Legion still sucks.

[Return1]

I don't actually mind high gil prices, seeing as we're rapidly heading to inflation one again. gil is so easy to create it's kinda a joke.

[Mahoro]

VV, Stormbird, and various nuke atmas were available at the start and at the time were insane. Cruor Buffs themselves and a myriad of Temp items enabled anyone to take out most things at 80cap. With Scars came RR and MM, cementing "easymode" forever into abyssea.

"Most" things, yes. Not all. Not talking about Gnawtooth Gary.

Most things could actually be duoed at the level cap for their respective expansions. And nothing, but maybe Rani, couldn't be killed by a PT of less than 6.

"Most things", again perhaps in theory, not in practice. As you are mentioning "duoing", I assume not all procs are covered as well and efficiency sacrificed. Let's also not forget the rep that solo NIN/DNC got taking 30 minutes to kill stuff back in the day.

And what praytell were these "other events" that couldn't be lowmanned?

As a starting point, the others I listed last page? Should also be remembered that Heroes came out in December 2010. Few months later, Voidwatch began and if you recall, it most assuredly did not have a robust PUG community at the beginning.

Personal goals are achieved faster and faster the less people you have to lug along with you. EGLSs were held together by the idea of personal advancement. Abyssea made it easier for people to lowman personal advancement, and thus having more than ~5-6 people with you will ALWAYS slow you down more than help you.

And that's exactly why people supplemented personal goals with LS events, reducing the loot queue for all. Having more than 5-6 people eventually slowed you down more than helped you in Abyssea, but by then the shell moved on. Burning your bridges till you only end up with 5-6 people to do stuff with slows you down more overall than helps you.

Also, no offense, but that pooling system for VW/WoE is completely fucking stupid. Either you pay them more for the items than the AH would, and hemorrhage LS gil, you pay them the same as the AH would, reducing your LS to a ghetto AH, or you pay them less than the AH, in which case your ls is hurting its own members.

If it's adapt or die, that ls needs to be sent to slaughter.

Nobody complained when they capped out on stuff faster than they would hanging at the coattails of JPs at 4AM-6AM NA time. I appreciate the bon mot, but if anything needs to be sent to slaughter, it's limited perspectives.

[Return1]

"Most" things, yes. Not all. Not talking about Gnawtooth Gary.

Name an NM that couldn't be beaten in Visions at level cap with WHM + Tank and Stormbird+VV or HP+30% atma, liberal Temps, and Cruor buffs. I think Glavoid?

"Most things", again perhaps in theory, not in practice. As you are mentioning "duoing", I assume not all procs are covered as well.

We weren't talking about procs, we were talking difficulty. If we were, a trio of WHM, WAR, and NIN could do all red procs with select pieces of gear (and now WHM THF WAR can do the same). If you were after Blue, MNK+WHM and wait for the right time. Yellow? Drop a DD and add a BLM (It was mathed out that adding a Blue who needed drops would cost you more time than just not procing occassionally). The only reason to do abyssea besides EXP after a week or so was to get EMP items, and procing did nothing for the fights themselves.

And that's exactly why people supplemented personal goals with LS events, reducing the loot queue for all. Having more than 5-6 people slows you down more than helps you in Abyssea. Burning your bridges till you only end up with 5-6 people to do stuff with slows you down more overall than helps you.

What?

There's not any event outside of Legion where you need a group of more than 5-6. Period. Having 5-6 is ideal in today's game.

Nobody complained when they capped out on stuff faster than they would hanging at the coattails of JPs at 4AM-6AM NA time.

Praytell, what useful non-R/EX items did they cap out on?

Particularly, tell us how they capped out faster on these non-R/EX items with an LS event than they could have by simply farming and buying, and using their stones for R/EX equipment that they wanted specifically instead of wasting them on your events.

[Return1]

Also, VW didn't have a robust PUG community at the very start because no one knew how the events worked, people didn't want to waste the precious few stones they had at the start, and most of the gear sucked or at best was situational, with a couple being good.

PUGs started after a little while, and before jeuno tier. Which is when drops became significantly better.

WoEs has always been pretty trash ande always PUG.

[Mahoro]

We are getting back offtopic, but in the interest of ending this side jaunt, in answer to your questions:

1) if you are truly talking pre-Minikin, pre-broken-healer-atma Visions play, WHM + Tank for the following mobs would be either foolhardy or would waste more stones for r/ex equipment than "wasting them [on] events" as you cite such concern: Eccentric Eve, Bloodeye Vileberry, Briareus, Hadhayosh, Glavoid, Iratham, Usurper, Turul, Carabosse, Cuelebre, Chloris if unlucky doom.

2) We were talking difficulty first, but your subsequent comments were so interlaced with efficiency arguments that I felt obligated to slip it in.

3) We are debating a semantic point. There are plenty of things where one needs more than 5-6 "bodies" to round out events (and in the case of ADL, if you are doing it with 5-6 you are likely not counting mules). My point was that if you only knew 5-6 people in the game, and have to form or join /shouts for stuff like Voidwatch, you either are spending a lot of time idling in PJ or otherwise waiting for those 5-6 people to all log on simultaneously. I'd like to point out that I do PUGs for various things outside of events too, but unlike you, I wouldn't castigate a group of people who get together for events a few times a week to achieve those goals they can't easily achieve in PUGs.

4) Not taking the bait and listing each and every single useful WoE drop in response to an obviously rhetorical question, but since only about ~20% of the event's drops are useful (as with Voidwatch), it didn't take long as we weren't dealing with VW loot design, and those minority few who were making Coin weapons were glad for the runs.

5) You are assuming a healthy market on VW/WoE items and forgetting that when the event was first released, there wasn't as robust a market as there is today, and moreover some fluxes/mobs were just not done out of hand. The statement "WoE was always PUG" is also somewhat shortsighted in the context of patches that have since turned it into the Tokyo Playground where the AH is flooded with items the JP's sell.

EDIT: 6) Your last post does not refute my original point that VW was a non-lowman event released soon after the end of Heroes (and I could argue the bodies off Celaeno/Ironclad/Hahava provided at least some incentive). By the time the PUG community began to flourish, things were figured out, and drops were better, you'd have to be incredibly lucky on drop rate not to supplement PUG runs with LS runs if you had access to one.

[Sparthos]

Name an NM that couldn't be beaten in Visions at level cap with WHM + Tank and Stormbird+VV or HP+30% atma, liberal Temps, and Cruor buffs. I think Glavoid?

All of the Emp NMs @80 weren't that easy and without Razed Ruins to boost your hit/crit rates, you likely would most likely need at least a party to win. Glavoid was the toughest NM in Visions but most of the top tier NMs weren't being duoed outside extremely skilled players and even then it took forever and required timestacking which also wasn't that easy to do in small groups during the time given our understanding of lights at the time and average killspeed.

It was Scars where time became trivial given the light assists from Bastion, Ephemerals that made getting lights faster, Empyrean WS unlocks and the unholy combo of MinikinRuins.

We weren't talking about procs, we were talking difficulty. If we were, a trio of WHM, WAR, and NIN could do all red procs with select pieces of gear (and now WHM THF WAR can do the same). If you were after Blue, MNK+WHM and wait for the right time. Yellow? Drop a DD and add a BLM (It was mathed out that adding a Blue who needed drops would cost you more time than just not procing occassionally). The only reason to do abyssea besides EXP after a week or so was to get EMP items, and procing did nothing for the fights themselves.

You're completely eliminating the fact that Vision was pretty tough for most people @80 with or without understanding of procs. Things like Fistule and Carabosse actually hurt, certain JA and weaponskills weren't available and Razed Ruins was off the table.

[SpankWustler]

Oh also, apparently you can drop the Uptala to 1% and it won't die until it successfully casts Kaustra; at that point all damage just does 0 and you have to wait until it decides to fall over.

This is a really cool mechanic. Not exactly balanced when dealing with two other horrible monsters and a tight time limit, but it is nice that it's something beyond "I am below 25% HP and I am using that horrible AoE a lot now. A lot a lot so much so much forever! I hope you like AoE's. I like AoE's."

Instead, it's more like:

"Dost thou wish Kaustra to be cast upon thee?"
Stun!
"But thou must!"
Stun!
"But thou must!"
Shock Squall!
"But thou must!"
"But thou must!"
"But thou must!"

[Luvbunny]

EDIT: 6) Your last post does not refute my original point that VW was a non-lowman event released soon after the end of Heroes (and I could argue the bodies off Celaeno/Ironclad/Hahava provided at least some incentive). By the time the PUG community began to flourish, things were figured out, and drops were better, you'd have to be incredibly lucky on drop rate not to supplement PUG runs with LS runs if you had access to one.

He also has total amnesia about Voidwatch when it was first came out. The original cities one was a bit of a challenge for random PUG, we were at level 90, and everyone was still trying to figure it out. I remembered it was not a very easy one albeit doable. Then SE made lots of tweak on the events and lowered the difficulty considerably, now all the cities and jeunos are super easy to do and done in matter of minutes per run. Still you need more than 5-6 people unless you get ones who are filled with temp items and decked head to toe with elite gears.

[Return1]

1) if you are truly talking pre-Minikin, pre-any-useful-healer-atma Visions play, WHM + Tank for the following mobs would be either foolhardy or would waste more stones for r/ex equipment than "wasting them [on] events" as you cite such concern: Eccentric Eve, Bloodeye Vileberry, Briareus, Hadhayosh, Glavoid, Iratham, Usurper, Turul, Cuelebre, Chloris if unlucky doom.

Some of those really shouldn't have been listed. Cuelebre for example has always been a joke. The only ones to present real problems are Glavoid and Death users, and death users could be stunned with a competent Mage or DNC. PDT, MDT, Evasion, or stun can make all but glavoid very possible at 80.

Also, no one cares about abyssea stones. I was talking about VW stones.

2) We were talking difficulty first, but your comments were so interlaced with efficiency arguments that I felt obligated to slip it in.

I get that. Doesn't change the fact a small group could always do it all and be farm more efficient. At any level cap.

3) We are debating a semantic point. There are plenty of things where one needs more than 5-6 "bodies" to round out events (and in the case of ADL, if you are doing it with 5-6 you are likely not counting mules). My point was that if you only knew 5-6 people in the game, and have to form or join /shouts for stuff like Voidwatch, you either are spending a lot of time idling in PJ or otherwise waiting for those 5-6 people to all log on simultaneously.

ADL is a very recent addition to shit people actually do, and only a select few do it. ADL does require a group, and for any kind of efficiency, more than 6. That said, one monster in all the evvents out, isn't really justification for a whole EGLS.

Or you can organize/do PUGs instead of waiting on others times to line up with yours for shit you don't need them on. VW kills EGLSs because you can't gift/govern, and people have their own goals. There's no benefit to them using stones or wasting time at your events when they could just pick and choose the events that benefit them. An ls offers 0 advantages over a PUG for VW/WoE, and several disadvantages.

5) You are assuming a healthy market on WoE items and forgetting that when the event was first released, there wasn't as robust a market as there is today, and moreover some fluxes were just not done out of hand.

Or that most of the rewards are dogshit and easily replaced. If the item was good enough, you had better odds finding one for sale and farming the gil for it than actually finding one from the event. Also it was heavy on PUGs from the start and you couldn't gift/govern because people could just enter and take your gear and then it went to personal reward as well.

6) Your last post does not refute my original point that VW was a non-lowman event released soon after the end of Heroes. By the time the PUG community flourished, things were figured out, and drops were better, you'd have to be incredibly lucky on drop rate not to supplement PUG runs with LS runs if you had access to one.

It was a non (mainstream) PUG event for about a month. PUGs did do it after about the first week, but it wasn't very large until it had been mapped out. You didn't cap everyone out on their drops with just a months worth of stones, especially considering those kills sucked in comparison because you didn't know how to boost lights.

The drops from the only wave not to have an immediate large PUG response, was the wave with the hands down worst drops, and it was only a temporary use for an LS. The event itself did far more harm than help for an LS.

Your whole argument is an ls could just twist people's arms to do an unknown event when it first comes out. That's the only advantage was early on you could provide knowledge on the subject.

The 1 stone per day initial limit had more to do with PUGs not being big on VW when it first began, than the event not being lowman friendly. And the bigest reason the lowest levels weren't lowman friendly is because of the stupid lights/proc system.

[Return1]

Just want to point out my friend, my wife (and her mule), and I could kill all tier1s as PLD, BRD, BLU, WHM, Tier 2s we killed as SMNs and BRD, we picked up a couple SMNs for Lorb and Ogbun, and that even worked on one tier 3 (Tonberry).