Walk of Echoes: Has anything changed?

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

So there was yet another modification to WoE this time around. To keep from getting bogged down by what has already been said ad nauseam, I'll just recap the two main issues here:

1. Nobody does WoE because nobody does WoE. Rewards require mass participation; nobody will go if nobody is there.
2. Rewards aren't balanced(!) with effort, where "effort" includes the need to organize enough people to guarantee a win (see above) as well as the challenge of the fights themselves.

Now, this latest round of change tried to address #2 above by trying to make the rewards more plentiful and/or more profitable while potentially reducing the participation and/or job variety needed to win.

So... is it enough? My own experience on Sylph, at least, shows WoE as empty as ever (having shiny new content likely doesn't help). And previously, even when a large enough group was grinding WoE, they were grinding the same one or two Walks, neither one of which seemed to drop the coins I was interested in. So even if crowds do materialize, will these crowds do a wider variety of Walks?

[Luvbunny]

They need to warp you direct to WoE and you should never leave the area, have the gil deducted directly from participating or just get rid of that silly thing altogether. They need to also add new gears, or get the drop rate higher. Overall people will not do this because the reward are not there. They need to add a full set of gears (not just random pieces and accessories). And they certainly need to buff the "fake" empy to be very comparable or at least give it special different abilities so people will incline to make it because it is slightly different from empy but not a total weaksauce.

[Caketime]

Stay out of WoE, more gilz for me!

I was in there all day yesterday, and made millions worth of coinage and upgrade items playing as WHM. SMN and BST onry is no longer required, but it helps. Flux 15 is still ridiculous, but can likely be done with two parties now if you have enough SMNs. Most bosses can be taken down with melee unlike before, though most of them have party/alliance hate so prepare to make new macros. There's also a new variable that's likely due to the much faster pace of Walks, each flux can only be visited once every 45 minutes. We bounced between 5 fluxes on our marathon session yesterday due to time restrictions, so if variety is your issue then it's probably not much of one anymore.

From what I've seen, a single LS with pet/ranged jobs could smash WoE now. Have fun!

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Not sure it affects anything, but I note that neither "Walk of Echoes" nor "The Threshold" are in either the auto-translate dictionary or the glossary of game terms at playonline.com.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

From what I've seen, a single LS with pet/ranged jobs could smash WoE now. Have fun!

So a full alliance or so of exactly the right kinds of jobs? /sigh

At any rate, I just established that 6 players from my LS, all level 90+, can't beat #01. 45 minutes (not counting travel time) and nothing to show for it. So... same ol' same ol' from my perspective.

I'm about ready to drop the damned weapon.

[Caketime]

So a full alliance or so of exactly the right kinds of jobs? /sigh

At any rate, I just established that 6 players from my LS, all level 90+, can't beat #01. 45 minutes (not counting travel time) and nothing to show for it. So... same ol' same ol' from my perspective.

I'm about ready to drop the damned weapon.

Suck less. Sorry, but I've got no sympathy for you, every event is exclusionary to some extent. This event has always been favorable to pet and ranged jobs, lower mob levels doesn't suddenly mean zerg material, which is actually a good thing. AoE Weakness + Curse and Bio auras are radical.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

Suck less. Sorry, but I've got no sympathy for you, every event is exclusionary to some extent.

This brings us back to the same old complaints about WoE about reward versus effort. My group could have gone to Dynamis instead, in which we would have (1) made demonstrable progress towards (2) real weapons.

This event has always been favorable to pet and ranged jobs, lower mob levels doesn't suddenly mean zerg material, which is actually a good thing.

Prior trials were tier 2 Voidwalkers, which always could be zerged with a less-than-full alliance even at 75-80. The next trials are kindred crests, of which everyone already has several hundred.

If WoE is "working as intended," it's time for S-E to stop pretending and improve the stats on WoE weapons. Meanwhile, I'm back to watching /search results until a full alliance of pet jobs pops in WoE before making any progress.

[Caketime]

Oh my, a pack of wild assumptions has appeared! Sorry, too much Dragon Quest.

You're giving the WoE mobs and bosses too much credit, they're nowhere near as facegrindy as they used to be, even my WHM can melee most of them safely. No exaggeration at all, just have to keep HP up and gtfo before it turns into a total dumpster fire. From what I've observed, players new to the event seem to think they have to try and go balls to the wall at all times, forgetting that they take much more damage now when Berserk. Melee is fine when you have the means to mitigate enemy TP moves, but the bosses in WoE are designed to faceroll you for not paying attention and then use your corpse as a comfy seat.

The only flux that still offers a challenge is 15, and calling it a challenge is bordering on exaggeration. Friday morning we busted Mingyi up with just over a dozen people, around half were pet jobs and the rest were varied, I was one of a pair of WHM, we pretty much ran around giving everyone cureskin and spamming Cursna. The trick to this fight is to have the pets on it as a distraction while players unload ranged damage from afar. Mingyi is not fun to melee, it spams Caturae TP moves and switches between a couple of nasty auras. So the players end up running around the center pillar staying away from the TP moves while shooting/casting/nosepicking/tasting the floor until it dies. Simple.

Lesser fluxes can be done with far less coordination, just make friends with a few pet job types and tear it up, when you get a handle on it then go for the big boss and before you know it the whole thing will be one big farm session.

[Ziyyigo-Tipyigo]

You're giving the WoE mobs and bosses too much credit, they're nowhere near as facegrindy as they used to be, even my WHM can melee most of them safely.

"Most" ≠ "All." In WoE, "most" gets you nothing. If you don't bring enough to deal with 3 Caldera Crabs simultaneously, you're literally better off staying home.

The rest of your post can be summed up as "Bring your Abyssea LS." Effort vs. reward.

[Caketime]

Maybe this event just isn't for you, bro. If you can't even figure out the Crabs then I just don't know what to say, other than what I mentioned in my second post.