Legion, current playerbase and endgame content

[Afania]

I have some problems with your statements, mainly that you think Rex and Gallu have the good drops.

While it's true they drop body abjurations and meteor/arise, the truth is you cap out on that stuff very, very fast. The good drops are L feet, L head, C feet, Ormulo Ingot and Duplus grip. And if you have any amount of people that want any 1 of those items, I assure you that all your mules will have meteor, arise and body abjurations before you finish those drops.

IMO there isn't anything really wrong with Legion in the way the event is executed, even the random hate the Ironclad has that always results in people dieing. It's hard to build a group for it because most people are just bad, and it's a hard event. The -crit trait isn't really a big deal either, even though I have a 99 Ukon and am sad I am not the awesomest DD ever for this event like all the others. Gallu and Rex spawning in the middle of other waves is the worst idea I've ever heard for a change that could occur for this event. Wave 2 are the important mobs, and theyre annoying enough as it is.

That said, I do think SE should do something to increase interest in the event. And by that, I mean make the items better. even small increases to the potential of the items would help generate huge interest in the event. All theyd need to do really is make the augments on the abjuration stuff better for the pieces no one cares about, like Hugin pants, and leave the ones alone that are good, like Hugin shoes. Then take all the decent items, and make them better. Give Fulad-Zereh 5% DA instead of 3, make Duplus Grip 4% DA instead of 3, make the weapons actually worth using so people would want them by increasing their damage, give Gunmans gambison a good snapshot value, etc. It wouldn't be hard at all and it would greatly increase interest in the event, thus making it easier to find people to do it with.

Also: SovietSpaceDogs is currently looking to do 36 person Mul instead of 18, if you're on Odin and would like to join, send me a tell in game and we can discuss what jobs we're looking for.

Legion drop isn't bad, and gallu/rex drop actually worth quite some gil if you can manage to kill both every time.(although meteor/arise/honor price been dropping recently). Also whether gallu/rex drop is good or not is depend on job really, personally I can't even find enough people for Mul if I even want Gallu/rex clear, let alone getting Gallu/Rex drops. The problem is some of the preparations for their job shut off half of the players that may be interested.

Me: I'm looking for people for legion, wanna join?

Player A: Need a DD? I have MNK with 90 Vere.

*Takes the MNK to legion and see him parse a lot lower than a 95 Rag owner lower acc too*

Player B: Need a DD? I have 90 Ukon.

Me(Who learned a lesson): Legion mob has high acc, MAKE SURE YOU BRING ACC SWAP

*Takes him to legion and see him still parse lower than a 95 Rag*

Player C: Need a SCH? I have a SCH with 470 enhancing.

Me: Do you have a macc stun set and Impact?

Player C: No, and magic skill not capped ;(

Me: Stun going to get resist like this, gogo build a Rag and go work on macc set

Player A B C: Sorry I'm out, gl on your event and cya!


I've met plenty of players like A B C, they're interested in it, but they're not going to spend weeks and months to work on one of their job(out of many) just to do this event. There are certainly many ppl interested in it, but the requirement for it just shut the door.
You said it's hard to build a group because "most of the players are bad", but having to get X gear(and in the case of the DD, a relic!) just to have proper performance in 1 event isn't reasonable, considering it takes quite a large of time to build X gear set/weapon. Some of the players certainly knows how to play the job or follow orders. But as soon as they need to get X gear Y weapon just to join the event and have decent win rate, they'd rather not join and do other event that's even less productive. It's more about most players aren't legion job main to devote all their time on, rather than most players are bad. There are many players actually has decent skill and understanding of their job and not bad at all, doesn't mean they'll spend the time and effort to prepare for legion job when they're just mostly logging on for fun.

Now that GW2 is out and FFXIV ARR about to release soon, many older players left FFXI for those games. I know many player doesn't log on anymore and just stays in 14 all day, and it's getting very frustrating for someone who runs LS legion event to gather 18/18 for Mul. When I try to recruit new players, that's the above problem I'd face. I do legion with 2 different LS, both LS haven't been able to find 18/18 for weeks.

It's also affecting economy, staghorn coral is 3~5M each on my server and going up everyday.

Mantis stun resist needs to be lowered, so does NM evasion and enemy crit-hit- %. This event shouldn't require certain gear to do properly when those gears aren't needed anywhere else. Whether you win or not should be determined on other factor, not having a Rag army. I don't have problem finding DD and SCH for VW and Nyzul, why'd ppl have to face problem to find DD and SCH for legion?

[Arcon]

Legion drop isn't bad, and gallu/rex drop actually worth quite some gil if you can manage to kill both every time.(although meteor/arise/honor price been dropping recently). Also whether gallu/rex drop is good or not is depend on job really, personally I can't even find enough people for Mul if I even want Gallu/rex clear, let alone getting Gallu/Rex drops. The problem is some of the preparations for their job shut off half of the players that may be interested.

The problem is that Gallu/Botulus drops have a very high drop rate, compared to T2 mobs. And once you have a decent static group and can clear content better and faster, you will get a lot more drops from them than any other mob in Legion, even more so if you can clear both NMs. We got three Meteors in two runs last Sunday, for example. I don't even remember how many Meteor/Arise scrolls we got in total, but we haven't even seen a single Duplus Grip in all that time, and everyone and their mother wants one. That is the true problem with the drop distribution right now.

Me: I'm looking for people for legion, wanna join?

Player A: Need a DD? I have MNK with 90 Vere.

*Takes the MNK to legion and see him parse a lot lower than a 95 Rag owner lower acc too*

Player B: Need a DD? I have 90 Ukon.

Me(Who learned a lesson): Legion mob has high acc, MAKE SURE YOU BRING ACC SWAP

*Takes him to legion and see him still parse lower than a 95 Rag*

Player C: Need a SCH? I have a SCH with 470 enhancing.

Me: Do you have a macc stun set and Impact?

Player C: No, and magic skill not capped ;(

Me: Stun going to get resist like this, gogo build a Rag and go work on macc set

Player A B C: Sorry I'm out, gl on your event and cya!

While this is a legitimate concern, Legion is simply not designed to work this way. It was meant to be cleared with a familiar group of friends, who will stick around and work together to improve at the event and eventually clear it. This pretty much means LS events, possibly with strangers on less demanding jobs to fill in the gaps. And you don't need a full roster of Ragnarok DDs to clear it, as long as they're still good. It just happens to be a great weapon, even outside of this. We've won Mul several times without a Ragnarok DD.

As I said, it's still a valid concern, some people simply prefer the casual nature of events they've got accustomed to through Abyssea and Voidwatch. But it was precisely the LS activities that I personally missed during that era. Sure, you could still do VW with your LS (and we did/do, to get people clears), but you wouldn't want to spam a NM countless times with people you know don't need anything from it, especially if there's no need for it. Due to how the Voidwatch drop distribution works it's easy to find people to do it with, because everyone knows they'll get their own chest. This does not apply to any other event, which is why people generally hesitate to team up with strangers for those.

If anything, I'd complain that the overall difficulty is too hard to be done by a majority of players. It's simply not very accessible to most people who would actually want to do it. That's why I liked the idea of having different difficulty settings available for it. The critical hit rate penalty sucks, but in most cases it won't make or break a run compared to all the other things going on (high Evasion/Defense, resistance to Stun, spammy AoE moves, including AoE death, etc.). I wouldn't want to see what this looks like with Perfect Defense and Embrava nerfed. That will be a much bigger drawback than the critical hit rate penalty ever was. Just have to hope they adjust the event before those nerfs.