We finally had a slow night with enough of the right classes to try a raid. We all head to BB and group up. About a 1/5 of our numbers are apps and we want to try something a bit easier then a Time level for our 1st try so we grab the MM normal raid.

The raid itself wasn't that bad, we didn't "win" cause we ran out of time, kinda our fault, we wasted time killing the wrong mobs and were not prepared for the boss mobs. No biggy, so we just buffed those that died and used those extra 30 minutes.

So, what was our reward for 3 & 1/2 hours of work? 9% aap, zero points and 4 augs from the chests. Three crappy TYPE 3 augs and a ac aug for int casters. Yes, a F*ing 15ac aug for int casters... Too bad we didn't have anyone actually wearing LDON armor there to enjoy those bloody type 3 augs. Atleast make them all slot type or something.

Going to be a cold day in hell before we will be able to get most of those 36 people to step foot in a LDON raid again.

Oh ya, we got four +7 augs too, 1mr, 1str, 1pr and 1dex. Our 36 folks would have been better off just grinding away in normal adventures for that time period.

Well I can see the trolls putting this into an uber vs casual dibate again.

However I know theres a lot of guilds out there which simply wont even raid Ldon raids in their current state.

The ones who do have terrible attendence issues.

SoE really fugged up on LDoN for raiding was a 2nd thought to the expansion which their trying to backtrack.

Roll on next expansion or WoW....whichever comes first!

Tils

"Well I can see the trolls putting this into an uber vs casual dibate again"

How so? No casuals do the raids, so I doubt they'd even have an opinion.

If this example is typical, I'd sure have no motivation to doing one. 9% AA in 3.5 hours is ridiculous.

Tat

You get about 2% aa in 4 hours spent raiding VT, so I guess that's a step up! ;)

Blah! Sounds bad. SOE is losing their touch.

I’m not quite sure what the complaint is about. You failed the raid and got pretty useless loot. It’s no different to any other failed raid, except that most failed raids you don’t even get useless loot. Rallos Zek doesn’t drop consolation loot if you fail to kill him. Not even if it takes you a week of trying to do it.

And for most raids the extra half an hour is just a hang over from the normal LDoN groups, because the boss normally despawns when the timer runs out, so getting an extra half an hour to kill him… Either that or the hostages die when time runs out.

Now if you were to complain that the loot is sub-standard for a successful completion of the mission then I would agree with you. However I still enjoy the missions for the challenge of trying to complete them. Bad loot just means we won’t be going back to farm them.

RvR in LDoN raids are bad. Well, not quite. But I think PoFire pretty much spoiled us on RvR. Zone in, kill mob, loot something really nice.

LDoN raids are similar to VT type raids at level 60. Kill a bunch of things that hit for a bunch of damage. Walk 100 feet. Rinse and repeat.

While the items and augments seem to be a bit underpowered for the level of effort (when compared to PoFire), the type 8 augments are still imporvements.

By and large, LDoN Time level raids aren't worth it when compared to an actual Time raid. But if your guild is fully Time equipped, then these raids are the only way to improve.

We usually do these raids when it isn't our turn in Time. We usually lose.

A positive note about LDoN raids is that they are very interesting raids to do. Mobs are scripted better. There are twists and turns to the script (as opposed to clear to boss, kill boss, loot style that is a Trademark of EQ). And everyone has to be on their toes for the three some odd hours it takes to win. No more slacking on auto-follow.

Originally posted by AmonraSet
I’m not quite sure what the complaint is about. You failed the raid and got pretty useless loot. It’s no different to any other failed raid, except that most failed raids you don’t even get useless loot. Rallos Zek doesn’t drop consolation loot if you fail to kill him. Not even if it takes you a week of trying to do it.

And for most raids the extra half an hour is just a hang over from the normal LDoN groups, because the boss normally despawns when the timer runs out, so getting an extra half an hour to kill him… Either that or the hostages die when time runs out.

Now if you were to complain that the loot is sub-standard for a successful completion of the mission then I would agree with you. However I still enjoy the missions for the challenge of trying to complete them. Bad loot just means we won’t be going back to farm them.

I wasn't complaining that we lost and got crappy loot. I was complaining that the loot sucked for the RvR. More importantly, for those guilds who have a hard time with the 36 man limit, the RvR really blows. Nothing like seeing 10 of your core members saying "Well, that blew. You're not going to be seeing me in a LDON raid again" in /gu.

There really is no reason at all to raid ldon other then to say you did it. Atleast when you climb a big, rough mountain in RL you get a nice view from the top. In LDON you don't get any real loot most of the time, no exp and not even a fraction of the AP you could have gotten in 1/6 the time in a normal ldon adventure.

In VT you do get worse exp, but you also walk away with 36? (I forget how many drops) decent items for the effort. Time is actually better exp and you get anywhere from 41-51 items.
Raid VT and get 36? items in 6-8 hours for 72 people. Raid Time and get 41-51 items for 72 people in 6-8 hours. Raid LDON and get 4 items for 36 people in 3-4 hours?
That basically works out to 1/2 the people, 1/2 the time and 1/4th the drops. Most of which you can't even use at the level you can get them at.

Originally posted by Tilien Venator

Raid VT and get 36? items in 6-8 hours for 72 people. Raid Time and get 41-51 items for 72 people in 6-8 hours. Raid LDON and get 4 items for 36 people in 3-4 hours?
That basically works out to 1/2 the people, 1/2 the time and 1/4th the drops. Most of which you can't even use at the level you can get them at.

again... you lost.... and you got a ****ty reward. lose in VT? you get a ****ty reward their too, everyone gets to buy coffins yay!

if you are talking about the loot from a completed ldon raid please state so, and show exampes, because atm it still sounds like you are miffed about the rewards in a raid in which you failed.

The rewards are the same for winning in overtime on a raid as they are for winning normally. They are no different. So yes, they won in overtime, and the rewards sucked....but the rewards would have been the same regardless.

I dont think that point was made clear.

The loot seems to be very poorly done. Not so much the absolute power level or the number of drops, but just the big variability in desirablity. It's ok to have a sucky augment on a merchant list because if noone wants it noone will buy it.

But picking things from what looks to be a very big table is more like if you dinged and it gave you a random aaxp, instead of letting you pick the one you wanted. I think people would exp a lot less if they knew the rewards could be +2 CR instead whatever it was they wanted.

IMHO they should remove all the augments from the loot tables, and instead:

give 150+ points for a raid win

first time you win a particular raid you get some unique augments unlocked at the merchants.

soru

It's already been stated, but it's worth making clear.. The *only* difference between finishing a raid in the given time and finishing it in overtime is that you don't get your points in latter case. Loot isn't affected in the least.

Bear in mind that throughout the entire affair, those 4 generic stat augs mentioned were the only significant drops prior to the defeat of the bosses. True, drops off VT trash for instance are rare, but at least an Eom here and there drops something that'd be considered nice for most people at that level.

The loot from the bosses really wasn't much better (again, same as if the adventure were finished in the time given.) I think it was the above mentioned 15 ac caster aug, a Fury of Druzzil aug, a Regen 3 aug, and some 2 or 3 point DS aug. Fury of Druzzil isn't bad, I suppose, but it's a type 3 aug (as were all but one, though I forget which one wasn't) which really limits the usefulness drastically. Of course the bosses weren't even as tough as wading through the three hours of trash once we knew what to do with them, but the simple fact of the matter is that the raid was long, boring, and yielded only a few items anyone would've even used, and none that anyone would specifically want to raid for again. We're not nearly fully Time equipped as we're only a phase 4 guild at this point, so in theory this level of raid should be giving us things that some people might still find desirable.

Perhaps we just got unlucky on our boss chest drops, or maybe other raids are much more fun and better itemized. My personal impression of LDoN raids so far is though is that the designers took everything that made VT boring, and opted not to include the loot.

My guild recently completed an LDoN hard raid. It took a wopping 3 hours for them to complete to see 6 drops land. Of which 3 would have rotted because 90 percent of the raid was time equipped.

We had 2 guests there, of which one guest got 2 drops because he was the only one of 36 people who needed the upgrade. Everyone else has elemental/time gear or better. The other drop rotted.

So, risk vs reward is definately screwed up. This stuff is balanced for a time level raid, and drops NToV/Vex Thal level drops.

Not to mention, you can't join a raid in progress or replace people as they need to log. Another fine screw up.

Iegil

Hmm.

I would like to see the kind of items you could make from Raid-dropped items coupled with Raid-dropped augments... It would be very educating and a much better way to judge the actual reward of LDoN raids.

Ex : a Fury of Druzzil augment, a +40 hp/mana augment and a +6 all stats +6 all resists augment coupled with a 12 ac, 100 hp/mana, +5 all stats and resists ring.... That would come up to a very interesting ring for a VT-level guild, no? Yet, taken individually, they wouldnt sound like much...

I agree though, if you need to upgrade both your base items and to put 3 augments on them for those items to become valuable, 4 drops on a 3 hour raid is ridiculous. Put 3 base items and 5 worthy augments or something like that...

I also agree they should fix the raiding... They really should enable replacements, at the very least. Sucks big time for a guild with 55 on to say to 19 sorry! next time... maybe! Also sucks big time to have a few raiders go LD... If it's tough for 36, imagine how tough it is with 30...

Callahad