Feldon So if you played in the Beta, or heard tales, you know that like past betas, the solo overland content was rather… challenging. We’re talking badgers and gnolls that ignore 30-40% of damage done to them, have upwards of 100,000 hp, and put out damage in the thousands. Notorious were the crystal spiders needed for the flying mount quest which, if they successfully poisoned you, were doing upwards of 4,000 damage *per tick* until cured. If you didn’t whip out a potion or use that click-to-cure, you were dead in seconds.
2 weeks before Velious Beta ended, SmokeJumper admitted that it was too difficult and so sweeping changes were made. Players who were originally getting slaughtered in Velious overland zones were then able to with stand 2-3 mobs beating on them with few ill effects. When Beta closed, we had been told that more changes would be made to try to strike a balance.
What we’ve seen so far in Velious is that things were tweaked to still present a challenge, but some of the tougher effects have been dialed down.
What Constitutes Test Gear?
Every year after Beta, the question is asked: Did you guys test this stuff in the best Raid gear or what?
Velious Beta started out with an NPC offering Battlegrounds gear. Soon after, Tier 1 Sentinel’s Fate raid gear was added to the Buffer NPC. Players quickly noticed that the solo quests in Velious award the Tier 1 Sentinel’s Fate raid gear with the red adornment slots removed.
In fact, this is now the predominant recommendation we’ve seen: Unless you raided in Sentinel’s Fate, all of your gear should quickly be replaced with Velious solo quest gear.
Your Feedback
Do you think Velious overland mobs are too hard? Too easy? Have you ended up replacing all your gear with Velious solo quest armor? Does this progression make sense?
So far, with a Wizard in t1 raid gear, a 90 warden in t3 level 80 gear with a few pieces of t1 90 gear, and a paladin in t2 raid gear that it has been all easy. My wizard can with one hit bring mobs to less then 5% health and my warden and pally can take the hits easy. I’m not saying it is easy just not challenging to the point where i am always stressed out about dieing. for the most part i cant give up my red adorns o most my old armor and the new armors progression is really odd, going from fabled to legendary of the same level is to weird and the fact that with all the stat changes the only gear that seems reasonable now is the new gear, ALL old gear needs their stats looked at and reworked to fit the new changes and probably have most mit values for tanks increased as it seems most have lost mitigation with the stat changes.
Kunark started out like this too sort of. 2 years later they smoothed it out because it was no longer new anymore. I predict the same will happen to velious in a couple years. lol
But yea my raid gear was not protecting me very much when soloing this place. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t raid. lol
The following may be harsh!
Before Velious for a >very casual< player you need to get the legendary faction gear from Sentinel's Fate zones. Select all health pool increase in your character development, and at least 5 of the 10 points in the start of shadows needs to be max health also.
Growth's Ambrosia gives about 300 HP at level 90. Max health potions. Cure potions, cure potions, cure potions. Click the orb near the Lodizal for an unlimited duration buff of crit and about 600 HP. Lasts while you are in EW or GD.
Learn how to use CC, kiting, mob pathing, etc to your advantage. Don't be afraid to group for solo content but be prepared to baby people through quests if you do!
Lore wise: Your a dork, and velious mobs are thugs. Don't try to take on the whole gang at once unless you know you can take it.
edit: Feeding the lodizal from nipik’s tent after doing the right quests is what gives you the buff.
As a non-raider in T2 armor those mobs are unreasonable for their level. The day this game requires one to raid to expect to kill a overland snow badger is the day they truly lost their mind. 🙂
Personally, as a Troubador I’m really enjoying the challenge of soloing again. Granted, I wouldn’t mind if they dialed down the damage just a bit on a few of the mobs. 😉
My Inq only have gear from SF instances and I have no problems at all to solo GD. Haven’t tried EW yet…
I think it is great that finally there is a bit of a challenge back in the game, and not just in raids.
I think everyone started to get tired of phrases like – “let me round up the room and then we can kill them all together”
Who knows people might even get back to pulling being a skill and the masters being monks and bruisers.
A world where agro management is an art, and healers work hard, and debuffs make or break an encounter.
I’m an inquisitor with mastercrafted gear and I’m having no trouble at all; all my fights end with full health and power and I’m soloing yellow ^^ mobs no problem. Haven’t tried a true heroic yet.
This is odd because I hear some other people talking about getting one-shotted. Maybe it just means inquisitors are really good at soloing. *shrug*
I gave up on my Defiler. It was impossible. Our solo ability was pretty craptacular to begin with and now its just frustrating beyond comparison.
I dont doubt if you didnt raid, you are using the new set of armor you get through initial quests. I have some raid gear and find it refreshing a blubie can wipe me if i am not watching mob paths. I hope it even gets harder as I progress. My bigger concern (borders whine) is how there appears to be no transitions between xpacs–hyperinflation of stats. Some junk dagger has 30% crit chance? I get the new mechanics, but still.
My vote. Make solo even more challenging. You cannot fear death.
I had no problems with any enemies soloing in beta though I have noticed that after release of the game the enemies aren’t as tough.
My guild and I are personally loving the challenge of the new zones. Our healers are having to heal, our mages are having to root and nuke, etc. We are actually having to group up a bit instead of solo steam rolling content.
Now, add all this to the crazy PvP on Nagafen and its even more fun than its been. Cant wait for the public quests on Nagafen to gain some popularity. It will be like the avatar fights, fighting the mobs and each other. Im expecting some truly epic ring war battles.
Claviarm,
Inquisitors are beast at soloing. Some people prefer them to SK.
agree with ardeth, if your not a ideal solo class, best roll one if you plan on advancing “solo” quests, i understand people wanting added difficulty, but on common trash mobs for 11 gold quests? the dungeons and heroic quests should be hard, but there’s little balance, several people in my guild have called the expansion, destiny of raiders…
My BG geared Guardian is tackling groups with fair ease, although I do see my health going down now unlike SF, and I certainly wouldn’t want to AFK anywhere like I could in SF. The last time I tried a heroic mob though he took me down quickly, whether post beta I can actually though remains to be seen.
I have a suspicion that fighters have it easier then other classes (partly due to the fact that fighters have no other option to win other than to go toe to toe), I’ll be able to verify that when I get my T8 geared level 86 ranger in there, which is something I’m very much looking forward to.
90SK in some t1 raid jewelry but mostly BG gear & armor. I pulled over 20 Order of Rime guys and slaughtered them with ease. It seems that my spells are doing less damage and my auto attacks and procs are destroying them. I soloed the named wurm (91 heroic^^) on the cliffs. I can definitely feel the difference between SF/SBH and Velious but SKs are still beastly.
im not really having to much much of a issue, but yah they are hitting a little to hard like some of the named one ups 2 shot me a few times .. im in t2 raid gear SF. but im haivng a blast this x pack rocks.
overland mobs are geared to much towards having to have raid gear,
the quest gear is decent, but you’ll have to take huge hits to everything else in order to gain the (needed) critical mitigation,
the quest progression is actually pretty great imo, as far as story, and ease of following it along, tho i havent been through all of it yet
It’s like to hear form other Warlocks. My 90 lock is getting creamed. I’m a casual player – so don’t have the time to raid – so my gear is only Mastercrafted. But, the mobs are making short work out of me.
My 90 Wizzy isn’t having nearly as many problems (with the same gear).
I’ve been a subscriber since day 1 (and used to raid back in the day – but life has overtaken the amount of time I can play). Having said that, I play at least 5 – 10 hours a week, every week.
I’ve seen a lot of changes to the game – many for the better. However, I am very disappointed that, at least at present, it seems that the new expansion is not aimed at the casual player. That’s a shame. Had I known that the solo content was so demanding – I would not have purchased the expansion……
Honestly this is far easier then ROK.
Warden T3 just rolling thru the overland zones quests. Gather up 10 to 20 mobs and boom.
Conj T2-3 snare the heriocs & regular mobs just melt. Chain pull till pet is low on mana and wait a moment.
In terms of difficulty, I think the expansion is fair. I don’t think it’s too hard or too easy. Seasoned veterans of the game with decent gear will be encouraged to actually pay attention when soloing instead of pushing the auto-attack button and going afk. On the flip side, non-experts with lesser gear will still have an opportunity to be successful if they’re careful while collecting the Velious starter gear set; they just won’t be able to be as aggressive as players with a better setup.
I do think there will be an issue with discouraging mass pulls in heroic instances however, especially when it means more time required in the zone just clearing trash. As a tank, I’ve never heard anyone complain that I was pulling too many mobs (as long as it didn’t wipe the group). In fact, people appreciated that because it allowed you to get through zones, even the harder ones, in a reasonable amount of time. Who wants to spend 60-75% of the zone time clearing trash? Unless you’re the kind of person who puts in 8-10 hours every day at the game, you’d probably prefer logging in for 2 or 3 hours and being able to do 3 or even 4 zones when you go LFG, experiencing more content in one sitting. I really think people are eventually going to miss the aoe aspect of the game and the time it saves for people who want to get the most out of their play time (imo, there’s just something really fun about being surrounded by lots of mobs and hitting those nice blue background abilities).
My raiding defiler, with t1 and t2 stuff has no issue taking on solo mobs. Well, no health issue. Its mind numbingly slow, but she doesn’t take a lot of damage. The ward and heal procs on her gear and the quality of it means she hardly sees her health go down at all.. and rarely has to cast a real ward or heal.
My swashy? had her butt handed to her by an urchin 3 levels below her. 5 times.
2 of those in full defensive spec, with shield.
She only has casual gear though, not raid quality. Things are a touch easier after getting some quest gear, but with the CA lag hammering me, its hard to get stuff off in time to kill the mob fast enough.
My assassin, with -some- raid gear fairs a teensy bit better.. but by far the most durable is the one that kills the slowest.
It’s very disenheartening.
Yea i have to agree with you Yure. It is easier then RoK was when it was new. As a fellow warden, you should know it takes a while for us to kill anything, and we can heal rather quick with not much of a power drop. The only thing i noticed here was i had to heal myself while soloing about as much as i did back in RoK, and that it takes even longer to kill these mobs. Other then that i have only died once and it was not because of a mob but because i levitated off thurg into one of the fire pits and died instantly lol.
I’ve only tried the beginning quests on one of my toons so far but I have to agree with Yure: Far easier than RoK was at launch. I’m not wearing ANY raid gear, just stuff picked up in the instances. Nothing has really been that tough as long as I’ve been careful to pull one mob at a time and watch for DoTs. Elemental DoTs are putting a hurting on me so I make sure to hit a cure potion whenever I get one on me. Yes, it’s true, you’re allowed to use cure potions outside of raid zones. 🙂 I’ve not got a full set of quested gear that moves my crit mit from 7% to around 125% but puts my multi-attack and crit in the toilet. Haven’t started wearing it yet because of that but I’m carrying it around for when I start getting flattened.
On another note, I find it infuriating that the gear folks are still not talking to the design folks apparently because the stupidity of non-communications seems to have continued.
Design folks: Lets make it so all mobs have the ability to crit so that we can make it a bit tougher for the players and add back in some challenge.
Gear folks: People are getting creamed because all the mobs are now able to crit. We better add crit mit to the quested gear so this doesn’t cause so much problems.
??? What’s the point? Added Mob Crit + Added Player Crit Mit = 0.
Now there is one rationale I can think of that may make all this make a bit of sense. It used to be that with decent instance gear, I could hop into a pick up raid and hold my own on a melee class. With the addition of crit mit, that was no longer the case. I’d get flattened if I got too close. Adding crit mit to regular gear may change that back to the way it was prior to SF. I guess we’ll see.
Hmm, I wonder myself if there is another rational for the crit mit, as you say yourself you have a set of gear you use that has much higher crit then the crit mit gear has, but the crit mit has poor crit and MA.
So it seems like we have had to step down a big notch on the DPS in return for being able to just survive in the new zones (at least when we need the crit mit). That’s good for keeping the mudflation down a little if so.
On another note I’ve taken my T8 fabled/lengendary geared level 86 ranger into DoV and I’m feeling the pain. Definitely a much more exciting adventure then SF’s snoozefest, with solo mobs I’m hopping around using all my kiting tricks, with groups though the traditional bane of Rangers I come a little unstuck.
I actually ended up duoing with a poorly geared Brawler and doing the quests, a lot of fun, I’m wondering if it will last as I’m sure some player swill complain a lot? I guess we’ll see there, but the solo game looks like it has the content (and very nice rewards) to keep the dedicated solo player busy.
I didn’t actually find it to difficult – At the start of DOV – I ignored the beta “invite” i recieved 2 weeks before release – I’d prefer not to have that preview – and went out with my level 88 templar. I had a mix of later level SF legendary and t1 Raid gear from Rok. Yeah, It was slow going, But not that dangerous. I did die twice, Untill i learned that i needed to heal more. After that it was smooth sailing. Hit some buggy quests though 🙁
I remember the spiders in Beta very well. My SK was in T1 Def gear. I had the elemental det the spiders would pop. It was supposed to do 2700-4700 cold damage every 2 seconds and every tick it could add an additional 1k-2k damage to it. 10 seconds it did 32k damage. Thats 5 ticks. Thankfully the Dev i spoke to did listen to me and it eventually got fixed. I mainly play on my warden. I dont kill the mobs super fast but that toon is the easiest to solo on. My coercer is not too bad. I just have to pay attn to things and I just noticed I can cure my pet so I might just use the pet to pull mobs and let it get the detriments. I cant wait to get in there and read up all the lore. I loved playing the Final Fantasy games due to there was always alot of reading involved. Great work Feldon. =)
Inquisitor with no raid gear.
Not having any issues taking down mobs or a couple of mobs. unlike sf I actual need to use a heal or 2
I enjoy the harder soloing to be honest. Until now the only way to get a challenge was to solo heroic mobs. So it’s nice to see they do try and make it more challenging … hope it doesnt get nerfed !!!!
As a level 90 inquisitor with terrible jewelry and 1 piece of tier 1 and tier 2 raid gear, things are melting. Granted as a plate wearing healer I will take little to no damage and can cure myself; Mobs die with little to no effort. Especially on my assassin, dirge, conjuror, and illusionist. I do not mean to offend, but in all seriousnes- Solo content in this expansion is fairly simple.
A few tips if you are having trouble in DoV.
1)Nab a mob, debuffs, dots, damage, and dead. If you’re a healing class throw in a heal and a cure when needed. If not… roots, stuns, and messes are your friends.
2) Consider the Public quests. All of my previous gear was replaced by that. once you have obtained it move on to EW quests and instances.
3)Get a better feel for your class. I’ve spent hours with ACT (parse program)changing my casting orders, armor, weapons, and jewelry. So far my damage output in this expansion has been nearly doubled (14-15k).
4) If you’re having a hard time with your class. Perhaps you might try and consider another one. I played for a year and a half on my assassin as my main, but I am nowhere near as effective with her then my inquisitor. I find getting the feel or ‘mindset’ of the character helps. As a general rule I choose to follow; If I die more then once before level 30, I suck at the class and the character must be deleted XD
P.S. If you’re not trying to save your life with a heal/cure… never EVER interrupt your auto attack. Trust me it helps 😀