Bayld Needed to Obtain the Wildskeeper Reive Key Item

[Merton9999]

I think the issue right now is I feel more like a gardener and an exterminator than an adventurer. Reives make your average Campaign battle seem downright compelling by comparison.

I feel exactly the same. On the positive side, I actually like the pace of Reives compared to campaign battles. I like the predictable battle times, the smaller fight area, the auto-evals, and the Reive unity bonuses. The mechanics to me are fine. It's a little odd having to aggro mobs on SCH on purpose just so I can get points for curing myself, but whatever.

However, as a person trying to be a hero in a fantasy land, whacking trees, rocks, grasshoppers, bunnies and butterflies is... I don't know what to call it. Boring? That doesn't quite cover it. I have to keep reminding myself it's fun for logistical reasons while I nuke another ladybug.

My guess is people will say it's not much different than old xp parties fighting crabs and birds. Those always seemed like player choices to me though due to ease and xp chains. But when SE puts the group battles out there explicitly, they're usually more compelling mobs - beast men in Campaign and the hordes of nasties in Besieged are pretty cool.

I haven't done nearly enough exterminating and silly "surveying" yet to come close to a Wildskeeper Reive. Hopefully those will be a little more heroic, but I don't think I'll have the patience to get there

[Daniel]

I have many problems with Reive that stop me from doing it, other than the lack of fun.
1. To the best of my knowledge there is no way to tell when one is going to pop other than watching for people gathering.
2. The reward for actions varies strictly on the type of job you play.
3. Layer Reives aren't worth doing at this point
4. The range in which you have to retain makes it impossible to pull a single monster and fight it without eventually linking all of the monsters.
5. The butterflies spam a silence move, assuming you don't want to waste 3 stacks of echo drops every run it really is a deterrent for playing a caster.

An example of the class imbalance can easily be pointed out here. A couple days ago I took a thf, my sch, and a brd to a layer Reive and super tanked the mobs with the thf. I spammed cure IVs and the brd kept buffs on both. As sch I don't think I stopped curing the whole fight, it was a 4-5 min fight so this was allot of curing. When the layer died the points had been distributed like this.

~800 for thf
~300 for sch
~90 for brd

All the thf did was auto attack and spam WS, my sch was non stop busy the whole fight and it got less than half the points, the the relic brd required to keep my sch's mp high enough to spam cure IV got nearly a 10th of what the thf did despite having performed its primary function.

If you consider the amount of damage players will be taking in normal settings, trying to get points as a caster is feudal, you cast the odd buff, you cast a cure here and there, but really you can't do enough work to even get half the points that a mele who just mindlessly smacked around some monster got.

[Kristal]

~800 for thf
~300 for sch
~90 for brd

How much damage did each job do? Were the SCH and BRD meleeing the wasp nest while buffing and curing?
Honestly, I get more then that combined on PUP/DNC, and the only thing I have to do is keep hidden while my pet tears the wasp nest to pieces. (Which is harder then it sounds, since no spot is safe, and there's ALWAYS a damn bee looking at you when you need to get sneak and invis back up.)

[detlef]

Sometimes it can be surprisingly difficult to get your cure score up.

[Daniel]

How much damage did each job do? Were the SCH and BRD meleeing the wasp nest while buffing and curing?

No the brd and I were not meleing, the mobs that were being super tanked were the mantis so getting anywhere close was not an option.

[saevel]

I feel exactly the same. On the positive side, I actually like the pace of Reives compared to campaign battles. I like the predictable battle times, the smaller fight area, the auto-evals, and the Reive unity bonuses. The mechanics to me are fine. It's a little odd having to aggro mobs on SCH on purpose just so I can get points for curing myself, but whatever.

However, as a person trying to be a hero in a fantasy land, whacking trees, rocks, grasshoppers, bunnies and butterflies is... I don't know what to call it. Boring? That doesn't quite cover it. I have to keep reminding myself it's fun for logistical reasons while I nuke another ladybug.

My guess is people will say it's not much different than old xp parties fighting crabs and birds. Those always seemed like player choices to me though due to ease and xp chains. But when SE puts the group battles out there explicitly, they're usually more compelling mobs - beast men in Campaign and the hordes of nasties in Besieged are pretty cool.

I haven't done nearly enough exterminating and silly "surveying" yet to come close to a Wildskeeper Reive. Hopefully those will be a little more heroic, but I don't think I'll have the patience to get there

Well the flip side of that coin is you could be fighting dragons, demons and undead that do 9,001 damage per hit and spam aoe's that inflict any combination of Death, Doom, Petrify, Zombie, Charm, 75% HP down or full dispel.

Be very VERY careful what you wish for, this is SE we're talking about not a competent developer. They see "challange" and immediately go into Killer Game Master mode where they think of the most unbalanced impossible and utterly ridiculous way to kill players. Given the choice between Monty Haul and Killer GM, Monty Haul wins every time.

[saevel]

Sometimes it can be surprisingly difficult to get your cure score up.

I've devised a fix for that. I go BLU to Reives and bring my WHM dual box. On BLU I rotate the following while smacking the roots

BA + GoH
CA + Efflux WoR

Occasionally using

Demoralizing Roar
Actinic Burst

And whenever it's up I use WoR just for good measure. I keep cocoon up at all times along with Pro / Shell V from my WHM. This results in everything nearby trying very very hard to kill me while my WHM spams Cure IV / III on me to keep me alive. I typically get 3.5~4K from the Yahse and battlegrounds with my WHM getting 2~3K.

[Caketime]

As a Game Master myself on occasion, I feel success lies somewhere between Monty and the Killer. Players should be rewarded for heroic deeds, but they should also be careful not to get too cocky. I know some guys who will get pissy when a group goes in the opposite direction of the planned storyline so their immediate response is violence, but personally I prefer to allow the players to go on a tangent until they get bored and ask for some direction. It's also hilarious to me when an adventurer decides to go off by themselves and get into a ridiculous situation, because then I can have fun and not have to kill them. Destroying PCs is boring, Polymorphing them into a Goose that can only speak common with a french accent is fun for everybody.

[Kristal]

As a Game Master myself on occasion, I feel success lies somewhere between Monty and the Killer. Players should be rewarded for heroic deeds, but they should also be careful not to get too cocky. I know some guys who will get pissy when a group goes in the opposite direction of the planned storyline so their immediate response is violence, but personally I prefer to allow the players to go on a tangent until they get bored and ask for some direction. It's also hilarious to me when an adventurer decides to go off by themselves and get into a ridiculous situation, because then I can have fun and not have to kill them. Destroying PCs is boring, Polymorphing them into a Goose that can only speak common with a french accent is fun for everybody.

Or getting a high-level barbarian resurrected as an eagle Can't use weapons or armor, but who cares about that when you got a pair of talons, barbarian rage and a death-from-above cry that causes weaker ground dwellers to run in fear