Raider to Non-Raider: an exhibition on thoughts and misconceptions

[Tyrn]

pink's secondaries are unreliable for what you get

True they're unreliable and I've gotten an aetherial item that was no better than the unmelded crafted equivalent but the good ones can give you 3 maxed out secondaries which means we might see 210 aetherial gear that's straight up better than gordian/upgraded eso.

[Malzian]

True they're unreliable and I've gotten an aetherial item that was no better than the unmelded crafted equivalent but the good ones can give you 3 maxed out secondaries which means we might see 210 aetherial gear that's straight up better than gordian/upgraded eso.

Well, bringing it back to the original issue that started this conversation... It really doesn't make sense to me to put a piece of gear that has unknown stats on a BiS list since it -could- be great or it could be awful. Maybe on there as an "if you get these stats", but I'd rather put a known item on a BiS list than say it's that much more of a gamble to get it.

[BristolRuss]

I would like to become a raider.... But being on a EU server when you live in NZ makes it hard XD Weird timezones and increased ping.

While it certainly makes it trickier, it's not impossible. I run a raid team which consists of 5 people from England, 2 from Finland and 1 from New Zealand. On an EU server as well.

[Ibi]

Okay, I checked this and you're correct. Pink and green items of the same iLvl have the same stat values, though pink's secondaries are unreliable for what you get. I could not find a comparable set for pink to blue.

There's only one pink item that has the same level as any blue items. The Aetherial Felt Trousers are i50, and can be equipped by any DoW. Comparing these to blue i50 leg armor of the same type, such as the Temple Gaskins, shows that both have 72 Defense, 12 Strength, and 13 Vitality.

Lodestone doesn't show secondary stats for the pink item, since they're randomly generated, but you can verify in-game that the secondary stat budgets are the same also.

[MeiUshu]

The people who are taking the time to post that they didn't read the OP are the worst people in this thread.

I so much indeed so much agree with this analysis...that post is well written and thought out...I am not too sure though it calls for an intervention without starting again a debate long 100000 miles without getting nowhere, since everybody will camp on whatever they believe...but opens up some personal thoughts

Mei

[HorseBoots]

I think the issue with Alexander is that it's a bad raid. The story left a poor first impression. The latter half of Savage feels poorly tuned, over designed, and with a larger jump in difficulty to the rest of the raid unseen since Psychonauts' Meat Circus. The loot tables for each individual floor is a linear joke, completely ruining the fun of gear optimization by making it completely linear and the excitement of clearing fights in general.

You didn't see this amount of complaining from Coil. The common joke response when someone would criticize Coil's fights was "yo get gud". I have yet to have another player come and defend any of the actual design in the latter half of Savage.

My group blazed through floor 1 and 2 in the first two weeks of release, while floor 3 has sandbagged us since. And it's not a team failure, I'd feel confident in claiming that 60% of our wipes have been due to the obnoxious amount of RNG tied to it's tight instant-death mechanics. Nothing is more infuriating than wiping when you KNOW that you are attempting to preform the mechanic correctly, only for the game to just say no.

If I didn't absolutely love actually playing with my static, I'd have dropped this raid and probably taken a break. Chatting up with my friends is fun, the actual fights are not.

I really hope Square has payed attention to the points being made, and take them into account when designing the next part of the raid.

[Windsar]

I've tried to follow the thread as best as I could. One thing I'm not sure if anyone at this point has considered. If you are going to ask for a change in the raid (be it size or difficulty, or what have you), how would the dev team have the time to create and/or change such content? It seems like the team is stretched thin as is and are still able to put out content faster than most MMO's care to try (that have larger teams I'd imagine). I'm not saying it wouldn't be possible, but making suggestions for smaller changes instead of larger, more time consuming ones might be the first step in constructive feedback. Apologies if this was part of the intent, but this has been a rather long read all together, things have blurred a bit .

[Kanzer]

I loved this post, especially since our static is going through this struggle right now. We were able to down T13 before the nerfs happened and were crazy happy about that, like you said, our raid group was a grab bag of skill levels and how people felt about raiding in general. Some did it just for the challenge like me, wanting to succeed, some valued the friendships more. Before now, we were able to co-exists fine but now, with AS3, it became painfully obvious that this was no longer going to be the case. All of a sudden, sadly it became necessary for us to replace those weak links in order to attain the progression that many of us wanted, and unfortunately it cost many friendships in the process, something that makes me sad, but something that was unavoidable.

We never beat second coil savage while it was progression, but I was fine with that. I was just happy getting past Bahamut while it was still progression, but now it seems if I want that feel again we have to re-build our static from the ground up with a certain kind of player. While I'm of course willing to do that, I still don't enjoy the process of reforming the raid. I don't enjoy getting hated by people who were once friends because I choose to pursue my goals in the game. While I don't blame SE for the loss of friendships, I do believe this is definitely an issue that needs looking at, as in the end, I would have rather avoided all the heartache.

Thanks for taking the time to write this out OP.

[cgbspender]

Sacrificing friends for the sake of potentially clearing a savage floor : Yes, sad indeed.

[RiceisNice]

To chime in my opinion, I'm not against having a normal mode and a meaningful savage mode raid (that is, harder difficulty with mechanical changes, maybe even an extra phase completely unique to it, and of course better rewards like a mount).

However, I also feel that FCoB on release, was exactly what normal mode should be. It's definitely mechanics you can't ignore, but you don't end up wiping your entire party upon failing it (which more-or-less applies to all SCoB turns excluding 6), and most importantly; it's difficulty was more on numbers being met that it could naturally get easier as you get gear for it (which again, can't be said for SCoB since any mechanics will outright kill you even at lvl 60 if it was left unchanged). That alone should be more than enough to throttle the average clear rates and groups for most normal-mode content. And when I say this, I mean gear makes it easier, not possible to clear. Having an absurdly high gear wall to the point that you need the entire party to get gear from the previous turns within the same tier (when you only get 1-2 drops per week for 1-2 individual...) is slapping the same wall that the midcore players are facing, except it's also slamming the hardcore players too.

With Alexander normal, unfortunately I feel that this difficulty has dipped well into the CT-raid difficulties (and we have the upcoming void ark for that anyway...) upon release. This hits the nail on the coffin in regards to having no meaningful raid content that's suited to the midcore group. The only reason you'll ever go into Alexander normal as a group (because honestly, my raid group didn't even get together to clear A4 within the first day of release, we DF'd it) is to guaranteed that you'll get your weekly drop.