Dethdlr 
Tomorrow marks a week that Destiny of Velious has been live. I’ve had time to run through the Icy Fingers quest series on three characters, get my flying mount, check out Thurgadin, and even run through the first quest area in the Eastern Wastes. I’ve also poked my head into the Tower of Frozen Shadows: Shadowed Corridors. I’ve learned a few things during this time that I’d like to pass on. This is mainly meant for the non-raiding portion of our audience since the raiders most likely know all of this information already or have the level of gear so that this doesn’t really apply.
The flying mounts are awesome! They make questing much more enjoyable. Depending on your class, you may want to do the questline with a friend as there are a few places where it can get a bit tough.
Run the questlines in the Icy Fingers. You’ll end up with a full set of armor and pretty much a full set of jewelry and weapons as well just from doing the Othmir and Gnoll quest series at the begining of the Great Divide. Your crit mit will vary depending on your class but you should at the very least be able to get above 70% crit mit just from putting that gear on. You’ll also want to put on the jewelry to beef up your resists. This can make surviving quite a bit easier.
From all the reports I’ve heard, as well as my experience in ToFS: SC, the devs have added strategy to just about all named encounters. Adding strats to instance nameds is not new but hasn’t been done on this grand of a scale before. As far back as Kingdom of Sky, and possibly even further back, there have been named mobs in instances that required you to figure out their strat. Blackscale Sepulcher and Halls of Fate come to mind. It seems though, with this expansion, even the first named in the first zone takes a bit of strategy for your average group of adventurers.
We went in wearing pretty much just the gear from the Icy Fingers questlines and cleared the first two named and were working on a third before we ran out of time (got a late start). These zones are going to require people to figure out a strategy on how to take down the mobs.
CASUAL PLAYERS: Most encounters have more than one way to take the mob down. I can tell you that I have not seen the strategy that my guild uses for most of the instances we’ve done in the past, to include Ward of Elements, written up anywhere other than the private forums of our guild website. My point is, what works for some groups, doesn’t work for others. We use trial and error to find out what works for us. Just because the writeup you find for a named says it’s a basic tank and spank, doesn’t mean that’s what it will be for you. As long as you have a decent group setup and decent gear, don’t get discouraged.
Check out the post I made a while back on How To Figure Out An Encounter. This has a lot of tips that may come in handy for working through the DoV instances.
Keep in mind that there may be a progression intended for DoV that starts by doing the quests in the Great Divide and Eastern Wastes. Gear is rewarded for doing quests in both zones and it may be that the instances are meant to be tuned towards players wearing that gear as a starting point. Raiders in T3 raid gear may be able to skip this and dive straight into the instances but the casual group players may need to bite the bullet and get some better gear before the instances are possible.
So far, I’m really liking this expansion. I like that the “easy” instance is actually kind of tough and takes a bit of figuring out. We’ve got a while before the next expansion comes out so we have plenty of time to work on it and progress through the rest of the instances. This has the potential to be quite a fun expansion.
As little guild most of time we are 3, with SF we was able to enjoy the game doing some library run, or event RH, conservatory. We even success SR and some other name like OV until 2rd last name.
But with velious it look like small group are not welcome anymore.
I agree it’s nice that its a challenge. But it does have a downside, as Lathain said it’s unlikely to be done by a smaller group (at least not until you get better gear i recon). But also the instances tend to take more time too, so it’s harder to do a quick instance (haven’t done all the instances though so there might be some quicker ones).
yea no more 15-20 min instances.. =/ which sucks sometimes thats all i have between waking up for work and having to get ready..
Everyone in Beta said that the armor and jewelry from the Othmir quests would replace my existing gear. It was described as the Tier 1 Raid armor from SF, minus the red slots.
As a ranger, I can’t agree with replacing my gear with the Othmir quest armor and jewelry. Most of the “scout” armor and jewelry had potency, crit bonus, and riposte damage. If I equipped all that gear, my Double Attack and Crit Chance would drop from 100% each to about 25% each.
I’m finding upgrades, but the Othmir quest armor is not necessarily an upgrade unless you’re still wearing TSO gear.
Feldon – the gear *was* exactly like the stuff you’d find from Toxx Mound, minus both the Ability Modifier and the red adornment slot (and dropped to 2 stats rather than 3). But they replaced all that gear after beta ended it appears (and weakened it a bit as well).
Crit chance is now only on a few items (weapons, secondary slots, and I believe belts and possibly cloaks) – but those should have 20%+ crit chance on each.
Feldon: Grab ACT and try parses with and without the new gear. I was pretty surprised that the numbers on my Assassin and Coercer actually stayed about the same or went up with the new armor and gear. I had the same worry about my crit and MA plummeting with the new gear but the potency and crit bonus seems to have made up the difference from the lower crit and multi-attack. It depends on what gear you’re starting from though. My toons are wearing instance gear from SF with no raid gear. Resists went through the roof too. Your parses may be worse but the only way to tell is to try it out. Looking at the numbers, I was expecting mine to be worse but they ended up being way better than I expected. Not to mention, I do a lot less DPS in the prone position while waiting on a rez. Before I put on the new gear with the crit mit and higher resists, I spent a lot of time waiting on a rez. But then again, I’ve heard you have a better chance at an exquisite chest if you sacrifice a ranger so wearing your old gear might be better for your group in the long run. 🙂
On another note, we went back in to ToFS: SC again last night and took out two more nameds. Sergeant Schriber was an interesting fight. I’m sure it will get old after running it several times but it was kinda interesting the first time through. We ran out of time before we could try the Librarian.