Given that Delve II armors are outdated now, on the low end of the 119 spectrum, what with the Ambuscade, Escha, and AF+3 and +4 that are out these days, and now we got Su3 equipment....
Is there a reason why Delve II stuff needs to be so hard to get?
Last couple days, I was duo with a family member in Kamihr Drifts trying to get ahold of some Delve II stuff, some starter 119s for jobs that we only have sparks gear for, thusfar.
Not only does it take forever to get Yggrete Shards to drop, but when you do finally pop the mobs (some of them are just simply overpowered for low-man groups!), they pretty muc never rop what you need anyways. For example, the Raaz NM that drops the Qaaxo Gloves. We popped him at least 20-25 times and we got but 2 pieces of equipment to drop, and both times, it was the wrong piece.
I'd think about going to buy said piece of equipment now that I have the Impure Yggzi from him... oh wait, 150,000 Mweya Plasm. *sigh*
So let me get this straight.... the devs think it is a good idea for us to have to kill an NM 100 TIMES to get enough Plasm to buy the piece of armor from the NPC? Honestly... it's ridiculous.
The NMs in Ceizak, for example, you only need like 8,000 Plasm. That's very reasonable, given you get 1,000 out of the guaranteed bead drop. If it doesn't drop in 8 kills, you can go buy it if you'd rather not spend the rest of the week killing the stupid thing.
But then you get to Kamihr Drifts and they expect you to kill the thing 100 times (that's assuming you're solo and not sharing drops with other players, then it's 100 times avg per person).
Honestly I think that we should do the following:
1). Reduce the Plasm costs.
2). Significantly increase the drop rates of equipment.
3). Reduce the power of certain NMs and/or remove mechanics that make solo nearly impossible, such as AoE HP-to-One, invincibility vs damage types, etc.
Delve II equipment is aged, but it is a nice stepping stone to help a player get into Vol2 Ambuscade, but the problem is, it takes way too much of a time investment to try to obtain, so most players try to skip it and go straight to Ambuscade even though they really aren't geared good enough for it.
Same goes for Skirmish rewards; you only get 1 random piece of equipment out of solo/duo Yorcia Weald, and it's not easy to do on top of that, and trying to solo Ra'Kaznar is a joke (that stupid golem that unequips you and makes it so you can't re-equip yourself is just stupid) AND to boot, you almost never get Pulchridopt Wings or even worse, Vials of Transmelange to make the Yorcia Gear (that you get very little of) 119.
We need new/improved ways to go from Sparks gear up to Ambuscade/Escha, and buffing Delve II rewards so that it is worth it for the solo player to do in their off-time would be a great start.