouldnt respawn. So if this was reverted to the old code and somehow make it if you fail he repops automatically (like generals) then the fight I would think is balanced. Just need good button pushers on your healers.

Trio: totally agree.


I know you don't want to hear that xxx zone should be reverted, but in all honesty it is probably the best choice. Revamping zones bc a T13 guild things its easy would be like revamping tot bc a T11 guild thinks it too easy. We can 1 group the first farhag does that mean it should be buffed?

At least 4 guild struggled to learn and get through the encounters and now 2 of them after successfully killing the entire zone struggle with a majority of them. That is wrong.
this is the point we talk about in vent all the time. After farming it for a year, now we cant even always kill everything is wrong. And no guild on Tier will be able to kill it if the over tiered people are wiping over and over. The biggest unbalance fights in Spires are Voidworm, Trio, and Duo.
 
I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with Ludovician's posts on this thread. Seems our two guilds are experiencing pretty much the same thing. Up through T9 is balanced nicely. It's scary to think that SB and CW can all of a sudden not kill mobs in spires etc. If these guilds which have been farming T11/12 can't kill things, I'm not sure how we are supposed to have any hope of breaking into this content. And that's really discouraging to a guild trying to progress.

Stuff to add: we haven't even considered attempting Temple, because the entrance mechanism sounds horrible and if we aren't capable of killing things we just made it that much harder to go next time.

We killed Overgrown Szithri on tier BEFORE the change, we have not downed it since. Same with hellhound, though we wiped at 0% so that's sort of a kill. But it is amazingly harder than it was before and pushes all of us to our limits, and then we need some luck thrown in too.

We haven't tried Thaz in maybe a month and a half, we tried earth wing and got wrecked. So we've been trying to gear up a little bit before going back. Haven't tried any of the other wings as a guild, but we are aiming to push it a little more in the near future. The timer is sort of an issue when you wipe and then have to decide whether to rush back for a hasty engage or wait and clear through all of the trash again.

Side note: if FA is rotting 3-4 healer frags every time they go to UC, I know a druid who has been looking for his 4th frag for 9 months now (hint: IT'S ME). I know it's sort of a different conversation, but archaic's are an enormous part of progressing at these tiers and the drop rate is mind-numbingly low in Plane of Frost and UC.
 
Dread Capt I think hits the same as he always did, and we did it on tier. But now the issue is that he is invuln until the other one is dead usually. So there is no way on tier healers can heal through that the whole time of the caster guy then continue healing through Dread Captain. When he wasn't invuln the melees could burn him down freeing up those healers. However if you failed you had to petition to get it repop'd because Dread Captain wouldnt respawn. So if this was reverted to the old code and somehow make it if you fail he repops automatically (like generals) then the fight I would think is balanced. Just need good button pushers on your healers.

from what i've been reading about duo, having not done it anytime recently, is that it might be bugged. dread capt always used to stay invuln until you casted a certain number of spells on him. it sounds like he's either been bugged or fixed to work how it was maybe intended
 
from what i've been reading about duo, having not done it anytime recently, is that it might be bugged. dread capt always used to stay invuln until you casted a certain number of spells on him. it sounds like he's either been bugged or fixed to work how it was maybe intended

Yeah we get the emote about it, and we are trying to find a pattern with number of spells and type of spells but it seems pretty random at the moment. Could be completely wrong too and I just havent paid close enough attention because Im smashing quick heal button so our T12 tank doesnt get molly whooped.

I'm pretty much 100% in agreement with Ludovician's posts on this thread. Seems our two guilds are experiencing pretty much the same thing. Up through T9 is balanced nicely. It's scary to think that SB and CW can all of a sudden not kill mobs in spires etc. If these guilds which have been farming T11/12 can't kill things, I'm not sure how we are supposed to have any hope of breaking into this content. And that's really discouraging to a guild trying to progress.

Stuff to add: we haven't even considered attempting Temple, because the entrance mechanism sounds horrible and if we aren't capable of killing things we just made it that much harder to go next time.

We killed Overgrown Szithri on tier BEFORE the change, we have not downed it since. Same with hellhound, though we wiped at 0% so that's sort of a kill. But it is amazingly harder than it was before and pushes all of us to our limits, and then we need some luck thrown in too.

We haven't tried Thaz in maybe a month and a half, we tried earth wing and got wrecked. So we've been trying to gear up a little bit before going back. Haven't tried any of the other wings as a guild, but we are aiming to push it a little more in the near future. The timer is sort of an issue when you wipe and then have to decide whether to rush back for a hasty engage or wait and clear through all of the trash again.

Side note: if FA is rotting 3-4 healer frags every time they go to UC, I know a druid who has been looking for his 4th frag for 9 months now (hint: IT'S ME). I know it's sort of a different conversation, but archaic's are an enormous part of progressing at these tiers and the drop rate is mind-numbingly low in Plane of Frost and UC.

CW did temple of elael like 4 times. The first boss was always buggy and it was omg power through strat. Then the second boss was completely bugged and unkillable (i have heard it is fixed now). But havent been back sense because of how broken it all seemed.

Thaz seemed over powered for the tier it's supposed to be. The timers seemed to short, the trash hit too hard, and the zone crashes every 30mins. I wrote a PM of our experience in LT Fire to Jumbers (i might have sent it to others as well), for a more in detail look at it.

Abyss revamp was unnecessary. Abyss wasn't supposed to be T11 and shouldn't have been increased difficulty.

As to your last part of the quote, agreed. I told <From Accounting> even after you kill Prime Enchanter (which is a feat in itself) you will never get off the first floor in spires because Voidworm is unkillable at the moment. Which really sucks. Plus Voidworm loot is garbage compared to the rest of the zone, so it really was a lot better being the easiest mob in spires since it's the worst loot.
 
Twins: fight, the invuln part is buggy or we just cant find a pattern with it. The non-robe one (cant remember the name) goes invuln and makes the fight if the raid is on tier extremely more difficult and I dont see how T11 healers unless fully farmed out would ever have the mana to do it anymore.

Unless Twins has changed, to make the Dread Captain vulnerable you need to cast 6 spells on him. After you cast 6 spells he nukes the MT hard. It has been this way since the very beginning, I believe the only thing that has changed over time with this fight is the wisps (color change so it is much much easier to find out what element to nuke). However, if there have been changes since we last killed duo I can't even begin to speculate as to why. This is a painstakingly long and boring fight, but it seemed balanced nonetheless. Anything that makes it harder without reducing the duration is probably not warranted.

I pretty much agree about everything that has been said in this thread re: Spires balancing, the only fight that I think needed to be tweaked was Void Worm, which seems to have been tuned way too far.

Edit: For Tur'Ruj, I am not sure what all has changed other than Tar'Loc being made more difficult. This tribe hasn't been touched since TU first did it (in any noticeable way) and even when it was considered "progression" we could clear it in 10 minutes if no one AFKs. It's literally 11 mobs (if you don't count the squishes which are easily ignored with a competent warrior/SK in the raid).
 
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